#since the capital of the empire is on the other side of europe | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

pazziville · 3 months

Text

because i adore pazzi to the bone and have them on my mind 24/7/365 i shall present my pazzi roman empire list

part two here!

pazzi state fair tradition

azzi's mom liking a post about pazzi and paige

azzi greeting jon a hbd ft. paige

azzi saying paige has a great heart

paige lockdown defense aka hugging azzi

pazzi reserved 💗 for each other compilation

azzi calling out for paige

pazzi horseback riding

paige being touchy to azzi while playing with kids

azzi's lock screen that is allegedly paige (other angle)

the ornament

drake concert

paige is a fudd confirmed

azzi's amazing nap with paige

pazzi bench getty images

paige being azzi's number one fan and the president of azzi fudd fan club

infamous ice live ft. pazzi

europe air

pazzi touchy moment near the bench

matching for halloween (video clip)

paige calling azzi bighead

paige's crush

down bad in europe

paige being a menace while azzi studies

azzi annoying paige after their cool handshake

paige watching azzi with a baby

taking the fair to paige

matching/borrowing of necklace pt. 1

azzi twerking in front of paige

allegedly jealous azzi

iconic 'wife' clip

paige one sided staring contest with azzi

the goddamn sza concert wherein paige allegedly looked at azzi in the lyric 'i don't wanna see you with anyone but me'

team paige or team azzi

team doing a tiktok and paige allegedly pointing at azzi and looking at her during the lyric 'i'm saying that i love you everyday'

lifting clip

totally unnecessary holding of hands

sharing of clothes pt. 1

europe boat together

ice suspiciously smiling when paige mentions azzi

no one can stop them from teasing each other

matching shorts

together before mavs vs celtics game 2

paige staring at azzi hard

azzi saying it's good that paige isn't scared of the dark cause she is

compilation of interactions for team usa u17 part 1 part 2 part 3

paige sleeping in azzi's bed [video]

cruise clip

moments during 2018 girl's capital classic all-star game at st john's

lowkey flexing each other

paige fixing whatever was on azzi's outfit during the wnba draft

taking photos of each other

them in each other's ig comments

THE pazzi hug

crazy eye contact in sue bird's show

matching pants

young azzi slapping paige's forehead

azzi staring lovingly at paige

azzi wearing pazzi slam shirt and covering paige's face with a sticker

paige hovering over azzi while she works out

sleeping on the couch

her partner in crime

paige in azzi's tiktok comments

azzi's relationship with paige's family (another one)

azzi spanking paige

paige's eyes are glued to azzi

paige favorite a semi-pazzi edit

young pazzi enjoying a party together

matching/borrowing of necklace pt. 2

azzi hugging paige's mom

reading in front of kids

airport fetus pictures

camping

princess was rizzed

borrowing/matching clothes pt. 2

paige grabbing azzi for a hug

factimes

azzi trolling paige's reading ability

matching outfit

a bueckers bantering with a fudd

gentlewoman paige

soft pat pats

borrowing/matching clothes pt. 3

story of the olaf lego [one] [two] [three] [service]

paige heart eyes

azzi heart eyes

part of the family

azzi speechless after looking at paige [backup]

since i've hit the link limit in this post, time to make a second list which i'll be linking in this post! 💗

a/n: submissions of worthy pazzi roman empire moments will be accepted and shall be continuously added to this list. 🫶🏼

#pazzi

637 notes · View notes

thebrisingamen · 11 months

Text

ESCAFLOWNE VOICE MEME; Read More for anyone who hasn't watched the series. Tons of spoilers ahead, you've been warned.

Introduce yourself! When did you first watch Escaflowne? What brought you into the fold? Hi, I'm Norse, an internet Elder. My Uncle knew I liked anime from my watching Inuyasha, and he would buy me and my cousins birthday/Christmas presents. He, however, never asked what anime I liked lol. He picked up the Fox VHS tapes and I watched them so much my father started quoting parts of them and the tapes had lines in them. Nothing else truly compared to this story before or since in anime, especially in other Isekai stories; no other story genuinely gives me a feeling that this IS another world; there's no overpowered protagonist, just a teenage girl and the worst powers to have during wartime.

Who is your favorite character and why? Was it love at first sight? Has any of their qualities or quirks swayed you on characters in other series? I like a lot of characters in the series, however, my psychotic boy Dilandau is probably my favorite. On the surface, he is just an insane, pyromaniac child soldier but there is SO MUCH to unpack with his character. Not only is he unstable and insane, when we get the reveal that Dilandau was/is a manipulation of Celena, it's very interesting. How many children were just like him in the Empire? He can't possibly have been the only "success" in the Empire. Aside from Celena, does he have any false memories implanted in him? Was his personality chosen for him or was in the influence of all the manipulation on his body and fate? With the Dragonslayers added in, are all of them also the same age as their commander? Does Zaibach regularly have child soldiers? He's just such a fascinating character to me, in these regards. I wish the transformation between Celena/Dilandau wasn't so thorough, though. Like that there were still some remnants of the Dilandau personality in her. Second favorite character is Folken, solely because of Paul Dobson voicing him, but his personality is also pretty interesting to me. As far as other characters, nah, I tend to like these psychos often, they just seem like they're fun.

Which side are you on? What do you think happens Post-Hitomi when she leaves? Who do you think will be the next opposing power? I think the show does a good job of showing us that there are no good or bad sides; even Zaibach only started conquering because their new leader gave them the knowledge and power to defend themselves at first and they lived in a barren wasteland. I am on Fanelia's side, however and I hope that they are able to restore their Capital City in full and that everyone is able to reach a tenable peace I think a lot of peace talks and treaties and marriages of political convenience end up happening between several of the allied countries and that there will be a pause in the conflict; Zaibach will more than likely pull back and maybe crumble from the loss of leadership and the split in power. Though they were wiped out militarily; I can't imagine General Adelphos spending funds on the Sorcerers anymore. I forsee similar issues that plagued Europe in our history happening to the world of Gaea, but I think that the next opposing power will likely be Basram or Zaibach, potentially Asturia if their influence reaches over to Zaibach.

Least favorite plot point? Was there something you think should have changed? What do you think would have made it better. I hate the love triangle here, as per usual. It makes sense and removing it would be bad because it is critical for our characters' growth, but I still hate the Allen/Hitomi interactions near the later half of the series solely because its there ONLY to delay Van/Hitomi. Which is the point, of course. I also really don't like the REVEAL that 'GASP' Emperor Dornkirk was...SIR ISSAC NEWTON?? All along??/ Like bitch how'd you fuckin' SURVIVE that long.

OTP? What kind of art and fiction would you like to see? What are some head canons you have for them? What is you NoTP OTP; Van/Hitomi; I think their romance is well developed and I like them. They definitely have more of an equal footing with one another and support one another, with believable roadblocks. SOMEONE PLEASE DRAW THEM KISSING WE NEVER GET IT IN THE SERIES. As for fan pairings, I actually liked Folken/Dilandau before some reveals, but honestly Folken getting TWO partners is pretty funny for me, even if it's in the afterlife. NOTP: Allen/Millerna or Allen/Hitomi; gross, he's SO MUCH older than both of them. Dilandau/Van is also a big No from me.

What would you like to see in a figurativ remake/sequel? Would you include more minor characters? Would you want a whole new story that could be a stand alone? Honestly, I'd love a stand alone or if it's a sequel series, mostly focusing on the internal politics of Gaea. Possible focus on Merle, Chid and maybe Dryden and Millerna. Or maybe just references too them, I have questions about the world but I'd like to leave the main story alone.

Movie, Series, Game, or Manga preference? What are things you did/didnt like of each? Series; The manga is awful and the movie is wildly different from the series. I'm most familiar with the series.

Do your favorite impression! Bonus points if you can do a conversation with a scene cut in! LORD VAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!

What do you think about the idea of a re-dub? What are your feelings about the current cast selection for Van (and others if more are introduced)? Well since we had the Funimation re-release at the time of doing this, I think a new dub really forgot the deeper charms of the original dub; there's no depth of feeling to most of the voices and the acting feels phoned in, not to mention that several of the characters that are supposed to have a commanding presence and deeper voices don't, and it sounds the same as all current Funimation voice work...Awful and Samey. I find that Aaron Dismuke was actually a good choice for Van, same with Alexis Tipton for Merle, as while Aaron gave a slightly different flavor for Van it was still a good portrayal, and Merle seems to be an easy character for VAs to portray. However, once again Funi ruins things by casting Vic Mignonana (idc how to spell his last name) as Folken, like are you SERIOUS? He can't compare to either Paul Dobson OR Jōji Nakata in terms of rich toned voice, or a commanding sort of voice at all. And my boy, Dilandau, is ruined. My poor little meow meow isn't psychotic enough, isn't funny enough and isn't threatening enough. Joel MacDonald sounds exactly like 30-year-old man reading for a teenager and doesn't understand Dilandau's character at all, even on basic level. Bring back Andrew Francis. Basically the Ocean Dub is superior, if you're gonna watch in dubs imo. I prefer the sub just because Maaya Sakamoto as Hitomi is just BETTER than either English VA imo and both English VAs made me actively hate her for a lonnnng time. But if I watch in Dub its gonna be Ocean Dub.

Recite your top five characters by name. Dilandau, Folken, Van, Hitomi and Dryden

#escaflowne #The Vision of Escaflowne #They massacred my boy #dilandau albatou #is my favorite little psycho #and then Folken Van and Hitomi

11 notes · View notes

thepastisalreadywritten · 2 years

Text

It’s been a year since Russia invaded Ukraine, and the battle continues.

Military and civilian deaths and injuries on both sides have been estimated in the hundreds of thousands, and millions more Ukrainians have been displaced.

What set the stage for today’s conflict? Here’s a look back at the long, intertwined history of the contentious neighbors.

The two countries’ shared heritage goes back more than a thousand years to a time when Kyiv, now Ukraine’s capital, was at the center of the first Slavic state, Kyivan Rus, the birthplace of both Ukraine and Russia.

In A.D. 988, Volodymyr the Great, the pagan prince of Novgorod and grand prince of Kyiv, accepted the Orthodox Christian faith and was baptized in the Crimean city of Chersonesus.

From that moment on, Russian leader Vladimir Putin recently declared, “Russians and Ukrainians are one people, a single whole.”

Yet, over the past ten centuries, Ukraine has repeatedly been carved up by competing powers.

Mongol warriors from the east conquered Kyivan Rus in the 13th century.

In the 16th century, Polish and Lithuanian armies invaded from the west.

In the 17th century, war between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Tsardom of Russia brought lands to the east of the Dnieper River under Russian imperial control.

The east became known as "Left Bank" Ukraine; lands to the west of the Dnieper, or "Right Bank," were ruled by Poland.

More than a century later, in 1793, right bank (western) Ukraine was annexed by the Russian Empire.

Over the years that followed, a policy known as Russification banned the use and study of the Ukrainian language, and people were pressured to convert to the Russian Orthodox faith.

Ukraine suffered some of its greatest traumas during the 20th century.

After the communist revolution of 1917, Ukraine was one of the many countries to fight a brutal civil war before being fully absorbed into the Soviet Union in 1922.

In the early 1930s, to force peasants to join collective farms, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin orchestrated a famine that resulted in the starvation and death of millions of Ukrainians.

Afterward, Stalin imported large numbers of Russians and other Soviet citizens—many with no ability to speak Ukrainian and with few ties to the region—to help repopulate the east.

These legacies of history created lasting fault lines. Because Eastern Ukraine came under Russian rule much earlier than western Ukraine, people in the east have stronger ties to Russia and have been more likely to support Russian-leaning leaders.

Western Ukraine, by contrast, spent centuries under the shifting control of European powers such as Poland and the Austro-Hungarian Empire — one reason Ukrainians in the west have tended to support more Western-leaning politicians.

The eastern population tends to be more Russian-speaking and Orthodox, while parts of the west are more Ukrainian-speaking and Catholic.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine became an independent nation. But uniting the country proved a difficult task.

For one, “the sense of Ukrainian nationalism is not as deep in the east as it is in west,” says former ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer.

The transition to democracy and capitalism was painful and chaotic. Many Ukrainians, especially in the east, longed for the relative stability of earlier eras.

"The biggest divide after all these factors is between those who view the Russian imperial and Soviet rule more sympathetically versus those who see them as a tragedy," says Adrian Karatnycky, a Ukraine expert and former fellow at the Atlantic Council of the United States.

These fissures were laid bare during the 2004 Orange Revolution in which thousands of Ukrainians marched to support greater integration with Europe.

On ecological maps, you can even see the divide between the southern and eastern parts of Ukraine—known as the steppes—with their fertile farming soil and the northern and western regions, which are more forested, says Serhii Plokhii, a history professor at Harvard and director of its Ukrainian Research Institute.

He says a map depicting the demarcations between the steppe and the forest, a diagonal line between east and west, bears a "striking resemblance" to political maps of Ukrainian presidential elections in 2004 and 2010.

Crimea was occupied and annexed by Russia in 2014, followed shortly after by a separatist uprising in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas that resulted in the declaration of the Russian-backed People’s Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Today, the two countries find themselves in conflict yet again, fault lines that reflect the region's tumultuous history.

Portions of this article were originally published during the 2014 Crimean crisis. It has been updated to reflect current events.

#Ukraine #Russia #Kyiv #Kyivan Rus #Volodymyr the Great #Vladimir Putin #Russification #Joseph Stalin #2004 Orange Revolution #Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy #Volodymyr Zelenskyy

41 notes · View notes

driftwork · 2 years

Text

I could easily put a date, a period to the music... part one

Today is my birthday, I am 63, my 64th year has begun.... How did I end up across the world teaching Hegel? It was a long time ago, I don't actually know how long ago, decades at least. So here I am trying to remember the name of the philosopher hiding out in Europe who produced a a a phrase that defined the major part of our lives since then. It rapidly became normalized and the words dropped out of the mouths of the publics throughout the world. So here I am sitting, typing these phrases, it's a mathematical formula that defined the way in which we live, perhaps though its more precise than the mathematical phrases of 'willing slaves of capital'. Out there are a few billion willing slaves. Men and women, children and geriatrics, the healthy and the sick, people at keyboards, cosmonauts, astronauts, mall workers, teachers and the others who may think in terms of a collapsing evil empire, but we don't live in amongst these remnants for the publics love their enslavement. A long time has passed since then, decades. Barbarism has become normal, and we have no idea how to prevent barbarism from growing still further. How did I end up working and living here? How did it collapse like this?

The story begins with the sea: After she left our prison I was there another year, still constrained within the 100 metre diameter cell, towards the end all i remembered of her was the feint almost homeopathic scent of honey. For a long time I had to avoid the scent of honey for it made me long for her. "We should leave now," they told me without taking time to pack things in a thoughtful fashion. Not giving me time to think, or even to put my shoes on. I threw a few things in a bag. I took my notes, the books, clothes. There was nothing else, a few memories of her, I had missed her for months. They let me out on license when the regime began to change, put a GPS tracker on my wrist, escorted me back to my apartment. A two bedroom living room and kitchen, with a nice shower room close to Little V... The only thing I did was to ask them to pause so that I could stand on the concrete promenade looking at the sea. Long waves beat diagonally, across, the beach, bulge hunchbacked,with cords of muscle, raise quivering ridges that tip over at their very repetition. No wave is unique, each one identical. Their crests stretched tight, already welted white, around the cavity of air crushed by the clear mass like a secret made and broken... For the entire time i had been a prisoner here i had only seen it in the distance, Is it the same beach? The same sea? It’s a year later. The intervening pages scarcely matter, we’ll get to them over the days and weeks of living. I stick my bookplate on the inside cover: someone sees someone standing. And try to think of the last time i read a book with the sea in it. The coach driver calls me, I board the bus and he carries me and my escort away. The old coach took us to the railway station where we caught the slow train to the nearest city, passing through the snow, and then transferred to the southern express. We, the escort and I didn't speak. Shortly after the train began heading south a seller of sweets passed through the carriage. More parochially I arrived back in January, it is a a a a beautiful day before us, its the early morning and we are wondering what we will or should do with it. There is only a single choice really. We travelled in a police car through the city, to my apartment in the block of flats which sits in a side street in the north of ... People looked away to not know who the police were transporting... The apartment had been newly cleaned, a few meals, handed me keys, pass codes, a document that listed the constraints imposed on a political prisoner life me, and instructions about when to go to the police. I asked my escort about the missing items, things that were listed on the document but not in the apartment. Usually solitary political prisoners like you get burgled, anything valuable gets stolen. Could have happened anytime over the years you were away. Should I report the burglary?? I asked him. He shook his head, no point you don't have any idea when it happened, and you won't be able to claim anything on insurance. Do I need to sign anything, he handed his tablet to me, sign here, and her, and here....then again on this document. You must live in this place. He instructed. Where would I go? I have been disowned. I replied. Yes, it's normal.

It took a few weeks for me to get employed as a barista in a quasi-independent coffee store. I worked 40 or 50 hours a week, 10% over minimum wage, a hundred and more espressos and teas a day, I never really counted. sometimes milk shakes, usually for children. The cafe owners were ex-communists (smiles) after a few weeks of serving people, the weak sunlight entering the cafe through the UV filtering glass. Me, eventually, wearing teeshirts with images of Hegel and others. Ex colleagues from the university appeared. It's the way of nepotism and political protectionism that I got a temporary assistant teaching post, 12 hours a week in the university. Dividing my time between the cafe and the evening shifts and then into the daytime. After about four months they removed the GPS trackers from my body. Insanely feeling free at last. I lay on my back in the park watching silver airplanes flying overhead in the bright blue sky. Once the trackers were gone I applied for work at the Black Hotel Gardenia. We have been asked to employ you the Hotel said. I didn't understand what this might mean. I left the cafe to work in the Hotel cafe and then elsewhere in the Black Hotel. I began to think I might survive in this newly lonely life. I didn't dare have friends as I waited for them to arrest me again. In the late autumn the politics stabilized again. One morning at the Hotel I was taken into the directors office and was told by a dark suited european that they would rearrest me next week and that I should leave. They gave me an envelope of instructions, tickets, money, credit cards, a new identity and passports. Let us say a year passed perhaps more perhaps less. And there I was running along a slow line of flight boarding a small ship in winter… Today is my birthday I am 63, I have never returned to the country that wants me, a teacher of Hegel to be imprisoned. I am an exile on a small planet.

https://www.driftwork.work/post/684428858721697792/a-village-on-the-coast

#everyday practices #port story #nonfiction #prisoner

2 notes · View notes

ashitakaxsan · 6 months

Text

Archaeological Developments that Rock!

With Amazing archaeological discoveries,that are taking place in iran things are getting much more light,thus providing us more chance of understanding what shaed the land thta is Iran.

Sassanid coin depicting Empress Boran on view at Tehran museum-April 2, 2024

TEHRAN - A significant historical artifact, the Sassanid coin featuring Empress Boran (Purandokht), daughter of King Khosrow II, is now on display at the Money Museum in Tehran

This coin holds immense value as it represents the first official depiction of a female ruler in Iranian history.

In 629 CE, Purandokht ascended to the throne and ruled for a year, during which she authorized the minting of coins bearing her name.

The silver coin depicts Empress Boran in the form of a female figure with intricately woven hair, while the reverse, like other Sassanid coins, features a fire altar with two attendants guarding the flames.

To provide visitors with a better view of the coin, the museum has installed larger images of both the obverse and reverse sides on the walls, allowing guests to easily admire the depiction of Empress Boran.

In about 220 CE, the Sasanian dynasty of Iran introduced the concept of thin flan coins, issues that were struck in relief on both sides. In order not to produce intolerable stresses in the dies, since the thinner the material the more force necessary to make it flow into the recesses of the die’s design, the depth of relief on such coins was of necessity much shallower than with earlier currency. Such techniques spread by way of Byzantium to northern Europe, where the emperor Charlemagne struck thin flan deniers (small silver coins), or pennies, which became characteristic of both his own and neighboring kingdoms.

The Sassanid era saw a general renaissance in the nation’s art and architecture. As scholarship was promoted by the government and many works from both the East and the West were translated into Pahlavi, the Sassanian people’s official language, crafts like metalwork and gem engraving reached a high level of sophistication during that time.

The Muslim conquest of Persia, also known as the Arab conquest of Iran, led to the fall of the Sasanian Empire in ca. 651 and the eventual decline of the Zoroastrian religion. The rise of Muslims coincided with an unprecedented political, social, economic, and military weakness in Persia.

‘Important’ ruins unearthed in downtown Isfahan-April 5, 2024

TEHRAN – Archaeologists have unearthed an array of “important” ruins and centuries-old structures in Isfahan, which was once the capital of Persia during the Safavid era (1501-1736).

The discovery was made in the Zarrin-Kamar passageway situated in downtown Isfahan adjacent to the UNESCO-registered Jameh Mosque of Isfahan, IRNA reported on Thursday.

“The passageway is situated in the heart of the historical fabric of Isfahan, and significant evidence from various historical periods has been discovered within it,” Ali Shojai Isfahani, who presides over the archaeological team, said.

“Archaeological findings unearthed from the Zarrin-Kamar passageway span from pre-Islamic times to the Qajar era.”

Recently, a routine urban dig revealed evidence of two architectural structures. Consequently, that operation was halted, and urban archaeological operations began with an agreement between the Cultural Heritage Research Institute, Isfahan’s Urban Revitalization Organization, and the Art University.

Shojaei Isfahani, referring to the digging of five trenches during the archaeological operation, stated: “Under the sediments of the first trench, evidence of a series of engraved objects (related to irrigation and water supply) were found, which requires further examination to predict their antiquity, but it is likely that these artifacts date back to the period before the Mongol invasion of Isfahan.”

“These engraved objects raise the question of why these water structures were decorated, which needs further investigation.

The archaeologist continued: “It is probable that these water structures were [once] visible and aesthetically pleasing.”

Furthermore, another trench led to the discovery of a kiln, which is of great importance from a historical studies’ perspective, he explained.

“It appears that this kiln was dedicated to baking a specific type of pottery, but there is still doubt in this regard,” Shojaei Isfahani added.

He continued: “The antiquity of this kiln may be attributed to the 7th century, indicating that we are facing an industrial complex on a part of this passageway.”

The archaeologist said: “Another trench led to the discovery of an architectural structure that appears to belong to the late Islamic period.”

“Here, stone walls and brick floors came to light, which requires further examination and research for dating.”

“One of the existing pieces of evidence is that the dimensions of one of the brick floors found in this passage are identical to the dimensions of bricks found in the dome chamber of the Jameh Mosque of Isfahan, suggesting that these structures may belong to the Seljuk period. However, this requires further investigation.”

Isfahan was once been a crossroads of international trade and diplomacy in Iran and now it is one of Iran’s top tourist destinations for good reasons as it is filled with many architectural wonders, such as unmatched Islamic buildings, bazaars, museums, Persian gardens, and tree-lined boulevards. It’s a city for walking, getting lost in its mazing bazaars, dozing in beautiful gardens, and meeting people.

The ancient city is renowned not only for the abundance of great historical bridges but also for its ‘life-giving river’, the Zayandeh-Rood, which has long bestowed the city an original beauty and fertility. Isfahan has long been nicknamed Nesf-e-Jahan, which is translated into “half the world”; meaning seeing it is relevant to see half the world. In its heyday, it was also one of the largest cities in the region with a population of nearly one million.

The cool blue tiles of Isfahan’s Islamic buildings, and the city’s majestic bridges, contrast perfectly with the encircling hot, dry Iranian countryside. The huge Imam Square, best known as Naghsh-e Jahan Sq. (literary meaning “Image of the World”), is one of the largest in the world (500m by 160m), and a majestic example of town planning. Constructed in the early 17th century, the UNESCO-registered square is punctuated with the most interesting sights in Isfahan.

Apart from its cultural heritage gems, Isfahan is home to some heavy industry, including steel factories and a nuclear facility on its outskirts. A top destination when it comes to medical tourism, the ancient city is also home to a gigantic, professional, and state-of-the-art healthcare city, which is a major destination in the realm of medical tourism.

Name Shiraz identified on clay seal of Sassanids, archaeologist says-April 6, 2024

TEHRAN - In a remarkable archaeological revelation, the name “Shiraz” has been identified in Pahlavi script on a Sassanid-era clay sealing.

The finding is important due to cementing the history of Shiraz, which is situated some 60 km south of Persepolis, once the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire (c. 550–330 BC).

The sealing, excavated near the city of Shiraz at the site of Qasr-e Abu Nasr, is being kept at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

On Saturday, Iranian archaeologist Mohammadreza Nasab-Abdollahi affirmed to ISNA news agency that the inscription “Mugh-e Shiraz” has been deciphered on these Sassanid clay sealings.

Explaining further, the member of the Iranian Society of Archaeology described such sealings as pieces of clay of various dimensions and shapes, crafted to seal documents and goods. These sealings were imprinted with a seal, leaving an indelible mark on the clay.

“These clay sealings, due to their firing process, have a remarkable durability,” Nasab-Abdollahi added.

He noted that these sealings were unearthed during three seasons of archaeological excavations by experts from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, conducted from 1932 to 1935.

According to Nasab-Abdollahi, archaeological investigations indicate that Qasr-e Abu Nasr in Shiraz exhibits a cultural sequence from the Achaemenid to the Abbasid period, with its primary settlement dating back to the Sassanid era.

“The archaeological findings from Qasr-e Abu Nasr reveal a wide spectrum of administrative systems, techniques, and defensive structures,” the archaeologist remarked.

Furthermore, he emphasized that archaeological evidence from the Sassanid period, including such clay sealings, as well as artifacts from the Achaemenid era such as inscribed bricks from Persepolis, corroborates that the city known today as Shiraz bore the same name in antiquity and was among the significant cities of ancient Iran.

According to the Met Museum, this sealing was impressed with four seals of varying sizes. The imagery on the seals depicts a lion walking right, a monogram, an inscription, and a horned quadruped.

The sealing was among over 500 sealings excavated in the Sasanian fortress at the site of Qasr-e Abu Nasr. The cache was preserved because the building had burned, baking the clay and retaining the seal impressions.

These small clay objects played a role in Sasanian administrative practices. A piece of clay is pressed around a cord to close a document or package and then stamped with a seal. In some cases, these removed sealings seem to have been deliberately stored for administrative purposes.

Excavated by archaeologists from The Metropolitan Museum of Art for three seasons from 1932-1935, Qasr-e Abu Nasr is located near Shiraz in southern Iran at a strategic point at the intersection of defensive mountains, available water sources, and along roads entering the Shiraz plain.

The eastern part of Qasr-e Abu Nasr is a raised plateau of a roughly triangular shape. During the Sasanian period, the plateau was fortified by a wall and densely occupied. Archaeological finds from the fortress show a wide range of defensive and administrative practices.

Celebrated as the heartland of Persian culture for over 2000 years, the capital city of Shiraz has become synonymous with education, nightingales, poetry, and crafts skills passed down from generation to generation.

Shiraz was occupied, at least intermittently, from the Parthian period (3rd century BC–3rd century CE) to the Muzaffarid period (13th-14th century CE). The major occupation, including the extensive fortress, dates to the Late Sasanian period (6th-7th century CE).

It was one of the most important cities in the medieval Islamic world and was the Iranian capital during the Zand dynasty from 1751 to 1794. Moreover, Shiraz is home to some of the country’s most magnificent buildings and sights. Increasingly, it draws more and more foreign and domestic sightseers flocking to this provincial capital.

Eram Garden, Afif-Abad Garden, Tomb of Hafez, Tomb of Sa’di, Jameh Mosque of Atigh, and Persepolis are among the historical, cultural, and ancient sites of Shiraz that are of interest to domestic and foreign tourists. The ancient city is also home to some magnificent historical gardens such as Bagh-e Narenjestan and Eram Garden, which are top tourist destinations both for domestic and international sightseers.

Sources:

https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/496616/Sassanid-coin-depicting-Empress-Boran-on-view-at-Tehran-museum

https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/496738/Important-ruins-unearthed-in-downtown-Isfahan

https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/496798/Name-Shiraz-identified-on-clay-seal-of-Sassanids-archaeologist

#cultural heritage #archaelogy #iran persia #ancient coins #Sassanid #ancient Persia #Turism #Money Museum #Isfahan #UNESCO #unearthing #excavation #Shiraz Iran #Pahlavi Script #clay seal #Iran Tehran #TehranTimes #یران #فارسی نو

0 notes

johnjankovic1 · 9 months

Text

Maritime Nationalism

He who commands the sea has command of everything. Themistocles, c.525-460 BC

Both protectionism and strategic investment have been mainstays in America’s buildup of its Merchant Marine whether by cabotage or subsidies since its divorce from the metropolitan power of Britain. In the post-independence era statesmen began in earnest to cradle waterborne commerce against the predations of Europe’s many empires in the Mercantilist Age. No longer a captive market or a feedstock of Old Europe the New World of America came to be emancipated from the yoke of subjugation to claim sovereignty once and for all over its proper interests. From that point onward the country would be spared from Britannia’s monopoly. Economic growth so became a function of efforts meant to fructify an armada of ships as the young republic was poised to command the high seas. Seafarers who braved the open waters with the countenance of Congress went on to carve out new trade routes bereft of the previous restrictions prevalent under the jackboot of British colonialism. In fact right in the thick of the Revolutionary War was the Treaty of Amity and Commerce of 1778 negotiated with France to export commodities and import manufactures. Access to French ports gifted America with a ‘Most-Favoured Nation’ status whereby its trade advantages would be as favourable as any other counterpart with such privilege.

This parity in trade relations not only vouchsafed greater autonomy to the fledgling economy through the diversification of markets but it was a fillip to industrial development as well. The influx of capital goods which circumvented both colonial and agrarian dependence quickly became the grist for manufacturing. America’s lowly status as a supplier for raw goods would be no more when the paradigm of exploitation codified by Britain’s Navigation Acts came to be undone. Exports from the homeland thus began to skirt the predatory practices endemic to Britain’s dealings with its colonies. Those prohibitively high tariffs that once hobbled America’s industries gave way to a stronger purchasing power whereby capital accumulation could be more keenly ploughed into investments for machines and factories. This shift of production factors essentially laid the foundations for the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century on the opposite side of the Atlantic. Finally American industries stopped being curtailed when the growing profitability of cash crops were not marauded by tariffs in a stark departure from the mores of mercantilism under Britain (Eckes 1995). This newfound inflow of capital set America upon the path of industrialization whilst its cities evolved into hives of commercial activity.

Industrial policy buttressing maritime trade had an intimate symbiosis with urban growth as the economy matured. Over time a panoply of consequences saw a throng of dockworkers and businesses coalesce around the magnet of shipyards in New York and Boston which epitomized gateways to Atlantic trade. In short order did the copious amounts of cargo to these ports transform them from sedate outposts into the beating heart of America’s industrialization. Like a beacon in the dark the wealth generated here attracted immigrants and migrants alike who in turn changed the profile of these metropolises in indelible ways. It was within this melting pot of people and goods that the Buttonwood Agreement of 1792 emerged which heralded the genesis of the New York Stock Exchange and the creation of Wall Street that was once the physical wall on the periphery of the New Amsterdam settlement (Eisenstadt 1994). The reason why banks proliferated most prominently in New York was in virtue of how merchants and traders availed themselves of these institutions to manage their earnings whereby the financial sector found itself wedded to the maritime industry. Pursuant to the laws of unintended consequences Wall Street was therefore intrinsically a function of New York City’s thriving docks by catering to the nouveau riche.

Around the same time the Tonnage Act of 1789 further cultivated the indigenous maritime industry to run athwart of the legions of fleets from established merchants across the sea. To build, be a proprietor of or operate an American ship was given greater prominence than the scores of vessels registered outside of the territory. The genius of this industrial policy was to proffer a substantial cost advantage to the domestic industry so it may wean itself off from Europe’s hegemony. Where shipbuilding once languished this new incentive by government design beckoned shipwrights to produce at scale so they may remedy the disparity that would follow from American harbours being less hospitable to foreign craft. Those behemoths in the water made at home were subjected to nominal tariffs of only 6 cents per ton whereas others were levied 50 cents for the equivalent mass (Miller 1960: 19). Naturally it became more profitable to ferry goods aboard domestic ships whereby in less than a decade 94 percent of vessels entering mainland ports originated from the Union (Hutchins 1941). Not only did this Act serve as a source of revenue for the federal government but it equally hedged against industry being overwhelmed by European competitors. This stratagem of bestowing preferential rates onto native ship producers aroused the growth of the maritime sector.

By the mid-18th century the fruits of this partiality towards American shipbuilders saw their gross tonnage of craft reach 3.5m only second to Britain’s 3.8m. Where the Merchant Marine acquired their comparative advantage was in the ready supply of oak timber and pine masts that could be exploited to build the variety of barques, brigs, schooners and clippers with gusto (Hutchins 1941: 172). This taxonomy of ships was turned out in large numbers since America prospered from natural endowments of production factors that were scarcely found in such bounty elsewhere. Whilst this deficit handicapped other economies the eastern seaboard was left immune to this affliction of timber famine. It was particularly the fallowed lands of Maine where vast stores of wood could be felled next to tidewaters whose location was propitious for sawmills in close vicinity. The short haul of local timber was just one of many cost advantages conducing to a maritime industry of international repute. Economies were aplenty in the midst of the early years so long as it was not necessary to venture deep into the interior across marshes for the purpose of cutting down forest lest shipyards become crippled by the paucity of inputs. In the fourth quarter of the 18th century shipbuilding was then a staple for the seaboard economy as production intensified.

#Shipbuilding #Alexander Hamilton #Report on Manufactures #Protectionism

0 notes

biblenewsprophecy · 9 months

Text

DW: Turkey’s Erdogan vows ‘new era’ in ties with Greece

COGwriter

Turkey looks to be moving closer to Greece, its traditional nemesis:

Turkey’s Erdogan vows ‘new era’ in ties with Greece

7 December 2023

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday made his first official visit to Athens since 2017, telling his Greek counterpart that he believes that “a new era” is dawning in relations between their two countries.

Greece and Turkey have long been regional rivals, but ties have recently become closer after Greece sent rescuers and aid to Turkey following a February earthquake that killed at least 50,000 people there.

What was said during the visit?

Erdogan told Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou in televised comments that he believed that “the Turkey-Greece strategic cooperation meeting will lead to a new era” in relations, adding that “we need to be optimistic, and this optimism will be fruitful in the future.”

The Turkish president said, “We will discuss what steps going forward we can take on all issues after preparations have been made by the relevant ministers. We will proceed in a more logical way.”

“I believe it is best for the future of both sides to discuss looking at the glass half-full,” Erdogan said.

Erdogan said he aimed to nearly double bilateral trade volume to $10 billion (€9.3 billion) from $5.5 billion currently. https://www.dw.com/en/turkeys-erdogan-vows-new-era-in-ties-with-greece/a-67655942

The Anatolian peninsula, comprising most of modern Turkey, is one of the oldest permanently settled regions in the world. Starting around 1200 BC, the coast of Anatolia was settled by Aeolian and Ionian Greeks. The area fell to Alexander the Great in 334 BC. Following Alexander’s death in 323 BC, the area was subsequently divided into smaller Hellenistic (Greek) kingdoms, all of which became part of the Roman Republic by the mid-1st century BC. It remained basically a Greek speaking region as the eastern leg of the Roman Empire under the Byzantines until the 15th century. The Ottoman Turks under Mehmed II invaded and completed their conquest of the Byzantine Empire by capturing its capital, Constantinople, on 29 May 1453. The empire was further expanded in Anatolia and the Balkan peninsula.

Most of the Greeks were driven out.

Tensions between Turkey and Greece have existed ever since. The island of Cyprus is basically split by both Greek and Turkish governance–and this has caused flareups of tensions in recent times.

That said, Europe (which includes Greece) and Turkey are prophesied to work together for the destruction of the USA and its British-descended allies:

2 For behold, Your enemies make a tumult; And those who hate You have lifted up their head. 3 They have taken crafty counsel against Your people, And consulted together against Your sheltered ones. 4 They have said, “Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation, That the name of Israel may be remembered no more.” 5 For they have consulted together with one consent; They form a confederacy against You: 6 The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites; Moab and the Hagrites; 7 Gebal, Ammon, and Amalek; Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre; 8 Assyria also has joined with them; They have helped the children of Lot. (Psalms 83:2-8)

The ‘who’ that have consulted together and agreed to the conspiracy includes Turkey. “Edom” is a reference to Turkey and Assyria to Europe.

The late WCG evangelist Raymond McNair wrote:

Daniel 11 also mentions some of the Mideast peoples who will be involved in that struggle among the nations at the close of this age. The belligerents will include the “King of the North,” the leader of the European Union (or its final outgrowth, called the “Beast”). The “King of the South” (an Islamic leader—apparently from Egypt {or} some other Muslim state) is also referred to. The following lands/peoples are specifically mentioned: Egypt, the Holy Land (Israel/Palestine), the Ethiopians (modern Cushites, south of Egypt), Libya, Edom, Moab and Ammon. Many descendants of the ancient peoples known as Edomites or Idumeans now live in the West Bank, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Arabia, Yemen, the Persian Gulf states, etc. (McNair R. Solving the Arab-Israeli Impasse! Copyright Raymond F. McNair 2005, Church of God—21st Century).

Notice the following from the old Radio Church of God:

Turn to the astounding prophecy found in Psalm 83:1-8. David, inspired of God, predicted the coming time when ALL of Israel’s enemies would join together in an effort to crush out even the name “Israel” from the face of the earth! (Verse 4) “For they have consulted together with one consent: they are confederate against thee…” (verse 5). Notice the nations making up this confederation. “Edom [Turkey], and the Ishmaelites [Saudi Arabia]; Moab [Jordan], and the Hagarenes [they anciently dwelt in the land known as Syria today]; Gebal {Lebanon}, and Ammon [Jordan] and Amalek; the Philistines with the inhabitants of Tyre; Assur [whose descendants migrated to Germany] is joined with them; they have helped the children of Lot” {Moab and Ammon in modern Jordan). Here we see that the Arab nations mentioned are allied with Germany (Assur) which we know from other prophecies will be the military leader — naturally so — of a United States of Europe…Egypt…will provoke the prophesied United Europe (Dan. 11:40). This European power — called the “king of the north” in Daniel 11 — shall invade and occupy the “glorious land” of Palestine (verse 41). “And the land of Egypt shall not escape”(Boraker R. SYRIA RAIDS ISRAEL – Where Is It Leading? Plain Truth. November 1966)

Turkey will be part of a confederacy that will conspire against the tiny nation of Israel as well as against the USA and its British-descended allies (see also Anglo – America in Prophecy & the Lost Tribes of Israel) but since Assyria is involved in Psalm 83, this is also an alliance with a coming European power.

The Bible also shows that Turkey will also, temporarily and as part of a confederacy, support the prophesied King of the South:

40 “At the time of the end the king of the South shall attack him; and the king of the North shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter the countries, overwhelm them, and pass through. 41 He shall also enter the Glorious Land, and many countries shall be overthrown; but these shall escape from his hand: Edom, Moab, and the prominent people of Ammon. 42 He shall stretch out his hand against the countries, and the land of Egypt shall not escape. 43 He shall have power over the treasures of gold and silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt; also the Libyans and Ethiopians shall follow at his heels. (Daniel 11:40-43)

The King of the South is prophesied to be over lands that are currently under Islamic domination. Yet, despite being Islamic, notice that Daniel 11:41 shows that Turkey (Edom) will escape the coming destruction from the King of the North, despite being aligned for a time with the King of the South.

Interestingly, notice the following Roman Catholic prophecy about Turkey and a “Great Arab” leader:

Nostradamus: The Great Arab shall progress well forward, But betrayed shall be by the Byzantines. (Turks).

Comment on above from Catholic writer Yves Dupont: Here, we are told that Turkey will break its faith with the rest of the Arab world. (Dupont, Yves. Catholic Prophecy: The Coming Chastisement. TAN Books, Rockford (IL), 1973, p. 107).

Dionysius of Luxemberg (died 1682): a. “After the birth of Antichrist the people of the world will be very wicked and godless … The churches will be dreary and empty like deserted barns … From the midst of His Church He will raise up a Christian ruler who will perform most remarkable deeds. With divine assistance this ruler will not only lead erring souls back to the true Faith but also deal a heavy blow to the foes of the empire; the Turks, to take away their empire and restore it to Christianity (Connor p.84).

The “Great Arab” is probably supposed to represent the Mahdi/Caliph, the final King of the South. The Turks currently control Byzantium and have for many centuries. Dionysius of Luxemberg seems to be saying that the Turks will betray an Islamic empire.

Hence, Roman Catholic prophecy indicates that Turkey will betray the Islamic Arabic power and support Europe. In the Bible, Daniel 11:25-26 is quite clear that an ally of the King of the South will betray the King of the South:

25 “He shall stir up his power and his courage against the king of the South with a great army. And the king of the South shall be stirred up to battle with a very great and mighty army; but he shall not stand, for they shall devise plans against him. 26 Yes, those who eat of the portion of his delicacies shall destroy him; his army shall be swept away, and many shall fall down slain. (Daniel 11:25-26)

If Daniel 11:25-26 has future fulfillment (and as it seems to parallel Daniel 11:40-43, it looks to), it would seem that there will be close allies (like Turkey) that will betray the King of the South according to scripture as well.

So what do we make of all of this?

Well, for a time, Turkey will continue to try to have ties with Europe and with the Islamic world (cf. Psalm 83:4-8; Daniel 11:40-43). But this will not last.

For a short while, Turkey will will align with the King of the South–which will also have one or more ties with Europe (cf. Daniel 11:27; Psalm 83:4-8)–until the King of the South and the European King of the North turn against each other (Daniel 11:40-43), but Turkey will switch by then to support the European King of the North.

My experience with the Turks (my wife and I have been to Turkey 3 or 4 times) is that they are a pragmatic people. In time, they will see problems with the ambitions of the King of the South. This will lead to one or more leaders in Turkey betraying the King of the South to the European King of the North, consistent with scripture.

Turkey ultimately will align with Europe, despite some distancing that will also occur.

Biblical prophecies concerning Turkey and Europe will come to pass.

LATEST NEWS REPORTS

LATEST BIBLE PROPHECY INTERVIEWS

0 notes

literary-illuminati · 2 years

Text

Books I Read In July

31. India In The Persianate Age by Richard M. Eaton

So this has been on my list for, like, 2 years(?),since I asked for recs on Indian history after finishing After Tamerlane and someone mentioned it. Having finished it - good recommendation! Shockingly readable, and if absolutely nothing else has given me a basic understanding of the broad strokes of medieval Indian history. (Now just to read up on the Congo basin and points south, and South-East Asia, and I’ll have something like an extraordinarily cursory understanding of the political history of the entire world).

But no it really was interesting. Beaton’s central thesis - that it’s more useful to think of medieval India as a period of conflict and syncretization between Persianiate and Sanskrit cultural spheres, not a period of holy war and strict us-them divides - seems a bit overstated, but it’s definitely worth taking seriously (and certainly a useful corrective to the political narratives that have dominated since). The Mughal’s in particular seemed to have been a really syncretic empire, legitimized by islamic clergy but with Rajputs and other hindu aristocrats playing keys roles in just about all realms of the state, and the symbolism and rhetoric of the state definitely seemed to be pretty thoroughly syncretized by the eighteenth century.

Also, like, to the extent there even is a popular memory of the Mughals in the west, it’s definitely of the ‘ancient, decadent empire’ sort, so useful to remember that they’re almost quintessentially early modern.

It’s mostly an aside in the book, but one thing that really did strike me (largely because it agreed with what I remember of Darwin’s take in After Tamerlane) is that the colonization of India was in large part only possible because India was so much like Europe - The collapse of the Mughals sort of rhymes with general anarchy of the Early Modern in terms of giving opportunities for state formation, and more specifically there had been something like an Indian Military Revolution leaving large populations of trained professional mercenaries very skilled at their craft and without much loyalty beyond their next paychecks, and (probably more importantly, especially in Bengal) fairly sophisticated credit markets that could be tapped to provide capital for military adventures. If the Brits hadn’t been able to tap into both the military and credit markets and exploit them to the hilt, there’s simply no way they would have been able to exploit the opportunities they did and dominate the subcontinent.

Which definitely does lead one to wonder how much of a delay you’d need to allow proper Indian fiscal-military states to consolidate on their own and resist complete European domination/jump into the empire-building game themselves, and what that would have looked like. From my (again, very vague) understanding of it, the Sikh Empire and Sultanate of Mysore managed to get pretty close to fighting the Brits on even ground even historically.

32. The Galaxy and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers

Hugo novel nominee 6 out of 6! We did it! Confetti and sparklers!

Okay it’s not really hate-reading but I’ve literally read all but one thing Chambers has ever published at this point, I think. Please don’t let the sequel to Hymn to the Wild Build get nominated for a Hugo next year.

But no honestly I didn’t even hate this one. Extremely readable - would have been great for a train ride or day stuck in an airport - and it even has a bit of interpersonal conflict! Little, little bit, argument lasts for three pages before they agree to disagree, and I get the feeling I’m supposed to find one side much more obviously correct than I do, but still!

I’ve said it before, but I really do want to like the Wayfarers universe. And, well, in large part that assuredly just because I can’t think of any other proper space opera settings that have even slightly taken off that are newer than Mass Effect, and also it’s the blessedly rare setting where the entire universe isn’t warped around the sheer magnetic Specialness of humanity, but still, it’s a fun, well-thought out setting! Would love to read a story with a plot set in it some day!

Though the whole Aeluon demographics thing is still bothering me - a population can’t recover from a bottleneck when the average number of kids per potential mother is less than two! Especially when they’ve got the whole galactic military superpower thing going on. They should still be slowly limping to extinction! (and really, if you actually want to dig into the drama of a huge cultural expectation to have kids, that seems like a way richer vein to tap anyway.)

33. Six-Gun Snow White Catherynne Valente

So on account of really loving The Past Is Red, and still having lines from The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland stuck in my head on occasion, and having gone feral over L’Esprit de L’Escalier when it came out last year, I just kind of decided to put holds on every Valente book my library had (there were a lot). Of the three I’ve read so far, this was easily the weakest

I mean the conceit is good - I still adore retelling fairytales and classics in new settings (fuck you I will defend 10 Things I Hate About You and She’s The Man to my dying breath), I love mixing up any post-medieval time period with mythic/fantasy elements, and the prose and imagery is still mostly very good.

But after the first act the whole thing just felt very confused and meandering and not sure what to do with itself, honestly. And maybe I’m just not cultured enough to get it, but the ending really fell a bit flat imo.

34. Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed The World by Adam Tooze

Since he’s the public intellectual of the moment, and also because my god I knew less about the history of the Great Finacial Crisis than I thought I did.

So beyond an understanding of just how long the crsis lasted and how comparatively hypercompetent the Chinese government was compared to anyone else, I have mostly been left with an incredible disdain for the European elite in general and Germany’s political class in particular. Just, totally fucked everything up and made everything worse for everyone, for almost no reason whatsoever. France comes out smelling of roses and seeming well-governed, by comparison. France!

Beyond that, it really just was a decade where the West’s most salient political divide was between well-heeled technocrats trying to keep global capitalism running relatively smoothly and the inarticulate nationalist screaming, huh? Truly depressing era for the left. (tbf so are most of them).

Relatedly but wow has spending the last section on Ukraine made this book age amazingly. More topical now than four years ago, somehow.

35. Comfort Me With Apples by Catherynne Valente

So this one I liked a fair bit better than Snow White, though honestly it really could have been a short story instead of a novella. The bits of the HOA agreement for the magical-realist-suburb the story takes place in before each chapter were clever and nicely dystopian/faerie-ish.

The whole conceit of the Garden of Eden as this stifling hyper-manicured stepford wives gated community was generally really well done, but as previously mentioned I’m an extremely easy sell for that sortof thing. It really did take me altogether too long to realize that all the other people had animal names, so it seemed clever to me when that was pointed out anyway.

Beyond that it was all a bit confused, really. Blasphemous in a 1990s feminist fantasy sort of way? Adam is also Bluebeard, a giant and a brute who murders his wives when they realize what he is after finding the mementos he keeps, or otherwise displease him and then demanding his Father make him a new one, Eve eventually convincing him to eat the Apple is something like an analogy to poisoning an abusive husband. That sort of thing.

36. Deathless by Catherynne Valente

Now this one, this one was good, IMO. But then like I said, I’m an easy sell for twentieth century fairy tales, and even moreso Soviet ones. And Valente really leaned into the fairy tale-ness with this one, all the rich description and obscure metaphors and triptychs upon trptychs upon triptychs. Also the little domestic/family spirits who’d gotten cooped together in communal housing like everyone else and formed a housing committee to start making the place bigger on the inside (and realized that they can cause far more trouble for people by being informants than just spoiling milk) and the kazakh dragon whose horde is oil and wheat were both great.

The plot was, honestly, still rather meandering. But hey, when it’s a novel length fairy tale that kind of comes with the territory. And being in Marya’s head was always enjoyable.

…really don’t have too much to say about this one except that it was good, honestly.

37. A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow

And Hugo Novella Nominee number five!

So I absolutely adored Ten Thousand Doors of January, which was also the only thing by Harrow I’d previously read. So it’s possible I went in with overinflated expectations. But still, this was honestly a pretty big dissapointment.

And okay, part of it is, just like songs about how sexy being a musician is or dense essays about how criticism and Studying Theory are moral imperatives, stories about how ~important~ stories are have to be really good to not leave me rolling my eyes. And that goes double and triple for stuff that just leans into many worlds theory to justify itself about why there are all these convenient parallel worlds where fairy tales are real exactly as you imagine them, and triple for stuff that tries to get all cute and meta about all the cliches but then still expect you to take it seriously.

So I mean, even going in, this probably wasn’t the book for me. But still, it was just so…impressed with itself? Or no, that’s unfair, more that the reviews and marketing copy on the book jacket were impressed with it. And I just..didn’t see it? If it wasn’t gay the entire plot seems like it could have been a made-for-tv movie I watched as a kid. Certainly not exactly ‘subversive’ or ‘groundbreaking’ or whatever.

Also I was kind of surprised how how fucked up the original Sleeping Beauty story was (Princeess didn’t wake up with true love’s kiss, she woke up when the prince rapes her while she sleeps, she gets pregnant, and her newborn baby suckles the splinter out of her finger) was treated as this, like, shocking revelation. I mean I was absolutely a miserable child who sought these things out but still, pretty sure I’d heard that by the time I was 14. Like Cinderella’s stepsisters slicing chunks of their feet off to fit in the slipper, y’know?

#monthly tally #analysis/review #a spindle splintered #alix e. harrow #deathless #Six Gun Snow White #comfort me with apples #Catherynne Valente #crashed #Adam Tooze #the galaxy and the ground within #becky chambers #India in the Persianate Age #Richard M. Eaton

78 notes · View notes

regina-del-cielo · 3 years

Text

Immortal Siblings AU | Four, then three, then four again

I mentioned that the bulletpoint post describing how the Guard from the Immortal Siblings AU found Joe had totally run away from me. It has, in fact, become a study on them grieving over Lykon and then finding Yusuf.

I have, somehow, reached a sort of natural end to the amount of bullshit my mind can add to this list/fic draft. So, if you want to give it a read... grab a snack. It’s long. I’m sorry.

Warnings for Wikipedia levels of historical accuracy - I added links to the relevant pages when quoting historical events, but since I was just trying to work out a timeline (famous last words), the research wasn’t extensive. There’s a lot of hand-waving.

By the end of the 11th Century, I think Andy, Quynh and Nico haven’t been in Europe for a while, not really. They moved south, and then east, after the sack of Rome of 410 CE. Seeing the great cities fall has become hard for them, especially for Nico, who is a nomad at heart but has a soft spot for cities, together with Lykon, the true city boy in the group. He’d seen it happen to Athens, he wasn’t sure he could deal with seeing Rome wilt.

For reasons I cannot fathom, my mind is settled on them having been in India when Lykon dies (possibly sometime around the middle of the 6th century, in the mess that was the crumbling of the Gupta Empire???)

Seeing him die destroys them, and they take a break from any battlefield to grieve their friend and brother. They wander, occasionally helping but almost never raising their weapons, too leery of injuries and of losing each other.

(Quynh, who was the first to notice Lykon’s wounds, has nightmares that make her cry in her sleep. Andromache holds her so tight Nico can feel the tension on her muscles against his back. He and his sister barely sleep, scared of the open spaces of Asia as they’d never been before. Lykon was the youngest of them and he died, what if they stop healing too?)

(If Nico stands guard over his sisters and feels an ache in his chest seeing how they hold onto each other, he’s never going to say it out loud. His Mache deserves the love she shares with Quynh. But sometimes he wishes he had someone to hold him like that, one he can call his heart.)

The first time they go to battle again like in the old days it’s almost the end of the 10th century, and they’re helping Quynh’s lands gain independence from China. They have a reason and a specific side to root for, and it’s the kind of cause Lykon would have approved of. They find purpose again.

They are distantly aware of how things are holding up in the west – they know Constantinople has crowned itself capital of the Roman Empire (what is left of it anyway); they know of the new religion, Islam, and how it was brought further east with the armies conquering Persia. They met the Varangians on the Northern Plains of the Rus’, when Andy insisted on going back to their steppes for a while.

They acquire new swords, repair the old weapons, make improvements on their bows. They travel, and help, and listen. They learn new languages. They heal.

They’ve just spent the winter in Samarkand when they hear merchants newly come from Constantinople talk about the Frankish armies that took Antioch and making their way further into Palestine.

The words ‘freeing Jerusalem from the infidels’ make Andy sigh in exasperation and twist Nico’s guts. The three of them don’t really understand the point of going to war for a god, but Jerusalem is old, and she’s been coveted by many throughout their long lives. Things like this never end well, they know it intimately.

But they’ve been away for a long time, centuries at this point. Things are very different from when the Romans had the power. They are less eager to throw themselves into the battlefield now, and there’s much they don’t know about the dynamics of Europe and the Levant. Still they’re worried, and decide that they’ll move west to see if something can be done, for the civilians at least.

At first they travel slowly, keeping an ear out for gossip spoken by the caravans coming from the west. Things radically change, however, when they dream of a new immortal (a man, with a curly black beard and shining dark eyes) dying on the walls of Jerusalem and reviving to an unprecedented slaughter – said man is, obviously, absolutely terrified and they feel it.

He’s also woken up surrounded by living enemies, with high risk of being killed or injured multiple times, and of being seen.

They are still too far away to do anything more than hope that the new guy is clever enough to keep himself alive until they can reach him, but now Nico is all for moving west at full speed to get him out.

“What the everloving FUCK is happening over there?!” is the common theme in their thoughts; nothing about this war they’re walking towards is making any sense.

Yusuf al-Kaysani is, in fact, clever enough to keep himself (and a few other civilians to boot) alive and get out of Jerusalem when it becomes clear than no matter how many Franks he kills he can do nothing to stop them alone. (It’s a fucking carnage, and he’s so tired). He walks away from the battle and tries to reach some sort of safety in the desert.

When he’d decided to stay in Jerusalem and fight instead of escaping the siege, Yusuf had considered the possibility of dying. He had not accounted for waking up from a fatal wound with no sign of having been hit in the first place.

And then there are the visions. Or dreams, he’s not sure. They don’t seem to make any sense? Who are those people?! Is his mind so addled by the war that he’s conjuring scary warrior women and a stupidly handsome man, armed to the teeth and camping in the desert?

(fantasizing about handsome men in his sleep isn’t exactly news for him, but there were never women in those. And none of his usual dreams involved weapons. Something is definitely off)

For the following days, Yusuf makes sure to stay away from human settlements while putting as much space as possible between Jerusalem and himself – the last thing he needs is to become a potential target for any invader that may cross his path.

But he’s alone, having nightmares, constantly on edge, and in a body that suddenly doesn’t feel like his own anymore, since he doesn’t even have the scars to prove that the injuries he sustained were real to begin with.

After a couple of weeks, the appearance of the strangers in his dreams starts feeling safe and comforting; they seem to operate like a little family, and God knows how much he misses his own.

(should he try to go back home? Would news of the siege reach his family before he does? Would he be able to go back to his previous life in the state he’s in? Could he keep this secret from them? Would they still love him or think him a monster?)

Despite their impressive warrior appearance, they feel... kind. And gentle. Sometimes, it feels like they’re trying to reassure him, even. Especially when he dreams from the perspective of the man.

The sensation those dreams leave on his skin is like a cape. You’re not alone, it whispers. Wait for us.

Andy, Quynh and Nico have just left Baghdad when the dreams change, and not for the better - Yusuf was passing through a village when a band of marauding Franks started harassing the locals. He moved to defend the villagers, but was overwhelmed and what’s worse, the Franks saw his wounds close too fast. Their reaction was vehement: they called him a demon, incapacitated him and then brought him back to their garrison, with every intention of ‘properly getting rid of him’.

Nico wakes up screaming and Andy has to sit on him so he doesn’t just sprint ahead without actually knowing where the fuck he’s going.

“We can’t just raid every single Frankish encampment in a twenty mile radius around Jerusalem, Nico!” “TRY ME” *Aggressive Sibling Bickering follows* *Quynh doesn’t bat an eye and just rolls out a map of the area she purchased and starts mapping out the fastest routes*

Yusuf is having a Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week at the hands of his captors, who are getting disturbingly creative in their tortures, but whenever they let him fall unconscious he sees the people of his dreams travelling much faster than before, looking Royally Pissed Off, and the surroundings are... starting to look familiar too?

If he tries to pay more attention to the conversations his torturers are having with each other outside of the tent he’s in and hoping the dreams go both ways, so the maybe-real trio can find him easier, now that’s nobody’s business but his own.

(spoiler: it works)

When they are in sight of Jerusalem, the immortals find a drunk “pilgrim” boasting about his band capturing a ‘pagan demon’ while coming back from their victory at Ascalon, follow him back to his camp, and as soon as it’s feasible they attack.

(Andy will later gripe that Nico didn’t leave her anything to do because he just paved his way through the Franks like he was harvesting wheat.)

seeing the Stupidly Handsome Man of his dreams standing in front of him covered head to toe in blood, with a double-bladed axe in one hand and a sword in the other, staring intensely at him as if to peer directly into his soul is... an experience for Yusuf.

(he may have composed a lot of poems about that first vision of Nico through the centuries. The words ‘avenging angel’ have been used quite profusely, too)

The protective instinct that Nico has felt for the newest immortal since the first dream clutches at his throat when he finally sees him, chained to a pole and so thin his clothes barely cling to his body, but with the softest dark eyes staring back with a glint of recognition when he comes closer.

(he could cry with relief at the knowledge that he’s not scared of him. Nico has seen the faces of the men that were keeping him captive, he knows he looks a lot like they did, and that he paints a gruesome picture.)

“Are you alright?” Nico asks first, in Greek. (He knows, from the dreams, that his captors prayed in Latin. He wants to make sure that the other knows that he’s not like them.)

“You were in my dreams. You came.” Yusuf answers back in the same language, although his sounds much newer than Nico’s.

“Of course. We’re not meant to be alone… and no one deserves to be in a cage”.

Nico uses the axe to break the chains, and by the time he’s done Andy and Quynh have reached them and his sister throws the keys at him to open the shackles.

“Couldn’t take a moment to get them yourself, little eagle? You wanted to show off your skills to the new one?” Quynh teases, just to see Nico blush. Andy stares at her brother and their new companion for a few beats, before finally asking his name.

“Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad Al-Kaysani, known as al-Tayyib” he answers, letting out the first smile in weeks at the raising eyebrows of his saviours. “Just Yusuf is fine.”

“You have a sense of humour, brother. I like you!” Andy snorts, before cutting her palm with the edge of her axe, and showing him her fast healing.

“We are like you, Yusuf. That’s why you dreamt of us, and we of you” Nico adds gently, while Quynh offers her waterskin to Yusuf. They also offer their own names.

“We need to clean up this mess and move away from here” Andy says, while Nico helps Yusuf up. “One of those fuckers was boasting about an undying demon with others in a tavern, the last thing we need is to fight our way out against their whole army because someone else decided to come check if he was saying the truth.”

“It’s been a long time since we were in Kush” Quynh whispers, and Yusuf sees their faces open in a look of affectionate grief he remembers seeing on his Baba’s eyes when he talked about his own mother.

“We can talk about it more when we’re somewhere safer” Andromache suggests, before moving to set up the stage of an ‘accidental’ fire.

As they’re riding away, Yusuf turns slightly to watch the camp burn, leaving no trace of the invaders that hurt him. Jerusalem looms in the distance - lost, and wounded. If he were a little less exhausted, he could easily work out a metaphor about his own situation.

But then he looks at the three people of his dreams – Quynh, Andromache, Nikolaos – that came for him. Who are the same as him, immortal.

His world has turned upside down, and there are so many questions to ask, and he could sleep for a month straight – but one thing is certain.

He’s not alone anymore.

76 notes · View notes

atlanticcanada · 3 years

Text

Explosions heard in Kyiv as Russia presses Ukraine assault

Several explosions were heard in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv early Friday as Russian forces pressed on with their assault.

Associated Press reporters heard several blasts in different parts of the city.

More to come

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP's earlier story follows below.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Thursday, unleashing airstrikes on cities and military bases and sending in troops and tanks from three sides in an attack that could rewrite the global post-Cold War security order. Ukraine's government pleaded for help as civilians piled into trains and cars to flee.

Scores of Ukrainians, civilians and service members alike, were killed in the first full day of fighting, and the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv appeared to be increasingly threatened. President Volodymyr Zelensky said the government had information that "subversive groups" were encroaching on the city, and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Kyiv "could well be under siege."

Ukrainian forces braced for more attacks after enduring a Russian barrage of land- and sea-based missiles, an assault that one senior U.S. defence official described as the first salvo in a likely multi-phase invasion aimed at seizing key population centers and "decapitating" Ukraine's government. Already, Ukraine officials said they had lost control of the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power plant, scene of the world's worst nuclear disaster.

In unleashing the largest ground war in Europe since World War II, Russian President Vladimir Putin ignored global condemnation and cascading new sanctions. With a chilling reference to his country's nuclear arsenal, he threatened any country trying to interfere with "consequences you have never seen," as a once-hoped for diplomatic resolution now appeared impossible.

"Russia has embarked on a path of evil, but Ukraine is defending itself and won't give up its freedom," Zelensky tweeted. His grasp on power increasingly tenuous, he pleaded Thursday for even more severe sanctions than the ones imposed by Western allies and ordered a full military mobilization that would last 90 days.

Zelensky said in a video address that 137 "heroes," including 10 military officers, had been killed and 316 people wounded. The dead included all border guards on the Zmiinyi Island in the Odessa region, which was taken over by Russians.

He concluded an emotional speech by saying that "the fate of the country depends fully on our army, security forces, all of our defenders." He also said the country had heard from Moscow that "they want to talk about Ukraine's neutral status."

U.S. President Joe Biden announced new sanctions against Russia, saying Putin "chose this war" and had exhibited a "sinister" view of the world in which nations take what they want by force. Other nations also announced sanctions, or said they would shortly.

"It was always about naked aggression, about Putin's desire for empire by any means necessary -- by bullying Russia's neighbors through coercion and corruption, by changing borders by force, and, ultimately, by choosing a war without a cause," Biden said.

Blinken said in television interviews that he was convinced that Russia was intent on overthrowing the Ukrainian government, telling CBS that Putin wants to "reconstitute the Soviet empire."

Fearing a Russian attack on the capital city, thousands of people went deep underground as night fell, jamming Kyiv's subway stations.

At times it felt almost cheerful. Families ate dinner. Children played. Adults chatted. People brought sleeping bags or dogs or crossword puzzles -- anything to alleviate the waiting and the long night ahead.

But the exhaustion was clear on many faces. And the worries.

"Nobody believed that this war would start and that they would take Kyiv directly," said Anton Mironov, waiting out the night in one of the old Soviet metro stations. "I feel mostly fatigue. None of it feels real."

The invasion began early Thursday with a series of missile strikes, many on key government and military installations, quickly followed by a three-pronged ground assault. Ukrainian and U.S. officials said Russian forces were attacking from the east toward Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city; from the southern region of Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014; and from Belarus to the north.

Zelensky, who had earlier cut diplomatic ties with Moscow and declared martial law, appealed to global leaders, saying that "if you don't help us now, if you fail to offer a powerful assistance to Ukraine, tomorrow the war will knock on your door."

Though Biden said he had no plans to speak with Putin, the Russian leader did have what the Kremlin described as a "serious and frank exchange" with French President Emmanuel Macron.

Both sides claimed to have destroyed some of the other's aircraft and military hardware, though little of that could be confirmed.

Hours after the invasion began, Russian forces seized control of the now-unused Chernobyl plant and its surrounding exclusion zone after a fierce battle, presidential adviser Myhailo Podolyak told The Associated Press.

The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency said it was told by Ukraine of the takeover, adding that there had been "no casualties or destruction at the industrial site."

The 1986 disaster occurred when a nuclear reactor at the plant 130 kilometres north of Kyiv exploded, sending a radioactive cloud across Europe. The damaged reactor was later covered by a protective shell to prevent leaks.

Alyona Shevtsova, adviser to the commander of Ukraine's ground forces, wrote on Facebook that staff members at the Chernobyl plant had been "taken hostage." The White House said it was "outraged" by reports of the detentions.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence issued an update saying that though the plant was "likely captured," the country's forces had halted Russia's advance toward Chernihiv and that it was unlikely that Russia had achieved its planned Day One military objectives.

The chief of the NATO alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, said the "brutal act of war" shattered peace in Europe, joining a chorus of world leaders decrying an attack that could cause massive casualties and topple Ukraine's democratically elected government. The conflict shook global financial markets: Stocks plunged and oil prices soared amid concerns that heating bills and food prices would skyrocket.

Condemnation came not only from the U.S. and Europe, but from South Korea, Australia and beyond -- and many governments readied new sanctions. Even friendly leaders like Hungary's Viktor Orban sought to distance themselves from Putin.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he aimed to cut off Russia from the U.K.'s financial markets as he announced sanctions, freezing the assets of all large Russian banks and planning to bar Russian companies and the Kremlin from raising money on British markets.

"Now we see him for what he is -- a bloodstained aggressor who believes in imperial conquest," Johnson said of Putin.

The U.S. sanctions will target Russian banks, oligarchs, state-controlled companies and high-tech sectors, Biden said, but they were designed not to disrupt global energy markets. Russian oil and natural gas exports are vital energy sources for Europe.

Zelensky urged the U.S. and West to go further and cut the Russians from the SWIFT system, a key financial network that connects thousands of banks around the world. The White House has been reluctant to immediately cut Russia from SWIFT, worried it could cause enormous economic problems in Europe and elsewhere in the West.

While some nervous Europeans speculated about a possible new world war, the U.S. and its NATO partners have shown no indication they would send troops into Ukraine, fearing a larger conflict. NATO reinforced its members in Eastern Europe as a precaution, and Biden said the U.S. was deploying additional forces to Germany to bolster NATO.

European authorities declared the country's airspace an active conflict zone.

After weeks of denying plans to invade, Putin launched the operation on a country the size of Texas that has increasingly tilted toward the democratic West and away from Moscow's sway. The autocratic leader made clear earlier this week that he sees no reason for Ukraine to exist, raising fears of possible broader conflict in the vast space that the Soviet Union once ruled. Putin denied plans to occupy Ukraine, but his ultimate goals remain hazy.

Ukrainians were urged to shelter in place and not to panic.

"Until the very last moment, I didn't believe it would happen. I just pushed away these thoughts," said a terrified Anna Dovnya in Kyiv, watching soldiers and police remove shrapnel from an exploded shell. "We have lost all faith."

With social media amplifying a torrent of military claims and counter-claims, it was difficult to determine exactly what was happening on the ground.

Russia and Ukraine made competing claims about damage they had inflicted. Russia's Defense Ministry said it had destroyed scores of Ukrainian air bases, military facilities and drones. It confirmed the loss of one of its Su-25 attack jets, blaming "pilot error," and said an An-26 transport plane had crashed because of technical failure, killing the entire crew. It did not say how many were aboard.

Russia said it was not targeting cities, but journalists saw destruction in many civilian areas.

Poland's military increased its readiness level, and Lithuania and Moldova moved toward doing the same.

Putin justified his actions in an overnight televised address, asserting the attack was needed to protect civilians in eastern Ukraine -- a false claim the U.S. predicted he would make as a pretext for invasion. He accused the U.S. and its allies of ignoring Russia's demands to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO and for security guarantees, saying the military action was a "forced measure."

Anticipating international condemnation and countermeasures, Putin issued a stark warning to other countries not to meddle.

In a reminder of Russia's nuclear power, he warned that "no one should have any doubts that a direct attack on our country will lead to the destruction and horrible consequences for any potential aggressor."

------

Isachenkov and Litvinova reported from Moscow. Francesca Ebel in Kyiv; Angela Charlton in Paris; Geir Moulson and Frank Jordans in Berlin; Raf Casert and Lorne Cook in Brussels; Nic Dumitrache in Mariupol, Ukraine, Inna Varennytsia in eastern Ukraine; and Robert Burns, Matthew Lee, Aamer Madhani, Eric Tucker, Nomaan Merchant, Ellen Knickmeyer, Zeke Miller, Chris Megerian and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed.

from CTV News - Atlantic https://ift.tt/ogkPFwr

#new brunswick #prince edward island #nova scotia #news #politics #canada #CTVAtlantic

2 notes · View notes

needcake · 3 years

Note

Bored at work again so gonna shoot another request: thoughts on Bel, Ned, Germany or Prussia? I’ll take any and all hcs you’ve got 🥰

I thought I had nothing, but then I had a beer and I found some stuff to share haha

Ned

Ned grew up too fast after Flanders was annexed into Habsburg Spain by Carlos V, since annexation meant higher taxes and the imposition of Catholicism meant that both Protestants and Jews living in present-day Netherlands were in danger.

He crash-coursed through what usually takes nations decades and centuries to evolve into, things like good morals, strong alliances, trade networks. So in order to rebel against Spain and fight for his independence he needed money, fast, and after Portugal was annexed by Spain in 1580, the Portuguese colonies in Asia became free real state.

The Portuguese employed a lot of Dutch people throughout the colonies, they had historically always traded with the Flemish, and so their very carefully guarded and protected secrets, like maps, trade routes, contracts and more, were stolen and published in Europe. (see this guy for more on that)

The Dutch invented modern capitalism and the stock market to raise a lot of money very fast and build a lot of ships to take a lot of Portuguese colonies. You can follow their path of conquest after rebelling against Spain and notice they never targeted Spanish colonies (maybe with the exception of the Philippines), only the Portuguese ones. Their colonialism was very pragmatic and business-focused, they had no problem accepting foreign religions, a point of friction between the Portuguese and many Asian cultures for example, and were able to take control of the spice trade fairly easy, since the Portuguese navy, now Spanish, was mostly otherwise occupied fighting Spanish wars (and Spain was enemies with everyone at this point, so Port took a lot of damage in this union).

This drive for wealth and power only slowed down after their 80-year war against Spain ended and with the Glorious Revolution in England and the union of their crowns, which meant less investment in the Dutch navy. Ned and England had a kind of the enemy of my enemy is my friend sort of friendship, with some occasional backstabbing on the side, but that's England's relationship with pretty much everyone. And so, while their keen focus on expansion slowed, Dutch colonialism still persevered and never really ended? There are a few islands in the Caribbean that still rely on the Dutch government for international matters, despite having self ruling governments, much like the Overseas France.

I think deep down he's still a shy kid who grew up too fast and made the choices he thought he had to in order to survive. He's very pragmatic and not one to dwell too much on the past. He did what he did, doesn't try to hide it, and tries to do better now.

Best friends with Denmark, btw, they share cows and go on bike rides on the weekends.

Bel

Unfortunately, I don't know much about Belgium to have a clear picture of her in my mind. All I studied from Belgium history is linked to their colonial past, and that is a complex topic.

I think she's a lot like Ned in the sense that she does the work that is required of her and doesn't spend a lot of her time looking back and thinking about the bad stuff. The territory of Belgium was fought over and changed hands a lot between the Spanish, the French and the Dutch, and so I think all of that shaped her into being tougher than she looks, and while she gets along fine with everyone, she also doesn't want anyone bossing her around anymore.

Germany

Likewise, I haven't study much of German history to have very strong opinions. But my idea of Germany is that he's young young, he has a big romantic heart and he loves going for walks in the forest near the mountains. He enjoys the simple things, a good hard day of work, coming home to a hot meal and writing poetry about nature.

I don't think the heaviest parts of his history hardened him. I think he is still the same sweet guy with a romantic heart, but he's smarter now, he doesn't trust as easily, and he's always hyper aware of himself and of others not to let history repeat itself.

I think he also has a liiittle bit of OCD and things have to always be tidy and clean.

Prussia

I struggle with Prussia a bit. To me he reeks of boy genius, you know? The kind of genius that gets easily bored because his mind is running at three times the speed and he can't sit still through something as dull as meetings or lectures.

He's terribly attracted to power, but he can just as easily turn his back to it, because he knows he doesn't need it, unlike England and France and Spain, who all clung to power as if their lives depended on it. He knows deep down that death is inevitable and that allows him clarity. Empires fall, they live on, and that's that.

If he can be bothered, he is a master of philosophy and can debate for hours (Kant was Prussian after all), but mostly he just rolls his eyes and exits the room because you guys are wrong but I'm not gonna waste my time correcting you all.

He also thinks he's funny as hell.

(and anytime he thinks England needs to be brought down a peg he likes to retell the story of the battle of Waterloo from his perspective)

#rein-ette #i am now fairly drunk but i hope this serves you in some way #hetalia #hws netherlands #hws belgium #hws germany #hws prussia #thank you for the ask!!#I had fun writing this #which also reminded me to study more #and finish critique of pure reason >_>

11 notes · View notes

antoine-roquentin · 4 years

Quote

If every language is acquirable, its acquisition requires a real portion of a person’s life: each new conquest is measured against shortening days. What limits one’s access to other languages is not their imperviousness but one’s own mortality. Hence a certain privacy to all languages. French and American imperialists governed, exploited, and killed Vietnamese over many years. But whatever else they made off with, the Vietnamese language stayed put. Accordingly, only too often, a rage at Vietnamese ‘inscrutability,’ and that obscure despair which engenders the venomous argots of dying colonialisms: ‘gooks,’ ‘ratons’, etc.12 (In the longer run, the only responses to the vast privacy of the language of the oppressed are retreat or further massacre.) Such epithets are, in their inner form, characteristically racist, and decipherment of this form will serve to show why Nairn is basically mistaken in arguing that racism and anti-semitism derive from nationalism – and thus that ‘seen in sufficient historical depth, fascism tells us more about nationalism than any other episode.’13 A word like ‘slant,’ for example, abbreviated from ‘slant-eyed’, does not simply express an ordinary political enmity. It erases nation-ness by reducing the adversary to his biological physiognomy.14 It denies, by substituting for, ‘Vietnamese;’ just as raton denies, by substituting for, ‘Algerian’. At the same time, it stirs ‘Vietnamese’ into a nameless sludge along with ‘Korean,’ ‘Chinese,’ ‘Filipino,’ and so on. The character of this vocabulary may become still more evident if it is contrasted with other Vietnam-War-period words like ‘Charlie’ and ‘V.C.’, or from an earlier era, ‘Boches,’ ‘Huns,’ ‘Japs’ and ‘Frogs,’ all of which apply only to one specific nationality, and thus concede, in hatred, the adversary’s membership in a league of nations.15 The fact of the matter is that nationalism thinks in terms of historical destinies, while racism dreams of eternal contaminations, transmitted from the origins of time through an endless sequence of loathsome copulations: outside history. Niggers are, thanks to the invisible tar-brush, forever niggers; Jews, the seed of Abraham, forever Jews, no matter what passports they carry or what languages they speak and read. (Thus for the Nazi, the Jewish German was always an impostor.)16 The dreams of racism actually have their origin in ideologies of class, rather than in those of nation: above all in claims to divinity among rulers and to ‘blue’ or ‘white’ blood and ‘breeding’ among aristocracies.17 No surprise then that the putative sire of modern racism should be, not some petty-bourgeois nationalist, but Joseph Arthur, Comte de Gobineau.18 Nor that, on the whole, racism and anti-semitism manifest themselves, not across national boundaries, but within them. In other words, they justify not so much foreign wars as domestic repression and domination.19 Where racism developed outside Europe in the nineteenth century, it was always associated with European domination, for two converging reasons. First and most important was the rise of official nationalism and colonial ‘Russification’. As has been repeatedly emphasized official nationalism was typically a response on the part of threatened dynastic and aristocratic groups – upper classes – to popular vernacular nationalism. Colonial racism was a major element in that conception of ‘Empire’ which attempted to weld dynastic legitimacy and national community. It did so by generalizing a principle of innate, inherited superiority on which its own domestic position was (however shakily) based to the vastness of the overseas possessions, covertly (or not so covertly) conveying the idea that if, say, English lords were naturally superior to other Englishmen, no matter: these other Englishmen were no less superior to the subjected natives. Indeed one is tempted to argue that the existence of late colonial empires even served to shore up domestic aristocratic bastions, since they appeared to confirm on a global, modern stage antique conceptions of power and privilege. It could do so with some effect because – and here is our second reason – the colonial empire, with its rapidly expanding bureaucratic apparatus and its ‘Russifying’ policies, permitted sizeable numbers of bourgeois and petty bourgeois to play aristocrat off centre court: i.e. anywhere in the empire except at home. In each colony one found this grimly amusing tableau vivant: the bourgeois gentilhomme speaking poetry against a backcloth of spacious mansions and gardens filled with mimosa and bougainvillea, and a large supporting cast of houseboys, grooms, gardeners, cooks, amahs, maids, washerwomen, and, above all, horses.20 Even those who did not manage to live in this style, such as young bachelors, nonetheless had the grandly equivocal status of a French nobleman on the eve of a jacquerie:21 In Moulmein, in lower Burma [this obscure town needs explaining to readers in the metropole], I was hated by large numbers of people – the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me. I was sub-divisional police officer of the town. This ‘tropical Gothic’ was made possible by the overwhelming power that high capitalism had given the metropole – a power so great that it could be kept, so to speak, in the wings. Nothing better illustrates capitalism in feudal-aristocratic drag than colonial militaries, which were notoriously distinct from those of the metropoles, often even in formal institutional terms. 22 Thus in Europe one had the ‘First Army,’ recruited by conscription on a mass, citizen, metropolitan base; ideologically conceived as the defender of the heimat; dressed in practical, utilitarian khaki; armed with the latest affordable weapons; in peacetime isolated in barracks, in war stationed in trenches or behind heavy field-guns. Outside Europe one had the ‘Second Army,’ recruited (below the officer level) from local religious or ethnic minorities on a mercenary basis; ideologically conceived as an internal police force; dressed to kill in bed-or ballroom; armed with swords and obsolete industrial weapons; in peace on display, in war on horseback. If the Prussian General Staff, Europe’s military teacher, stressed the anonymous solidarity of a professionalized corps, ballistics, railroads, engineering, strategic planning, and the like, the colonial army stressed glory, epaulettes, personal heroism, polo, and an archaizing courtliness among its officers. (It could afford to do so because the First Army and the Navy were there in the background.) This mentality survived a long time. In Tonkin, in 1894, Lyautey wrote:23 Quel dommage de n’être pas venu ici dix ans plus tôt! Quelles carrières à y fonder et à y mener. Il n’y a pas ici un de ces petits lieutenants, chefs de poste et de reconnaissance, qui ne développe en 6 mois plus d’initiative, de volonté, d’endurance, de personnalité, qu’un officier de France en toute sa carrière. In Tonkin, in 1951, Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, ‘who liked officers who combined guts with “style,” took an immediate liking to the dashing cavalryman [Colonel de Castries] with his bright-red Spahi cap and scarf, his magnificent riding-crop, and his combination of easy-going manners and ducal mien, which made him as irresistible to women in Indochina in the 1950s as he had been to Parisiennes of the 1930s.’24 Another instructive indication of the aristocratic or pseudo-aristocratic derivation of colonial racism was the typical ‘solidarity among whites,’ which linked colonial rulers from different national metropoles, whatever their internal rivalries and conflicts. This solidarity, in its curious trans-state character, reminds one instantly of the class solidarity of Europe’s nineteenth-century aristocracies, mediated through each other’s hunting-lodges, spas, and ballrooms; and of that brotherhood of ‘officers and gentlemen,’ which in the Geneva convention guaranteeing privileged treatment to captured enemy officers, as opposed to partisans or civilians, has an agreeably twentieth-century expression. The argument adumbrated thus far can also be pursued from the side of colonial populations. For, the pronouncements of certain colonial ideologues aside, it is remarkable how little that dubious entity known as ‘reverse racism’ manifested itself in the anticolonial movements. In this matter it is easy to be deceived by language. There is, for example, a sense in which the Javanese word londo (derived from Hollander or Nederlander) meant not only ‘Dutch’ but ‘whites.’ But the derivation itself shows that, for Javanese peasants, who scarcely ever encountered any ‘whites’ but Dutch, the two meanings effectively overlapped. Similarly, in French colonial territories, ‘les blancs’ meant rulers whose Frenchness was indistinguishable from their whiteness. In neither case, so far as I know, did londo or blanc either lose caste or breed derogatory secondary distinctions.25 On the contrary, the spirit of anticolonial nationalism is that of the heart-rending Constitution of Makario Sakay’s short-lived Republic of Katagalugan (1902), which said, among other things:26 No Tagalog, born in this Tagalog archipelago, shall exalt any person above the rest because of his race or the colour of his skin; fair, dark, rich, poor, educated and ignorant – all are completely equal, and should be in one loób [inward spirit]. There may be differences in education, wealth, or appearance, but never in essential nature (pagkatao) and ability to serve a cause. One can find without difficulty analogies on the other side of the globe. Spanish-speaking mestizo Mexicans trace their ancestries, not to Castilian conquistadors, but to half-obliterated Aztecs, Mayans, Toltecs and Zapotecs. Uruguayan revolutionary patriots, creoles themselves, took up the name of Tupac Amarú, the last great indigenous rebel against creole oppression, who died under unspeakable tortures in 1781. It may appear paradoxical that the objects of all these attachments are ‘imagined’ – anonymous, faceless fellow-Tagalogs, exterminated tribes, Mother Russia, or the tanah air. But amor patriae does not differ in this respect from the other affections, in which there is always an element of fond imagining. (This is why looking at the photo-albums of strangers’ weddings is like studying the archaeologist’s groundplan of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.) What the eye is to the lover – that particular, ordinary eye he or she is born with – language – whatever language history has made his or her mother-tongue – is to the patriot. Through that language, encountered at mother’s knee and parted with only at the grave, pasts are restored, fellowships are imagined, and futures dreamed. 12. The logic here is: 1. I will be dead before I have penetrated them. 2. My power is such that they have had to learn my language. 3. But this means that my privacy has been penetrated. Terming them ‘gooks’ is small revenge. 13. The Break-up of Britain, pp. 337 and 347. 14. Notice that there is no obvious, selfconscious antonym to ‘slant.’ ‘Round’? ‘Straight’? ‘Oval’? 15. Not only, in fact, in an earlier era. Nonetheless, there is a whiff of the antique-shop about these words of Debray: ‘I can conceive of no hope for Europe save under the hegemony of a revolutionary France, firmly grasping the banner of independence. Sometimes I wonder if the whole “anti-Boche” mythology and our secular antagonism to Germany may not be one day indispensable for saving the revolution, or even our national-democratic inheritance.’ ‘Marxism and the National Question,’ p. 41. 16. The significance of the emergence of Zionism and the birth of Israel is that the former marks the reimagining of an ancient religious community as a nation, down there among the other nations – while the latter charts an alchemic change from wandering devotee to local patriot. 17. ‘From the side of the landed aristocracy came conceptions of inherent superiority in the ruling class, and a sensitivity to status, prominent traits well into the twentieth century. Fed by new sources, these conceptions could later be vulgarized [sic] and made appealing to the German population as a whole in doctrines of racial superiority.’ Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, p. 436. 18. Gobineau’s dates are perfect. He was born in 1816, two years after the restoration of the Bourbons to the French throne. His diplomatic career, 1848–1877, blossomed under Louis Napoléon’s Second Empire and the reactionary monarchist regime of Marie Edmé Patrice Maurice, Comte de MacMahon, former imperialist proconsul in Algiers. His Essai sur l’Inégalité des Races Humaines appeared in 1854 – should one say in response to the popular vernacular-nationalist insurrections of 1848? 19. South African racism has not, in the age of Vorster and Botha, stood in the way of amicable relations (however discreetly handled) with prominent black politicians in certain independent African states. If Jews suffer discrimination in the Soviet Union, that did not prevent respectful working relations between Brezhnev and Kissinger. 20. For a stunning collection of photographs of such tableaux vivants in the Netherlands Indies (and an elegantly ironical text), see ‘E. Breton de Nijs,’ Tempo Doeloe. 21. George Orwell, ‘Shooting an Elephant,’ in The Orwell Reader, p. 3. The words in square brackets are of course my interpolation. 22. The KNIL (Koninklijk Nederlandsch-Indisch Leger) was quite separate from the KL (Koninklijk Leger) in Holland. The Légion Étrangère was almost from the start legally prohibited from operations on continental French soil. 23. Lettres du Tonkin et de Madagascar (1894–1899), p. 84. Letter of December 22, 1894, from Hanoi. Emphases added. 24. Bernard B. Fall, Hell is a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu, p. 56. One can imagine the shudder of Clausewitz’s ghost. [Spahi, derived like Sepoy from the Ottoman Sipahi, meant mercenary irregular cavalrymen of the ‘Second Army’ in Algeria.] It is true that the France of Lyautey and de Lattre was a Republican France. However, the often talkative Grande Muette had since the start of the Third Republic been an asylum for aristocrats increasingly excluded from power in all other important institutions of public life. By 1898, a full quarter of all Brigadier-and Major-Generals were aristocrats. Moreover, this aristocrat-dominated officer corps was crucial to nineteenth and twentieth-century French imperialism. ‘The rigorous control imposed on the army in the métropole never extended fully to la France d’outremer. The extension of the French Empire in the nineteenth century was partially the result of uncontrolled initiative on the part of colonial military commanders. French West Africa, largely the creation of General Faidherbe, and the French Congo as well, owed most of their expansion to independent military forays into the hinterland. Military officers were also responsible for the faits accomplis which led to a French protectorate in Tahiti in 1842, and, to a lesser extent, to the French occupation of Tonkin in Indochina in the 1880’s . . . In 1897 Galliéni summarily abolished the monarchy in Madagascar and deported the Queen, all without consulting the French government, which later accepted the fait accompli . . .’ John S. Ambler, The French Army in Politics, 1945–1962, pp. 10–11 and 22. 25. I have never heard of an abusive argot word in Indonesian or Javanese for either ‘Dutch’ or ‘white.’ Compare the Anglo-Saxon treasury: niggers, wops, kikes, gooks, slants, fuzzywuzzies, and a hundred more. It is possible that this innocence of racist argots is true primarily of colonized populations. Blacks in America – and surely elsewhere – have developed a varied counter-vocabulary (honkies, ofays, etc.). 26. As cited in Reynaldo Ileto’s masterlyPasyón and Revolution: Popular Movements in the Philippines, 1840–1910, p. 218. Sakay’s rebel republic lasted until 1907, when he was captured and executed by the Americans. Understanding the first sentence requires remembering that three centuries of Spanish rule and Chinese immigration had produced a sizeable mestizo population in the islands.

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities

#citation 24 is gorgeous

31 notes · View notes

wildesfancyfrock · 3 years

Text

John Graves Simcoe

For those who don't know much about John Graves Simcoe, I am going to be posting some fun things, as a Canadian who has lived his entire life in towns/places impacted by Simcoe himself. These are from his time in Canada, since I assume those who have seen TURN have a very vague idea of what he did in the Revolutionary War (even though it's very inaccurate).

John Graves Simcoe (25 February 1752 – 26 October 1806) was a British Army general and the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada from 1791 until 1796 in southern Ontario and the watersheds of Georgian Bay and Lake Superior. He founded York (now Toronto) and was instrumental in introducing institutions such as courts of law, trial by jury, English common law, and freehold land tenure, and also in the abolition of slavery in Canada.

His long-term goal was the development of Upper Canada (Ontario) as a model community built on aristocratic and conservative principles, designed to demonstrate the superiority of those principles to the republicanism and democracy of the United States. His energetic efforts were only partially successful in establishing a local gentry, a thriving Church of England, and an anti-American coalition with select Indigenous nations. He is seen by many Canadians as a founding figure in Canadian history, especially by those in Southern Ontario.[3] He is commemorated in Toronto with Simcoe Day.

First Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada (known today as; Ontario.)

The Constitutional Act 1791 divided Canada into the Provinces of Upper Canada (Ontario) and Lower Canada (Quebec). The Act established separate governments and legislative assemblies for each province. Lower Canada was the French-speaking eastern portion, which retained the French civil law and protections for the Roman Catholic Church established when Britain took over the area after its defeat of the French in the Seven Years' War. Upper Canada was the western area, newly settled after the American Revolutionary War. The settlers were mostly English speakers, including Loyalists from the Thirteen Colonies, and also the Six Nations of the Iroquois, who had been British allies during the war. The Crown had purchased land from the Mississauga and other First Nations to give the Loyalists land grants in partial compensation for property lost in the United States, and to help them set up new communities and develop this territory.[18]

Simcoe was appointed Lieutenant-Governor on 12 September 1791, and left for Canada with his wife Elizabeth and daughter Sophia, leaving three daughters behind in England with their aunt. They left England in September and arrived in Canada on 11 November. Due to severe weather, the Simcoes spent the winter in Quebec City. Simcoe finally reached Kingston, Upper Canada on 24 June 1792.[17]

In a proclamation on 16 July 1792, he renamed several islands at the mouth of the archipelago at the head of the St. Lawrence river for the victorious Generals at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham (Amherst Island, Gage Island, Wolfe Island, and Howe Island).[19]

Under the Constitutional Act, the provincial government consisted of the Lieutenant-Governor, an appointed Executive Council and Legislative Council, and an elected Legislative Assembly. The first meeting of the nine-member Legislative Council and sixteen-member Legislative Assembly took place at Newark (now Niagara-on-the-Lake) on 17 September 1792.

Following Simcoe's work precipitated by the Chloe Cooley incident, the Assembly passed the first Act Against Slavery in the British Empire in 1793, and the English colonists of Upper Canada took pride in this distinction with respect to the French-Canadian populace of Lower Canada. The Upper Canadians valued their common law legal system, as opposed to the civil law of Quebec, which had chafed them ever since 1763. This was one of the primary reasons for the partition of 1791. Simcoe collaborated extensively with his Attorney-General John White on the file.

The principles of the British Constitution do not admit of that slavery which Christianity condemns. The moment I assume the Government of Upper Canada under no modification will I assent to a law that discriminates by dishonest policy between natives of Africa, America, or Europe.

— John Graves Simcoe, Address to the Legislative Assembly[20]

Slavery was thus ended in Upper Canada long before it was abolished in the British Empire as a whole. By 1810, there were no slaves in Upper Canada, but the Crown did not abolish slavery throughout the Empire until 1834.

Simcoe's first priority was the Northwest Indian War between the United States and the "Western Confederacy" of Native Americans west of the Appalachian Mountains and south of the Great Lakes (the Shawnee, Miami, Wyandot, and other tribes). This conflict had begun in 1785, and was still raging when Simcoe arrived in 1792. Simcoe had hoped to form an Indian buffer state between the two countries, even though he distrusted Joseph Brant, the main Indian leader. Simcoe rejected the section of the Treaty of Paris (1783) which awarded that area to the US, on the grounds that American actions had nullified the treaty.[21] However, the French Revolutionary Wars broke out in 1793. The government in London decided to seek good terms with the United States. Simcoe was instructed to avoid giving the US reason to mistrust Britain but, at the same time, to keep the Natives on both sides of the border friendly to Britain. The Indians asked for British military support, which was initially refused, but in 1794 Britain supplied the Indians with rifles and ammunition.[22]

In February 1794, the governor general, Lord Dorchester, expecting the US to ally with France, said that war was likely to break out between the US and Britain before the year was out. This encouraged the Indians in their war. Dorchester ordered Simcoe to rally the Indians and arm British vessels on the Great Lakes. He also built Fort Miami (present-day Maumee, Ohio) to supply the Indians. Simcoe expelled Americans from a settlement on the southern shore of Lake Erie which had threatened British control of the lake. US President Washington denounced the "irregular and high-handed proceeding of Mr. Simcoe."[23] While Dorchester planned for a defensive war, Simcoe urged London to declare war: "Upper Canada is not to be defended by remaining within the boundary line."[24] Dorchester was officially reprimanded by the Crown for his strong speech against the Americans in 1794.

Simcoe realised that Newark made an unsuitable capital because it was on the Canada–US border and subject to attack. He proposed moving the capital to a more defensible position, in the middle of Upper Canada's southwestern peninsula between Lake Erie and Lake Huron. He named the new location London, and renamed the river there the Thames in anticipation of the change. Dorchester rejected this proposal, but accepted Simcoe's second choice, the present site of Toronto. Simcoe moved the capital there in 1793, and renamed the settlement York after Frederick, Duke of York, King George III's second son. The town was severely underdeveloped at the time of its founding so he brought with him politicians, builders, Nova Scotia timber men, and Englishmen skilled in whipsawing and cutting joists and rafters.[25]

Simcoe began construction of two roads through Upper Canada, for defence and to encourage settlement and trade. Yonge Street (named after British Minister of War Sir George Yonge) ran north–south from York to Lake Simcoe. Soldiers of the Queen's Rangers began cutting the road in August 1793, reaching Holland Landing in 1796. Dundas Street (named for Colonial Secretary Henry Dundas) ran east–west, between York and London.

The Northwest Indian War ended after the United States defeated the Indians at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. They made peace under the Treaty of Greenville. While still at war with France, Britain could not afford to antagonise the US in the Jay Treaty of 1794, and agreed to withdraw north of the Great Lakes, as agreed in the Treaty of Paris (1783). Simcoe evacuated the frontier forts.

Legacy

In the winter of 1779, the first known Valentine's Day letter in America was given by then Lieutenant Colonel John Simcoe to Sarah 'Sally' Townsend.[31]

Simcoe Street in Oyster Bay, New York is named after him for his destruction of a vast apple orchard and reconstruction of a hill fort on the site.[32]

Act Against Slavery passed in 1793, leading to the abolition of slavery in Upper Canada by 1810. It was superseded by the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 that abolished slavery across the British Empire.

Simcoe named London, Ontario and the River Thames in Upper Canada.

He named Lake Simcoe and Simcoe County to the west and north of Lake Simcoe in honour of his father.

Simcoe named his summer home Castle Frank for his first son Francis Gwillim, who was preceded by eight daughters. (It is in what is now named Cabbagetown, a neighbourhood in downtown Toronto.)[33]

The Ontario Heritage Foundation placed a plaque in Exeter's cathedral precinct to commemorate his life.

Simcoe's regiment is still called the Queen's York Rangers, now an armoured reconnaissance regiment of the Canadian Forces reserves.

Many places in Canada were named in honour of Simcoe:

The town of Simcoe in southwestern Ontario

The Simcoe Fairgrounds in Simcoe.

Civic Holiday, a statutory holiday celebrated throughout Canada under a variety of names by region,[34] was established in honour of Simcoe by the Toronto City Council in 1869.[35] Other Ontario municipalities and then other provinces soon took up the holiday as well, leading to its Canada-wide status, but without any attribution to Simcoe. In 1965, the Toronto City Council declared the holiday would henceforth be known as Simcoe Day within Toronto.[35] Attempts have been made to have the official provincial name—still Civic Holiday[34]—amended, but none have succeeded.

Governor Simcoe Secondary School in St. Catharines, Ontario

Governor Simcoe Public School. Grades K – 8, in London, Ontario. The now closed and demolished school was located at the corner of Simcoe and Clarence Streets.

Three parallel streets in downtown Toronto, John Street, Graves Street, and Simcoe Street, are all located near the fort where Simcoe lived during his early years in York and were named for him. Graves Street was later renamed Duncan Street.

Simcoe Street, Simcoe Street United Church, and Simcoe Hall Settlement House in Oshawa.

Simcoe Street in New Westminster and Simcoe Park was named by Colonel Moody in reference to the surveying of the area after the city of Toronto.

Simcoe Street, Simcoe Street School and the Simcoe Street School Tigers Bantam Baseball Team of Niagara Falls

Simcoe Island, located near Kingston, Ontario

Simcoe Hall, located on the St. George campus of the University of Toronto

John Graves Simcoe Armoury, located on Industrial Parkway in Aurora, Ontario

There are two places named for Simcoe with the title Lord, but Simcoe was not made a Lord in his lifetime. They are the following:

Lord Simcoe Drive in Brampton, Ontario

Lord Simcoe Hotel, which operated from 1956 to 1981

Captain John Kennaway Simcoe, the last member of the Simcoe family, died without issue in 1891 and was survived by his widow beyond 1911

In Popular Culture

A fictionalised version of John Graves Simcoe is a primary antagonist in the 2014–2017 AMC drama Turn: Washington's Spies, portrayed by Samuel Roukin.[37] He is portrayed in the series as a cruel and ruthless sociopath.

Despite the strong fictionalisation of the namesake TV-show character, several biographical aspects of the latter's historical counterpart appear to have been adapted for and transferred onto the fictional character Edmund Hewlett. For instance, Hewlett's romantic ambitions regarding Anna Strong in the series resemble Simcoe's courtship of Sarah Townsend, sister of Culper Ring spy Robert Townsend, for whom he wrote a poem that is thought to be the first verifiable valentine on the North American continent.[38] It is presumed that Townsend, much like the fictionalised portrayal of Anna Strong on Turn, may have gathered and passed on intelligence gleaned from her unsuspecting suitor to the Culper Ring.

Similarly, Hewlett's close bond with his horse Bucephalus (presumably named after Bucephalus, the horse of Alexander the Great) which overarches all four seasons, appears to have been inspired by history: in 1783, John Graves Simcoe sent a series of letters to New York in order to find the horse he had ridden on campaign, Salem. Salem was located and Simcoe subsequently paid the considerable sum of £40 to have him shipped to England and thus returned to him.[39] Shortly before his departure to Upper Canada almost a decade later, it is reported he was greatly concerned for Salem's welfare in his absence, therefore making arrangements for the latter's care and upkeep.[40]

source; Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Graves_Simcoe)

Now for some images, taken by me in Chatham, as well as Queen's Park in Toronto.

Now, some fun facts about me, related to Simcoe:

I was born in Chatham/Chatham-Kent

I go to high school in Simcoe County

I'm debating going to college in Toronto (to become a history teacher)

I've been to the Simcoe County Museum, where they have a bust of Simcoe and a whole wall of information about him (from what I could see- I was there on a WWI field trip and didn't really get to explore)

Every where I've lived/been to school, has been impacted by John Graves Simcoe.

In reality, he was not that bad a dude. TURN just TURNed (ha, get it) into the psychopathic antagonist they wanted. Alright, this has been fun but I need to go study Canadian law, piece homies.

#john graves simcoe #captain simcoe #john graves simcoe facts #queens rangers #i dont know what to tag anymore #turn: washington's spies

9 notes · View notes

newstfionline · 3 years

Text

Sunday, September 12, 2021

Americans less positive about civil liberties: AP-NORC poll (AP) Ten years after the 9/11 attacks, Americans were reasonably positive about the state of their rights and liberties. Today, after 20 years, not as much. Far fewer people now say the government is doing a good job protecting rights including the freedom of speech, the right to vote, the right to bear arms and others. For example, the poll finds that 45% of Americans now say they think the U.S. government is doing a good job defending freedom of speech, compared with 32% who say it’s doing a poor job and 23% who say neither. The share saying the government is doing a good job is down from 71% in 2011 and from 59% in 2015. Dee Geddes, 73, a retiree in Chamberlain, South Dakota, said she was frustrated at the government’s apparent lack of ability to safeguard the amount of private information available, especially online. “It bothers me when I can go on the internet and find pretty much anything about anybody. It makes me feel sort of naked,” said Geddes. About half now say the government is doing a good job protecting freedom of religion, compared with three-quarters who said the same in 2011.

20 years later, fallout from toxic WTC dust cloud grows (AP) The dust cloud caught Carl Sadler near the East River, turning his clothes and hair white as he looked for a way out of Manhattan after escaping from his office at the World Trade Center. Gray powder billowed through the open windows and terrace door of Mariama James’ downtown apartment, settling, inches thick in places, into her rugs and children’s bedroom furniture. Barbara Burnette, a police detective, spat the soot from her mouth and throat for weeks as she worked on the burning rubble pile without a protective mask. Today, all three are among more than 111,000 people enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program, which gives free medical care to people with health problems potentially linked to the dust. Two decades after the twin towers’ collapse, people are still coming forward to report illnesses that might be related to the attacks.

US producer prices jump an unprecedented 8.3% in August (AP) Inflation at the wholesale level climbed 8.3% last month from August 2020, the biggest annual gain since the Labor Department started calculating the 12-month number in 2010. Inflation has been stirring as the economy recovers from last year’s brief but intense coronavirus recession. Supply chain bottlenecks and a shortage of workers have pushed prices higher. Food prices were up 2.9% last month after falling in July. Over the past year, wholesale food prices have climbed 12.7%, including surges of 59.2% for beef and 43.5% for shortening and cooking oil. Energy prices rose 0.4% from July and are up 32.3% over the past year.

Wigged out: A Venezuelan spymaster’s life on the lam (AP) Wigs, a fake moustache, plastic surgery and a new safe house every three months—these are just some of the tools of deception authorities in Spain believe a former Venezuelan spymaster relied on to evade capture on a U.S. warrant for narcoterrorism. The two-year manhunt for Gen. Hugo Carvajal ended Thursday night when police raided a rundown apartment in a quiet Madrid neighborhood where they found the fugitive in a back room holding a sharp knife in what they described as a last desperate attempt to evade arrest. Nicknamed “El Pollo” (“The Chicken”), Carvajal has been a thorn in the side of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration since 2014, when he was arrested in Aruba on a U.S. warrant only to go free after President Nicolás Maduro’s government pressured the small Dutch Caribbean island to release him. While on the lam, he was rumored to be in Portugal, then a hideout in the Caribbean. The reality was much simpler: The 61-year-old had never left Madrid. His last hideout was a mere 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) from the headquarters of the National Police.

Denmark lifts all coronavirus restrictions and celebrates ‘a whole new era’ (Washington Post) Some countries are setting records for daily covid-19 infections. Others are pursuing sweeping rules to mandate vaccination. But in Denmark, something like normal life has resumed. After nearly 550 days, the Scandinavian country has lifted the last of its domestic pandemic-era restrictions, declaring that the coronavirus is no longer a “critical threat to society.” Denmark appears to be the first European Union member to issue such a declaration, potentially providing a glimpse into the future of the bloc’s recovery—or serving as a cautionary tale of a nation that moved too quickly. The country’s leaders have pointed to its high vaccination rates—among the best in the world, with nearly 75 percent of residents fully immunized—as evidence that the step is justified.

Russia begins major military drills with Belarus after moves toward closer integration (Washington Post) Russia and Belarus began a massive week-long military exercise on NATO’s borders Friday after President Vladimir Putin and Belarus’s leader agreed on a new effort toward integrating the nations, including creating a “single defense space.” The Zapad 2021 exercise, involving 200,000 personnel, has NATO members and other neighboring countries on edge, echoing worries this spring over an unannounced Russian military buildup near Ukraine. The Zapad (meaning West) exercise is held regularly, but this iteration comes as Russian relations with NATO are increasingly fraught.

Pope Francis to visit impoverished Roma quarter in Slovakia (AP) Pope Francis is paying a visit next week to a neighborhood in Slovakia most Slovaks would not even think about going, which until recently even the police would avoid after dark. Francis will make the visit to the Roma community in the Lunik IX quarter of Slovakia’s second largest city of Kosice one of the highlights of his pilgrimage to “the heart of Europe.” Francis will be the first pontiff to meet the most socially excluded minority group in Slovakia. A fitting place to go for the “pope of the peripheries,” Lunik XI is the biggest of about 600 shabby, segregated settlements where the poorest 20% of the country’s 400,000 Roma live. Most lack basics such as running water or sewage systems, gas or electricity. “It’s a huge honor for us,” said Lunik IX mayor Marcel Sana, who has been a local resident since he was 2. “Even if he says just a few words, his presence will be a big boost for all those living here, the socially disadvantaged and poor people who need such support.”

Fleeing China, Hong Kongers flock to Britain (Los Angeles Times) He has no job, he’s still grappling with English and the climate is often cold and wet, but Dennis Chan is still grateful to be setting up his life in Britain. The 34-year-old arrived in Edinburgh, the Scottish capital, alone in April after quitting his job as a cargo officer for Cathay Pacific airlines in Hong Kong. He had never set foot in Britain before. But he also felt he didn’t recognize his own homeland any longer amid China’s relentless crackdown on political dissent and civic freedoms. After Beijing imposed a sweeping new national security law on Hong Kong in July of last year, he felt an urgency to leave. Within two months of making the British National Overseas visa available in January, the British government received 34,000 applications. It estimates that about 300,000 people could take up the offer within five years; others say the figure could wind up being closer to 500,000. For many new arrivals like Chan, who is still living in a rented room and finding his bearings, the transition has not been easy. Although Britain boasts a well-established Chinese community, many of the Hong Kongers who have immigrated in recent months have found it difficult to land a job and make connections, especially in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. They miss—or even fear for—loved ones left behind, and they sometimes feel the sting of racism here in the land that ruled Hong Kong for 156 years as part of its globe-straddling empire.

Lebanon gets a new government after 13 months of collapse (Washington Post) Lebanon finally got a new government Friday, after 13 months of tortuous negotiations that left the country leaderless and paralyzed during the worst economic and financial collapse in its history. The formation of the new cabinet, headed by billionaire tycoon Najib Mikati and seemingly supported by almost all factions, means the country will be able to get down to the business of steering its way out of the crisis, which has wiped billions of dollars from the banking system and impoverished millions. Mikati, the new prime minister and one of the country’s wealthiest men, seemed to fight back tears as he delivered his inaugural speech, describing the problems of parents who cannot afford to feed their children, send them to school or find medicine to treat them when they are sick. But given the country’s kleptocratic system of government, there are few reasons to believe that Mikati’s administration will be capable of undertaking the radical reforms that are essential if Lebanon is to climb out of its depression, analysts say.

#headlines #news

2 notes · View notes

eternalrevivalist · 3 years

Text

Greece: A historical essay - Part 2/4

ROMAN AND BYZANTINE GREECE:

It is often said that the Romans conquered Greece with might, but the Greeks conquered Rome with their culture. Much of Roman religion, mythology, alphabet, language, culture and philosophy were heavily based on Greek ideas and sometimes even outright taken and implemented with few differences.

In terms of Philosophy, the Roman period brings us the grand life practice of Stoicism, the advancement of Platonism and Aristotelianism, the mathematically-based philosophy of the Pythagoreans, and finally the rival of Stoic thought, Epicureanism. Platonism and Aristotelianism heavily influenced the later faiths of Christianity and Early Islam, Stoicism and Epicureanism were the main two philosophies of the educated and literate class in the late Roman Republic.

Rome itself is another large topic, so I will do my best to be brief here (although I could not help myself and included some of interesting, yet irrelevant, details).

Originally, Rome was a city-state of farmers who fought for the expansion of their civilization. Most of the early history we have of Rome is filled with righteous and defensive wars. in the absence of other, non-roman, sources, we have to take these claims with a grain of salt. But regardless of how the wars were started or who was at fault for them, we know that Rome expanded rapidly through Italy, uniting the peninsula, and then continuing into Southern France, Eastern Spain, and North Africa. At their height, they controlled all lands surrounding the Mediterranean, Babylon and most of Western Europe.

The basis and ideal of Roman society was the model of the citizen-farmer-soldier, this was referred to as “Romanitas” or “Roman-ness”. A Roman was expected to actively participate in the political life of the city (citizen), have a few acres of farmland and some cattle (farmer), to sustain their family and to maintain their weapons and armor in peacetime, so they’ll be ready to defend their country whenever it is threatened as a united army of levied militia (soldier).

Politically, The Romans were in a constant tug-of-war between aristocratic and republican governance. In the beginning of the Roman Republic, the wealthy patricians and, to a degree, the middle equestrian class, were the only people allowed in most government offices. After some years of vocal plebeian dissatisfaction with this state of affairs, the Plebs got their own office in the Tribune of the Plebs, soon after laws barring Plebeians from government offices were repealed and eventually they could hold most offices and legal privileges by class were mostly nullified. For a small number of years during the late Republican period, a silver lining was found. New problems appeared though and the Republic could not avoid being replaced by an empire. This situation lend itself to 2 broad political factions: The populists and the aristocrats.

With the Roman conquests of north Africa after the Punic wars, there was a great supply of slaves coming into Roman territories. The wealthy Romans used the absence of the soldiers from their farms to buy them out and expanded them through slave labor. Since slaves require no wages, these farms operated very cheaply and with great profit compared to the small farms of the soldier-farmers who were just returning home. Most were eventually outcompeted, had to sell their farms and flood to the city for urban work. The cities were not in a much better shape, slaves there would work in manufactories of sorts, creating urban goods at little expense. In the end, Roman citizens became a squalid underclass in the fringes of Roman society, dependent on the state or rich patronage for their sustenance and selling their only property, the vote, to the wealthy each election season.

The Populist Gracchi brothers, descendants of a rich plebeian family who had gotten into the Senate, pushed for reform, specifically land reform, in favor of these dispossessed roman citizens. The Oligarchic senators, in a paranoid frenzy, murdered both of them because of their fear that they had aspirations of becoming kings. Their laws were left unimplemented or outright repealed. The state of the common citizen did not improve.

The Late Roman Empire right before Caesar’s dictatorship.

Red: The empire’s extent at 68 B.C.

Yellow: Caesar’s conquests as military commander

Blue: Pompeii’s conquests

Green: Roman client states

Afterwards, there were the Marian reforms, named after the populist Gaius Marius, which turned the Roman army into a paid professional force and then the dictatorship of his enemy Sulla. Eventually we reach the age of Julius Caesar, who established a life-long dictatorship before being murdered, his successor, Octavian (Augustus), took over and formed the Roman Empire. Caesar’s solution to the state of the average citizen was to provide them the famous “Bread and Circuses”, he created and expanded the Roman welfare state in an effort to win over the people. While this program is often disliked as a dictatorial measure to pacify the masses, I believe it is important to judge it compared to the previous state of life. Despite that, it would still be appropriate to call it a band-aid solution at best.

Throughout all of these changes, Greeks remained mostly unaffected, only being involved in the wars, civil wars and one major failed revolt, where the Greek regions were devastated for a few years. The emperor Hadrian at one point went to Greece, where he had served as Archon of Athens before the start of his rule, and tried to organize the Greek cities into an autonomous Koinon (Commonwealth/League), which was not materialized de facto in any way unfortunately.

At this point in time, Christianity appears as a faith, first mentioned around 70 A.D., it spreads to many of the Eastern Roman provinces and Greeks are some of the first ethnic groups to convert to it, creating substantial Christian communities all over the mainland, its islands, the coasts of the Levant and Asia Minor. By the 4th century, Greece is almost completely Christianized.

The Roman empire was eventually split into two parts by Diocletian, in order to be more efficiently governed. This cut off the more wealthy eastern provinces from the western Empire, which was in great need of funds. The Western Roman empire was barely able to last 170 years after the split, whereas the East lasted, in one form or another, until the 15th century A.D.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, we arrive at the Eastern Roman Empire, with its capital in Constantinople, where emperor Justinian takes the Throne in 527 A.D. He implements great legal and economic reforms, strengthens the army and sends it to many of the fallen parts of the former Western Roman empire to take them back. With his capable general Belisarius by his side, he conquers north-western Africa/former Carthage (modern-day Tunisia and north Algeria) from the Vandals, takes back Italy from the Ostrogoths and pushes the Visigoths of Spain to the interior, gaining back its south-eastern coast. These great conquests stretch the empire’s armies thin, greatly burden its economy and, combined with a devastating plague, lead to the rapid loss of all that land not even 50 years after it was attained.

Justinian’s Empire by 555 A.D.

This is often considered the beginning of the Byzantine Empire. With the loss of these territories, the empire is once again isolated mostly to the territories of the Greek population, with the only notable exceptions, Egypt and the Levant, being lost to the emerging Arab caliphate of the Rashidun and its new faith of Islam.

The Arabs would be the main enemies of the Hellenized Eastern Roman Empire until the arrival of the Turks in the late 11th century.

The Byzantine empire is considered to have become officially Greek with the reign of Heraclius (610 - 641 A.D.), who made Greek the official language of administration in the empire, abandoning Latin.

The powerhouse of the Byzantines was Asia-Minor for the most part and it was generally concentrated in Asia-Minor and Mainland Greece, occasionally ruling over most of the Balkans and parts of Syria but rarely having the strength to venture further.

Within the Byzantine Empire we get the formation of the Christian Orthodox dogma, traditions and structure. Even before the official split with the catholic church in 1054.

The Byzantine empire was legally an elective autocracy. The Emperor was viewed as a politically-neutral defender of justice and the Christian faith, the role was likened to the referee in a sporting event, handing warnings or punishment to bad actors and prizes to fair winners. The elective element came from the legal requirement that the successor to the emperor should be chosen through a vote of the senate, something which could be (and always was) bypassed by 2 methods: The emperor had the right to appoint a co-emperor/caesar/despot (the name of the title changed over time), who functioned as a vice-president of sorts, and that individual would become the emperor after the old Emperor’s death. So emperors chose their successors by handing them the office and made elections redundant. The other route was a palace coup or open rebellion. Byzantine politics were generally very cut-throat affairs and political ministers had to always watch their backs for rivals while also avoiding the emperor’s wrath.

In 1071, Byzantine forces are defeated at Manzikert by migratory Turks, who proceed to invade Asia Minor and conquer as far as the Aegean coast, the picture above shows the areas of control around 1081.

The Byzantine emperor Alexios I seeks aid from the Pope and Western Europe in beating back the Turks and Arabs, this call for help is utilized by the pope to start the first Crusade. The first few crusades help the Byzantines reconquer much of Asia Minor again, helping the “Komnenian restoration” period of Byzantium, even if they also lead to territorial disputes with the new Crusader states of the region.

Despite that, after only a few years Byzantium keeps declining territorially and is dealt a great blow during the 4th Crusade, which gets derailed by an exiled Emperor who promises great wealth to the Crusaders if they take Constantinople for him. long story short, they take it, he cannot pay them because the treasury is empty, they loot the city and divide the empire amongst themselves.

Some Greek Byzantine remnant states are created, with the most important among them being the Empire of Nicaea, the Despotate of Epirus and the Empire of Trebizond. These gradually kick the Latin states out of mainland Greece and Anatolia, until the empire is reunited by the Palaiologoi dynasty of the empire of Nicaea.

After some internal fracturing of their own, the Turks unite behind the relatively new Ottoman dynasty-state and start conquering the Greek mainland and Balkans during the 14th century, until finally taking the city of Constantinople itself in 1453. Ending Byzantium, the final remnant of the Roman empire.

#greece #rome #greek independence day #history #essay

7 notes · View notes