#and assumed that meant it could apply to the consequences of their own centuries of colonialism

[navree]

I would say claiming to be from a culture you are not (I don't mean you, just in general) is pretty offensive, even if it's a 'white' culture. Especially if you have never engaged with that culture and only use it as a talking point or in a "I'm so cool cause I'm not completely American because I'm from (insert place)" even if you've never been there, you can't speak the language and you can't even place it on a map. Especially if you are actually encountering someone from the culture you say you are from when again, you're actually not.

Also girl, taking AP classes in your (foreign) native language is cheating!!! Take this good humourly because my sister definitely did the same thing in our language and a French friend of mine took French. But yk what they say: work smarter, not harder. Xd

God Europeans wanna be oppressed so fucking bad. Get a hobby go outside touch grass pay reparations to the entire rest of the world for having to put up with your bullshit. Absolutely no one cares least of all me.

"take this good humourly" no :) twat :)

[haldenlith]

Family Ties

So, considering Astarion's an elf along with being a vampire, it means he potentially has family still out there, right? Definitely a House, given that he was a noble. This bit isn't a new speculation, especially given how young he is, by elf terms (around 239ish, give or take some indeterminate amount of years, since Astarion says nearly two centuries under Cazador).

My thing is, well... I'll start with the fact that he was a corrupt and power hungry noble (so it says in the artbook). It's quite possible that this is a "nurture" situation. What I mean is that it's possible that this corrupt and shitty mindset was inherited. What if he came from an exceptionally shrewd, domineering family interested largely in securing political power?

Him being only 39 and being in a position of some degree of power suddenly makes a little more sense. Before, it was incredibly bizarre for an elf to be out in society in that capacity at such a ridiculously young age for them, to the point that I didn't believe it when I read it (I'll admit I still wonder if it's an oversight or a typo on Larian's part). By all rights, societally, Astarion was a damn child by elf standards. BUT, if you're say... a family from outside of the illustrious Baldur's Gate, looking to establish a foothold in the mercantile city for your own benefit, why... the humans would be none the wiser. Astarion is very much otherwise an adult. He'd be young enough to be pliable enough to mommy and daddy's machinations. Hell, they could have easily been planning to play a long game. They could put him through some form of schooling there, to financing his being there in general, schmoozing and boozing with the other patriars and nobles of Baldur's Gate, at least until he was established.

Even though the artbook doesn't outright say he was a magistrate, I'm going to assume he was, given that it seems the elite in Baldur's Gate are generally politicians or adjacent, or very wealthy merchants. (Or the founding families, but that doesn't apply here.) So, once he became a magistrate, it would mean they'd have a foot in the door. All they needed was to trust that Astarion didn't muck it up. As long as he did his job, got cozy with the right people, kept the right families smiling, it'd be good. His weird flights of fancy and uproarious temper could be dealt with. He'd outlive a good chunk of the nobles anyway, given that Baldur's Gate is a majority human city, that also goes for its nobility. It's even possible that, given time, a century or two, he could work his way onto the Council, and then the Ancunin family could start pulling a few threads in their favor. It all depended on him being smart.

And that's where the Ancunin plot falls apart: Astarion's not smart. I'd argue that he's clever, but he isn't smart. We see that multiple times.

Examples: Being willing to hop into a deal with Raphael without considering the consequences (he sees the reward, not the fine print, basically). Approving of you setting off the trap in the Monastery to Lathander (which is extra hilarious when you consider he has special dialogue for dying to that). Wanting to interrupt the Ogre and Hobgoblin in the barn despite the risks, solely because it's funny.

(Honestly, I'd even count his attempts at seducing Tav. He didn't consider what that might entail or the very real possibility of catching feelings.)

This man is awful at thinking things through.

He's impulsive and filled with hubris, and that catches up with his living, not-vampire-spawn self in the form of The Gur. Sure, he probably wasn't personally out to get them (though it does seem that he buys into the racist sentiments of Society at the time), but whatever ruling he passed down probably meant he was still part of the ongoing systemic oppression against them, and he clearly thought of himself as untouchable enough to not have guards while enjoying all that being nobility in Baldur's Gate has to offer on the streets at night. He probably got too used to The Watch being there to protect him.

But money and influence make a poor shield against the physical danger of fists and blades, and a scheming Vampire Lord named Cazador, who was all too familiar with him.

All of this is to say that, when considering that little speculation of mine, it suddenly makes a little more sense why no one has been looking for him. It's quite possible that, while the Ancunin family may have mourned losing him, they may have also shrugged and just went back to the drawing board. They're elves. They can wait a bit and plop another Ancunin into Baldur's Gate high society, perhaps even farm some sympathy for their lost son.

TLDR: Summing all of that long ass rambling to say that it's entirely possible that Astarion has been a damn pawn his whole life, everything planned out for him. It might very well be a good thing that he doesn't remember much, and it might also be a good thing that they think him dead.

[scotianostra]

On 11th July 1274 Robert the Bruce was born probably in Turnberry Castle, Ayrshire.

I don’t like repeating the same old story, especially on posts like this, The Bruce turns up so often in my posts that it isn’t any wonder he is part of the Scottish Psyche. In 2006 Robert the Bruce came third in a poll of ‘most important Scots’, behind William Wallace and Robert Burns. Leaving aside what that says about the nation that produced, among others, David Hume and Adam Smith, Alexander Fleming and John Logie Baird, there can be no doubt that a king that ruled 700 years ago is still very much remembered by Scots today and in the Scots psyche, even more pertinently, that his life and achievements are deemed to be profoundly influential. It is hard to imagine any King of England being similarly admired the way we Scots revere the Bruce, our warrior king, the first man to be known as Braveheart. 

Quite simply there is no record of where King Robert was born. Consequently, that opened the door to all sorts of claims some of which, disturbingly, have been put forward as fact in school classrooms of all places.

In the absence of anything in the records, historians are reluctant to dwell too much on the subject. Not being a bona fide historian I have the luxury of doing just that.

So how should we approach the issue. Well, the best way, as far as I can see, is by looking at it from two angles, human nature and practicality. Let’s apply that to the one place that appears to have found a lot of favour south of the Border, Writtle in Essesx.

The reasoning seems to be that Bruce’s father was at the Coronation of King Edward the First in the summer of 1274. Bruce was also born that summer so the deduction seems to be that the birth must have occurred in England for Robert, to be at Westminster. Writtle was owned by the Bruce’s so the story has developed that must be where Robert was born. Of course, it also ignores the fact the Bruces had at least a manor house in what is now Tottenham.

Lets start with practicality. Edward’s Coronation took place on August 19. King Robert was born on July 11. Assuming both dates are exact, the young Bruce would have been 39 days old when the Coronation took place. That’s almost six weeks, plenty of time for dad Robert to have enjoyed the arrival and early days of his son and make the journey on horseback from Turnberry Castle to London for the Coronation, or even sailing round the coast and up the Thames.

Now to the practicality. It’s a long journey from Ayrshire to the English capital, a trip that would need plenty of planning if a heavily pregnant lady was travelling. It’s pretty fair to assume, Marjorie, Robert’s mum, even if she had wanted to head south, would not have been prepared to make the journey when she was seven months or more. It’s fair to assume such a trip would have been made via the Bruce lands ie from Carrick to Annandale, south to Yorkshire and then on to Essex.

That’s a formidable trip on a cart, given it’s unlikely Marjorie could have gone on horseback. Bumpy tracks, crossing the mountainous spine of England, a foreign country, with regular rest stops along the way, it’s likely the trip would have taken about a month. I really can’t see her wanting to spend time on a galley either.

So at the very latest that would have meant leaving Turnberry in March, still winter, and, given the seasons were much more pronounced in the thirteenth century, it would have made matters a whole lot worse, the party quite possibly having to travel on snow covered frozen ground especially high up the Pennines. It just does not make any sense.

On the human nature side, we have to remember that Marjorie, by all accounts, was a determined woman used to having her way. Is it really likely that such a lady would want to have her firstborn son anywhere other than her family home? I doubt it.

She would want to be surrounded by the familiarity of Turnberry, family and the servants she knew well, safe in the midst of lands owned by her family for many years.I doubt she would have wanted to give birth far away in a foreign land surrounded by people she did not know, perhaps even speaking a dialect she did not understand.

There may not be a historical record of where Robert was born but common sense insists it would only be Turnberry. I think it’s high time everyone acknowledged that. Everything does not have to be written down to be obvious. So let’s stop entertaining this nonsense that Bruce was born anywhere else, especially Writtle.

[mdzsgildedfate]

Gilded Fate - Chapter 1

{In the case of souls who lived traumatic lives and died violent deaths, regaining those memories in the next life can have dire consequences. With the need for cultivators having died with the reign of the gentry clans, Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi apply their skills to locating these reincarnated souls and guiding them through Awakening.

Meanwhile, Jin Ling investigates a mysterious surge in Yin energy accumulating in the mountains where Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen reside.}

In a moment of weakness… I lied… And in a moment of weakness… I said yes… ` Xiao Xingchen… My Daozhang… Please, forgive me…

Darkness brought with it a certain kind of peace. Fingers were numb. Eyes were rested. The body stopped aching. The heart was at peace. It was impossible to tell how long had passed in the darkness. Minutes? Years? The clock ticked by while his brain muddled through fuzzily. Memories of his life had disintegrated like sand falling into a rushing stream. It felt nice to forget. What good had those memories ever done?

In the blink of an eye, the light came rushing back, blinding and painful and unwanted. Everything hurt. His fingers, his eyes, his skin ached like he’d fallen off a cliff. If he could remember how to cry, he would. God, why did his eyes hurt so much? What was this horrible pressure against his back?

“Xiao Xingchen?” The words came through deafeningly loud. Without meaning to, he brought his hands up to his ears to cover them.

The words came again, but they held no meaning to him. All he could think about was how his head was spinning, his neck was screaming, and there was some annoying force grasping at one of his hands. Reluctantly, he forced open his eyes, squinting at the light that came rushing in. As was to be expected, nothing was familiar. He was in a white room with white curtains and white furniture and soft blue accents.

“Xiao Xingchen, can you hear me?”

His eyes followed the sound of the voice, settling on an unfamiliar face that grimaced at him with some unfamiliar expression. He grimaced back, despair filling his heart as he came to the horrible realization that he was alive. What cruel force had chained him back to this existence?

“Xingchen… don’t you remember me?” The voice asked again.

No, I don’t… leave me be…

The man reached behind him, fumbling for something beyond Xingchen’s line of vision, before turning back to hold up an object for him to see. He stared at the unfamiliar sword, confused further at why he was suddenly being presented a weapon. Did this wretched human really summon him to carry out revenge for him? Could the living not leave the dead to rest in peace?

He pushed the sword away from him, casting his gaze instead to the other figure standing in the room. One unfamiliar face after another. At least this one wasn’t staring at him with pleading eyes. In fact, compared to the one at his side, this one was quite pleasant to look at. He had soft, youthful features and passionate eyes that looked quite satisfied with the events transpiring before him.

“Good to see you again, Jiujiu.” He smiled, the expression lighting up his whole face.

Jiujiu…?

He grimaced again. He had no memory prior to the darkness, but he was certain he didn’t want to be here. Some horrible feeling of despair sat in the pit of his stomach as a reminder to that. Carefully, he brought one hand up to his neck, letting the tips of his fingers graze over the old injury. He frowned. The ghost of a face could almost manifest in his mind.

“Xiao Xingchen? Say something, please…”

He turned his head to meet the other’s gaze once again. “...”

“Wei Wuxian, what’s wrong with him?”

The other figure simply shrugged his shoulders. “It has been a decade since his death, he might not remember who you are.”

“Wei Wuxian-!”

“Don’t blame me, I told you there were some risks. This is a brand new path of cultivation, the only ones to broach this territory are myself and Xue-”

“ Don’t say his name.”

Wei Wuxian shrugged again. “I’m just saying. I did what you asked, and as far as I can tell, it worked. Anything else is just going to be a side effect of having been dead for so long.”

Xue…. Xue who? Why can’t he say his name? His eyes flickered between the two men, finally settling on the one at his side. He reached out one hand, letting it hover over the man’s eyes. Something seemed wrong about it.

“Xingchen?” The man said his name, sounding much sadder this time.

He narrowed his gaze, trying to figure out why his attention was drawn to this person’s eyes. Why did that name echo in his brain when the two men in front of him drew no memories forth? He clenched his jaw. Some deeply buried Yin energy bubbled in his gut, urging his hand to reach out and pluck the eyes out of this man’s head.

“...Mine.” He managed to say, surprised by the sound of his own voice.

The man looked taken aback, shuddering slightly. “Y-yes… These are your eyes, Xingchen.”

He let out a hum of approval, nodding his head slightly.

“Do you remember me?”

He clenched his jaw again. His head hurt. How many things did he have to remember today? He already felt exhausted.

“My name is Song Lan. You remember me, don’t you?”

Xingchen hummed again. The name sounded strange to him, bringing forth a swirl of different emotions.

“Zichen, give him some time to adjust to being alive again.” Wei Wuxian warned. “Don’t rush him all at once. He’s back now, you don’t need to force things.”

Song Lan let out a defeated sigh, nodding his head. “I know. You’re right.”

“You guys have the rest of your lives. Which, considering your conditions, is pretty much forever.”

Forever. Xingchen shuddered at the word. Forever? He had to be alive… forever? He frowned at Song Lan. This was his fault. Whatever reason he had, he’d ripped Xingchen from blissful nonexistence and forced him back into the harsh, painful world of the living.

~X~

No matter how many reincarnated souls Lan Sizhui encountered, the feeling of dissonance never faded. Several milleniums had passed and the world had become utterly unrecognizable. The cultivation clans of old had been completely forgotten- even myths and legends no longer existed. The Immortals had long since gone into hiding, shutting out the rest of the world. Were it not for Jingyi and Jin Ling, Sizhui would have been left alone.

As it were, they provided no help when it came to identifying reincarnated souls. That was Sizhui’s work. Most of the time, it was easy. Souls who’d passed naturally and reincarnated peacefully- those souls untouched by the corrosion of traumatic death- those souls could be recognized easily. Over the centuries, he’d easily identified fellow Lan clan members, friends from the Nie and Jiang sects, even some of Jin Ling’s distant Jin relatives.

But the souls who had suffered in death, those souls who’d been corrupted and changed and took time to heal enough to reincarnate, those souls were more difficult to identify. That was Sizhui’s very problem now. This man that stood before him resonated a strong spiritual energy, one that felt forebodingly familiar to the Lan Immortal, but had changed so greatly he was struggling to place a name to the face.

“Professor?” The man urged, pulling Sizhui from his thoughts.

“I’m sorry, Xinyi, but your attendance in my class has been too poor for me to pass you.” Sizhui repeated the words he’d already spoken to the student. “I’ve offered all the extra credit I can, my hands are tied on this.”

Xinyi let out a frustrated hiss but bit his tongue, eyes glued to the floor.

“I do hope you take this more seriously next semester.”

Xinyi raised his eyes, biting back what Sizhui could only assume were some pretty colourful insults. “Professor, I do take this class seriously, I just-.”

Sizhui held his gaze, waiting patiently for whatever explanation the younger man could come up with.

“-I just… Nevermind.” Xinyi spun on his heel quickly, snatching his books off the desk behind him and rushing out of the lecture hall.

Sizhui shook his head. This soul’s identity was on the tip of his tongue, but this student was getting on his last nerve. Maybe it was both. Maybe this soul was someone Sizhui truly couldn’t stand in his past life. He let out a sigh and shrugged his shoulders, packing his own belongings to head home for the night.

[JY]: Any luck with your latest project? [LS]: None. He’s hopeless. Truly, students these days lack discipline. If we’d slacked off our studies like this kid does, Hanguang-Jun would’ve left us outside all winter. [JY]: I meant with figuring out who he is. [LS]: I know… No progress there either… He’s infuriating [JY]: Are we sure Jin Ling didn’t die? Could be him… [LS]: I think we’d know if Jin Ling suddenly died after 8,000 years [JY]: Any ideas as to what Sect he was at least? [LS]: None. I’m not sure he was from any of the major clans. [JY]: But you’re sure you knew him well? Who did we know well that wasn’t from a major clan? [LS]: No one that I can remember. He just… unnerves me. [JY]: Maybe it’s Hanguang-Jun [LS]: ….

Sizhui rolled his eyes and shut off his phone, tossing it into the passenger seat of his car. Jingyi was never any help. He knew just as well as any of them that Lan Wangji had disappeared into the mountains with Wei Wuxian half a dozen millennia ago, along with the rest of the remaining Immortals. If he’d died, they would have felt something. The passing of an Immortal threw the whole energy of the world into imbalance, it was impossible to miss.

No, this soul was definitely not Lan Wangji. The feeling he got was not that kind of familiarity. Driving home, his mind wandered, and he couldn’t help but wonder if he should even pull on this string. Wang Xinyi unnerved him enough as it was, knowing could make it worse and make it impossible to continue on as the unassuming moral philosophy professor.

~X~

Xinyi paced back and forth within the confines of his shared dorm room, muttering under his breath with no regard to his poor roommate. He paused every so often to stare out the window or flip through one of his textbooks or simply to throw his backpack across the room in a fit of sudden rage.

“Take this class more seriously, Xinyi- It’s a fucking moral philosophy class, how seriously can I take it?” He grumbled to himself, fishing his textbook out of the trashcan, having thrown it away twice already tonight.

“Why are you even taking that class?” His roommate grumbled back, half asleep.

“It was supposed to be an easy anthropology course.”

“I thought you hated anthropology.”

“I fucking do! But apparently I need a degree in it to take over my family’s collection.” Xinyi huffed, finally falling back against his bed.

“Collection? You mean all those creepy fucking swords and scrolls all over your parents’ house?”

“They’re not creepy, Chen.” Xinyi huffed indignantly, folding his arms over his chest. “You realize those swords and scrolls are thousands of years old, right?”

“That means they could have thousands of years worth of ghosts attached to them.” Chen shrugged, pulling his blanket up to his chin.

Xinyi sighed and slumped down onto his bed. He switched the bedside lamp off and resigned himself to sleep, or what little he could get in between the dreams. Ever since starting college, he’d been plagued by them nearly every night, and they’d only gotten worse as the year was ending. He could only consider himself lucky that the one night he’d actually woken up screaming, Chen had been staying the night somewhere else.

Some horrible vision of having his hand run over, so real it still ached long after he’d woken up. Xinyi blinked at the ceiling in the dark, squeezing his left hand at the memory of the dream. After a moment, he shook the thought from his head and rolled over, closing his eyes and hoping that he’d get some half-decent sleep before packing up his car in the morning to drive back to his parent’s house for the summer.

The long, white robes billowed in the wind like a pair of butterfly wings. The stark contrast between the pristine clothes and the black hair that cascaded along them was almost breath-taking. Even though only the back of the figure could be seen, it was a sight more beautiful than any he could remember. His fingers twitched with the desire to touch this person, but the hand that reached up was a bloodied, battered mass.

“You… are truly disgusting…”

The words echoed back, over and over, sounding too distant and too close. Blood gushed from his wounded hand, pooling at his feet. Blinking twice, the blood had crept up to his ankles, showing no indication of stopping anytime soon. He looked back up, practically nose-to-nose with a ghostly white face and jet black eyes- a man’s face growling back at him. His mouth opened and closed as if trying to say something, but only blood came out, adding to the lake of blood that had now reached their knees.

Xinyi finally got his legs moving, taking steps back with much effort, as though the blood was as thick as butter. The ghostly man in front of him moved back, mirroring his movements for a minute before falling straight back into the blood, disappearing beneath the surface. Xinyi tried to call out, but his voice was barely a whisper. Looking down at the lake, which was nearly his chest, half a dozen hands shot out and grabbed the front of his shirt and dragged him down.

When his eyes finally shot open, Xinyi was drenched in sweat. He kicked his blankets off onto the floor beside his bed and sat up, ripping his shirt off over his head. The dawn light was pouring through the cracks in the blinds and he was surprised to see that his white t-shirt was not red with blood. He tossed it down with the pile of blankets and looked at his hand, relieved to see that all five fingers were still there. He let out a ragged sigh and rolled out of the bed to walk to the bathroom.

“Fuck, man, do you ever sleep anymore?” Chen grumbled, his voice hoarse from having just woken up.

Xinyi jumped, startled by the voice. “Did I wake you up?”

“Yeah. From a really good dream too.” Chen rolled onto his back and stretched for a few seconds before looking back to his left to check the clock on the nightstand. “Fuck.... I need to get up anyways.”

Xinyi groaned and kicked his blankets out of the way. “Guess it’s officially summer.”

~X~

“Three months really isn’t enough time between school years.” Jingyi grumbled, his face pressed against Sizhui’s back.

“You sound like the students.” Sizhui laughed. “Being a teacher was your choice you know. You could spend your immortality doing something else.”

“I know that.” Jingyi pulled his face back, running his hand over Sizhui’s hair a few times to smooth out where he’d messed it up. “But then I’d see you less.”

Sizhui shifted to the side so he could look at Jingyi. “Am I really your whole purpose in life anymore?”

“Of course you are. We can’t all be dedicated to finding reincarnated souls.” Jingyi shrugged, taking a small sip from his wine glass.

Sizhui was quiet for a long time, watching Jingyi with soft eyes. “It feels like doing cultivation work again… you know? We don’t have as many ghosts or yao to deal with anymore, but it’s nice to guide souls on the brink of remembering.”

Jingyi folded his arms over his chest and nodded very seriously. “I can’t argue that, of course. It’s at least more respectable than what Jin Ling is doing.”

“What’s wrong with what Jin Ling is doing?” Sizhui laughed, giving Jingyi a small shove.

“What’s wrong- A-Yuan, come on, don’t try to defend his little Ghostbusting business!”

Sizhui just laughed harder. “It works though! It’s a little dressed up for the modern age, but he is still cultivating.”

Jingyi just waved his hand, as if airing away Sizhui’s words, and sipped from his glass again. Sizhui rolled his eyes and leaned forward, planting a kiss on Jingyi’s cheek. Before he had a chance to pull away, Jingyi wrapped an arm around Sizhui’s shoulders and pulled him back, pressing their lips together. The wine glasses and empty takeout boxes were left, forgotten on the floor, as the two entangled with each other, enjoying the last night of summer before returning to campus.

And then Sizhui’s phone started ringing.

“For fuck’s sake.” Jingyi hissed. “Let it go to voicemail.”

Sizhui shook his head, picking himself up from the floor and out of Jingyi’s grasp. “It’s Jin Ling.”

“Are you serious? Even when he’s not here he’s bullying me!”

Sizhui chuckled softly and answered the phone. “A-Ling, it’s unusual for you to call so late.”

“You know the weird energy I’ve been investigating outside the city?” Jin Ling’s voice came through loud enough for Jingyi to hear.

“Did you find the cause?”

“Yeah. You’ll never guess who I just fucking saw at a tea shop.”

“You saw someone familiar? Reincarnated, or…?”

“A-Yuan. I saw Song Lan Daozhang.”

Sizhui and Jingyi exchanged shocked looks, both at a loss for words.

“Hello? A-Yuan? Did you hear me?”

“Y-yes, I heard you. Are you sure it was him?” Sizhui asked.

“I haven’t seen a Fierce Corpse in at least 5,000 fucking years, I’m pretty damn sure.” Jin Ling hissed, sounding just as indignant as ever.

Jingyi grabbed the phone from Sizhui’s hands and put it to his ear. “Jin Ling. Can you never just say things nicely?”

“Shut up! Give the phone back to Sizhui!”

Jingyi ignored Jin Ling and put him on speakerphone instead. “Have you already talked to him?”

“No, I wanted your opinions on it first.”

Sizhui nodded, his eyes narrowed in thought. “It’s not a problem that needs resolving, but it might be nice to have a meal with him. It’s not every day we run into people from back then, he might welcome it as well.”

Jingyi nodded. “A-Ling, since you’re already there, you should try to meet with him again and see if he’s interested.”

~X~

With Autumn on it’s way, the weather was perfect for a casual hike. It was finally starting to cool off and the leaves on the trees were beginning to change colour. With eyes closed, Jin Ling could almost imagine himself on Dafan mountain with Jiang Cheng, or in the back paths of Lanling with Guangyao. If he didn’t pay too close attention, he could almost imagine the husky following closely at his feet was Fairy.

“You don’t really seem like the type.”

Jin Ling’s eyebrows twitched downward. He could almost imagine. But the young girl trailing alongside him was a constant reminder of where and when he was. Which was part of the reason he kept her around, but, of course, he’d never been much of a people person and she poked and prodded at his nerves just like anyone else.

“The type for what?” Jin Ling asked, opening his eyes again and looking down the trail.

“You know, the ghost-hunting type.” She replied, laughing softly. “Paranormal investigation. You’re so uptight, I thought you’d be more skeptical.”

“Is that so?”

“What happened?”

Jin Ling slowed his pace, sucking in a breath of air. “What happened to what?”

“What happened to make you take up ghost-hunting? You see a ghost or something?”

Jin Ling furrowed his brow, tossing a puzzled look at his acquaintance. “MingYue. I’ve been doing this for years, if I hadn’t seen a ghost by now, I wouldn’t still be doing it.”

MingYue skipped a few times to catch up to Jin Ling on the trail. “Well yeah, but what about the first time?”

“The first time…” Jin Ling turned his gaze forward again, letting memories flicker through his mind. “Hmph… I suppose, there was that time in Yi City.”

“Yi City? Never heard of it.”

“You wouldn’t. It’s a ghost town.”

“Fitting.”

Jin Ling rolled his eyes. “I doubt there’s any remnants of it still standing, it was almost completely abandoned when I visited.”

“So?” MingYue urged, taking a few large strides and turning around to face Jin Ling, walking backwards along the path.

“So what?”

MingYue smiled, though her eyes had narrowed slightly. “You’re doing that on purpose, quit avoiding the point.”

Jin Ling smirked slightly. “What do you think happened? I saw a ghost of course. My friends and I were taking shelter in this old shop, and my uncle, who thinks he’s so funny, tricked us all into looking through this hole in the paper window. Made it sound like there was some amazing sight on the other side, only for it to turn out to be the bleeding face of a ghost.”

MingYue looked up at the sky, looking as though she were thinking very hard about what Jin Ling had said. “I don’t believe it.”

“You don’t believe in ghosts? Find someone else to follow then!”

“No, I mean, I don’t believe you’ve ever had friends.”

“You-!” Jin Ling raised a hand as if he wanted to hit her, only eliciting a series of aggressive barks from their canine companion. “Gongzhu, hush!”

To Jin Ling’s relief, MingYue fell silent in favour of finding sticks to throw for Gongzhu to run after. Despite how she’d angered him only moments before, he smiled softly to himself as he watched them play. As the sun started to descend in the sky, the trail finally opened up to reveal the valley below. According to some of the locals in town, there was an abandoned temple nestled in the valley. Jin Ling figured if the ancient Daozhang were to be hiding anywhere, that was the most likely place.

Another hour passed, and then another, and finally they were reaching the bottom of the mountain. The sun had disappeared behind the high horizon, but there was still plenty light to see by. Though they were both feeling the exhaustion of hiking all day, they both quickened their speed, keeping their eyes peeled for any indication that the temple was close.

“Gongzhu- hey, what’s wrong?” MingYue knelt down, attending to the dog who’d suddenly gone stiff, her neck outstretched towards the East.

Jin Ling watched carefully, wiping the sweat from his forehead. “We must be close.”

“How can you tell?”

Because she’s a spiritual dog, of course. “Because she’s trained to know things.”

MingYue just smiled back- the same look she always gave Jin Ling when he was being purposely vague and irritating.

“Just quit asking so many questions.” At that, Jin Ling stood back up, signaling the end of their brief rest.

MingYue followed suit and Gongzhu resumed her trot as though nothing had happened. “I have to ask questions, that’s the point of being an apprentice.”

Jin Ling scoffed. “You’re not my apprentice, you’re my dogsitter.”

The farther down the trail they got, the more the husky trotted circles around them anxiously, occasionally darting ahead out of sight before sprinting back to them. MingYue kept glancing at Jin Ling, expecting him to say something about Gongzhu’s erratic behavior, but he stayed silent. It wasn’t until the gate of the temple finally came into view that he broke the silence once more.

“MingYue.”

She turned to look at him. “Gege?”

He grimaced at her. “Don’t call me that.”

She smiled back.

“Just- Keep an eye on Gongzhu, and don’t ask questions while we’re here. Assuming the person I’m looking for is here, it’s likely you won’t understand a lot of what we’re talking about.” Jin Ling explained carefully, making eye contact with the girl. “Mind your manners in Song Lan Daozhang’s presence, he’s hidden himself away in the mountains for a reason. Don’t make me regret bringing you.”

MingYue considered saying something, but Jin Ling rarely showed this degree of severity in his words, so she thought better to hold her tongue. They continued on through the gate and into the temple court, rousing the attention of the two Taoist priests sitting across from each other at a small table.

“This temple is not open to the public.” Song Lan called to them, barely turning his head to look their way.

“What about to fellow cultivators?”

The two men turned their heads now to look at Jin Ling and MingYue. Jin Ling set his hands out in front of him and bowed deeply. After a moment, Song Lan stood and crossed the court, studying the two faces. After a moment, a small look of recognition crossed his features and a small smile appeared on his lips.

“You’re one of the young disciples from Yi City.”

Jin Ling returned the smile. “My name is Jin Ling. My companion is MingYue.”

Song Lan bowed his head in greeting.

“I apologize for the intrusion. I saw you in a tea shop in town about a month ago and couldn’t help seeking you out.”

“Understandable. It’s not common to encounter other cultivators these days. Is your friend…?”

“No.” Jin Ling shook his head. “Though, two other disciples you met in Yi City live nearby in Beijing, they were hoping to meet with you again.”

Song Lan looked at him thoughtfully, considering the proposal. “I suppose it would be appropriate. I’m sure Xiao Xingchen would be grateful for the company. It’s been a long time since we’ve had guests.”

[elphenfan]

Nesting (Good Omens) 2/?

Chapter One I Chapter Two I Chapter Three I Chapter Four I Chapter Five I Chapter Six I

I...wow. Thank you to all for the love and subscriptions! That was an unexpected treat. Well, without further ado, then

-------------------------------------------

Shit! Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!

Of all the things that could – shit!

He couldn’t say where he went after that. Not around in his Bentley, though it was tempting, to scare the life out of some innocent pedestrians. He’d left it back where he lived, though, for some reason choosing to walk to where they’d met up.

Nor did he go straight back to his flat. He couldn’t face it right now, just in case he spotted some remnant of a nesting attempt he hadn’t quite managed to get rid of.

The alcohol might not exactly be a help, either. Of course, he could just sober up instantly if that was what he wanted, but he had a shrewd idea that if and when he did, it’d take away the nausea but leave the rest much starker and more painful.

So…he was definitely nesting. There could be no doubt about it. Not when there was a feather in plain sight.

Feathers didn’t fall from angels’ wings often and they were even more rarely plucked. When they did fall, they were always carefully picked up and hidden away so that nobody else would touch it, accidentally or on purpose. In that regard, angel feathers were much like human teeth, in that they could fall off and were rather…intimate, but without the slight gross factor, obviously.

They were something that should only ever be touched, or even seen, by the angel who’d shed or plucked them.

The only exception to that rule was when the angel in question was nesting and even then, that only applied to the one they were nesting for. In fact, when the nest was accepted, the other angel would take one of the feathers that had been left around the nest and keep it. Then they would put one of their own in its stead, which would begin the next part of the –

No. He wasn’t going to begin thinking about that.

Passing by a couple, he snarled at them, successfully enough that they almost ran off.

The Aziraphale in his mind gently scolded him for it but he snarled at that voice, too, and it shut up.

His aimless wanderings had taken him to one of their usual haunts, quite without his say-so. When he realised that he was in a very familiar park, he stopped and turned on his heel, heading back the way he’d come. He wasn’t going to torture himself with being where he had that many memories which featured the angel.

Of course, the fact that they’d been around for so long, had had London as a base of operations for so long meant that realistically, he would be hard-pressed to find somewhere without memories of all. But there was no need to go somewhere where they were practically chock-a-block.

“Fuck!” he cursed out loud as he walked. Then he followed it up with a string of increasingly foul and inventive swears and even so, he was unable to properly give voice to what he was feeling.

It was something that he was angry, though. Mainly because he knew that the moment that he stopped being angry, the hurt would push itself through the dam barrier and flood him.

Why? Why now? Of all things and all times, why now? What had changed? Who had he met that had so completely managed to steal his heart that he was willing to, to nest for them? Something which he had never done in all the time that Crowley had known him.

It must have been a recent romance, otherwise he would’ve done it earlier. It wasn’t as though new faces popped up among the ranks of angels every century or something, so it had to be someone he already knew and had just started to see in a new light.

He wracked his brain trying to think of whether or not Aziraphale had mentioned anyone in the last decade or so. Any little encounter with the other angels which had been voiced with more genuine joy and excitement than he displayed otherwise when it came to them.

There wasn’t any, as far as he could remember. To be honest, though, he would have to admit that he hadn’t always been the best at paying attention to what was being said. Instead, he let the voice flow over him, content to just be in the moment and enjoy the angel’s presence.

Feeling even angrier now, partly with himself for possibly missing something which would’ve clued him in earlier as to what had been going on – and consequently, if he’d known, he could’ve put a spanner in the works long before this whole nesting business started – he barged his way through the crowds, only realising that he’d actually arrived back at his flat when he kicked his foot out behind him to slam the door shut. It shut with a satisfying bang.

He stalked his way to his desk and chair and practically threw himself onto said chair.

Six thousand years of being there, of loving him from afar no matter the distance between them. Of pining and hoping and torturing himself just to be able to be beside him and now, it had all been snatched away from him by one stupid fucking birdbrain of a Heaven dweller!

Aziraphale had chosen him, bless it! As someone to stand by, stand with and help out, if nothing else. Crowley was supposed to be the opposition, the enemy, and yet the angel had always, despite what he’d said, taken the time out not just to stay his hand but to listen to Crowley and even seek him out. That time in Rome, for one.

The point was that they helped each other, with small things and big things. They had been each other’s only constant for six millennia, for crying out loud, they’d been friends. That ought to mean something! Even if it hadn’t become what Crowley had hoped for, with increasing fervour from the day they met when he realised there were still other ways you could fall, they were friends and that ought to mean something.

But it could, couldn’t it? To the angel, his angel, it could, and it didn’t have to change a single thing, between them or between Aziraphale and the angel he’d taken such a shine to.

Why the heaven was he pussyfooting around? It wasn’t ‘taken a shine to’, it was fallen in love with. You didn’t ever nest for someone you merely fancied, did you?

No. You didn’t.

He writhed in the chair, gripping onto the armrests hard, the truth staring him down, burning him.

Even more so for the consequent confirmation that Aziraphale hadn’t ever felt that way about him. If he had, he would’ve said something by now even if he hadn’t outright built a nest.

Was that what rankled? That he’d build it for someone else but not for Crowley?

No, that wasn’t it. Well, perhaps, but not – firstly, it was far from all that rankled and secondly, even if it did, it was only a very small part of the reason.

He’d desperately hoped, even if he hadn’t prayed, that someday he might manage to pluck up the courage and tell Aziraphale how he felt, and that he’d tried to build him a nest, and Aziraphale would return his feelings, would smile and say he would love to see Crowley’s nest. Would already have a feather ready and waiting for him to place.

But deep down, he knew it for the complete castle in the air it was. He knew he’d never believed the angel would return his feelings. Not like he wanted him to, in any case. Yes, they were friends, even if neither of them had actually admitted that out loud, but there was a long way from that to being, well, not lovers, but…romantic partners? Yes, that would do.

But hope was a funny thing. It found a way to grow on the lousiest of bedrocks, to survive with the barest of nourishments if any at all. To blossom at the merest ray of sun, the lightest of drizzles.

Now, though…now it lay crushed on that very bedrock, its petals scattered and curled up, its roots exposed and broken.

His vision was blurry. Why was his vision blurry? He never had that kind of reaction to alcohol, especially not when he wasn’t also dizzy. In any case, the effects had worn off while he’d been walking.

It was only when he felt wetness streak down his cheeks and drip from his pointed chin that he realised he was crying.

When had he last cried? Genuinely cried, that was. He couldn’t remember.

“Bastard,” he suddenly shouted, his voice strained. “You bloody bastard! How could you – could you – “

He choked on the words.

“You bastard,” he whispered when he’d recovered. “You beautiful bastard angel, how…fuck, how I wish I’d told you before…and now you’re gone. My angel, I love you. So fucking much, you utter twat.”

------------------------------------------------

Aziraphale called him the next day, presumably to ask whether he was okay or not.

It was ‘presumably’ because he didn’t know for sure as he refused to pick up the phone. Then the angel tried his landline and got the same result.

Only, this time, after calling a few times there as well, he left a message on the answer phone. One which the demon was there to hear as it was recorded, confirming the presumed.

“Crowley, it’s me. I know you’re ignoring me. Well, I don’t know, but I assume that you are as I’ve tried both your mobile phone and here. I just…I wanted to know whether you’re alright. Oh, I hope nothing’s happened.” That bit was mumbled but Crowley picked up on it, nevertheless. His heart did a funny squeeze.

“Well, anyway, please call me when you get this or, or feel up to replying. I…well, quite, yes. I just…please call me, my dear.”

With that, he hung up, leaving a demon who stared at the machine as though it had just spelled that out in semaphore instead of perfectly understandable English.

But this was Aziraphale. Eloquent Aziraphale with the careful diction – who sounded distracted and disjointed somehow.

He’d sounded nervous, too, and worried, his hindbrain supplied, but Crowley dismissed it. That could just as easily have been because he had someone else there. Someone who he didn’t want to know he was calling Crowley, a demon they were meant to be fighting against, not socialising with and definitely not caring about.

Caring?

Yes. Caring. As much as he was hurting right now and wanted to curse the blond, he couldn’t in good conscience say that Aziraphale didn’t care about him a great deal, even if he’d never called them friends. Otherwise, he wouldn’t run the risk of associating with a demon for so long.

But would that also stop? Would he no longer be able to see Aziraphale or even contact him?

Okay, yes, Crowley was one who wasn’t answering the attempts to contact him right now, but that didn’t…that wasn’t…he never meant forever. Even if it hurt, even if he wanted to escape from being anywhere near Aziraphale and his new nestmate, he couldn’t imagine his life without his angel there in some capacity. He didn’t want to imagine that.

New partner or not, Crowley had no intention of leaving Aziraphale’s side for good. No matter how much it would hurt to see, to watch and know he was forever on the outside looking in, even on that score.

He’d cling to whatever was available to him, even if it was only scraps.

It might be incredibly selfish of him, but he was a demon, after all. He wasn’t meant to be selfless.

He wasn’t meant to be friends with an angel, either, never mind in love with him, but that was another matter entirely and quite irrelevant in the circumstances, in his mind.

If Aziraphale wasn’t interested in that, though, or possibly, if he didn’t dare risk it considering there was another angel, one who hadn’t spent so many millennia on earth and had earned some greater understanding of how things, well, actually worked, to consider, then…

Then the possibility, the risk, that Crowley wouldn’t be allowed near his angel at all was very real.

Or maybe Aziraphale wouldn’t be as interested, either. Not because he didn’t care, of course not, but he’d have other things on his mind, things to do which he couldn’t or didn’t want to include Crowley in anymore. He wouldn’t have a need to include him, either, not to the degree he did now.

After all, a nestmate beat a friend, didn’t they? Especially a friend on the opposite side…who he’d been fraternising with.

That conversation still stung, even after so many decades had passed.

Feeling the claws of abandonment and loneliness ripping and tearing at his insides, along with the rest of it, he hurried to pick up the receiver on his landline and called Aziraphale.

Who picked up almost immediately, something which he didn’t often do, and not only when he was engrossed in a book.

“Hello?” he called down the line.

“Yeah, hi, Aziraphale. It’s me.” He didn’t let on how relieved he actually was to hear the angel’s voice, even though it’d only been a short time since he’d heard it last.

“Crowley!” Was there both relief and joy in that voice? More than one would expect there to be, given their parting? No, surely not. Definitely not. “Oh, thank goodness! I thought you were – but you’re alright.”

It came out as a statement rather than a question. He might’ve thought there was a hint of pleading in there, too, but he was certain that wasn’t it.

“Yeah. Course. Why wouldn’t I be?” He honestly had no idea how he was managing to sound as calm as he always did because he sure as hell, aha, didn’t feel that calm and collected.

“…No. No, of course. Silly of me, really. I just…well. Should I have a word with the owners?”

Owners? What was he on about?

Out loud, Crowley only made a slight questioning noise.

“About the wine where we ate. If it made you ill, then – “

Oh. “Oh, no, it’s, it’s fine. I’m alright now. That’s really all I wanted to say. Don’t worry about it.”

“Oh. I see.” There was a pause and for a moment, Crowley thought that he’d hung up on him. But then he continued, voice soft. “Could I…would it be alright if I came over and brought something for you to eat? To make it up to you, I mean.”

What might in other circumstances have been seen as sweet, something that sent Crowley’s heart into a butterfly-filled stutter, now stabbed at it instead.

Did he feel that guilty about the nesting? Did he know – no, he must know that the demon had spotted it. Mustn’t he? Or perhaps he was trying to cover it up, try to prevent Crowley from finding out about it, talking about coming to his flat rather than the bookshop. Perhaps he hadn’t presented it to the angel it was meant for and he didn’t want Crowley to come barging in at the wrong time?

Something about that felt wrong but he refused to focus on it right then.

On the other hand, even if that was all true, he couldn’t deny that it would be another chance to see Aziraphale, just the two of them.

He would have to treasure and hoard those moments now, wouldn’t he? More than he already did, that was, because now they were in danger of being numbered, even if he fought it. Not to imply that he wouldn’t ever not fight it.

“Yeah, sure,” he said. Then, hearing himself and worrying that he might come off a little too detached, which wasn’t his intention, he added, “That’d be lo – very nice.”

Don’t tip your hand now, whispered a voice in his head. Don’t make it worse for yourself. It will only hurt more later on.

But at the same time, he wanted him to know that he was worth spending time with, still. That he could still fit in with him as it was. That he didn’t need to avoid him entirely when his nest was accepted, even if they’d have to be even more careful than they were now.

“Oh, good!” Aziraphale enthused. “I’ll be right there. Well, I might have to pick up a few things first, but I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

The way Crowley’s heart danced at the warmth in the angel’s voice at that was undeniable, though.

---------------------------------------------------------

He didn’t even consciously register that it would be the first time that Aziraphale had actually come over to his flat or that he had in fact never told him the address for it, either.

Instead, he spent the limited time he had before the blond would show up panicking about the state of the immaculate flat. Was it too dark? Too messy? Maybe it was too garish or even too cold for the angel? There certainly wasn’t enough furniture to sit on and the plants looked miserable.

He conjured up a chair, quite incongruous with the rest of the décor of the flat but which he thought perfect for Aziraphale then went and shouted abuse at one of his poor plants which had been unlucky or unwise enough to develop a bit of downy mildew on its leaves.

Its tour to say goodbye was brief and its demise only halted by the sounded of the doorbell.

Right. Time to act as though nothing was the matter apart from a bit of a tummy upset and perhaps a bit of a hangover.

He could do that.

The achingly familiar face, which he opened the door to, held an expression that was hard to decipher but Crowley thought he saw hurt, concern and joy mixed in there as well as some other emotions that he couldn’t put his finger on.

To be perfectly honest, the ones he could identify puzzled him enough, to be honest, especially the hurt, but he pushed the thought and the subsequent knot inside his chest aside for the moment.

It didn’t matter right now.

What mattered was his angel, pure and simple.

“Aziraphale,” he said in greeting as he opened the door, and if the way the other’s face lit up both hurt and warmed him as though he’d gotten too close to a star again without realising, what of it?

[babylon-crashing]

shamanic armenia

... from Michael Berman’s Shamanic Journeys Across the Caucasus (2009, pages 21-32)

If the Scriptures are rightly understood, it was in Armenia that Paradise was placed. – Armenia, which has paid as dearly as the descendants of Adam for that fleeting participation of its soil in the happiness of him who was created from its dust. It was in Armenia that the flood first abated, and the dove alighted. But with the disappearance of Paradise itself may be dated almost the unhappiness of the country ; for though long a powerful kingdom, it was scarcely ever an indipendent one, and the satraps of Persia and the pachas of Turkey have alike desolated the region where God created man in his own image (taken from Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Leslie Marchand (cd.), London, 1976, vol. V, p.157).

What can we say about Armenia?  “There is no other country like her. She has played a unique and perhaps indispensable role as a buffer between Asia and Europe, a mediator between two seemingly irreconcilable civilizations and ways of life. And her dark beauty is eternal” (Surmelian, 1968, pp.23-24).

Located in the southern Caucasus, Armenia is the smallest of the former Soviet republics, and is bounded by Georgia in the north, Azerbaijan in the east, Iran in the south, and Turkey in the west. Frequently referred to as one of the cradles of civilization, it is also considered by many to have been the first country in the world to officially embrace Christianity as its religion (c. 300).

Armenia, like neighboring Georgia, is in a region which is a crossroads between Asia and Europe, and has more often than not been conquered by the dominant regional power of the day, starting with the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Macedonians, through to the Ottomans and finally the Russians. As a result, an Armenian diaspora has thus existed more or less throughout the nation's history, with emigration having been particularly heavy since independence. So much so, that an estimated 60% of the total eight million Armenians worldwide now live outside the country. Nevertheless, once again like Georgia, the country has managed to hold onto a unique cultural and linguistic identity which is reflected in its folklore.

As a consequence of Soviet era policies, the number of active religious practitioners in the country is relatively low, but the link between Armenian ethnicity and the Armenian Church is strong. An estimated 90 percent of citizens nominally belong to the Armenian Church/ an independent Eastern Christian denomination with its spiritual center at the Etchmicidzin cathedral and monastery.

It is all too easy these days to paint a totally negative picture of life under Soviet communism, especially when it comes to the matter of religious freedom, but in the case of Armenia it would be an injustice to do so for:

Soviet communism protected the Armenian people from Turkism ... Moreover, despite its internationalist posture, communism built up a nation in Soviet Armenia from individuals and groups of widely differing geographic origins. The power to withstand, and the sense of nationhood, have to be balanced against the totalitarianism and Stalinism which were part of the state ideology, although less visible at the start (Walker, 1997, p.140).

As for the current status of religious freedom, although the Armenian Constitution as amended in December 2005 provides for freedom of religion, the reality of the situation is that the Armenia (Apostolic) Church, which has formal legal status as the national church, enjoys some privileges not available to other religious groups. Societal attitudes towards some minority religious groups appear to be somewhat ambivalent too, with reports of societal discrimination directed against members of these groups.

Only registered groups may publish newspapers or magazines, rent meeting places, broadcast programs on television or radio, or officially sponsor the visas of visitors, although there is no prohibition on individual members doing so. And to qualify for registration, religious organizations must, “be free from materialism and of a purely spiritual nature,” and must subscribe to a doctrine based on, “historically recognized holy scriptures.” In the case of religions based on ritual observance rather than “holy scriptures” though, were an application for registration made, it is unclear what scriptures could be presented to the Office of the State Registrar to satisfy such a requirement.

We find what is now Armenia referred to in the Old Testament, with the Book of Genesis relating how:

Noah's Ark, as the waters of the flood subsided, came to rest, not “on Mount Ararat” as is commonly misstated --- the Armenians call this Mount Masis, a name (Masios) used by Greek geographers to denote a range to the south-west --- but, “upon the mountains of (the land of) Ararat,” i.e. a country known to the ancient Assyrians as Urartu (Downing, 1972, p. ix).

The region of Ararat was then invaded by the Armenians after the Urartian kingdom, plagued by Assyrian and Cimmerian attacks, fell to the Medes in 612 B.C. The most momentous event in the national life of Armenia, however, and the event which was the chief determining factor in the early history of the country, was the change of religion made by the adoption of Christianity, which was finally established by Tiridates (A.D. 286-342).

By this the Armenians were entirely severed from the pagan Persians and brought into close contact with the Greeks, whose representative was then the Emperor of Byzantium. As a result of this religious agreement, a treaty was concluded in 319 between Tiridates and Constantine, the first Christian Emperor of Rome, by which the two Christian monarchs bound themselves to defend each other against all pagans.

The adoption of Christianity meant, to the Armenians, a revolution in their whole view of life, a severance from their ancestral beliefs, though these beliefs have left traces in Armenian folklore which are visible even to this day. These beliefs and the folklore arising out of them were regarded by the Christian clergy as a poisonous flower grown up in the fields of paganism. The historians of the period have chronicled the efforts of the clergy to exterminate every relic of the old faith. Temples were pulled down and churches built in their stead; images and other monuments were broken in pieces; heathen books and records were destroyed; pagan festivals were turned into Christian ones. We learn from Faustus of Byzantium that laws were even made against the use and the singing of pagan songs (Boyajian, 1916, p. 151).

Nevertheless, despite the fact that the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian Churches took the place of the old religions in Europe and across western Eurasia, this applied mainly to the urban centers.

Beyond the borders of Rome's control, in the most northern and eastern fringes and on the western isles, and in the rural environments amongst the "country folk" or pagani, the old religions continued, pejoratively designated after them as Paganism. Even when officially Christianized, the religion of the Pagans remained an assimilation, merely an overlay of the newer cults, or it passed unnoticed under other names, with its myths and beliefs adapting and surviving primarily in less objt'ctionnble forms such as folktales and bizarre or quaint festival rites (Kuck, Staples, et al., 2007, p.3).

And this is very much what occurred in the case of Armenian paganism too. Not only can reminders be found in the traditional dances, songs, and rites still being performed, but also in the folktales still being told. Even after so many centuries of Christianity in Armenia, elements of paganism live on in the country to this day. Moreover, the origins of Armenian paganism could well date back even further into the distant past, when shamanism would have been practiced in the land.

Their concept of the soul, for example, would indicate that this was likely --- the belief that departed bad souls could pursue the living, resulting in their soul loss:

Since it was believed that the soul left the mouth in death, it lived on apart from the body and was invisible. It could assume physical shape somewhat smaller than the body, or an animal shape, the most important of which was a bird ... Even inanimate objects, such as trees, were associated with soul beliefs, and the poor health of a tree symbolized that the human owner was in danger, too.

Departed souls could appear as good or evil. Good ghosts were associated with angels and holy beings; bad ghosts were considered to be the souls of sinners ... In the shape of animals or men these unclean souls appeared before men and brought misfortune to them. Such departed bad souls constantly pursued the living and were eager to take them along. To prevent this, the living flattered the dead with attention and honored them with a Funeral. They provided a hokeh-hatz (funeral dinner) with abundant food for the mourners. If, however, flattery was ineffective, the evil force of the soul might be destroyed by eating part of the dead man's heart, which was, and still is, considered the seat of the soul.

... The belief that the soul of the departed needs special care exists even today. Special prayers for the peace of the departed are still said in church and until recently were chanted in individual homes on Saturday nights over the faint glow of incense. On the Monday after Easter the great celebration of Merelotz [Memorial Day] occurs. In Armenia whole families spent the afternoon at the cemeteries of their departed (Hoogasian-Villa, 1966, p.61).

As for the folktales, they can be divided “into wonder tales ... and realistic tales of everyday life ... although this is a rough distinction at best for there are wonder tales with realistic elements in them, and realistic tales not altogether devoid of the marvelous” (Surmelian, 1968, p.11). The tale presented here is of the former type.

Epithets are frequently used in the stories. In The Girl Who Changed Into A Boy, there are the examples of “the King's daughter” and “the old woman's daughter.” We never learn their names, only the name of the horse.

Another feature we find is that formulas are repeated, a popular one being “Whether they traveled a long or short time, only God knows.” Frequently, the following disclaimer appears too: “Whether it happened or not ...” or “there was and there wasn't...” As for the story endings, many are a variation on … “Three apples fell from heaven --- one apple for the storyteller, the second for the person listening to the story, and the third for the whole, wide world.” Another common ending formula is “They attained their happiness. May you attain your happiness, too” (Marshall, 2007, p.xxviii).

A comprehensive introduction by Aram Raffi to the religious beliefs and practices that prevailed in Armenia in pre-Christian times can be found in Armenian Legends and Poems and, as a starting point, it is presented below:

The principal god of Armenia was Aramazd, whom the Armenians called “the Architect of the Universe, Creator of Heaven and Earth.” He was also the father of the other gods. The Armenians annually celebrated the festival of this god on the 1st day of Navasard [which, according to the later calendar of pagan Armenia, was in August], when they sacrificed white animals of various kinds — goats, horses, mules, with whose blood they filled goblets of gold and silver. The most prominent sanctuaries of Aramazd were in the ancient city of Ani in Daranali, the burial-place of the Armenian kings, as well as in the village of Bagavan in Bagravand. Aramazd had an attendant incorporeal spirit, named Tir or Grogh (“writer”), whom he sent to earth to watch men and record in a book their good and evil deeds. After death, human souls were conducted by Tir to Aramazd, who opened the book at each soul's record, in accordance with which he assigned a reward or punishment. In a village near Vargharshapat there was a temple of this god, where the priests interpreted dreams after consulting his oracle. The influence of Tir was great in Armenia, for he was a personification of hope and fear. There are traces of the cult of this god in the Armenian language. It is still usual to hear, used as a curse, the expression, “May Grogh take you!” The son of Aramazd was Mikr, Fire. He guided the heroes in battle and conferred wreaths on the victors. The word nu'himi (“temple”) is derived from Mihr; also some Christian names. One of the months in the ancient Armenian calendar (Mehekan) was named after him. His commemoration-day was celebrated with ... great splendour at the beginning of spring. Fires were kindled in the open market-place in his honor, and a lantern lighted from one of these fires was kept burning in his temple throughout the year. This custom of kindling fires in the spring is still observed in some parts of Armenia.

Although the Persians and the Armenians were both worshipers of Mihr, the conceptions and observances of the two nations differed. The Armenian sacred fire was invisible, but the Persian was material and was kept up in all the temples. For this reason the Armenians called the Persians fire-worshipers. But the Armenians had also a visible fire-god, who, although material, was intangible --- the sun --- to which many temples were dedicated and after which one of the months (Areg) was named. Long after the introduction of Christianity, there was a sect of sun-worshipers existent in Armenia, who were called “Children of the Sun.” A small remnant of them is still supposed to be found, dwelling between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Traces of sun-worship are also evident in the Armenian language and in the Armenian literature of Christian times. Some sayings and phrases are still in use which contain references to sun-worship, such as the expression of endearment, “Let me die for your sun!” and the oath, “Let the sun of my son be witness.”

One of the most famous Armenian goddesses was Anahit, who answered to the Greek Artemis and the Roman Diana. As a daughter of Aramazd she was the benefactress of the whole human race; “through her the Armenian land exists, from her it draws its life; she is the glory of our nation and its protectress;” and for her the ancient Armenians felt intense love and adoration.

Many images and shrines were dedicated to her under the names of “the Golden Mother,” “the Being of Golden Birth,” etc. Every summer there was a festival in her honor. On that day, a dove and a rose were offered to her golden image, whence the day was called Vardavar, which means “the flaming of the Rose.” On the introduction of Christianity, the temple of Anahit was destroyed and her festival became the Feast of the Transfiguration of Christ; it falls in the last days of the year according to the ancient Armenian calendar; but the name “Vardavar” still remains and doves are still set flying on that day.

The sister of Anahit was Astghik (which means “little star” in Armenian), the goddess of beauty, a personification of the moon, corresponding to the Phoenician and Sidonian Astarte. Strange to say, the Persians had no goddess of beauty, but the bright sky of Armenia, its numerous valleys, the torrents running down from snow-capped mountains, the lakes, the cultivated fields and meadows tended to strengthen the sense of beauty, and, therefore, Armenia had a goddess of beauty, who was not to be found in the pantheon of the neighboring country.

The Armenians assigned Astghik a husband worthy of her. He was Vahagn, deified on account of his valor. In ancient songs, he is credited with a miraculous birth. The fires of heaven and earth, and the sea crimson in the light of dawn, travailed to bring him into being. ... Vahagn was called Vishapakagh (Uprooter of dragons), as he cleared the Armenian land of monsters and saved it from evil influences. His exploits were known not only in Armenia, but in the abode of the gods. Having stolen corn from the barns of King Barsham of Assyria, he ran away and tried to hide himself in heaven. From the ears he dropped arose the Milky Way, which is called in Armenia the Track of the Corn-stealer.

The third daughter of Aramazd was Nane or Noone. She was the goddess of contrivance. It was believed by the Armenians that contrivance was a necessary power for a woman, because, in the management of the household, she had to make big things out of small ones, and circumstances were already against her on account of the vicissitudes which Armenia was constantly undergoing.

Sandarnmet, the wife of Aramazd, was an invisible goddess and a personification of the earth. Aramazd sent rain upon her, which brought forth the vegetation on the earth. She came to be a synonym of Hades and was very frequently referred to as such in theological books and in the hymnary of the Christian Church.

Besides these gods of their own, the Armenians also adopted alien divinities. When Tigranes brought a number of Phoenicians to Armenia as prisoners they brought with them their god Ammon, from whose name [some say] comes the word Ammonor, “the day of Ammon” --- the New Year. Assyrian, Arab, and other emigrations also led to the introduction of foreign deities. An Armenian king, when he brought home captives, also introduced the gods of those captives, whose images were placed in the temples beside those of the native gods that they most closely resembled. Even Indian fugitives brought the brother-gods, Demetr and Gisanes, whose images were not like those of the other gods of Armenia, for the images of the gods of Armenia are, as a rule, small, whereas these were very tall, with long black hair and black faces. There was also a great immigration of Jews into Armenia, and this influenced the Armenians in the direction of monotheism. Besides the principal gods, there were also secondary ones. These were spirits, corresponding to angels, who acted as guardians to different classes of natural objects: --- Kadjk (which means “brave ones” in Armenian], who occupied the mountains; Parik, who presided over flocks; and many others.

Water was honored in Armenia as a masculine principle. According to Tacitus (Annals, vi. 37) the Armenians offered horses as sacrifices to the Euphrates, and divined by its waves and foam. Sacred cities were built around the river Araxes and its tributaries. Even now there are many sacred springs with healing powers, and the people always feel a certain veneration towards waters in motion.

There were gods who lived in the waters and destroyed harmful monsters of the deep. There was also a god who breathed out a mysterious atmosphere which destroyed malignant creatures. … All the gods of this class were friendly to agriculturists.

There were also “Haurot-Maurot,” the name of a flower (Hyacinthus raccmosus dodonei) first mentioned by Agathangelos. The Arabs incorporated them in the Quran (ii. 96) as two angels sent down to live in Babel in human circumstances.

Alk, who dwelt in the waters, was a very harmful devil. He used to live in the corners of houses and stables, and in damp places. He had eyes of fire, nails of copper, teeth of iron, and the jaws of a wild boar. He carried a sword of iron in his hand and was a bitter enemy to pregnant women, near whom he sat at the time their child was born.

There were nymphs, who were guardians of women. They wandered through gardens and amid streams, but were invisible. They attended weddings and frequented bathrooms and the women's quarters in general. These nymphs and spirits were innumerable. Every woman was supposed to have a guardian nymph. The nymphs were supposed by some to be immortal and endowed with perpetual youth; others described them as mortal though they never grew old. There was also a group of male spirits who were regarded by some as mortal, by others as immortal. They wandered with the nymphs through forests, gardens, and other open places. They were imagined as very tail, with features like those of men; some were half-man and half-animal. Some were called Parik, “dancers” others Hushkn parik, “dancers to a melody in a minor key.”

In some places, even now, a belief in these nymphs (or fairies) survives. Many stories are told of their beauty, their marvelous dancing, and their wondrous music. They are never called by the name of “nymphs,” but are spoken of by the people of the country as “our betters.” Still in some parts of Armenia, in May and October, a festival is held annually in honor of them, generally by the women in the Public Baths. They assemble early in the morning and remain till late at night, dancing, eating, and bathing. Before the people thought of building temples, they worshiped their gods in forests and on mountains. One of these forests was the Forest of Sos. According to tradition, the son of Ara the Beautiful, Anushavan, who devoted himself to the worship of this sacred place, was called, after the forest Sos. The priests derived oracles from the rustling of the leaves in this holy wood.

Besides temples, which were numerous in Armenia, there were, all over the country, altars and shrines, as well as images and pictures.

To sum up, the pre-Christian religion of Armenia was at first “a kind of nature-worship, which developed into polytheism (Boyajian, 1916, pp.l27-13'l). A great many curious ceremonies are observed by the Armenians in connection with such family events as births, marriages, and deaths. A wedding takes a whole week to celebrate, and when a wealthy farmer dies all the inhabitants of the village are publicly invited by the priest in church to the funeral feast. They have also retained a great many strange superstitious practices, and believe in the existence of a variety of supernatural beings possessing propensities and powers both benevolent and malevolent. In the long winter nights, when the snow lies thick in the streets and on the housetops, the women fancy they hear in the howling of the wind the shouts and laughter of these tricksy beings. And the young women and girls, when the day's tasks are done, gather round the grandmother, who relates strange creepy stories of the pranks of the djinns, or charming romances dealing with peris, magicians and enchanted palaces, while the grandfather, sitting cross-legged in his fur-lined pelisse in the corner of the divan, tells the boys tales of the Armenian heroes of old (Lucy Garnett, Turkish Life in Town and Country, London, 1904, pp.176-82).

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE COURAGE OF PROJECT

Then when you start a startup anywhere. That's why mice and rabbits are furry and elephants and hippos aren't.1 The very design of the average site in the late twentieth century. He got a 4x liquidation preference. Google, it's hard to get into grad school in math. Can we claim founders are better off as a result of this new trend. Where you live should make at most a couple percent difference. But investing later should also mean they have fewer losers.

They make something moderately appealing and have decent initial growth.2 If you major in math it will be whatever the startup can get from the first one to write a paper for school, his mother would tell him: find a way to turn a billion dollar industry into a fifty million dollar industry, so much the better, if all fifty million go to you. The classic yuppie worked for a small organization. Before us, most companies in the startup funding business. The best way to get a big idea can take roost.3 4 or 5 million. This essay grew out of something I wrote for myself to figure out how to increase their load factors. But you can also apply some force by focusing the discussion: by asking what specific questions they need answered to make up their minds. This plan collapsed under its own weight.4 Startups happened because technology started to change so fast that big companies could no longer keep a lid on the smaller ones.

The only place your judgement makes a difference is in the industry.5 People who do great work, and it's a bad sign when you have a special word for that. One of the exhilarating things about coming back to Cambridge every spring is walking through the streets at dusk, when you can see into the houses. If you have steep revenue growth, say over 6x a year, no matter how many good startups approach him. Recently we managed to recruit her to help us run YC when she's not busy with architectural projects.6 This works better when a startup has 3 founders than 2, and better when the leader of the company in later rounds. I'm not saying you can get away with zero self-discipline.

We're not a replacement for don't give up. What you should not do is rebel. But while series A rounds from VCs. Someone who's scrappy manages to be both threatening and undignified at the same world everyone else does, but notice some odd detail that's compellingly mysterious.7 Even Tim O'Reilly was wearing a suit, a sight so alien I couldn't parse it at first. They can't tell how smart you are.8 The story about Web 2. Maybe one day the most important thing is to be learned from whatever book on it happens to be closest. This essay is derived from a keynote at FOWA in October 2007. They'll decide later if they want to raise.9

Sometimes it reached the point of economic sadism: site owners assumed that the more pain they caused the user, the more benefit it must be to them. It's cities that compete, not countries.10 Kids are curious, but the best founders are certainly capable of it. But investors are so fickle that you can fix for a lot of time on work that interests you, and don't just refuse to. But you have to be an insider.11 A key ingredient in many projects, almost a project on its own, is to step onto an orthogonal vector. So ironically the original description of the Web 2. Back when it cost a lot to like I've done a few things, like intro it to my friends at Foundry who were investors in Service Metrics and understand this model I am also talking to my friend Mark Pincus who had an idea like this a few years ago.12 0 seemed to mean was something about democracy. We didn't have enough saved to live on. There is another reason founders don't ask themselves whether they're default alive or default dead.13

So most investors prefer, if they wanted, raise series A rounds. They're unable to raise more money, and precisely when you'll have to switch to plan B if plan A isn't working. That doesn't mean the investor says yes to everyone. Miss out on what? It's so cheap to start web startups that orders of magnitudes more will be started. Investors evaluate startups the way customers evaluate products, not the way bosses evaluate employees. The bust was as much an overreaction as the boom.14 Startups are undergoing the same transformation that technology does when it becomes cheaper.15 Another way to fly low is to give them something for free that competitors charge for. After all, a Web 2.16 He bought a suit.

Instead you'll be compelled to seek growth in other ways. They all knew their work like a piano player knows the keys. But consulting is far from free money. They say they're going to get eliminated. What does it mean, exactly? If investors were perfect judges, the two would require exactly the same skills. And to be both good and novel, an idea probably has to seem bad to most people, or someone writes a particularly interesting article, it will show up there. The mere existence of prep schools is proof of that.17 So far the complete list of messages I've picked up from cities is: wealth, style, hipness, physical attractiveness wouldn't have been a total immersion. Don't just do what they tell you to do. But advancing technology has made web startups so cheap that you really can get a portrait of the normal distribution of most applicant pools, it matters least to judge accurately in precisely the cases where judgement has the most effect—you won't take rejection so personally. If raising money is hard.

There is no sharp line between the two types of startup ideas: those that grow organically out of your own life, and those that you decide, from afar, are going to get rarer. While some VCs have technical backgrounds, I don't know enough to say, but it happens surprisingly rarely.18 Most subjects are taught in such a boring way that it's only by discipline that you can never safely treat fundraising as more than a startup that seems like it's going to stop.19 It sounds obvious to say that you should worry? One reason startups prefer series A rounds? When I was in high school either. If you feel you've been misjudged, you can do. Google. Of course, someone has to take money from people who are young but smart and driven can make more by starting their own companies after college instead of getting jobs, that will change what happens in college.

Notes

Though they are themselves typical users. But it takes to get good grades in them to private schools that in three months, a valuation. Giving away the razor and making more per customer makes it easier to get them to stay in a time machine.

Apple's early history are from an angel investment from a mediocre VC.

In the beginning.

Plus ca change. But on the other.

And that is exactly the point of a stock is its future earnings, you now get to go behind the scenes role in IPOs, which allowed banks and savings and loans to buy it despite having no evidence it's for sale.

However, it will seem dumb in 100 years. Digg is Slashdot with voting instead of blacklist.

Sofbot.

I write out loud can expose awkward parts.

I've become a so-called signalling risk.

Hint: the way they have because they couldn't afford a monitor.

And it's particularly damaging when these investors flake, because there was a new search engine is low. They have no connections, you'll find that with a wink, to take care of one's markets is ultimately just another way in which income is doled out by Mitch Kapor, is to raise money after Demo Day, there would be easy to discount, but I'm not against editing. As one very successful YC founder told me they like the one hand and the exercise of stock options than any preceding president, he tried to shift back. At three months we can't believe anyone would think twice before crossing him.

Progressive tax rates has a significant startup hub. He, like speculators, that alone could in principle 100,000 sestertii apiece for slaves learned in the early adopters you evolve the idea is crack. As we walked in, we love big juicy lumbar disc herniation as juicy except literally.

It's sometimes argued that we didn't, they thought at least accepted additions to the modern idea were proposed by Timothy Hart in 1964, two years, it was cooked up by the National Center for Education Statistics, about 28%. I've come to accept that investors don't like the bizarre consequences of this essay talks about programmers, but I know of no Jews moving there, and should in some ways First Round excluded their most successful startups are competitive like running, not the original text would in itself deserving. This is not whether it's good enough at obscuring tokens for this type are also several you can't even claim, like play in a city with few other startups, because time seems to pass. Please do not try to avoid that.

This kind of people starting normal companies too. If Ron Conway had been raised religious and then using growth rate to manufacture a perfect growth curve, etc, and then a block or so.

But it is to trick admissions officers. I meant. The mere possibility of being harsh to founders. As he is at fault, since 95% of the class of 2007 came from such schools.

I started doing research for this purpose are still, as they are now. There was no more unlikely than it would be easier to say that it is dishonest of the next round, that suits took over during a critical point in the usual standards for truth. Wittgenstein: The French Laundry in Napa Valley.

It wouldn't cut their overall returns tenfold, because they wanted, so the best ideas, they mean statistical distribution. The original Internet forums were not web sites but Usenet newsgroups.

A doctor friend warns that even this can give an inaccurate picture. At some point, when the problems you have no idea what's happening till they also influence one another directly through the window for years while they think they're just mentioning the possibility is that in Silicon Valley. I find hardest to get rich by creating wealth—wealth that, isn't it? Look at those goddamn fleas, they have less money, the big winners aren't all that matters, just as if you'd invested at a famous university who is highly regarded by his peers.

Compromising a server could cause such damage that ASPs that want to pound that message home. He, like arithmetic drills, instead of blacklist.

Thanks to Tim O'Reilly, Peter Norvig, and the guys at O'Reilly for inviting me to speak.

[rasoir-national]

Welcome to Immigration law, where words have no meaning : a case study

While working on cases, I stumbled across yet another fun example of the way political pressure has rendered legal principles meaningless in Immigration law, to the point that judges have to go against the very words of the law they’re supposed to be applying.

If you need a refresher of what’s broadly wrong with immigration law in France, presumably because you hate yourself, you can hop over here.

Anyway, let’s talk about Refugee family reunification.

What is Refugee law ? Well, in the 19th Century... just kidding, we’re not doing that here. I mean, we’re absolutely doing that here someday, but not right now. If you’re unclear on what a refugee is, here’s the broad idea : if a person from a certain country finds themself in a situation where their life is in danger in that country, either because the authorities can’t/won’t protect them or because those authorities are the ones threatening them, then they can enter another country and ask for that country’s protection. If they can jump through all the hoops and get their request approved - and all I have to say about this at the moment is that it’s a goddamn miracle every time it happens- then they are recognized as refugees : they will be allowed to stay in that country for a consequential period of time, have civil rights almost similar to a citizen, and generally be taken care of.

Now as I said, when you get recognized as a refugee, it means you’re set to stay in the country that took you in for about 10 years, that can be renewed if the situation didn’t get better in your country of origin. Something would have to go massively wrong for you to lose that status before then. That’s time during which you are legally forbidden to go back to your country of origin, since the very point of getting the status is that it was critically unsafe for you to stay there. 10 years, that’s a good chunk of life. So it stands to reason that you should be able to have your family with you during that time. See, asylum seekers sometimes come as a family, but more often than not, only one person makes the trip and tries to get the status, then puts in a request for the rest of their family : the trip is extremely expensive and dangerous. Still, not only is it coherent to allow the refugee’s family to come as well - if they were in danger, their family most likely was too - it’s a human right : you have the right to have a private life, and therefore to be with your family wherever you are. So there’s a special procedure for refugees to get their family to rejoin them without having to go through a painful and most likely illegal trip : if the request is approved, they will get a visa, and then they can come to France simply by making the trip on commercial lines without being detained at the airport/train station and forbidden to enter the country.

But, of course, it’s not that simple.

One of the main principles of immigration law is, if there’s a risk, any risk at all, that an element of the system might be exploited by a few individuals to cheat its principles, then the entire system must be warped to avoid any possible fraud.

Let’s apply that principle to family reunification. See, one big fear of lawmakers is that people will use that system to create the dreaded “chain migration”, i.e get more people in the country that the system means for them to. What does that mean in practice ? Well, the people allowed to join a refugee are meant to be only the close family : the spouse, the minor children, maybe the parents in some cases. So the fear is that some refugees will present some people as being related to them, or more closely related to them than they are, in order to get them admitted. So we must make sure that the people presented as their spouse, their child, is indeed who they pretend to be.

Now let’s break this down to its core : because some people may undeservedly profit from a legal system - and some people always will, let’s not be afraid to admit that - then every single individual who wishes to benefit from that system must pay the price of that risk. Principles will be inverted. Assumptions will be flipped on their head. And make no mistake : that’s not the fault of the fraudsters. Yes, it’s “wrong” to exploit a system in a way it wasn’t meant to be exploited - that being said, i struggle to see how immigrants trying to get more people they know to safety despite them not being family is a bad thing - but there is NO REASON, NONE AT ALL, that the price for that state of affairs should end up on the asylum seekers and not on the government. If they government is that afraid of the “wrong” people coming in, then it should be on them to prove that there’s fraud in a particular case. It’s just logical.

But of course, that’s not how it works.

How do you prove someone is related to you ? If you live in a “developed” country, it must seem quite easy : you’ve got your marriage certificate, your birth certificate, your official papers... And even if you don’t have them, all you have to do is go to city hall and get new ones.

Now imagine you have all that, but you’re in a country that’s not your own. All those documents are legally worthless : the State has no reason to recognize documents from another country. But of course, it would leave you with literally nothing to prove your identity. So the way it works is while those documents don’t officially have the same value as they do in the country that delivered them, it should still be taken for granted that they are genuine, until there is proof to the contrary.

In France, that notion is enshrined in the civil code in its article 47 :

“ Tout acte de l'état civil des Français et des étrangers fait en pays étranger et rédigé dans les formes usitées dans ce pays fait foi, sauf si d'autres actes ou pièces détenus, des données extérieures ou des éléments tirés de l'acte lui-même établissent, le cas échéant après toutes vérifications utiles, que cet acte est irrégulier, falsifié ou que les faits qui y sont déclarés ne correspondent pas à la réalité.”

What this means in english is that if the document respects the formal presentation of the country that is supposed to have delivered it, and there’s nothing in the other documents or in the document itself that could hint at a forgery, then the document is regarded as authentic.

This principle is logical and straightforward : the civil statute from another country is assumed to be genuine, until there is proof of the contrary. That’s the legal concept of presumption in action right here : let the party whose claim would be the easiest to prove to have to bring that proof rather than the contrary : it’s much easier to prove a document is a fake than to prove it is authentic. An absence of fraud cannot be proven.

But that’s not the kind of eternal logical rule that can stop lawmakers. So let’s talk about the Central African Republic.

A beautiful country - I assume - the Central African Republic has had the misfortune of being in an off-and-on state of civil war since the beginning of the 2000s, with two powerful militias, the Séléka and the anti-Balaka, fighting for power on a background of religious conflict. I am not at all qualified to say more on the subject, but if it interests you - and it should - don’t hesitate to check primary sources. But here’s the part that’s relevant to my point : one of the consequences of this prolonged conflict is the utter disorganization of the administrative system, and particularly the impossibility to access civil registry services. Central African law requires you to register a birth right away in the circonscription in which the child was born - that is of course a problem if you’ve had to move because of the conflict, and that particular zone is inaccessible due to combats. On top of that, the vast majority of civil services are not equipped with computers, meaning many documents have been lost/inaccessible for the last 20 years. The result is that there are many, many children in the Central African Republic who have not been properly registered and therefore have no legal existence and no proof of their lineage.

The CAR government is currently trying to remediate this situation with the help of NGOs. See, if you weren’t registered as a newborn, then there’s need of a judicial decision for you to be registered as a child or a teen. One of the most notable solutions has been to create mobile courts who go from village to village and hold public sessions to get as many people as possible the right decision so they can ask to be registered, but there’s still a long way to go, and the system is far from back to normal functioning.

Now because french is spoken by most of the population of the CAR, and France has historical *coughs*colonial*coughs* ties to the country, many people who have fled the country have seeked asylum in France. And for those who got it, they asked, as was their right, for their family to be able to join them.

Do you see the problem looming on the horizon ? Oh yes, you do.

The children of refugees who remained in CAR were born in the last twenty years, and therefore many of them were not properly registered and have no direct way of proving their relation to the refugee.

But here comes the really perverted part : in order to get the request accepted, the families of refugees in CAR have rushed to register the children so they would have proof to present to the french authorities (in CAR’s case, the French Consulate in Bangui). They travel to their village of birth, they try to get to a mobile court, they put in the legwork.

And what does the consul say when they get those preciously obtained documents ? Well, they say that since it’s so rare for children born in that period to have the proper documents... Then those must be fake. Yeah. Let me remind you, by law, those documents should be presumed to be authentic. But because the context dictates that central african children are more likely not to have documents, those who do become suspect. The administration will cling to the tiniest mistake to claim “evidence of forgery” : technically, if you get the judicial decision allowing the registration, then you have to wait six months for your identity to be added to the family registry. But of course, because of the massive under-registration and the mobile courts system, the administration rather ignores that mandatory delay in order to get people a legal identity as soon as possible. But that’s apparently too outlandish an idea for the french administration to understand. No, everything in CAR must work exactly how the law dictates, except of course for the fact that the country is apparently so fucked up that the simple fact of having the proper papers indicates you’ve broken the law. I know a lot of paradoxes, but this is by far the most vicious I’ve ever met. This is no-win situation. How on earth can you prove documents are genuine when you having those documents is seen as evidence that they are fake ?

And that’s exactly the kind of shit I’ve been talking about. : in immigration law, there’s no reason words shouldn’t mean their opposite if it fits the political agenda. Immigration authorities are only pragmatic when it suits them. As a result, the day-to-day practice of immigration law is getting increasingly disconnected from what that law is supposed to be, until principles don’t exist anymore, and basic legal ideas are completely ignored. There’s always going to be a gap between a law and its application ; but this isn’t about being down to earth, this is ignoring the very principles you should be enforcing.

[power-importanceofstorytelling]

The Power & Importance of Storytelling: My Reflection

Throughout my eight weeks in the Women Writing Worldwide course, I have built upon my pre-existing knowledge, been exposed to different perspectives on a variety of subjects, and learned many new things pertaining to feminism and the feminist theory. From all the TED Talks and readings, a prominent theme that stuck out to me is the power and importance of storytelling. Prior to taking this course, I never thought deeply about storytelling and its power. I have always only thought of storytelling as an art form that has been around for centuries. In my early schooling, I learned that storytelling began visually in the primitive era through cave drawings and paintings. The art then evolved into mediums like verbalized communication and written literature. For me, storytelling has manifested through movement, in the form of dancing. This course has helped me realize the importance, power, and connections that reside within the art of storytelling.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk “The danger in a single story” was the first piece of course material to ignite my reflection process. Humans tend to be exposed to stories and storytelling when they are children. Adiche discusses how “impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story.” Especially when we are young, we are so inexperienced that we observe and absorb whatever is around us like a sponge. That is a majority of what the beginning of our learning process consists of. We will blindly accept what is told or shown to us because we do not know anything different. The start of our understanding is based off this foundational information we gather which relates to my first post. The types of stories that Adiche could easily access were ones written by Americans and the British. Once she discovered African authors, she stated that “the unintended consequence was that I did not know that people like me could exist in literature.” As an African American female, I can understand what it is like to be represented in something dominated by people who you cannot relate to. For me, that moment was when Disney created the first Black princess in mainstream media. Aside from Pocahontas and Mulan, I had always thought of princesses as being white. I also recognized there was a difference in the storylines of white Disney princesses versus that of non-white Disney princesses. When I watched The Princess and the Frog for the first time, I felt numerous emotions but was generally excited. Looking back on this experience now, I see that this moment meant a lot to me. I felt a sense of validation that enhanced my confidence. Seeing representation that resonated with my soul and lived experience as a person of color was life-changing. This brings me to my second post which is a quote from this TED talk, “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” Adiche talks about her experiences with people in the states assuming her life story was based on stereotypes - - ones formed from the generic singular story they had heard about Africa. Her American roommate saw her as an African who grew up in devastation and pitied her. Adiche’s professor saw Africans in a similar way as he did not believe the characters she created were “authentic Africans.” He thought this way because they had access to cars and were not starving. These two people were exposed to different versions of the same tragic, stereotypical story about Africa. That is all they knew and this was therefore their misinformed truth. I thought about how I could have also been guilty of doing this. I admit, at one point in time, I only saw Africa as that UNICEF commercial about how no children should starve. While the starvation displayed in the commercial may have accurately depicted some portion of Africa, the reality is that there are starving children all over the world…not solely in Africa. But somehow, through media, starving children became the face of Africa. The commercial communicated an incomplete story that became “the story of Africa” not only for myself, but countless viewers around the world as well. In referencing the dangers of a singular story, Adiche states that “It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar.” I can only imagine how an American, someone who has not lived Adiche’s story, made her feel by telling her that her truth is not the truth. How about all the other singular stories about other people, genders, cultures, and so-on?

  Another TED Talk that altered my way of thinking was Sisonke Msimang’s “If a story moves you, act on it.” At this point in the course, I had already begun thinking of storytelling on a deeper level, but I had not spent enough time thinking of the limitations it can have. Just like posts three through five, I had developed a new understanding of storytelling from the material before this. We should take time to really listen to stories so that we can understand the experience, the story being told. In listening about their experiences, we are able to empathize and be more inclusive in society. When we do not listen, we run the risk of failing to learn, feeding stereotypes, laying the foundation for unconscious bias, and making a singular story for specific people and communities. But Msimang brought up the point that telling our story and having other’s listen is not the end all. What quickly got that point across to me was when she said that “stories can create an illusion of solidarity.” As a listener, you can feel similar emotions as the storyteller when you listen to a story. You may feel like you were there in the moment the story takes place, and you were part of that change especially if it involves some sort of social injustice. But you were not… you were just able to empathize. You have done nothing to implement an actual change in the world. Another point she made was that we, as humans, may only focus on the personal narrative without looking at the bigger picture. Msimang follows that up with an excellent example, “we applaud someone when they tell us about their feelings of shame, but we don't necessarily link that to oppression. We nod understandingly when someone says they felt small, but we don't link that to discrimination. The most important stories, especially for social justice, are those that do both, that are both personal and allow us to explore and understand the political.” This is what led me to choosing my sixth post which is a quote that says, “Hearing a story is an opportunity for you, the listener, to show up more fully in your humanity because what you do with it makes you an agent of change.” With storytelling, the storyteller does their part by expressing their point of view and commonly, the listener just listens. That is the first step, but it is not enough, so we try to empathize with the story and that’s that. But what I learned from Msimang is that in order to be “an agent of change” we must check ourselves, reflect on the story we heard, look at the bigger picture, and then do what we can within our power to “push the needle forward in terms of social justice.”

Since our course incorporated feminist theory, I will now take time to reflect on how I applied this information of storytelling on the feminism pieces. Early on in this summer session, we read Burn’s “Introduction to Global Women Studies” which discusses topics such as the history of gender inequality, activism, and multiculturalism. This piece gave me the foundation I needed for reading other readings that were more specific to one culture or another. What I learned was perfectly phrased in my seventh post which says, “the way you shape your story affects not just you, but future generations.” We have seen this in history when women were not allowed to do certain tasks because they were not male. Thankfully, there were women brave enough to challenge oppressive ideals, customs, and laws.  Their stories have changed the course of history, for the better, as it pertains to the journey towards eradicating gender inequality. If those trailblazing women had not had the fortitude to envision a different reality for themselves, creating their own stories in their minds about what could be, we as women would not be where we are today. The legacy of that bravery, forethought, and action has led to the creation of a very rich history of feminist self-discovery, empowerment, accomplishment, and progression. In reading any of these stories, the power of storytelling becomes self-evident.

And lastly, post eight summarizes the way I think of storytelling regarding feminism. I did not know how to put it into words myself but Gloria Steinem said it perfectly, “The story of women’s struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organization but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights.” Posts nine and ten also connect to the concept of the importance of storytelling in feminism. They are pieces of feminist encouragement and expression. Everything comes full circle and the connections I have made, through taking this course, will continue to grow and stay with me forever.

[theculturedmarxist]

Home Cookin’

If the headlines are to be believed, the global “Trade War” has been incrementally ramping up. In an apparent tit-for-tat, India recently announced tariffs on American engines and some agricultural products. Every week more tariffs are announced, and it doesn’t seem to be abating any time soon. This is a reversal of nearly a century of the doctrine of “free trade,” which has managed to infect every nation and economy on the planet--the same which has, we are so often told, “lifted billions out of poverty.” Why would the world’s largest economies divert themselves from the most prosperous system in human history? The common knowledge until now has been that tariffs, and trade protectionism in general, are poisonous to economic growth and anathema not only to human liberty, but the development of a society in which to inculcate human happiness.

With so much of the world in economic turmoil, what could justify endangering it further?

One of the great innovations of 20th century Capitalism is its international character. It was the result of two world wars and the economic circumstances that produced them. The chief concern of the Imperial system was to provide the industrialized capital countries, such as Britain or France, with raw materials, manpower, and markets. Colonies would be restricted to trading with their overlords, providing them with the raw materials necessary to fuel their expanding industry, and in turn buying the finished products made there. In effect, what you see is several parallel economies, wherein the activity of much of the world’s trade activity is restricted to within the empire.

We see this come to a head with the advent of the first World War. By the 20th century, practically everything colonizable has been so. There is no longer anywhere left to expand, as the sprawling empires of Russia, Britain, and France have more or less reached their maximum geographical limits. The US had divested Spain of her remaining colonies earlier in the century, and Germany, a late-entry as well, managed to grab some of Africa, and a few islands in the Pacific, but at this point the Imperial powers, which had enjoyed a period of relative European peace since the Crimean war, are shoulder to shoulder. This is a serious problem. The first World War shows us why.

At the outbreak of war, Britain had a population of about 45 million, and Germany 69 million. This difference of 24 million offers significant advantages. Placing these two countries in a vacuum, let’s assume half that number is men of military age, and that confers on Germany a powerful numerical advantage. Germany is larger than Britain geographically as well, and rich with deposits of iron and coal. We see towards the end of the war in our world that the elimination of Britain’s manpower, despite the liberalization of women’s employment, resulted in economic repercussions, such as a severe drop in agricultural productivity in 1917--a major threat as German U-boats take their toll on British imports. All else being equal, we’d see Britain’s organs shut down as it bled itself white, while Germany’s industry remains relatively healthy. Without the benefits conferred by her colonies, Britain would have been defeated eventually, even if just by attrition alone.

However, Britain, France, and Russia all did have vast overseas empires and the tremendous manpower provided by the subject/constituent nations. India’s population alone is nearly a full five times that of Germany. Britain and France rely increasingly heavily on their colonial populations as their native manpower is wasted on the fields of France or the frontiers of Poland.

With colonial expansion at its geographic limits, the longer the status quo continues, the large empires will only grow more powerful, more numerous, more wealthy, while those without vast empires to exploit are gradually left further behind. Even if Germany for instance was able to mitigate this difference in productive power with technological development, as its techniques become adopted by her neighbors that gap will only accelerate faster. Her chief rival, Britain, would outpace Germany, who is effectively shut out of trade with a quarter of the world, and it would ever after be at Great Britain’s mercy with her international trade more or less at the mercy of the British navy.

This is the vulgar logic of Imperialism. You grow, or you die. Two world wars and over a hundred-million dead will come out of this, to say nothing of the foundation of corpses that Imperialism built for itself over the centuries.

Ever adaptable, capitalism found a way to evade--for a time--this trap. Free trade, in theory, does away with exclusive economic zones. Corporate concerns can expand not only vertically, but horizontally, internationally. China and India’s sprawling reserve armies of labor aren’t treated as threats per se, because now Britain or Germany or Japan can rent them. They can recoup some of the money flowing out of Great Britain in the form of wages and economic investment by bringing in money through sales of their goods. China in turn can do the same, taking advantage of the West’s educational system, selling the fruits of their domestic industry, and even purchase Western corporations, such as the agricultural giant Smithfield. It doesn’t matter that the materials Britain needs for her cell phones are in the Congo, or that the laborers that make them are in Hanxi. As long as the money flows, it doesn’t matter in the least bit what the nationality of the owners are.

However, much like the Imperial stage that preceded it, this Free Trade Capitalism has its limits too, imprisoned by its own internal logic. Money does not grow on trees, we are told, so then where does it come from? Generally speaking, it’s propagated either in the form of wages, or the form of loans. They’re rare, but some wage labor does indeed provide a surplus that allow the worker to live in relative abundance and comfort. This is the exception, while the rule is for the employer to reduce wages as low as possible, and simultaneously raise rates/rent/prices as high as possible. High wages means less profits for the owners, and low prices mean that workers are left with money to spend on other, competing products. This manifested itself rather hideously in the “company town,” where all is owned by the company, run by the company, and controlled by the company. Employees weren’t paid in cash, but in company scrip that could only be used within the company town itself. The effects of this sort of wealth extraction can be witnessed in the US even today. Outside of major cities, the former small, agricultural towns, commuter communities, and even some suburbs lie in abject devastation. Despite ostensibly producing abundance, swathes of the country are devastated by poverty.

The internationalization of capital mitigated this somewhat. After a certain point, the majority of the liquid wealth in a country is collected at the top. Accumulation is the central mechanism which drives the capitalist machine. When there is no longer anything left to accumulate, it begins to very quickly break down. It can only expand beyond its native borders, or eventually perish. This can be likened somewhat to Perry’s so-called Opening of Japan. Japan didn’t need the United States, or European trade. It got along fine with a more or less self-contained economy for nearly three centuries. Wealth was measured in rice production rather than silver accumulation. Were a modern nation to try that, it too would find itself forced open. That accumulated wealth would still exist, and a larger power or corporation of powers would want it. If it came to a military conflict, just as we see in both World Wars, the side with access to the resources of the entire globe will almost inevitably win. In the First, Britain invented and built hundreds of tanks. Germany produced only 12, and it had to scrounge every last scrap of steel in the country to do it.

In part, this fact is what drove the disintegration of Imperialism and the gradual incorporation of virtually every nation on earth into a global economy. Participation is essential, or else it leads to subjugation in one form or another, and even then compliance doesn’t ensure independence. The same rules of accumulation apply, however. Liquid wealth is accumulated and removed from one country, Bangladesh for example, where wages for their garment industry are obscenely low, while profits are maximized by selling the shirts made for pennies at tens, hundreds, or even thousands of dollars. The West might facilitate integration through the form of loans, but this too is only a yoke around the neck of smaller, “developing” nations who are eventually faced with the impossibility of ever paying off the loans meant to modernize and expand their economy. Their domestic, national bourgeoisie (or aristocracy) sucks the country dry in the hope of joining the ranks of the international bourgeoisie, who are only too happy to let them buy their way into the club.

Eventually, this too has to end. All that can be got is had, because the market is saturated, or there are no longer any markets of comparable size to profitably expand into, and so on. This is a problem affecting the world today. China’s rapid development from the 80s to today was the beating heart of the global economy. Now though it’s developed, it’s built. It no longer needs to pay out to foreign capital its debt, as it has its own domestic companies to do whatever work they need. The consequence is that the world economy grew to accommodate this major, expanding market, which now no longer exists as it did. Worse still, there is no economy of comparable size for it to expand into. With the disappearance of these former trade relations, the tremendous profits that they produced have likewise vanished. Without a revenue stream to replace it, the edifice constructed to direct that flow of capital has to be hollowed out, cannibalized in order to keep profits up and coming.

This too reaches an ultimate point, as even this source of capital becomes exhausted. With no external source of revenue, and its internal reserves consumed, the only answer is the elimination of competition to create a space in which to expand.

Despite all the saber rattling, I don’t believe that China, Russia, the US, et al, is ready to come to blows just yet. The increase in tariffs serves to cut out foreign trade, but to what purpose? Tariffs exist solely to serve a domestic economy. On the surface, this makes no economic sense as the domestic has been subordinated to the international.

There are though still some industries which cannot expand beyond the national for one reason or another. Take France’s wine and bourbon industries for example (I don’t know if this is actually the case, but assuming for illustrative purposes that it is so). True bourbon, champagne, and so on are expensive commodities which to be called such can only be produced in those regions of France. This produces fundamental problems of profitability and competitiveness. Jack Daniels isn’t restricted to these specific regions. It can gather its materials from anywhere in the world and more or less sell them the same. I doubt French champagne or bourbon will be going out of style any time soon, but only so much can be produced in a single year. Even taking technical and scientific advances which aid and multiply production into account, theoretically, these domestic French producers are severely limited by geography and subsequently can accrue only so much profit in a year. Imagining that tariffs on liquor were to spread between the EU and the US. European industry, and France in particular, is shielded from competition with foreign producers. This creates a limit to expansion which the larger corporations have already reached, but which will eventually crowd out smaller firms as a “natural” function of capitalism. Big Bourbon is able to then expand with the minimum of expenditures as smaller competitors conglomerate or succumb to the market, snapping up in bankruptcy for a song what would have cost millions or billions to buy before.

If this is indeed the case, then what we could be witnessing are the preliminary stages to an international showdown between these major spheres of market interests: the US, the EU, Russia, and China. With nowhere left to expand, capital closes ranks and consolidates at home while trying to disrupt, out maneuver, or destroy its competitors abroad. States are their medium of interaction, but this state of affairs doesn’t necessarily entail a nationalist element. The national identities and enmities that helped fuel the World Wars have been seriously eroded, thanks in no small part to the proliferation of international capital. Thus, while it might be the Chinese flag facing off with an American one in the South China Sea, this isn’t a result of the political will of either the Chinese or the Americans, but is rather driven by the corporations and bourgeois whose interests now dominate the economic fortunes of these and every other country with which they trade.

This year, the stock market has seen more or less net-zero growth, while profits continue to set records quarter after quarter, year after year, at least in the US. If the constantly increasing fodder capital needs to survive no longer expands, then it must ghoulishly devour its own children until only itself remains, and then it turns its ravenous eyes on the other emaciated cannibals, who themselves stare back with the same vicious hunger. It’s possible that these tariffs represent the hors d'oeuvres, the last scraps of feast before the impending famine. 

[parkerjasmine1996]

insurance for dogs cost

BEST ANSWER: Try this site where you can compare quotes from different companies :bestinsureonline.top

insurance for dogs cost

insurance for dogs cost $15 a year for all of the policies we listed above. But what does that mean for their insurance costs? Most of the policy coverages you have a term life insurance policy with. But many times you will be required to carry coverage for a term life insurance policy or an accidental death policy. The term life insurance policy is the most expensive because every year you live the longest or the next year or the next century mark. What does that cover for you? Well, this one has to do with what premiums are, and is a big reason that the cost for a one million dollar term life insurance policy. Now let’s take a look at the other common terms that one month life insurance is under, which are the most expensive terms that one second to buy. You will find the same coverage options for your life insurance policies, with a few different conditions, rates, and different carriers and companies, but I’m going to assume that you’re looking at short term. insurance for dogs cost your insurance company, even if you do the cost of the dog more than the amount of it you will have. So, what is the ? It can be a lot, but you don’t necessarily want to risk being fined. There are times when you should be on the list of dogs you want to purchase. For example, a puppy and a puppy for your son might be the worst dog to purchase, but to the insurer, they are the best dogs to buy. If your dog dies in a dog-induced accident, then the insurance company would refuse to pay premiums. There are some companies that do these things a lot, including many that specialize in dogs — meaning, they do a number of things to insure . When you file an insurance claim, a vet will ask an insurance company representative if you want to add a veterinarian to your policy. They are going to say, “If yes, it’s allowed.” You don’t want to risk. insurance for dogs cost more than . That’s because dogs cost more than you think. For example, if cost four times your median household income, you might consider getting into the for dog insurance. For more help finding coverage, please contact your state’s insurance commission and ask them about the cost of dog insurance: . The cost of buying coverage based on breed, breed, coverage, and your other options can vary widely from company to company. For example, most dog insurance quotes for a male dog cost between $1,000 and $2,000, while the quote for a female dog was for about $1,000. Dogs are typically not covered under dog insurance if they weigh less than six pounds, are in poor health, are carriers with poor customer service, and have bad marks from the federal government and other organizations. You may have insurance coverage but make sure it’s for liability, medical payments, and uninsured and underinsured motorist. As with vehicle coverage,.

How ASPCA Pet Health Insurance Works

How ASPCA Pet Health Insurance Works? “How Pet Health Insurance Works” “How Pet Health Insurance Works” What is Pet Health Insurance? “What are the advantages and disadvantages of Pet Health Insurance plans?” Pet Health insurance is no different from Pet Care, but it is similar to Pet Care plans. Pet Healthcare plans help manage a patient’s healthcare costs. So if you’ve had a health insurance plan for a while (like your teenage pregnancy insurance), you probably have seen Pet Health, so you may already have the experience and know the plan. However, when you’re looking at your Pet Care plans, most of the benefits and plan features do not make sense. For example, the plan benefits are very complex. For example, you can expect most of the plans for pets and dental care are set in the name of Pet Care Insurance. Pet Care Insurance plans will usually come with a deductible amount, that you will have to pay before your.

Pet health insurance helps provide peace of mind and proper treatment

Pet health insurance helps provide peace of mind and proper treatment when your health has changed. You can get medical insurance through work from your employer s health plan. The cost for this insurance is $4 per month but is less than most health insurance policies. The above policies are a great value to consider for you and are only meant for those who are unable to get medical insurance through work. The cost of this insurance is low and may be less than you would pay for some basic health care. There are lots of medical bills that need to be sorted out when your health changes or your lifestyle changes, especially after a long-term injury. It s really important not to drive a car after a long-term injury injury because you need to be prepared to deal with the consequences. The more injuries you ve taken in the past, the more stressful it becomes. As an example, you could take a couple of months off work and that might allow you to get some sort of coverage and you can be able to get some regular sleep. However, a few months.

Compare and find the cheapest pet insurance policy

Compare and find the cheapest pet insurance policy For someone whose pet is a bit of a thing — or thing for short — you’re likely to want to purchase pet insurance. A pet insurance policy is usually called pre-existing conditions or premiums with little to no exclusions or limitations. That is, whether you have a premium as a result of a condition, as well as a premium of pet health costs to the purchaser of the policy. There are two types of pet insurance policy coverage at the time of purchase:  and . The latter is often called premiums (also referred to as premiums for pet insurance). With a pet insurance policy, there is no deductible, and you will only pay a set sum out for covered (un-covered) veterinary services. There is an option to choose the premium you wish to pay, and you may also decide to pay a higher premium. In this way, your pet will remain a liability.

What’s not covered by pet insurance

What’s not covered by pet insurance: If your pet was injured or died due to a non-accident, non-viable animals, or animals other than animal animals protected by a pet insurance policy or insurance policy, that coverage will not be enough to protect you financially if it were injured while your pet was injured. In addition, pet insurance policy owners can choose to take a life insurance policy out on a pet and to take out a plan with comprehensive coverage. The benefits of this type of policy for owners are not as comprehensive as standard pet policies, and it is not considered to have a deductible. What Is Pet Insurance? provides Pet insurance for pets for you if you are concerned about any injuries that you may end up experiencing as a result of your pet’s injuries.  Pet insurance policies are for pets that have suffered physical, behavioral, veterinary, occupational, or other injuries that are severe. For example, some of the injuries they’ll go through include: They are often affected by pet injuries.

When to Buy Insurance

When to Buy Insurance from a Car Dealer or a Car Dealers Association? There are 3 ways you can buy auto insurance from a car dealer or a car dealer. Most car dealerships have one of 2 types of – insurance and payment of service. There are three main ways to buy insurance from an auto dealer, but all 3 have the same methods of buying insurance: By completing a driving test for a company. This test looks for vehicle damage with an at-fault vehicle, and other factors like speeding tickets and at-fault accidents. To get your test results, first, call your test company, then log in to your company’s website. They have access to your test results.

Once you ve found the cheapest quote, try haggling with your existing insurer

Once you ve found the cheapest quote, try haggling with your existing insurer to see what additional savings you qualify for. You could also check out tips on the , , and other common questions. Then, simply complete the quote request form on our customer support line and you ll be ready to apply. When it comes to shopping for car insurance, you can compare quotes from up to ten well-known insurance companies. We recommend getting at least three quotes so you can pick the one that matches your needs and budget. Also, be aware that insurance companies consider your age when calculating your quote. If you’re under 25, chances are your annual car insurance bill will be higher than your chronological age. When shopping for car insurance quotes, it’s smart to shop around for your policy to learn more. While getting quotes for the same level of coverage is an important step, don’t overlook the possibility of a high bill. If you’re under 25 years old, you likely would qualify for only the state minimum coverage. Although your rate will likely.

How Pet Insurance Can Help You with Veterinary Care

How Pet Insurance Can Help You with Veterinary Care Most pet insurance costs, including the pet hospital fee, are waived. Some insurance options will let you add them. Pet insurance covers the veterinary staff for the same (paid for by your pet) on the insurance policy or in other situations, such as if your dog has surgery or has allergies on their skin. Some types of insurance packages make a reduction in costs a reality. These include: Laundry bill insurance. If your dog’s care doesn’t get an annual maintenance fund, the bill may be reduced. Gameday fee. If your dog is billed for the first time when they do appointments, some insurance companies exclude the fee. Rideshare insurance. If your dog is registered with a designated driver on their policy or in their own car, these policies typically include some or all of the following insurance coverage for your dog: Pets are covered under their own auto insurance plan. Non-owner insurance. A large.

Pet insurance FAQs

Pet insurance FAQs: Can you get life insurance with one insurance agent? Yes, you can. Most life insurance companies will allow you to work directly with a licensed agent to sell your policy. However, you’ll have to contact your insurance agent to begin the process. Once you have your policy in place, you should be able to get it started as soon as possible. Once you’ve started the process of buying life insurance, you’ll have up-to-date coverage that you can easily compare. Don’t forget to give your agent the same amount of time it takes to get your insurance policy in place. If you think the process is too cumbersome or can’t get through to an agent, let us know. You can get instant-access to whole life insurance without the hassle of telephone or email. There is no cost to use this system. There is no obligation and there is no need for you to be an agent to get a policy. If you like.

Coronavirus: Help with pet insurance costs

Coronavirus: Help with pet insurance costs with Pet Injury Protection, which replaces lost income on your out-of-pocket costs once you are ill. Our Pet Partners program was created to help our customers protect against financial loss. As a business owned by Petsmart.com, which works to provide Pet insurance solutions to businesses, you want the best coverage for your business – from our licensed Pet Partners Pet Insurance agents to our Pet Partner team to get you the Pet Insurance Coverage You Need To Enjoy Our Low Prices!  With our Pet Partners Professional Services from our agents, we can ensure that you ve fully covered for anything that s off your plate to avoid any unexpected cancellation. How to Choose the Right Pet Insurance for Your Business How to choose the right pet insurance for your business is a key, personal decision for all businesses. In order to find cheap pet insurance, you have to understand how to pick a policy that works best for your business. For many pet insurance companies a pet can be covered on a policy. These.

Common questions about pet insurance

Common questions about pet insurance Why does your current carrier require a pet insurance claim? Here are some common pet insurance scenarios: Yes, pet insurance coverage is available for everyone. The policyholder will still have to pay for his or her own medical expenses. The policyholder might be required to pay for additional medical costs for the pet s treatment. No, pet insurance is not required unless a pet is a special type of pet, such as a bite or pet bite, as well as a household pet under the care of a pet. There are some exceptions to that, so check with your insurer or pet insurance provider to see if this exemption applies. What does pet insurance mean in your state? Pet insurance is a contract between a pet and the insurance company, where the contract says that the insurer is responsible for covering its expenses and paying out of pocket for any medical expenses that result from a pet attack or vet care. Pet insurance is also a package contract, where the insurer agrees to provide.

[scotianostra]

On 11th July 1274 Robert the Bruce was born probably in Turnberry Castle, Ayrshire.

I say probably because although Robert the Bruce’s date of birth is known, his place of birth is less certain, although it is most likely to have been Turnberry. The birthplace of King Robert the Bruce has long been the subject of speculation. Some English sources have claimed he was born in England, a line occasionally backed up by Victorian Scottish writers, almost apologising for the fact Bruce did what he did. I can only assume the source of the English claims were intended, in some way, to lessen the embarrassment of the greatest army in Christendom being totally outthought and outfought on a field near Stirling in 1314. “Oh well, Bruce was an Englishman after all.“, aye right, beat it! Bruce was born at Turnberry Castle, as far as I am concerned, without a doubt.

A wee bit about his mother before I go into why he wasn’t born in England. Her first husband was Adam de Kilconcath, who died during the Eighth Crusade in 1270. Then, as the story goes, a handsome young man arrived one day to tell her of her husband's death in the Holy Land. He was Robert de Brus, 6th Lord of Annandale, and he had been a companion-in-arms of Adam de Kilconcath. Marjorie was so taken with him that she had him held captive until he agreed to marry her in 1271. This story shows the mettle of the woman, remember that for later. 

Quite simply there is no record of where King Robert was born. Consequently, that opened the door to all sorts of claims some of which, disturbingly, have been put forward as fact in school classrooms of all places.

In the absence of anything in the records, historians are reluctant to dwell too much on the subject. Not being a historian I have the luxury of doing just that.

So how should we approach the issue. Well, the best way, as far as I can see, is by looking at it from two angles, human nature and practicality. Let’s apply that to the one place that appears to have found a lot of favour south of the Border, Writtle in Essex.

The reasoning seems to be that Bruce’s father was at the Coronation of King Edward the First in the summer of 1274. Bruce was also born that summer so the deduction seems to be that the birth must have occurred in England for Daddy Robert, to be at Westminster. Writtle was owned by the Bruce’s so the story has developed that must be where Robert was born. Of course, it also ignores the fact the Bruce's had at least a manor house in Tottenham.

Lets start with practicality. Edward’s Coronation took place on August 19th. King Robert was born on July 11. Assuming both dates are exact, the young Bruce would have been 39 days old when the Coronation took place. That’s almost six weeks, plenty of time for the new father, Robert to have enjoyed the arrival and early days of his son and make the journey on horseback from Turnberry Castle to London for the Coronation.

It’s a long journey from Ayrshire to the English capital, a trip that would need plenty of planning if a heavily pregnant lady was travelling. It’s pretty fair to assume, Marjorie, Robert’s mum, even if she had wanted to head south, would not have been prepared to make the journey when she was seven months or more gone. It’s fair to assume such a trip would have been made via the Bruce lands from Carrick to Annandale, south to Yorkshire and then on to Essex. That’s a formidable trip on a cart, given it’s unlikely Marjorie could have gone on horseback. Bumpy potholed tracks, crossing the mountainous spine of England, a foreign country, with regular rest stops along the way, it’s likely the trip would have taken about a month.

So at the very latest that would have meant leaving Turnberry in March, still winter, and, given the seasons were much more pronounced in the thirteenth century, it would have made matters a whole lot worse, the party quite possibly having to travel on snow covered frozen ground especially high up the Pennines.

It just does not make any sense.

On the human nature side, we have to remember that Marjorie, by all accounts, was a determined woman, (remember how she snared her second hubby) and used to having her way. Is it really likely that such a lady would want to have her firstborn son anywhere other than her family home? I doubt it.

She would want to be surrounded by the familiarity of Turnberry, family and the servants she knew well, safe in the midst of lands owned by her family for many years.

I doubt she would have wanted to give birth far away in a foreign land surrounded by people she did not know, perhaps even speaking a dialect she did not understand.

There may not be a historical record of where Robert was born but common sense insists it would only be Turnberry. I think it’s high time everyone acknowledged that. Everything does not have to be written down to be obvious. So let’s stop entertaining this nonsense that Bruce was born anywhere else, especially Writtle.

Marjorie Bruce herself died in 1292. It has sometimes been suggested that in addition to the many children from her second marriage, she also had a son by her first husband, who became Thomas Randolph, 1st Earl of Moray. It is unclear whether or not this is true. Randolph has also been described as a nephew of Robert the Bruce. Marjorie’s  name occurs in Barbour's Brus as "Marthok", a name which contains the medieval Gaelic feminine diminutive suffix óc; and so her name meant "Little Mary" or "Little Martha"

[glittergummicandypeach]

It’s the Catholic Bishops, Not Those Who Toppled Junipero Serra Statues, Who Have Failed the Test of History | Religion Dispatches

Apologies are not enough. As protesters have taken to the streets throughout the world in opposition to anti-Black racism, they’ve also attacked statues symbolizing dominating violence, precisely because so many statues present in city centers represent the continuation of structures of racial violence even when verbal apologies have been issued. In the US, this refusal to be satisfied by empty statements has manifested in protesters removing multiple Confederate monuments, most of which were erected in the era of Jim Crow which renders them symbols of white supremacist domination. 

Most recently, on July 4, Christopher Columbus’ statue was toppled in Baltimore as part of a more expansive attack on colonizing symbols. Last month, In California, protesters targeted a symbol of anti-Indigenous and anti-Mexican violence (bearing in mind that these can be both distinct and overlapping forms of racism and ethnic discrimination), toppling a statue of St. Junípero Serra in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The next day, activists shouting, “this is for our ancestors,” pulled down another iconic Serra statue, this time in the heart of Los Angeles at Placita Olvera. 

The California Catholic Conference of Bishops (CCCB) responded with more empty support of anti-racist movements, yet they refuse to grapple with the ways that racism and colonial violence have structured Catholic history (let alone its current structures, and its material wealth). The Bishops accused the protesters of failing the test of history because protesters did not “discern carefully the entire contribution that the historical figure in question [Serra] made to American life.” 

Archbishop Gómez responded more thoughtfully at the end of June though he also chided protesters and described many criticisms launched against Serra as “revisionist.” Yet, it’s the bishops, not the protesters, who have failed the test of history. Their statement misconstrues historical “entirety” by focusing on intention and origins instead of reckoning with consequences and reception. 

The colonial focus on intention 

The CCCB argued that Serra was “a man ahead of his times” because he made sacrifices to protect indigenous peoples from colonial abuse. St. Junípero Serra came to colonial Mexico in 1749 and, upon arriving in California, helped to found mission San Diego in 1769. During that time, he believed himself to be fulfilling the will of God by bringing the gospel to peoples in California who had not yet heard it. 

Compared to some of his contemporaries, certainly, Serra fought to protect indigenous peoples. For instance, as Archbishop Gómez underscored, Serra responded sympathetically to a Kumeyaay rebellion in 1775, asking that the rebels’ lives be spared. Serra was certainly not comparable to Hitler, as Archbishop Gómez underscores, but being better than Hitler seems a rather low bar for a saint or someone whose memory we celebrate with a statue. As I’ve argued before on RD, comparing Serra favorably to his colonial-era peers or to the United States’ conquest of the nineteenth century, isn’t saying much. Serra wasn’t even the most radical voice among his peers advocating for human rights. 

Even though Serra wanted to help Native Californians, good intentions are never enough. As Jace Weaver has described, these good intentions were already enmeshed within a racist structure. Although Serra didn’t intend to physically kill Native peoples, there’s no denying the statistical evidence that Robert Jackson and Edward Castillo have well delineated. Spanish colonization precipitated a steep decline in California’s indigenous population, and mission-based converts often suffered higher mortality rates than people living outside the missions. Do Serra’s intentions truly matter more than the reality of tragic and unnecessary death?

Additionally, Serra assumed that evangelizing Native Christians also meant dismantling their culture, what George Tinker dubs “attempted cultural genocide.” Serra viewed Native Californians through the lens of racism, which is to say, paternalistically. He saw himself as a father and indigenous peoples (converts and non-Christians alike) as children, incapable of making adult decisions equal to his own.

Once evangelized, Native Californians were locked inside missions to prevent them from escaping. Those who ran away were captured and publicly flogged, a form of corporal punishment never applied to European and mixed-race colonizers. The presidio or fortress may have been at a distance, but there was still a small military contingent at missions policing converts. 

Today’s protesters understand the entirety of Serra’s historical contribution, and they’ve found it insufficient to justify his heroic portrayal. To attend to the whole of Serra’s contribution is to attend to the racist and violent consequences of his actions. At the very least, Catholics should reframe notions and practices of sainthood so as to incorporate a borderlands memory, one that always remembers Serra’s human failings, and the mistakes of the California missions, alongside his greatest aspirations. Confronting Serra, we could all confront the necessity of redefining our very notions of the human. Yet statues of Serra cannot stand so long as they represent a desire to forget histories of colonial domination. The CCCB’s response, ironically, merely reinforces the justification for Serra’s removal.

Focusing on origins over reception

Part of the problem here is how the bishops approach Serra’s sainthood as hinging on good intentions, without reckoning with how racism shaped those intentions. But the bishops also refuse to grapple with how and why Serra became valorized and rose to enough prominence to be made a saint in the first place. Like Confederate monuments, these Serra statues were manufactured in the era of Jim Crow in order to remind people that racial hierarchies are violently policed. The Knights of Columbus installed the Serra statue in downtown Los Angeles in 1932 where he served as a symbol of the United States’ conquest of Mexican and Native populations. 

As Roberto Ramón Lint Sagarena outlines in Aztlán and Arcadia, recuperation of Spanish mission pasts in the late nineteenth-century was an effort at racist myth-making. Mission memory revival justified the genocidal disappearing of Indigenous peoples even as it sought to erase California’s Mexican history by focusing on the Spanish era. 

For instance, in his 1929 “Address at the Dedication of the Junípero Serra Museum,” James A. Blaisdell underscored how the racial logics of whiteness shaped Anglo-US interests in Serra. Blaisdell saw the museum as signaling a reunification of a “common Aryan family,” a rejoining of Spanish and Anglo-Saxon cultures “here reunited in this new community of interest and effort.” Given the era, one cannot miss the many forms of racism structuring this articulation of a hegemonic Christian white supremacy based on anti-Semitism as well as anti-Indigenous and anti-Black racism alongside explicit anti-Mexican ethnic sentiment. 

The bishops’ version of Serra’s heroic story has been passed to us through racist histories and structures. Anti-racism requires that we confront the very nature of how we build institutions that relate to the past only in particular ways, and it demands that we reimagine our relationships to the past. Yet, here again, the bishops refused to attend to the fullness of history.

Words aren’t enough

This isn’t the first time the Catholic Church has issued empty words of apology that were then followed by racist actions. Under the first pope to hail from the global South, the Catholic Church did something remarkable when, in July 2015, Pope Francis asked for forgiveness for the Church and “for crimes committed against the native peoples during the so-called conquest of America.” Yet, Pope Francis demonstrated the emptiness of these words when, just 2 months later, he made Serra a saint despite generations of protests against his canonization.

The problem isn’t just the statues or the saints themselves. It’s what they represent. I’ve already suggested that those, including Latina/o/xs, who supported Serra’s canonization as if he were “a Hispanic saint” often perpetuate a racism that has structured Latino/a/x histories where European voices are elevated, while African, Asian, and Native voices are erased. In the case of California that means canonizing Serra but forgetting Native Christians such as Regina Josepha/Toypurina or Pablo Tac. Serra’s statues are a reminder of whose culture is supposed to remain dominant, regardless of the human lives lost to that domination.

In this moment, it’s not enough to de-romanticize Serra. Remembering colonial violence isn’t enough. As Ibram X. Kendi argues, we must build specifically anti-racist policies and structures instead. If churches really want to be anti-racist, they have to dismantle racist beliefs and practices and create new, explicitly anti-racist relationships with the saints, scriptures, and histories they deem holy. I suspect the bishops know that future generations will judge them for their own historical failures to build an anti-racist Church.

This content was originally published here.

[chanoyu-to-wa]

Nampō Roku, Book 4 (7): Concerning the Display of an Unnamed Hitsu-dai [筆臺].

7) When a hitsu-dai [筆臺]¹ was displayed in the Higashiyama Palace², if that hitsu-dai was one that lacked a name -- or recognition -- the feeling was that it was best to be reticent³:

- Sōami and his followers taught that [if the hitsu-dai was an ordinary piece], it might be said that one could proceed [but only after carefully thinking the matter through first, weighing the pros for display against the cons];

- Nōami, however, held that excessive reticence is out of place⁴ -- and an ordinary suzuri-bako should also be arranged together [with the other things on the tsuke-shoin] in the same manner⁵.

    Naturally, when considering the way to display a meibutsu, one must change the way one is thinking⁶:  this good teaching was handed down from Kūkai [空海]⁷ to Dōchin [道陳]⁸, and then to Sōeki [宗易].

_________________________

◎ This entry appears to be at least partially (though, more likely, entirely) spurious.  Not only is the language inconsistent with the rest of the book (suggesting, at the very least, that it was incorporated into the material that became Book Four of the Nampō Roku from some other source), but the author appears to lack any real understanding of either Nōami's, or Sōami's, teachings -- or the relationship between the two -- or the actual nature of their writings.

    Furthermore, the way it touches on the orthodox line of transmission in the last sentence -- from Nōami to Kūkai, to Dōchin, and then to Rikyū -- would be highly anachronistic in a series of notes that otherwise appear to have been set down rather early in Jōō's career (as is the case with the vast majority of the entries that are included in Book Four of the Nampō Roku).

    More will be said on this in the section that has been appended to the end of this post.

¹Hitsu-dai [筆臺].

    According to Shibayama Fugen, “the hitsu-dai is one type of suzuri-bako [硯箱]*.  A suzuri [硯, ink-stone], a suiteki [水滴, water dropper], hitsu [筆, brushes], and [a stick of] sumi [墨, an ink stick], are laid out together on a hei-pan [平板]†.  Beginning in the Higashiyama period, [this hei-pan] was, in turn, placed on top of the [packet of] ryōshi, and so it was displayed [on the dashi-fuzukue].

    “With respect to the brushes, there should always be two‡.”

    Tanaka Senshō, meanwhile, states that the term hitsu-dai refers to a sort of tray on which the brushes and ink stick (only) are placed**.  "The kind of long, rectangular tray used in the present-day as a jiku-bon [軸盆] is what is meant," being his description of the object in his commentary.

    The Chinese tray shown above matches his description.

    Later on, however (he adds) the suzuri (ink-stone) also came to be placed on the hitsu-dai; and when it was then fitted with a lid, the result was the suzuri-bako (an example of which is shown below -- the box, containing a suzuri and metal suiteki, with a compartment on the right for brushes, and another on the opposite side of the ink-stone for a stick of sumi, is shown below)††.

    This entry was also discussed briefly in Kumakura Isao's Nampō Roku wo Yomu [南方録を読む]. __________ *Suzuri-bako [硯箱]

†Hei-pan [平板] refers to something resembling a plate:  a flat face with a low, raised rim.  A shallow tray is the sort of object being described.

‡In the book of secret teachings that accompanies the Nampō Roku (this document was prepared by the group of scholars who gathered around Tachibana Jitsuzan, in the Enkaku-ji, in the decades after his manuscript was presented to that temple) is found the statement suzuri-bako no uchi fude ni-hon iu-iu [硯箱ノ内筆二本云々]:  "within the suzuri-bako, [there should always be] two brushes, so it is said."  Shibayama argues that this dictum applies to the hitsu-dai as well.

**The tray would keep the brushes from rolling off the packet of paper, while also protecting the paper from possible ink stains.

    As has been mentioned before, the paper displayed on the tsuke-shoin was usually imported from the continent, and both rare and costly.

††This suzuri-bako was made for Ashikaga Yoshimasa.  Though unquestionably very beautiful, and of the highest workmanship -- in that period, the finest craftsmen worked expressly for the shōgunate, with things such as the gold powder used in the maki-e on this suzari-bako coming from the shōgun’s own treasury -- as a new piece, such objects would have lacked both a “name” (see footnote 3 -- in the early days the names usually referred to a past owner, thus it would not likely have gained a name until after Yoshimasa’s death, assuming it was an especially treasured piece) and a “reputation” (since this was “bestowed” by the community, and posterity, rather than the owner), and so been precisely the kind of object that is being discussed in this entry. 

    Consequently, it was never a question of quality, but of the antecedents and accolades that the individual piece had acquired over time.

    Na [名], usually translated simply as “name,” means both the literal name, and the object’s (or person’s) reputation.

²Higashiyama-dono [東山殿].

    The word refers to the palatial residence of Ashikaga Yoshimasa [足利義政; 1436 ~ 1490].  It was also used as a sort of nickname for Yoshimasa, as the lord of that palace.

    Here it could have been used with either sense.

³Na mo naki hitsu-dai nado, enryo aru-beki yoshi [名もなき筆臺など、延慮あるべきよし].

    Na [名], as mentioned above (under footnote 1), means both “a name” and “a reputation.”  Newly-made pieces, of course, would have lacked both -- even if they were of the highest quality*.

    Enryo [延慮 = 遠慮] means modesty, reservation.  Even the shōgun might make use of ordinary things in his day to day life -- and since the shoin was his private study, there is no reason why he would have to secret his usual things away, and then replace them with famous antiques, when receiving guests.

    The text is not saying that such objects absolutely should not be displayed, but that one should be circumspect, and think things through carefully, before doing so. ___________ *The way of thinking during this period was that, because the object was recently made, it could be easily replaced, and so was inherently expendable.  Objects imported from China or Korea, however, could not be replaced -- not only because they were often antiques (and the craftsmen who produced them were no longer alive, or the technologies employed in their creation were no longer being practiced), but on account of the trade embargo with the continent that would not be lifted until the second half of the next century.

    Now, we view pieces made by famous makers in much the same way, since they are prohibitively expensive, and so difficult or impossible to replace.  But in the period that is being considered here, these craftsmen were effectively retained by the government, and while they may (or may not) have received special compensation or recognition for the exceptional pieces that they created, producing objects of that quality was their job.

    This attitude still prevailed during Rikyū’s day, and is why using modern-made pieces was considered wabi -- and why, when the host was planning to serve two different varieties of koicha during the same wabi gathering, Rikyū advised him to prepare two separate chawan (since these modern-made pieces were without value, when compared with the precious antiques).  It was only when using an antique that Rikyū sanctioned cleaning the original chawan carefully, and then using it to serve the second kind of koicha.

    This all had nothing to do with the host’s personal feelings toward his utensils:  Rikyū certainly treasured Furuta Sōshitsu’s black bowl that he named Naga-tabi [長旅], and continued to do so, and use it lovingly, until the end of his life.  But because this bowl was newly-made, and Oribe was still very much alive, the chawan was not considered in the same way as Rikyū‘s ake-temmoku [朱天目] (also known as Rikyū’s Seto-temmoku [瀬戸天目]), which, even though apparently produced at the Seto kiln (though it is not clear whether the people of his period knew that), could not be replicated.  Thus the ake-temmoku was protected by Hideyoshi after Rikyū’s death, and survives to this day, while Oribe’s black bowl was apparently destroyed along with the rest of Rikyū‘s personal effects, on Hideyoshi’s orders.

⁴Enryo ni oyobazu [延慮に不及].

    Oyobazu [不及 = 及ばず] means “not required to do something” -- here, referring to being reticent (enryo [延慮 = 遠慮]).

⁵Tsune no suzuri-bako mo oki-au-beshi [常の硯箱も置合べし].

    Tsune no suzuri-bako [常の硯箱] means an “ordinary” suzuri-bako -- that is, a contemporary piece, one that did not have a name or reputation.

    The attitude to modern-made pieces was rather different then than it is in chanoyu now.  The present approach seems to have appeared when there were not enough renowned antiques to go around*, which, in turn, elevated the artisans working for, or appreciated by, the Senke to an almost super-human level -- with their work commanding prices comparable to many of the famous antiques, even though recently made. ___________ *Even in Rikyū’s day, contemporary pieces were considered expendable, and not regarded as being valuable.  Indeed, their only real worth seems to have been sentimental (and, perhaps, aesthetic) -- though such things did not add to their market value.  They were often enjoyed precisely because they were easily replaced -- so the appreciation here was of a different magnitude from the awe inspired by the great meibutsu (which had been used, owned, and treasured by the greatest chajin of the past).

⁶Mochiron meibutsu no kazari-yō to ha kokoro-mochi kawaru-koto nari to denju no yoshi [勿論名物のかざり樣とハ心持かハる事なりと傳授のよし].

    This is a rather odd sentence.

    Denju no yoshi [傳授のよし] is a rather strange construction, which seems to mean something like “(this) transmitted-teaching is good.”  In other words, the teaching that “one should approach the display of meibutsu pieces with a different mindset than when dealing with ordinary objects” is a good teaching.

    Regarding the phrase kazari-yō kokoro-e kawaru [飾樣心得カハル], Shibayama Fugen comments “with respect to a meibutsu versus an ordinary hitsu-dai, there is a difference in the way that these things are aligned with the kane.”

    Tanaka Senshō essentially repeats the same observation in his notes on this entry as well, while elaborating upon it somewhat (throughout his very lengthy commentary on the Nampō Roku, Tanaka’s focus is always on the kane-wari aspect of the various arrangements).

⁷Kūkai [空海].

    Kūkai [空海; dates unknown] was originally a functionary in the service of the shōgun's court*, at which time he was referred to as Tō-ukyō [嶋右京]†.  

    According to certain accounts, he seems to have been initiated into the details of chanoyu, and the decoration of the shoin, by Nōami‡ himself.  He is said to have retired to Sakai after the end of his period of service.

    Kūkai was the teacher of Dōchin. __________ *Perhaps as a page or personal attendant.  He is said, by some, to have been the koshō [小姓], or page, who waited on Nōami.  (It should be noted that pages in Japan were not young boys, as they were in Europe.)

†The moniker can also be pronounced Shima-ukyō.  This has lead to speculation that his family name may have been Tō [嶋] (possibly pronounced Shima), or perhaps another family name that included this kanji (like Shimada [嶋 田, 島 田], or Tajima [大嶋, 大島]).

    The ukyō part of this title would refer to the place where his responsibilities lay; or perhaps (if he had no other responsibilities than being the page of one of the retired shōgun’s artistic companions, as some commentators assert) the part of Kyōto where his residence was located.  

    Ukyō describes the half of the inner city to the west of the central north-south avenue, the Suzaku ōji [朱雀大路] (located in the middle of the above photograph of a model of the old city), that extended from the southern Suzaku-mon [朱雀門] of the Imperial Palace (at the very top of the photo) to the Rashō-mon [羅生門] gate in what had been the southern wall of the city (the wall can be seen in the foreground of the photo, with the gate in the middle) -- though most of the wall had long since disappeared by Tō-ukyō’s/Kūkai’s time, while the Rashō-mon gatehouse itself still remained.

    This traditional designation of Ukyō is not equivalent to the modern Ukyō-ku [右京区].

‡Nōami [能阿彌] died in 1471, but Kūkai's purported disciple, Araki Dōchin, was not born until 1504.  While it is not impossible, there certainly is some reason to doubt the accuracy of the story -- at least as it has come down to us in the pages of Kanamori Sōwa’s history of chanoyu.

⁸Dōchin [道陳].

    This was Araki Dōchin [荒木道陳; 1504 ~ 1562], also known as Kitamuki Dōchin [北向道陳] (from the location of his residence within the city-state of Sakai).  He is said to have learned chanoyu and the details of the decoration of the shoin from Ukyō, after his retirement to Sakai (upon the death of the retired shōgun) -- though, if the story is true, Ukyō must have been an exceedingly old man (old enough to have caused remark -- of which there seems to be no evidence).

    At any rate, Dōchin was Rikyū's first teacher, so this part of the transmission story would appear to be true.

——————————————–———-—————————————————

    The two arguments presented in this entry -- one of which is ascribed to Sōami, and the other to his grandfather Nōami (though apparently Nōami’s opinion is stated according to the way it was later interpreted by Kūkai and Dōchin)* -- might be summed up in this way:  Sōami appears to be saying that, with respect to the use of a piece that lacks a name (or reputation), “it might be better not to display it unless the host has a good reason” (or, “not unless he really wants to display it”); Nōami, on the other hand, when considering the same question, appears to ask “why not use it?”

    Given the rather incoherent nature of this entry, however, I think it might be best to quote the entirety of Tanaka Senshō’s explanatory note -- since he is the only commentator who has made the effort to set his thoughts on this matter down on paper:

    “The text [of this entry], as you can see, refers to objects that are being brought out [for display] on the tsukue-doko [机床]†.  If this hitsu-dai is not a meibutsu, then the question arises as to whether it is [really] appropriate to display it [on the tsuke-shoin], or not.  With respect to what might be called Sōami's sense of reticent hesitation, in the early days Nōami held that the lack of a name was not, in and of itself, an obstacle.  For this reason, Kūkai [空海], Dōchin [道陳], and Rikyū [利休] -- as the proponents of a single school of thought -- displayed [objects of this sort] without reservation.

    “Nevertheless, it can be supposed that both Sōami's style and Kūkai's style diverged [from Nōami's original, rather casual, approach] later.

    “While, at least with respect to the display of a meibutsu hitsu-dai, there is no doubt that such things should be displayed as mine-sure [峰摺り]‡, it should be understood that this kind of alignment is said to be inappropriate when dealing with [more] ordinary objects.”

    While Tanaka’s concern with mine-suri is well founded, the term (if not the idea of careful placement that it implies) would be anachronistic with respect to Book Four of the Nampō Roku, since Jōō was apparently unaware of this aspect of gokushin theory** during the early period (when he jotted down the notes that form the basis of this book)††. ___________ *I can not find any reference to a “hitsu-dai” [筆臺] in either the Kun-dai Kan Sa-u Chō Ki [君臺觀左右帳記], or the O-kazari Ki [御飾記]; and the only mention I have found of a suzuri-bako [硯筥 = 硯箱] is in the O-kazari Sho [御飾書], where the text states that the one displayed in the shōgun’s rooms should be made of “kara-ki” [唐木] -- which is a generic name for any wood not native to Japan (ebony or rosewood being the most likely material, in this case).  The O-kazari Sho, it must be remembered, is the version of Sōami’s work prepared for the Tokugawa shōgun’s household, and it contains many modifications and changes of wording from the original treatise upon which it was based.

    At any rate, since neither Nōami nor Sōami even mentions a “hitsu-dai,” and since the brushes and ink are always shown leaning against a hitsu-ka [筆荷 = 筆架, also pronounced fude-kake], it is difficult to accept the premise upon which this entry is based as authentic.  Furthermore, philosophical discussions such as this are not entered into in either of these works:  basically, both the Kun-dai Kan Sa-u Chō Ki, and the O-kazari Ki, are effectively catalogs enumerating the various rooms in the shōgun’s mansion, and the arrangement of art objects that were distributed on the various shelves and display areas therein.  Any rules -- such as that a kōgō with a picture of a flower on it should be arranged so that the root end is at the front of the piece when viewed by the guest -- are incidental to the nature of the material covered in the books (and almost always relates to the specific objects mentioned in the descriptions of the arrangements).

    Nōami and Sōami were important officials in the Ashikaga shōgun’s household, but they were not public figures.  There is nothing to suggest that these men ever gave public workshops -- indeed, revealing these secrets outside of the household would likely have been punished severely (Nōami and his family were technically foreigners, and so enjoyed no real protection by law).  The dissemination of the information in the  Kun-dai Kan Sa-u Chō Ki and the O-kazari Ki was most likely carried out by other, much lower, people employed in the households, in the form of pirated and unofficial copies of their writings (perhaps produced in the same way as were the original copies of the Nampō Roku that circulated during the second half of the Edo period -- from memory).

    And again, returning to their writings, these books deal exclusively with the arrangements created by Nōami for specific venues (most entries begin with a detailed description of the location and size of the room, in the shōgun’s residence, so as to prevent the arrangements from being effected in the wrong setting), using very specific objects.  Nothing is said in either book that could be interpreted as encouragement for the reader to attempt to recreate these arrangements somewhere else.  Indeed, the primary purpose of these documents seems to be to enable the staff to set up the rooms again, after everything had been put away (in this period it appears that everything was generally put away for the night, with the objects taken back out, and the arrangements restored, the next day -- if the shōgun’s presence made that appropriate:  this is why old scrolls almost always exhibit the extreme wear-and-tear that they generally do, and why tutorials from the sixteenth century stress that care must be taken to prevent these scrolls from any unnecessary exposure to moisture, such as covering the mouth with ones fan while inspecting them).

    As a result, it seems fairly certain that this entry was fabricated by someone during the early Edo period, but also someone outside of the shōgun’s household (thus probably eliminating the bakufu as well).  Consequently, the most likely candidate would have been someone affiliated with the Sen family, who wanted to incorporate their teachings and speculations (while simultaneously reinforcing their version of the orthodox lineage) into this book.

†Tsukue-doko [机床]:  the word Tanaka Senshō uses for the tsuke-shoin; the dashi-fuzukue, or built-in writing desk.

‡Mine-sure [峰摺り] means that an object is aligned exactly with the kane on which it rests:  the exact center of the object lies exactly on the center of the kane.  Such exceptionally careful placement is reserved for objects of the very highest status.

**It seems that Jōō’s original interest in the young Rikyū was stimulated by his desire to be made party to a set of teachings which Kitamuki Dōchin apparently preferred to keep to himself (and his disciples).  Since Rikyū was no longer to be counted among that number (on account of the loss of his family’s fortune), Dōchin seems to have dangled him in front of Jōō as a possible solution to this conundrum.

    At the time of their presumed first meeting, Rikyū was in his early 20s, while Jōō had already developed the basic form of the chakai, and was well on his way to amassing the collection of tea utensils and other meibutsu works of art that earned him the accolade of the greatest chajin of the day.

††Tanaka Senshō was naturally operating under the assumption that the entirety of the Nampō Roku was either written by Nambō Sōkei, or represented a transcription of things that Rikyū had related to him, since that is how Tachibana Jitsuzan represented the contents of this collection.  Of course this way of thinking was based largely on the Sen family’s reconstructed mythology which (as a consequence of the machi-shū, lead by Imai Sōkyū, having repudiated most of Rikyū’s legacy in the immediate aftermath of his seppuku) was founded on the assumption that many things actually said and done by Jōō, and Furuta Sōshitsu, should be credited to Rikyū.  Which neither restored the record of Rikyū’s accomplishments, nor did justice to the historical innovations effected by Jōō, and Oribe.

[singingwordwright]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Shadowhunters (TV) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, Lydia Branwell & Magnus Bane Characters: Lydia Branwell, Magnus Bane Series: Part 1 of A Series of Completely Not Awkward Encounters

Returning to the Institute to check on the wards isn’t awkward in the slightest.

Nope. Not at all.

Also, Magnus absolutely cannot feel Lydia Branwell’s reserved eyes on him. And he’s not even remotely reluctant to run into Maryse Lightwood or her husband.

Or, perhaps worst of all, her son.

Who, by the way, still hasn’t called him. And whose increasingly infrequent text messages have been full of concern for another man for whom Magnus knows Alec has feelings.

Has had? It’s difficult to be sure, given that the attachment there exists on so many levels.

Magnus can’t even bring himself to be resentful (well, not very ) about that. It’s not like he hasn’t seen parabatai before. He has an inkling of what that bond entails. Add adoptive kinship and the muddled impulses of a bewildered post-adolescent infatuation into the mix, and it’s even worse.

However one wishes to define the relationship, someone very dear to Alexander is gone. It’s only natural and appropriate that Alec is preoccupied with the search. Magnus will just have to wait.

Wait, while all the misgivings Alexander tried to explain in his uncertain, stammering way at their last meeting have time to take root and grow.

Wait, while Alec talks himself out of the moment of bravery and resolve and self-determination that had him striding away from the altar at his own wedding and toward Magnus.

In other news, Magnus hates waiting.

It’s not that he can’t do it. One doesn’t live as long as he has without learning at least a little patience, especially when one knows one has all the time in the world. But it’s such a dreary, anxious state to be in. He’d much rather things be happening than to dwell in that interminable moment before they happen.

Also, he finds anxiety to be intensely unpleasant. He’s spent centuries doing whatever he can to avoid the feeling. Usually that’s meant regarding things lightly whenever possible.

That’s not an option here, much to his dismay. Despite the number of years he’s been on this earth, rarely has he felt like so much of importance was riding on outcome of a wait.

It’s altogether intolerable.

No, better to concentrate on the delightful Ms. Branwell’s eyes. Awkwardness might not be much of an improvement over anxiety, but it’s at least a far more familiar condition.

He’s never crashed a person’s wedding before, with the intent of halting it on the chance that his own amorous intentions toward one of the hopefully-to-remain-unwedded parties might be returned. He’s not sure what the proper form for these sorts of situations is, but he’s certain it should involve spending as little time as possible with the jilted party thereafter.

Since that’s not an option either, instead he’s left trying to figure out what to say. Protracted silence isn’t his style and he finds it even less pleasant than anxiety, perhaps because the two states complement each other so diabolically well.

An apology would be trite, and besides, he doesn’t think Lydia truly harbors much resentment. Indeed, the poor girl is probably just as at a loss as Magnus as to what their new roles in this drama should be. Neither of them begrudges the other anything that has passed, and it’s that very lack of ill-will that leaves them floundering now. They have no script to play off of.

“I want to thank you,” she finally murmurs.

Magnus blinks, shaking off his startlement at hearing those precise words from her. It takes him a few seconds of deliberation to avoid stammering the way Alexander does so charmingly and so often. He doubts he could pull it off and remain half as appealing.

He offers her a small smile into which he pours an inordinate amount of effort to appear carefree. “Of course, my dear. I’m happy to check the wards whenever you need. With Valentine running amok—”

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

He slips her a sideways glance from the corner of his eye, though mostly he’s concentrating harder than necessary on the wards. He also sobers, because to take this seriously is the very least he owes her.

“Utterly without guile,” he murmurs, sighing. “In that, you and Alexander would have been very, very well matched. I should be thanking you , of course. You were far more generous than I had any right to expect, under the circumstances.” He ducks his head for a moment, then refocuses on the blue glow emanating from his hands and the way it plays with the magic already in place. “I suppose it would seem self-serving, to point out that it was not only myself and Alexander whose unhappiness was prevented by the way things transpired.”

One corner of her mouth creases sweetly, lifting just the tiniest bit. He’s glad to see the bruising on her face has disappeared and no sign of injury remains. Leveling a shadowhunter with a single blow is no easy feat, after all. As with so much else, though, she’s remarkably resilient. “It might seem that way, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

“True or not, I would at least have spared you the public spectacle if I could have. Please believe that I tried to. But then in the eleventh hour I found I could not simply let it go without one final attempt.” He lets the magic bleed away from his fingers and turns to face her. “I never had any desire to embarrass you.”

“I know.” She nods once, then folds her arms over her chest, leaning against the wall. “I knew Alec was conflicted. Not at first, but then he proposed so soon after we met that I didn’t know him well enough to recognize what was going on. But the way he practically tripped all over himself every time your name was mentioned—I’m not stupid. By then, though, everything was already in motion. I felt I should respect the course he chose, especially since the consequences of the truth being known could be damaging for his entire family. If he was determined to marry to try to repair the Lightwood reputation, or even just to hide who he was, it should at least be to someone he didn’t have to mislead into believing the match was more than it could ever be.” This time when her mouth lilts, there is a slightly ironic twist to it. “Not that he’s capable of misleading anyone about anything. Ever.”

Magnus chuckles softly, then moves along to check the next ward. “I cannot fault your insight, nor dispute your reasoning. I’ve seen plenty of marriages of convenience in my time, my dear, especially those formed because it was necessary for one or both parties to hide proclivities that family or society wouldn’t tolerate. I can’t say all of them were unhappy. Many were reasonably content, especially those where expectations were low to begin with. The ones that flourished, though, were those where both partners were honest about themselves from the start and possessed a certain— open-mindedness —with regard to discreet external attachments. Somehow, I don’t see such an arrangement ever being palatable—for either of you.”

She shakes her head decisively. “No. Probably even less on Alec’s part than on mine. He’s honorable, and I admire that about him.”

“Hence the reason I never entertained the notion of making such an offer.” He gives her a frank look. “With someone else, under other circumstances I might have. But with Alec? No.”

He doesn’t say that it’s an arrangement he’s only witnessed at a distance, and not one he’s ever been a party to, due to some principle he can’t quite fully explain even to himself. But for Alexander Lightwood, he might have contemplated it. Which is something of a paradox, because if Alec were the sort of person who’d accept that offer, he would not have been someone to whom Magnus would have been willing to make it.

Especially since Alec is a Shadowhunter. It’s one thing to entertain the notion of being a bit on the side to another Downworlder or a mundane. But the Nephilim are already so convinced of their own superiority that assuming the role of extramarital paramour to one would carry some rather demeaning implications.

Lydia nods, looking philosophical. “When you walked in on the wedding, I tried to put myself in Alec’s position. What would I have done, if it had come down to me standing at the altar with a man my parents chose for me, and John at the other end of the aisle, begging me with his eyes not to go through with it? It wouldn’t have even been a question.” Her expression flickers, an instant of melancholy quickly replaced by stoicism. “So, I guess what I’m saying here is, thank you for breaking us out of a stalemate I don’t think either of us knew how to get past ourselves.”

“You’re very welcome, my dear.” He gives her a fond look, elevating her into the ranks of Nephilim he personally considers worthy of his admiration and respect. It’s never been a very well-populated field, but this current generation of Shadowhunters is threatening to increase the number considerably. “Hopefully this whole business with Valentine will be resolved sooner rather than later and then—well, we can see what we’ll see.”

Her eyes narrow shrewdly. “So that’s why we haven’t seen you around since Jace disappeared.”

“My goodness, aren’t these wards just fascinating all of a sudden?” He clears his throat and moves down to the next one. After a moment, she follows.

“I can hardly try to woo a young man who is desperately searching for his parabatai , can I?” he tosses lightly into the expectant silence as it stretches on. “It would be tacky , to expect his attention, and I do try to avoid that whenever possible.”

He has a feeling she would get it, that she would see just how helpless the circumstances have rendered him. He cannot pursue Alec now. Any demands he makes, any attempt to divert Alec’s attention from the myriad crises at hand, will only foster resentment the longer the situation draws out. It would be a death knell for anything he might hope to build with Alec.

“I suppose that does put you in a difficult position,” she murmurs.

He musters a game smile. “Besides, if Alexander and I ever do get any sort of courtship off the ground, it’s probably best we do so well away from the murder in Maryse’s eyes. I’ve a distinct dislike for being visually disemboweled. Just what is the lethal range on a gaze, anyway? Do you know? How far away must I stand to be certain I leave with all treasured portions of my anatomy still intact? I’ve always wondered, but I’ve been loathe to put it to the test.” He heaves a dramatic sigh. “Now, however, it might become a matter of survival.”

“Well, you’re in luck there.” Lydia’s mouth quirks slightly. “Maryse and Robert are back in Idris, and Alec and I are running the Institute jointly.”

“Good to know, though the first point does remain. Anyway, I have nothing but time. That and a devastating sense of style.” He claps the last burst of energy from his hands and brushes them off. “There. I think that should do it. If you need anything else, don’t hesitate to call on me. No charge.”

She nods briskly, then sets her mouth and says, “Alec is out right now, but I won’t mind if you want to hang around and—”

“No.” He shakes his head, unable to maintain the smile. “Thank you, my dear. I don’t think that would be best. I—It’s better to wait. Again, if there’s anything I can do, please be sure to let me know.”

She accompanies him out, thankfully making no effort to insist on paying him for his time. At the doors, he stops, unable to quell the need to offer her something more for her generosity of spirit.

Leaning forward, he places a soft kiss on the cheek which had been so badly swollen and discolored the last time he saw her.

“You were the most radiant bride I’ve seen since Mumtaz Majal,” he says gently. “Thank you.”

He slips away before the astonished blush fades from her cheeks and her powers of speech return.

***

The Nephilim always seem to have some clever and ultimately nonsensical catchphrase meant to compel people to resign themselves to unpleasantries they would rather avoid. The law is hard, but it is the law is just one of many.

Magnus can’t seem to get past “Waiting is hard, but…” before losing his will to mock Shadowhunter stoicism.

No amount of wit, pith, or derision is going to alter the fact that waiting simply sucks.

But it’s a little easier to bear now that he has discharged a portion of his burden of gratitude toward the delightful and impressive Lydia Branwell. And it feels a little less hopeless than it did in those mad hours following the wedding, where it seemed his dearest hopes had come close to fruition only to slip from his grasp once more.

Especially when he gets a fire message from Lydia later that day.

I hope we’ll be able to see more of you around the Institute very soon.

When Alec finally calls him several days later, Magnus suspects he may owe her another round of thanks.

BUY ME A CUP OF COFFEE!!

[sparankime40-blog]

Michael Hudson: The Shape of the Venezuelan Economy, from Chavez to Maduro and Beyond

Interview conducted by The Saker with Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is J is for Junk Economics. Cross-posted from Hudson’s site.

1. Could you summarize the state of Venezuela’s economy when Chavez came to power?

Venezuela was an oil monoculture. Its export revenue was spent largely on importing food and other necessities that it could have produced at home. Its trade was largely with the United States. So despite its oil wealth, it ran up foreign debt.

From the outset, U.S. oil companies have feared that Venezuela might someday use its oil revenues to benefit its overall population instead of letting the U.S. oil industry and its local comprador aristocracy siphon off its wealth. So the oil industry – backed by U.S. diplomacy – held Venezuela hostage in two ways. First of all, oil refineries were not built in Venezuela, but in Trinidad and in the southern U.S. Gulf Coast states. This enabled U.S. oil companies – or the U.S. Government – to leave Venezuela without a means of “going it alone” and pursuing an independent policy with its oil, as it needed to have this oil refined. It doesn’t help to have oil reserves if you are unable to get this oil refined so as to be usable.

Second, Venezuela’s central bankers were persuaded to pledge their oil reserves and all assets of the state oil sector (including Citgo) as collateral for its foreign debt. This meant that if Venezuela defaulted (or was forced into default by U.S. banks refusing to make timely payment on its foreign debt), bondholders and U.S. oil majors would be in a legal position to take possession of Venezuelan oil assets.

These pro-U.S. policies made Venezuela a typically polarized Latin American oligarchy. Despite being nominally rich in oil revenue, its wealth was concentrated in the hands of a pro-U.S. oligarchy that let its domestic development be steered by the World Bank and IMF. The indigenous population, especially its rural racial minority as well as the urban underclass, was excluded from sharing in the country’s oil wealth. The oligarchy’s arrogant refusal to share the wealth, or even to make Venezuela self-sufficient in essentials, made the election of Hugo Chavez a natural outcome.

2. Could you outline the various reforms and changes introduced by Hugo Chavez? What did he do right, and what did he do wrong?

Chavez sought to restore a mixed economy to Venezuela, using its government revenue – mainly from oil, of course – to develop infrastructure and domestic spending on health care, education, employment to raise living standards and productivity for his electoral constituency.

What he was unable to do was to clean up the embezzlement and built-in rake-off of income from the oil sector. And he was unable to stem the capital flight of the oligarchy, taking its wealth and moving it abroad – while running away themselves.

This was not “wrong”. It merely takes a long time to change an economy’s disruption – while the U.S. is using sanctions and “dirty tricks” to stop that process.

3. What are, in your opinion, the causes of the current economic crisis in Venezuela – is it primarily due to mistakes by Chavez and Maduro or is the main cause US sabotage, subversion and sanctions?

There is no way that’s Chavez and Maduro could have pursued a pro-Venezuelan policy aimed at achieving economic independence without inciting fury, subversion and sanctions from the United States. American foreign policy remains as focused on oil as it was when it invaded Iraq under Dick Cheney’s regime. U.S. policy is to treat Venezuela as an extension of the U.S. economy, running a trade surplus in oil to spend in the United States or transfer its savings to U.S. banks.

By imposing sanctions that prevent Venezuela from gaining access to its U.S. bank deposits and the assets of its state-owned Citco, the United States is making it impossible for Venezuela to pay its foreign debt. This is forcing it into default, which U.S. diplomats hope to use as an excuse to foreclose on Venezuela’s oil resources and seize its foreign assets much as Paul Singer’s hedge fund sought to do with Argentina’s foreign assets.

Just as U.S. policy under Kissinger was to make Chile’s “economy scream,” so the U.S. is following the same path against Venezuela. It is using that country as a “demonstration effect” to warn other countries not to act in their self-interest in any way that prevents their economic surplus from being siphoned off by U.S. investors.

4. What in your opinion should Maduro do next (assuming he stays in power and the USA does not overthrow him) to rescue the Venezuelan economy?

I cannot think of anything that President Maduro can do that he is not doing. At best, he can seek foreign support – and demonstrate to the world the need for an alternative international financial and economic system.

He already has begun to do this by trying to withdraw Venezuela’s gold from the Bank of England and Federal Reserve. This is turning into “asymmetrical warfare,” threatening what to de-sanctify the dollar standard in international finance. The refusal of England and the United States to grant an elected government control of its foreign assets demonstrates to the entire world that U.S. diplomats and courts alone can and will control foreign countries as an extension of U.S. nationalism.

The price of the U.S. economic attack on Venezuela is thus to fracture the global monetary system. Maduro’s defensive move is showing other countries the need to protect themselves from becoming “another Venezuela” by finding a new safe haven and paying agent for their gold, foreign exchange reserves and foreign debt financing, away from the dollar, sterling and euro areas.

The only way that Maduro can fight successfully is on the institutional level, upping the ante to move “outside the box.” His plan – and of course it is a longer-term plan – is to help catalyze a new international economic order independent of the U.S. dollar standard. It will work in the short run only if the United States believes that it can emerge from this fight as an honest financial broker, honest banking system and supporter of democratically elected regimes. The Trump administration is destroying illusion more thoroughly than any anti-imperialist critic or economic rival could do!

Over the longer run, Maduro also must develop Venezuelan agriculture, along much the same lines that the United States protected and developed its agriculture under the New Deal legislation of the 1930s – rural extension services, rural credit, seed advice, state marketing organizations for crop purchase and supply of mechanization, and the same kind of price supports that the United States has long used to subsidize domestic farm investment to increase productivity.

What about the plan to introduce a oil-based crypto currency? Will that be an effective alternative to the dying Venezuelan Bolivar?

Only a national government can issue a currency. A “crypto” currency tied to the price of oil would become a hedging vehicle, prone to manipulation and price swings by forward sellers and buyers. A national currency must be based on the ability to tax, and Venezuela’s main tax source is oil revenue, which is being blocked from the United States. So Venezuela’s position is like that of the German mark coming out of its hyperinflation of the early 1920s. The only solution involves balance-of-payments support. It looks like the only such support will come from outside the dollar sphere.

The solution to any hyperinflation must be negotiated diplomatically and be supported by other governments. My history of international trade and financial theory, Trade, Development and Foreign Debt, describes the German reparations problem and how its hyperinflation was solved by the Rentenmark.

Venezuela’s economic-rent tax would fall on oil, and luxury real estate sites, as well as monopoly prices, and on high incomes (mainly financial and monopoly income). This requires a logic to frame such tax and monetary policy. I have tried to explain how to achieve monetary and hence political independence for the past half-century. China is applying such policy most effectively. It is able to do so because it is a large and self-sufficient economy in essentials, running a large enough export surplus to pay for its food imports. Venezuela is in no such position. That is why it is looking to China for support at this time.

5. How much assistance do China, Russia and Iran provide and how much can they do to help? Do you think that these three countries together can help counter-act US sabotage, subversion and sanctions?

None of these countries have a current capacity to refine Venezuelan oil. This makes it difficult for them to take payment in Venezuelan oil. Only a long-term supply contract (paid for in advance) would be workable. And even in that case, what would China and Russia do if the United States simply grabbed their property in Venezuela, or refused to let Russia’s oil company take possession of Citco? In that case, the only response would be to seize U.S. investments in their own country as compensation.

At least China and Russia can provide an alternative bank clearing mechanism to SWIFT, so that Venezuela can bypass the U.S. financial system and keep its assets from being grabbed at will by U.S. authorities or bondholders. And of course, they can provide safe-keeping for however much of Venezuela’s gold it can get back from New York and London.

Looking ahead, therefore, China, Russia, Iran and other countries need to set up a new international court to adjudicate the coming diplomatic crisis and its financial and military consequences. Such a court – and its associated international bank as an alternative to the U.S.-controlled IMF and World Bank – needs a clear ideology to frame a set of principles of nationhood and international rights with power to implement and enforce its judgments.

This would confront U.S. financial strategists with a choice: if they continue to treat the IMF, World Bank, ITO and NATO as extensions of increasingly aggressive U.S. foreign policy, they will risk isolating the United States. Europe will have to choose whether to remain a U.S. economic and military satellite, or to throw in its lot with Eurasia.

However, Daniel Yergin reports in the Wall Street Journal (Feb. 7) that China is trying to hedge its bets by opening a back-door negotiation with Guaido’s group, apparently to get the same deal that it has negotiated with Maduro’s government. But any such deal seems unlikely to be honored in practice, given U.S. animosity toward China and Guaido’s total reliance on U.S. covert support.

6. Venezuela kept a lot of its gold in the UK and money in the USA. How could Chavez and Maduro trust these countries or did they not have another choice? Are there viable alternatives to New York and London or are they still the “only game in town” for the world’s central banks?

There was never real trust in the Bank of England or Federal Reserve, but it seemed unthinkable that they would refuse to permit an official depositor from withdrawing its own gold. The usual motto is “Trust but verify.” But the unwillingness (or inability) of the Bank of England to verify means that the formerly unthinkable has now arrived: Have these central banks sold this gold forward in the post-London Gold Pool and its successor commodity markets in their attempt to keep down the price so as to maintain the appearance of a solvent U.S. dollar standard?

Paul Craig Roberts has described how this system works. There are forward markets for currencies, stocks and bonds. The Federal Reserve can offer to buy a stock in three months at, say, 10% over the current price. Speculators will by the stock, bidding up the price, so as to take advantage of “the market’s” promise to buy the stock. So by the time three months have passed, the price will have risen. That is largely how the U.S. “Plunge Protection Team” has supported the U.S. stock market.

The system works in reverse to hold down gold prices. The central banks holding gold can get together and offer to sell gold at a low price in three months. “The market” will realize that with low-priced gold being sold, there’s no point in buying more gold and bidding its price up. So the forward-settlement market shapes today’s market.

The question is, have gold buyers (such as the Russian and Chinese government) bought so much gold that the U.S. Fed and the Bank of England have actually had to “make good” on their forward sales, and steadily depleted their gold? In this case, they would have been “living for the moment,” keeping down gold prices for as long as they could, knowing that once the world returns to the pre-1971 gold-exchange standard for intergovernmental balance-of-payments deficits, the U.S. will run out of gold and be unable to maintain its overseas military spending (not to mention its trade deficit and foreign disinvestment in the U.S. stock and bond markets). My book on Super-Imperialism explains why running out of gold forced the Vietnam War to an end. The same logic would apply today to America’s vast network of military bases throughout the world.

Refusal of England and the U.S. to pay Venezuela means that other countries means that foreign official gold reserves can be held hostage to U.S. foreign policy, and even to judgments by U.S. courts to award this gold to foreign creditors or to whoever might bring a lawsuit under U.S. law against these countries.

This hostage-taking now makes it urgent for other countries to develop a viable alternative, especially as the world de-dedollarizes and a gold-exchange standard remains the only way of constraining the military-induced balance of payments deficit of the United States or any other country mounting a military attack. A military empire is very expensive – and gold is a “peaceful” constraint on military-induced payments deficits. (I spell out the details in my Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (1972), updated in German as Finanzimperium (2017).

The U.S. has overplayed its hand in destroying the foundation of the dollar-centered global financial order. That order has enabled the United States to be “the exceptional nation” able to run balance-of-payments deficits and foreign debt that it has no intention (or ability) to pay, claiming that the dollars thrown off by its foreign military spending “supply” other countries with their central bank reserves (held in the form of loans to the U.S. Treasury – Treasury bonds and bills – to finance the U.S. budget deficit and its military spending, as well as the largely military U.S. balance-of-payments deficit.

Given the fact that the EU is acting as a branch of NATO and the U.S. banking system, that alternative would have to be associated with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the gold would have to be kept in Russia and/or China.

7. What can other Latin American countries such as Bolivia, Nicaragua, Cuba and, maybe, Uruguay and Mexico do to help Venezuela?

The best thing neighboring Latin American countries can do is to join in creating a vehicle to promote de-dollarization and, with it, an international institution to oversee the writedown of debts that are beyond the ability of countries to pay without imposing austerity and thereby destroying their economies.

An alternative also is needed to the World Bank that would make loans in domestic currency, above all to subsidize investment in domestic food production so as to protect the economy against foreign food-sanctions – the equivalent of a military siege to force surrender by imposing famine conditions. This World Bank for Economic Acceleration would put the development of self-reliance for its members first, instead of promoting export competition while loading borrowers down with foreign debt that would make them prone to the kind of financial blackmail that Venezuela is experiencing.

Being a Roman Catholic country, Venezuela might ask for papal support for a debt write-down and an international institution to oversee the ability to pay by debtor countries without imposing austerity, emigration, depopulation and forced privatization of the public domain.

Two international principles are needed. First, no country should be obliged to pay foreign debt in a currency (such as the dollar or its satellites) whose banking system acts to prevents payment.

Second, no country should be obliged to pay foreign debt at the price of losing its domestic autonomy as a state: the right to determine its own foreign policy, to tax and to create its own money, and to be free of having to privatize its public assets to pay foreign creditors. Any such debt is a “bad loan” reflecting the creditor’s own irresponsibility or, even worse, pernicious asset grab in a foreclosure that was the whole point of the loan.

This entry was posted in Guest Post on February 8, 2019 by Lambert Strether.

About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

Post navigation

← PR Powerhouse to Democrats: Don’t Be Mean to Starbucks Cisco Joins Other Tech Giants in Calling for a Federal Privacy Law →

Source: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/02/michael-hudson-shape-venezuelan-economy-chavez-maduro-beyond.html