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kiri-instinct · 6 months

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I sometimes wonder if the defense of Israel would have been as fierce as it is now if their enemies had been white people.

I was thinking about recent happenings and remembered a news report I saw. I believe it was from an American channel. The reporter was talking about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and how it caused thousands of Ukrainians to flee west, fearing for their lives.

It was the usual stuff for the time. How this was a tragedy, and how Russia should be held accountable. That sort of thing. All very true, of course.

But I remember something that stuck with me from that news report. It hit me like a freight train when I heard it. Maybe the news reporter had a slip of the tongue. Maybe he genuinely thought what he said was not fucking horrific.

"These are prosperous, middle class people. These are not people trying to get away from areas in North Africa."

Not people trying to get away from areas in North Africa. A lot of other, similar things were said at the time. I distinctly remember these:

"This is not a developing, 3rd world nation. This is EUROPE."

"This isn't a place, with all due respect, y'know, like Iran or Afghanistan. This is a relatively CIVILIZED, relatively EUROPEAN, and I have to choose those words carefully, too, city where you wouldn't expect that or hope that it is going to happen."

A lot of words to emphasize one thing: This is happening in a civilized nation, not like the ones in Africa, the '3rd world' or, God forbid, the Middle East. EUROPE is a civilized land, unlike them, the fact this is happening HERE at all is simply unfathomable!

Obviously, a lot of people criticized these wordings for their obvious racism. The idea that Europe and Europe alone was civilized, and that these nations, stuck in conflict thanks to borders we decided for them, are unwashed, barbaric hordes is just...obviously bigoted and, more importantly, wrong.

Then, Israel began its full-scale invasion of Palestine, starting off with declarations that even Russia dared not make. Yes, Russia's accusation that Ukraine was a Nazi state, or that it was somehow 'de-nazifying' it while its soldiers carried reactionary iconography, was obviously bad (and hypocritical). However, compared to Israel's government starting off by announcing clear intentions to level Gaza, that its soldiers were fighting "human animals," and that even the civilians of Gaza were to blame was far worse, and made Russia's blatant hypocrisy, lying and evil seem...tame, almost.

So, that's it. Israel invades Palestine with obvious malevolent intent, the world condemns Israel and we put together whatever we can to defend Palestine.

Except that never happened. Everyone rallied behind Israel. Joe Biden, with the same casual tone as you'd ask for a tenner, asked if he could trade weapons to Israel in complete secrecy. People were arrested en-masse for protesting against Israel bombing civilian holdings, refugee camps and hospitals. The US vetoed a motion against Israel as Israel violated the Geneva Convention over, and over, and over again.

I myself remember my bewilderment. I sent over clothes, hoping to help in any way I can, even relinquishing some clothes which had sentimental value, only to find out that it may be possible that my donations would never make it, as Israel began bombing the Lebanese border, and blockaded the Gaza Strip.

One day, I chose to skip school, not telling my mother, and went to a protest, hoping that my voice would do something, anything, to help. That same day, someone on TV called me and others like me agitators. Said we were stirring up antisemitism within our local communities.

Some time after that, my grandmother pulled me aside, having already guessed that I was on the side of Palestine, and warned me: The place I live in is massively pro-Israel, with many of my neighbors having chanted "Death to Arabs!" despite us having Arabic neighbors, according to her. If someone here were to find out I am pro-Palestine, I could risk social pariah status, and become unable to do anything. Simply because I support the rights of Arabic folk to live in peace.

My mind was clouded for a few days. The effort I could put in to help Palestine within my limits...was antisemitic? I was agitating people? We were evil for even daring to suggest this was a genocide? I could not wrap my head around it, then I remembered the words of those reporters talking about Ukraine.

"Not people escaping North Africa," "civilized, unlike Iran and Afghanistan," and "not a developing 3rd world country, but Europe".

The same message, but delivered in different ways: Those who are not in the West are uncivilized, brutal folk, not to be trusted. Tragedy falling upon them is expected, or, perhaps, welcomed.

Combined with the fact that Israel previously attempted to destroy local fauna in an attempt to appear more European, the realization hit me.

Israel is getting so much support because the West believes them to be "European enough" to get their neo-imperialist excuses. Israel is not the 'only democracy in the Middle East,' not really -- believe me, I have gone and voted in elections before. I have seen political rallies, and I have witnessed the same drama the average US voter witnesses. I live in a democracy, even if I do not live under a government I approve of.

Israel is simply the West's personal guy in the Middle East, hence the claim that it is the only democracy here. Really, it is just the only democracy they all approve of, rather than being the most legitimate one.

When government officials turn a blind eye to Zionists calling for the conquest of not only Palestine, but also Lebanon and Egypt, and when they censure their fellow politicians for saying, maybe, not every single Palestinian should die over a terrorist attack, they are not doing it because they sincerely believe Israel is the victim here, or because "right to defend oneself" is something that applies here -- they do it because Israel is white and Western enough for them to see as a worthwhile ally. To them, Palestine is little more than a shitty bunch of Arabs who can easily be discarded if their personal attack dog in the Levant gets to survive just one day longer and maintain their influence there.

Not even when the US was fighting the Nazis in WW2 did we think that killing German civilians was acceptable. Nor was "All of them" a proper, reasonable and POPULAR response to someone asking "How many must die before we have peace". But...these aren't good, civilized Europeans. These are Palestinians. ARABS! If their ethnic cleansing can result in our civilized Jewish friends in Israel liking us more and becoming more powerful, who cares if the entire Palestinian identity is extinguished?

So, I ask again: If Israel were to go up against a 'civilized' western, European and white nation, like say France, or Britain, or Germany, and genocide their peoples while they could do very little about it...would the response have been the same? Would US come to condemn any of those countries for faking death tolls or lie about seeing the Bundeswehr decapitating Israeli babies? Would people be arrested in France for demanding a ceasefire between Israel and Britain?

Given all that I have said, I do not think so. If any of those nations were to be attacked, Israel would be treated as Russia were -- depicted as barbarians, and told that their war was unjust and cruel. We'd have people on the news saying that this isn't North Africa, or Iran, and that no one'd expect Israel to do something so cruel to a fellow civilized nation.

But that is not happening. Israel's target for genocide, Palestinians, are, by all means, acceptable targets for the Western world. In the name of peace and global unity, they will pile high the bodies of anyone their fellow 'civilized nations' want dead.

But we cannot let them do that. We must scream, from rooftops if need be, that we will not stand for injustice. So, even if you feel hopeless and desolate in the face of great evil, do your best. Even the most minuscule action matters, because when a lot of little things come together, they can topple even the mightiest of giants.

From river to sea, Palestine shall be free. And don't you let them convince you otherwise.

#palestine #free palestine #i do not think it'd be fair for me to tag ukraine here as the primary topic is palestine #sorry if this is overly long and maybe a bit incoherent

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thankskenpenders · 2 years

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Updates on the Boingkid shit (go read the previous post if you have no idea what I’m talking about) because yes he is still at it:

1. People (myself included) have wondered why the creator of Boingkid would only be taking issue with Belle’s design now, in the form of Twitter DMCAs, when she’s been in the comics for almost two years at this point. Why not go to IDW directly, and why not do so sooner? Well, here are some responses:

“We did from time to time because we were busy with other projects. We sent an email and got a response from IDW's secretary and she insist to know the details of what we want to share with the CEO. Despite the gut feeling we shared the potential of illegal action & get blocked.”

“We did not write even a single line about this publicly, until one of the IDW artists cry out that Twitter has accepted the claim. Then after that upon fans reach out we shared what happened. We tolerated this for 2 years as Belle was just a spinoff but they continue to bring her“

So, yeah. He’s supposedly believed this the whole time, but IDW ignored him because of course they did. (Lord knows how, exactly, he tried to contact them in the first place, or if he even sent his pitch to the right email.) It was Jen Hernandez publicly calling him out over the DMCA on Twitter that was the last straw, and now he’s making this extremely public in retaliation

2. He now seems to be demanding that IDW simply alter Belle’s face “to avoid any resemblance to other copyrighted work in US.” This would be reasonable if he had a case, but, again, he did not invent the concept of a character having a clown nose and freckles

3. I previously said the guy was from Italy (both his ArtStation account and the unsuccessful Kickstarter for the Boingkid game have their locations set as Rome, and the demo was shown at an expo in Rome), but people dug up the copyright registration for Boingkid and found out that he’s originally from Iran. Either way, t’s likely that a language barrier is part of the confusion here, as his English isn’t the best (although it’s certainly readable)

4. Much of his case, as he presents it on Twitter, is predicated on Twitter support believing him when he filed his DMCA claims. This obviously doesn’t hold any water as social media companies accept false DMCA claims all the goddamn time due to the inherently flawed nature of the law, but his fundamental misunderstanding of how this system works may be partially due to that language barrier

5. People keep comparing this guy to Penders. I just want everyone to understand that, even with his outlandish claims about Julie-Su and Shade being legally the same character and things like that, even Penders has waaaaaaay more to back up his argument there than Boingkid guy has against Belle. Penders worked on Sonic for 13 years and the BioWare team literally said they were inspired by the comics. Boingkid guy is just some fucking guy no one’s heard of who allegedly got ghosted on a pitch to IDW. There’s no reason to believe that Evan even knew who he was before Friday

6. There’s a lot of question about the guy’s motives. Whether he actually believes this, or if it’s just a publicity stunt. I don’t think there’s any reason it can’t be both. He absolutely seems to believe his claim, at least to some extent, but he also seems to be relishing the attention

I feel cynical for saying this, but like. The guy’s been trying to make Boingkid a thing for years. The Kickstarter in 2017 only got nine backers for a total of $667 against a $53,000 goal. The team moved to a Patreon page which is now all but dead. If we believe his claim that he pitched the comics to IDW, that went nowhere. The demo for the game got a few positive previews, but as a dev myself believe me when I say that in this day and age a few blog posts are not enough to move the needle on their own. Again, I sympathize with the guy on that level, because he’s a good artist and GOD is it hard to make it out there even when you’re giving it your all. But this controversy is by far the most attention Boingkid as a brand has ever gotten. Thousands upon thousands of quote tweets for an account that had 150 followers at the start of this, and that follower count has only been going up. As they say, any press is good press. It’s hard not to look at that and assume the worst. If he had actually designed a character that was much more similar to Belle, or if I believed even for a second that Evan was the type of person who would plagiarize someone else’s work like that, then this would be different. But when the argument is so flimsy...?

I don’t believe he’s purely a troll, as some artists really are just like this. (Lord knows I’ve seen some people get in extremely heated feuds over superficial similarities between furry OCs and the like.) But at the same time, I do believe that at this point he’s acting in an intentionally incendiary way to get attention. Whether it’s a desperate attempt to drive attention to the Boingkid IP after years of floundering, or it’s purely to try and get IDW to respond to a genuine plagiarism claim and right a perceived wrong and nothing else, I can’t say. It’s quite likely a mixture of both, though

But either way, this whole situation continues to suck. I hope this is resolved soon. Belle’s a great character, and Evan, Jen, and anyone else who just wants to draw Belle in peace doesn’t need this hanging over their head

#tkp post

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petits-pois-carcinogenic · 2 years

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I'm by no mean a historian, let alone a journalist (Thank God). But at the risk of playing armchair analysts, I've noticed that ever since WW2, there are mainly three tropes of conflicts, in matter of duration, that is:

First case: 4 days-long wars. Those where the power balance between belligerent factions is so unequal that there is no point in resisting or fighting back. Outpost guards just watch powerlessly entire regiments cruise drive through their checkpoints. It's basically what happened with the American invasion of Grenada in 1983, or the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008, or even Crimea in 2014. Those are wars that end up seeing very little material damage and few victims (Crimea's invasion is even called "The war without a single shot fired" in Russia, which is an image they like a lot btw. Krutchev claimed America would fall without them firing a single shot too, few decades back).

How many Central and South Americans does the CIA need to kill before you realize socialism is bad? - Charlie Kirk

Second case: 4 weeks-long wars. Or the Blitzkriegs. The power balance is a bit more reasonable, but through coordination and shock&awe tactics, one invader sends the enemy to the mat by wreaking havoc. Destroying comms, bombing roads, bridges, rail tracks, or shredding the airforce/navy before it even takes off. Within a month, the defending army is folded. This is essentially how most of the allies fell during WW2 (Poland, France, Norway), and in more recent examples, it is how went the American invasion of Iraq, or the NATO-backed coup in Libya (Iraq evolved into a case 3, but Saddam's army still got swept within 40 days, give or take).

The Onion did release some bangers during that time, so maybe the Invasion was worth it after all

The third type, the worst of all, either when the power balance is fair, or when the fighting tactics are too different to compare: the dragging to a stalemate. A lot of destruction, a lot of death, civilian & military alike, but no winner in the end. Yeah, some skirmishes here and there to be claimed, but the losses are so that it is pointless to call those victories. The textbook case of "Tactical VS Strategic victory". Examples are Vietnam to the US, Algeria to France, Afghanistan to the Soviets (for the record, those three were the strongest armies of the Cold war, with nuclear armament). And the most iconic: The Iran-Iraq war: 8 years of conflict, 300.000 deaths on each side, hundreds of billions worth of dollars thrown into the cogs of war. Yet the borders have not moved a centimetre nor did the people in power. Almost a million people died for, in the literal sense of the term, nothing.

"Hey you ever heard of Verdun? Hell on Earth, chemical artillery, fruitless bloodbath. Sounds horrible. Let's try that!" - some iraqi/iranian general, probably

Back in February, when I heard the news of war, I expected it to be a case 1, the way it happened in Crimea back in 2014. Zelensky would run tails between legs. Russian tanks arrive in Kiev without firing a single shot and Ukraine would fall back into Russian tutelage. The international community gets pissed, shakes their finger. Dogs bark and the caravan moves on.

But that did not happen, a month in and Ukraine was still holding. I then betted that Zelensky could come to terms with an armistice à la Finnish winter war (Both sides lose, but having saved enough dignity to call it a victory). The Donbass is demilitarized, Donestk becomes a Karelia 2.00 and falls into Russian territory and the Azov battalion is sold out on the sacrificial altar. Putin, having filled his "Special operation" objectives (demilitarization, denazification, protection of russophones), can now toot his horn back in Moscow. Meanwhile, Zelensky can come back to Kiev as a hero: he saved Ukraine from getting eaten whole by the second army in the World, like Finland did 80 years ago.

It is tomorrow the day 250 of the conflict. Russia has since mobilized its civilians because the meat grinder needs more flesh and Zelensky is getting more and more bold and aggressive in its pleas for assistance to the West: Ukraine is a hill Putin's Russia will die on, literally. And no Russian (that desires to keep living in Russia, that is) can back down either. If/when Russia loses, the Western powers appear hell-bent to make Russians pay for all the wrongdoings in Ukraine for the passing 10 generations. "Russia will be carved, its economy dismantled, its relevancy wiped out!". Well, this is what Russian media claims at least, but it's hard to fully deny it either; the US doesn't give tens of billions monthly to Ukraine as a charity: like everything, it's an investment, it expects a return and I don't really see a war-torn Ukraine bringing it.

But to Russians, this conflict either ends two ways: with Russia's annihilation and its fall back to square (199)1, or Russia forcing the way through Ukraine to have a chance at living a life like it used to be before the conflict. The peace talks are far gone. In fact, peace is a word neither Ukrainians nor Russians want to hear right now: This war is ending with the capitulation of Ukraine, or Russia's.

#ukraine war #personal #long post #russia

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radkindoffeminist · 2 years

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why is it only far right tories that put anti-trans policies in place? kind of weird that you share a gender ideology with conservatives huh

Why is it only far-right homophobes who want to force gay people through conversion therapy to make them like a certain type of genitals? Kind of weird that you share an ideology with homophobes huh

Why is it only countries like Iran and other homophobes who are forcing gay people to transition because straight and trans is better than cis and gay? Kind of weird that you share and ideology with homophobes huh

Why is it only raging misogynists who threaten to rape, assault and silence women because they don’t like women speaking out against them? Kind of weird that you share an ideology with misogynists huh

Why is it only MRAs and Incels who think that women have it easy, everything is biased towards women, and living as a woman is living in easy mode? Kind of weird that you share an ideology with misogynists huh

Why is it only raging misogynists who think that women are the lesser sex and always dumber than their male counterparts? Kind of weird that you share an ideology with misogynists huh

Why is it only conservatives who think that women need to be feminine and men need to be masculine? Kind of weird that you share an ideology with conservatives huh

And yes, these are all things which I have heard from trans activists. Lesbians need to learn to like girl dick; ignoring people’s internalised homophobia and saying they’re trans; massive amounts of rape and death threats sent almost exclusively to women who speak out against trans activism; saying that being a woman is easier than being a man; saying that horemones treatments have made them ‘dumber’ or shifted their interests to being more feminine; and saying that being a woman is basically conforming to misogynistic stereotypes/implying that they ‘knew’ they were woman because they fit into stereotypes better.

If you’re going to compare us to the right because they’re the only ones introducing anti-trans legislation and because you can’t understand the idea of two people coming to the same conclusion for vastly different reasons, then it’s only fair that we compare you to homophobes, misogynists, incels, MRAs, and conservatives.

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 3 months

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The UK’s charity regulator is investigating videos of antisemitic speeches given by former Iranian generals to British students, as well as footage of "death to Israel" chants at the British premises of an Islamic charity.

UK officials probe Iran generals' antisemitic talks to students https://t.co/8GJvEReZt2 — BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) January 22, 2024

Two of the videos being investigated by the UK’s Charity Commission show talks by members of the Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), with one of them describing an apocalyptic war with Jews and Holocaust denial.

The videos, which the BBC saw and verified, were recorded in 2020 and 2021 and show three events. Two were live-streamed speeches by former and active commanders of the IRGC, while the other was an in-person event inside the Kanoon Towhid Islamic Center in western London, commemorating Iran’s top military commander, General Qasem Soleimani.

Soleimani was killed in a US air strike in 2020. Chants of "death to Israel" were heard during the in-person event, but it wasn’t clear or known who was saying them. There is also other evidence of an IRGC commander giving online talks to British students, where the commander bragged about his role in training Hamas fighters before the October 7 attacks in Israel that claimed the lives of over 1,200 Israelis.

This is former IRGC commander Gen Saeed Ghasemi - he falsely claims the holocaust never happened and urges students to join an apocalyptic war. pic.twitter.com/oT5jMZZ6Bb — Ed Thomas (@EdThomasNews) January 23, 2024

The Islamic Students Associations of Britain (ISA) and its affiliates promoted the online talks in advance, and these events took place in Kanoon Towhid Islamic Center, which was used as a meeting place. Unlike mainstream Muslim student groups in the UK, the ISA was founded to promote the philosophy and ideology of Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s first supreme leader and the founder of the Islamic Republic.

Kanoon Towhid is also owned by the Al-Tawheed (TUCF) Charitable Trust, which has already been investigated by the Charity Commission after reports of the event honoring Soleimani, whom the British government sanctioned for his links to terrorism. The commission is investigating the videos seen and verified by the BBC, including one footage of this event.

Orlando Fraser, chairman of the Charity Commission, has previously warned that charities must not "become forums for hate speech" or extremism. The commission has the authority to investigate, sanction, or even close down charities that violate regulations.

This is ridicuously shocking. How does this go under the radar? — Melanie Amini (@TheMelAmini) January 23, 2024

Alicia Kearns, a Conservative MP for Rutland and Melton who also serves as chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee in Parliament, described the speeches as a “brazen act of radicalization," adding that the IRGC should be added to the government’s list of proscribed terrorist groups in the UK, which would make it illegal to be an IRGC member or show support for the IRGC.

In one Instagram Live recording from Iran, which was live-streamed in September 2020 and has been viewed about 1,500 times, IRGC commander Hossein Yekta said universities have become "the battlefront" and urged students to become "soft-war officers.”

The other video of an online talk from January 2021 glorified the death of Soleimani. Seen by thousands of people, the video shows former IRGC commander Gen Saeed Ghasemi comparing Soleimani’s death to the movie Terminator 2, saying that after Soleimani was killed, the broken pieces would come back together, stronger than ever before.

I thought “absolute free speech” in universities was paramount, and that students had to learn to be resilient when faced with “opposing views” or am I misremembering the last ten years or so? — Robin Chud (@MisterDanielBro) January 23, 2024

Ghasemi also falsely claimed that the Holocaust was "a lie and a fake" and talked about an apocalyptic war that British students could join to "bring an end to the life of the oppressors and occupiers, Zionists and Jews across the world."

"God willing, myself and you good students in Europe will be written in the beautiful list of the soldiers of the resistance from tonight." Ghasemi also added.

Lastly, the Instagram Live from 2020 was hosted by Mohammad Hussain Ataee, a British citizen in Yorkshire who was previously the secretary of the Islamic Students Associations of Britain. Although he is no longer the organization's secretary, he still serves as the secretary of the Union of Islamic Students Associations of Europe, an umbrella body that includes the British organization. Although Ataee, who was granted an audience with Iran’s supreme leader Khamenei last year, said the allegations against him were false, he did not answer further questions from the BBC.

#ThisIsIslam

#Iran #Islamic Republic of Iran #islam #this is islam #jihad #islamic terrorism #islamic violence #antisemitism #religion is a mental illness #islamic supremacy

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aftabkaran · 2 years

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Hi I’m a white westerner with a question if that’s ok please? I only heard about what is happening in Iran from tumblr, it hasn’t even shown up on my Twitter trends or from anyone I follow and the only thing I heard on the news was a brief statement that ‘Iran has erupted into protests after police brutality’ and then they moved on to something else. I’ve spent the last few hours reading things and trying to understand what’s going on and I want to be a better ally.

My question is that I have seen a few posts where people are saying ‘just because these women in Iran are protesting the hijab doesn’t mean other women in other countries don’t want to wear it’ and then people, yourself included which is why I am asking you, have said things like ‘stop making this about you’. I want to assure you I am sincere when I ask, how are comments like that making it about them? I am not a Muslim women so I don’t understand all the layers and history, but I see those comments and interpret them as someone saying don’t harass women in a hijab. I have grown up unlearning a lot of islamaphobia, so when I see people say ‘some people in the west want to wear a hijab’, based on my experiences, I feel like it’s a call to protect Muslim women because older people where I’m from will use any excuse to harass muslims. I understand I am only seeing this from my lived experiences and again I don’t understand all the layers, but I don’t see how those comments are making it above themselves? If you are comfortable may you please explain it to me?

I have learned (I think?) the situation in Iran isn’t strictly about the hijab under the current regime you are risking your life and are seemingly legally allowed to be harassed by other men and beaten up by police so taking off the hijab is protesting the mistreatment and oppression of women. And they are protesting regime not religion? Is this correct?

I’m sorry for the long message and I hope you know I am messaging with good intentions and a very limited understanding and I am not a troll. I saw your bio said it was ok to ask. Thank you and I will keep trying to learn and understand.

hello stranger. no offence taken.

A huge problem when discussing third world countries in west is that westerners only seem to grasp what our issues mean in relation to them. for example when an Iranian journalist is posting online all some westerners comment on is which western organisation she works for and that becomes her identity to them. it's a very western centric way of thinking because these people exist in a rich context that is wholly alien to westerners. It would be if I only knew Paul McCartney as that guy who visited Tehran once and nothing else. of course McCartney did visit Iran but that's far from what defines him in west.

Similarly, when discussing hijab what it means in the context of Iran is completely different from what it means in say France. when you start comparing these two-even if the comparison is valid- one side of the comparison is bound to become 1.decontextualised 2.become the less significant side of the comparison because the other side is more relevant to the western discourse. so westerners who are comparing hijab in France and Iran are inevitably mostly talking about hijab in France.

As for decontextualising the issue, it’s ironically a mistake that both sides of the “islamophobic” question in west commit. Saying “women in France choose hijab like Iranian choose not to wear it” is just as much of a decontextualised argument as “woman in France shouldn’t wear hijab because Iranians don’t want to wear it”.

As for your second question, Iran is a theocracy which means the issue of religion and politics are intertwined. Of course Iranians are very religious people but we are very much fed up with political religion(not to mention a lot of what the so-called islamic government is doing can not be justified even by the most backwards rules of Islam)

There are a lot of problems in Iran today(namely state corruption and oppression of minorities) and this has been going on for years. As with many other movements, Mahsa’s murder was the straw that broke the camels back.

hope this helped

#asks #iran #mahsa amini

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emma-what-son · 2 years

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Her 2022 comeback is definitely not going well

So you know that saying whenever can go wrong will. That’s definitely what is happening to Emma in her 2022 comeback for sure. We heard it from sources that she would try to be more active this year. She has been a bit more active but the receptions are definitely not what she expected at all. The last few months of this year have been some of the worst in her career for sure. I’m not sure if she has a PR team, but if she does they are definitely working and sweating hard. The whole issue with the Mermaids charity did not help at all. You know it’s bad when people are saying JK Rowling is right, and she’s looking like the nice person calling out the charity. Then you have the whole dating Green thing, not sure if it’s an actual relationship or what. It doesn’t look like it because they haven’t been seen together since the Italy trip. It look like it might have been a PR move, or they are just friends with benefits. Lots of sources “claiming that they are close to her” that her and green are really good friends and that’s all. It gives off more FWB vibes Instead. But the reception to that was not great at all, she was getting flamed for it so bad. The reputation of Greens father is something that he can’t run away from. He might be a nice guy, and completely different from his father but we all know the internet doesn’t care and will still judge him. And well Emma doesn’t look good at all for associating herself with him, I think people definitely judge her to harshly on this one. You can’t help who you love and maybe she does like that guy. Maybe he is very different from his father. Then thing is ever since the pictures of the Italy trip came out she hasn’t been seen with him at all. Maybe if they are dating they are keeping it more hidden now due to The Backlash, and the last thing she needs more backlash if trying to make a comeback. I think eventually more information will come out over that since she can’t stay single for a long time. So we will see her with Green or some new guy. Let’s be honest she’s had lots of boyfriends now so she doesn’t like being single. And if it was a PR move for her Prada add them it definitely didn’t get the positive reception she wanted. Then you have the whole Prada campaign she did, in which she was the actress, and director of the commercial. It seems like she’s trying to get into directing. Maybe she could be successful if give a shot, but I definitely don’t think people will watch something or support it fully is she’s only directing it. At the end of the day she is an actress and people want to see her act. Plus that Prada campaign definitely has to been a flop or have bad sales. I mean shes supposed to be this big name celebrity and the perfume is definitely not getting attention. Compare to her social media following the interaction is horrendous. No big influencers have even talked about it, not even former cast members have helped her promote it. I think only one former cast member helped her by promoting it by singing to Emma near a Prada add. If you look at her socials each time she post something anout Prada the comments are all talking about the issue in Iran, and how come she hasn’t spoken up about it. She posted today and not a single comment is about the perfume it’s all about her not supporting Iran. In sure Prada is definitely not happy with that, people not talking about the product. She did Bring it I’m herself by claiming to be this serious activist and feminist. When things like this happen people expect for you to speak up and help the cause. Maybe she can’t post anything because she’s in a contract with Prada for a bit to promote the perfume. They’re has to be things that state she can’t promote controversial things during her contract or promotion of the product. But I honestly think that if she posted something supporting the women of Iran I would crate more buzz that the whole Prada camping. It might actually help the campaign, since when they mentioned her thy would say former HP Hogwarts alumni, and they would talk about her recent add. Because I’m sure at this point she must know that no matter what she does or roles she plays she’s always going to be know as Hermione from HP. Then you have the cult thing, not sure how accurate it is since not much more has come from it. It looks more false as the days go by. Still creating more negative press for her. If she did join or even did attend a zoom meeting just to be curious it’s not a good look . Due to the cult leaders past history. So yeah sorry after this long rant, I definitely don’t think she’s making a comeback this year at all. She was spotted in Spain In a post form a post on twitter. She probably just enjoying her money and life. She might have to soon realize that she’s not that big anymore and she losing relevance. And the drama doesn’t help at all. I think if we seen anything from her it’s definitely 2023 for sure. And it’s more drama or even more stuff about the cult then I definitely think her career will definitely be over for sure. I actually want to see if she promotes Felton’s book at all during related or near it. If they are close friends as they are claiming to be. If she post printing the book it will also be a bad look. Since we know that she can post about other things and Prada is not limiting it. So people will be mad because she’s not doing anything about the dramas she’s facing. I think it will be a bad look no matter what for her. I think she’s taking the ignoring route for sure. Letting people forget about it. But if more stuff comes out about her it definitely won’t be pretty for her career.

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chloeworships · 26 days

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This is exactly what I am talking about and I am going to go even FURTHER and put the responsibility on sitting governments and news agencies for not making the MORAL CASE on behalf of Israel 🇮🇱 The violent protests we are seeing today is precisely because governments never made the ‘business case’ against terrorism (Hamas) and Iran.

https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1780770857415008567?s=46&t=81HbOHvjKICPZpAbxtcT8g

Also I would like to see police start jailing some of these protesters or calling in the national guard like they did when it was BLM…. When it was mostly BLACK PEOPLE in those crowds. How quickly they acted then? Let’s be fair because this is outrageous. These are NOT peaceful protests.

Blaming Israel doesn’t solve the problem and not expecting them to retaliate is nonsensical when their entire nation is under threat from Iran.

I saw God rip Iran away from the IRGC and their oppressive regime who beat, rape and murder women and those from the LGBTQ community just like he ripped away the Kingdom of Israel from Saul.

God showed me the word

“Today”

In green and gold and then he showed me the above script.

He also showed me this ⤵️

Remember he spoke to me about someone needing to contact Justin in his booming voice.

👀

Here, Jesus is compared to Moses but what I want to illustrate is the price we pay when we do not listen to the LORD, when we don’t believe and when we are ungrateful for what he’s already done for us. Many people didn’t see The Promiseland because they didn’t believe or trust God… so he ended their lives.

God has shown us whose side he is on. My prayer is that we listen to the LORD.

PS. This also confirms what the LORD told us about speaking to your enemies. Yes, they heard God the first time but they still rebelled.

I pray the rightful rulers of Iran, if they are just and wise, return to power.

We will see God end this regime.

Isaiah 66:22-24

Perhaps this is why the LORD kept showing us the eclipses both the Solar and Lunar eclipses. This is also why he showed us the Angel of Death scraping aside all those dead bodies.

Sweet dreams 😴

PS. Verse 22 is personal to me so I knowwww this scripture is 💯 confirmation 👀

#thank you Van #at least someone gets it #a warning ⚠️#Operation: Liberate Iran

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amerasdreams · 2 years

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I can't tell you how much I want to do an Intelligence Studies masters degree....

I get these emails for when I almost did one (also almost started another time... along with one from another university. {And other degrees....} But chickened out because. Money. And how likely could i do it. And how far I am from that world rn. How they would be like, why are you here. No experience except for political science degree) . I always click on it. I did a terrorism class from them once, which was fun. It was on a discount price to get people to go to the university. After that I wrote another paper on my own and then tried to write another about Iran, doing research for 2 years, but I think it was too broad and i never finished. That's where I am now. Trying to do more papers... on Ukraine (others eventually, maybe try to finish Iran one...) maybe for a blog. But I don't really know anything. Writing them helps me know more but not compared to actual experts. So how could I be an authority. I need to go to school and be in that field. But how realistic is it for me.

I just want it. One of only things I ever wanted to do (besides writing) but how do I know I really like and would be good at it (let alone possible.. idk about any of it really) unless I do school which costs thousands of dollars. Or something more feasible which I can do. Or give up on trying to do anything big... (bigger than pet sitting and menial jobs!)

I want to help in a big way. Intelligence could help prevent disasters. I heard it requires history knowledge and writing... which I like.. along w following international affairs in depth....

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cursesive · 2 years

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Fate/stay night: Heaven's Queen [0 Hour]

Rating: Teen and up audiences Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, major character death, rape/non-con Fandom: Fate/stay night, Fate/Grand Order Summary: In which one Sakura Matou summons a certain Babylonian goddess of love and war for the Fifth Holy Grail War. It goes about as well as expected. Also available on: AO3

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Pain. So subjective.

She felt the worms moving against her, fighting her even though she had no fight to give. They would resurface and sink without breaking skin. Her skin was more likely broken by her brother, which would hurt less compared to this pain of her spirit.

The worst of it was the pleasure she could dream with someone else. Between the pleasure and pain, violation and own volition, neither cancelled out. She felt both: she didn’t know what she was feeling. Only when it stopped and she could feel the sharper edges of the world. The worms burrowed in and out of her skin without a scar. Would it make it all the more real if they left scars others could see?

No. Because.

Senpai would fret.

Senpai would know.

She heard someone calling but maybe not. It was getting louder and soon she would surface. She swam before in gym class years ago. There was relief when people surfaced for the precious air, even when someone was drowning. No matter how much the air punched your throat, your lungs, you welcomed it back into yourself. Not her though. The pressure of being underwater, silent and muffled; it was familiar and she would rather stay within its depths.

“Wake up already!”

Sakura opened her eyes.

Shinji Matou’s voice echoed throughout the worm pit. Her hearing came back before her sight did. Her back and limbs scraped the floor as she pushed herself up. Ghostly mage light shone from the corners, a sickly green that enveloped the room. Shinji dared not to touch the walls or descend to wake the girl early until the worms disappeared into the cavernous room or deep into her skin. He was in a hurry but not enough to pay a price with the worms himself. He’d seen what those worms could do.

He carried a bucket of soapy water that sloshed when he descended the stairs. He dropped it in front of her, throwing a rag into her chest. “Clean up your mess off the circle. I have preparations to make.”

The girl obeyed, swaying lightly on her hands and knees. It was a miracle she didn’t fall over, even while on all fours. Her grip was not as good, dropping the rag a couple times before her hands could hold it firmly.

Someone normal would have felt cold but that someone was not her. She left the ability to feel a long time ago because of the pain that came with it. Letting go was the best thing she ever did. Away went the cold, the hope, and the desire for modesty as she silently scrubbed the magic circle at the base of the stairs that led out of the Matou’s basement.

Shinji huffed, turning his back to her.

With no formal training for her in magecraft, the duties of preparing the ritual was left to Zouken with menial help from Shinji. The boy was a disappointment for sure but in something he so badly wanted, he was a devil with the details. From the practice of many years of drawing this circle on his own, he had spent weeks touching this one up until it was perfect; every rune was slanted just so and exact to the millimeter as described in handed down texts.

Up the stairs Shinji went for the most precious part of this ritual. The mirror was a lot heavier than it looked and it looked heavy enough to begin with. The reflective surface was still intact but its frame of stone had long been shattered, either by time or by those who dug it up from a temple in Iran. He doubted his “sister” would be able to lift it. Last thing he needed was for her to drop the mirror and to test out if seven years of bad luck would take. The mirror was the best catalyst left; it was the only catalyst. Generations of Matous had fallen and without alliances or access to the Mage’s Association, Shinji would have to make due.

The time was near, almost sunrise. According to all his years of study, it was the best time for new endeavours to begin and succeed with the optimism of the sun. What better time to summon his Servant?

An old man appeared out of the shadows, aided by a cane. He said nothing but both teenagers were well aware of his presence.

Shinji’s irritability revved higher under the eyes of the Matou patriarch. Everytime the boy glanced back at the old man, Shinji would quickly turn his head away, dejected. He had to try.

"Ojiisan?"

Zouken eyed Shinji, the young man posturing before the catalyst he set up. "What is it?"

“We’re summoning a Servant from the realm of the dead. Whoever sold you this mirror doesn't know the prize they gave away."

A derisive snort was all he got in return. Zouken didn't deign to turn in his direction. "Don't be stupid."

Shinji tried again. "The side of the mirror translates to below the earth therefore underworld…"

His voice trailed off watching his grandfather ignore him. He had to resist the urge to stomp his foot like a petulant child even though the old man was the one being difficult. Here he was as the devoted scion of this family who gave up weeks in preparation whereas the thief only showed up tonight doing what she did best: laying on her back for hours.

"I've been studying cuneiform more and this word is distinct from_"

"Silence."

"But."

Zouken tapped his cane sharply. "I have no need of a circuitless boy with amateur translations of the ancient arts."

Wisely, Shinji bit his tongue, figuratively and literally. The taste of blood grounded him to not lose sight of the big picture. Forcing silence was easier than forcing calm. No matter how irritated he was with the elderly man, Zouken was also the one with magic circuits and it was his decision if Shinji would represent the Matous in this war. Sakura was fine with being a temporary stand-in, basically a catalyst herself, to be seen and not heard. At least that was the plan.

Sakura finished her task unnoticed. She brought the bucket upstairs, emptied it, and then returned down the stairs. Without a word, she stopped in front of the Matou patriarch without any verbal order or gesture. There were times…that Shinji wondered how much of her mind was actually in there and how much was now just a puppet: an interloper who required those parasites to become a Matou.

No sense of shame to hide herself, like grabbing the sheet that hung by door on her way down, just free goods on display. Shinji snorted. The slut was probably lying with Shirou everyday she disappeared to the Emiya residence while he was here doing the lion’s share of the work for weeks.

Her gaze was as blank as a doll’s and even those toys would have more life than her. She probably wouldn’t have reacted if Zouken slapped her; he knew because he did it before on the long road of breaking her in.

Both the girl and the old man stood unmoving. His eyes scanned her from top to bottom and from bottom to top. Shinji paused for just a moment, allowing himself a small smile in anticipation of what the fake Matou heir was about to receive; and that he wasn’t the target.

“You’ve memorized the summoning spell, right?”

Shinji opened his mouth to reply but it was Sakura who answered.

“Yes Ojiisama.”

“Very well. But I’ll have you replace two of the words to the incantation.”

“What do you mean?” Shinji almost dropped the book in his hands, looking between the both of them.

“Sakura will be doing the incantation.”

Rage coupled with anxiety made for a nasty temper. When did this change?! Shinji was barely able to squeeze the words out coherently. “I was supposed to summon the Servant! I brought the catalyst and everything!”

“Say them.” Zouken commanded the girl, ignoring the boy.

As the girl said the words, Shinji whispered them to himself. He had practiced for so long…

Of course the old man would walk in here on something he’d been working on for months and praying for years. Zouken barely blinked when he made the announcement to them of the impending Holy Grail War months ago. When Shinji heard the proclamation, he set to work with all the meager resources he had.

It was a sign when he found the book on the Holy Grail War as a child, written by some ancestor of the first three wars. Ever since he found the passage that a Servant could be “shared” by two people, one providing the mana and the other, the true Master, commanding, Shinji could see his own magic in sight.

“I know I don’t have the magic circuits,” Shinji seethed to have to say that fact out loud, “but I’ve been studying. I won’t mess up the incantation. I know the ritual inside and out. She doesn’t have that.”

“It has nothing to do with power or training. The Grail itself does the summoning; the mage needs only to provide enough mana for the Servant to manifest. Something you lack with those dead circuits you mentioned, Shinji.” Zouken abolished the boy.

He smiled, rotting teeth barely hanging onto his jaw. “If you had the circuits, perhaps the Grail would have chosen you. Without them, you are no Master unless I allow you. What good are your studies if you need a mage to make your precious book?”

“She said she doesn’t want to fight in the war!” Shinji snarled. “She agreed to this arrangement to avoid helping this family.”

Zouken gestured at the girl. “Sakura will do as she is told without question, something you should learn before you need to be taught.”

Shinji gulped, clutching the heirloom book in his arms.

The old man circled the girl slowly, his gleeful expression unchanged. After his third cycle, he stamped his cane on the stone floor, the sound echoing in the chamber.

“However,” the patriarch drawled, “if after the summoning, Sakura is willing to yield her command spells for the Book of False Attendant, we shall proceed with making the book.”

The look her brother gave her left no room for disagreement but his own face faltered when Zouken’s smile loomed centimetres from the boy’s. Shinji gulped, the noise popping out of his throat. His purple eyes frantic to not look directly at his grandfather. His discomfort pleased Zouken as he leered at the boy, stepping closer, gnarled hand raising to touch his face. The hand stopped before it made contact.

Shinji had just enough spine to keep standing through shaking knees.

Zouken chuckled, retracting the appendage. Trampling youth always did make him feel so young. He made his way to the circle, surveying it before turning to the girl.

Sakura had not moved in expression or body the entire exchange. Her docile manner pleased Zouken. At least she knew how to keep quiet and obedient, far easier to control now but that stubborn streak of hers remained however buried.

An old memory echoed of another Master in this very basement, in the same spot, consumed by worms. Unlike him, the girl could stand.

She had held firm against actual participation in the war, which was how the silly idea continued to fester inside the boy’s head. At the promise that the duties of the Matou representative could be passed over, she didn’t hesitate to agree to Shinji’s orders when he cornered her months ago. Given Zouken’s eventual plans, it was not a priority for her to be fully active as the Master for this family but she would participate one way or another as he made her.

The Matou patriarch survived this long because of backup plans and a willingness, no matter how inconvenient, to adapt. This war came unexpectedly as the land around Fuyuki began to hum in expectation. Mount Enzou’s circle was beginning to awaken, fifty years ahead of schedule but who was Zouken to complain? Less of a wait for his plans to fall into place, especially the trump card he planted years ago.

It was a mixed blessing: try for the prize again and the chance to free himself of this dying body. Or lose again and watch how many more years he had to wait for his backup plan.

Four out of five wars lost were not good odds. This girl didn’t care to win, even if the boy did: they were not enough to make a difference. It was no secret what his grandson was planning, even convincing him to do the command spell transfer. A mage is nothing without their legacy. This war should have been his already and now he had an opportunity, just like the chance encounter at the end of the 4th Holy Grail War.

You didn’t get to be his age by wasting opportunity. His plans had been for a war fifty years from now and that was the main performance: so why not test a few things in this rehearsal? He'd been doing a lot of thinking in the last decade.

He had a mage of potential in his thrall. If Sakura's bloodline ran true (of not only Tohsaka but of the famed Eidelfelt family), she would be able to summon a worthy Servant. If not, both would serve as a distraction and another play completed of his original script.

Zouken made the girl repeat the changed lines until he was satisfied. Whatever luck she had, hopefully it would serve her better than the last Master he had modify the summoning lines. Then again, the girl was unlucky to be born second with a unique trait. A mixed blessing for a mixed blessing.

Ignored, Shinji tried to understand from his studies why the change but knew better than to ask aloud; he’d find out later from the family library. He had a Servant to be summoned and a war to win. Begrudgingly he stepped aside when his grandfather ordered him to stand by stairs, stating the summoning needed to be untainted by the relic of an old failure.

A little late for that. Shinji thought, considering the whore taking his place. It should have been him!

Their grandfather stood, staring at Sakura. Fear both paralyzed and agitated her. She knew better than to move but his attention to her never turned out well. Finally he broke eye contact to take out an old pocket watch, a patina on its metal. Satisfied, he nodded to her.

"Begin."

She needed no encouragement. Beneath her skin, the worms were still very awake but in their satisfied state after her time in this pit. If she failed, she would be spending more time down here again, to relearn that she and this war were one. She knew that much at least.

Sakura only needed to do this one thing. Then everything would be over.

Just one small thing.

For a lifetime.

The young woman carefully tread to the center of the magic circle. Once her feet were planted, she raised her left hand first to brush the red hair ribbon, and then to extend it, three command spells visible. Her eyes closed, she chanted:

“Silver and mercury to the origin. Let stone and the archduke of contracts be the foundation. Let Makiri be the ancestor I pay tribute to. Let each be turned over five times, simply breaking asunder the fulfilled time. Set. I shall declare here. Your body shall serve under me. My fate shall be with your sword. Submit to the beckoning of the Holy Grail. If you will submit to this will and this reason, then answer. I swear here. I shall attain all virtues of all of Heaven. I shall have dominion over all evils of all of Hell. From the Seventh Heaven, attended to by three great words of power! Come forth from the ring of restraint, Protector of the Balance!”

Her soft voice carried the chant evenly with the slightest falter but no mistakes. She couldn’t wait to get out of the circle. Her thoughts on summoning and…no. She could think of Shirou later. Once she was done, she was free, if for a time.

Winds picked up from nowhere in the basement, swirling around the room. Her left hand felt pulled, like she was fighting a bowstring but she held her arm out firm, refusing to budge. Out of reflex, her other hand touched her hair ribbon again, praying for this to work, for this to end.

Light engulfed the room, a soft blue to the usual sickly green. A magic circle appeared above the one drawn into the floor, swallowing the mana in the room but not all her mana. The worms would let her know if that was gone. The runes on the floor grew bolder as power filled them. Sparks, charges of magical power, cackled, swirling around a point till the light grew the brightest.

Images of beasts filtered in and out of view: ravenous lions and sharks that evaporated into doves.

Then nothing.

Except a woman standing before her.

Sakura didn't know what to expect but this woman was and wasn't it. Her presence filled the room compared to how little she wore. Her legs were bare save for a ribbon around one ankle and a toeless stocking on the other that stretched above her knee. The woman's hands were stuffed into the pockets of her very modern looking hoodie: pink with an abstract design on the shoulder. Dark hair peeked out from beneath her hood.

The woman's face was in shadow save for her mouth, which was pulled into a smug grin. No, a show of teeth. Her teeth were perfectly human and white.

Shinji took a step towards the Servant until her head turned. He paled, backing away until his rear hit the chamber's wall. Whatever temptation the skimpy outfit promised, it was not worth a closer look. The hoodie was dangerously short, covering just up to the top of her thighs. The barest sign of a swimsuit could be seen below the hem.

It had no effect on Zouken. "Servant, who are you?"

There was silence as the woman's head twisted side to side, surveying her surroundings.

"He asked you a question." Shinji straightened his resolve. "Answer!"

When the Servant let the silence continue, he turned to glare at Sakura. "What did you do?"

The girl's legs buckled beneath her, knees scraping the ground. She bowed her head and herself was spent. The servile pose only incensed her brother further.

Of course she would screw up something as straightforward as summoning a Servant! He had been patient long enough but he was not watching her screw up his chance for another second. Time to take control.

“Whatever. Give me your command spells. I will deal with you later.”

Shinji reached out but his hand never touched another hair on Sakura’s head. Instead a sickening crack bounced off the walls. The boy screamed as the woman used the broken arm to toss him aside like a used toothpick. He whimpered, scuttling as far back as he could, nursing his ravaged limb.

"Servant Rider at your command, Master."

The Matous turned to the woman.

Her voice soft but held the command of armies; hundreds of voices funneled into one. It was a voice that could stun but it was the disappearance of both Sakura and the new Servant that left Shinji and his grandfather silent.

~*~

Sakura would have fallen over from the jolt of changing scenery but her Servant's arm kept her steady. Though shaky, Sakura shoved the Servant away as she took in her surroundings. It was a small playground inside one of the public parks. She sometimes passed it on errands but never went in.

Never after the last time of an old life: one with a sister, a mother, and an uncle.

The Servant walked the sandy surface, her back turned to Sakura. Whatever calm this Servant had, Sakura possessed none. She could weather Shinji, she could survive Zouken but this, they would never forgive. The longer the command seal was on her hand, the longer she would be marked as Master, the more likely she'd have to fight Rin.

"Please! Whoever you are, we have to go back!"

The woman casually stepped onto the carousel before leaping atop its center. She sighed, throwing back her hood and looked up at the morning star, rising brighter than its neighbouring lights. The horizon was lined with orange and gold leaking across the dark sky. Dawn would be here soon.

Sakura stopped her advance as she marvelled at the magnificent crown glistening in the rising light. Seven points of gold arose from dark hair. How didn't she see it earlier? She was close enough to see black twintails neatly tied with black ribbons, nestled in the graceful fall of hair, like Rin's.

Sakura felt a tug in her heart. This was always how it felt to look at Rin, always from behind, like a shadow to a sun. Her eyes widened as the woman turned to her finally.

Her eyes must have been wrong, maybe her former memory of this place playing tricks on her as she looked up at her sister's face.

"Servant Rider, the goddess Ishtar, daughter of Anu!" Her sister's face proclaimed, beaming with a smile. "I ask of you: are you my Master?"

~*~ Sakura was sure she was dreaming. The pinch was too sharp and she was still in the park. There was no way this was happening. Her mind tried to reason something other than this being some cruel, elaborate prank of Rin being summoned as her Servant. And yet…

She pinched herself again, hoping to wake up but found the woman before her still.

She had done everything exactly to the one task she was traded for. Her mouth formed the goddess’ name but the sound that came out was, “Rin?”

The Servant tilted her head from side to side, as if to roll the thought in her mind and puzzle it out. “Rin...Rin...Rin...OH!”

Triumphant, her fist met her palm. “I suppose that is the name of this maiden’s body. Strange how even though she is not of my service, there’s an affinity.”

The Servant sounded like Rin and she had her gestures. She was the right height. Did Rin’s summoning mess up that she became part of a Servant? Alarm raced through Sakura’s body. She needed to fix this. Rin had to be okay. Rin had to participate or else... or else why were you given to the Matous?

It was difficult to breathe. There was not enough air and yet Sakura never felt more energy than she did now. Her body was tingling like it was alive, so different from when it was in motion due to the worms that lurked inside of her. She knew where she was: she had to go back. To stop this from being worse.

The “goddess” who had been admiring her new body paused as the girl started to bolt away.

“At least put something on!” Ishtar insisted, appearing in the girl’s path, arms spread to cover her exit.

Sakura halted abruptly, almost falling to the floor but she caught herself at the last possible second, fluttering her arms to stay upright. She looked down to find she was no longer naked but for how long she didn’t notice the winter cold, she wasn’t sure.

Her body was now covered by a long, black, flowing skirt adorned in a cherry blossom print topped by a thick, sensible white v-neck sweater. Warm sheepskin boots enveloped her feet. There was brief mental panic in realizing her hair was tied back in a side ponytail on the opposite side of her hair ribbon. To her relief, the ribbon was still there, now around the sidetail.

“What the?” She lightly tugged at the sweater confirming it was real, at least to the touch. “Where are these clothes from?”

“Journal Standard™.”

“What?”

“I’m not quite sure when I saw you in that outfit but I do remember you wearing it when we went to dinner one night.”

“We’ve never gone to dinner together for me to wear something like this. Besides that, why would we have dinner together?” Sakura finally snapped in frustration.

“Because we’re sisters, silly,” the woman giggled. “A few years from now, you will visit me in London. The food wasn’t bad but your cooking is definitely better. Their dessert however was divine.”

That was when Sakura took a good long look at this Servant who claimed to be a goddess. The more Sakura examined the woman, the more she looked like an older Rin. “You came from the future?”

“Ehhh…not exactly but close enough.” The Servant looked a little sheepish at that, lightly scratching her cheek with a finger.

“You call yourself Ishtar.”

“That’s right.”

“And yet you call me your sister.”

“Correct.”

“Which is it?”

“Both. Because of my vastness, I could only send a portion. After all, it’s the Holy Grail that does the summoning. A summoning within a summoning.”

Sakura shook her head, still not understanding. “How are you in Rin’s body?”

Ishtar hummed. “I wouldn’t say I’m in her body. I’m a part of her more than I’m ‘in’ her body.”

“I’m sorry; I still don’t follow.” She tried to steady her breathing. Controlled inhale, controlled exhale, every breath exact, like this was archery practice. She could almost hear Shirou’s voice.

“My original self was more glamorous but this body is also not bad.” Ishtar said more to herself than to the girl in front of her.

Sakura continued to look at her expectantly.

She sighed. “Everything is recorded, including those who have participated in the Holy Grail War as Master or Servant: past, present, or future. The Throne of Heroes is beyond that and as such is not tied to something as silly as time and space. My soul and that of this girl merged and since this is the last body that soul inhabited, I look like this.”

Rider looked around, finding a stick. She drew an incomplete circle, a little more than half. “My soul is myself and Rin’s. The summoning drew what it could of my divine soul.“ She tapped the circle and then drew lines dividing a smaller piece to complete the divided circle. “Whatever was too great, was filled with the girl’s soul. Like…oh that method of gold to repair things—kintsugi but more awesome!”

Without a doubt, this was definitely Rin’s body, a Rin’s body but not the Rin she knew, if she was comprehending Rider’s words correctly. The Servant’s face had lost its childhood roundness, mostly angles and curves. At the center were her red, red eyes; red as rubies instead of an aquamarine blue.

“I’m usually summoned as an Archer but I guess even I am subject to the Rule of Nasu. Archer has been taken.” She said as she turned up to look at the morning star. The woman grimaced, like she had eaten something disagreeable. “I should have gotten Saber….”

“So you’re not really Rin.”

“No more than I’m really Ishtar. We’ve merged; right now it’s about 60/40 ratio with me as the majority. I am both Rin and Ishtar.”

“Where is human Rin then?”

The Servant waved off the question. “Don’t worry, present me is still my ordinary self, asleep at home, not a Master till over a week from now.”

“So both you and her are here now, in the present.” Sakura reasoned.

“Mm-hmm.” The woman nodded, pleased with herself.

“Are you connected to that Rin right now? Is that how I summoned you?”

“No we’re not connected, not like how a Servant and Master are. As far as this Holy Grail War goes, we’re two separate participants. You summoned me because I heard your call.”

“My call?”

Rider came closer, her hand hovering beside Sakura’s head. Sakura flinched before the hand made contact, eyes closing out of instinct. “Because of this.”

She opened one eye to see Rider holding her hair with the worn hair ribbon. “I gave this to you. You always wore it. I still have the other half.”

She didn’t know much about magecraft. The Matou’s didn’t need her to learn but she knew bits and pieces about the Holy Grail War. Some nights when her old household was asleep, Sakura would sneak downstairs to hear what their father taught Rin, to somewhat be included. Their father never included her in anything, it was always Rin who sought her out before and vice-versa.

The ritual for summoning was an ancient one. A Master needed to be able to do the summoning and a Master needed magic circuits to be able to do the summoning; that part was made clear to her as Tokiomi Tohsaka and Zouken Matou made the exchange, talking over her like a bartered ware or livestock. A catalyst was normally used to call specific Servants but the Matous couldn’t afford one of those as Shinji complained when he was searching the manor’ storage till he found the mirror to his satisfaction.

“But there was a catalyst! That mirror next to the circle...”

“Oh that old thing? It was kind of useless.” The Servant chuckled and then stopped to ponder. “There is a goddess it could call but she wouldn’t have answered.”

“Then why did you?”

“So we could be sisters again! Once the Holy Grail War is over, there’s no reason for you to be a Matou anymore.”

The playground sand shifted in Sakura’s vision. Again the Servant rushed to brace her from falling. She led the girl to the benches lining the playground. Once she was seated, Sakura buried her face in her hands.

Of course it would be beyond the impossible for the one thing she always wanted. But to win the Holy Grail War?

“Kariya-ojii-san tried to win the war.” Sakura robotically stated. “He said I could go back to the Tohsakas when he won. Look where that led him.” And me.

“Matou Kariya was a mortal man;” Rider proudly posed, gesturing at herself, “I am Ishtar, goddess of beauty and war, bringer of victory. I will win: I always eventually do in the end. My triumphs are numerous. That’s why I’m here to rescue you!”

There was only so much shock one could take. Sakura was glad she was already sitting down. Her head snapped up to face the Servant, her voice cracked. “To rescue me from what?”

“The Matou’s and what they’ve done to you. You’ll win the war and you will be free to live your life as you've always wanted with who you wanted. That is the Sakura I know in my memories.”

It was what she as she always wished for but everything had a catch…

Sakura shook her head, eyes wide in disbelief. “You know…what they did to me?”

“I know everything they did.”

If the Servant had slapped her, it would have been less of a blow. Sakura froze.

“Everything?” She whispered.

“Everything.” Rider acknowledged. “I know how you went from this,” she grasped a lock of her own dark hair, “to this.” She lifted the violet hair still in her other hand, holding the purple and black hair together. Even through all that, they still had the same straight texture.

“I still don’t know all the details in the future but I will eventually learn all the details you were willing to share with me.”

Sakura narrowed her eyes sharply. “You mean you don’t know now? The you who is sleeping in Tohsaka manor right now?”

Rin doesn’t know? Sakura found it hard to believe. Was that why…was that why the Tohsakas had forsaken her to the Matous? They really didn’t know?

Or was it so convenient they wouldn’t?

Seeing Sakura’s distress, Rider let go of their hair. “You are happier in the future and I tried making up for lost time but some part of me doesn’t believe it’s ever enough for what you went through and I didn’t know. How many times did I walk past you in school thinking you were okay because you were adopted as the Matou heir and you were finally safe. What a joke!”

“Safe?” The echoed word was hollow.

“After the war, you live with me in Tohsaka manor. Like the sisters we should have been.” Rider smiled brightly.

The girl just stared ahead, barely moving except for her hands to wrinkle the skirt, bunching the material up in her hands. She kept gripping it tighter and tighter.

Rider knelt in front of Sakura, her own hands covering the girl’s. “If you’re worried about fighting me, don’t worry. I know you’re worried about that. You told me once. For me to happen as I am now, I would need to survive to the future so I won’t let anything happen to us.”

What should be an affectionate gesture was an awkward one, warring with years of Sakura’s composure to never touch much less hold her sister again. Sakura melted in more; she used to dream of this before she met Shirou. She wanted to take Rin’s hands but she couldn’t. She couldn’t touch her sister now. Not as she was now, when she had become this.

This disaster of life.

This was all wrong. All of it!

Sakura pulled away from the Servant for the second time, holding her arms around herself to avoid touching. It was too much. This person. Their claims. These clothes…

She was naked.

She had been naked.

Violet eyes widened and pupils shrank to pinpoints. Sakura slammed her eyes shut to block out the revelation.

“You…you saw me like that.” Her lips trembled.

It was bad enough Rin would know of what happened. Of course Rin would see her now at her worst, fresh from the worms, defiled and naked.

No. No. No. “Down there…in the pit…you saw…” She gulped. “You didn’t know?”

“We didn’t.” Rider gravely confirmed. “I mean, she didn’t know. She found out later and she was horrified.”

Sakura stayed silent. Rin was horrified by her.

“We, my Servant and I, were investigating the Matou household when we found...that pit.” The goddess balled up her own fists. “If I knew, I would have done something; anything. Or as much as I could have at age six when you were taken.”

Age six.

When you were taken.

Nothing ever mattered. If what this Servant was saying was true, Rin never knew and all these years, she was waiting for nothing. She meant nothing.

She could imagine the type of sister she was in the future, what the Servant hadn’t said. Even now, her sister didn’t have anything to praise her with and who could blame her? What good was she to Rin now as she was after the Matous? They were all that would take her, after she’d been damaged and discarded.

No one took in thrown away garbage.

“I’m going back to the Matous. You’re too late.” Sakura whispered. She stood up from the bench. “You are free to go Rider. No, I won’t be your Master but I won’t give you to Shinji either.”

She wanted to cry but she was just too tired. Step by step, she walked away from the kneeling goddess.

The Servant reached out a hand but didn’t connect to the girl’s back. The hand dropped. All the power of a goddess and she couldn’t fix this. Her blue eyes started watering because what else could she do? Her sister didn’t believe her. She really was useless…

Sakura had expected the woman to go away or to keep talking but instead it was just silent until she heard a clink of chains. Briefly she turned to find the goddess had gotten up only to slump into a seat of the playground’s swing set. All her exuberance had been drained before the war could even start.

The girl returned to her path, walking away.

Rider tightened her grip on the swing. “For whatever it is worth. That’s why I’m here, even if we’re late.”

“You told me you were barely treated as a human. That you need permission to even breathe.” The somber and quiet voice did not suit an arrogant, upbeat goddess but a young mortal woman who had lost.

Sakura stopped.

“You told me that the Matou magecraft was carved into you. You told me of the pain every day. So much pain.”

The girl turned around.

“How terrified you were to eat because everything was poison.” Her sister was crying. For her.

“You told me they rejoiced in your pain.” That flicker of ferocity on the goddess’ face should have scared Sakura but it didn’t. It looked like Rin when she was stubborn and righteous. Rider turned her head, looking for a target and let a well-aimed shot of mana shoot from her finger pointed like a gun. The tree was completely incinerated before the sound of the explosion boomed.

“You waited eleven years; why didn’t I figure it out sooner?”

Rider took deep breaths. Instead of the confident facade seen earlier, it was broken into tears and she didn’t care who saw. There was no one to impress anymore. After all, she had failed. “If I could pay for your pain I would have. Easier to see myself suffer than to have known you were suffering this whole time and I did nothing. They won’t hurt you anymore. Not while I am here.”

“You don’t have to forgive her—us. It’s one thing we can’t change but I swear to you we’re here now to make up for it. I will protect my sister.”

She was shocked to find Sakura now sitting on the swing next to her, crying as tears fell without a voice. Her hands clutched the handles.

“It’s too late to save me.” Sakura stated with no emotion yet at odds with her tears, her body unable to agree on a feeling.

“It’s never too late to save you and that’s what we’re going to do!” Rider stood and enveloped her arms around the girl.

Sakura couldn’t stop crying.

How long had it been since she was hugged? Oh she was touched in the Matou household but never hugged. Not like this. This time she didn’t pull away; she dived. She smelt the sea and ocean wind in the Servant’s hair. The tears kept falling, faster now. The goddess eased her embrace enough so the girl could see her face.

“Let me try again.” Ruby eyes met hers. It was Rin’s face, actually looking at her for once. Rin smiled. “Will you be my sister?”

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

Disclaimer: I do not own Fate/stay night, Fate/Grand Order, or any of the related properties from Type-Moon and other IP holders.

AN: I’m well aware Ishtar could not normally be summoned. I’m still writing this.

Thanks to the anon who asked for the first chapter. Especially since this kept me sane when I had COVID-19 over the winter holidays and I wanted to do something more than sleep for 16 hours a days.

If anyone feels bad about procrastinating, I know for a fact that I got this idea on January 14, 2018 after seeing Fate/stay night: Heaven’s Feel - presage flower that day. It only took four years for me to type up a whole chapter :3

I don’t know how long it will take to write this fic that’s been fermenting since I saw Presage Flower but to give you a little preview of the chapter titles:

1 Wish

2 Sisters

3 Words of Power

4th Holy Grail War

5 Elements

6 Lives

7 Gates

8-Pointed Star

#Fate/stay night #Fate stay night #fate stay night heaven's feel #Fate Grand Order #FGO #Fate/Grand Order #Fate/stay night: Heaven's Queen #Fate Ishtar #Matou Sakura

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silkylious · 3 years

Text

Brief overview of what it means to be Me/Na

I feel bad for clogging up people’s dashboards with this type of discourse every couple of days (even if I know it’s not my doing) instead of posting content, which is what people followed me for (honestly kinda discouraging when this is most of what I see when I log on here). Plus I’m honestly getting tired of addressing this over and over again. So here you go, one last post to put this all to rest, hopefully you’ll learn something new from this. I won’t be responding to any anons like this after this post.

Here’s a couple of things anons have said about me where I just chose to block them and then move on with my day:

(got this masterpiece a while ago over a ship of all things, Arabic is a language not an ethnicity sweetheart)

(not really much to say here, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they didn't know my nationality. Still disgusting)

I even got one that I refuse to share on here out of respect for myself and other POC (involved a racial slur pertaining to another race, honestly hats off to you for being creatively the worst human being imaginable). One moment I’m called racial slurs, the next I’m not even acknowledged for my ethnicity. So which is it? Tell me anons, am I a goat fucker or a white cracker, hm?

Actually I’ll answer that one for you, since you seem to be lacking some cogs up in your noggin.

I doubt many people have heard of the term Mena. Hell, I myself was introduced to it not too long ago, and I’m Mena. That tells you a lot already about the erasure of my culture in western societies.

Mena simply stands for Middle eastern and North African, which most people generalize as “Arabs” which isn’t entirely accurate considering the fact that Iran is a middle eastern country but not an Arab state.

As you can see, there are a lot of countries that fall under the umbrella term Mena. The amazing geographical advantage this area held led to colonization. Colonization dates centuries back in time, speaking for my homeland Egypt, we’ve been subject to colonization dating back to Ancient Egypt. First came the Greeks, then the Romans, then with the introduction of Islamic rule came an era of medieval dynasties originally from Saudi Arabia ending with the rise of the Mamluk sultanate which was composed of several tribes and groups of nomadic Turks. Then came the ottoman empire which reigned for over 5 centuries, with some interference from the French around the 1790′s which lasted about two decades, until modern-era Egypt which was under British imperialism. It’s important to note that pre-modern era, the main ethnic group in north Africa were called the Berbers (there are other names used to refer to them), who had pale skin despite their black ancestors, yet still had distinctly different features compared to western and north European Caucasians.

This is all speaking about one fucking country, and I didn’t even go into detail to save time. Do you people not realize the ethnic diversity in the middle east and north Africa?

Generally speaking we’ve had European influences (British and French colonization), Euro-Hispanic influences (Portugal and Spain colonization), a large number of countries have typically Persian features (mostly in the Persian gulf and Iran). I haven’t even scratched the surface here.

With all this ethnic diversity you can now clearly see the need for an umbrella term to house the variety of ethnic groups and sub-groups here. Mena is no way, shape or form a good indicative of the ethnic background of each specific area but it’s a fucking start.

When people from North Africa, the middle east or southwest Asia migrate, they have to legally write down that they’re white or some other race because there’s no option for us. I mean shit, I got called white twice on here, even though the third thing on my about me page is literally my nationality. It's erasure.

I can’t even begin to describe how empty I feel regarding all of this; getting degraded because of my race when it’s convenient and getting my whole ethnic identity disregarded when it’s convenient.

I know as someone with a pale skin tone, I have it way easier than other Mena who have darker skin colors, I wont sit here and try to pretend that colorism doesn’t exist. Because it does, and it’s disgusting. But at least have the common decency to address me correctly, I can’t count the amount of times I’ve mentioned my ethnicity/nationality and waited with baited breath for some sort of insult.

Before you make baseless assumptions about me, please at the very least take two seconds out of your day to check the link in my description. It’s there for a reason.

#silky rants #tw racial slurs #tw racism #tw discourse

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chrisgoesrock · 3 years

Audio

03. Apache - Craig Smith (Maitreya Kali) - Color Fantasy - 3.50

Craig Vincent Smith (April 25, 1945 – March 16, 2012) was an American musician, songwriter and actor. He began his career in the 1960s playing pop and Folk music, and appearing on The Andy Williams Show. Smith wrote several songs that were recorded by successful artists of the time including Glen Campbell, The Monkees, and Andy Williams. After experimenting with drugs while travelling on the hippie trail, he suffered mental health problems which worsened over time. He released two solo albums, Apache and Inca, in the early 1970s under the names Maitreya Kali and Satya Sai Maitreya Kali. After spending nearly three years in prison for assaulting his mother, he spent the majority of the next 35 years homeless.

Early and personal life. Smith was born in Los Angeles, the son of Charles "Chuck" Smith and Marguerite "Carole" Smith (née Lundquist). His father was a descendant of gospel songwriter Charles H. Gabriel. His mother was of Swedish and German descent. Smith had two older brothers and one younger sister. Chuck Smith had worked as a manager at the Jade Room, a nightclub owned by Larry Potter, and was known by the stage name Chuck Barclay. After World War Two he worked as a welder and a salesman. Chuck died in 1978, aged 64, from a stroke, and Carole died in 1998, aged 82, from pulmonary disease.

Smith attended Grant High School, becoming class president and being on the school gymnastics team. He graduated in June 1963, and turned down a number of offers from colleges in order to pursue a career in the entertainment industry.

Career 1963–1966: the Good Time Singers. In August 1963 Smith was recruited by Michael Storm and Tom Drake (who had performed together as the Other Singers) to join the Good Time Singers, a band formed to replace the New Christy Minstrels on The Andy Williams Show. From December 1963 to January 1964 Smith and Storm also performed shows with Gordon and Sheila MacRae, supported by their daughters Heather and Meredith. The Good Time Singers released their debut self-titled album in January 1964, and their second album One Step More in October 1964. In between the albums they had embarked on a 17-city tour. Around this time Smith began songwriting, and he wrote a song called "Christmas Holiday", which was recorded by Andy Williams for his 1965 album Merry Christmas. As the Good Times Singers' was ending, Smith and fellow bandmember Lee Montgomery intended to form a new duo called Craig & Lee, but Smith had to pull out after successfully auditioning for a new ABC television show, called The Happeners. Smith had previously unsuccessfully auditioned for The Monkees. The pilot for The Happeners was filmed in November 1965. The Good Times Singers' contract for The Andy Williams Show was not renewed past 1966.

1966–1967: The Happeners and Chris & Craig. After a successful audition process, Smith won the role of Alan Howard on The Happeners. The show was to be directed by David Greene, and was a mix of acting and singing, set in New York and based on the fictional eponymous folk trio. However, ABC declined to pick up the show following the pilot episode. Smith and his The Happeners co-star Chris Ducey decided to form a musical duo called Chris & Craig. They moved into an apartment together and began writing songs. They signed to Capitol Records, recording a number of demos throughout the summer of 1966. Their first single, "Isha", was written by Ducey b/w "I Need You" written by Smith, and was produced by Steve Douglas utilizing session musicians Hal Blaine and Carol Kaye of The Wrecking Crew. It was released in July 1966. Another single, "I Cant't Go On" (written by Ducey), was produced with the same line up. Originally an acoustic duo utitilizing session musicians, during their later 1966 sessions they began experimenting with a full band, and in November 1966 they played a show supporting the Mothers of Invention with such a full band, with Smith and Ducey playing electric guitars. Throughout late 1966 and early 1967 the duo continued to write and record more songs, but they were never released by the label. In 1967 Smith befriended Gábor Szabó and the Beach Boys, unsuccessfully offering to write songs for the latter. In early 1967 Chris & Craig began playing with a permanent backing band. Through their friendship with Michael Nesmith of the Monkees, they hired Jerry Perenchio as their manager. They changed their name to the Penny Arcade, shortly becoming the Penny Arkade for trademark reasons.

1967–1968: the Penny Arkade. Nesmith began producing Smith and Ducey, initially pairing them with John London (bass) and Johnny Raines (drums). They were eventually replaced by Donald F. Glut on bass (who had appeared in an earlier incarnation of the band) and Bobby Donaho on drums. While the band worked on their own material, Smith continued to write songs, including "Salesman" for the Monkees, and "Hands of the Clock" and "Lazy Sunny Day" for Heather MacRae. Smith was also credited as co-producer for the songs, alongside Bob Thiele. He also wrote "Holly" for Williams. Nesmith took the band into a studio to record their album. One of the songs written at this time by Smith was "Country Girl", which was later recorded and released by Glen Campbell for his Try a Little Kindness album. The album never materialised, but some of the songs were collected and released as Not the Freeze in 2004. After a bad review of one of their live shows, the band decided to concentrate on writing and recording songs. In early 1968 they unsuccessfully auditioned for the role of house band on the TV show Peyton Place. In February 1968 Smith and his father went into business together, running a bar called the Buckeye Inn. In late 1968 Smith was associating with the Manson Family, and exploring an interest in Eastern philosophy, particularly Transcendental Meditation. Smith eventually left the Penny Arkade and decided to go travelling. The band continued without Smith until 1969, renamed as the Armadillo and with Bob Arthur as a replacement guitarist.

1968: travelling to Asia. After previously smoking small amounts of marijuana with friends, Smith began experimenting with LSD in 1968. During his travels Smith took LSD on a "regular" basis, and he smoked "copious amounts of hashish" while in Afghanistan. Smith decided to travel to India alone, with just a guitar and a backpack. He set off to join the hippie trail, arriving in Turkey in October 1968, possibly via Austria and Greece. Smith met fellow Western travellers (an Irishman and two American women) in Istanbul, and they set off together in a VW van, intending to drive to Delhi. After the van broke down, they hitched a ride in a lorry transporting olive oil, before taking a bus to Iran. They passed through Afghanistan, with Smith deciding to leave his companions for a few days in Kandahar while they travelled on to Kabul. Smith never joined them in Kabul; when his companions returned to Kandahar a few months later, they heard rumours that he had "gone crazy", running through the market with a knife threatening people, and then disappeared. It later became apparent that after threatening a market vendor, Smith had been beaten close to death and robbed, and possibly kidnapped and raped. Smith possibly spent some time in an Afghan insane asylum, where he is thought to have developed acute schizophrenia. It is not known if Smith ever reached India, although he and his travelogue claims he did visit India and reconnected with the Maharishi and went to Nepal.

1969–1970: return to United States and travelling to South America. Smith returned to the United States in late 1968 or early 1969, initially living back with his parents. He was possibly institutionalized and medicated for a short period. By this stage he was using the name "Maitreya Kali", which he intended to become his legal name, although this didn't happen until 1971. He continued to receive royalty checks from his historical songwriting for Williams and Campbell, amongst others. After his girlfriend left him, Smith decided to travel to South America, spending time in Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, and the Galapagos Islands of Chile. Returning from South America, Smith reunited with his girlfriend, and they became engaged. When the engagement ended, Smith ripped up the wedding dress his fiancée had chosen. Following another brief re-connection, the relationship ended for good when Smith violently threatened one of her male friends.

1970–1971: deterioration in mental health. Smith claimed to have mystical powers, and thought he was a messiah. He prophesied that he would be "King of the World" by 2000. He claimed to be a reincarnation of Jesus, Buddha, and Hitler. As his erratic and bizarre behavior became more pronounced, such as claiming voices were telling him to kill people, his friends started to ignore him. One friend eventually had to obtain a restraining order against Smith. His appearance became more and more unkempt, with long hair and a wild beard. At one point, he shaved his head and beard off, and dressed in robes, his appearance comparable to a Buddhist monk, although his hair and beard would later grow back. He visited Heather and Sheila MacRae in Miami, and was asked to leave by Sheila's new husband after he woke up to find Smith standing over their bed with a knife. Heather saw him again in Los Angeles in 1972, when he "looked really scary [...] just totally looked insane, and would say weird things."

1971–1972: Apache and Inca. Smith wrote two solo albums Apache and Inca in 1971, which were self-released in 1972. In the liner notes to both albums, Smith claims to have played every instrument. The liner notes as a whole have been described as "bizarre [and] rambling", and display his belief system. Apache was released on his own 'Akashic Records', and features three songs from the Penny Arkade recording sessions. Inca was released a few months after Apache, in the summer of 1972, not as a standalone album but as a double gatefold with Apache on his new 'United Kingdom of America Records' label. Like Apache, Inca also features songs from the Penny Arkade recording sessions. The albums were mainly distributed to Smith's friends or sold on the street.

1973–1976: prison. After the albums were released, Smith sold his car with the intention of going to Ethiopia. His mental health problems continued, such as suggesting to a friend that they fight to the death using samurai swords. He also had a small black spider tattooed in the middle of his forehead in 1972 or 1973. On April 22, 1973, Smith attacked his mother at the family home. An attempted murder charge was not established, and following a psychiatric examination, he pleaded 'no contest' to a charge of assault. He was sentenced in November 1973 to six months to life, the maximum sentence for the offence, and the Judge suggested intense medical and psychiatric treatment. He began his sentence at the California Institution for Men, before transferring to the Deuel Vocational Institution in December 1973. He transferred again, to the California Men's Colony, in February 1974. He was granted parole at the fourth attempt, and was released from prison in June 1976.

1977–2012: later years and death. Suzannah Jordan, the third member of The Happeners trio, ran into Smith in LA in 1977; he was homeless but did not display any mental health issues. He drifted in and out of mental hospitals until the mid-1980s when funding was cut, and would then spend the next years homeless. He also had various run-ins with the law. In 1981 or 1982 he saw another old friend and told her he had been recording music. He has been indeed recording music, according to Mike Stax, as late as the late 1990s, which includes the 1994 song "Waves", which was released on the 2018 CD version of the album Love is Our Existence. By the early 2000s his "ramblings" had moved from Eastern philosophy/his Maitreya Kali persona to aliens. Smith died on March 16, 2012. His family declined to collect his ashes, and they were eventually collected by journalist Mike Stax.

★ Apache (Released under the name Satya Sai Maitreya Kali) (Akashic Records, 1971)

01. Ice and Snow 03:25 02. Black Swan 02:50 03. Color Fantasy 03:51 04. Voodoo Spell 02:01 05. Salesman 02:55 06. Music Box 02:55 07. Love Is Our Existence 02:30 08. One Last Farewell 02:35 09. I'm Walkin' Solo 02:28 10. Silk and Ivory 03:05 11. Swim 02:43 12. Revelation 03:12

★ Inca (Released under the name Satya Sai Maitreya Kali) (United Kingdom of America Records, 1972)

01. Lights of Dawn 02:56 02. Thesis 02:46 03. Knot the Freize 12:31 04. Jesus Owns 01:32 05. Sam Pan Boat 03:18 06. Fearless Men 03:38 07. Cheryl 03:05 08. Country Girl 02:51 09. Old Man 03:47 10. King 00:08

#Apache #Craigh Smith #Maitreya Kali #Color Fantasy #03:50

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blackswaneuroparedux · 4 years

Text

Treat Your S(h)elf: The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise Of The East India Company (2019)

It was not the British government that began seizing great chunks of India in the mid-eighteenth century, but a dangerously unregulated private company headquartered in one small office, five windows wide, in London, and managed in India by a violent, utterly ruthless and intermittently mentally unstable corporate predator – Clive.

William Dalrymple, The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise Of The East India Company

“One of the very first Indian words to enter the English language was the Hindustani slang for plunder: loot. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this word was rarely heard outside the plains of north India until the late eighteenth century, when it became a common term across Britain.”

With these words, populist historian William Dalrymple, introduces his latest book The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company. It is a perfect companion piece to his previous book ‘The Last Mughal’ which I have also read avidly. I’m a big fan of William Dalrymple’s writings as I’ve followed his literary output closely.

And this review is harder to be objective when you actually know the author and like him and his family personally. Born a Scot he was schooled at Ampleforth and Cambridge before he wrote his first much lauded travel book (In Xanadu 1989) just after graduation about his trek through Iran and South Asia. Other highly regarded books followed on such subjects as Byzantium and Afghanistan but mostly about his central love, Delhi. He has won many literary awards for his writings and other honours. He slowly turned to writing histories and co-founding the Jaipur Literary Festival (one of the best I’ve ever been to). He has been living on and off outside Delhi on a farmhouse rasing his children and goats with his artist wife, Olivia. It’s delightfully charming.

Whatever he writes he never disappoints. This latest tome I enjoyed immensely even if I disagreed with some of his conclusions.

Dalrymple recounts the remarkable rise of the East India Company from its founding in 1599 to 1803 when it commanded an army twice the size of the British Army and ruled over the Indian subcontinent. Dalrymple targets the British East India Company for its questionable activities over two centuries in India. In the process, he unmasks a passel of crude, extravagant, feckless, greedy, reprobate rascals - the so-called indigenous rulers over whom the Company trampled to conquer India.

None of this is news to me as I’m already familiar with British imperial history but also speaking more personally. Like many other British families we had strong links to the British Empire, especially India, the jewel in its crown. Those links went all the way back to the East India Company. Typically the second or third sons of the landed gentry or others from the rising bourgeois classes with little financial prospects or advancement would seek their fortune overseas and the East India Company was the ticket to their success - or so they thought.

The East India Company tends to get swept under the carpet and instead everyone focuses on the British Empire. But the birth of British colonialism wasn’t engineered in the halls of Whitehall or the Foreign Office but by what Dalrymple calls, “handful of businessmen from a boardroom in the City of London”. There wasn’t any grand design to speak of, just the pursuit of profit. And it was this that opened a Pandora’s Box that defined the following two centuries of British imperialism of India and the rise of its colonial empire.

The 18th-century triumph and then fall of the Company, and its role in founding what became Queen Victoria’s Indian empire is an astonishing story, which has been recounted in books including The Honourable Company by John Keay (1991) and The Corporation that Changed the World by Nick Robins (2006). It is well-trodden territory but Dalrymple, a historian and author who lives in India and has written widely about the Mughal empire, brings to it erudition, deep insight and an entertaining style.

He also takes a different and topical twist on the question how did a joint stock company founded in Elizabethan England come to replace the glorious Mughal Empire of India, ruling that great land for a hundred years? The answer lies mainly in the title of the book. The Anarchy refers not to the period of British rule but to the period before that time. Dalrymple mentions his title is drawn from a remark attributed to Fakir Khair ud-Din Illahabadi, whose Book of Admonition provided the author with the source material and who said of the 18th century “the once peaceful realm of India became the abode of Anarchy.” But Dalrymple goes further and tells the story as a warning from history on the perils of corporate power. The American edition sports the provocative subtitle, “The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire” (compared with the neutral British subtitle, “The Relentless Rise of the East India Company”). However I think the story Dalrymple really tells is also of how government power corrupts commercial enterprise.

It’s an amazing story and Dalrymple tells it with verve and style drawing, as in his previous books, on underused Indian, Persian and French sources. Dalrymple has a wonderful eye for detail e.g. After the Company’s charter is approved in 1600 the merchant adventures scout for ships to undertake the India voyage: “They have been to Deptford to ‘view severall shippes,’ one of which, the May Flowre, was later famous for a voyage heading in the opposite direction”.

What a Game of Thrones styled tv series it would make, and what a tragedy it unfolded in reality. A preface begins with the foundation of the Company by “Customer Smythe” in 1599, who already had experience trading with the Levant. Certain merchants were little better than pirates and the British lagged behind the Dutch, the Portuguese, the French and even the Spanish in their global aspirations. It was with envious eyes that they saw how Spain had so effectively despoiled Central America. The book fast-forwards to 1756, with successive chapters, and a degree of flexibility in chronology, taking the reader up to 1799. What was supposed to be a few trading posts in India and an import/export agreement became, within a century, a geopolitical force in its own right with its own standing army larger than the British Army.

It is a story of Machiavels from both Britain and India, of pitched battles, vying factions, the use of technology in warfare, strange moments of mutual respect, parliamentary impeachment featuring two of the greatest orators of the day (Edmund Burke and Richard Sheridan), blindings, rapes, psychopaths on both sides, unimaginable wealth, avarice, plunder, famine and worse. It is, in particular – because of the feuding groups loyal to the Mughals, the Marathas, the Rohilla Afghans, the so-called “bankers of the world” the Jagat Seths, and local tribal warlords – a kind of Game Of Thrones with pepper, silk and saltpetre. And that is even before we get to the British, characters such as Robert Clive “of India”, victor at the Battle of Plassey and subsequent suicide; the problematic figure of the cultured Warren Hastings, the whistle-blower who became an unfair scapegoat for Company atrocities; and Richard Wellesley, older brother to the more famous Arthur who became the Duke of Wellington. Co-ordinating such a vast canvas requires a deft hand, and Dalrymple manages this (although the list of dramatis personae is useful). There is even a French mercenary who is described as a “pastry cook, pyrotechnic and poltroon”.

When the Red Dragon slipped anchor at Woolwich early in 1601 to exploit the new royal charter granted to the East India Company, the venture started inauspiciously. The ship lay becalmed off Dover for two months before reaching the Indonesian sultanate of Aceh and seizing pepper, cinnamon and cloves from a passing Portuguese vessel. The Company was a strange beast from the start “a joint stock company founded by a motley bunch of explorers and adventurers to trade the world’s riches. This was partly driven by Protestant England’s break with largely Catholic continental Europe. Isolated from their baffled neighbours, the English were forced to scour the globe for new markets and commercial openings further afield. This they did with piratical enthusiasm” William Dalrymple writes. From these Brexit-like roots, it grew into an enterprise that has never been replicated “a business with its own army that conquered swaths of India, seizing minerals, jewels and the wealth of Mughal emperors. This was mercenary globalisation, practised by what the philosopher Edmund Burke called “a state in the guise of a merchant””.

The East India Company’s charter began with an original sin - Elizabeth I granted the company a perpetual monopoly on trade with the East Indies. With its monopoly giving it enhanced access to credit and vast wealth from Indian trade, it’s no surprise that the company grew to control an eighth of all Britain’s imports by the 1750s. Yet it was still primarily a trading company, with some military capacity to defend its factories. That changed thanks to a well-known problem in institutional economics - opportunism by a company agent, in this case Robert Clive of India, who in time became the richest self-made man in the world in time.

Like many start-ups, it had to pivot in its early days, giving up on competing with the entrenched Dutch East India Company in the Spice Islands, and instead specialising in cotton and calico from India. It was an accidental strategy, but it introduced early officials including Sir Thomas Roe to “a world of almost unimaginable splendour” in India, run by the cultured Mughals.

The Nawab of Bengal called the English “a company of base, quarrelling people and foul dealers”, and one local had it that “they live like Englishmen and die like rotten sheep”. But the Company had on its side the adaptiveness and energy of capitalism. It also had a force of 260,000, which was decisive when it stopped negotiating with the Mughals and went to war. After the Battle of Buxar in 1764, “the English gentlemen took off their hats to clap the defeated Shuja ud-Daula, before reinstalling him as a tame ruler, backed by the Company’s Indian troops, and paying it a huge subsidy. “We have at last arrived at that critical Conjuncture, which I have long foreseen” wrote Robert Clive, the “curt, withdrawn and socially awkward young accountant” whose risk-taking and aggression secured crucial military victories for the Company. It was a high point for “the most opulent company in the world,” as Robert Clive described it.

So how was a humble group of British merchants able to take over one of the great empires of history? Under Aurangzeb, the fanatic and ruthless Mughal emperor (1658-1707), the empire grew to its largest geographic extent but only because of decades of continuous warfare and attendant taxing, pillaging, famine, misery and mass death. It was a classic case of the eventual fall of a great power through military over-extension.

At Aurangzeb’s death in 1707, a power struggle ensued but none could command. “Mughal succession disputes and a string of weak and powerless emperors exacerbated the sense of imperial crisis: three emperors were murdered (one was, in addition, first blinded with a hot needle); the mother of one ruler was strangled and the father of another forced off a precipice on his elephant. In the worst year of all, 1719, four different Emperors occupied the Peacock Throne in rapid succession. According to the Mughal historian Khair ud-Din Illahabadi … ‘Disorder and corruption no longer sought to hide themselves and the once peaceful realm of India became a lair of Anarchy’”.

Seeing the chaos at the top, local rulers stopped paying tribute and tried to establish their own power bases. The result was more warfare and a decline in trade as banditry made it unsafe to travel. The Empire appeared ripe to fall. “Delhi in 1737 had around 2 million inhabitants. Larger than London and Paris combined, it was still the most prosperous and magnificent city between Ottoman Istanbul and Imperial Edo (Tokyo). As the Empire fell apart around it, it hung like an overripe mango, huge and inviting, yet clearly in decay, ready to fall and disintegrate”.

In 1739 the mango was plucked by the Persian warlord Nader Shah. Using the latest military technology, horse-mounted cannon, Shah devastated a much larger force of Mughal troops and “managed to capture the Emperor himself by the simple ruse of inviting him to dinner, then refusing to let him leave.” In Delhi, Nader Shah massacred a hundred thousand people and then, after 57 days of pillaging and plundering, left with two hundred years’ worth of Mughal treasure carried on “700 elephants, 4,000 camels and 12,000 horses carrying wagons all laden with gold, silver and precious stones”.

At this time, the East India Company would have probably preferred a stable India but through a series of unforeseen events it gained in relative power as the rest of India crumbled. With the decline of the Mughals, the biggest military power in India was the Marathas and they attacked Bengal, the richest Indian province, looting, plundering, raping and killing as many as 400,000 civilians. Fearing the Maratha hordes, Bengalis fled to the only safe area in the region, the company stronghold in Calcutta. “What was a nightmare for Bengal turned out to be a major opportunity for the Company. Against artillery and cities defended by the trained musketeers of the European powers, the Maratha cavalry was ineffective. Calcutta in particular was protected by a deep defensive ditch especially dug by the Company to keep the Maratha cavalry at bay, and displaced Bengalis now poured over it into the town that they believed offered better protection than any other in the region, more than tripling the size of Calcutta in a decade. … But it was not just the protection of a fortification that was the attraction. Already Calcutta had become a haven of private enterprise, drawing in not just Bengali textile merchants and moneylenders, but also Parsis, Gujaratis and Marwari entrepreneurs and business houses who found it a safe and sheltered environment in which to make their fortunes”. In an early example of what might be called a “charter city,”

English commercial law also attracted entrepreneurs to Calcutta. The “city’s legal system and the availability of a framework of English commercial law and formal commercial contracts, enforceable by the state, all contributed to making it increasingly the destination of choice for merchants and bankers from across Asia”.

The Company benefited by another unforeseen circumstance, Siraj ud-Daula, the Nawab (ruler) of Bengal, was a psychotic rapist who got his kicks from sinking ferry boats in the Ganges and watching the travelers drown. Siraj was uniformly hated by everyone who knew him. “Not one of the many sources for the period — Persian, Bengali, Mughal, French, Dutch or English — has a good word to say about Siraj”. Despite his flaws, Siraj might have stayed in power had he not made the fatal mistake of striking his banker. The Jagat Seth bankers took their revenge when Siraj ud-Daula came into conflict with the Company under Robert Clive. Conspiring with Clive, the Seths arranged for the Nawab’s general to abandon him and thus the Battle of Plassey was won and the stage set for the East India Company.

In typical fashion, Dalrymple devotes half a dozen pages to the Company’s defeat at Pollidur in 1780 by Haider Ali and his son, Tipu, but a few paragraphs to its significance (Haider could have expelled the Company from much of southern India but failed to pursue his advantage). The reader is not spared the gory details.

“Such as were saved from immediate death,” reads a quote from a British survivor about his fellow troops, “were so crowded together…several were in a state of suffocation, while others from the weight of the dead bodies that had fallen upon them were fixed to the spot and therefore at the mercy of the enemy…Some were trampled under the feet of elephants, camels, and horses. Those who were stripped of their clothing lay exposed to the scorching sun, without water and died a lingering and miserable death, becoming prey to ravenous wild animals.”

Many further battles and adventures would ensue before the British were firmly ensconced by 1803 but the general outline of the story remained the same. The EIC prospered due to a combination of luck, disarray among the Company’s rivals and good financing.

The Mughal emperor Shah Alam, for example, had been forced to flee Delhi leaving it to be ruled by a succession of Persian, Afghani and Maratha warlords. But after wandering across eastern India for many years, he regathered his army, retook Delhi and almost restored Mughal power. At a key moment, however, he invited into the Red Fort with open arms his “adopted” son, Ghulam Qadir. Ghulam was the actual son of Zabita Khan who had been defeated by Shah Alam sixteen years earlier. Ghulam, at that time a young boy, had been taken hostage by Shah Alam and raised like a son, albeit a son whom Alam probably used as a catamite. Expecting gratitude, Shah Alam instead found Ghulam driven mad. Ghulam Qadir, a psychopath, ordered a minion to blind Shah Alam: “With his Afghan knife….Qandahari Khan first cut one of Shah Alam’s eyes out of its socket; then, the other eye was wrenched out…Shah Alam flopped on the ground like a chicken with its neck cut.” Ghulam took over the Red Fort and after cutting out the eyes of the Mughal emperor, immediately calling for a painter to immortalise the event.

A few pages on, Ghulam Qadir gets his just dessert. Captured by an ally of the emperor, he is hung in a cage, his ears, nose, tongue, and upper lip cut off, his eyes scooped out, then his hands cut off, followed by his genitals and head. Dalrymple out-grosses himself with the description of Ahmad Shah Durrani, the Afghan invader of India, dying of leprosy with “maggots….dropping from the upper part of his putrefying nose into his mouth and food as he ate.”

By 1803, the Company’s army had defeated the Maratha gunners and their French officers, installed Shah Alam as a puppet back on his imitation Peacock Throne in Delhi, and the Company ruled all of India virtually.

Indeed as late as 1803, the Marathas too might have defeated the British but rivalry between Tukoji Holkar and Daulat Rao Scindia prevented an alliance. “Here Wellesley’s masterstroke was to send Holkar a captured letter from Scindia in which the latter plotted with Peshwa Baji Rao to overthrow Holkar … ‘After the war is over, we shall both wreak our full vengeance upon him.’ … After receiving this, Holkar, who had just made the first two days march towards Scindia, turned back and firmly declined to join the coalition”.

For Dalrymple the crucial point was the unsanctioned actions of Robert Clive and the bullying of Shah Alam in the rise of the East India Company.

The Jagat Seths then bribed the company men to attack Siraj. Clive, with an eye for personal gain, was happy attack Siraj at the behest of the Jagat Seths even if the company directors had no part in this. They “consistently abhorred ambitious plans of conquest,” he notes. Clive’s defeat of Siraj at Plassey and the subsequent chain of events that led to Shah Alam giving tax-raising powers to the company in 1765 may be history’s most egregious example of the principal-agent problem.

Thus, the East India Company acquired by accident the ultimate economic rent — a secure, unearned income stream. Company cronies initially thwarted attempts at oversight in London, but a government bailout in 1772 following the Bengal Famine and the collapse of Ayr Bank confirmed the crown’s interest in the company, which had now become Too Big to Fail. Adam Smith called the company’s twin roles of trader and sovereign a “strange absurdity” in Book IV of The Wealth of Nations (unfortunately, Smith’s long condemnatory discussion of the company receives only a cursory reference from Dalrymple).

As part of the bailout, Parliament passed the Tea Act to help the company dump its unsold products on the American colonies by giving it the monopoly on legal tea there (Americans drank mostly smuggled Dutch tea). This, of course, led to the Boston Tea Party and the American Revolution.

By 1784, Parliament had set up an oversight board that increasingly dictated the company’s political affairs. The attempted impeachment of Governor-General Warren Hastings by the House of Lords in 1788 confirmed that the company was no longer its own master. By that stage, the company was an arm of the state. Dalrymple’s coverage of the subsequent racist policies of Lord Cornwallis and the military adventures of Richard Wellesley make for compelling reading, but they are not examples of unfettered corporate power.

Overlaid on top of luck and disorder, was the simple fact that the Company paid its bills. Indeed, the Company paid its sepoys (Indian troops) considerably more than did any of its rivals and it paid them on time. It was able to do so because Indian bankers and moneylenders trusted the Company. “In the end it was this access to unlimited reserves of credit, partly through stable flows of land revenues, and partly through collaboration of Indian moneylenders and financiers, that in this period finally gave the Company its edge over their Indian rivals. It was no longer superior European military technology, nor powers of administration that made the difference. It was the ability to mobilise and transfer massive financial resources that enabled the Company to put the largest and best-trained army in the eastern world into the field”.

Dalrymple pretty much loses interest once the Company gains full control. “This book does not aim to provide a complete history of the East India Company,” he writes. He skips past one mention of Hong Kong, which the East India Company seized after the opium wars in China. A few sentences record the 1857 uprising of Indian soldiers that led to the British government taking India from the Company and establishing the Raj that lasted until Indian independence in 1947.

The author makes passing reference to the fact that the struggle for American independence was underway for much of the period about which he writes. He notes that It was British East India Company tea that patriots dumped into Boston harbor in 1773. American colonists were so grateful that the Mysore sultans tied up British forces that might have been deployed in America, they named a warship the Hyder Ali. Lord Cornwallis provides a connection, having surrendered to George Washington at Yorktown in 1781, an event confirming American independence, and turning up in 1786 in India as governor-general, taking Tipu Sultan’s surrender in 1792.

That reference raises an interesting side question that may someday deserve closer examination - Why were American colonists successful in driving off their British overlords. At the same time, Indian aristocracy and the masses over whom they ruled were unable to rid themselves of the British East India Company and the British Raj for another century?

No heroes emerge from Dalrymple’s expansive account that is rich, even overwhelming in detail. He covers two centuries but focuses on the period between 1765 and 1803 when the Company was transformed from a commercial operation to military and totalitarian — to use an appropriate term derived from Sanskrit - juggernaut. Among the multitude of characters involved in this sordid story are a few British names familiar in general history, Robert Clive of India, Warren Hastings, Lord Cornwallis, and Colonel Arthur Wellesley, who was better known long after he departed India as the Duke of Wellington. None - with the exception of Hastings - escape the scathing indictment of Dalrymple’s pen.

At the core of the story we meet Robert Clive, an emblematic character who from being a juvenile delinquent and suicidal lunatic rose to rule India, eventually killing himself in the aftermath of a corruption scandal. In particular Robert Clive comes in for much criticism by Dalrymple. After putting down one rebellion, Clive managed to send back £232 million, of which he personally received £22m. There was a rumour that, on his return to England, his wife’s pet ferret wore a necklace of jewels worth £2,500. Contrast that with the horrors of the 1769 famine: farmers selling their tools, rivers so full of corpses that the fish were inedible, one administrator seeing 40 dead bodies within 20 yards of his home, even cannibalism, all while the Company was stockpiling rice. Some Indian weavers even chopped off their own thumbs to avoid being forced to work and pay the exorbitant taxes that would be imposed on them. The Great Bengal famine of 1770 had already led to unease in London at its methods. “We have murdered, deposed, plundered, usurped,” wrote the Whig politician Horace Walpole. “I stand astonished by my own moderation,” Clive protested, after outrage intensified when the Company had to be bailed out by the British government in 1772. Clive took his own life in disgrace.

Warren Hastings, whom Dalrymple portrays as the more sensitive and sympathetic Company man, was first made governor general of India for 12 years and later endured seven years of impeachment for corruption before acquittal. Hastings showed “deep respect” for India and Indians, writes, Dalrymple, as opposed to most other Europeans in India to suck out as much as possible of the subcontinent’s resources and wealth. “In truth, I love India a little more than my own country,” wrote Hastings, who spoke good Bengali and Urdu, as well as fluent Persian. “(Edmund) Burke had defended Robert Clive (first Governor General of Bengal) against parliamentary enquiry, and so helped exonerate someone who genuinely was a ruthlessly unprincipled plunderer. Now he directed his skills of oratory against Warren Hastings (who was finally impeached), a man who, by virtue of his position, was certainly the symbol of an entire system of mercantile oppression in India, but who had personally done much to begin the process of regulating and reforming the Company, and who had probably done more than any other Company official to rein in the worst excesses of its rule,” Dalrymple writes. At his public impeachment hearing in 1788, Burke thundered: “We have brought before you…..one in whom all the frauds, all the peculation, all the violence, all the tyranny in India are embodied.’ They got the wrong man but, by the time he was cleared in 1795, the British state was steadily absorbing the Company, denouncing its methods but retaining many of its assets.

Dalrymple has a soft spot for a couple of Indian locals. “The British consistently portrayed Tipu as a savage and fanatical barbarian,” Dalrymple writes, “but he was in truth a connoisseur and an intellectual…” Of course, Tipu, Dalrymple confesses a bit later, had rebels’ “arms, legs, ears, and noses cut off before being hanged” as well as forcibly circumcising captives and converting them to Islam.

Emperor Shah Alam (1728-1806) is contemporary for much of the time Dalrymple covers. “His was…a life marked by kindness, decency, integrity and learning at a time when such qualities were in short supply…he…managed to keep the Mughul flame alive through the worst of the Great Anarchy….” Dalrymple portrays a most intriguing figure in Emperor Shah Alam, a man attracted to mysticism and yet as prepared as his contemporaries to double-deal; someone who endures exile and torture and who outlives, albeit in a melancholy fashion, his enemies. Despite his lack of wealth, troops or political power, the very nature of his being emperor still, it seems, inspired affection.

Part of Dalrymple’s excellence is in the use of Indian sources – he takes numerous quotes from Ghulam Hussain Khan, acclaimed by Dalrymple as “brilliant,” who threads the story as an 18th-century historian on his untranslated works, Seir Mutaqherin (Review of Modern Times). Dalrymple has used a trove of company documents in Britain and India as well as Persian-language histories, much of which he shares in English translation with the reader. However he does this a bit too often and portions of his account can seem more assembled than written.

These pages are also brimming with anecdotes retold with Dalrymple’s distinctive delight in the piquant, equivoque and gory: we have historical moments when “it seemed as if it were raining blood, for the drains were streaming with it” (quoted from a report c1740 regarding events that preceded Nadir Shah’s infamous looting of the peacock throne) as well as duels between Company officials so busy with their in-fighting that it’s a miracle they could perform their work at all; there’s also homosexuality, homophobia, sexual torture, castrations, cannibalism, brothels and gonorrhoea.

The principal protagonists of the “Black Hole of Calcutta” incident are both, naturally, certified pervs: Siraj ud-Daula is a “serial bisexual rapist” while his opponent Governor Drake is having an “affair with his sister”. And one particular Mughal governor liked to throw tax defaulters in pits of rotting shit (“the stench was so offensive, that it almost suffocated anyone who came near it”). All this gives one a rough idea of what historically important people were up to according to Dalrymple. But all things considered, Dalrymple’s research is solid and heavily annotated.

However entertaining and widely researched using unused Urdu and Persian sources, Dalrymple’s overall approach doesn’t tell us very much about the general tendency in eighteenth-century imperial activity, and particularly that of the British, that we didn’t already know. And other things he downplays or neglects. Thus, the East India Company was one of a series of ‘national’ East India companies, including those of France, the Netherlands and Sweden. Moreover, for Britain, there was the Hudson Bay Company, the Royal African Company, and the chartered companies involved in North America, as well, for example, as the Bank of England. Delegated authority in this form or shared state/private activities were a major part of governance. To assume from the modern perspective of state authority that this was necessarily inadequate is misleading as well as teleological. Indeed, Dalrymple offers no real evidence for his view. Was Portuguese India, where the state had a larger role, ‘better’?

Secondly, let us look at India as a whole. There is an established scholarly debate to which Dalrymple makes no ground breaking contribution. This debate focuses on the question of whether, after the death in 1707 of the mighty Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb (r. 1658-1707), the focus should be on decline and chaos or, instead, on the development of a tier of powers within the sub-continent, for example Hyderabad. In the latter perspective, the East India Company (EIC) emerges as one and, eventually, the most successful of the successor powers. That raises questions of comparative efficiency and how the EIC succeeded in the Indian military labour market, this helping in defeating the Marathas in the 1800s.

An Indian power, the EIC was also a ‘foreign’ one; although foreignness should not be understood in modern terms. As a ‘foreign’ one, the EIC was not alone among the successful players, and was not even particularly successful, other than against marginal players, until the 1760s. Compared to Nadir Shah of Persia in the late 1730s (on whom Michael Axworthy is well worth reading), or the Afghans from the late 1750s (on whom Jos Gommans is best), the EIC was limited on land. This was part of a longstanding pattern, encompassing indeed, to a degree, the Mughals. Dalrymple fails to address this comparative context adequately.

Dalrymple seems particularly incensed at “corporate violence” and in a (mercifully short) final chapter alludes to Exxon and the United Fruit Company. Indeed Dalrymple has a pitch ” that globalisation is rooted here, albeit that “the world’s largest corporations…..are tame beasts compared with the ravaging territorial appetites of the militarised East India Company.”

It is an interesting question to ask: How might the actions of these corporate raiders have differed from those of a state? It’s not clear, for example, that the EIC was any worse than the average Indian ruler and surely these stationary bandits were better than roving bandits like Nader Shah. The EIC may have looted India but economic historian Tirthankar Roy explains that: “Much of the money that Clive and his henchmen looted from India came from the treasury of the nawab. The Indian princes, ‘walking jeweler’s shops’ as an American merchant called them, spent more money on pearls and diamonds than on infrastructural developments or welfare measures for the poor. If the Company transferred taxpayers’ money from the pockets of an Indian nobleman to its own pockets, the transfer might have bankrupted pearl merchants and reduced the number of people in the harem, but would make little difference to the ordinary Indian.”

Moreover, although it began as a private-firm, the EIC became so regulated by Parliament that Hejeebu (2016) concludes, “After 1773, little of the Company’s commercial ethos survived in India.” Certainly, by the time the brothers Wellesley were making their final push for territorial acquisition, the company directors back in London were pulling out their hair and begging for fewer expensive wars and more trading profits.

So also for eighteenth-century Asia as a whole. Dalrymple has it in for the form of capitalism the EIC represents; but it was less destructive than the Manchu conquest of Xinjiang in the 1750s, or, indeed, the Afghan destruction of Safavid rule in Persia in the early 1720s. Such comparative points would have been offered Dalrymple the opportunity to deploy scholarship and judgment, and, indeed, raise interesting questions about the conceptualisation and methodologies of cross-cultural and diachronic comparison.

Focusing anew on India, the extent to which the Mughal achievement in subjugating the Deccan was itself transient might be underlined, and, alongside consideration, of the Maratha-Mughal struggle in the late seventeenth century, that provides another perspective on subsequent developments. The extent to which Bengal, for example, did not know much peace prior to the EIC is worthy of consideration. It also helps explain why so many local interests found it appropriate, as well as convenient, to ally with the EIC. It brought a degree of protection for the regional economy and offered defence against Maratha, Afghan, and other, attacks and/or exactions. The terms of entry into a British-led global economy were less unwelcome than later nationalist writers might suggest. Dalrymple himself cites Trotsky, who was no guide to the period. To turn to other specifics is only to underline these points.

After Warren Hastings’ impeachment which in effect brought to an end the era when “almost all of India south of [Delhi] was…..effectively ruled by a handful of businessmen from a boardroom in the City of London.” It is hard to find a simple lesson, beyond Dalrymple’s point that talk of Britain having conquered India ‘disguises a much more sinister reality’.

One of the great advantages non-fiction has over fiction is that you cannot make it up, and in the case of the East India Company, you cannot make it up to an extent that beggars belief. William Dalrymple has been for some years one of the most eloquent and assiduous chroniclers of Indian history. With this new work, he sounds a minatory note. The East India Company may be history, but it has warnings for the future. It was “the first great multinational corporation, and the first to run amok”. Wryly, he writes that at least Walmart doesn’t own a fleet of nuclear submarines and Facebook doesn’t have regiments of infantry.

Yet Facebook and Uber does indeed have the potential power to usurp national authority - Facebook can sway elections through its monopoly on how people consume their news for instance. But they do not seize physical territory as Dalrymple states. Even an oil company with private guards in a war-torn country does not compare these days. This doesn’t exonerate corporations though. I know from personal experience of working in the corporate world that it attracts its fair share of psychopaths and cold blooded operators obsessed with the bottom lines of their balance sheets and the worship of the fortunes of their share prices and the lengths they go to would indeed come close to or cross over moral and legal lines. Perhaps the moral is to keep a stern eye on ‘corporate influence, with its fatal blend of power, money and unaccountability’. Clive reflected after Buxar, ‘We must indeed become Nabobs ourselves in Fact if not in Name…..We must go forward, for to retract is impossible.’ That was the nature of the beast.

Speaking of being beastly, some readers may disagree with the more radical views presented in taking apart the imperialist project and showed it for what it was - not about civilising savages, but about brutally exploiting civilised humans by treating them as savages. I think that’s partly true but not the whole story as Dalrymple will freely concede himself. Imperial history is a charged subject and they defy lazy Manichean conclusions of good guys and bad guys.

Dalrymple’s book is an excellent example of popular history - engaging, entertaining, readable, and informative. However, I honestly think he should have stuck to the history and not tried to draw out a trustbusting parallel with today’s big companies. Where the parallels exist, they are to do with cronyism, rent-seeking, and bailouts, all of which are primarily sins of government.

The Anarchy remains though a page-turning history of the rise of the East India Company with plenty of raw material to enjoy and to think about. To my mind the title ‘The Anarchy’ is brilliantly and appositely chosen. There are in fact two anarchies here; the anarchy of the competing regimes in India, and the anarchy – literally, without leaders or rules – of the East India Company itself, a corporation that put itself above law. The dangers of power without governance are depicted in an exemplary fashion. Dalrymple has done a great service in not just writing an eminently readable history of 18th century India, but in reflecting on how so much of it serves as a warning for our own time when chaos runs amok from those seeking to be above the law.

#treat your s(h)elf #books #review #reading #bookgasm #book review #history #east india company #william dalrymple #the anrchy #britain #colonialism #imperialism #british history #india #personal

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So, you’ve decided to invest in XRP Ripple. However, you’re confused and don’t know where to start - you're wondering, how to buy XRP? With so many options available, it can be difficult to choose the best option for you. Plus, there are lots of things you need to think about before you start making payments.

Learning how to buy XRP in USA can be a confusing process. It doesn’t have to be, though. In this guide, we will give you the answers!

How to Buy XRP?

The process of buying and selling XRP has been made a lot simpler over the last few months. There are a few important factors that you must think about before buying XRP:

Payment Method

The most common and accepted payment methods to buy cryptocurrency include: credit card, bank transfer, or even cash. Different websites accept different payment methods, so you'll need to choose a website that accepts the payment method you want to use.

Type of Cryptocurrency

Not all cryptocurrencies are available for purchase on every website. You will have to find a website that sells XRP that you want to buy.

Cost of Fees

Each website has different fees. Some are cheap, some are not so cheap. Make sure you know how much the fees cost before setting up an account on any website. You don't want to waste your time verifying yourself and then find out the fees are too high!

How Much You Can Afford

As with any investment, you should never invest more than you can afford. I recommend speaking to a financial adviser first.

With those 4 factors in mind, we can move on. When you buy your XRP, though, where are you going to store it? I'll give you a hint: it's not your bank account.

Cryptocurrencies

Nationwide USA

Worldwide

Afghanistan, Aland Islands, Albania, Algeria, American Samoa, Andorra, Angola, Anguilla, Antarctica, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Aruba, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bhutan, Bolivia, Plurinational State of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Bouvet Island, British Indian Ocean Territory, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Congo, The Democratic Republic of The Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Cote D'ivoire, Croatia, Cuba, Curacao, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Falkland Islands (Malvinas), Faroe Islands, Fiji, Finland, France, French Guiana, French Polynesia, French Southern Territories, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Gibraltar, Greece, Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guam, Guatemala, Guernsey, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Heard Island and Mcdonald Islands, Holy See, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Ireland, Isle of Man, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jersey, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macao, Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Martinique, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mexico, Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Montserrat, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Niue, Norfolk Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Palestine, State of Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Pitcairn, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Reunion, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Barthelemy, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan Da Cunha, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Martin (French Part), Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saint Vincent and The Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Sint Maarten (Dutch Part), Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, South Georgia and The South Sandwich Islands, South Sudan, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syrian Arab Republic, Taiwan, Province of China, Tajikistan, Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tokelau, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Turks and Caicos Islands, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United States Minor Outlying Islands, United States of America, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Vietnam, Virgin Islands, British, Virgin Islands, U.S., Wallis and Futuna, Western Sahara, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Cryptocurrency Wallet

A XRP wallet is where you store your cryptocurrencies after you have bought them. You can compare a cryptocurrency wallet with your bank account. In the same way that you store traditional currencies (USD, JPY, EUR etc.) in your bank account, you will store your cryptocurrencies in your crypto wallet.

There are a lot of easy-to-use and safe options to choose from. It is important that you choose a highly-secure wallet, because if your cryptocurrency gets stolen from your wallet, you can never get it back.

There are three types of wallets:

Online wallets: The quickest to set up (but also the least safe);

Software wallets: An app you download (safer than an online wallet);

Hardware wallets: A portable device you plug into your computer via USB (the safest option).

The wallet you need will depend on which cryptocurrency you want to buy. If you buy Bitcoin, for example, you'll need a wallet that can store Bitcoin. If you buy XRP, you'll need a wallet that can store XRP.

Luckily, there are a lot of good wallets to choose from that can store multiple cryptocurrencies.

Where to Buy Cryptocurrency?

To learn where to buy XRP, you’ll first need to know where to purchase XRP stock. Just a few years ago, there were only a few places to buy and sell cryptocurrencies. Now, though, there are a lot more! Let’s look at the different places and ways you can get your crypto.

How to Buy Cryptocurrency at Cryptocurrency Exchanges?

XRP exchanges are online websites that let you exchange your local currency for cryptocurrency. Exchanges are the most popular way of buying cryptocurrency. I recommend newbies to use these exchange websites as they are easy-to-use and quick to set up.

Payment Method: Most of the exchanges accept payment by bank transfer or credit card, some of them also accept PayPal.

There are a lot of exchanges for you to choose from. Each one of them has different levels of security and they each accept different types of payment methods. Most exchanges will ask you to follow the steps below before you can start buying cryptocurrency.

Check the security of the exchange. This is the most important thing you need to consider as investors have lost lots of money in the past when the exchanges have been hacked.

Transaction fees – the lower, the better.

The number of payment options available: do they accept bank transfer, credit card, PayPal, etc.?

The amount of time it takes to activate your account — if you’re in a hurry, you might not want to wait a long time to get verified!

Which cryptocurrency options they offer. For example, if you want to buy the XRP token then you need be sure that the exchange you choose sells the XRP token.

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