#naval establishment on land

[vampiricgf]

WATER SONG [PT. 1]

merman leon x gov't researcher reader

word count : 7k+

warnings : female reader, reader has a sort of type A personality and some mild anger issues, talk of medical experiments, he's referred to as a subject and specimen quite a lot, descriptions of predatory behavior (animal kind, not the sexual kind), slow pace, sfw, lots of yearning for touch

okay part one isn't terribly exciting im sorry ajdgakab I just wanted to establish a connection between the reader and him in the setting n such before developing any deeper connection. also like 1% research went into this so im sorry if you're knowledgeable about oceanic research this'll probably piss you off lmao. also all credit for this au idea goes to @/bunnivievve tysm for letting me write a lil interpretation of your idea! this was inspired by this post of theirs as well ‹𝟹

JUNE

Subject Zero. 

Male, combined characteristics of humanoids and aquatic species. Captured by a trawling vessel, out in deep waters usually traversed by cargo freighters but occasionally by commercial fishing vessels. A freak happenstance. When the net had been dredged up in a fantastic spray of salt water, the hoard of tuna quickly spilling into the sorting containers, the men on deck had spotted something much larger than white fin tuna thrashing in the net. 

Upon careful inspection they feared they’d pulled up a man, some poor unfortunate victim of a seafaring disaster. A capsized or otherwise destroyed vessel, a near drowning victim that had fallen overboard perhaps. 

Until they spotted the flashing of sharp teeth, and the thick, muscled tail slamming against the wet metal under their feet. 

Thankfully their transmission to the Coast Guard was intercepted, a naval craft catching the broadcast and setting course as fast as possible for the trawler. 

And now Subject Zero finds respite in your “office”. If an office can be counted as more of an observation space, nevertheless. A part of you feels bad, the less scientifically trained and inclined part that is, for keeping such a clearly intelligent creature within a tank inside a black site. The initial placement had been… difficult. It was clear the subject missed the open ocean, and you did feel sorry that it had been so unceremoniously plucked from its home and deposited in such an alien space on land. But there was nothing to be done about it. 

He was far too valuable as a research opportunity. The cold, clinical part of your mind understood that. He was a marvel of nature, flesh and blood proof that man could be intermixed with seafaring species, it was one of the single greatest events in modern marine biology. And an immense privilege for you, the scientist chosen chiefly to study the subject. 

A dream. The government all but telling you to do whatever you deemed necessary, no concern over the expense. Gone were worries of securing grant funding for more piddling projects or the endless anxiety of thinking you would be stuck as one name in an endless list of names relegated to ordinary oceanic study. Not that your peers' works weren’t valuable, but you always held the selfish desire for notoriety. Had dreamed endlessly throughout your undergraduate program of the day your name would be the one filling up library indexes and publications with impressive, weighty studies. Discoveries so undeniable you would join the ranks of the most noteworthy in the field. 

And seemingly, your wish had been granted. Subject zero would be the gravel that paved your road to success. It’s just a pity it has to be such an intelligent creature. 

You sit back, uncuring from your hunched position at the desk, rolling your shoulders and wincing as you hear your joints popping. Documentation was a never ending pain in the ass but it had to be done, if you wanted to keep the convenience of not having to answer to nor justify your expenses to an overhead department. Ordinarily that work would be relegated to a lower priority researcher, but you preferred being able to sign off on it all yourself, comforted by the fact that there were no unforeseen surprises lurking in the documents or spreadsheets or data tables. Nothing anyone would be about to point out as a discrepancy, leaving you humiliated and floundering. 

As you close your eyes you can feel it, the hair on the back of your neck slightly on edge. The feeling of being observed. 

He seemed to prefer watching you when your back was turned or if you were otherwise unaware. If you were facing the ten foot thick glass of the massive elcousure he would recede into the farthest corners of it, shying away into watery obscurity. In a way it was cute, an obvious curiosity for the beings around him but he seemed stricken by shyness, didn’t know if you were trustworthy. Which was understandable. You were the one keeping him there, at least to his limited viewpoint. The one that denied him reentry into his former home. 

That irritatiningly scentimental part of your mind whispered to you again. 

What if he thinks you’re cruel?

So what? We don’t even know to what extend he does think. 

You say that but you do care, at least a little. Thats why you sneak him extra food. 

You sigh to yourself, pushing up from the familiar desk, palms flat on its slick glass surface before rising to your full height. Out of the corner of your eye you catch the white coat you don most of the day, every day, slung carelessly over the back of another chair at a separate station. Your badge attached via a shiny, silvery little clip. Walking over you purposefully keep your eyes directed away from the elcousure, your movements slow. This is a good opportunity to see how long he’ll watch you as long as he believes you aren’t paying attention. 

The badge is solid, though lightweight as you pick it up, bringing it closer to your face. It’s hard to believe you look so excited in the small picture in the upper lefthand corner. Your name in bold typeface as last name, first name all neatly lined up next to the photo. In it’s reflection you can see him, one hand perched against the glass, that thick midnight blue tail swishing up and down in a soft, rhythmic motion as he stays still. Ever watchful. 

Its hard to see in the little reflective glimpse but subject zero does have more… handsome features. You smile to yourself, recalling one of the other researchers giggling while telling you it wasn’t weird to note that because it was true. What man on land, with two legs, had eyes that shade of blue or a jawline that impressive? None that aren’t using photoshop or filters. 

Maybe if the discovery of the subject was publicized there would be throngs of people banging on doors trying to find out where he’s being kept. It did make you huff out a laugh, the idea that a half fish man who couldn’t speak was more appealing than the majority of men on earth. 

Maybe we should open an instagram page for him. 

You shake your head to yourself, still smiling, as you set the badge down. 

The office slash observation room remained quiet save for the occasional sound of sloshing water. It was late, well past time fo anyone other than the usual armed military guard to be roaming the facility. Well past time for you to go home. 

At that moment you turn, just enough to peek over your shoulder and as soon as your eyes fix on the spot he occupied all you catch is a low flash of dark blue, retreating into the shadowy depths encased in glass. 

~

OCTOBER

Three months of observation. 

Hardly enough to form any evidence based conclusions, but enough time to get started on the right path. You had approximately nintey days of solid data on his diet, his presenting condition each day, endless notes on his observable physiology. He preferred deep water fish, clearly an omnivore as he also didn’t mind the addition of oceanic plant species mixed with the fish when it was introduced into the tank. In fact he seemed to greatly enjoy the sudden introduction of variety, although still preferred to eat his meals in a semblance of solitude. 

His distrust was only natural, you had to remind yourself. Until such time as he’s fully used to his new environment you’re unlikely to observe any great variation in his behavior. 

At least he wasn’t showing signs of aggression. That had been a legitimate concern, and still was, of course. All proper safety precautions were followed to the letter when it came to subject zero, and absolutely no one was to physically get in the tank, not until further tests could be done on his temperament and how he reacted to certain stimuli both pleasant and unplseant. 

You grimace seeing a newly sent email notification, the little computerized ding signalling that your attention was required. 

When isn’t it?

You put the sleek desktop into split screen mode, keeping the charts on the subject to the left while your email opened to occupy the right side. Amid the usual low importance emails from general staff there was a new one, at the very top. The name made your stomach twist in preparation of the message. Dr. Gregg had, for lack of a better phrase, a raging hard on for the opportunity to remove the subject from the tank and getting it into a smaller one in order to sedate and extract genetic material. It didn’t matter that he’d already been sedated and had samples drawn when he was initially transported here, no. The good doctor wanted more than that, but you couldn’t accommodate the request in good conscience. 

Or rather, you were worried about the effect it would have on him. It could set back the last nintey days of progress, or worse, inspire severe mistrust and heightened aggression towards all researchers. There was no way, even with sedation, that cutting into him wouldn’t cause pain. And a source of pain that a creature like subject zero had no way of understanding would only lead to problems. 

The two of you had been butting heads over the issue for the last week, culminating in an argument yesterday where you all but told him to get fucked. You were the lead on this, you made the decisions and he wasn’t going to usurp your authority. Your credit. 

But as your eyes scan the email you can feel yourself getting physically hot, your blood pressure threatening to rise. 

You may be the lead, the head researcher on this project, but do not believe for one moment that I will not go above your head. You are not CIA, doctor. You don’t call the final shots here, and it would do you well to remember that. Whatever your personal feelings on subject zero, you cannot stand in the way of necessary elements that better out understanding of the creature. 

With shaking fingers you close the window, not bothering to respond and not trusting yourself to either. Every fiber of your being wanted nothing more than to march down that hallway and wring his wiry old turkey neck. Who does he think he is? He’s just some physiologist, some ancient fuck. Who is he to threaten you? If his contributions were so invaluable wouldn’t he have been made lead?

You squeeze your eyes shut, hands clenching in your lap as you breathed deeply in through your mouth and out through your nose. The meditation app you’d been using had provided you with some useful tools, being that your temper had plagued you since you were small. Always the first to fly off the handle at even the idea you could be questioned, your competence or credibility casted in doubt. 

Inferiority complex, a nasty voice giggled in your head. 

It’s not that it wasn’t true, and it was a bit of an achilles heel for you. But what took priority now was holding Gregg back, keeping him away from the subject and minimizing the risk that he could fuck it all up before you even had a chance to really begin. So, once you felt that initial flashpoint of rage quelling you reopened the email application, setting your shoulders back as you began typing. 

Under no circumstances are you permitted to sedate nor perform any surgical procedures on subject zero. You have not been given any formal authorizations, so it would do you well to remember not to threaten your head researcher in the contents of easily retrievable emails. You are free to broach the topic with any superior officer on sight, and I am more than happy to entertain a line of questioning from said superior officers on why I do not believe it to be prudent at this juncture to allow for another extraction of material. Research is not a race, Doctor. 

You can’t help but smile smugly to yourself, imagining his fury at opening your reply. If he thinks just because you’re young that you’re easily pushed around he is sorely mistaken. Nothing and no one is allowed to jeopardize the most important work you may ever do. 

With that you abandon the desk, it’s dull and mind numbing work, in favor of standing in front of the tank yet again. It was nice, having a portion of it extending into this area as an offshoot of the main tank where all the feeding and the bulk of physical testing was done. He seemed to enjoy it too, which despite yourself you did place some importance on. 

It was important to ensure he was as comfortable as possible. He was still a living being, despite his status as a research subject, and you took no pleasure in the idea of him suffering in any way. It was definitely a slight drawback, you could begrudgingly admit, that you tended to get… overly attached to the species in your care. You’d done the same in both undergrad and postdoc, although it was more important than ever before to keep a tight hold on those tendencies now. 

How would you feel, if you knew that man was so hell bent on slicing you open? 

Probably afraid. 

What are you feeling now?

It would be so much easier if he were capable of speech. The bridges that had to be built between what was known and unknown had to come from the very foundations, things that required occasionally unpleasant experiences in order to build their understanding of him. But if he could just explain some of it, that would be easier. A half formed bridge is faster to finish than one from scratch. 

Uselessly you peered into the clear, clean water. Between swaying stalks of plants there was nothing to see except the seemingly endless expanse of water. Several mind boggling tonnes of it, all kept nicely contained in ten foot thick military grade glass. Bulletproof. Shatter proof. Even if subject zero were to ram it with intent, crack it even, it would still hold. 

You couldn’t help but wonder, as you remained staring through that glass, if he was lonely. Seeing so many strange, upright walkers but being unable to even touch them, even consider the act of doing it. 

As you frown at your own reflection, you feel it again. 

Duel observation.

~

It was bizarre, to him. These two legs, tall men. He knew they existed, they’d always known a different sort of being lived on the land, domineered it and then took to making attempts at dominating the sea as well. It had all become so noisy, so very nearly unbearable thanks to their hulking monstrosities of shining metal and the things they constantly kept dumping into the water.

Every day there were new threats to avoid. Long gone were the days of simply worrying about other predators lurking in the open waters or within the sediment and foliage. 

He hadn’t seen the net, as they called it, until it was too late. Had been too caught in the euphoria of finding such a gigantic school of gorgeous, meaty tuna, that his mind switched off to everything but pure instinct as he’d circled them quickly, calculatedly. His jaw had felt the ache of hunger so viscerally it was like the bones themselves were vibrating with it. 

And then they’d all begun moving. Swept up, trapped in an upward drag that he’d been powerless to fight against while overwhelmed by the wriggling, frantic fish flashing across his vision, no way to know what was forwards or backwards, up or down. 

Then the shock of air. His lungs had seized up painfully with it, the feeling of being constricted by nothing at all yet everything all at once had been horrific, beyond frightening. 

After that it was too messy, too jumbled in his mind. Harsh sounds, their sounds, were prevalent in his memory but just beyond his grasp. Far too loud without the water to act as a buffer between, softening the blows of each reverberation against his eardrums. 

But her sounds were different. Or, it was that she didn’t make many to begin with. The look of them all was mostly similar from behind the thick material they kept him in, in this unknown space. At least they offered readily available food, although not nearly what he was used to hunting for himself and his webbed fingers itched at the thought of clawing through water in pursuit of some darting piece of prey. It would feel so, so good to sink his teeth into flesh, to feel it rip and catch in chunks between his teeth, the iron rich scent of blood swirling around. The roar of adrenaline in his ears. 

It was difficult to keep his focus on much here, save for her. The best parts were when the others disappeared but she would still be in that corner, down the long corridor of water and he would be able to see her, sitting and doing wholly alien things with her hands at something large and flat, but vaguely shiny. Hers didn’t have webbing, none of them did from what he could tell. How did they ever swim competently? 

She was softer than the rest and he enjoyed watching her do her strange tasks, sometimes she would pace around holding a sheet of paper in her hands, chewing on her bottom lip. Her teeth didn’t seem all that sharp, since she never seemed worried about cutting her flesh on them. What did they eat, with useless teeth? 

Just like at the present moment, with her back turned it was easier to look at her fully. Usually he wouldn’t approach openly like this, unsure of the intentions of everyone here, but this space seemed to be reserved for her only which put him at ease. That and none of those harsh spotlights were present, if anything she seemed to prefer it half dark which was fine by him, preferable to that loud bright area behind him back through the water corridor. But she seemed tense, the set of her shoulders curled forward, almost in on herself. Something in front of her was clearly upsetting and in some odd way he felt offense on her behalf. She was kind, gave him extra food before she would disappear through the night, always seemed to be keeping a close watch over him and how the others were with him. 

He may not be able to speak, but he’s pretty sure she was the reason he wasn’t suffering in this place. And that was good enough, at present, to make him feel a sense of kinship with her. Closeness. 

As she carried on with whatever it was that kept her so occupied his mind wandered to what it would feel like to touch her. They seem to enjoy touch, most of them being very casual with the way they interacted. How did she like being touched? Or would she dislike being touched by him outright? Would she find his webbed, clawed fingers disgusting, would she flinch away?

He frowned behind the glass. Hopefully not, but there really was no way to know. They seem intent on keeping a wide distance from him, which wasn’t unwelcome. The only one he was at all curious about was her anyway, not that he would purposely antagonize anyone who ventured inside his new domain, though he certainly wouldn’t circle them like one of the friendly, if a little dumb, nurse sharks do occasionally out in open water. 

He was so caught up in that worry he nearly failed to catch her movement, but his reflexes are faster than hers. Before she could approach the glass fully he’d already retreated a safe distance away. Watching as she stared into the expanse of water, her face unreadable but the set of her eyebrows told him she felt some kind of stress, strain. 

His fingers twitched at his sides, thinking about reaching out to touch her again.

~

You smile to yourself, a soft hidden kind, at the now familiar feeling. It was like there was a strange sense of understanding between you two, although you could just be ascribing things to him he doesn’t possess. Thats always something to keep in mind, as a researcher but more often than not lately you’re coming to resent that line of thought. It was clear subject zero was intelligent. Maybe not to the degree of a human being, but he was close enough evolutionarily speaking, that he was like a cousin in the chain. An offshoot of the formerly solidly established line of human life. Theres no reason, as yet identified, that he wouldn’t be able to communicate if given the chance to learn how. 

You aren’t thinking of him as a subject anymore. That’s dangerous. 

You know it is, know that voice is right. But it doesn’t account for everything. The odd push and pull, hide and seek game you two play here in this office every single evening. Its to the point now that you feel tense, uncomfortable if you don’t sense him behind you, watching you work or pace around nonsensically. You’ve spent over an hour before reading and rereading the same observational notes and data sets because you kept grinning to yourself like a fool feeling those eyes burning holes in your back. 

He’d even made appearances in your dreams a handful of times over the last month, flashes of deep, endless blue that clung to the soft corners of your mind as you went about your morning routines, ruminating over his appearance as steam from your coffee curled around your hands, ghostly fingers clawing at the air. Tension crept up your beck, spreading out over the tops of your shoulders and trapezius muscles prompting you to stretch against the back of your office chair, rolling your joints and hearing their familiar cracking in response to hours of sustained poor posture. Lazily you grasp your phone from the desk, thumbing open the music app and scrolling a bit through your shuffle playlist before settling on something bubbly, but easily tuned into the background. 

You wonder if he enjoys music, what his preferences would be if he could swipe through your library of songs. It makes you smile to yourself thinking about it, maybe that would make for a good test of his thinking abilities, how he responds to different genres, different artists. Standing, you bend slightly to make a quick note on a half discarded sticky tab: musical testing?

And suddenly a somewhat mad thought grips you, what if you tried right now? Whats the worst that could happen, he lurks in the background while you sway around the dim office like a fool? At least the only people who could see would be the guards, not that they’d say anything either beyond thinking to themselves that every researcher here must be insane. That makes your smile grow wider, giggling to yourself a bit as you take slight steps in time with the beat, giving a little spin on your toes to face the take. 

It only somewhat shocks you to find yourself face to face with him, that he hasn’t retreated to the safety of the shadowy corners. His eyes, a remarkably similar color to the water surrounding him, track your movements with abject curiosity as you follow an imaginary path, one foot placed delicately in front of the other to carry your body with the faint sound of the music. All the while his eyes never stray from you, even when he has to move to keep you in his sights, even when you come right up to the glass and offer a little spin in front of him, giggling to yourself a little more freely now. 

And to your amazement, at your laughter, he smiles. He smiles and it makes your chest feel light, like a ten pound weight you hadn’t even been aware of was finally lifted off. Some might find his fanged appearance frightening, to you it was boyishly cute. A toothy little grin, the tips of his elongated enscisors catching against his bottom lip, and his thick, muscular tail began to move. As if, had he possessed legs like yours, they would be moving in tandem with you. 

It felt like a genuine breakthrough, making you hug your arms around yourself as you stopped moving, still laughing and feeling just a tad bit lightheaded. He genuinely smiled at you. 

He was moving with you. 

That was a major breakthrough, even if just a personal one. Increased rapport meant things would be easier going forward, for both of you. 

With a contented sigh you pressed one hand to the smooth, icy surface of the glass, your fingers stretching over the sleek glass and he does something that makes your breath freeze in your lungs. Gingerly, the way people stretch out their hands to scared animals, inch by inch his own rases to be a perfect mirror of your own. One larger, webbed, hand pressed to the glass right behind your own. It felt silly but you were too afraid to even exhale with any effort, for fear even the barest noise would ruin the moment and he would flee right back into the far corners, beyond your reach. 

But he doesn’t, doesn’t stop holding your gaze for a single second and you marvel at the way his blonde hair sways in the water, like the finest strands of silk-

“So, thats why you keep refusing to allow any progress of this “research”?”

You nearly jump out of your skin at the voice from behind you, a signature grating tone you could pick out anywhere. As your head snaps to the side, body following the movement only a second after, you see him standing in the door way with his arms crossed nearly reeking of smugness. 

Fuck. 

~

One week. 

You have one week to figure out what to do. 

After shattering your late night revelation with subject zero, who has been increasingly attached to you ever since, the resident pain in your ass physiologist had made sure to fire off emails riddled with concerns and accusations addressed to the operatives truly in charge of the site. Questions of your ability to continue in any capacity with the project, the nature of your relationship to the subject, insinuating you had some kind of perverse intention, even going so far as to insult your credibility. Not only cc-ing yourself but “mistakenly” sending those emails to every person working on site.

It had effectively turned you into a pariah with regards to your peers. Whispers of conversation that would be cut off as soon as you set foot into a room. Strange looks from your coworkers, ranging from disgust to perverse curiosity. It felt like you were continuously on fire, every minute of every day. There would be a meeting in one weeks time, and until then you were relegated to nothing but the paperwork in your office, per the tense instructions given to you.

But your panic had less to do with your professional reputation, surprisingly, and more to do with feeling very nearly physically sick when you recalled how fixated he was with the idea of getting to cut into subject zero. If you were removed completely from this project there would be no one else to act as a roadblock, to keep that from happening. 

Your eyes slide over to the observation tank, noting the worried way he’s been watching you for hours now. You wished you could haul him out of there, explain what was happening, the risk of what could happen to him. Maybe he would have some idea of how you both could get out of this. But was there any way out? Or is the only option allowing yourself to become a laughingstock, a professional embarrassment and to allow subject zero to languish in whatever horror would surely be inflicted on him? 

You can’t say if desperation is the only thing motivating you, but your mind becomes mostly blank as you leave the office. Its early enough, after you’d been practically climbing up the walls all night, so maybe the choice was fueled by sleep deprivation. Whatever the case may be, you find yourself moving as if through a dream: down the cavernous corridors, turning and twisting to follow the slate grey concrete all the way to the impossibly large main observation chamber. 

With a swipe of your ID card, forcefully and defiantly, the locks give a little beep before disengaging. Mechanically you make your way to where the suits are stored. Specially designed, one of a kind. Made of an interwoven, enmeshed material not unlike chainmail to prevent sharp teeth from being able to puncture both cloth and flesh, and featuring only the best in terms of diving design. The manufacturer had created them after winning a defense contract from the governenment and you wonder if they ever would have guessed someone would be stripping and tugging the suit on in order to come face to face with something most people would assume only existed in a fairytale. 

But here you are: yanking and adjusting the suit before prepping the oxygen tank, also designed to be compact but sacrificing the amount of time one could spend fully submerged at any depth. Either way it would work for this application, although no one had been given clearance to dive yet. 

You knew doing this would come back to bite you far worse than just those vendetta fueled emails. Diving without any clearance, using untested equipment. It was beyond insane. But the circumstances felt insane enough on their own to justify it. Subject zero was overwhelmingly likely to be just as intelligent as you were, and just as likely to feel physical and mental distress in similar ways. Trying to communicate was step one and what better way than face to face. Then you could form step two: proving beyond a reasonable doubt that he was intelligent and thus, could be advocated for medically even if he couldn’t advocate for himself. 

That was the only way to halt the now speeding train of decisions being made on his behalf and without his input. If he could even write out the most barebones statement, even that would work to prove they needed consent to continue with any of this. Tomorrow you could wake up in a whole new world, one where there is technically a second legal classification of human being, one with a tail and gills. The though made you smile despite the tense circumstances. 

What you were doing was a halfcocked, absolutely batshit attempt at a hail mary but it was worth a shot. Your reputation was already in tatters on site, how much worse could it be? If you fail in this all that happens is you’re dismissed and removed from the site, doomed to be a whispered footnote for future researchers. Did you ever hear about the lady that went crazy with one of the subjects? A cautionary tale about getting too attached to your work. 

But fuck that. If you’re not at least a little attached to your work then do you even really care at all about any of it? You would argue that the resident physiologist holds no love for the work, only a love for the idea of something else experiencing pain.

With a deep breath you sit carefully on the steel ledge that runs the length of the tanks open ceiling. Easy, you just flip backwards and hit the water, reorient yourself and try not to get eaten by one potentially pissed off subject. Yeah, a real piece of cake. With that you decide theres no more time to waste, it’s probably already flagged in the system that you accessed the main deck, they’ll be here any minute. 

Good, that means they can all see I’m not insane or inappropriate. He can comprehend things just like we can, the music wasn’t a fluke. 

In the span of a second your worldview dips, swirls, and the splash of water hits your ears at the exact same moment the shock of cold does. The water is kept at approximately the same temperature as the water he was captured in, frigid Atlantic delights. As bubbles envelop you, you manage to get yourself turned right side up, carefully circling your arms to tred water and remain mostly stationary. This would be the key moment, you have to exercise extreme caution. 

You’re another predator that has invaded the territory of a fellow predator. In the natural world, it’s a killable offense. But you keep your eyes open, sweeping the dimly lit, wide expanse of saltwater around you. No sign of him, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t here, watching you, gauging the situation. As you continue to keep your breathing even, your movements slow enough but steady enough to keep your body afloat, you catch sight of something in your peripheral. That intimately familiar midnight blue tail. He was moving behind you now, one webbed, clawed hand slicing through the water like knives as the rest of him came into your view. That sandy, dishwater blonde hair floating in fine tendrils around his face, framing piercing blue eyes that took you in critically, curiously. 

You allow him to keep circling you, doing your best to calm your nervous system that felt on high alert, panic just on the cusp of overriding your sensibilities. Allowing that would spell disaster, you would certanly be killed if you started thrashing or spinning wildly, it would scare him, you could both be injured in any kind of violent altercation. They would kill him if he killed you. 

But your worries abate as he slows to a stop in front of you, and despite your eyes staying locked together you’re conscious of the audience you have on the other side of the glass. The feeling of being watched by many people is something quite unique, it’s also unnerving. You wish you could apologize to him, you hadn’t realized before how uncomfortable literally living beneath a microscope was. 

You raise your arm, hand extended, in a painfully slow movement that makes the muscles in your forearm ache. His attention goes to the appendage now how hanging between you two, eyeing it with equal parts suspicion and what seems to be excitement. The physical equivalent of a high pitched alarm happens in your body as he moves closer to you, the air suddenly locked in your lungs as you wait. This was another critical moment. Would he grasp your hand? Rip it off? It was entirely unknown, beyond dangerous. 

But none of those things happen. The painting, god touching adam, comes to mind as he raises a clawed index finger delicately up to yours. They don’t touch but rather hover in proximity to one another before a grin works its way across his face, those sharp incisors catching against his bottom lip as his eyes flick back to your goggled face. 

You hope he can see that you’re smiling too, but you hope its not like it is with monkeys where grins are signs of aggression. But it seems that fear is unwarranted as his tail twitches erratically, the wispy bits of filigree flesh on the split end swirling through the water in a gorgeous display of deep blue and white. Like sheer fabric winding through the air. 

The ecstasy that floods your brain is a feeling like no other, a full body sensation that spreads from the tips of your fingers to your fabric covered toes. His tail moves to brush against your kicking legs, the heft of it is shocking. You can immediately imagine the sheer power of it kocking into you, it would feel like being hit by a freight train no doubt. For something that looked so elegant and otherworldly, it was still a threat. 

But you couldn’t get distracted you needed some display of his intelligence, and you needed it now. 

So you shake off the awe, do your best to refocus on his face. Carefully you draw back your hand, pointing to yourself and then at him. You repeat the gesture several times, hoping to receive a reaction that displays understanding. 

And he doesn’t keep you waiting long. 

In a flash one clawed, webbed hand encircles your wrist and halts your movement. 

It’s like time suspends, a complete and total pause as you feel a different kind of chill within the suit. It’s like you’re watching in third person, your throat seizing as your fingers intertwine hesitantly. It’s an oddly tender gesture, and then your body is tugged through the weight of the water, pushed against the solidness of his chest. Your arms came gingerly around him, and his enveloped you in turn. He was all firmness, so solidly built it shocked you. You hadn’t properly appreciated the sheer mass of him, the way his body had been crafted for underwater pursuit, hunting. But also to accommodate displays of affection, just like your own. 

And as you two embrace you can’t help but smile again. It wasn’t perfect, but it was enough to form one hell of an argument on his behalf and you would shout until your face was blue that going forward, communication would take priority. Worrying about the innerworkings of his physiology could wait until later.

[queenvhagar]

Where King's Landing Gets Its Food (and Why the Blockade of the Gullet Has No Effect on Overall Food Security)

King's Landing is the capital city of Westeros. With a population of roughly half a million people, it needs to get its food from somewhere. But where?

In close proximity to the Crownlands and King's Landing is the Reach. The Reach has incredibly fertile farmland and is responsible for growing food for the majority of the realm. Most notably, this is where the majority of King's Landing's food supply comes from:

As you can see on the map, the Reach and King's Landing are connected via multiple direct land routes:

At the time of the start of the Dance of the Dragons, the land connecting King's Landing to the Reach was held by the Greens, and later, most of the Reach had declared for the Greens. Therefore, there would have been little issue in continuing the transport of food from the Reach and into King's Landing. This map is roughly how the map was divided at the start of the Dance (however, following the campaign towards Rook's Rest, the Greens had claimed areas north of Kingslanding held by the Darklyns and other Black supporters, giving even more of the area surrounding King's Landing to the Greens):

Since the majority of food for King's Landing comes from the Reach, and since the Reach and the areas connecting it to King's Landing are held by the Greens, food supply should not be an issue, nor should a blockade of the Gullet have any significant impact on the ability of the smallfolk in King's Landing to access food.

What, then, is the impact of the blockade? What comes into King's Landing on normal occasions and therefore might not get through during a blockade? Since King's Landings gets all the food it needs from the Reach, Blackwater Bay and trade and passenger routes that run through it are most commonly bringing travelers from other bays or Essos and goods from the Free Cities such as spices, silk, and other luxuries. This map helps to visualize the trade that occurs in the Narrow Sea:

The primary goal of the blockade of the Gullet by the Blacks and the Velaryon fleet was likely more about controlling the waters of Blackwater Bay and guaranteeing no naval presence of the Greens could establish itself near King's Landing, rather than a concerted attempt to keep goods out and away from the city, due to the lack of impact this would have on supplies and resources for the war effort.

In the books, the blockade does not result in issues in food security, as food comes from the Reach and not by sea. Although it may have had an impact on certain industries and access to employment, which could have indirectly led to issues in some groups of people being able to afford food, by no means did it result in a lack of food. Therefore, there was no cause for riots this early into the war, and in fact, none actually did occur while the Greens held King's Landing.

Riots due to food security did eventually happen in King's Landing, but this was years into the conflict when, due to the burning and destruction of crops in the war and the disruption of land routes by which to transport food, there was less food coming into the city. At the same time, smallfolk were subjected to high taxes by the Blacks who held the city, which compounded rising food prices amid the scarcity. This resulted in riots against the Targaryens, and following the death of Queen Helaena, the smallfolk stormed the Dragonpit, killed the dragons, and drove Rhaenyra from the Red Keep and to her ultimate death.

In the show, the blockade apparently results in mass starvation after only a couple of weeks, despite the city realistically getting food from the Reach and certainly having stores of food to last during possible siege. When word is spread of the Greens' supposed feasts while people starve and the people see the sheeps brought to the Dragonpit to feed the dragons, and when Rhaenyra sends a boat full of fresh produce from Dragonstone, a volcanic island hundreds of miles away, the smallfolk forget that the Blacks are responsible for the blockade in the first place and praise her generosity. Then, they attack the two Green Queens when they are leaving the Sept, throwing food at them despite the apparent food insecurity and shouting about their true Queen Rhaenyra.

Also, despite the blockade being an issue, and despite Caraxes and Meleys out of the picture, Aemond doesn't use Vhagar to destroy the blockade. Nor do the Greens use the fact that Rhaenyra and the Blacks ordered the blockade to their advantage, despite them using other events to help themselves in previous episodes. There is no explanation of why it would be that food was not coming from the Reach. The Blacks were not attacking supply or food trains along the routes on land, nor is it mentioned that anyone was blocking the routes and not allowing food to pass through these land routes. Ostensibly, we're supposed to believe that the city imports the entirety of its food supply from overseas despite having lands under its jurisdiction from which to get food.

Why move the riot up in the overall progression of the story, as the cost of in-universe logic and consistency? Moving it so it happens while the Greens are in power allows for the show to demonstrate how the smallfolk hate the Greens. Despite season 2 episode 2 showing the smallfolk mourning for and sympathizing with the two Green Queens, they would apparently rather support their "true queen" who they believe had a 6 year old decapitated in his bed and who currently is causing the food insecurity with her blockade all because of one boat of food being sent through and Mysaria's agents spreading stories about food in the Red Keep. This allows the Greens to be continued to be seen as in the wrong and further adds more evidence to the viewer that the smallfolk suffer under the leadership of the Greens and wish for their "rightful" queen to sit the throne instead. Just days earlier the smallfolk mourned with the Green Queens, but now they're with Rhaenyra and want to hurt them. This also allows the writers to take the parts of the book that say Alicent and Helaena were beloved of the smallfolk and officially brand those sections as "Green propaganda."

Overall, the deviation of the show from the source material is illogical and unreasonable given the information available. The blockade would not have resulted in starvation within weeks, due to alternate primary sources of food and the existence of food stores within the city. The smallfolk would be aware that the Blacks controlled and the blockade and would not praise them for a demonstration of such via one shipment of food sent through, especially following the recent funeral procession of Jaehaerys where the smallfolk learned of Rhaenyra the Cruel's character (and similarly, the sight of Meleys' head would not have motivated them to support Rhaenyra or mourn the "beloved" dragon as it recently murdered hundreds of them unnecessarily when Rhaenys refused to use the back exit to the pit so she could come face to face with the Greens at the coronation). If in actuality the blockade did in fact cause issues for the Greens, which it really would not have done, Vhagar would have been used to destroy it, lacking the threat of large dragons on the Black side at this point.

All in all, this plotline was not thought through and only serves to highlight the incompetence of the writing team and their ignorance of in-universe mechanics and implications and the world in which the story takes place.

[sundew199]

This Better for you?

tags: roronoa zoro x f!reader, guided masturbation, fingering, teasing, edging

"Keep your legs spread will ya?"

You groaned, abiding by the hushed command from your boyfriend into your ear, spreading your legs back out so his hand could continue his descent.

Zoro had the grand idea of guiding you through your self pleasure after he walked in on you beginning to do it yourself. He at first stood frozen in your doorway, staring like a hungry animal as your dainty finger was teasingly circling your clit. Even though the two of you had an established relationship, the embarrassment still flooded through you when he barged in. Should've expected it at some point, the man not knowing how to knock to save his life. But instead of saying anything, all Zoro did was climb into your bed behind you, caging you in from behind and gently running his hands across your body.

The shirt you were wearing was gone, as were your panties that'd you'd been using as a poor excuse of a shield earlier to get to your peak. Now, you laid back on his bare chest, naked and ten times more aroused than you'd been when you started this.

"Now, tell me what you were thinking about before I walked in?" Breathing into the shell of your ear, running his large veiny hand along your inner thigh, so dangerously close to your throbbing core.

Huffing with a small attitude, you whined. Something obviously was altered in that brain of his to beat around the bush instead of diving right into things to tease you with a question like that, feeling the frustration dimly simmer.

"You obviously."

He chuckled, brushing over your folds and inhaling deeply. "What about me?"

Sighing softly to the continuous brush of his hand, you rested your arms on his bent legs, giving up your ability to fight back and answer his question.

"How you feel, and how good you make me feel."

A kiss landed on your cheek, two of his fingers splitting your wet folds and swiping up slowly. "Is that why you came in here instead of asking me?"

Deciding to look down between your legs as he asked, you chewed on your bottom lip, watching the repeated motion from his fingers and how heated it made your skin feel. Zoro didn't tease like this often, always so needy for you and needing to get his dick wet, to prolong teasing if it weren't to prep you.

"You were training, didn't want to interrupt." Croaking out a whine when his middle finger tapped lightly on your clit, refusing to give it the stimulation you craved, making it throb like your heart beating in your chest. "But seeing you shirtless and sweaty prompted me to come in here, like I said, didn't want to interrupt."

Zoro hummed disapprovingly, adjusting his posture behind you and taking his hand away, causing you to quietly whine.

"Let me see."

"What?"

"I wanna watch."

Turning to look at him to see he was being completely serious, you sighed, scooting back into his chest more and hooking one of your legs over his. His chin came to hook over your shoulder, taking the hand you brought down and collecting your middle and ring finger into his mouth to wet it for you. Shuttering at the action, you let your hand glide down your stomach, past your naval and in between your legs to copy how he split your folds apart from earlier.

There was so mistake that you were already wet, craving to be filled and the simple press of your two fingers on your clit brought a hiss out of you. Zoro didn't have a reaction, still looking down from over your shoulder and breathing just outside of your ear steadily.

You gathered slick from your entrance to circle your clit, starting slow and letting your body relax against him. It didn't feel the same as when he did it, but you knew that and still let yourself enjoy the stimulation.

Pace increased gradually, still remaining steady and hoping Zoro's plan was to take over and let you cum like you wanted too. It was hard to focus with his breathing and observing eyes, not used to putting on a show, even if it was only him.

Your leg twitched against his when you pressed down harder, whining under your breath and turning greedy with how good it made you feel. All you could think about was the low tone in Zora's voice when he would slid inside of you, the puff of breath as he took a second to keep himself from cumming right away, and how badly you wanted him.

"Slow down," He breathed into your ear, wrapping his hand around your wrist and halting your motions altogether. "No need to rush."

He moved to sit up a bit, taking you with him. Gently his lips pressed into your cheek, lingering on your skin as his hand now shadowed over yours. Refusing to look away, you watched him pressed your fingers with his back onto your clit, moving in one slow circle.

"Though you wanted to watch?" Letting out the breath you were holding as you spoke, entire body pooling into mush from the slow calculating circles he was forcing your fingers to do on your throbbing clit.

"I can watch and guide baby. Besides show would've ended too soon if you didn't slow down and enjoy yourself a bit."

God, what have you gotten yourself into. Why was now the time he decided he wanted to be a rotten tease and ease your orgasm out of you instead of being selfish. You liked when Zoro worked fast and hard on your pussy, impatient and wanting to stretch you out as soon as possible. A change of pace wouldn't do any of you harm, so just this once you would sit back and let him guide you into taking it slow.

At first, you thought he would draw his hand away after a few guidances, but he kept it there instead, moving his hand down with yours to gather more slick to lubricate the fingers, going right back up to previously. You were limp already against his chest, letting out soft moans and gasps when he'd press down harder or swirl a little faster and you'd catch his smile out of the corner of your eye.

"Do you always think about me when you do this?"

"Yea, always."

His hand moved to swat yours away, leaving just his own hovering between your legs. Zoro split your folds like before and hummed, spreading your arousal around messily.

"Share the details." Absentmindedly requesting, observing his middle and ring finger, admiring how shiny they looked in the sunlight peering in from the window of your room.

Relaxing further into the broad chest sticking to your back, you smiled at the go-to memory you went to on the rare occasion you got time to yourself.

"I like to think about when we first got together and you stumbled into my room drunk and horny. Falling on top of me in bed and asking if you could eat me out."

Zoro groaned at your words, amusingly, faintly recalling that night considering he was probably drunk out of his mind when it happened, but he believed it. His hand was already back between your legs, two fingers circling over your clit lightly, and tilting your head to the side so he could kiss your neck.

"You were so eager too, whining for permission like I'd say no."

He smiled into your skin, pressing just his middle finger into your entrance past the first knuckle and pulling away, doing it again a few more times. You jolted in his arms, muffling a whine but still pulling yourself together to go on.

"Felt so good, you were so sloppy and greedy."

"Any man would be if they got a taste of your pussy." Confidently declaring, pulling away from your neck and plunging his thick finger all the way in, holding you down with an arm across your chest. You writhed against it, throwing your head back to his shoulder and arching your back, broken moans filling the room as he began to pump it in and out at a moderate pace.

"This better for you?" Asking in a smug tone, curling his finger once and making your leg shake in need. All you could do was nod, crane your neck to look at him and plead for more. Zoro chuckled low, adding his ring finger without warning and fluttering them both furiously.

Silent desperate moans came from you, mouth agape and breath shaking, hips rutting into his hand as you couldn't get enough. Zoro took pity on you, kissing you slowly, licking into your mouth and nipping at your bottom lip. Euphoria ran rampant through your body, so lightweight and out of this world, like you were high on some kind of drug and never wanting it to end.

"So fuckin' needy, look at you." Taunting between drawn out kisses, pulling his fingers out and taking them into his mouth, keeping his eye locked with yours. You nodded pathetically, because you were, always were when it came to him. He fucked you so good every time that nothing would come close to comparing.

"Such a needy pussy too, fuck baby why didn't you ask?" Referring back to your excuse when he walked in on you, unable to read his face or tone as he was focused on the squelching fingers thrusting in and out of your cunt once again.

"Couldn't wait, didn't want to interrupt - I told you this." Huffing and squirming in his hold, needing to cum and losing your will to hold off.

"Would've fingered you up in the crow's nest right then and there, but can't complain too much. Walking in on you, like that, could help me out later when you're too busy." Growling seductively, going straight to your cunt and making you whine a bit louder.

Zoro smiled, taking your other leg to hook it over his like the opposite one was, spreading you out all the way and ripping his drenched fingers out. He smeared them on your inner thigh just a little, leaving enough to focus on your clit. He stopped when he did because he knew you were about to cum, all your inclinations giving him signs to switch things up. He knew you hated him for doing that, but he was having fun.

"Zoro, please." Mewling desperately, unable to stop yourself from sneaking a hand down to where his was and rub that throbbing bud. Before he could respond, he grabbed both of your wrists in his free hand, holding them up and away.

"Promise you'll ask next time instead of doing it yourself?"

"Yes, yes I promise."

Tightening his hand around your wrist, he nodded, sinking his fingers back into your entrance and thrusting them in and out at break neck speed. You cried out, and were quickly silenced with his mouth on yours, swallowing all those pitiful noises he loved listening too, loved forcing out of you. Your body was running hot, hips twitching upwards into his hands, legs trembling in profound overstimulation. You were going to break and that was Zoro wanted.

"I'm gonna cum - Zoro,"

"Then do it, cum on my fingers baby." Pressing the words into your lips and keeping his speed, knowing his palm and wrist were drenched in you and that was he could've asked for.

He felt you clench hard around him, biting his lower lip and whimpering as your orgasm ripped through you violently. He kept you steady against him, brought his fingers to slow steadily prior to taking them out, turning gentle to ensure he wouldn't hurt you.

Tenderly he kissed you, a couple times to clear the fog of lust from your mind. As he did so, Zoro wiped his fingers on his pants, sat up all the way and unhooked your legs from his. You were jelly against him, smiling weakly while trying to move.

"Take a nap or somethin', okay?" Instructing after he moved out from behind you and cleaned the mess he created between your legs, tossing you a shirt and shorts.

"You're coming back right?" Pouting sweetly up at him, ignoring the loving eye roll he gave to your question.

"Yea, gonna finish training." Kissing your forehead, stepping away from the bed. He turned to wink at you, a subtle hint for what to expect when he got back. You blew him a kiss, seeing him smile as he left your room, giggling as you began to drift off in the post coital nap.

[workersolidarity]

[ 📹 Scenes of evidence left behind after Israeli occupation naval gunboats fired artillery shells at fishing boats on the Mediterranean coast of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. Following the shelling, the gunboats waited until residents and first responders arrived to put out the flames before shelling them as well. ]

🇮🇱⚔️🇵🇸 🚀🏘️💥🚑 🚨

DAY 229: HEALTHCARE SYSTEM COLLAPSING IN NORTHERN GAZA, NORWAY, IRELAND AND SPAIN RECOGNIZE PALESTINIAN STATE, ISRAELI MASSACRES IN GAZA CONTINUE

On 229th day of the Israeli occupation's ongoing special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) committed a total of 6 new massacres of Palestinian families, resulting in the deaths of no less than 62 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, while another 138 others were wounded over the previous 24-hours.

It should be noted that as a result of the constant Israeli bombardment of Gaza's healthcare system, infrastructure, residential and commercial buildings, local paramedic and civil defense crews are unable to recover countless hundreds, even thousands of victims who remain trapped under the rubble, or who's bodies remain strewn across the streets of Gaza.

In move welcomed by Palestinians and Arabs across the world, Spain, Ireland and Norway have officially recognized Palestinian Statehood, to take effect on May 28th.

The Prime Ministers of all three countries announced their recognition of Palestine as an independent State on Wednesday, May 22nd, calling on more Western countries to follow suit.

In his announcement, Norwegian Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr, said the goal of recognition was to establish a cohesive Palestinian state based around the Palestinian Authority, further noting that a two-state solution is in the interest of the Israeli occupation authorities.

Reflecting on his own country's recognition of a Palestinian state, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said "We are a peaceful people, and this is what thousands of demonstrators show in the protests against the Gaza massacres."

Sanchez went on to accuse the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of working to destroy the Gaza Strip, further endangering a two-state solution.

Irish Prime Minister, Simon Harris, made a similar announcement regarding his country's recognition of Palestine, adding that he expected more nations to recognize Palestinian statehood in the coming weeks, adding that "there is no future for the extremist version of Zionism that fuels settler violence and land seizures."

He went on to add that "there can be no peace without equality, and it is important that our decision is not misinterpreted."

In response to the announcements, the Israeli occupation authorities summoned the ambassadors for Norway and Ireland in order to "conduct emergency consultations."

In other news, in an urgent warning issued by the World Health Organization (WHO), doctors with the international healthcare organization say the last two hospitals remaining in the northern Gaza Strip, Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia and Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, are barely functional after 8 months of non-stop bombardment, and the blockade of fuel and medical supplies by the Israeli occupation.

Doctors with the two hospitals told reporters that the Israeli occupation army continues to open fire on associated buildings, while occupation snipers have been posted on nearby rooftops at one of the hospitals.

According to Dr. Muhammad Saleh, the acting Director of Al-Awda Hospital, today marks the "third day of the siege of Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza," while the Israeli occupation forces continue "shooting at the hospital buildings" while Israeli "snipers" have taken positions in nearby homes.

Dr. Saleh went on tell journalists that the Israeli occupation has destroyed the southern wall of Al-Awda Hospital, while "all the medical staff and patients" remain inside the hospital's wings, which have become "very difficult to move between."

The doctor went on to add that hospital staff are forced to bring water from one hospital building to the other, a result of IOF soldiers having "struck the first building with a shell that targeted the fifth floor and destroyed the water tanks."

Speaking from a press conference in Geneva, Switzerland, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told reporters that “148 hospital workers and 22 patients and their companions are trapped inside” the hospital.

Following several recent visits to Al-Awda Hospital by WHO staff to deliver medical supplies and fuel, Ghebreyesus says Israeli snipers targeted the hospital, while occupation artillery shelled the fifth floor of the building.

Similarly, the Emergency Relief Coordinator for Doctor's Without Borders, Donia Al-Dakheili, said that "nothing enters or exits" the Al-Awda Hospital for fear of the Israeli snipers who remain looming over the building from nearby rooftops.

Previously, the Israeli occupation army besieged Al-Awda Hospital for several days, during which, two staff members were killed while many others were arrested and detained.

Kamal Adwan Hospital is in similarly dire circumstances, coming under fire in recent days, forcing the evacuation of patients and staff, according to Dr. Hossam Abu Safia, the hospital's Director.

"Currently, the hospital is being evacuated of the wounded, patients, and medical staff... There are many patients that the medical teams were not able to evacuate," Dr. Safia said of the attacks, adding that "the reception and emergency gate at Kamal Adwan Hospital was subjected to artillery shelling" as the occupation army advanced towards the complex.

According to Rick Peppercorn, a representative with the WHO, the reception center in the Intensive Care Unit for Kamal Adwan Hospital was bombed by the IOF.

"At the moment, there are still 20 health staff members and 13 patients," Pepperkorn said, adding that Kamal Adwan and Al-Awda are "the only two hospitals that are still working, and we cannot afford for them to stop working."

Even while Gaza's healthcare system verges on collapse as supplies run thinner than ever before, the Israeli occupation forces continued the closure of the Rafah and Karm Abu Salem border crossings for the 16th consecutive day, blocking humanitarian and medical aid trucks, along with fuel, from entering Gaza.

According to press reporting, more than 3'000 aid trucks have been prevented from entering Gaza, along with preventing at least 700 sick and wounded Palestinians from leaving Gaza for treatment abroad during the period the two crossings have been closed.

Meanwhile, the bombardment of the Gaza Strip continues unabated as occupation bombing, shelling, drone and missile strikes continued to target civilian residences and infrastructure, resulting in dozens of casualties.

Local reporting stated that the Israeli occupation forces fired several artillery shells into civilian neighborhoods in the Tal al-Hawa area, southwest of Gaza City, while Israeli warplanes bombed a residential home belonging to the Abu Zaida family in the Al-Faluga neighborhood of Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, killing 6 civilians and wounding 6 more.

In another atrocity, occupation fighter jets bombed a barracks in the vicinity of Terrence al-Baba, where displaced Palestinian families were sheltering from the war in the town of Al-Zawaida, in the central Gaza Strip, slaughtering at least 10 civilians, including an infant pulled from her mother's womb, and wounding a number of others.

Wounded civilians were transported to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in neighboring Deir al-Balah.

A similar assault targeted residential areas of the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City, martyring 2 Palestinians and wounding several others who were taken to the Baptist Hospital in the city.

Occupation artillery shelling also targeted the northern and southern neighborhoods of Gaza City, while neighborhoods east of the Nuseirat Camp also endured intense shelling.

At the same time, aircraft belonging to the Israeli occupation army bombed the Farhat family home in the Tal al-Sultan neighborhood, west of the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, wounding several people who were transported to the Kuwait Specialized Hospital.

Additionally, occupation artillery forces renewed their shelling of central and eastern Rafah, and Israeli quadcopters opened fire on several areas of the Tal al-Sultan neighborhood. Meanwhile, Israeli fighter jets bombed civilian targets in residential neighborhoods of central Rafah.

Occupation gunboats also shelled Palestinian fishing boats off the coast of Rafah, after which, the gunboats opened fire on civilians who rushed to put out fires resulting from the shelling.

As a result of the Israeli occupation's ongoing special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, the current death toll has risen once again, now exceeding 35'709 Palestinians killed, including upwards of 15'000 children and over 10'000 women, while another 79'990 others have been wounded since the start of the current round of Zionist aggression, beginning with the events of October 7th, 2023.

May 22nd, 2024.

#source1

#source2

#source3

#source4

#source5

#source6

#source7

#source8

#videosource

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[mapsontheweb]

The evolution of the Spanish West Indian Empire

« Atlas histórico de España », Jordi Induráin Pons, Larousse, 2021

by cartesdhistoire

In the 18th century, Spanish America was firmly established: the conquest phase having been completed, pacification opened the way to a reorganization of the administration of this immense territory. It was necessary to take into account the evolution of the population (since the law of 1514 allowing marriage between Spaniards and Indians, interbreeding was the central axis) and the rapid integration of the Río de la Plata to the south. Furthermore, the rise of the English and French Caribbean islands encouraged Spain to see its own islands as something other than naval relays to the continent.

The real administrative structure was the urban network, which allowed the Spaniards to immediately have control of the territory. Cities were political, administrative and religious centers, defensive sites and points of convergence for commercial and economic activities. They were created at the outlets of rich agricultural lands, most often at altitude to avoid tropical diseases, even if commercial necessities sometimes led to exceptions, as for Lima, built at sea level.

The plan of these new towns followed the same logic: a central square, with the church, the palace of the governor or viceroy, the town hall, seat of municipal power. The checkerboard plan structured the city. According to the Castilian model, the municipal power representing the local elites, the “cabildo”, was elected. Urban power was, throughout the colonial era, a center of passive resistance to distant injunctions from central power. Richly decorated, with public and private buildings of grandiose architecture, Spanish cities were incomparably more luxurious than their British or French counterparts in America. Montreal, Philadelphia or Cap-Français could not compare to the splendors of Bogotá, Caracas and even less so with Havana and Cartagena de Indias.

[usnatarchives]

D-Day: Operation Overlord

On June 6, 1944, over 160,000 Allied troops, including Americans, British, and Canadians, embarked on a courageous mission known as Operation Overlord. The D-Day invasion, as it would be famously known, marked the beginning of the end of World War II.

The largest seaborne invasion in history, D-Day saw troops land on five Normandy beaches, codenamed Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. The assault started with airborne operations, and naval forces bombarded the coastal defenses before the landing of ground troops.

The D-Day invasion was a logistical feat. From deception tactics, such as Operation Fortitude, which misdirected German attention from Normandy, to the innovation of the Higgins boats, it showcased ingenuity as well.

The cost was steep; the Allies suffered heavy casualties. Yet their bravery and sacrifice led to the successful establishment of a Western front in Europe, a crucial step towards liberating the continent from the Nazi German regime.

As we look back on this historic day, we remember the extraordinary courage and dedication of all those who fought for freedom on the shores of Normandy.

[argyrocratie]

(...)

"What is the Houthi movement?

The Houthi insurgency is a Zaydi Shiite Islamist political movement established in 1992 to challenge Yemen’s longtime, and increasingly corrupt, leader Ali Abdullah Saleh. Following massive street protests, Saleh resigned his post in 2011. After the resignation, a national unity dialogue was held in Yemen’s capital Sana’a to try to resolve a host of Yemeni political conflicts. However, those talks eventually broke down, prompting the Houthis to advance on Sana’a with the goal of taking power. This sparked Saudi Arabia’s deadly US-backed air, ground, and naval invasion of Yemen, which lasted for seven years and killed an estimated 9,000 civilians, as well as significant numbers of Houthi forces, in repeated airstrikes. Despite the overwhelming force used by Saudi Arabia, however, the Houthis gained control over roughly a third of Yemen’s land—and two-thirds of its population—over the course of the war.

In April 2022, Saudi Arabia and the Houthis negotiated a truce that has nearly eliminated the fighting in Yemen. The truce halted offensive military operations, allowed fuel ships to enter Yemeni ports, and restarted commercial flights from Sana’a airport. However, it did not offer a comprehensive political settlement, leaving open the threat of renewed hostilities.

How have the Houthis become involved in the war?

After Israel began bombing Gaza on October 7th, the Houthi movement—which has long held what Yemen expert Helen Lackner called a “fundamentalist foreign policy position against the US and Israel”—announced that it was ready to intervene in solidarity with Palestinians. “There are red lines in the situation related to Gaza, and we are coordinating with our brothers in the jihad axis and are ready to intervene with all we can,” the Houthis’ leader said. As part of this effort, the movement has carried out 27 attacks in the Red Sea between November 19th and January 11th, most of them on commercial ships linked to Israel (although some of the attacks have targeted ships without a clear connection to Israel). The movement has also tried to fire on American warships and on Israel itself.

In the attacks on commercial ships, the Houthis have mostly fired missiles at them, though on November 20th, the group’s fighters seized a cargo ship and detained the crew members onboard. These attacks have discouraged shipping companies from traversing the Red Sea, the fastest route from Asia to Europe; many are instead sailing around the Horn of Africa, which adds $1 million to the typical cost of a roundtrip. On January 11th, the White House cited this trade disruption as a key motivating factor for the US’s bombings in Yemen, noting that “more than 2,000 ships have been forced to divert thousands of miles to avoid the Red Sea—which can cause weeks of delays in product shipping times.”

The Houthi movement’s attacks in the Red Sea, as well as the retaliation the attacks have generated, have revitalized the group’s power within Yemen. Prior to October 7th, the Houthis were facing discontent due to their authoritarian rule, their failure to pay salaries, and their control of aid in the face of spiraling poverty. Their confrontation with Israel, however, has seen “their popularity suddenly skyrocket, including in areas in Yemen where they don’t rule and in stark contrast to other Arab [states] who are at best being silent, or at worse, helping the enemy,” Yemen expert Helen Lackner told Jewish Currents. After incurring significant losses in their conflict with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the Houthis’ firm opposition to Israel has also helped them to recruit more young men to their military who believe they will have the opportunity to fight in Palestine, according to Lackner.

In this context, experts say it is unlikely the spate of Western bombings will end the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea—and such attacks could even contribute to the group’s bolstered popularity. “They’re willing to live with some level of retaliation because they can then position themselves as having been targeted by this Western alliance that is serving the interests of Israel,” said Mohamad Bazzi, director of New York University’s Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies. Other experts have also warned that the US strikes risk provoking further escalations: For instance, the Houthis could decide to attack Saudi Arabia in a bid to up the pressure on American allies.

(...)

What is Iran’s role in the regional escalation?

While the groups responding to Israel’s bombing of Gaza—Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the Iraqi and Syrian paramilitaries—are spread out across the region, they are all supported by Iran, which has armed and financed them as part of an overall strategy to contest US and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. This Iran-supported network is often called the “axis of resistance,” and the alliance’s close collaboration reflects an approach developed by Qassem Soleimani, who was a key Iranian military leader until he was assassinated by the US in January 2020. “A big part of his strategy in the region was for the groups to get to know each other, and to share training and expertise—and that continued after the assassination in Baghdad,” said Bazzi.

Experts emphasize that Iran does not have full control over the groups it funds and arms, which often pursue their own agendas. For example, the relationship between the Houthis and Iran, according to Lackner, “is a bit like Netanyahu’s relationship to Biden. If they agree, and they want to do the same thing, then they do it. But they are not afraid to diverge either,” said Lackner. For instance, the Houthis ignored Iran’s orders to halt their advance on Sana’a in 2014, which sparked the years-long civil war and the conflict with Saudi Arabia. In the current conflagration, Bazzi said, Iran is unlikely to be directing the various forces to pursue “specific attacks,” but Iranian military leadership is “probably involved in larger-scale conversations about the division of responsibilities of different parts of the axis of resistance.”

According to Bazzi, at this moment Iran is carefully calculating how to maintain regional credibility by showing support for Hamas, while not going far enough to provoke a war with powerful foes like the US and Israel. “The primary Iranian calculation is about regime survival, and they don’t want to do anything that seriously jeopardizes their survival,” said Bazzi. Parsi said that so far, Iran has benefited from avoiding risky moves—in contrast to Israel, which has diminished its own “global standing” with its operations in Gaza. “Israel’s pariah status globally—at least outside of the West—is something that the Iranians are drawing benefits from. But that only works to the point that this doesn’t escalate into a larger conflict,” he said.

How is the US responding to the regional conflict?

Since October 7th, the US has repeatedly said that it wants to prevent more fighting in the region. Early on, the US dispatched warships and fighter jets to the Mediterranean to deter Hezbollah from entering the fray. Biden administration officials have also ramped up diplomatic efforts to halt a regional conflagration: The president sent envoy Amos Hochstein to Lebanon to try to negotiate a solution to the fighting around the blue line, and reportedly warned Israel against escalation with Hezbollah in private conversations. In October, when Israel had made plans to pre-emptively strike Lebanon, President Biden called Netanyahu to tell him to “stand down” on the attack plans, and ultimately, Israel did not launch a wide scale attack, according to a December Wall Street Journal report. “The priority for the Biden administration is to limit or prevent the broadening of the conflict,” said Schenker.

At the same time, the US has carried out repeated bombings in Iraq, Syria, and now Yemen, even as officials continue to talk about de-escalation. “We’re not looking for conflict with Iran. We’re not looking to escalate and there’s no reason for it to escalate beyond what happened over the last few days,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said last Friday, after the first US bombings of Yemen. But yesterday, the US military again bombed Houthi targets for the third time in a week, and then designated the Houthis as a terror organization, blocking the group’s access to the global financial system. By targeting Yemen, experts say the US is significantly expanding the regional war—“escalating regional tensions and adding fuel to a conflict,” as Bazzi wrote in a recent column published in The Guardian. “The conflagration could spiral out of control, perhaps more by accident than design,” he noted.

Many Middle East analysts say the Biden administration’s attempt to avert regional war is failing for one main reason: its refusal to couple a plea for de-escalation with advocacy for a ceasefire in Gaza. “Seeing the wider regional conflict as something that can be managed separately from Gaza is the source of the dissonance [in the administration’s strategy],” Bazzi told Jewish Currents. “You can’t prevent the wider regional war effectively without addressing the core immediate issue, which is the Israeli assault on Gaza. It’s just wishful thinking in the Biden administration that somehow it can separate the two.”

[15-lizards]

Hi! I love your redesigns for ASOIAF houses and the snippets of their house’s fashion history. I wrote a ton of fashion history papers in college so it warms my heart with your posts. 💚💛💚 (green hearts for Meera Reed)

What do you think House Velaryon would dress like? They have such an interesting history that it’s hard for me, personally, to imagine it. My first thought was Vikings because they’re sea faring like the Greyjoys but it wouldn’t match too much because they’re a political powerhouse with dragons and members in the Royal family… at least in the HOTD era. In GOT they’re much smaller and less powerful naval house under Stannis who obviously isn’t as flashy as the Targs or even his brothers. The fashion would’ve changed drastically throughout their history, especially considering the two very different houses their power has been tied to so I was wondering what your take would be on their different statuses being reflected in their clothes.

This got very long lol I love your energy with the fashion history side of the fandom so I don’t mind if it takes a while to answer! Great things take time after all💚

Hey this is such a great question!! I think I’ll do like a “timeline” of fashion for this one instead of one period on time.

Okay so they’re said to have arrived even earlier than the targs, so their earliest fashions would be older remnants of Valyria. Fairly simple clothing, since I don’t think they were very established in Valyria, but as they made their wealth, their fashion became more complex with added jewelry and finer materials, but they still hung on to their traditions for a while. Simple one piece dresses or tunics and sun protecting/religious headwear that got more complex over time

An unspecified amount of time later, when the Targs arrive, the Velaryons have grown nice and wealthy off of the constant wars on the mainland. At this point they’re still cleaning to tradition, but they’re also letting Westerosi influences come in. Leather jerkins and wool cloaks and velvet jackets etc etc. And at this point they’re starting to evolve into a sea faring family too so: cotton clothing that’s easy to move around in on ships, turbans/head wraps to keep hair out of their face on Driftmark and while at sea, rare jewels and metals found on expeditions.

By the time of the dance they’ve probably fully conformed to Westerosi fashions. And they’re rich enough to fully indulge in it too. Big frills and ruffles, wide skirts, embroidered clothing, jeweled headdresses, studded leather jerkins, carefully crafted doublets, the whole nine yards. I feel that since this is the peak of the Targaryen era it’s also the peak of the Velaryon era, since they’re so closely connected

By the time of Aerys II, I think that their peak has definitely passed, and the Velaryons are slowly falling from grace, though it isn’t as extreme or as fast as the targs. Their clothes are older and more worn, beginning to become mostly for practicality. Skirts are flatter, leather has become cracked, people are wearing the clothes of their mother and father. It’s not immediate, but there’s definitely a slow decline in quality as the house becomes less and less important to Westeros

By the late 290’s, I think the Velaryons are all but faded into obscurity. They have their noble name, but that’s really it. They were fading already by the end of the Targs, so the absolute shitshow Robert launches the country in cant really be good for them, or the fact that Mr. Stingy Stannis is their new liege lord. When Aurane comes to power, they’re essentially just dressing like landed knights. Their clothes are clean and fit well and don’t have holes…but that’s about it.

[usafphantom2]

2nd September 1937. First flight of the Grumman XF4F fighter, which would become known as the Wildcat. Its performance was initially inferior to the rival Brewster Buffalo, and the aircraft required an extensive redesign before being put into production. Despite this unpromising beginning, the Wildcat would prove crucial in the early stages of the Pacific war. Though less manoeuvrable than the Japanese Zero, it was well armed, rugged and a capable adversary in the hands of a skilled pilot.

The Wildcat’s first combat sorties were actually flown by the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm. Named Martlet in British use until 1944, the type’s first victory was a Junkers 88 over Scapa Flow on Christmas Day 1940. Martlets went on to serve successfully on the first Royal Navy escort carrier, HMS Audacity, in 1941. They continued in this role until the end of the war, scoring their final victories in Fleet Air Arm service by shooting down four Bf 109s in March 1945.

Wildcats first flew in combat against the Japanese during the attempt to take Wake Island in early December 1941. Four Marine F4Fs mounted a heroic defence, breaking up several air attacks as well as sinking a destroyer and submarine with 100lb bombs before the island finally fell on 23rd December. Wildcats served in all the key early engagements of the Pacific war, including Coral Sea, Midway and the defence of Guadalcanal.

Wildcats quickly established a reputation for toughness, able to absorb far more punishment than their Japanese opponents, and had an impressive kill/loss ratio. Wildcats were credited with destroying over 1,000 Japanese aircraft for 178 aerial losses, 24 to anti-aircraft fire, and 49 to operational causes. One Navy and seven Marine Corps pilots would earn the Medal of Honor in Wildcats.

In early 1943, Wildcat production was taken over by General Motors under the designation FM-1 and later the improved FM-2. Though replaced by the more powerful Hellcat on American fleet carriers during that year, the Wildcat’s small size and light weight made it ideal for use on escort and light carriers. With the addition of folding wings, they were well suited to the limited hangar and deck space available.

As in Royal Naval service, they remained in use until the end of the war. For example, during the battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944, Wildcats mounted strafing runs against Japanese warships, helping to buy time for their parent escort carriers to escape.

Pictured:

1) First prototype Grumman XF4F-2 in flight. Note the cowling machine guns, forward radio antenna mast and telescopic gunsight, none of which featured on production models.

📷 thisdayinaviation.com

2) Grumman Martlet of 888 Squadron NAS warming up on board HMS Formidable prior to takeoff.

📷 IWM (A 11640)

3) Wrecked Grumman F4F-3 Wildcat fighters of Marine Fighting Squadron 211 (VMF-211), photographed by by the Wake airstrip sometime after the Japanese captured the island on 23rd December 1941. The plane in the foreground, 211-F-11, was flown by Captain Henry T. Elrod during the 11th December attacks that sank the Japanese destroyer Kisaragi. Damaged beyond repair at that time, 211-F-11 was subsequently used as a source of parts to keep other planes operational. Elrod received a posthumous Medal of Honor after leading a beach defence unit during the final Japanese assault.

📷 NHHC 80-G-179006

4) FM-2 Wildcat over the escort carrier USS Santee during the Leyte landings on 20th October. Santee would survive a kamikaze attack and a torpedo hit from a Japanese submarine 5 days later.

📷 NHHC 80-G-287594

@JamieMctrusty via X

[calirph]

𝐅𝐈𝐑𝐄 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐃 𝐀𝐔 / 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐓 𝐃𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐃𝐑𝐀𝐆𝐎𝐍𝐒 𝐒𝐂𝐄𝐍𝐀𝐑𝐈𝐎𝐒 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐒.

scenarios and prompts based on alternative takes related to george r.r. martin's fire and blood and it's hbo's adaptation; house of the dragon specifically the aftermath of the dance. change pronouns, locations and names as you see fit.

Here are 50 alternate universe (AU) ideas for George R.R. Martin's Fire & Blood and the Dance of the Dragons aftermath:

Jaehaera Targaryen survives – Instead of jumping from Maegor's Holdfast, Jaehaera seeks refuge in the North, becoming a key figure in the alliance between House Stark and House Targaryen.

Viserys and Jaehaera’s forbidden love – Viserys II and Jaehaera secretly begin an affair during their marriage, leading to a quiet but intense power struggle within the Targaryen family.

Dragons remain in Westeros – Despite the conflict, many dragons survive and form a vital part of Targaryen rule, with their numbers dwindling but never disappearing.

Pact of Ice and Fire finalized – The Starks of Winterfell honor their ancient pact with the Targaryens, marrying a Stark to a Targaryen, leading to a permanent alliance that changes the political landscape.

Aegon II survives – Aegon II recovers from his poisoning, regains the throne, and executes all rivals. His reign is marked by paranoia and brutality, yet the Targaryen dynasty remains strong.

Daemon survives – Daemon Targaryen survives the Battle Above the Gods Eye and returns to seize power, uniting the surviving dragonlords under his banner.

Daemon and Rhaenyra rule together – Daemon and Rhaenyra win the Dance and establish a joint monarchy, their reign plagued by inner family tensions but marked by strong military rule.

House Velaryon rules Driftmark and King's Landing – The Velaryons, bitter over losing Laenor and Laena, break from the Targaryens, declaring independence and ruling as a seafaring kingdom from Driftmark.

Rhaena Targaryen claims the throne – Following her mother's death, Rhaena emerges as the last true Targaryen and fights her way to the Iron Throne, riding her newly-hatched dragon into war.

Daemon marries Sara Snow – In a scandalous twist, Daemon Targaryen marries Sara Snow instead of Laena Velaryon, leading to a strong Targaryen-Northern alliance.

Visenya, daughter of Rhaenyra, survives – Rhaenyra’s daughter, Visenya, survives birth and grows up to become a fierce queen, continuing her mother’s legacy.

Helaena becomes the last dragonrider – Helaena Targaryen takes control of the surviving dragons after the war, uniting them under her leadership in an attempt to restore peace.

The Ironborn side with Rhaenyra – Instead of remaining neutral, the Ironborn join Rhaenyra’s side in the Dance, turning the tide of battle with their naval power.

Alys Rivers takes Harrenhal and the Riverlands – Alys Rivers declares herself queen of the Riverlands after the Dance, ruling Harrenhal with an iron grip and dark sorcery.

Aegon the Younger conquers Dorne – As part of his rule, Aegon III launches an invasion of Dorne, succeeding where his ancestors failed and uniting all of Westeros under the Targaryen banner.

Dragons take over Valyria – With no home left in Westeros, the surviving dragons fly back to the ruins of Valyria, slowly rebuilding the ancient civilization.

Helaena becomes Queen Regent – After the death of her sons, Helaena assumes power as Queen Regent for a young successor, ruling with quiet determination.

Daemon and Rhaenyra's heirs unite the realm – Joffrey, Aegon the Younger, and Viserys II form a triumvirate after the war, ruling Westeros together and reforming the realm.

Mysaria rules King's Landing – Mysaria, the White Worm, seizes control of the capital after the death of the major claimants, ruling the city through intrigue and shadow.

Cregan Stark usurps the throne – After aiding Rhaenyra, Cregan Stark takes control of the throne for himself, establishing a short-lived Stark dynasty in King's Landing.

Aegon III embraces dragons – Instead of hating dragons after the Dance, Aegon III devotes his reign to breeding and raising more dragons, leading to a second era of Targaryen dominance.

Daemon Targaryen forms a pirate kingdom – Rather than fighting for the Iron Throne, Daemon survives the war and retreats to Essos, founding a pirate kingdom and terrorizing the Narrow Sea.

The Great Council of 136 AC establishes democracy – The lords of Westeros convene a second Great Council after the Dance, deciding to institute a form of elected monarchy for the realm.

Rhaenyra marries Cregan Stark – Instead of Daemon, Rhaenyra marries Cregan Stark, leading to a powerful alliance between the North and the Iron Throne.

Aegon III and Baela Targaryen rule together – Aegon III marries Baela Targaryen, and together they forge a powerful, unified Targaryen reign that heals the wounds of the Dance.

Sunfyre lives and becomes King’s dragon – Sunfyre, Aegon II's dragon, survives the war and becomes a symbol of Targaryen power, loyal to the new king on the throne.

Helaena escapes the Red Keep – Helaena Targaryen escapes her captivity in the Red Keep and joins a secret society in Essos, vowing to return and reclaim her family’s throne.

Aegon III brings Essos to heel – Aegon III’s hatred of war turns into a desire for conquest, leading him to unite the Free Cities under his rule with the help of new dragons.

Alys Rivers becomes the true power behind the throne – Alys Rivers manipulates her son with Aegon II, ruling from the shadows and weaving spells of control over the Iron Throne.

Corlys Velaryon establishes a separate kingdom – After growing tired of Targaryen infighting, Corlys Velaryon declares the islands of Driftmark and Dragonstone as an independent kingdom.

Daemon marries Rhaenys Targaryen – Daemon Targaryen marries Rhaenys, the Queen Who Never Was, instead of Laena, uniting two of the most powerful dragonriders.

Joffrey Velaryon survives and becomes king – Joffrey Velaryon survives the fall from his dragon, Vhagar, and later becomes King Joffrey I, uniting the realm with his charisma.

The Triarchy defeats Daemon – The Triarchy wins the Stepstones war, taking control of the Narrow Sea and launching a full invasion of Westeros.

House Hightower seizes the throne – After the fall of Aegon II, House Hightower stages a coup, taking control of the throne for themselves.

The Ironborn take Dragonstone – Seeing the Targaryens weakened, the Ironborn seize Dragonstone and hold it as a stronghold against the Targaryens, becoming a naval superpower.

Targaryen civil war in Essos – After the Dance, surviving members of the Targaryen family flee to Essos, where they begin a new civil war over who should lead the exiled line.

Winterfell becomes a new capital – After the war, the Iron Throne is moved to Winterfell, cementing the alliance between House Targaryen and House Stark.

House Blackwood seizes the Riverlands – The Blackwoods, loyal to Rhaenyra, seize control of the Riverlands in the aftermath of the Dance, establishing a new Blackwood dynasty.

Helaena and Aegon II produce an heir – Helaena and Aegon II produce a son before Aegon’s death, allowing their child to claim the Iron Throne instead of Aegon III.

Dragonstone becomes independent – The island of Dragonstone declares independence after the Dance, ruled by a council of dragonlords led by Aegon III.

House Velaryon claims the Iron Throne – With no clear Targaryen heirs, House Velaryon rises to power, with a Velaryon monarch taking the Iron Throne and ruling Westeros.

The Westerlands declare independence – Seeing an opportunity, the Westerlands, led by the Lannisters, declare independence from the Targaryens and rule as a separate kingdom.

Aegon III becomes the Dragon King – Rather than rejecting dragons, Aegon III spends his reign perfecting dragon breeding, eventually becoming the most successful dragonlord since Aegon the Conqueror.

Rhaenys Targaryen becomes the ruler of Dorne – After surviving the Dance, Rhaenys flies her dragon to Dorne and unites the kingdom under her banner, ruling as Queen of Dorne.

The Citadel bans magic and dragons – After the devastation of the Dance, the Citadel seizes control of the realm’s political power, banning magic and dragons in all of Westeros.

Jace Velaryon defeats Aegon II – Jacaerys Velaryon survives and defeats Aegon II, becoming King Jacaerys I and ruling with a just hand, despite his mother’s death.

Helaena and Daemon unite against Rhaenyra – In a shocking twist, Helaena Targaryen joins forces with Daemon, turning against Rhaenyra in a bid to seize power for themselves.

Daemon becomes the first King of the Stepstones – After losing the Dance, Daemon Targaryen retreats to the Stepstones, declaring himself king and founding a new pirate empire.

Dragons become extinct – After the Dance, dragons are hunted to extinction by fearful lords, marking the end of the Targaryen dragonlords and leading to their eventual fall.

Aegon II reconciles with Rhaenyra – Instead of warring, Aegon II and Rhaenyra come to terms and rule Westeros together, forging a fragile but lasting peace between their factions.

[theworsthistorynerd]

"In the late 6th century, a new monotheistic religion called Islam was founded by its prophet Muhammad, whose followers became known as Muslims. Muhammad united the tribes of Arabia into a religious polity, a caliphate, whose domains he and his successors extended into a vast empire through holy war (jihad).[296][ci] They conquered Palestine in 636 to 640.[247][cii][ciii]

Society in the caliphate formed a pyramid with five layers.[297] Arabs were at the top, followed by converts to Islam (mawali) (this distinction disappeared after the Abbasids seized power).[297] Below them stood dhimmis, followed by non-Muslim free men and slaves at the bottom.[297] The dhimmi (meaning "protected person") were Christians, Jews, and Samaritans, who the Muslims designated as "peoples of the Book" (ahl al-kitab), meaning that they, like the Muslims, based their worship on a book God had given to them, which, in its essence, was identical to the Koran.[298] Unlike the previous rulers, the Muslims allowed them to practice their religions in peace. However, non-Muslim men had to pay a special tax (jizya) and they had to be submissive to Muslims.[298][civ] Dress regulations were imposed on non-Muslims, but it is uncertain whether they were ever enforced in Palestine.[299][cv] Muslim men were permitted to marry non-Muslim women even if the latter choose to remain in their faith. Muslim women, however, could not marry non-Muslim men, unless they first converted to Islam.[300][cvi] The Muslims also lifted the Romans' centuries-long ban on Jews in Jerusalem.[301]

The Muslims organized the territory of the Byzantine Dioceses Orientes (Syria) into five military districts, or provinces (jund, pl. ajnad).[302][cvii][cviii] The territory of Palaestina Prima and Palaestina Tertia became Jund Filastin and stretched from Aqaba in the south to the lower Galilee in the north and from Arish in the west to Jericho in the east.[303][cix] The Tulunids later expanded the borders of the province eastwards and southwards to include regions in modern-day southern Jordan and north-western Saudi Arabia.[304][cx] The newly founded city Ramla became Jund Filastin's administrative capital and most important city.[305] Jund al-Urdunn corresponded with Palaestina Secunda, covering most of the Galilee, the western part of Peraea in Transjordan, and the coastal cities Acre and Sur (Tyre).[306] Tabariyyah (Tiberias) replaced Scythopolis as the province's capital.[307]

Throughout the period, Palestine was a sort of gold mine for the caliphate and among its most prosperous and fertile provinces.[308] Palestine's wealth derived from its strategic location as a hub for international trade, the influx of pilgrims, its excellent agricultural produce, and from a number of local crafts.[309] Products manufactured or traded in Palestine included building materials from marble and white-stone quarries, spices, soaps, olive oil, sugar, indigo, Dead Sea salts, and silk.[310] Palestinian Jews were expert glassmakers whose wares became known as "Jewish glass" in Europe.[311] Palestine was also known for its book production and scribal work.[312]

The Muslims invested much effort in developing a fleet and in restoring seaports, creating shipyards, fortifying coastal cities, and in establishing naval bases in Palestine.[313] Acre became their chief naval base from which a fleet set out to conquer Cyprus in 647.[314] Jaffa came to replace Caesarea as Palestine's main port due to its proximity with Ramla.[315]

Though Palestine was now under Muslim control, the Christian world's affection for the Holy Land continued to grow. Christian kings made generous donations to Jerusalem's holy sites,[cxi] and helped facilitate the ever increasing pilgrimage traffic.[317][cxii] Pilgrims ventured for the adventure, but also to expiate sin.[319][cxiii] Many pilgrims were attacked by highwaymen which would later be cited by the Crusaders as a reason to "liberate" Jerusalem from the Muslims.[320]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Palestine#Crusader_period

[kharrneth]

𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐃𝐄𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐃 - 𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐋𝐌𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐊𝐇𝐎𝐑𝐍𝐄

The Blood God's realm is vast-- ever expanding, growing endlessly with his might. Thusly, there are countless sub-territories within the Kingdom of Skulls owned by territorial daemons or daemon-beasts. Underground, the land is spoken for, with Blood Hosts warring beneath the dry, cracked, skull-choked plains of Khorne. Even the Blood Oceans are rife with ships of sinew, brass and bone, skull-fleets of daemons battling for naval supremacy...

The most grand of these territories are those held by the Bloodthirsters. A newly manifested Fist of Khorne must face many trials before he is taken seriously by his fellow Greater Daemons and of these trials is the ownership of a lair. Lairs can be founded or seized and are often built from the remains of the many massive beasts that lurk Khorne's realm, (though may be constructed purely from raw materials). These are called the Khala'thysk ("Castle Beast" in Dark Tongue) and each of them is big enough to comfortably fit several Bloodthirster in it's mouth, thus making them first basis for a Fortress.

A Castle Beasts skull is the one skull in a Greater Daemon's career that it will keep for itself. It becomes it's lair and the basis for any additions to the fortress, be that more skeletons or actual brick and mortar. Typically, the fortress is built into the body of the beast and particularly large fortresses may be made of several beasts. The Bloodthirster, naturally, makes it's quarters in the Skull and leaves the neck, ribs, belly, and tail to it's subordinates.

A lair is by no means a strictly terrestrial affair: Some are built on top of the various floating shards of stone littered about the skies of the Realm of Blood. Others are hidden underground, where they are hard to find and assail by overground Blood Daemons unaccompanied by a scenting Flesh Hounds. Cohabitation is tricky for Daemons of Khorne, as their patron demands endless slaughter and does not care where it comes from. However, a Host has no shortage of enemies, especially newly established Daemon Lords. Neighboring daemons will send war parties to probe for weaknesses and test the mettle of newcomers. Packs of bloodthirsty beast are not shy about attacking a Lair either. Enemy Daemons from other gods offer challenge from time to time and always, roving bands of daemons and champions of Khorne look for blood and skulls-- this endless gamut of enemies, and the sheer presence of a Bloodthirster, ensures all aggressions are turned outward, not inwards.

Not all Bloodthirsters have lairs. Some are strictly nomadic. Some do not have hosts-- living along in whatever fortress they've stolen or constructed. Only the Bloodthirsters from the Eight Hosts of Murder are afforded anything like Luxury, for they live within the very Halls of the Skull Throne, nearest to their god in his barracks.

[halobirthdays]

Happy birthday to Captain Veronica Dare!

Today is her -492nd birthday!

Dare was born on Actium and enlisted with the UNSC, eventually joining the Office of Naval Intelligence. During the Battle of Mombasa, Dare was given command of a squad of ODSTs for a classified mission. The squad--Alpha Nine--was lead by Edward Buck, whom she'd crossed paths with before.

Dare met Buck while on shore leave seven years prior, and the two shared a brief affair. Buck had hopes that their relationship could develop into something more serious, but those hopes were dashed when he learned that she was affiliated with ONI, leading to concerns about his ability to trust her due to ONI's reputation as underhanded and manipulating. Thus, they parted ways, and they did not see one another again until a mission on Belisk six years later, and then at the Battle for Earth a year after that.

Dare did not reveal her mission to Alpha-Nine before she took control of the squad: they believed they were supposed to infiltrate and destroy the Covenant carrier Solemn Penance. During the drop, she ordered Alpha-Nine to divert their descent, avoiding the ship and landing in New Mombasa. Alpha-Nine was scattered after the crash, with Dare continuing her mission to the Superintendent's data center. Eventually, the squad was able to regroup, and Dare revealed her true mission: she was supposed to gather information on the portal at Voi, and discovered a Huragok named Quick to Adjust in the process. These organic artificial intelligences contained a wealth of knowledge about the Forerunners and the Covenant, which Dare quickly realized would be invaluable to the UNSC. Dare and Alpha-Nine were eventually able to escape the city with Quick to Adjust in tow.

After the war's end, Dare and Buck decided to spend shore leave together again, as they did whenever their schedules allowed, only to be interrupted by Jun-A266, a SPARTAN-III who was now in charge of Spartan recruitment. Jun asked Buck to joined the Spartans, and he initially declined. But after a mission to Draco-III against the United Rebel Front lead to the death of Jonathan Doherty, his squadmate, Alpha-Nine disbanded and Buck joined the SPARTAN program alongside Mickey and Romeo. Later, Buck would discover that Micky had defected to the URF, and he was arrested and held at a secret SPARTAN training facility.

During the Created conflict, Dare would ask Buck to re-establish Alpha-Nine to assist her in convincing an URF-controlled colony to share technology that could be used against the Guardians. To do this, she wanted Buck to enlist Micky's help. Though he was reluctant, Buck broke Mickey out of confinement and Dare and Alpha-Nine traveled to Hole in the Wall, where she was able to negotiate sharing the technology. Shortly thereafter, the colony was attacked by a Guardian. As they evacuated, Buck confessed to Dare that he regretting never marrying her. The squad was taken onto Infinity, where Dare called Buck's bluff and dared him to follow through on his desire to marry her. He agreed, and they were married moments later by Roland, the ship's AI.

After Operation: WOLFE, Fred gave Dare a message from Veta Lopis and the Ferrets, explaining that they were undercover and infiltrating the Keepers of the One Freedom. Lopis' message warned the UNSC of the return of Atriox and his plans for the Ark. It is unknown if Dare was onboard the Infinity when it was attacked by the Banished.

In canon (~2560), she is turning 45!

[usarmytrooper]

Today is the 79th Anniversary of Operation Overlord

On June 6, 1944, nearly 160,000 British, Canadian, and American troops crossed the English Channel to attack Hitler’s Fortress Europe at Normandy. It was the largest amphibious operation in history.

Above: Map depicting the D-Day landings by Allied forces.

Above: The text of the Order of the Day for 6 June 1944 issued by Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) and General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Prior to the assault, the United States’ 82d and 101st Airborne Divisions were assigned objectives on the Cotentin Peninsula west of Utah Beach, while the British 6th Airborne Division was assigned to capture the bridges over the Caen Canal. The Airborne operations were intended to impede the German response to the beachhead. Supreme Allied Commander (European Theater of Operations) had been told that casualties among the Airborne units could be as high as 80%. They jumped into Europe anyway.

Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower speaks to men of the 101st Airborne prior to their boarding lanes that would take them to jump into Normandy. Eisenhower stayed at the airstrip until all of the planes had taken off safely before returning to his headquarters. Happily, casualties among the paratroopers were much lower than predicted. Of approximately 13,100 paratroopers who jumped into battle, approximately 2,500 (19%) were killed, wounded, or missing by the end of D-Day.

Approximately 3,000 landing craft and 2,500 ships were used during the invasion. Preliminary naval bombardment of German positions commenced at 05:45 and continued until 06:25 from five battleships, twenty cruisers, sixty-five destroyers, and two monitors. Infantry began arriving on the beaches at around 06:30.

Above: (Top) The Battleship HMS Rodney fires on German positions at Caen, (Lower Left) Battleship USS Arkansas engages the enemy at Omaha Beach, (Lower Middle) Battleship USS Nevada fires her ten 14-inch guns in support of the Invasion, (Lower Right) Battleship USS Texas underway en route to England to participate in the Invasion.

Above: US Troops begin to establish a beachhead, signaling the beginning of the end of the Nazi occupation of Europe.

On D-Day, some 132,000 men were transported to the beaches by sea, and a further 24,000 entered France by air. The battlefield conditions were brutal and the Allied hold on the beaches was tenuous, particularly at Omaha Beach, the sector most heavily defended by German troops. But they held on. By July 25, 1944, the Allies had landed approximately 1.5 million troops in France and were ready to implement Operation Cobra, the Allied break out from Normandy. By the end of August, approximately 2,050,000 Allied troops had landed in France and resistance by Hitler’s Wehrmacht was crumbling.

Above: US Troops exit a landing craft to attempt to establish a beachhead at Omaha Beach.

The Allies suffered approximately 226,000 casualties during the period from D-Day to the end of August: the American armies suffered 124,394 casualties, of whom 20,668 were killed, and 10,128 were missing. Casualties within the Canadian and British Armies are placed at 83,045: 15,995 killed, 57,996 wounded, and 9,054 missing.

During the same period, Allied air forces flew over 80,000 sorties in support of Operation Overlord, suffering approximately 17,000 additional casualties and the loss of over 4,000 aircraft.

They truly were the Greatest Generation. After what they did for all of us, it is only fitting that we pause for a moment to remember and reflect on the sacrifices they made at the altar of freedom.

[theculturedmarxist]

Yves here. You are getting a Sunday extra on the conflict in Gaza and where it looks set to be headed, given Hamas’ apparent strategy, the dug in position of the US and Israel, and the so far on-track behavior of the Arab world.

John Helmer’s post clinically and persuasively draws conclusions that most commentators, including yours truly, have been loath to state clearly, perhaps because depicting the likelihood of bad outcomes somehow feels as if it increases the odds they come to pass (magical thinking cults and their lesser “intention” cousins illustrate this superstitious tendency).

Even though the earlier part of Helmer’s analysis is based on known facts (at least if you’ve been paying attention), he adds critical information about the implications of even a shortish war with Israel’s neighbors on Israel, and the apparently-not-heretofore-reported sighting that China has naval vessels in the Persian Gulf that have anti-sub and anti-missile capabilities.

It’s not hard to conclude from Helmer’s depiction that with the US and Israel unwilling to accept a loss and the lack of any adults on “our team” mean the odds of eventual nuclear war are way too high.  And if you think Helmer is too pessimistic, listen to the section from Larry Johnson in the broadcast on Judge Napolitano with Ray McGovern. Starting at 11:40, Johnson describes how Pakistan has offered to send some of its nukes to Türkiye in case of a dustup with Israel.

By John Helmer, the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears

Preamble1.  Since 1943 the US and its European allies, including Germany (Olaf Scholz’s government, not Adolf Hitler’s), have aimed to liquidate the secular nationalist Arab leadership capable of co-existence with the West and a state for the Jewish people.

2.  In Palestine Hamas has studied seventy-five years of lessons on the impossibility of coordinating Arab state war in the defence of the Palestine part of the two-state solution.

3. For more than a year, therefore, Hamas has prepared in well-kept secret an offensive against Israel to achieve five objectives – the first to demonstrate how inferior the Israeli military is, how vulnerable, how incompetent their intelligence on the Arab world. This has been achieved by the initial attack of October 7.

4. The second Hamas objective has been to demonstrate the Israeli plan of ethnic cleansing of Gaza,  genocide against the Arabs, and incorporation of all Israeli-occupied territories in a single theocratic Zionist state —  Quod erat demonstrandum. The third objective is to hold out against the expected Israeli counterattack for long enough to activate the Hezbollah forces on the northern Lebanon front;  Syrian and Iranian forces on the eastern Golan front; and the West Bank Palestinians, including the Jordanian Palestinians; the latter’s targets will be US air and armoured land force bases in Jordan. So far, so good.

5. The final Hamas objectives are to compel the vacillating sheikhdoms to resist US pressure; limit oil and gas supplies to the enemy markets; prevent regional land base and air transit rights being activated in support of Israel — so far, so good. And lastly, the fifth objective, to engage the friendly nuclear powers – Russia, China – to deter, and if necessary combat US forces in the region and Israel’s threat to fire its nuclear weapons.

The rules of war 6.  These aren’t in the code of secular international humanitarian law referred to in the western media and by UN officials in support of Israel. Those rules were eliminated by the destruction of two generations of Arab leaders willing to abide by them. The war doctrine of Hamas does not concede that international law may dictate to or supersede Islamic law.  In parallel, the war doctrine of Israel is that Jewish and Israeli law supersedes every other.

This report is the most comprehensive record in English to date of the official Israel statements of genocide against the Gaza Palestinians in intention, policy and practice. Source:  https://ccrjustice.org/ In 1948, the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide expressly included in Article II “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. Forty years later, in 1988, the US Congress added two qualifiers to the provision in the US criminal code which defines genocide as a crime to be prosecuted if Americans commit it. This new US law declared genocide is “the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in substantial part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group”. “Substantial part,” the statute now said, meant “a part of a group of such numerical significance that the destruction or loss of that part would cause the destruction of the group as a viable entity within the nation of which such group is a part.” So long as the genocidal Arab killer isn’t “specific” in intention and the part of the people attacked isn’t “substantial”, the killer is off the hook in the US criminal code.  This was a calculated US change to the crime of genocide. The US senator who drafted it and promoted it into law was Joseph Biden. For more, read The Jackals’ Wedding – page 14-18.

7. The Hamas offensive of October 7, OPERATION AL AQSA FLOOD ( عملية طوفان الأقصى,  amaliyyat ṭūfān al-ʾAqṣā), is, as its code name indicates and in the interpretation of Islamic law, lawful self-defence, and the killing of Israelis, including civilians, lawful according to the retribution doctrine of Qisas.  It’s clear there is a Koranic injunction against killing non-combatants, particularly children, the infirm, the old, and women.  When women are combatants, as they are in the kibbutzim, they lose their exemption; also children, if they are armed and trained. So, the evidence question is — how many children under the age of arms-bearing were killed at the border settlements on October 7? And how did they die – by Hamas directly, or in crossfire between Hamas and IDF?  The Israelis say one thing; Hamas says nothing.

8. It is clear the Israeli rules of war allow indiscriminate killing of children in offensive and defensive operations, in retribution and in collective punishment. No Palestinian Arab or Iranian is in any doubt that this has been Israeli policy from the beginning; that it has always been US policy to support it; and that the destruction of Gaza is the current episode of the long laid plan.

The two-state solution 9. Zionist ideology and Israel’s constitution have ruled out the two-state solution.

Source: https://perma.cc/9PZN-DJGY 

10. The Arab state supporters of the two-state solution (including Fatah and the Palestine National Authority) cannot support it when Gaza is being liquidated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), supplied by the Pentagon.

11. President Joseph Biden’s (lead image) recent public remarks endorse Israel’s one-state solution, adding his personal religious benediction — “may God protect our troops”.    Until he said that, Biden had limited himself to invoking God’s protection of “our troops” in speeches on the Afghanistan  War in April 2021  and on the war against Russia in the Ukraine in February 2023.  Before Biden, it was President George Bush Jr. who claimed God on the US side when he meant self-defence – “we will defend our freedom. We will bring freedom to others and we will prevail. May God bless our country and all who defend her.”  With Biden the Christian, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken declaring himself Jewish in Israel,   the war of Israel against Gaza is a theocratic one, a crusade.  This is how it is understood now throughout the Muslim world.

12. According to God, therefore, there is only a one-state solution – it is either Palestine or Israel.

The current battlefield situation 13. On the Gaza front, Hamas has fought the IDF to a standstill outside the Gaza border wall. The Israel Air Force has dropped about 4,000 tonnes of bombs per week, 8,000 tonnes to October 21; that is more than the US Air Force dropped on Afghanistan in the peak year of 2019.   More than 3,500 Palestinians have been killed so far, including at least 1,030 children  and hundreds of family units; more than 12,500 people have been injured, one million Palestinians displaced, and thousands of homes destroyed. About 1,200 are missing believed to be trapped under the rubble. The Israeli and US government record, reported by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) in Washington, documents the continuing firing from Gaza into Israeli territory in what the ISW calls its “Iran updates”.   A prolonged IDF siege threatens to kill several hundred thousand Palestinians by starvation, dehydration, disease, and a combination of artillery and aerial bombardment,  while leaving the Hamas forces relatively unscathed and waiting to inflict a higher rate of casualties on the IDF than it has ever experienced.

14. On the northern front across the Lebanon border, there have been exchanges of missile, drone, anti-tank rocket, artillery, and mortar fire between the IDF and Hezbollah. There have been casualties on both sides. Border settlements on the Israeli side have been evacuated to the south. For a summary of the ISW reports favouring Israel, read this;    For maps and summaries of military action as of October 20 on the Gaza and northern fronts, as well as the Golan and West Bank, click to open.

Incident map on the northern front between October 12 and 17; source:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/

15. US forces on the Jordan front. The Israeli press has been reporting some details of USAF reinforcements at the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in the northeastern corner of Jordan and possible Marine deployments in Jordan.  Whether the Marines will be moved to defend the Al-Tanf base on the Syrian side of the border, 230 kilometres northeast of Muwaffaq Salti, isn’t known.

Top, right – the US airbase at Muwaffaq Salti; source: https://twitter.com/ According to an Israeli report, “a squadron of U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle bombers based in Britain was deployed over the weekend at the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base east of the Jordanian capital of Amman. Another squadron of A-10 attack aircraft has also been deployed there.”  Bottom, the location of Al-Tanf in Syria across the Jordanian and Iraqi borders.

16. Russian and Chinese navy deployments. The Russian fleet based at Tartous, Syria, is at sea, as reported here.   At the moment, there are as many, possibly more Chinese vessels of the 44th Naval Escort Task Force in the Persian Gulf.   The anti-surface, anti-submarine, and anti-air missile capabilities of the Type-052D destroyer can be followed here,  and of the Type-054A frigate here.  For the time being, the significance of this Chinese screen to deter a US-Israeli missile and aircraft attack on Iran has been missed in the western press and by Russian military reporters.

Top:  https://russianfleetanalysis.blogspot.com/ Bottom: the Chinese Defense Ministry announcement of the arrival of the destroyer Zibo and frigate Jingzhou at Kuwait on October 19.  

Armageddon strategy 17. US Afghanistan War veteran: “Suppose Israel and the US understand they are facing an existential survival future in which they must combat swarm attacks on three or four fronts — Gaza/Hamas, North/Hezbollah, Golan/Syria/Iran, and West Bank/Jordan, and they calculate the Arabs have at least a 30 to 60–day arms supply in stock, do they calculate they can withstand a multi-front offensive for enough time, resupplied by air from the US? If they calculate that they can withstand a 30-day multi-directional swarm, they must understand that, at a minimum, Israel’s infrastructure and economy will be ruined. In a scenario like that, even if they ‘win’, they lose. In terms of airlifting and shipping supplies, we’ve already seen that the Arabs can hit Israeli military and civilian airfields, airports and seaports. Defending Israeli infrastructure with their air defence capability is the main mission of the strike groups the US is deploying in the eastern Mediterranean and in the Red Sea.

According to the Pentagon on October 19,  the USS Carney, a part of the USS Gerald Ford group, had transited into the Red Sea through the Suez Canal the day before and was in the northern Red Sea when it intercepted three land attack cruise missiles and several drones.

Western societies like Israel cannot function without solid, reliable, electrical power and communications services. We can be certain that power generation, transmission and distribution will be targeted by the Arabs non-stop. The cell towers and central communications centres will be too.”

18. Moscow source. “When does the threat to Israel become so dire, they go nuclear, and when they do, against what targets will they fire – Hamas, Beirut, Damascus, Teheran?*  The US won’t accept a Palestinian state so the only option left for the Palestinians, Arabs, Iranians, possibly Turks is to fight with this new kind of warfare whose objective is to cut into the flesh and bones of the Israeli adversary, and make life in that state unviable. Without a Palestinian homeland, all of Israel and the Arab territories become a battlefield. The IDF options then shrink to two – carpet bombing and mass killing of the civilian population centres on all fronts at once. If that isn’t sustainable or effective for the Israeli-American purpose, then option 2 is to attack Lebanon, Syria and Iran to stop the flow of reinforcements. But that’s regional war, and it can only be conducted by the Israelis with full US military participation. This becomes nuclear very quickly because President Putin has already placed the Kinzhal missiles in range of the US carrier fleet in the eastern Mediterranean, and the Chinese have installed their screen to protect Iran. It’s obvious that the race hatred policies of Biden and Netanyahu, and their belief that God has chosen them both as destroyers for their people, lead to the final, nuclear weapons solution. The Russians and Chinese can maximise their limited military projection by deterring, or if need be pre-empting a nuclear attack on the Arab cities or Teheran. For this to work, the Russians and the Chinese need to say more – loudly so there’s no mistaking what they mean.”

[*] In 1983, in conversation with his General Staff, Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein said: “the Iraqis would be able to withstand three years of fighting in a war. However, the Israelis cannot withstand one year of fighting in a war.” In April 1990 Hussein was hosting Yasser Arafat of the PLO in Baghdad. “[Israel] has 240 nuclear warheads, 12 out of them for each Arab capital,” Arafat said. Saddam replied: “I say this and I am very calm and wearing a civilian suit [everyone laughs]. But I say this so that we can get ready at this level.” Quoted in The Jackals’ Wedding, page 16.  

[rabbitcruiser]

Flying West (No. 5)

San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, financial, and cultural center in Northern California. With a population of 808,437 residents as of 2022, San Francisco is the fourth most populous city in the U.S. state of California behind Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Jose. The city covers a land area of 46.9 square miles (121 square kilometers) at the upper end of the San Francisco Peninsula, making it the second-most densely populated major U.S. city behind New York City and the fifth-most densely populated U.S. county, behind four of New York City's boroughs. Among the 92 U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco is ranked first by per capita income and sixth by aggregate income as of 2022.

Prior to European settlement, the modern city proper was inhabited by the Yelamu, who spoke a language now referred to as Ramaytush Ohlone. On June 29, 1776, settlers from New Spain established the Presidio of San Francisco at the Golden Gate, and the Mission San Francisco de Asís a few miles away, both named for Francis of Assisi. The California gold rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, transforming an unimportant hamlet into a busy port, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time; between 1870 and 1900, approximately one quarter of California's population resided in the city proper. In 1856, San Francisco became a consolidated city-county. After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, it was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama–Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, it was a major port of embarkation for naval service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. In 1945, the United Nations Charter was signed in San Francisco, establishing the United Nations and in 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco re-established peaceful relations between Japan and the Allied Powers. After the war, the confluence of returning servicemen, significant immigration, liberalizing attitudes, the rise of the beatnik and hippie countercultures, the sexual revolution, the peace movement growing from opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, and other factors led to the Summer of Love and the gay rights movement, cementing San Francisco as a center of liberal activism in the United States.

Source: Wikipedia