#french intelligence service

[bookloversofbath]

The French Secret Services: From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War :: Douglas Porch

[vroomvroommuppett]

four

lando norris x ex vettel!reader, max verstappen x vettel!reader

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send an ask or reblog to tell me what you think, and/or what you think could happen

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blakelyvettel

liked by logansargeant, lillymunihe, and others

lilymunhe A MAN TOOK MY WIFE

carmenmmundt AND MINE? alexandrasaintlmeux SAME franchesca.cgomez MY WIFE alexalbon Rude georgerussell63 I'm right here charles_leclerc Should we be surprised? pierregasly HEY! blakelyvettel don't worry loves, he's just my side piece

lewishamilton SINCE WHEN?!

fan1 she's glowing

oscarpiastri I just heard a scream from the other room

blakelyvettel Thank you for your service 🫡

maxverstappen1 👀

fan2 MAX?? WHAT DO YOU KNOW?? fan3 ooh 👀

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blakelyvettel just posted a story!

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zoocbs and blakelyvettel

liked by blakelyvettel, mickschumacher, and others

zoocbs Meet Chloe Tousignant, played by the amazing Blakely Vettel, who is a French Intelligence Analyst. Watch Zoo this summer on CBS. *due to the nature of the show, viewer discretion advised* 🦁

blakelyvettel so excited!!

fan1 i forgot she was a child actress

sebastianvettel THATS MY DAUGHTER

jacksonpolk So excited!

fan2 this is going to be amazing

fan3 face card never declines

pierregasly SHE PLAYS A FRENCHIE. WEVE WON @.charles_leclerc

charles_leclerc IM MONAGASQUE

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blakelyvettel

liked by sebastianvettel, zoocbs and others

blakelyvettel watch the trailer for my new show, "Zoo" above! *due to the nature of the show, viewer discretion advised* 🦁

carmenmmundt BLAKELY JAMES VETTEL YOU KEPT THIS FROM US?!

blakelyvettel oops?

zendaya YES BBY

blakelyvettel I LOVE YOU

logansargeant SO EXCITED!

georgerusell63 SINCE WHEN?!

fan1 can't wait!

fan2 i bet nowins is punching the air

f1 Cannot wait!

blakelyvettel thanks admin 🫶🏼

maxverstappen1 We are definitely having a watch party.

blakelyvettel yes please!!

lewishamilton So proud of you!

blakelyvettel thanks lew lew 🫶🏼

sebastianvettel THATS MY DAUGHTER! GO BLAKELY!

blakelyvettel you're gonna make me cry. love you pops 🫶🏼

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[trans-girl-nausicaa]

Gee I wonder how common private gun ownership was right before the Russian revolution? Oh wait it was actually common and civilians could easily buy firearms. Here’s a print ad from the time:

Historically, many revolutions and civil wars involved the use of privately owned firearms. A really common pattern that you see going back hundreds of years is that at the outbreak of conflicts, civilians would form militias, arm themselves with whatever they could get their hands on, storm government armories, and then steal everything not nailed down.

During the Yugoslav civil war, the UN enacted an arms embargo on all sides of the war from Sept 1991 through the end of the war. The VRS split off from the JNA, so they just took those weapons with them. However, the ARBiH had to acquire weapons from a lot of different sources, such as:

Stolen from JNA barracks

Stolen from Yugoslav police

Taken out of museums (Yes, really. They were literally using vintage captured MG42s from WWII)

Handmade (!) (Yes, really. I saw handmade guns that were used in the war on display in a museum in Sarajevo)

Smuggled in by Pakistani Intelligence Services (Specifically anti-tank missiles)

Picture: A group of ARBiH soldiers at the Old Bridge in Mostar, June 1992. The man on the far right is carrying a Winchester Model 70 (captured from a Serb, who purchased it in Montana)

Picture: Two ARBiH soldiers, the one on the right is carrying an MG42.

Another conflict (or, more accurately, long series of conflicts) that we can also look to is the American Indian Wars. Native American combatants used a variety of weapons, but the weapons that they prized most highly were contemporary repeating rifles. Famously, repeating rifles such as the Henry lever-action rifle were contributing factors to the victory of Lakota and Cheyenne forces at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. (Native Americans had been purchasing guns for hunting and combat for over a hundred years at that point. One of the earliest accounts of such a purchase was in 1750 where French traders traded flintlock muskets for horses from Wichitas and Comanches.)

Picture: The Apache military leader Geronimo, on right, accompanied by three younger warriors, 1886.

Let’s take another, ongoing example: The Myanmar civil war (2021- present, as of April 2024).

Fighters in the coalition of anti-junta forces use a wide variety of small arms, but most relevant for this post is the manufacturing and use of the FGC-9, a 9mm carbine compatible with Glock magazines.

(Side note: FGC stands for Fuck Gun Control.)

The FGC-9 design uses a combination of 3D-printed parts and easily-manufactured pressure-bearing metal parts.

Picture: a People’s Defense Force soldier carrying an FGC-9.

If you genuinely believe that there will be a revolution or civil war in your country in the future, then logically it is 100% reasonable to buy and train with guns right now.

If you genuinely believe that there will be a revolution or civil war in your country in the future, it makes absolutely no sense to hand-wave that away with “one day when the exact right circumstances emerge for a proletarian mass movement to Do Revolution, only then will we acquire even one single firearm. I’m just going to assume there won’t be massive obstacles such as arms embargoes, government crackdowns, or supply-chain issues that could completely stymie our ability to do that.”

If you genuinely believe that there will be a revolution or civil war in your country in the future wouldn’t it be better for the people on your side to already have some level of training & skill with firearms?

If you live in a country where the right wing has spent decades buying guns and salivating over the idea of starting a civil war and killing left-wingers and minorities, do you think it is a good idea to discourage left-wingers and minorities from buying guns?

[aphroditeslover11]

Hi! I hope that you're having a great day/night! Could I request Lenny Miller with a younger reader?

Love Of His Life

This came so naturally, I’m not sure if it’s what you were hoping for but it just flowed out of my hands!

Warnings: a little smut, age gap, not proofread

Lenny had met you when you were spending a year in Paris, having taken a French degree that required you to spend a year abroad as a part of your study. It took some convincing for you to go out on a date with the older man, but he was persistent and eventually won you over. After he had taken you to dinner at Le Meurice, picking up the tab himself, he had walked you home and sent flowers to your tiny chamber de bonne the next day along with a note thanking you for your company. The fact that he was old didn’t mean he was dull or sleazy as you had feared, it meant that he was a hopeless romantic who knew how to treat a woman properly. The next time you met he had taken you for a picnic in the Jardin Du Luxembourg, complete with amazing French cheeses and a bottle of expensive champagne. It was fair to say that pretty soon you were hooked. Everyone always said that you were mature for your age anyway, so the concept of the age gap quickly became irrelevant to you.

A year later and you had finished your degree. When it got towards the end of your time studying in France Lenny had taken the risk of proposing you after taking you back to Le Meurice like he had on your first date. You hadn’t thought before saying yes, he put in for a transfer to be near you whilst you finished your degree and life continued in your strange state bliss.

You tied the knot quite quickly after that, getting married in a small service. His parents had both passed and he was an only child. Neither had much in the way of family, but you had agreed to a wedding in the church where he had grown up in Hawaï, though he wouldn’t admit it you knew that it made him feel close to his parents. You had the perfect white dress and he was in uniform, a hang over from the days when he had been climbing the ranks of Navy SEALs before he had been recruited into the CIA. As there were so few people you didn’t bother having a proper reception, he opted to take you to the beach where he had spent his time as a child, eating cheap burgers as your wedding breakfast and replacing the lights of a dance floor with the soft glow of the stars above you.

After this you moved to New York, he was promoted and took over a senior intelligence post, stationed in the city. He was in and out of the UN meeting with his counterparts, meeting all kinds of people. You knew he worked so hard because he wanted to prove he was worthy of you, his young and beautiful wife. You were remarkably proud of him, even if he found it hard to believe it. He was smart and had invested some of what his parents had left him into the stock market back when he was in the navy and used it to buy a beautiful apartment on the Upper East Side. It had a beautiful kitchen diner where you would attempt to cook together, often ending up in resorting to ordering takeout after Lenny decided that it would be a good idea to modify your recipes. There was something beautifully domestic about this life, it was still unpredictable but safe. Lenny refused to tell you much about his past because he didn’t want you to view him differently, but he gave up the guns and the action so he could live a safe life with you, finally letting himself rest.

After having seen so many horrible things he would want to protect you from the harshest realities of the world. You were young and innocent and so perfect for him, he didn’t want to taint that. He would never let an argument go unresolved before you went to bed. On the rare occasion that you had a proper row he would usually cave first and give you your way. He would usually be so in control of himself, but when he did shout it was harsh and loud, it always terrified you and as soon as he saw the look on your face he would cave. He could never stand the thought of you being afraid of him.

Arguments would often end in the bedroom, he would be the gentlest lover after a fight, peppering kisses along your collarbones before slowly moving down your body. He would be attentive, bringing you over the edge as many times as he could with his hands and his tongue until he had finally made it up to you. Only then would he seek any pleasure for himself, sheathing himself within you and moving so gently it would be as if you were made of porcelain. He’d be terrified of hurting you after seeing you so vulnerable earlier.

There could be another side of him in bed though. A raw and passionate one that came out after a difficult day at work. You learnt how to bring it out yourself over time, how to tease him with subtle touches at the work galas that he took you to and how he could never control himself when he saw you in just your lingerie and a pair of Louboutins. On those nights he would go for rounds at a time. Voracious, like a starving man at a banquet. He delighted in having you spread out below him, completely vulnerable to him and at his mercy. You always looked so small from that angle, he could do anything he wanted to you, and moreover he knew that you would let him and enjoy it. No matter how hard he took you though, he always ended with his head buried in the crook of your neck, whispering passionate prose into your ear and telling you how precious you were to him, how he would never let any harm come to you.

He managed to temper his protective tendencies well. Although both of you knew that it wasn’t a necessity, you found a job working in a little bookshop a few days a week, something to occupy your time. He was always anxious that something from his past would come back to haunt him, to haunt you, but he did his best to keep his worries separate from your life together. On account of your age difference, he was forced to confront the fact that there were things that you would want to do that he had left in the past, many years ago. You had a tight circle of friends that you would go with for nights out - clubbing, dancing and drinking in dives that he would never go into. He would never do anything to stop you, he would want you to live a life as full as you would have without him. Still, he couldn’t help it if he had to stay up until 3:00 am to make sure that you got home safe.

You had a beautiful life together in New York, it was something that you had built together, brick by brick. Every day he found himself falling deeper in love with you. He often said that he would probably have ended up dead in an abandoned corner of some far off land if he hadn’t had you to force him out of his ways. He pushed so hard for so long yet in you, your fragility and youth, he had finally made something to make him slow down. He finally understood the meaning of the phrase - you were the love of his life

[tarotwithavi]

what effect do have on others?

My Masterlist ⋇⋆✦⋆⋇ paid services

Disclaimer : for entertainment purpose only .

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pile 1 pile 2 pile 3

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PILE 1

I am hearing the word LOVE~ it's either that you make people feel loved and make them love themselves. You inspire people. Like really there's something about you that makes people feel extremely positive. Wow, I really admire you guys. I'm getting that you might be the therapist friend? You inspire people to do what they love and follow their passion. You follow the motto that nothing is impossible . Idk why but I'm getting that when you do something others go like " If pile 1 can do this, I can too" . Your energy makes people want to change like they want to change for the better . You may have an earth moon.

And I'm also getting that you make people fall in love with you. People fall in love with your personality and how you carry yourself . People may get attracted to you just because of your beauty but they fall in love with your personality. You are the perfect combination of beauty and brains. You're very self disciplined and you pamper yourself. I'm getting that you make people come out of their shell. you might have go through a lot or endings and may get tired around a lot of people . You are a social butterfly on the outside but an sleeping bag at home lol.

If you wonder why you attract only messed up people and the people who are mostly depressed trust me man I don't know too 💀 #webothmessedup . Jk it's because you are healed and you trigger those who are not healed yet . You might attract a lot of energy vampires or toxic people. So please protect yourself and your energy.

And one last thing,

YOU GUYS ARE PRETTY AF. like I was trying to not type it but I couldn't control myself.

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PILE 2

I'm hearing the word Luck for this pile. You bring a lot of luck in other people's life. Like there could be black clouds and thunderstorms everywhere but then you enter the room and BOOM sunshine and rainbows everywhere. Its funny how I'm trying to explain this. But one thing you make people speechless. You might even look different from the people in your area or just that you have a very unique aesthetic that no one in your are has. You might even speak two or more languages and people find that amazing.

T, O, M, R, A I'm getting these initials for some reason. Wait, they make AMOR which mean love in French . Maybe some of you are learning French or just have some sort of connection with France. I'm getting that you might give French artist vibes to people. It also makes RAM which is the name of one hindu God. Let me know if you see more words . You might have a lot of knowledge about different cultures . Also it's random but you look good in blue or shades of blue. Are you a middle child? Just asking.

Okay a lot of tarot readers in this pile , so hello to the tarot readers of this community! Honestly this pile has some abilities with tarot or could become famous in tarot community. Also you're very mysterious to others , they want to know you more and what's going inside your head.All I'm getting is Knowledge, intelligence, brilliance, a lot of intellect. You guys have a lot of unique and weird ideas . Sometimes you brain makes people go like "are you serious rn? " . You are always thinking about new things and you might over think a lot. Pile 1 and 2 are giving siblings vibes.

One last thing

YOU LITTLE WORKAHOLICS AND PERFECTIONISTS PLEASE GIVE YOURSELF SOME REST!!! It's okay to be lazy sometimes.

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PILE 3

Sjjsjsjs this group is femme fatal , if you don't know what that is, google it up. But yeah people tend to put you on a pedestal. People are ready to worship you like literally, they are ready to bow down to you. Because ya know you focus on yourself and never give other much of your time and keep people wanting for more. And that makes them obsessed with you. But this burdens you because you don't want this. You just want to work, earn, enjoy. Just to let ya know , two boys are extremely obsessed with you.

You make people fall for you at the first glance. I'm hearing " You're one you're two✌" . You are their first and you're their second. There's no one who has the same amount of charm as you. Even the people who look emotionless and reserved will fall for you. You fill their heart with love till it overflows. And they can't control their feelings for you. They feel instant connection with you.

K, L, W, V are the initials I got for you. You embody the Girlboss energy. Like the rich CEO who is also pretty AF. You guys are filled with confidence and know your worth and that's very ahem hot to others. You're also very grounded and don't like to show off. A lot of you could be leo. I just heard Dove, you might like dove or just give their vibes.

One last thing

Stop being so hot all the time Momma 😫💀 . Alright that was weird but I hope you get the point ;)

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[allastoredeer]

Do you have any headcanons about Alastor's participation in WW1? The Selective Service Act of 1917 made it mandatory for men aged 21-30 to register for military service and was later expanded to include men as young as 18, so if the stream saying that Alastor was late thirties to early forties when he died is still canon he'd have lived through that

So, I hadn't gotten to this part in my development of Alastor's backstory, but it got me thinking because, huh, how DID Alastor manage to get out of that?

Unless he just served in WW1. Which...I find oddly funny. I don't know why, but the the image of Alastor in the trenches...

But anyway, you got me curious so I looked into it. You're 100% right about the Selective Service Act of 1917 making it mandatory for men aged 21-30 to register for military service, and they even came up with different "classes" of the men who qualified, and if they exhausted one class, they'd go down to the next.

However, even with the Selective Service Act, there was still a lot of draft evasion going on. In fact, a significant amount of draft evasion happened in the South, which, as I'm sure you know, Louisiana is part of (some of it was in part of Southerners not having documentation, and thus, unable to even legally draft, which would probably give them a whole other slew of problems).

So, I was looking into how people evaded the draft. A lot of it is split up into different groups, like draft avoidance and draft resistance, with their only little list of things, but that's a lot and I don't wanna get into all of that. But my bet is on Alastor doing draft avoidance.

And there were actually quite a few interesting ones, like:

Claiming to have a mental or psychological problem (if you could find a doctor willing to certify that for you)

Student deferment, when someone is primarily in school to learn and study (or obtaining one in an effort to avoid the draft)

Deliberately failing the military intelligence tests

Professing sincere or religious ethical beliefs (join a church, avoid the draft!)

Bribery

and my personal favorite:

Being homosexual.

Because, as you know, the government can't allow the gay in the military!

And look, I'm a silly goober, so of course I immediately went to Alastor claiming to be homosexual. But the thing is, I kind of do think that is something Alastor would do for a majority of reasons.

In the 1920's, social values were evolving, and a lot of postwar "youths" began questioning traditional concepts of family, sexuality, and gender. There were "little Bohemia's" around the US, including in Manhattan and San Francisco, with communities and groups like this, and they weren't exactly unknown.

Back to Alastor, he lived in the French Quarter in New Orleans (or, at least, that's where I think he lived as a majority of mixed-raced Creole people lived there, which we know Alastor canonically is). And it just so happens, that it became the birth place of New Orleans gay community in the 1920's. There were entire gay neighborhoods, there were clubs where people dressed in the clothing of the opposite gender, they had parties and bars, and while it wasn't "the norm" to live this "lifestyle," and there was still a lot of harassment, it was still fairly normal to see. (Of course, then came what we can call the "gay panic" where government started cracking down on it, and claiming the gay community were all predators and pedophiles, and - well, you know. You know.)

But that was after/close to Alastor's death, so...

Anyway, I 100% believe that Alastor did take part and lived in communities like those. Names and labels for those things didn't exist at the time, so it's not like he knows what they're called, but homosexuals, cross-dressing, drag queens, they were normal to him. He's lived with them, partied with them, maybe even tried a few things out himself(so many headcanons, guys. So many).

This is to say, I think Alastor would 100% be comfortable claiming to be homosexual to avoid getting drafted. You've seen getting married for tax benefits, now consider becoming gay for draft evasion! I actually had a pretty fun talk about it with a friend in Discord, which only cemented it in my mind LMAO.

I have SO many headcanons around Alastor and him living in the French Quarter, in gay communities, where they challenged social norms (and we all know how he feels about challenging status quo's 😏)

But if not that, my runner up is that he totally bribed his way out of it. I don't know how he got the money, maybe he killed someone and stole their wallet, IDK, but bribery is a yes from me.

And if not THAT one, then he joined and church and claimed to have sincere religious and ethical beliefs 😇 🙏 (Yes, this is inspired by Nun Alastor, and no, I do not take constructive criticism. That's what happened guys, I was there). Besides, New Orleans was pretty Catholic, I'm sure he could find a church somewhere.

That's my take on it XD I think the one closest to Alastor's canon character would be bribery, but this is fandom, and if I say he claimed to be gay to get out of going to war, then goddammit he claimed to be gay to get out of going to war.

[leohtttbriar]

Someone brought an overhated character poll to my dash about Kai Winn and im literally so sad about the responses. I knew there were people who hated her but it's really baffling to me how maybe 10 people tops acknowledge her past and the reasonings behind her choices, they just see a space Karen.

oh dude, i'm sorry that sucks. and "sad" really is a simple but fairly complete word when it comes to the character of winn adami, huh.

like. i think a lot about how she's the most normal-looking woman on the show. she is also, simply, normal. she is faithful and political and appears and acts in ways far more familiar to us than most characters. even the fact of her alien-faith hardly serves to alienate, given that she is faithful in the way we might be--without true expectation of ever meeting the divine in this life. while kira can seem more like a fictional character when she speaks of the prophets, due to her proximity to them, winn sounds like the person accosting you on a street corner to talk about the rapture.

that's the thing, though, isn't it. about the "karen" phenomenon in general. there is nothing uniquely bad about middle-aged white women--nothing that makes them uniquely ungovernable in social spheres in ways men aren't. in ways everyone isn't, in some way. (merely anecdotal evidence, but my own experience in the service industry made me far more wary of men in their 30s wearing patagonia vests over dress-shirts). winn adami is a normal sort of frustration to people. one they encounter in the day-to-day. the political conservative who stands outside of planned parenthood and tells girls not to throw away their everlasting souls. the pentecostal women speaking gibberish in church, gesturing to the heavens with their out-of-fashion french manicures, who brought a tater-tot hot dish with extra kraft cheese to the pot luck. the women with cross-walls. with like. so many crosses. the women with leathery tans on the aging skin of their arms and neck. the women who quietly walk into voting booths around the world and choose "safety" over anything else, whether or not that "safety" is real.

at least. that's who people think winn is. setting aside the fact that most people don't truly know the kinds of women listed above, that it's unlikely they've spared a single ounce of pity for women like that ever in their entire lives, winn is not exactly pitiable in this way. she is awash in power. she is intelligent. she thinks. she would stand in a voting booth and choose "safety" (whether or not it's real) but she's not the lady wearing a t-shirt that says trump could grab her pussy if he wanted. she's not one of the many blonde women on fox news. she's not even sandra day o'connor or any other female conservative intellectual. because she's a metaphor.

we don't know her real-world politics because she's a fictional character in a fictional universe leading a fictional world. we know she's a conservative because fights very very hard to maintain the status quo regarding her bajoran religion and its teachings. but we don't know how any of that can be truly allegorized to conservative policies in the real-world. the main tension being: conservatives in the real-world base a lot of truly evil policy on a made-up divine figure interpreted through thousands of made-up hermeneutics and it is materially all Not Real. in ds9, the prophets are actual beings who affect reality. winn's said and done things on the show that sound like something an annoying woman with a turquoise-cross around her neck would say at a utah city council meeting about creationism and "inappropriate books." she also says things that a woman would say at a protest against the racist and paternalistic policies of the british museum. all we know of her as a political figure is that she is conservative. and like, power-hungry and desperate, but those aren't essentially related. she wants to conserve. and that encompasses more than one thing.

which means that people, when they see her, simply aren't thinking. they react to a woman who looks as she does. who speaks like a politician. who makes decisions that are unfair. but, exactly as you said, the show grounds her. they give her a past. they richly flesh out so much about her. they have her acting too rationally sometimes for someone of her professed faith. they have her acting completely irrational as her gods reject her again and again. all while she clings to them with a faith that endured actual torture at the hands of violent imperialists who yet attack her planet and yet attack her and yet she has to speak with as the leader of bajor.

and it's hard to see (beyond the obvious) why this character receives so much vitriol when you have characters like garak and dukat and kira who all are considered charming and beloved in some way or another, while still being as complex as they are. (and i don't even think dukat is all that complex.) even sisko has some moments that, if i lived in his world, i would be somewhat repulsed by--like when jake begs him to let the prophets go and sisko embraces the cosmic over the request of his son. (again: the prophets are real though, so my "repulsion" is more a reaction against people i see as priests, who i find in the real world, as a rule, awful.)

so. it's definitely sad. because the level and kind of hate bestowed upon this character really does seem to be a symptom of a much larger issue: of course, misogyny.

also that people don't tend to think.

[qsycomplainsalot]

Lindybeige is Either an Idiot or an Asshole

Most Likely Both

--There could be more flattering ways to put it, but he's never once given us that favor so why should I. His videos are wildly speculative and often based in cherry-picked British sources, when they come with any sources at all - see his masturbatory piece about the Bren vs the “Spandau”.

--There are two videos that I absolutely loathe at the edges of my youtube recommendations, both just filled to the brim with misinformation and logical contrivances. Videos that neckbeards will endlessly quote at me without question, taking a frustratingly long amount of time to untangle by which point they'd have usually lost interest already. The first one is Shadiversity's video about boob armor, the other is Lindybeige's video about the French Resistance.

--This video will have you believe that the French Resistance on its own did nothing of worth, based in great part on the fact that De Gaulle glamorized its contribution to the war for political status. I cannot stress this enough, just because De Gaulle used the general idea of the Resistance to smooth over a lot of Vichy war crimes and restore national unity does not mean the Resistance did not exist as a capable fighting force. --The very first more specific argument he offers to support his view -if you ignore “ME AND ME PA FOUND THAT VERY FONNY”- is that most of the French armor was American-made and provided through the lend-lease policy, making French people less deserving of credit in winning World War 2. I assume that in his mind that would diminish the contribution of the French Resistance to war efforts, even though these tanks and armored fighting vehicles were used by the Free French Army, not the Resistance at any point of its existence, making the point moot while also conveniently ignoring that the United Kingdom received ten times the aid France did through that same program.

--The image is from War Thunder because it makes for a better glamor shot than having it stand behind a museum fence or in black and white.

--His next argument implies that De Gaulle was "allowed" to walk in the liberated Paris ahead of Allied troops to give a speech that solidified the myth of the Resistance I mentioned. Again, in this passing, deceptive comment, Lindybeige implies that De Gaulle walked in after the fact and that Allied forces did the heavy lifting, only allowing him to do his speech a their convenience. Even a cursory amount of research will tell you that Paris was in fact liberated by the FFI, the Parisian people themselves and Leclerc’s 2nd Armored Division composed of Metropolitan and Colonial French with Spanish elements, supported only on the very last day by the US 4th Infantry Division and a special British unit sent to gather intelligence. --Following this, he quotes the speech De Gaulle delivered in front of the town hall the day the German garrison surrendered, but cuts it short of the part in said speech mentioning “the help of our dear and admirable Allies” to then call De Gaulle ungrateful, which I have a hard time believing could be anything but intentionally deceptive. He then goes on to claim that the French Resistance was not organized by De Gaulle but by the British, justifying the ludicrous claim with 'they didn’t tell him because French intelligence services were bad and would have leaked all of it’. This is of course ignoring the fact that De Gaulle had personally sent Jean Moulin back to France for the exact purpose of organizing the five big Resistance movements into one organization, which he did, creating the Council for National Resistance that played a major role in the liberation of Paris. How the British would have any hand in this may be explained by his further comments, where he goes on to say that agents of the organization preceding the MI6 had been infiltrated in the Resistance to organize it, which begs the question of who's responsible for it being a non-effective combat force if it had been the case. He then gives us a voice in a sarcastic tone by saying, “of course you and your British bias would say that !” but does not really address it. Because honestly yeah, you and your British bias would say that.

--After quickly rambling that there were too many people in France and not enough bushes for all people to join the Resistance, which I have to admit is an extremely pointed and pertinent thing to say in a video downplaying the efforts and suffering of thousands of people fighting back against Nazi occupation under constant threat of torture and execution if caught, he mentions that the German forced labor system had severely depleted France’s manpower of fighting age. He says that by 1944, only teenagers and decrepit middle aged men were left to fight in the Resistance, to the great disappointment of the British agents he mentioned earlier. According to him, this meant France lacked the manpower and the communication capability required to pull the Resistance off, which is again contradicted by the actions of Jean Moulin, who had seemingly managed to access both before his death.

--There are a few problems with that argument. The Service de Travail Obligatoire, STO for short, was a system put in place by Vichy France to supply Germany with civilian manpower to make up for their own shortfalls due to the Eastern front. Because Vichy had negotiated a relative independence compared to other occupied country, its own government was responsible for the order, although it was in almost every point similar to forced labor orders in Denmark or the Netherlands. Now the STO did deprive France of over six hundred thousand young men, many of them skilled workers. However as an incentive given by the Nazis, every three forced laborer sent to Germany would lead to the release of one French POW, meaning that as far as manpower was concerned, France pretty much lost only four hundred thousand men and received qualified military personnel for its trouble. Not only is it hardly the manpower drain pictured by Lindybeige, it also ignores that many of these forced laborers, my grandfather included, immediately skipped work and joined either the Resistance or Allied military regulars after operation Overlord, as they were not as tightly surveilled as POWs and minorities in concentration/death camps. It also bears mentioning that it was teenagers, dismissed by Lindybeige as a negligible quantity, that acted as reconnaissance troops for the Free French using their motorbikes to scout and guide the way to the German Kommandantur. In any case, most members of the FFI integrated the regular French army after the liberation of Paris, meaning they were definitely of fighting age. Of course that whole argument is dropped as soon as he brings in British involvement, at which point he finally points out how the Resistance disabled most of the railway network and stopped the famously lightning-fast German army from facing the Allied invasion properly. For their role in this sabotage, a hundred fifty Resistance members working for the French national railway company were shot and another five hundred deported.

--To put it simply, Lindybeige dismisses the Resistance as a useless, wasteful and infighting group of functional morons, while every successful operation they carried out, every display of good mobility and coordination is attributed to British uniformed soldiers overseeing it. In reality most of that effort was done by either agents of the French government in exile or the Allied command under Eisenhower, with no account mentioning any significant autonomous British involvement which stands to reason as De Gaulle and Churchill could not stand one another. In fact Lindybeige tries to pass off operation Jedburgh as a purely British operation while it was specifically a joint one with American, British, French, Belgian and Dutch operatives all along the Atlantic coast.

--The next part is baffling. Lindybeige points at the Allies stopping their shipments of weapons to the French Resistance after July 44 and justifies it by saying the various cells were fighting each other and were uncoordinated. Thank god the Brits stopped sending arms or there would have been a civil war between these silly French Resistance members. Of course what happened in August was the liberation of Paris followed by the integration of the FFI into the new French army, which would go on to liberate the rest of the country. But Lindybeige pushes this civil war angle pretty hard, calling at this point of the video both Vichy France and the Resistance to be pro French in a way and underlining the conflicts between the two as a reason why the weapon shipments stopped coming, with examples such as Resistance members exacting reprisals against Nazi collaborators, which is a completely moot point because Vichy France and collaborators had nothing to do with the Resistance and were in fact, at this point of time, recognized as the enemy by all Allied forces, meaning acts of resistance against them would in no way prompt Allied command to stop supporting the French Resistance. Lindybeige goes so far as to say that the OSS and British secret service stopping the weapon shipments in August 1944 legitimately prevented an outright civil war between the different cells of the French Resistance, which was in actuality pretty unified in its support to De Gaulle at this point thanks to the efforts of Jean Moulin as discussed previously. This hardly gels with the events following August 1944, where the members of the Resistance and FFI were enlisted in the Free French Army and were therefore issued American military equipment and training to function as regular troops. Now stop me if I'm wrong but it appears that in Lindybeige's mind all French people were ready to tear each other apart until the British stopped sending them pipe guns, after which the Americans sent them tanks which obviously disabled their ability to start a civil war.

--Two French colonial soldiers using a blend of Allied gear during the winter of 1944-45. They are presumably thinking of killing each other.

--Much like the Phantom Menace review this is addressing a piece of media were essentially everything is wrong, hence the length of this post. Lindybeige has obviously researched the topic to great length, then ignored half of it to record 17mn of vague, dismissive and unsubstantiated claim that each take an equal amount of time to debunk. He present the facts as if everything that happened on British soil was under British orders so as to make the French Resistance only effective on their accord, all the while disregarding the French government in exile and slandering the efforts of French people but also inadvertently of the Americans. It is my honest belief that this sad excuse of an historian is either profoundly lacking in literacy or actively trying to justify his xenophobia by bending WW2 historiography around his bias, and whatever it may be he should be deplatformed to avoid spreading more harmful and disrespectful lies about a group of brave men and women who fought to liberate their country from fascism.

[celestialprincesse]

🎩🪄

Seeing as everyone is currently sharing their COD OC's over at @charliemwrites I thought I'd share mine who's in the works!💕🎀

Name : Katarina 'Kitty' Jones

Aliases : Houdini , Witch , Kitty , KJ Age : 26 DOB : August 29 1998 Birthplace : Dallas , Texas , USA Current residence : Manchester , UK Spouse : N/A Height : 5'1 , 155cm, 1.55m Role : Intelligence acquisition - TS/SCI Date enlisted -2010 , British Infantry -2017 , Special Air service Date discharged:2021, honorable discharge Skills & specialisations: Covert reconnaissance , covert surveillance , long range shooting (sniper skills) , weapons handling , sabotage & infiltration , languages Languages : English (fluent) , French (Fluent) Notes : - Physically active (swimming, running) - Emotional support animal - Next of Kin N/A

Notable features : Heterochromia , mallen streak , large scar from left shoulder to right hip

Kitty Jones, known to most in her field simply as 'Houdini' specialises in intelligence acquisition and reconnaissance, having served four years in the SAS, honourably discharged following capture by enemy officers which led to severe physical and psychological trauma.

Having worked closely alongside CIA Agent Kate Laswell, Jones was offered a role working alongside the Task Force 141 ( see files below : John Price , Kyle 'Gaz' Garrick , John 'Soap' MacTavish , Simon 'Ghost' Riley ) Gathering information on enemy forces and supporting infiltration missions.

Teammates and coworkers have described Jones as 'fiery, but a real sweet lass when you know her' , 'too smart' , 'tiny but deadly' , and 'polly pocket if she was evil'

[eccentrcks]

𝐂𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐨𝐟 𝐃𝐮𝐭𝐲 𝐎𝐂: 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐞 𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐫𝐨𝐞.

This gorgeous artwork of Marlene was made by my talented baby sister. Give her some applause for this! 🫶 I also made a taglist out of boredom, so don't mind me. Taglist to those who inspired me to make this profile and ref. sheet: @revnah1406, @welldonekhushi, @littlemissclandestine, @alypink, and @darkhazard19.

⎯ 𝗚𝗘𝗡𝗘𝗥𝗔𝗟 𝗜𝗡𝗙𝗢𝗥𝗠𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡:

Name: Marlene

Full Name: Marlene Jamie Monroe

Alias(es): "Mona" (General nickname by her family), "Marlie" (childhood nickname), "Chicky" (Captain Price), "Squirt" or "Baby Girl" (Phillip Graves), "Marl" (David Mason).

Age: 23

Gender: Female

Nationality: American

Ethnicity: Irish, Native American, Welsh.

Hair Colour: Chestnut brown.

Eye Colour: Light brown

Height: 5’11” (181cm)

Weight: 187lbs (84.8kg)

Body Built: Athletically average.

Languages Spoken: English, Irish, Gaelic, Welsh, Cree, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Bulgarian, Mandarin, French, German, Portuguese, etc.

Date of Birth: August 29, 2002.

Place of Birth: Fairbanks, Alaska.

Blood Type: AB-

Sexuality: Heterosexual.

Marital Status: Single

Occupation: N/A.

Status: Unknown.

-

⎯ 𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗦𝗢𝗡𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗬 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗧𝗥𝗔𝗜𝗧𝗦:

Myers-Briggs Type: INTJ-T (The Architect)

Calm and reserved: Despite having her moments of being a spitfire, she is actually a well composed individual and this really helps her in matters of survival. Although pretty social sometimes, then she can be completely asocial, Marlene is not exactly the kind of person who wouldn't instantly show her actual personality to others whom she'd just met. She handles stressful situations with the pressure very well most of time.

Selfless and loyal: Marlene may be an impassive and hardened young woman, but she has a good soul and heart. Those who are lucky to be a genuine friend of hers are privileged to see her display her true self at most times. Has the tendency to put others before herself. Marlene's love language is giving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch- which the latter is a rare thing of her to do frequently as a young adult now. Keeps it discreet though.

Tough as nails: She is unbelievably durable and endures a lot of life-threatening situations. Often gets underestimated by others, but tends to straighten them up with a surprise. It still hurts, yes, although she just quickly learns how to suck it up and keep going without letting it drag her down.

Jaded and weary: It's safe to mention that Marlene didn't had a normal childhood and went through a lot of hardships growing up with a paranoid survivalist of a mother. Kind of a sore spot for her to be asked about. Has a bad case of PTSD and denies her clinical diagnoses constantly. ("I'm fine." is her favourite saying) Has a complex relationship with her mother, her only parent that raised her this way, which means Marlene cares and resents her at the same time, yet she internally respects the woman who taught her most of everything she knows. She suffered from losses who were dearly significant to her... somethings she isn't ready to openly talk about. So the girl is just simply exhausted from existing.

Adaptable and intelligent, also a polyglot: If thrown into an environment that Marlene hadn't been in before, she will learn and adapt if it's necessary. Growing up traveling with her mother had taught her some things. She's quite a multilingual genius, speaks and read around 37(ish) languages, but also graduated high school at sixteen before attending Stanford University and finishing in three years for her computer science degree. So in a shorter summary, she's an eager and fantastic learner.

-

⎯ 𝗦𝗞𝗜𝗟𝗟𝗦 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗔𝗕𝗜𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗜𝗘𝗦:

Primary Weapons: Knife, Karambit neck knife, Remington 700PSS, HK-MP5K, HK-MP5A3, TP-82, XM177E1, and Pipe Bombs.

Fighting Style: Hand-to-hand combat, some MMA.

Special Skills: Great at reading others' body languages and sensing danger.

Talents: She can learn to speak at another language in a short span of time, craft explosives such as a pipe bomb within an hour if she has the resources, and create traps with the right stuff.

Shortcomings: Can get paranoid most of the time, chronically insomniac, has some trust issues, and suffers from terrible migraines.

-

⎯ 𝗕𝗜𝗢𝗚𝗥𝗔𝗣𝗛𝗬:

"Born and grew up outside of Fairbanks in an isolated cabin for five years of her life with her mother, who had Marlene at eighteen, and mostly traveled around on the road after. She grew up with tough love and Melissa, her mother, was fiercely overprotective with her only child. Once they settled somewhere in California when she was eight where Marlene finally got enrolled in a public school where her peers would eventually learn about her intellect. She never knew how, or where, her mother earned her huge incomes to financially support themselves, but knows Melissa just has an every important job whenever she isn't home. Besides, whenever her mother was confronted, she was just met with a firm look by her and the woman stating that it's none of her concern as Marlene should just focus on herself. Eventually this led to her rebellious behaviour before incidents occurred and slowly shaped Marlene into a withdrawn teenager in college."

"Her history with Taskforce 141 was purely platonic. Met them through her mother, one by one when she was an teenager, before the group realized she was Melissa's baby girl and they all knew the same woman who met each of them outside of their occupations. She've met Phillip Graves when she was a kid when he came by to confront her mother before a father-daughter bond was formed between them since then. David Mason is her godfather and one of the people whom Marlene looks up to- much to Graves' dismay."

"When she was done with college at nineteen and the year 2021-[REDACTED]."

"Until 2022, she was brought into the CIA's custody in middle of a late evening walk, more like by Taskforce 141, and interrogated after some evidence of her was caught stealing some invaluable intel and secrets, appearing as one of their employees, before she was picked up by a black van after that. She kept denying the accusations and evidence for weeks until Graves, allegedly dead at the time, safely liberated her despite Marlene being in a frail condition with the help from David Mason and proof that she was truly innocent. Someone had framed her."

"Then not too long hours after she was brought into his protective custody, no one knew who helped her other than the fact that she escaped CIA's custody, as one of The Shadow Company's bases was attacked. Mostly everyone made it out, but Marlene who was soon announced dead after she passed out from the blood loss with the base getting bombed into nothing once they were forced to leave her behind. Leaving Graves and David angry, distraught, and vowed to avenge her once they find the culprits. Her remains were never found after that."

Theme song: Methods of Madness by Secession Studios.

*Profile will be be updated once the story progresses and kept her backstory vague(ish) for now.

[thejohnfleming]

My blog and Canadian 'Black Magic', a spy story, neo-Nazis and counterfeiting

GenCraft AI’s idea of what this specific blog might be about… One of the fascinating things about this blog, which I started in May 2010, is that people sometimes pick up on posts from the past and comment on them… and on previous Comments on them. For example, today there was a Comment about a blog I posted almost ten years ago – in October 2014.  The headline for that particular blog…

[zvaigzdelasas]

Former Fiji prime minister Frank Bainimarama says the country's intervention at the International Court of Justice on the Israel-Gaza issue betrays Fiji's legacy as peacekeepers.[...]

Bainimarama said Fiji's stance "insults the intelligence of every Fijian".

The former prime minister and military commander said that position undoes Fiji's long-standing commitment to neutrality, peacekeeping, and the principles of self-determination and decolonization.

"The coalition government's claim that the occupation of foreign territory by Israel is legal - an argument not even advanced by Israel itself - reveals a disturbing truth that Fiji's voice to the world is hostage to a demented few who are hellbent on destroying our national reputation," he said in a statement on Wednesday"

"This action contradicts our firm stance on the rights to independence and statehood, rights we have championed for our Pacific brothers and for all colonial peoples.

He said Fiji has stood with Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Kiribati, and others in their pursuit of independence.

"We must ask ourselves: with what credibility will we support the independence of territories like New Caledonia and French Polynesia? We must not be selective in our support for statehood and independence.

"Our actions today will define our legacy and our ability to lead in the Pacific and beyond.

"The world should know that the vast majority of Fijians stand on the side of peace. That is our national character and that is the spirit in which we offer our service on the frontlines of conflict zones around the world."

Fiji's human rights coalition has condemned the Fiji government's decision at the ICJ.

The group said the country's "position is profoundly troubling and starkly contrasts the values of justice, freedom, and international law that the Fijian people hold dear".

21 Feb 24

[the-gateway-to-madness]

Jack Frost Headcanons

Jack likes strong flavors, be they spicy, sweet, or savory. He likes mild stuff too- point is he'll try any food, pretty much.

Jack has good coordination and steady hands, and as such is very gentle when he handles most objects (and animals, and people).

Jack is a Ravenclaw with ADHD: he's not ambitious or trying to join the Guardians, who are powerful and well-known. His fighting style is more about maneuvering and strategizing than guts or power (unless you really upset him like when Sandy died). The being-easily-bored and good sense of humor would indicate intelligence as well.

Jack has a great sense of rhythm but dances like a dork on purpose.

Jack is a night owl.

Jack creates a proper hideaway for himself in Burgess after the movie. Something about the forming and confirmation of his identity in the movie makes me think he'd be ready to make a nice little home or even just a safe spot afterwards.

Jack's main love language is quality time, North's is words of affirmation, Bunny's is acts of service, Tooth's is gifts, and Sandy's is physical touch. Yes, I know North seems like he should be the gifts type, and he definitely does gifts like no one else- but he comforts Jack by talking with him, and Tooth tries to comfort Sophie with a (horrendous) gift.

Jack never yells during arguments. He's seen what it does to people who've been abused, watched kids and lovers be hurt and tried to stop it- so he refuses to even risk scaring anyone that way. Even before becoming a Guardian, Jack would never raise his voice in a fight- at the very least, never face-to-face.

Jack has a handful of scars, mostly from dumb accidents or crash-landings. He refuses to tell the stories. Everyone assumes they're horrible and traumatic, but in reality, Jack was just terrible at paying attention to stuff when he first started out as a spirit.

Emotions like anger, embarrassment, or attraction raise Jack's body temperature just enough for his blood to thaw and his heartbeat to get going. It startles him every single time.

Jack is fascinated by folklore and mythology and studied them extensively to try to track down other spirits to befriend, with little success.

Jack played at least one instrument in his past life (his hands would be suited to violin or piano, especially) and instrumental music still calms and focuses him.

Jack was a farmer in his past life and still has lean, strong muscle hidden under his hoodie. He could absolutely win an arm wrestle with Bunny.

Jack is a little insecure about his Adam's apple.

Jack's powers are stronger at night due to the lack of apricity.

Unlike the animosity that a lot of the fandom portrays Jack having with other potential seasonal spirits, I think he's buddies with the other seasons, they just don't see each other much due to minimal domain overlap. The spirit of autumn is his favorite, but he's very protective of spring (mirroring the fact spring relies on winter to nourish the earth). The other seasons all treat him like their baby brother.

Jack dips french fries in Wendy's frosties unironically. He probably dips their chicken nuggets in the frosties too.

Sophie made Jack watch gen 4 My Little Pony with her and he didn't think the songs were half bad. He would never admit this to Jamie or anybody else in a thousand years.

Jack thinks birds are cool.

Cats see Jack more often than dogs. He doesn't know why, but he's willing to pet most things that move.

Stay tuned for what will probably be a lot more of these-

[stephensmithuk]

His Last Bow

Originally titled in full "His Last Bow. The War Service of Sherlock Holmes" and later "His Last Bow: An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes", this was originally published in 1917.

It is the final story in His Last Bow, the final short story in the canon covered by Letters from Watson and agreed by all the key chronologists to be the final canon appearance of Holmes and Watson.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had openly supported British entry into the First World War in 1914.

The story came about after a visit to the Western Front in 1916; asked by a French general what Holmes was doing, Doyle had responded that he was too old to serve. He then decided to write this story as a means of boosting morale.

To put it mildly, the British public had gone a bit spy-crazy in the lead up to the war; fearing "Teutons serving them croutons" i.e. Germans living in the UK acting as intelligence agents for the Kaiser.

The Riddle of the Sands is one such work of popular literature on this theme, which is the subject of Letters from Carruthers coming in September.

There was also the fantastical works of William Le Queux, who started off with the French and Russians as his enemies before switching to the Germans; he also had his works serialised in the Daily Mail, a British middle-market tabloid that was founded in 1896 and has been happily engaging in right-wing sensationalism since to the point Wikipedia has banned them as a source. Le Queux for his part believed the Germans were out to get him for exposing their spy networks - he hadn't, they weren't and the Metropolitan Police refused him protection.

The Benz company had produced the first practical motor car in 1885; they of course later merged with Daimler to become Mercedez-Benz. I cannot find a 100hp example of their vehicles.

The German Chancellor in 1914, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, was a moderate, who reluctantly went along with many German policies like unrestricted submarine warfare and tried to initiate peace proposals on a number of occasions in the war before being ousted in 1917.

Flushing is the historical English name for the Dutch port of Vlissingen; it had a ferry connection to Sheerness until 1994.

At the outbreak of war, diplomats on both sides were allowed to return home unmolested, after locking down their embassies and burning anything sensitive they could not take with them.

Britain, France and Prussia had signed a treaty in 1839 guaranteeing the neutrality and independence of Belgium. The German invasion of the country on 3 August gave the UK justification for war and moved a Cabinet divided over the matter to firm unity.

There was a fear of Irish civil war at this point; the Liberal government, reliant on Irish and Labour support for a Commons majority after the two elections of 1910, had passed legislation creating a devolved government for the island, called Home Rule. This was vehemently opposed by Ulster Protestants and both sides were receiving weapons - from Germany in fact - in preparation for a fight as Whitehall tried to arrange a compromise. The Germans in fact believed the British would be distracted by a civil war, but in fact the Home Rule legislation was suspended for the duration and both militias decided to support the war effort. That stopped things... until the more radicial Irish Republic Brotherhood launched the Easter Rising of 1916.

"Window-breaking Furies" refers to the suffragette movement that sort votes for women, some of who engaged in direct action like breaking windows and also planting bombs or arson, although they made sure the latter was done when the buildings were empty to avoid killing anyone. These tactics were as controversial at the time as the tactics of modern-day groups like Just Stop Oil. When the war broke out, the suffragettes stopped their militant actions and supported the war effort; their imprisoned members being released as part of an amnesty.

John Bull is a national personification of the UK, typically a stout middle-aged man in a Union Jack waistcoast, frequently seen in cartoons at this time. He rather fell out of popular use post-war and is rarely seen today, unlike Britannia, who remains a widely used figure.

The Rosyth Dockyard was built from 1909 for refitting Royal Navy ships and submarines; although now privatised, it retains that role and is currently building the five Type 31 frigates.

Carlton Terrace was the home of the German Embassy until 1945; after the war, the property and its contents were sold off at auction. The Federal Republic of Germany set up at Belgrave Square in 1951 and remains there to this day.

Junkers were the land-owning aristocracy of Prussia, who exercised considerable political power up until 1945, at which point most of their holdings ended up in the USSR, Poland or what became East Germany. The land was broken up, usually ending up in collective farms; accused of war crimes, those Junkers who ended up in Soviet hands frequently ended up in NKVD camps or even executed. Their descendants did not get them back after reunification.

The King's English is another name for Received Pronunciation, the "standard" dialect and accent of British English.

Tokay or Tokaji is a sweet wine from the Tokaj regions of Hungary and Slovakia, the designation being protected under EU law in a similar way to Champagne. Imperial Tokay, which was the highest quality Tokaji Essencia, was reserved for the Austrian imperial cellars, often being passed to other European monarchs as gifts. This stuff is still drinkable after over 200 years and even the relatively new stuff isn't cheap.

A naval flotilla would be based at Harwich in both World Wars.

The reference to Holmes being sixty here is where the common estimate of 1854 being his birth year comes from.

Portland is a prison and young offenders' institution in Dorset. Notable past inmates include George Edalji (whose miscarriage of justice was exposed by Doyle), John Babbacombe Lee ("The Man They Couldn't Hang") and the controversial comedian Roy "Chubby" Brown.

Fratton is an area of Portsmouth.

In reality, the Home Section of the Secret Service Bureau, later MI5, had managed to identify the key German agents by monitoring their postal correspondence. The police then rounded them up in August 1914 and once the cross-sea cables were cut, contact with any agents in the UK became close to impossible. Little intelligence of any use came from them in any event; the Germans seem to have not even been aware of the British Expeditionary Force being sent to France, which was hardly a small event. Gustav Steinhauer, head of German naval intelligence's British section, got subjected to a rant about his agency's incompetence from the Kaiser that lasted the better part of two hours.

Twelve German spies would be executed during the war, eleven by firing squad at the Tower of London, which hosted its final execution (also of a spy) in 1941.

Skibbareen is a town in County Cork, now in Ireland.

The final speech by Holmes at the end also featured in the 1942 Basil Rathbone film Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror, based on this story.

So Holmes and Watson drive off into the sunset. What happened to them after that? All we know is that both survived the war and at some point Dr Watson stopped writing about his dear friend. They deserve to have had a long retirement.

I will be doing these for the individual chapters of the novels next year; I have already done ones for the first two chapters of A Study in Scarlet that I will repost.

[scotianostra]

Donald Currie Caskie was born on May 22nd 1902 at Bowmore, Islay, his exploits during WWII earned him the nickname "The Tartan Pimpernel"

Dr Caskie was the minister at the Scots Kirk in Paris when the Germans invaded France in 1940 and frequently denounced the Nazis from the pulpit which meant he had more to fear than many after the invasion.

He was repeatedly urged to return home and after the Dunkirk evacuation he locked the church on the 9th of June of that year and joined the mass exodus of Paris, heading south.

The crofter's son from the inner Hebridean island of Islay, said to have had the Celtic gift of second sight, endured weeks of hardship to get to Bayonne but in the end rejected the chance of safe passage on the last ship bound for England on the grounds that his place should be given to a wounded man instead.

He walked to a village called Cambo les Bains where he met friends from Paris purely by chance and they all drove to the port city of Marseille - leaving just hours before the Germans arrived.

Dr Caskie believed that God had commanded him to stay in France and help stranded British subjects and he was warned that he must only engage with civilians and would be arrested if he assisted servicemen.

He ran a Seaman's Mission but was living a double life and secretly helped airmen, seamen and soldiers, under the noses of the Vichy Police, escape the country across mountains into Spain or by sea in a submarine or ship.

Dr Caskie, a Gaelic speaker whose codename was Monsieur Le Canard – Donald Duck – was eventually recruited by British Intelligence officers and was told that his mission was the last link of a chain of safe houses that they had set up, which stretched from Dunkirk to Marseille.

One of the soldiers Dr Caskie helped was Captain Derek Lang who was captured at St Valery-en-Caux in Normandy along with 10,000 soldiers from the 51st Highland Division, mostly Scots, 81 years ago this weekend.

He managed to escape the Germans and fled to Marseille where he recalled meeting a "courageous and fearless" Church of Scotland minister.

"Evil in war produces heroes and Donald Caskie is one of these," wrote the army officer in the forward to the Tartan Pimpernel – a book he said moved him to tears.

Caskie spoke Gaelic to confuse German spies and inquisitors, but was betrayed by an English double agent. He evaded the firing squad and then restarted his activities in Grenoble. There he again repeatedly escaped the clutches of the Nazis until he was sentenced to death - when the intervention of a German pastor had his sentence commuted and he saw out the war in a PoW camp. His awards were: OBE, MA and O.C.F.(an honour bestowed by the French government). The OBE was awarded by the king for services to his country.

The medal, along with other personal artefactcs, is on display in the church. at Bonore. His autobiography, The Tartan Pimpernel was published in 1951.

[er1chartmann]

These are some facts and curiosities about Karl Brandt, the head of the Aktion T4:

He was born on 8th of January, 1904 in Alsace.

He began his studies in 1924, at the University of Jena, and in 1928, at the age of 24, he became a doctor.

A young doctor when he joined the Nazi party in 1932, he placed his hopes in the party for the recovery of the Alsace region, which in the meantime had returned under French rule (in 1919). A very important role in the formation of his thought was played by an Alsatian like him, the Nobel Peace Prize winner Albert Schweitzer, whose work as a missionary in Africa he however could not join for political and military reasons.

In 1934, at the age of just 29, he became the Führer's personal doctor . The conflict between the two was always quite heated. In fact, while Hitler's official doctor, Morell, was considered a charlatan, Karl Brandt was the scientific figure and traditional doctor of the Reich.

He was the man chosen by Hitler as the initiator of the T4 Program (the killing of disabled Germans) and as his supreme medical authority.

With these authorities, he was involved in roles of maximum responsibility in the sadly famous "scientific" experiments on human beings, including the one in which he himself asked the ReichsFührer, Heinrich Himmler, for authorization to carry out inoculations of the epidemic hepatitis virus in human beings.

He and Albert Speer were not only close friends, but also acted to save each other's lives. In 1944, Brandt used his enormous powers as General Commissioner of Medical Services and his friends to save the already ill Speer from Himmler's assassination attempt. Subsequently, on April 16, 1945, Brandt was arrested by the Gestapo and sentenced to death, as he was accused of high treason against the Führer. But on May 2 he was released by order of Karl Dönitz. In fact, upon hearing the news of his friend and colleague's arrest, Speer had the urgency to mobilize various people to save his life.

Brandt entered into what many think of as an adopted son relationship with the Führer himself.

François Bayle, a French psychologist who interviewed him repeatedly at the time of the Nuremberg trials, described him thus:

«Rich, vigorous, but undisciplined, pugnacious and childish personality made vulnerable by his ambition and pride. Possessed of a vivid intelligence, but little logical clarity and much imagination, which can easily be influenced and led astray. His character could also be influenced, just as easily."

He was tried from 9 December 1946 to 19 August 1947 with twenty-two other doctors at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice

Karl Brandt was found guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity and membership of an organization declared criminal by the International Military Tribunal and sentenced to death by hanging.

Sources:

Wikipedia: Karl Brandt

Military Wiki: Karl Brandt

The Nazi Doctors by Robert Jay Lifton

❗❗I DON'T SUPPORT NAZISM,FASCISM OR ZIONISM IN ANY WAY, THIS IS AN EDUCATIONAL POST❗❗