#that not only is 81 divisible by three | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

if-you-fan-a-fire · 2 years

Text

"Four Are Held Here In High-Grade Gold Smuggling Case," Windsor Star. February 22, 1943. Page 3 & 6. ---- Canadian and U.S. Police Co-Operate ---- SPRING TRAP AFTER TWO MONTHS OF WORK THOUSANDS IN PRECIOUS METAL IS RECOVERED --- By ANGUS MUNRO Bail of $5,000 cash or $10,000 property was fixed here this morning for each of four men charged with being members of a powerful gang of alleged high-grade gold smugglers.

The gang was rounded up and taken into custody after weeks of skilfully planned. perfectly executed police work on the part of federal authorities in Windsor, Toronto, Hamilton and Detroit.

Hunt Fifth Man Another member of the gang Windsor woman, wife of one of the men, is not being held now her identity rinsed by police. A fifth man is being sought in Detroit. Those held are:

Marke Lakich, 35, 1111 Albert

Michael Bich, 41, 775 81. Lake

George Birash. 47. 1366 Hickory

Sam Matijevich. 47, allas Sam Matheson, Hamilton.

All were arraigned before Magistrate J. Arthur Hanrahan in city police court this morning charged with at- tempting to export, or aiding and abetting the export of property from Canada to the United States without A licence from the Foreign Exchange

Bail Is Fixed

Only Malijevich was represented by counsel. Major J. Ernest Zeron, his lawyer, asked the court if bail could be allowed and after consultation with police, it was fixed at $5,000 cash or $10,000 property. The four were remanded a week. Purpose of the remand is to complete further investigations that are being made by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Foreign Exchange and A. W. Anderson, RCMP whe appeared in court this morning along with Inspector W. Morphet of the Windsor office of the Foreign Exchange Ctrl Board, intimated that more serious charges are likey to be laid involving alleged conspiracy.

The four were locked up pending bail arrangements.

Industrial Workers The three Windsor men are on the payroll of industrial plants here while Matijevich has no known occupation. Matijevich was arrested by Hamilton authorities and brought to Windsor while the remaining three were taken into custody a week ago in an Ouelette avenue rooming-house where the police trap was sprung without a hitch. All are being detained in a downtown hotel under guard.

Not since the old rum-running days on the border have international enforcement officers worked more lovely nor more dramatically. For two months, night and day. movements of the gang have been carefully watched and records made of their every move and word. This was possible through one of the oldest yet most audacious forms of sleuthing known in police.

In constant touch with the gang and successfully passing himself off as one of them wan an unidentified special agent of the United States Treasury Department. Customs Division, who was known to the rest of the gang as Bill Brown. He it was who flashed thick rolls of bills in the faces of the gang and who met with them in hotel rooms and other points of rendezvous without once arousing their suspicions.

Perfect Come-on He was a perfect come-on. He cultivated the friendship of the gold handlers. He won their trust and led them, sheep-like, into the trap which ended their activities and may send them to prison.

Authorities here believe Windsor was about to become one of the main new channels for the export of high-grade,, about $3,000.800 worth of which is estimated to be taken illegally from the country annually after being stolen by miners of Ontario's gold mining north country. All the men taken here are known to have formerly lived in the north or have been employed by mining companies. The dramatic story of the grand round-up in Windsor was given to The Star by Inspector W. M. Morphet of the Windsor inspectorate of the Foreign Exchange Control board. It was confirmed by Staff-Sergeant A. W Anderson of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The entire staff of both these offices have been devoted to the single purpose of gathering evidence, shadowing, trailing and checking movements of the men, watching trains hotel rooms, prate residences rooming houses, tunnel buses to Detroit, private cars and SW and A. buses. The gang and the Mounties in plain clothes moved in and with the city shopping crowds unnoticed.

Separate Rooms So careful were the authorities in avoiding publicity that separate rooms were engaged at the hotel where the men were kept under observation. No telephone calls were permitted to get through and only enforcement officers were permitted to visit the rooms.

The grand finale in the combined activities of United States and Canadian authorities came last Monday, February 13 when the actual gold was to be turned over in the Ouellette avenue rooming house in the men who were to smuggle it across to Detroit.

Gold sells for $38.50 an ounce in Canadian money in Detroit. On that basis the haul made last Monday amounted to nearly $3.000. A previous captured of gold was made in Detroit after it had left Canada. Ia value was $1.36732

While other gold seizures have been made in Canada's wartime history, they have been made only after the gold was out of the country and authorities had to work backwards from the U.S. side after the evidence had been seized by authorities there. Last Monday's climactic seizure was made before the gold left Canada. Here's how it happened.

Story of Seizure While the owners of the rooming-house and members of the family locked themselves in in upstairs room lest there be any shooting or roughhouse tactics, authorities engaged adjacent rooms on the ground floor of the house . In one of these the deal was to take place and the money passed over. In the other room were to be Inspector Morphet, Corporal R. L. Woodhouse and Constable J. M. Gallinger of the R.C.M.P. Allowing sufficient time for the money to produced and handed ever, the offices were at a given signal to enter and make the arrest. The plan worked perfectly.

The gang moved with caution. One of their number came on ahead to the house to scout the layout, Bill Brown, who was to buy the gold, posing as a member of the gang, said everything was okay.

Shortly after, the officers say, along came Lekich, Billich and Birush, one of them carrying the gold. (Matijevich was not in on this deal, but had been picked up in Hamilton on evidence arising from an earlier transaction.)

The gang talked for a while and finnally a deal was agreed on. Lekich and Birush were to take the gold w and Brown was to await a telephone call from Detroit stating that the gold had arrived before he would pay over the money. In "Button" Form The gold was in the form of a "button" or thick heavy slab the shape of the bottom of a small crucible. There were two of the one large one weighing 76 ounces and one small weighing eight ounces. They fitted tote a suit pocket without difficulty. Assays since given the seized gold proclaim it to be the equal of the finest produced in this country.

It was planned that the smuggling should be done in a car but the car wouldn't start and Birush returned to the rooming house while Lekich and the look-out man who had scouted the rooming-house made the trip in the tunnel en route to Detroit.

At the tunnel, both Leklch and the unidentified man were search ed. The gold was dienvered in Lekich's pin but as nothing was found on the other man, he was permitted to continue on through

Constable John T. Townsend and, Constable Walton Routledge. who picked Lekich up at the tunnel explained that they waited until he had passed the customs inspection and had declared himself not to have in his possession any property which should be declared. He was arrested just as he about to step in the Detroit bound bus.

Awaited Call Back at the rooming house, Brown and the others were awaiting the call from Detroit. This name but not from Detroit. This came but not from Detroit. Constable Townsend telephoned Brown from the F.E.C.B. office, stating that Lekich was in custody. This was according to plan. When Brown heard Townsend's voice he knew everything had gone as sched- suled, so he turned to the others and said that the gold had arrived in Detroit and that he was now about to pay them. He began to count out the bills. This was the signal for the others in the adjacent room. A minute or two elapsed until Bijlich and Birush had picked up handfuls of the bills. Then Inspector Morphet and the two officers stepped in through a communicating door and swiftly and efficiently Corporal Woodhouse snapped on the cuffs.

The gang had demanded to see the color of Brown's money before they would deal, so it was necessary to get $3,000 in Canadian funds to be used as come-on money. Authority was given to borrow it from a Windsor bank for this purpose, but it was an anxious time for Inspector Morphet and Staff-Sergeant Anderson while the money was in the hands of the gang. They were considerably relieved when it was taken back from Bijlich and Birush.

Throughout the entire period the assistance rendered by Brown was invaluable to authorities here. It was Brown who figured in an earlier deal 6 in which $1,000 of U. S. money was used to purchase gold in Windsor. The bills were marked and their numbers watched for in Windsor banks.

Wanted Bigger Game It was this deal which Lekich first figured in also. Because it involved a small amount, it was permitted to pass without interference, although under supervision because the authorities wanted bigger game.

Brown at that time flashed a roll of bills and said that he was not interested in "peanuts," he wanted "big stuff." At the sight of the money, he was promised a shipment of 300 ounces. The haul last week was far from that, but it was the largest so far attempted by the gang. It is belleved now that their scheme is nipped in the bud, although investigations are continuing and others may be shortly involved.

R. C. M. P. offices and Foreign Exchange authorities in half a dozen Ontario centres must be given a share of the credit for rounding up the gang. These offices are still hot on the trail. Two men are at present being held in Northern Ontario and others under suspicion. Their parts in the widespread, newly-organized ring, may be revealed within days if present investigations are successful.

More Important Even more important than these developments is the possibility that arising out of the present investigations may come evidence which will be strong enough to show conspiracy to commit an indictable offence. Under the charge now pending there are penalties provided rising to as much as $5,000 fine or five years in prison or both, upon conviction.

Breaking the gang and scattering its members before they even got going has been possible only through the most tenacious type of police work. The Windsor detachment, R.C.M.P., the largest in Canada, by the way, has employed all its members. A small army of officialdom and staff members of other federal agencies from top men down to stenographers have played their parts.

Particularly active have been Inspector Morphet, whose days and nights for the past eight weeks have been full of the details of the investigation, often incurring the duty of remaining up an entire night or working far into the small hours of the morning. Supervising the widely spread police net, Staff-Sergeant Anderson has had his finger on all the multiple duties of his men besides carefully watching the procedure of the case investigations in other centres. A tremendous share of the R. C. M. P. work has devolved upon Constable John T. Townsend and his chief paid tribute to him and his fellow officers in announcing the part the force has played in the case.

Praises Constable "They have devoted themselves unstintingly to their jobs," he said. "I cannot commend them too highly. I believe that Constable Townsend has done an especially good job."

Both department heads-Inspector Morphet and Staff Sergeant Anderson -were lavish in their tribute to the United States authorities.

"It was the most encouraging example we have ever had of international co-operation," Mr. Morphet sald in speaking of the parts played by U. S. officers. He mentioned United States customs supervising agent Charles Wyatt, U. S. Secret Service chief George Boos, Captain Joseph O'Rourke of the U. S. customs border patrol and their staffs. In the work on the Canadian side he spoke of the co-operation given by collector of customs Thomas Clark in Windsor and Inspector William McKee, special investigator of the F.EC.B. in Toronto.

Names Officers To the entire staff of R.C.M.P. officers here, he paid sincere tribute,naming: Constables C. A. Lazelle, Walton Routledge, J. M. Gallinger, D. C. McCannell, Corporal R. L. Woodhouse, his own enforcement inspector George McGonigal and Corporal W. E. L. McElhone, attached to the F. E. C. B. in Toronto, He also had a word for the girls who have worked nights and Sundays preparing the necessary documents in connection with the case. Two of those he especially mentioned are Mrs. Margaret Campbell and Miss Winifred Hubbard.

The men rounded up, with two exceptions, have no known criminal records, but all have formerly been connected in some way with mining and are familiar with the process of high-grading. Matijevich faced a charge of unlawfully wounding another man in February 1940, but the case was dismissed for lack of evidence. Bijlich, according to police, has served two years for high-grading.

The crime is as old as mining itself.Ever since man has dug in the ground for precious minerals, the temptation to get some of the easy wealth for himself has been present. The episode on the Windsor border is the end of a long trail that leads back to the mines of the north country.

Big Profit in Racket The immense profit in the racket is what causes an ever-increasing number of men who labor in the mines to take the chance of sneaking out a spare piece of ore. It must be an especially rare bit or it isn't worth the risk, but many such pieces are found in Ontario's rich gold country.

While following his ordinary job, a miner will suddenly come upon a chunk of ore that has the unmistakable signs of gold in large quantities. Despite all the precautions taken for years by mining companies, high grade ore continues to get out. This is difficult to understand when it is explain-ed that men working in shafts where the vein is believed to be rich, must undress before entering the mine and put on other clothes from the skin out. When they come off duty, these are removed and the street clothes donned again. Yet the $3,000,000 annually lost is a conservative estimate, according to mining men.

Once smuggled out of the mine, the gold is passed to a crude smelter. This agent pays probably $5 to $8 an ounce for what he believes there is of pure gold in the ore. He then takes it to a secret crucible somewhere - an ordinary Quebec heater has been known to serve - and with a few crude bits of equipment, renders it down to a molten state. Tossing in a handful of flux he is able to separate the gold from the unwanted ore and the whole is allowed to cool off. Then it is chipped from the crucible.

After this, it must be further refined in another crucible and chipped out. This is what is known as a button, one of which was found here weighing 76 ounces. This is sold to a runner who takes the responsibility of getting it to a buyer in the United States where the price is $35 an ounce, U.S. funds or $38.50 in Canadian funds. It is generally handled in lots up to 300 ounces. It is difficult to dispose of it in Canada because of the stricter supervision exercised over refiners. --- Image Caption

Officers Responsible for Arrests and Those Accused in Gold Case An international police trap, that clicked as smoothly as a well-rehearsed movie, has broken up what is believed to have been the beginning of a powerful gang of high-grade gold smugglers. More than $4.000 worth of the precious metal has been recovered and is being held as evidence. Four members of the gang are shown in the pictures on the upper right and in the group below. On the upper left, Foreign Exchange Control Board and RCMP officers are shown with the seized gold, part of one of the shipments. Left to right in the group on the upper left are: Inspector W. M. Morphet, of the Windsor office of the FEC.B: Constable J. T. Townsend, of the Windsor Detachment of the RCMP: Inspector George McGonigal, of the FECB; and Constable W. W. Routledge, of the RCMP. On the upper right is Marko Lekich of Windsor. who was arrested at the Windsor side of the tunnel with $3,000 worth of the gold in his possession. Below, left to right. are: George Birush of Windsor. Sam Matijevich of Hamilton, and Michael "Big Mike" Bijlich of Windsor, all members of the gang and former residents of Northern Ontario, from where the gold is believed to have come.

#windsor #detroit #gold smuggling #high grading #high graders #stolen ore #stealing from the company #robbing hoods #resource capitalism #resource extraction #northern ontario #crime and punishment in canada #history of crime and punishment in canada #police raid #undercover cops #customs officials #royal canadian mounted police #canada during world war 2

1 note · View note

anonymous-writer-hero93 · 2 years

Text

Fiery Christmas for Steve

Chapter 3:

Chicago Fire House 81 January 3rd 10am

Sam POV

I was sitting behind my desk trying to work on my paperwork when I let my mind wander to the Clause brothers once again. This was crazy I needed to get my head clear and stop letting what happened that night distract me from work. This man was important to Christmas and the North Pole why would be drop any of that to came back and see me. Besides I kept telling myself I was not ready for a relationship. I kept saying that every time I went out with my friends. It had only been three months since my last terrible relationship ended with that cheating, backstabbing doctor; Wesley.

I was sitting rereading the same email about the new gear to be delivered when I heard a knock on my door. I looked up to see my best friend Erika walking into my office. She must have been on a break from working on a case since she was in her street clothes with her gun belt on. She works with my father in Chicago violent crimes division as a detective.

“Your door is open. I am guessing it is safe to come in.” She just walked in without waiting for an answer and plopping down in one of the chairs in front of my desk. She looked around at the clutter in my office before smiling back at me. Most people thought she was intimidating since she is usually all serious and death glares. Only me and a few of our other friends get to see her smiles and the girly side of her that she tries to hide.

“Well just make your self at home detective. Now how can I help you ma’am.” I tried hard not to laugh at her when she raised an eyebrow at me. There are very few serious moments between us other then when we are working a case together. She might as well by my sister; my dad moved her in with us when we were still in high school after he had helped her leave the gang life.

“Oh, cut the shit. How have you been? Your dad says you seem like something has been on your mind. You were late to Christmas which is not you.”

I sighed as I rubbed my hands over my face thinking about what to say next. I couldn’t tell her the truth and have her tell my dad, so they both can think I am crazy. “I have just been tired.” Which wasn’t a complete lie; I have not been sleeping well. I have been up thinking about a man I am never going to see again.

“Is Wesley bothering you? If he is I can have his brother talk to him, you know Jason would do anything for you. Or has Casey rubbed off on you and your out with a different guy each night.”

It was my turn to raise an eyebrow at her. “No Wesley isn’t bothering me, or I would have cut his dick off and taped it to his forehead like a limp dick unicorn.” We both laughed at that since I have already punched him in the junk once after I found out that he had been cheating on me almost our entire relationship. Before we could continue Jessy came running in asking what we were gossiping about.

“No gossip. I am just trying to figure out what has been up with Sam here. You never did answer that last part of my question.”

I laughed before answering her since she knows there is no way that is true. Right? “No, I am not out prowling for men every night of the week.”

“Then what is going on with you?” Erika asked clearly done with this beating around the bush conversation as she got up to close to door to give us some privacy.

“Well…nothing really, just I have someone on my mind.” Both of their eyes light up. They have been trying to convince me to move on from my ex for a while practically shoving men at me every time we go out.

“When? Where? Who?” Erika asked leaning forward on my desk.

“Yeah? Who? Is he sexy? Cute? Handsome?” Jessy was jumping up and down spilling her coffee everywhere.

I felt my face heat up at how they were so interested in what I was saying. “It doesn’t matter I am never going to see him again he doesn’t live around here, so I need to stop thinking about him. But yes, he was all those things. Something about him made me want to rip off that pin stirp fur lined Versace Santa suit and take him on my kitchen floor. I mean the size of him towering over me and how ridged he was. You know he has some stress that he could take out on me. Just that broadness of his chest you know he has got a jolly saint dick. Just the thought of his large hands gripping my waist while slamming into me on top of my kitchen table… urgh… I wouldn’t have even cared that his brother would have been watching as I screamed his name while he permanently added me to the naughty list.” I realized I had been rambling and I finally collected my self to look at them. They were both looking at me like I had officially lost it. I cannot believe I just said that to them. I mean it was all true, but why did I have to say that to them. I already knew what they were thinking; that I had just got a one-way ticket to crazy town.

“That is a nice dream and all, but I think you are just horny and need to get laid. What man or men are running around in Versace Santa suits that aren’t weirdos or pedophiles?” Erika said as Jessy picked up her cup she dropped out of her hand while listening to my rambling.

“Chris’s one friend is single he isn’t too bad on the eyes, and he is real. I think you are just lonely. Or is it that you are just looking for a Daddy?” Jessy added as I turned around to hide my embarrassment. I knew they wouldn’t believe me I don’t even know why I said anything. I must tell them what happened that night and let them judge me, but I must let out everything I have been thinking about.

“Well, if this had happened what did this man look like? I can try to find a real-life man who looks like him for you if you want?” Erin asked walking around the desk to rest a hand on my shoulder. I pulled away from her to sit back in my big chair behind my desk.

“Erin, it is fine just drop it. I know you think I am crazy. I must be over working myself. Sorry I said anything.” I ducked my head and started going through my papers once again.

“Oh no we want to hear more about this supposed man, but I think the Santa suit was a wet dream of yours. Now tell us what he looks like and his name. Please.” Jesse was perched on the edge of my desk waiting for more details. I mean I could tell them about him even if they don’t believe me about the Santa part and at least it seemed that Jessy somewhat believed me.

“Yeah, sorry the Santa part was a dream I had.” I added to quickly make them not think I was crazy, “There is still no point he doesn’t live in Chicago. His name was Steve, and he was tall and very broad chested. His eyes were an icy blue that I could have gotten lost in, and his steely gray hair looked so soft. He was a little curt and short as far as his attitude, but when I had meet him, he was under a lot of stress. I don’t think he handles stress well.” I felt a weight lift off my shoulder when I told them about him. “Something about him was drawing me in. I had wanted to go to him and rub his shoulder to relax him and calm him down… Do you know what I mean or understand anything I am saying?” I looked to them for reassurance.

“It sounds like love at first sight like from some kind of fairy tale.” Erin looked at me like she felt sorry for me and that she was going to be sick. She didn’t believe in love or cute mushy relationships. She believed that everyone was out only for themselves and would step on anyone to get what they wanted.

“This so sweet! Do you think he felt the same or would come back to see you at all?” Jessy was bouncing with joy.

“I doubt it. That is why I am just trying to forget the whole thing. He is important where he if from, and he wouldn’t drop everything to come see some nobody like me.”

Meanwhile, outside Sam’s office

Steve POV

I put my back to the wall outside her office door trying to take in everything I had just overheard. I felt dizzy and lightheaded. Did I just hear her right? She loved me too. What was all of that about wanting me to take her on her kitchen table? I was sweeting bullets unsure what to say or do now. I was nerves before, but now I was terrified. Also, she said all of that to her friends out loud. What are they going to think about me?

A man started to walk down the hall toward me and stopped once he got to me. “You can knock. I think she is just in there talking to the other chicks of the fire house gossiping.” Before I could tell him not to worry about it, he knocked on the door.

“Ozzy. What is it?” I heard her sweet voice ask the man who had knocked on the door once she opened it.

“This man he been standing out her waiting to talk to you.” He points to me and as she leaned out of the doorway to look in my direction I started to panic. The moment she turned and looked at me her face turned a bright shade of red and somehow this made her even cuter. Her two friends pushed out the door to look at me too. The man who knocked started walking past me but stopped and thanked me for the cookies that everyone had took from me downstairs.

“Steve what are you doing here?” She asked pulling herself together as her friends kept looking me up and down. I started to panic. Does she know that I heard everything she said? Did she mean me when she was talking just now; I mean Steve is a common enough name. Before I could send myself into a full panic attack her one friend walked toward me and start circling me like I was her prey. Her cold hazel eyes bore into me and showed no emotion or kindness; that was until she looked back to Sam, and they light up slightly.

“If this is him, he isn’t impressive. He reminds me of the pedophile I arrested a couple of months ago.” She shifted the weight to one foot and crossed her arms to just stare at me.

“Erin it is fine you’re going to scare him. I for one think he is as sexy and handsome,” as the other one walked toward me and was on her tippy toes looking at me. I don’t think she knows about the definition of personal space. I took a couple steps back to give me some space. Her and I both dropped our jaws at what they were saying.

“How about you two get back to work and I will see you guys tonight at the bar. I will talk to Steve alone.” She stepped in to save me for there staring. They both walked past me to leave, but the excited one she called Jessy grabbed by ass and gave her the thumbs up. What is with these people why are they picking on me when I am obviously terrified. “Would you like to come in my office to talk? You look like you are about to have a heart attack.”

I walked into her office and the first thing I noticed was all off the books stacked everywhere. I heard the door close behind me and I turned to face her and once again I had stopped walking just inside the door and when I turned around, I had her pinned between me and the door again. She was so close to me. I could smell her perfume which was a sweet lavender; I noticed her breath hitched as I was staring at her, and she was starting to blush. It felt like time had stopped. I almost wondered what she would if I leaned downed and kissed her right now. I stood there staring at her until she lifted her hand and placed it on my chest and the touch startled me pulling me out of my daydream which caused me to jump back making myself stumble and trip over a stack of books she had on the floor.

“Oh my God are you ok? I am so sorry I know my office is cluttered.” She rushed to me offering her hand, but she ended up tripping over my boot causing her to fall on top of me. On instinct once she landed on top of me, I wrapped my arms around her to keep her from fall off me. She felt so warm in my arms. She leaned up, looking at me. Her face turned a dark shade of red; that cute face was all I needed to lose control of my actions. I ran a hand up through her hair cupping the side of her face. I looked to her lips as I noticed she was looking at mine.

Stop this what if this isn’t what she wants! Oh my god her lips look so soft, and I want them locked with mine! My mind was racing as I lifted my head bringing my lips closer to hers, but not all the way in case she didn’t want this. I felt like I waited there forever before she licked her lips and started leaning forward to meet me. Suddenly there was a sharp ringing sound and a siren going off.

“Company 81. Ambulance 18. Truck 81. Squad 8. Victim trapped on balcony of high rise. Police on scene.” She jumped off me and ripped open her door to run out of it but stopped and turned to me. “You can wait for me to get back. This call shouldn’t take long.” She smiled at me before leaving and I am pretty sure my heart skipped a beat. Before I could answer she was gone leaving me in her office; alone.

I looked around her office noticing it filled with picture of her life and stacks of books on every and any topic. I noticed that she still had Christmas twinkle lights hung up in her office as well. Her office smelled like her perfume mixed with her morning coffee that was still sitting on her desk half drank. The cup was still warm; meaning this was probably he second cup of the day at least.

The longer I was in here alone I started pacing and my nerves were on end. Every sound made me jump thinking it was her coming back. How was I going to tell her how I felt; I didn’t even have the balls to kiss her when she was on top of me. Do I ask her to dinner and tell her then? Wait, she had plans tonight she told her friends she was meeting them at the bar later. Do I just tell her when she comes back calmy and rationally? Yes, I think that will work. I kicked another pile of her books over in my pacing. I was in the middle of picking up the pile when I heard the door open. I turned quickly and saw her smiling coming back in from her call. It was now or never I had to rack up the courage and tell her.

“I love you!” Did I just say the out loud. I slapped my hand over my mouth. I started sweeting and waving my hands in front of me. I must apologize for just yelling it at her. She was just staring at me unblinking and unmoving. I took a step toward her trying to think of any way to make this better, but she took a step back. “I am sorry. I didn’t want to just blurt out how I feel. I am just so nervous. I have never felt like this about anyone before.” I took another step toward her, but this time she didn’t step back this time. I lifted my arm towards her to see if she would let me get even closer to her.

“Why does it matter you won’t stay here in Chicago. I have a life here.” Streams of tears were running down her face. I reached up and wiped them away cupping her cheek gently. What changed? She seemed like she was ok with us almost kissing earlier, but now she seems upset that I like her. I thought she would be happy about me returning the feeling she had toward me.

“You wouldn’t have to give up your life here. People have long distance relationships all the time. If you want, we can try working something out.” She started crying harder, but she stepped forward grabbing a hold of the front of my shirt burying her face in it. I wrapped my one arm around her and the other I cradled the back of her head. I was unsure what to do. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

She stopped crying and she stepped back and looked up at me. She tugged on my shirt pulling me down to meet her. Once I was closer to her level, she threw her arms around my neck and kissed me. The kiss was sweet yet passionate and full of the same fire I had burning in me for her. I pulled her into me deepening the kiss. I didn’t want it to end. She pulled away from the kiss just parting from me slightly. Her breathing was heavy and kept her grip on my shirt like she was holding on to me for dear life.

“I am sorry for how I reacted. I have never had a good tract record of men I have liked. I was panicking thinking of all my terrible ex’s then I remembered that they are not you. That you could be different than them.” Her eyes were a light with a hope for a future with me. I was so happy that she loved me too that now I didn’t know what to do now. I was expecting her to not return how I felt or even hate me for my rudeness the first time we meet. “What do we do now?” She finally let got of my shirt stepping back to compose herself.

“Honestly, I am not sure I was expecting you to not return my feelings that I didn’t think that far ahead when I was thinking this through.” I rubbed the back of my head feeling embarrassed for my actions.

“Well, I must finish my shift and I do have a meeting coming up with some top brass of the department. If you would like to you can go back to my place and wait for me to get off and we can discuss what is next for us over a drink and dinner tonight?” She started fishing through her desk drawers and pulled out what looked like a spare key to her house.

“That sounds like a good place to start to me.” I pulled her back to me by her belt and kissed her again. The taste of her lips on mine was intoxicating and I was never going to get used to it. The sweetness of her taste and the softness of her lips; I still am not convinced that this is real. This amazing woman for the moment is mine and I am still not sure how I got her.

#christmas #arthur #arthur christmas #fantasy #fanfic #fandom #holiday #holiday movies #romantic #romancenovel #writers on tumblr #my writing #writers

3 notes · View notes

ledenews · 5 months

Text

Nailers Start Division Final Friday Against Walleye

Both Teams Have Time to Rest Following Quick-First Round Wins The Wheeling Nailers, proud ECHL affiliate of the Pittsburgh Penguins, have announced their schedule for the Central Division Final Round of the 2024 Kelly Cup Playoffs. The Nailers will face the Toledo Walleye in a best-of-seven series, which begins on Friday night at Huntington Center. The Nailers defeated the Indy Fuel in five games during the opening round of the postseason, marking their second playoff series win in the last three seasons. Wheeling dropped the opening match, 5-2, before rattling off four straight victories, with scores of 7-1, 3-2 (OT), 3-0, and 4-2. That followed a 38-28-4-1 regular season, which was good for 81 points. The Walleye also made quick work of their opposition in round one, as they swept the Kalamazoo Wings in four games, winning 3-2, 5-2, 6-2, and 4-2. Toledo won the regular season division title with a 48-14-4-5 mark, good for 105 points, and has now won a playoff series in each of its last five postseason appearances. Despite being division rivals, head-to-head meetings were a rarity in 2023-24, as Wheeling and Toledo only collided four times, and three of those tilts took place before the turn of the calendar year. Each team earned one victory in each building. The Nailers were victorious 6-5 at Huntington Center on November 15th and 4-2 on home ice exactly one week later. The Walleye won 3-2 at WesBanco Arena on December 1st and 3-2 at home on March 29th. Three players on the current rosters were tied for the lead in the season series with five points - Brandon Kruse and Brandon Hawkins of Toledo, as well as Wheeling's David Jankowski. Kruse's four goals were the most, while Jankowski and Matt Koopman both lit the lamp twice for the Nailers. Jan Bednar took the crease in three of the four games for the Walleye, and went 2-0-1, while Wheeling used three different goaltenders, with Taylor Gauthier going 1-1-0. There has been plenty of playoff history between these two cities, as this will be the seventh ECHL postseason clash between Nail City and the Glass City, dating back to the Thunderbirds and the Storm. Toledo has won five of the prior six, including two in the Walleye era in 2015 and 2022. Wheeling's lone series triumph came in the second round of the 1998 Kelly Cup Playoffs, under the guidance of current New York Rangers Head Coach Peter Laviolette. This is by far the opponent that the Nailers have faced the most in postseason play, with the next closest teams being Reading and South Carolina with three series each. The 2024 Central Division Final Series between the Wheeling Nailers and Toledo Walleye will begin at Huntington Center on Friday and Saturday. The series will then shift to WesBanco Arena for games three, four, and five (if necessary) on May 8th, 10th, and 11th. Games six and seven will be played in Toledo, if necessary. All home games will begin at 7:10. To purchase tickets for the playoffs or for any questions or concerns about ticketing, please visit wheelingnailers.com or call (304) 234-GOAL. The Wheeling Nailers, considered one of the top things to do in Wheeling, West Virginia, provide affordable family entertainment for fans throughout the Ohio Valley. Central Division FinalWheeling Nailers vs. Toledo WalleyeGame 1 - Fri. May 3 at Toledo, 7:15Game 2 - Sat. May 4 at Toledo, 7:15Game 3 - Wed. May 8 AT WHEELING, 7:10Game 4 - Fri. May 10 AT WHEELING, 7:10Game 5 - Sat. May 11 AT WHEELING, 7:10 (if necessary)Game 6 - Mon. May 13 at Toledo, 7:15 (if necessary)Game 7 - Tue. May 14 at Toledo, 7:15 (if necessary) Read the full article

0 notes

yessadirichards · 7 months

Text

How French film is quietly becoming more diverse

PARIS

"Vermin", a horror film about killer spiders invading a run-down apartment block, has become the first hit of the year in France.

The eight-legged critters are not the only surprise in the low-budget film, however, which for once depicts France's ghetto-like suburbs as more than just a den of drug dealers and terrorists.

Instead the block is shown as a place of hard-scrabble solidarity whose problems stem from abandonment by police, media and society in general.

"We want to challenge stereotypes," said Olivier Saby of co-producers Impact Films. The company was set up in 2018 with a mission to bring more diversity to French cinemas.

"The goal is not to make sure there is a black, Arabic or white person in every scene," he told AFP. "We just want films and TV to reflect real life. If you walk into, for example, a lawyer's office today, you will find a lot more diversity than when you see one on TV."

French cinema has made steady progress in some areas.

French women won two of the last three Palmes d'Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Three of the five nominees for best director at next month's Cesars (France's Oscars) are women. (The prize has only once gone to a woman, Tonie Marshall, 24 years ago.)

Race is trickier.

Some black actors have become superstars in France, especially "Lupin" star Omar Sy, and comedian Jean-Pascal Zadi, whose sharp satires about racial politics, "Simply Black" and "Represent", have earned awards and been big international hits on Netflix.

But progress is hindered because it remains illegal to gather data on race in France on the grounds that it would perpetuate artificial divisions, said Wale Gbadamosi Oyekanmi, a PR consultant who invests in Impact Film.

"France doesn't really talk about race. You can't monitor the depth of the challenge because you can't measure it" with statistics, he told AFP. "There are new voices that could be heard, that reflect the country as it is now. It's something that can and must be improved."

Analysts work around the issue by measuring how people are "perceived" rather than directly asking their race.

A study of 115 French films released in 2019 by 50/50 Collectif, a campaign group, found 81 percent of lead characters were "perceived as white".

That is not a commercial decision, it said, since the figure dropped to 68 percent for the 15 most popular films of the year.

But France's cultural gatekeepers still bristle at the idea of mixing social issues with creativity, said Marie-Lou Dulac, founder of diversity consultancy DIRE et Dire.

Many in France see encouraging diversity as a way of "perverting creativity," she said. "Actually it's a way to renew creativity, to encounter new stories and characters.

"We can't keep making the same old caricature of a French film -- a white professional couple in Paris who are cheating on each other," she added with a laugh.

Impact Films supports films with LGBTQ, disabled or ethnic minority leads, said Saby. It finances documentaries about environmental and social issues, and hires people from under-represented groups to work behind the camera.

It also works with scriptwriters to avoid cliches. "Why are minority actors always playing a drug dealer?" he added. "Does every action hero need to drive a 4x4?"

As in other countries, pushing for change triggers a backlash.

Powerful right-wing businessmen are also moving into film productions, such as last year's "Vaincre ou Mourir" ("Victory or Death") about the peasant counter-revolution of the 1790s, a favorite topic of pro-Catholic, pro-monarchy ultra-conservatives.

It was produced by the company behind the Puy du Fou theme park, owned by far-right former presidential candidate Philippe de Villiers.

The risk of a backlash is no reason to give up, said Saby, with "Vermin" up for two Cesar awards and well on its way to being the most successful French horror flick in nearly 25 years.

"There was always this battle. It's just that only one side was winning up to now," he said. "There's plenty of room on screen for everyone."

#yessadirichards

0 notes

brookstonalmanac · 9 months

Text

Events 12.20

AD 69 – Antonius Primus enters Rome to claim the title of Emperor for Nero's former general Vespasian. 1192 – Richard I of England is captured and imprisoned by Leopold V of Austria on his way home to England after the Third Crusade. 1334 – Cardinal Jacques Fournier, a Cistercian monk, is elected Pope Benedict XII. 1803 – The Louisiana Purchase is completed at a ceremony in New Orleans. 1808 – Peninsular War: The Siege of Zaragoza begins. 1832 – HMS Clio under the command of Captain Onslow arrives at Port Egmont under orders to take possession of the Falkland Islands. 1848 – 1848 French presidential election: Having won the popular vote in a landslide, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte is inaugurated in the chamber of the National Assembly as the first (and only) president of the French Second Republic. 1860 – South Carolina becomes the first state to attempt to secede from the United States with the South Carolina Declaration of Secession. 1915 – World War I: The last Australian troops are evacuated from Gallipoli. 1917 – Cheka, the first Soviet secret police force, is founded. 1924 – Adolf Hitler is released from Landsberg Prison. 1940 – Captain America Comics #1, containing the first appearance of the superhero Captain America, is published. 1941 – World War II: First battle of the American Volunteer Group, better known as the "Flying Tigers", in Kunming, China. 1942 – World War II: Japanese air forces bomb Calcutta, India. 1946 – It's a Wonderful Life premieres at the Globe Theatre in New York to mixed reviews. 1946 – An earthquake in Nankaidō, Japan causes a tsunami which kills at least one thousand people and destroys 36,000 homes. 1948 – Indonesian National Revolution: The Dutch military captures Yogyakarta, the temporary capital of the newly formed Republic of Indonesia. 1951 – The EBR-1 in Arco, Idaho becomes the first nuclear power plant to generate electricity. The electricity powered four light bulbs. 1952 – A United States Air Force C-124 crashes and burns in Moses Lake, Washington, killing 87 of the 115 people on board. 1955 – Cardiff is proclaimed the capital city of Wales, United Kingdom. 1957 – The initial production version of the Boeing 707 makes its first flight. 1967 – A Pennsylvania Railroad Budd Metroliner exceeds 249 kilometres per hour (155 mph) on their New York Division, also present-day Amtrak's Northeast Corridor. 1973 – Assassination of Luis Carrero Blanco: A car bomb planted by ETA in Madrid kills three people, including the Prime Minister of Spain, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco. 1984 – The Summit Tunnel fire, one of the largest transportation tunnel fires in history, burns after a freight train carrying over one million liters of gasoline derails near the town of Todmorden, England, in the Pennines. 1984 – Disappearance of Jonelle Matthews from Greeley, Colorado. Her remains were discovered on July 23, 2019, located about 24 km (15 mi) southeast of Jonelle's home. The cause of death "was a gunshot wound to the head." 1985 – Pope John Paul II announces the institution of World Youth Day. 1987 – In the worst peacetime sea disaster, the passenger ferry Doña Paz sinks after colliding with the oil tanker MT Vector in the Tablas Strait of the Philippines, killing an estimated 4,000 people (1,749 official). 1989 – The United States invasion of Panama deposes Manuel Noriega. 1991 – A Missouri court sentences the Palestinian militant Zein Isa and his wife Maria to death for the honor killing of their daughter Palestina. 1995 – NATO begins peacekeeping in Bosnia. 1995 – American Airlines Flight 965, a Boeing 757, crashes into a mountain 50 km north of Cali, Colombia, killing 159 of the 163 people on board. 1999 – Macau is handed over to China by Portugal. 2007 – Elizabeth II becomes the oldest monarch in the history of the United Kingdom, surpassing Queen Victoria, who lived for 81 years and 243 days. 2019 – The United States Space Force becomes the first new branch of the United States Armed Forces since 1947.

#Events

0 notes

phantomtutor · 2 years

Text

SOLUTION AT Academic Writers Bay QUESTION 1 Use the following business rules to create a Crow’s Foot ERD. Write all appropriate connectivities and cardinalities in the ERD. A department employs many employees, but each employee is employed by only one department. Some employees, known as “rovers,” are not assigned to any department. A division operates many departments, but each department is operated by only one division. An employee may be assigned many projects, and a project may have many employees assigned to it. A project must have at least one employee assigned to it. One of the employees manages each department, and each department is managed by only one employee. One of the employees runs each division, and each division is run by only one employee. SAVE AS: ch4_question1_deleon.doc —————————————————– QUESTION 2 Create a complete ERD in Crow’s Foot notation that can be implemented in the relational model using the following description of operations. Hot Water (HW) is a small start-up company that sells spas. HW does not carry any stock. A few spas are set up in a simple warehouse so customers can see some of the models available, but any products sold must be ordered at the time of the sale HW can get spas from several different manufacturers. Each manufacturer produces one or more different brands of spas. Each and every brand is produced by only one manufacturer. Every brand has one or more models. Every model is produced as part of a brand. For example, Iguana Bay Spas is a manufacturer that produces Big Blue Iguana spas, a premium-level brand, and Lazy Lizard spas, an entry-level brand. The Big Blue Iguana brand offers several models, including the BBI-6, an 81-jet spa with two 6-hp motors, and the BBI- 10, a 102-jet spa with three 6-hp motors. Every manufacturer is identified by a manufacturer code. The company name, address, area code, phone number, and account number are kept in the system for every manufacturer. For each brand, the brand name and brand level (premium, mid-level, or entry level) are kept in the system. For each model, the model number, number of jets, number of motors, number of horsepower per motor, suggested retail price, HW retail price, dry weight, water capacity, and seating capacity must be kept in the system. SAVE AS: ch4_question2_deleon.doc ———————————————————— QUESTION 3 The Jonesburgh County Basketball Conference (JCBC) is an amateur basketball association. Each city in the county has one team as its representative. Each team has a maximum of 12 players and a minimum of 9 players. Each team also has up to 3 coaches (offensive, defensive, and physical training coaches). During the season, each team plays 2 games (home and visitor) against each of the other teams. Given those conditions, do the following: Identify the connectivity of each relationship. Identify the type of dependency that exists between CITY and TEAM. Identify the cardinality between teams and players and between teams and city. Identify the dependency between COACH and TEAM and between TEAM and PLAYER. Draw the Chen and Crow’s Foot ERDs to represent the JCBC database. Draw the UML class diagram to depict the JCBC database. SAVE AS: ch4_question3_deleon.doc ————————————————————————— QUESTION 4 Create an ERD based on the Crow’s Foot notation using the following requirements: An INVOICE is written by a SALESREP. Each sales representative can write many invoices, but each invoice is written by a single sales representative. The INVOICE is written for a single CUSTOMER. However, each customer can have many invoices. An INVOICE can include many detail lines (LINE), each of which describes one product bought by the customer. The product information is stored in a PRODUCT entity. The product’s vendor information is found in a VENDOR entity. SAVE AS: ch4_question4_deleon.doc —————————————————————– QUESTION 5 The Hudson Engineering Group (HEG) has contacted you to create a conceptual model whose application will meet the expected database requirements for the company’s training program.

The HEG administrator gives you the following description of the training group’s operating environment. (Hint: Some of the following sentences identify the volume of data rather than cardinalities. Can you tell which ones?) The HEG has 12 instructors and can handle up to 30 trainees per class. HEG offers 5 Advanced Technology courses, each of which may generate several classes. If a class has fewer than 10 trainees, it will be canceled. Therefore, it is possible for a course not to generate any classes. Each class is taught by one instructor. Each instructor may teach up to 2 classes or may be assigned to do research only. Each trainee may take up to 2 classes per year. Given that information, do the following: a. Define all of the entities and relationships. b. Describe the relationship between instructor and class in terms of connectivity, cardinality, and existence dependence. SAVE AS: ch4_question5_deleon.doc ——————————————————————– QUESTION 6 Automata, Inc., produces specialty vehicles by contract. The company operates several departments, each of which builds a particular vehicle, such as a limousine, truck, van, or RV. Before a new vehicle is built, the department places an order with the purchasing department to request specific components. Automata’s purchasing department is interested in creating a database to keep track of orders and to accelerate the process of delivering materials. The order received by the purchasing department may contain several different items. An inventory is maintained so the most frequently requested items are delivered almost immediately. When an order comes in, it is checked to determine whether the requested item is in inventory. If an item is not in inventory, it must be ordered from a supplier. Each item may have several suppliers. Given that functional description of the processes at Automata’s purchasing department, do the following: a. Identify all of the main entities. b. Identify all of the relations and connectivities among entities. c. Identify the type of existence dependence in all the relationships. d. Give at least two examples of the types of reports that can be obtained from the database. SAVE AS: ch4_question6_deleon.doc ————————————————————————————— QUESTION 7 United Helpers is a nonprofit organization that provides aid to people after natural disasters. Based on the following brief description of operations, create the appropriate fully labeled Crow’s Foot ERD. Volunteers carry out the tasks of the organization. The name, address, and telephone number are tracked for each volunteer. Each volunteer may be assigned to several tasks, and some tasks require many volunteers. A volunteer might be in the system without having been assigned a task yet. It is possible to have tasks that no one has been assigned. When a volunteer is assigned to a task, the system should track the start time and end time of that assignment. Each task has a task code, task description, task type, and task status. For example, there may be a task with task code “101,” a description of “answer the telephone,” a type of “recurring,” and a status of “ongoing.” Another task might have a code of “102,” a description of “prepare 5,000 packages of basic medical supplies,” a type of “packing,” and a status of “open.” For all tasks of type “packing,” there is a packing list that specifies the contents of the packages. There are many packing lists to produce different packages, such as basic medical packages, child-care packages, and food packages. Each packing list has an ID number, a packing list name, and a packing list description, which describes the items that should make up the package. Every packing task is associated with only one packing list. A packing list may not be associated with any tasks, or it may be associated with many tasks. Tasks that are not packing tasks are not associated with any packing list. Packing tasks result in the creation of packages. Each individual package of supplies produced by the organization is tracked, and each package is assigned an ID number.

The date the package was created and its total weight are recorded. A given package is associated with only one task. Some tasks (such as “answer the phones”) will not produce any packages, while other tasks (such as “prepare 5,000 packages of basic medical supplies”) will be associated with many packages. The packing list describes the ideal contents of each package, but it is not always possible to include the ideal number of each item. Therefore, the actual items included in each package should be tracked. A package can contain many different items, and a given item can be used in many different packages. Each item that the organization provides has an item ID number, item description, item value, and item quantity on hand stored in the system. Along with tracking the actual items that are placed in each package, the quantity of each item placed in the package must be tracked as well. For example, a packing list may state that basic medical packages should include 100 bandages, 4 bottles of iodine, and 4 bottles of hydrogen peroxide. However, because of the limited supply of items, a given package may include only 10 bandages, 1 bottle of iodine, and no hydrogen peroxide. The fact that the package includes bandages and iodine needs to be recorded along with the quantity of each item included. It is possible for the organization to have items that have not been included in any package yet, but every package will contain at least one item. SAVE AS: ch4_question7_deleon.doc ———————————————————————————– QUESTION 8 Using the Crow’s Foot notation, create an ERD that can be implemented for a medical clinic using the following business rules: A patient can make many appointments with one or more doctors in the clinic, and a doctor can accept appointments with many patients. However, each appointment is made with only one doctor and one patient. Emergency cases do not require an appointment. However, for appointment management purposes, an emergency is entered in the appointment book as “unscheduled.” If kept, an appointment yields a visit with the doctor specified in the appointment. The visit yields a diagnosis and, when appropriate, treatment. With each visit, the patient’s records are updated to provide a medical history. Each patient visit creates a bill. Each patient visit is billed by one doctor, and each doctor can bill many patients. Each bill must be paid. However, a bill may be paid in many installments, and a payment may cover more than one bill. A patient may pay the bill directly, or the bill may be the basis for a claim submitted to an insurance company. If the bill is paid by an insurance company, the deductible is submitted to the patient for payment. SAVE AS: ch4_question8_deleon.doc ———————————————————— QUESTION 9 Create a Crow’s Foot notation ERD to support the following business operations: A friend of yours has opened Professional Electronics and Repairs (PEAR) to repair smartphones, laptops, tablets, and MP3 players. She wants you to create a database to help her run her business. When a customer brings a device to PEAR for repair, data must be recorded about the customer, the device, and the repair. The customer’s name, address, and a contact phone number must be recorded (if the customer has used the shop before, the information already in the system for the customer is verified as being current). For the device to be repaired, the type of device, model, and serial number are recorded (or verified if the device is already in the system). Only customers who have brought devices into PEAR for repair will be included in this system. Since a customer might sell an older device to someone else who then brings the device to PEAR for repair, it is possible for a device to be brought in for repair by more than one customer. However, each repair is associated with only one customer. When a customer brings in a device to be fixed, it is referred to as a repair request, or just “repair,” for short. Each repair

request is given a reference number, which is recorded in the system along with the date of the request, and a description of the problem(s) that the customer wants fixed. It is possible for a device to be brought to the shop for repair many different times, and only devices that are brought in for repair are recorded in the system. Each repair request is for the repair of one and only one device. If a customer needs multiple devices fixed, then each device will require its own repair request. There are a limited number of repair services that PEAR can perform. For each repair service, there is a service ID number, description, and charge. “Charge” is how much the customer is charged for the shop to perform the service, including any parts used. The actual repair of a device is the performance of the services necessary to address the problems described by the customer. Completing a repair request may require the performance of many services. Each service can be performed many different times during the repair of different devices, but each service will be performed only once during a given repair request. All repairs eventually require the performance of at least one service, but which services will be required may not be known at the time the repair request is made. It is possible for services to be available at PEAR but that have never been required in performing any repair. Some services involve only labor activities and no parts are required, but most services require the replacement of one or more parts. The quantity of each part required in the performance of each service should also be recorded. For each part, the part number, part description, quantity in stock, and cost is recorded in the system. The cost indicated is the amount that PEAR pays for the part. Some parts may be used in more than one service, but each part is required for at least one service. SAVE AS: ch4_question9_deleon.doc ————————————————————— QUESTION 10 Luxury-Oriented Scenic Tours (LOST) provides guided tours to groups of visitors to the Washington, D.C. area. In recent years, LOST has grown quickly and is having difficulty keeping up with all of the various information needs of the company. The company’s operations are as follows: LOST offers many different tours. For each tour, the tour name, approximate length (in hours), and fee charged is needed. Guides are identified by an employee ID, but the system should also record a guide’s name, home address, and date of hire. Guides take a test to be qualified to lead specific tours. It is important to know which guides are qualified to lead which tours and the date that they completed the qualification test for each tour. A guide may be qualified to lead many different tours. A tour can have many different qualified guides. New guides may or may not be qualified to lead any tours, just as a new tour may or may not have any qualified guides. Every tour must be designed to visit at least three locations. For each location, a name, type, and official description are kept. Some locations (such as the White House) are visited by more than one tour, while others (such as Arlington Cemetery) are visited by a single tour. All locations are visited by at least one tour. The order in which the tour visits each location should be tracked as well. When a tour is actually given, that is referred to as an “outing.” LOST schedules outings well in advance so they can be advertised and so employees can understand their upcoming work schedules. A tour can have many scheduled outings, although newly designed tours may not have any outings scheduled. Each outing is for a single tour and is scheduled for a particular date and time. All outings must be associated with a tour. All tours at LOST are guided tours, so a guide must be assigned to each outing. Each outing has one and only one guide. Guides are occasionally asked to lead an outing of a tour even if they are not officially qualified to lead that tour. Newly hired guides may not have ever been scheduled to lead any outings.

Tourists, called “clients” by LOST, pay to join a scheduled outing. For each client, the name and telephone number are recorded. Clients may sign up to join many different outings, and each outing can have many clients. Information is kept only on clients who have signed up for at least one outing, although newly scheduled outings may not have any clients signed up yet. a. Create a Crow’s Foot notation ERD to support LOST operations. b. The operations provided state that it is possible for a guide to lead an outing of a tour even if the guide is not officially qualified to lead outings of that tour. Imagine that the business rules instead specified that a guide is never, under any circumstance, allowed to lead an outing unless he or she is qualified to lead outings of that tour. How could the data model in Part a. be modified to enforce this new constraint? SAVE AS: ch4_question10_deleon.doc “CUSTOM PAPER” CLICK HERE TO GET A PROFESSIONAL WRITER TO WORK ON THIS PAPER AND OTHER SIMILAR PAPERS CLICK THE BUTTON TO MAKE YOUR ORDER

0 notes

mariacallous · 2 years

Text

Foreigners, particularly Russians and those from the Balkan region, are taking advantage of a law in Montenegro that legalised same-sex civil partnerships. Might it prove a new market for the vital tourism sector?

In the first 12 months since Montenegro legalized same-sex civil partnerships in July 2020, 18 such partnerships were registered in the popular coastal resort of Budva. All but one involved foreigners, prompting some to identify the LGBT scene as a new potential market for the country’s tourism industry.

The 2020 law passed by the narrowest of margins – 41 of 81 MPs in parliament – to make Montenegro the first non-EU country in the Balkans to legalize same-sex civil partnerships.

Implementation began the following summer and the first same-sex marriage was registered in July last year in Budva. The resort has led the way ever since, registering 18 of a total of 22 same-sex civil partnerships in Montenegro. Russians dominate.

“Russian citizens registered 11 same-sex partnerships in Budva, while four couples were from regional countries – Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Croatia,” said Ksenija Slavkovic of the Secretariat for Local Self-Government at Budva municipality.

“Two Montenegrins registered partnerships with citizens of Spain and Ireland,” she told BIRN. “In only one case we registered a partnership of two Montenegrin citizens.”

With gay travellers estimated to be spending some $200 billion a year globally, according to the Gay European Tourism Association, GETA, LGBT rights groups say the Montenegrin tourism sector would do well to take notice.

“Budva is most popular for registering of same-sex partnerships, due to its tourist potentials. But other towns should also use this opportunity to improve their tourist offer,” said Milos Knezevic, executive director of the NGO Queer Montenegro. “We encourage local officials in Adriatic as well as mountain resorts to use this opportunity.”

Potential money-spinner

Of the states carved from the ruins of socialist Yugoslavia, Croatia and Slovenia – both members of the European Union – recognize gay and lesbian couples in law.

Montenegro tried and failed twice before to recognize same-sex unions – in 2014 and 2019. It succeeded in July 2020, becoming the only non-EU ex-Yugoslav republic to do so, though Serbia also has legislation in the pipeline.

Bojana Jokic, head of the Podgorica-based NGO LGBT Forum Progress, said that LGBT couples in other countries of the region were increasingly interested in the opportunity offered by Montenegro’s new law.

“There is growing interest from countries that do not have an equivalent law that could provide for the registering of a partnership between persons of the same sex,” said Jokic. “The largest number of interested people are from neighboring countries like Serbia, Albania, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as some Russian and EU countries.”

The Montenegrin law provides for the regulation of mutual financial support and division of joint property in event of divorce. It also grants those in a same-sex civil partnership the right to social security and health cover based on their partner and regulates family visits to hospitals or jails. It does not, however, provide for the right to adopt or foster children.

Budva, which accounted for 36 per cent of foreign tourist stays in Montenegro this summer, is proving a particularly popular wedding destination in a country where conservative currents are otherwise strong and the Orthodox Church remains influential.

“The city is a favorite tourist destination with beautiful and attractive locations for marriage ceremonies,” said Slavkovic. “Same-sex couples choose Budva to enter into a partnership because they consider it safer to perform the ceremony here.”

Three same-sex civil partnerships have also been registered in Kotor, a coastal town that in February 2020 became the first Montenegrin member of the Queer Cities network, which works with municipal and regional authorities to tackle discrimination against LGBT people.

The market for same-sex weddings and LGBT travel, in general, could be hugely lucrative for a country where tourism accounted for roughly 22 per cent of total economic output last year.

According to the GETA study from January 2020, Europe remains the most popular overseas destination for gay American tourists who are estimated to spend over $64 billion annually on tourism.

A 2020 report by Open For Business, a coalition of global companies dedicated to LGBT inclusion, estimated that the Czech Republic, for example, was missing out on between 25 million and 113 million euros a year from same-sex wedding revenues alone.

The Montenegrin Hotel Association did not seem fazed, telling BIRN: “So far there were no reports about organising gay weddings in hotels or plans to include such ceremonies in the tourist offer.”

Montenegrin same-sex couples remain fearful

While foreigners may be taking the opportunity, the stigma around homosexuality in Montenegro nevertheless remains strong.

Surveys suggest that 71 per cent of Montenegrin citizens view homosexuality as an illness and that every second citizen sees it as a danger to society that should be suppressed by the state.

Jokic, from LGBT Forum Progress, said that violence, hatred and discrimination against the LGBT population remain a problem.

“As a country and society, we are a little more open than a decade ago,” she said. “But it’s realistic to expect the quality of life of LGBT people and our social integration to be at a much higher and better level, which is not the case.”

Knezevic, of Queer Montenegro, said that because of the public’s “negative attitude”, LGBT couples in Montenegro are still not ready to register partnerships.

“There are a large number of those who will condemn this right of our community, as they do with other rights that are guaranteed to us by the Constitution of Montenegro,” he told BIRN.

“There is still great intolerance and non-acceptance of everything that society cannot or does not want to understand.”

1 note · View note

greatworldwar2 · 4 years

Text

• Lafayette Pool

Lafayette Green Pool was an American tank-crew and tank-platoon commander in World War II and is widely recognized as the US tank ace of aces, credited with 12 confirmed tank kills and 258 total armored vehicle and self-propelled gun kills, over 1,000 German soldiers killed, accomplished in only 81 days of action.

Lafayette Green Pool was born in Odem, Texas, on July 23rd, 1919, to John K. and Mary Lee Pool. He had a twin brother, John Thomas, (who served in the Navy during World War II) and a sister, Tennie Mae. Lafayette attended high school in Taft, Texas, graduating in 1938; he later attended Texas College of Arts and Industries in Kingsville, Texas, studying engineering and participating very successful in amateur boxing. Pool left college after one year when he was inducted into military service in the summer of 1941. Pool was drafted into the United States Army on June 14th, 1941, from Fort Sam Houston in his native Texas and assigned to the new 3rd Armored Division. Pool married Evelyn Wright while on leave in December 1942. While undergoing training at the Desert Training Center and Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, Pool was noted as a very aggressive sergeant, always wanting the best from his men; he even refused a commission as an officer so he could remain close to the front.

Pool was promoted to staff sergeant and deployed overseas with the 3rd Armored Division in September 1943. Pool served with the 3rd Platoon of Company I, 32nd Armored Regiment, 3rd Armored Division, in France between June and September 1944. He successively commanded three Sherman tanks; an M4A1, and two M4A1(76)Ws, all of which bore the nickname "IN THE MOOD" (they were not suffixed with a letter or Roman numeral). He kept the same crew throughout the majority of the war. The first tank used by Pool lasted between 23rd and 29th of June of 1944 during the time which his platoon laid siege on Normandy at Villiers-Fossard. Pool and his crew’s Sherman tank were however knocked out by a Panzerfaust, retiring it completely. Pool’s second tank was hit by friendly fire after lasting between July 1st and 17th August, 1944. During this time, Pool’s Combat Command A was on the verge of clearing the German forces from Fromental Village when P-38 knocked out the Sherman. On the night of 15th September 1944, while Combat Command A attempted to force a Siegfried Line at Munsterbusch, Pool’s third Sherman was completely destroyed by a Panther that had laid an ambush. The panther hit the Sherman twice before Pool could salvage the situation and back-up. The two hits flipped the Sherman over the edge of a ditch. This double hit blew Pool out of his commanding hatch and badly mangled his leg with a shell splinter. He was lucky to have survived the ordeal although his leg had to be amputated. The leg was so badly mangled that it later had to be amputated eight inches above the knee. As a result, Pool would not return to amateur boxing after the war. Pool’s successful encounters in the war led him to be nicknamed “War Daddy” by his crew. During a brief 83 days in combat in France, Belgium and Germany, Pool and his tank crew were credited with destroying 258 enemy vehicles, including tanks, self-propelled guns and armored cars. He and his crew killed over 1,000 enemy soldiers and took over 250 prisoners. His was the point tank in 21 full-scale engagements, and he survived many harrowing close calls with death.

Pool was discharged from the Army in June 1946. After 22 months of rehabilitation and being fitted with a prosthesis, Pool opened a filling station and garage at his home in Sinton, Texas, followed by several other businesses, before he re-enlisted in the Army and went into the Transportation Corps. He was recalled to active duty in 1948 to serve as an instructor with 3d Armored Division at Fort Knox, Kentucky. He retired from the Army on September 19th, 1960 as a Chief Warrant Officer 2d Class. Afterwards he went to business college, followed by a job as a preacher for $25.00 a week. He also coached little league baseball. Pool died in his sleep on May 30th, 1991, in Killeen, Texas, at the age of 71. He is interred at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio, Texas. He was survived by his wife Evelyn, four sons and four daughters. A movie, ‘Fury’, made to Pool's honor was released in 2014 where he was played by Brad Pitt. Before his death on March 30th, 1991, he had received the Distinguished Service Cross, The Legion of Merit, The Légion d’Honneur, a Silver Star and Purple Heart medals.

#second world war #world war ii #world war 2 #wwii #military history #history #biography #american army #tank warfare #tanks #american history #1944 #fury

124 notes · View notes

asipiyayun · 3 years

Text

Severe Humanitarian Disasters Caused by US Aggressive Wars against Foreign Countries

The United States has always praised itself as "a city upon a hill" that is an example to others in the way it supports "natural human rights" and fulfills "natural responsibilities", and it has repeatedly waged foreign wars under the banner of "humanitarian intervention". During the past 240-plus years after it declared independence on July 4th, 1776, the United States was not involved in any war for merely less than 20 years. According to incomplete statistics, from the end of World War II in 1945 to 2001, among the 248 armed conflicts that occurred in 153 regions of the world, 201 were initiated by the United States, accounting for 81 percent of the total number. Most of the wars of aggression waged by the United States have been unilateralist actions, and some of these wars were even opposed by its own allies. These wars not only cost the belligerent parties a large number of military lives but also caused extremely serious civilian casualties and property damage, leading to horrific humanitarian disasters. The selfishness and hypocrisy of the United States have also been fully exposed through these foreign wars.

1. Major Aggressive Wars Waged by the United States after World War II

(1) The Korean War. The Korean War, which took place in the early 1950s, did not persist for a long time but it was extremely bloody, leading to more than three million civilian deaths and creating more than three million refugees. According to statistics from the DPRK, the war destroyed about 8,700 factories, 5,000 schools, 1,000 hospitals, and 600,000 households, and more than two million children under the age of 18 were uprooted by the war. During this war, the ROK side lost 41.23 billion won, which was equivalent to 6.9 billion US dollars according to the official exchange rate at that time; and about 600,000 houses, 46.9 percent of railways, 1,656 highways, and 1,453 bridges in the ROK were destroyed. Worse still, the war led to the division of the DPRK and the ROK, causing a large number of family separations. Among the more than 130,000 Koreans registered in the Ministry of Unification in the ROK who have family members cut off by the war, 75,000 have passed away, forever losing the chance to meet their lost family members again. The website of the United States' The Diplomat magazine reported on June 25, 2020, that as of November 2019, the average age of these family separation victims in the ROK had reached 81, and 60 percent of the 133,370 victims registered since 1988 had passed away, and that most of the registered victims never succeeded in meeting their lost family members again.

(2) The Vietnam War. The Vietnam War which lasted from the 1950s to the 1970s is the longest and most brutal war since the end of World War II. The Vietnamese government estimated that the war killed approximately 1.1 million North Vietnamese soldiers and 300,000 South Vietnamese soldiers, and caused as many as two million civilian deaths. The government also pointed out that some of the deaths were caused by the US troops' planned massacres that were carried out in the name of "combating the Vietnamese Communist Party". During the war, the US forces dropped a large number of bombs in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, almost three times the total number of bombs dropped during World War II. It is estimated that as of today, there are at least 350,000 metric tons of unexploded mines and bombs left by the US military in Vietnam alone, and these mines and bombs are still explosive. At the current rate, it will take 300 years to clean out these explosives. The website of The Huffington Post reported on December 3, 2012, that statistics from the Vietnamese government showed that since the end of the war in 1975, the explosive remnants of the war had killed more than 42,000 people. Apart from the above-mentioned explosives, the US forces dropped 20 million gallons (about 75.71 million liters) of defoliants in Vietnam during the war, directly causing more than 400,000 Vietnamese deaths. Another approximately two million Vietnamese who came into contact with this chemical got cancer and other diseases. This war that lasted for more than 10 years also caused more than three million refugees to flee and die in large numbers on the way across the ocean. Among the refugees that were surveyed, 92 percent were troubled by fatigue, and others suffered unexplained pregnancy losses and birth defects. According to the United States' Vietnam War statistics, defoliants destroyed about 20 percent of the jungles and 20 to 36 percent of the mangrove forests in Vietnam.

(3) The Gulf War. In 1991, the US-led coalition forces attacked Iraq, directly leading to about 2,500 to 3,500 civilian deaths and destroying approximately 9,000 civilian houses. The war-inflicted famine and damage to the local infrastructure and medical facilities caused about 111,000 civilian deaths, and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimated that the war and the post-war sanctions on Iraq caused the death of about 500,000 of the country's children. The coalition forces targeted Iraq's infrastructure and wantonly destroyed most of its power stations (accounting for 92 percent of the country's total installed generating capacity), refineries (accounting for 80 percent of the country's production capacity), petrochemical complexes, telecommunication centers (including 135 telephone networks), bridges (numbering more than 100), highways, railways, radio and television stations, cement plants, and factories producing aluminum, textiles, wires, and medical supplies. This war led to serious environmental pollution: about 60 million barrels of petroleum were dumped into the desert, polluting about 40 million metric tons of soil; about 24 million barrels of petroleum spilled out of oil wells, forming 246 oil lakes; and the smoke and dust generated by purposely ignited oil wells polluted 953 square kilometers of land. In addition, the US troops' depleted uranium (DU) weapons, which contain highly toxic and radioactive material, were also first used on the battlefield during this Gulf War against Iraq.

(4) The Kosovo War. In March 1999, NATO troops led by the United States blatantly set the UN Security Council aside and carried out a 78-day continuous bombing of Yugoslavia under the banner of "preventing humanitarian disasters", killing 2,000-plus innocent civilians, injuring more than 6,000, and uprooting nearly one million. During the war, more than two million Yugoslavians lost their sources of income, and about 1.5 million children could not go to school. NATO troops deliberately targeted the infrastructure of Yugoslavia in order to weaken the country's determination to resist. Economists of Serbia estimated that the total economic loss caused by the bombing was as much as 29.6 billion US dollars. Lots of bridges, roads, railways, and other buildings were destroyed during the bombing, affecting 25,000 households, 176 cultural relics, 69 schools, 19 hospitals, and 20 health centers. Apart from that, during this war, NATO troops used at least 31,000 DU bombs and shells, leading to a surge in cancer and leukemia cases in Yugoslavia and inflicting a long-term disastrous impact on the ecological environment of Yugoslavia and Europe.

(5) The Afghanistan War. In October 2001, the United States sent troops to Afghanistan. While combating al-Qaeda and the Taliban, it also caused a large number of unnecessary civilian casualties. Due to the lack of authoritative statistical data, there is no established opinion about the number of civilian casualties during the Afghanistan War, but it is generally agreed that since entering Afghanistan, the US troops caused the deaths of more than 30,000 civilians, injured more than 60,000 civilians, and created about 11 million refugees. After the US military announced its withdrawal in 2014, Afghanistan continued to be in turmoil. The website of The New York Times reported on July 30, 2019, that in the first half of 2019, there were 363 confirmed deaths due to the US bombs in Afghanistan, including 89 children. Scholars at Kabul University estimated that since its beginning, the Afghanistan War has caused about 250 casualties and the loss of 60 million US dollars per day.

(6) The Iraq War. In 2003, despite the general opposition of the international community, US troops still invaded Iraq on unfounded charges. It is hard to find precise statistics about the civilian casualties inflicted by the war, but the number is estimated to be around 200,000 to 250,000, including 16,000 civilian deaths directly caused by US forces. Apart from that, the occupying US forces have seriously violated international humanitarian principles and created multiple "prisoner abuse cases". After the US military announced its withdrawal from Iraq in 2011, local warfare and attacks in the country have continued. The US-led coalition forces have used a large number of DU bombs and shells, cluster bombs, and white phosphorus bombs in Iraq, and have not taken any measures to minimize the damage these bombs have inflicted upon civilians. According to the estimate of the United Nations, today in Iraq, there are still 25 million mines and other explosive remnants that need to be removed. The United States has not yet withdrawn all its troops from Afghanistan or Iraq for now.

(7) The Syrian War. Since 2017, the United States has launched airstrikes on Syria under the pretext of "preventing the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government". From 2016 to 2019, the confirmed war-related civilian deaths amounted to 33,584 in Syria, and the number of Syrian civilians directly killed by the airstrikes reached 3,833, with half of them being women and children. The website of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) reported on November 9, 2018, that the so-called "most accurate air strike in history" launched by the United States on Raqqa killed 1,600 civilians. According to a survey conducted by the World Food Programme (WFP) in April 2020, about one-third of Syrians were faced with a food shortage crisis, and 87 percent of Syrians had no deposits in their accounts. Doctors of the World (Médecins du Monde/MdM) estimated that since the beginning of the Syrian War, about 15,000 Syrian doctors (about half of the country's total) had fled the country, 6.5 million Syrian people had run away from their homes, and about five million Syrian people had wandered homeless around the world.

Apart from being directly involved in wars, the United States has intervened directly or indirectly in other countries' affairs by supporting proxy wars, inciting anti-government insurgencies, carrying out assassinations, providing weapons and ammunition, and training anti-government armed forces, which have caused serious harm to the social stability and public security of the relevant countries. As such activities are great in number and most of them have not been made public, it is hard to collect specific data regarding them.

2. The Disastrous Consequences of Foreign Wars Launched by the United States

Since the end of World War II, almost every US president has waged or intervened in foreign wars during their terms of office. The pretexts they used include: stopping the spread of communism, maintaining justice, stopping aggression, humanitarian intervention, combating terrorism, preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), protecting the safety of overseas US citizens, etc. Among all these foreign wars, only one was waged as a counterattack in response to a direct terrorist attack on the United States; the others were waged in a situation where the vital interests of the United States were not directly affected. Unfortunately, even this singular "justifiable counterattack" was obviously an excessive display of defense. Under the banner of eliminating the threat of al-Qaeda, the US military wantonly expanded the scope of the attack in the anti-terrorism war in accordance with the principle "better to kill by mistake than to miss out by accident", resulting in a large number of civilian causalities in the war-affected areas, and despite using the relatively accurate drone strikes, the US military still did not succeed in reducing and mitigating the causalities of the innocent local people.

As for the procedures followed by the United States to start aggressive wars against foreign countries, some were "legitimate procedures" that the United States managed to obtain by manipulating the UN into authorizing them through the Security Council; more often, the United States just set the Security Council aside and neglected the opposition of other countries, and even the opposition of its own allies, when willfully and arbitrarily launching an attack on an independent country. Some US foreign wars were initiated without the approval of the US Congress, which has the sole power to declare war for the country.

US foreign wars have triggered various regional and international crises.

First of all, these wars have directly led to humanitarian disasters in the war-affected countries, such as personnel casualties, damage to facilities, production stagnation, and especially unnecessary civilian casualties. In the war-affected areas, people died in their homes, markets, and streets, they were killed by bombs, bullets, improvised explosive devices, and drones, and they lost their lives during airstrikes launched by US forces, raids launched by their government forces, terrorist and extremist massacres, and domestic riots. In November 2018, Brown University released a research study that showed that the number of civilian deaths during the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen were 43,074; 23,924; 184,382 to 207,156; 49,591; and 12,000 respectively, the number of journalists and media personnel who died at their posts during these wars, were 67; 8; 277; 75; and 31 respectively, and the number of humanitarian relief workers who were killed at their posts during these wars were 424; 97; 63; 185; and 38 respectively. Such casualties are often understated by the US government. The Intercept website reported on November 19, 2018, that the actual civilian deaths in Iraq were far higher than the number officially released by the US military.

Second, US foreign wars brought about a series of complex social problems, such as refugee waves, social unrest, ecological crises, psychological traumas, etc. Statistics show that each of the several recent US foreign wars created a larger number of refugees, such as the 11 million Afghan refugees, the 380,000 Pakistani refugees, the 3.25 million Iraqi refugees, and the 12.59 million Syrian refugees; these refugees have been forced to flee from their homes, of which 1.3 million Afghan refugees have fled to Pakistan, 900,000 Afghan refugees arrived in Iran, 3.5 million Iraqi and Syrian refugees fled to Turkey, and one million Iraqi and Syrian refugees fled to Iran. In Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, the deaths and injuries caused by the lack of medical treatment, malnutrition, and environmental pollution have exceeded the casualties directly caused by the wars, with the former number being four times greater than the latter. The uranium content per kilogram of soil in Basra, Iraq, rose sharply from less than 70 becquerels before 1991 to 10,000 becquerels in 2009, and the number was as high as 36,205 becquerels in the areas polluted by war remnants. The website of the British newspaper The Guardian reported on August 22, 2016, that 30 percent of the babies born in Iraq in 2010 were born with some form of congenital anomaly, while this figure is around two to four percent under normal circumstances.

Third, US foreign wars have often produced spillover effects, causing harm to the countries that were not involved in the wars. For example, in the Vietnam War, the US military spread the fighting to neighboring countries such as Cambodia and Laos on the excuse of blocking the "Ho Chi Minh Trail" (a military supply route running from North Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia to South Vietnam), resulting in more than 500,000 unnecessary civilian casualties and leaving a large number of war remnants in those countries, which are still explosive. When attacking terrorists in the Afghanistan War, the US aircraft and drones often dropped bombs on neighboring Pakistani villages, and even on wedding cars and Pakistani border guard soldiers. In an airstrike on Yugoslavia, the US forces even targeted the Chinese embassy, leading to the deaths of three Chinese journalists and the injuries of a dozen embassy personnel.

Last but not least, even the United States itself has fallen victim to the foreign wars it has started. According to statistics from the US Department of Veterans Affairs, there were 103,284 US soldiers who suffered physical injuries during the Korean War, and the number reached 153,303 for the Vietnam War. Between 2001 and 2005, about one-third of the 103,788 veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were diagnosed with mental or psychological illness, and 56 percent of those diagnosed had more than one disease. A study by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), which works exclusively for the United States Congress, pointed out that more than 6,000 veterans committed suicide every year from 2008 to 2016. The amount of economic compensation offered by the US military to the Korean War veterans reaches 2.8 billion US dollars per year, and the amount given to the Vietnam War veterans and their families is more than 22 billion US dollars per year. The cost of medical and disability care for the Afghanistan War veterans has exceeded 170 billion US dollars. Business Insider, a US business and technology news website, reported in December 2019 that the Afghanistan war has led to the deaths of more than 3,800 US contractors, and this number far exceeds the relevant statistical result released by the US government and even the US military deaths in Afghanistan.

3. The Major Cause of the Above-Mentioned Humanitarian Crises: The United States' Hegemonic Mentality

When reviewing the many aggressive wars launched by the United States, it can be seen that many of these military actions have led to humanitarian crises. In Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and other countries where wars are still ongoing, accidental bombings and injuries still frequently occur, and refugees have nowhere to stay. The infrastructure of these countries is crippled, and their national production is stagnant. The United States launched these foreign wars under the pretext of "humanitarian intervention" or "human rights overriding sovereignty", but why did these wars fought for humanitarian purposes turn into humanitarian disasters in the end?

In April 2011, the US-based magazine Foreign Policy summarized five reasons for the frequent foreign wars waged by the United States, such as the military advantages of the United States making it hard to resist the temptation to resort to force, and the checks and balances mechanism within the United States failing to play an effective role, while excluding any reason related to the values of the United States. "To safeguard human rights" was not a clear driving force for US foreign wars and that waging foreign wars was only a means to an end, although such an act did not exclude a sense of morality. The United States may feel an impulse to start a foreign war as long as it is considered necessary, believed to be in its own favor, and within its ability, while a sense of morality is not a sufficient or necessary condition to initiate such a war; and as for the terrible humanitarian disasters caused by these foreign wars, they will be borne by others instead of directly harming US citizens and preventing the United States from reaching its goals. Choosing to use force irrespective of the consequences reveals the hegemonic aspirations of the United States, which propel the United States to prioritize itself, demonstrate its "winner-take-all" mentality, and expose its unilateralist ideas of dominating the world and wantonly doing injustice to other countries.

US politicians claim that they respect "universal values", but do they agree that their own natural human rights are also natural for other people in the world?

The United States has formulated laws to ensure equality among all its ethnic groups within the country, but does it really believe that people of other countries should enjoy the same rights? Or, does it think that it can act wantonly in foreign countries just because the people there do not have a vote in US elections?

The United States believes that terrorist attacks targeting civilians within its territory are despicable and punishable, then what makes it accept that the incidents created by the US military in other countries, which have led to a large number of civilian deaths and injuries, are acceptable and even "necessary"?

When they adopt the principle "better to kill by mistake than to miss out by accident", when they arbitrarily use radioactive weapons and destroy all vegetation with toxic reagents, and when they open fire before clearly identifying the targets, do the US forces still respect the "natural" human rights treasured by the values of the United States?

The civilians who were unable to flee their war-affected areas and were treated as terrorists and shot at randomly did not have any human rights. The children who have been disabled at birth by the chemical weapons of the US forces and will suffer for the rest of their lives do not have any human rights. The refugees who have been forced to flee their homes and become homeless in other countries because of the US foreign wars do not have any human rights.

In the final analysis, the mindset of solving disputes by taking unilateral military actions is questionable. Given the inherent antagonism between humanitarianism and hegemony, it is ridiculous to expect a hegemonic country to defend the human rights of other countries. International disputes shall be settled through equal consultations within the framework of the United Nations. Coordinated efforts shall be actualized by regulating and improving international mechanisms and by establishing a community with a shared future for mankind. Only by discarding the hegemonic thinking, which is chiefly motivated by self-interest, can we prevent "humanitarian intervention" from becoming humanitarian disasters. Only in this way can we achieve mutual benefits and win-win results and can all the people across the globe truly enjoy natural human rights.

Appendix:

1. List of Civilian Casualties, Refugees, and Economic Losses Caused by Major Wars of Aggression Waged by the United States after the End of World War II

The Korean War: about 3 million civilian deaths and 3 million refugees;

The Vietnam War: about 2 million civilian deaths, 3 million refugees, and 3 million victims of defoliants;

The Airstrike on Libya: about 700 military and civilian deaths;

Invasion of Panama: about 302 civilian deaths and 3,000 civilian injuries;

The Armed Intervention in Somalia: about 200 civilian deaths and 300 civilian injuries;

The Gulf War: about 120,000 war-related civilian deaths and 2 million sanction-related civilian deaths, and economic losses amounting to 600 billion US dollars;

The Kosovo War: more than 2,000 deaths and 6,000 injuries, and economic losses amounting to 200 billion US dollars;

The Afghanistan War: more than 30,000 civilian deaths, 70,000 civilian injuries, and 11 million refugees;

The Iraq War: about 200,000–250,000 civilian deaths and 3.25 million refugees;

The Syrian War: more than 40,000 civilian deaths and 12.59 million refugees.

2. List of Wars of Aggression Waged by the United States and the US Interventions in Foreign Countries after the End of World War II

1947–1949: intervening in the Greek civil war

1947–1970: intervening in Italy's elections and supporting anti-communism activities

1948: supporting the anti-government forces in Costa Rica's civil war

1949–1953: supporting anti-communism activities in Albania

1949: intervening in the government change in Syria

1950–1953: waging the Korean War

1952: intervening in the Egyptian Revolution of 1952

1953: supporting a coup in Iran to overthrow the then Iranian government

1954: supporting the change of the then Guatemalan government

1956–1957: plotting a coup in Syria

1957–1959: supporting a coup in Indonesia

1958: creating a crisis in Lebanon

1960–1961: supporting a coup in the Congo

1960: stopping the government of Laos from starting a reform

1961: supporting the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba

1961–1975: supporting civil war and opium trade in Laos

1961–1964: supporting anti-government activities in Brazil

1963: supporting civil strife in Iraq

1963: supporting riots in Ecuador

1963–1975: fighting the Vietnam War

1964: intervening in the Simba rebellion in the Congo

1965–1966: intervening in Dominica's civil war

1965–1967: supporting the Indonesian military government’s massacre of communists

1966: supporting an insurgency in Ghana

1966–1969: creating conflicts in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), which is a region on the Korean peninsula that demarcates North Korea from South Korea

1966–1967: supporting an insurgency in Bolivia

1967: intervening in the change of the Greek government

1967–1975: intervening in Cambodia's civil war

1970: intervening in Oman's domestic affairs

1970–1973: supporting a military coup in Chile

1970–1973: supporting a coup in Cambodia

1971: supporting a coup in Bolivia

1972–1975: offering assistance to anti-government forces in Iraq

1976: supporting a coup in Argentina

1976–1992: intervening in Angola's domestic affairs

1977–1988: supporting a coup in Pakistan

1979–1993: supporting anti-government forces in Cambodia

1979–1989: intervening in the war in Afghanistan

1980–1989: financing the anti-government Solidarity trade union in Poland

1980–1992: intervening in El Salvador's civil war

1981: confronting Libya in Gulf of Sidra

1981–1982: pushing the change of the then Chadian government

1982–1984: participating in a multilateral intervention in Lebanon

1982–1989: supporting anti-government forces in Nicaragua

1983: invading Grenada

1986: invading Gulf of Sidra, Libya

1986: bombing Libya

1988: shooting down an Iranian airliner

1988: sending troops to Honduras

1989: confronting Libya in Tobruk

1989: intervening in the Philippines' domestic affairs

1989–1990: invading Panama

1990–1991: waging the Gulf War

1991: intervening in Haiti's elections

1991–2003: leading the enforcement action to establish a no-fly zone in Iraq

1992–1995: intervening in Somalia's civil war for the first time

1992–1995: intervening in the Bosnian War

1994–1995: sending troops to Haiti

1996: supporting a coup in Iraq

1997: sending troops to Albania

1997: sending troops to Sierra Leone

1998–1999: waging the Kosovo War

1998: launching cruise missile attacks on Sudan and Afghanistan

1998–1999: sending troops to Kenya and Tanzania

2001–present: waging the Afghanistan War

2002: sending troops to Côte d'Ivoire

2003–2011: waging the Iraq War

2004–now: inciting wars between Pakistan and Afghanistan in their contiguous areas

2006–2007: supporting Fatah, a Palestinian political and military organization, in overthrowing the elected government of Hamas

2007–present: intervening in Somalia's civil war for the second time

2009: supporting a coup in Honduras

2011: supporting anti-government forces in Libya

2011–2017: carrying out military operations in Uganda

2014–present: leading the intervention actions in Iraq

2014–present: leading the intervention actions in Syria

2015–now: supporting Saudi Arabia's participation in Yemen's civil war

2019: supporting the change of the Venezuelan government

23 notes · View notes

midnightactual · 3 years

Text

Yoruichi, Kūkaku, Kisuke and the Soul Society Arc

The relationship between Yoruichi, Kūkaku, and Kisuke isn’t explored much at all in canon, despite the fact we’re expected to take away that they’re friends (if not best friends). However, I think this relationship explains a lot of what happens within the early Soul Society arc. We know from chapter 175 that:

Aizen states he knew the Ryoka would be coming from West Rukongai. Why? Well, the only reasonable answer is Kūkaku. While it seems extremely evident that Yoruichi can enter Soul Society undetected in her cat form, using the Senkaimon, and has done so to remodel the Study Chamber’s annex, her going back and forth constantly is likely undesirable, and also probably didn’t happen, as chapter 78 indicates:

Kūkaku’s repeated emphasis of it having been a long time since she and Yoruichi have met suggests they haven’t done so since she went into exile. This is corroborated by the implication that Yoruichi does not know Ganju:

Her reaction to him introducing himself is the same as everyone else’s. You might say this is just a comedy moment, but think about it. How many people are there in Rukongai named Ganju? How many of them know some kind of strange earth magic? Yoruichi did not attach any importance to Ganju’s appearance in chapter 76 and 77, regarding him as a waste of time... when she’d literally just determined to find Kūkaku. If she knew Ganju was a Shiba and they already wanted to find Kūkaku, the sensible thing would’ve been to demand Ganju take them to her, not wander around using a map the next day. We also know from chapter 83 that:

Ganju was just a child when Kaien died, which happened sometime after 1952. (We know Hisana died “50 years ago” in 1951, Byakuya found Rukia the next year and brought her into the Gotei 13, and Rukia presumably spent at least a few years with Kaien.) This makes it likely (though by no means guaranteed, given the example of Nanao, but Ganju describes himself as “just a child” which Nanao likely wouldn’t have) that he was born after Yoruichi’s departure in 1901. They are likely to have never met before. (This also implies that Kaien, Kūkaku, and Ganju’s parents were alive until very recently, or may still be!)

So we can say 1. Yoruichi has been back to Soul Society and set up the the Study Chamber as a supply depot, and 2. she has likely not interacted with Kūkaku since leaving initially. Why the second? Well, pretty obviously, because meeting with Kūkaku would put her at risk and make things rather obvious. So, what does this have to do with Aizen? Well, that touches on another mystery: how does Kisuke get products from Soul Society?

We know from chapter 70 that Kisuke cannot go through his own Senkaimon. It follows that the same is true of Tessai. We know Yoruichi can as a cat, but likely can’t in her proper form. (Since she also comes back from Soul Society as a cat too, which is her last canonical use of the form.) We also know Kisuke’s Senkaimon can only stay open for four minutes:

We also know that transit through the Senkaimon is perilous. So, does it make much sense that Yoruichi run through the Dangai as a cat, hauling potentially heavy cargo which might get snared in the restrictive current and lost? Nope, especially when it’s likely that Yoruichi is not often at the Shōten (as Ururu and Jinta don’t know her and they’ve likely grown like normal humans). So what is the solution then?

Kisuke opens his Senkaimon above Kūkaku’s Flower Crane Cannon and she fires cargo shells through it containing his required items. Aizen noticed this and deduced how they were operating.

Kisuke’s Senkaimon opens in the air for some reason, almost as though to accommodate the height of the cannon:

Kūkaku launches crew with Method Two and the jolt isn’t so bad. (What’s Method One for then?)

The projectiles can also make sharp turns and accelerate after launch with no visible propulsion:

So, this presents a very obvious method of safely and securely getting cargo through the Dangai without risk to anyone. It is, however, conspicuous, and it also requires a method of communication.

Kūkaku moves around a lot, but appears to stick to West Rukongai. There may be some association between the Shiba and West Rukongai (as CFYOW tells us the Shiba lived in Rukongai even when they were a Great Noble Clan) which results in Kūkaku having an association with Jidanbō, which lets her easily enter the Seireitei even when she shouldn’t be able to (per CFYOW), or maybe she stays in West Rukongai for easy access to the Seireitei through him. Maybe both.

(We never hear what Yoruichi’s original plan for infiltrating the Seireitei was, but it appears to not have involved Kūkaku. My personal bet is that the canals under the Seireitei that 4th Division use empty out somewhere, as the water has to go someplace, and Hanatarō is wrong that only 4th Division knows them: it would make perfect sense that the Onmitsukidō know them too. But that’s a different piece of meta.)

It’s also very evident that Ichigo’s use of the Spirit Core in chapter 81 is what tips off Aizen that they’re coming. His use of it is extremely obvious, with Kūkaku noticing his reiatsu from the surface:

This flare is probably similar in output to the one he emits in chapter 116, which Jūshirō says could “only belong to a Captain”, making it likely readily obvious to Aizen’s surveillance (and Kūkaku also seems very surprised at the magnitude of it). Right after Ichigo stops using the Spirit Core, an intruder alert interrupts the meeting Yamamoto is holding to discuss Gin’s punishment, and all the Shinigami are kept up all night patrolling even though the Ryoka will not actually arrive until the next morning. This was very clearly orchestrated by Aizen, from within Central 46, in order to tire out and agitate the Gotei 13 so the Ryoka would be more successful at evading capture.

(This also means that the Aizen who attended the meeting, who Tōshirō saw exchange words with Gin, was not actually Aizen. That Aizen notably sweatdrops beforehand and behaves rather weirdly during the meeting and alert. It’s Substitute-san, nervous that the show’s started, delivering rehearsed lines with Gin. Probably a different guy than the one in TBTP since this once is much better at acting. Whatever happened to him anyway?)

In other words, Aizen observed that Kisuke’s Senkaimon only operated in West Rukongai (although his assertion that it only can operate there seems to be conjecture) and posted surveillance which detected Ichigo’s reiatsu emission, thus cluing him into the Ryoka preparing to move, just as he said.

That this pattern had long ago been made was probably predictable from Kisuke’s end, and he likely deliberately played into it to encourage Aizen’s arrogance, leaving Yoruichi to improvise on the ground.

As for how Yoruichi or Kisuke could communicate with Kūkaku during this time so as to place orders for equipment without visiting her, that’s a little more complicated. It’s obviously impossible to establish a hardline connection, and any kind of emitted signaling could be intercepted. Kisuke can’t run messages through his Senkaimon without sending someone on a perilous journey or building his own launching device. But there is an easy, expedient, covert, and disposable system: couriers.

There are plenty of souls left wandering around by Shinigami on Earth: you simply give them an encoded message and tell them to find Kūkaku once they arrive in Rukongai. While where they’re sent is random, if you do this a fair number of times, one of them should be able to make it to her. (Their reward is that given she always seems to live near the Seireitei, they wind up in a pretty safe district.) As for how Kūkaku would decode such a message, a cipher could’ve been left by Yoruichi as a dead drop during one of her rare visits.

If you wanted a darker but more “express” option, you would find someone fairly tough and violent (say, Yakuza enforcers), use a memory replacer to give them a memory of the message (it seems likely that Kisuke has iterated on the standard Gotei 13 Kikanshinki, given Yoruichi mentions a Kikanshinki Deluxe in CFYOW), and then kill them and give them soul burial. Such individuals would be far more likely to survive making it to Kūkaku regardless of where they were sent. (Depending on what they were guilty of, you could encode that into the message too and let her deal with them as she might.)

Anyway, I think it’s very obvious that Kūkaku is Yoruichi and Kisuke’s main point of contact in Soul Society. Jūshirō may also be involved, given his interest in Earth (vis-à-vis Ginjō and the Fullbringers) and how unlikely it is that nobody in the 13th Division ever noticed Kisuke, an infamous criminal (both Isshin and Ikkaku immediately recognized his name), was operating openly in Karakura. Indeed, Jūshirō may be directly involved. When the Ryoka are coming down over the Seireitei, we see that it has a radial design:

The four gates create four quadrants, each of which is divided into three. This makes for twelve slices. We know 1st Division occupies the center, so the most obvious orientation for the divisions’ physical territory is that each is simply a slice. If that’s the case, it is entirely possible that 13th Division is one of the two slices along the road coming from the West Gate, which would make it very easy for Kūkaku or her retainers to reach the Study Chamber at Sōkyoku Hill, gather supplies, and leave, or to augment them directly from 13th Division’s stocks.

#Out Of Character #Long Post #Meta #Headcanons

25 notes · View notes

yyh4ever · 3 years

Text

Togashi's Comments from the Table of Contents (1990-1994)

WSJ #15 to WSJ #24 (1992)

Volume 8: Chapters 64 to 72

ᐊ Volume 7: Chapters 56 to 63 Volume 9: Chapters 73 to 81 ᐅ

1992

➤ Weekly Shounen Jump N°15 (March 30, 1992)

★ Chapter 64. "Open Your Eyes!!" (目を覚ませ！！, Me o Samase!!)

*This issue also comes with a Yusuke telephone card*

Table of Contents:

"Aah!! It's an UFO. The moment I thought so, I was already running in the direction of that light. (to be continued)" - Yoshihiro

🇯🇵 あっ！！UFOだ。そう思った瞬間、俺はその光の去った方向にかけ出していた（続く）〈義博〉

➤ Weekly Shounen Jump N°16 (April 6, 1992)

★ Chapter 65. "One vs. Three!!" (１対３！！, Ichi Tai San!!)

Table of Contents:

"(Continued from last week) There's one alien from the UFO that landed in the forest. Yeek, I was found!! (to be continued)" - Yoshihiro

🇯🇵 『先週の続き』森に着陸したUFOから宇宙人がひとり。やばい、見つかった！！『続く』〈義博〉

➤ Weekly Shounen Jump N°17 (April 13, 1992)

★ Chapter 66. "The Shadow Channelers Take Center Stage!!" (魔性使いT登場！！, Mashō-zukai Chīmu Tōjō!!)

Table of Contents:

"'Togashi-kun, right?' - The alien said in Japanese. 'I'm Alien N. I have a request for you.' (continues in the next issue)" - Yoshihiro

🇯🇵 「冨樫君だね？」宇宙人は日本語で言った。「私はN星人。君に頼みがある。」以下次号〈義博〉

➤ Weekly Shounen Jump N°18 (April 20, 1992)

★ Chapter 67. "Gama: Ritual Body Art Master!!" (化粧使い・画魔！！, Keshō-zukai - Gama!!)

Table of Contents:

"Actually, I'm a fan of japanese manga. I want you to turn my idea into a manga. The hero is called Yusuke..." (End) - Yoshihiro

🇯🇵 実は日本の漫画のFでね。私の案を漫画にして欲しい。ヒーローは幽助といって…。＜完＞〈義博〉

➤ Weekly Shounen Jump N°19 (April 27, 1992)

★ Chapter 68. "Toya: Ice Master!!" (呪氷使い・凍矢！！, Juhyō-zukai - Tōya!!)

Table of Contents:

"After staying up for 40 hours, I slept for 18 hours. Ignoring the alarm clock, I slept like a log. I'm getting old." - Yoshihiro

🇯🇵 40時間起きっぱなしの後。18時間も寝てしまった。目覚し無視の爆睡ぶり。年ですな。〈義博〉

➤ Weekly Shounen Jump N°20 (May 4, 1992)

★ Chapter 69 (Colored). "A Battle All Alone" (ひとりきりの戦い, Hitori kiri no Tatakai)

*Part-color chapter with the lead pages in full color. Opening page says:

"Get out, get out of the way. Yusuke is coming through!"

They were also announcing: "volumes 1-5 now on sale".*

Table of Contents:

"Ms. Okamoto's dynamic answer from HEY! SAY! A BOARD OF EDUCATION was amazing. I'm more impressed than the correct answer." - Yoshihiro

🇯🇵 平成教育委員会の岡本さんのダイナミックな回答がすごい。正解以上に感心します。〈義博〉

T/N: "HEY! SAY! A BOARD OF EDUCATION" was an educational quiz variety program broadcast several times a year on Fuji TV from 1991 to 1997. Entertainer, race queen and gravure idol - Natsuki Okamoto - was a regular guest of the show who caught the viewers’ attention due to her unusual answers.

➤ Weekly Shounen Jump N°21・22 (May 18, 1992)

★ Chapter 70. "Fist of Rage!!" (一閃！怒りの拳！！, Issen! Ikari no Kobushi!!)

Table of Contents:

"We have savings for the first time in 700 days!! We're alone in 2nd place!! By the time this issue goes on sale, the magic will be lit up to win the championship! Long live the Hanshin." - Yoshihiro

🇯🇵 700日ぶりの貯金だ！！単独2位だ！！この号が発売される頃には優勝マジック点灯だ！！阪神万歳〈義博〉

T/N: Japanese Baseball terms:

- "Savings" (chokin): Accumulated surplus of wins; the number of wins exceeds the number of losses. Refers to the number of games a team is above the .500 mark.

- "Alone in 2nd place": the only 2nd place team that is not tied with other teams.

- "Magic (number) lights up": the magic number is a metric used to determine how close a team is to making the playoffs or winning the division. A team's magic number represents the combination of wins needed by that team and losses by its closest competitor to clinch a given goal. When your Magic Number hits zero, you've clinched the division. Called just "magic" in Japan, this value is used only when all other teams have lost the possibility of winning the championship on their own. The magic number is said to be "lit up" by the Japanese when this condition is met, and it is used as a way for the team to win. It’s fairly complicated calculation method, I'm not the best person to explain it, so please, if you’re interested, google for more info and real examples.

Hanshin failed to win the championship in 1992, it was won by the Yakult Swallows.

➤ Weekly Shounen Jump N°23 (May 25, 1992)

★ Chapter 71. "A Dangerous Gamble!!" (やばいカケ！！, Yabai Kake!!)

Table of Contents:

"The sixth volume of Yu Yu Hakusho will be released on June 10th! Let's all run to the bookstore!" - Yoshihiro

🇯🇵 『幽遊白書』の最新単行本第6巻は6月10日に発売！みんな本屋さんに走ろう！〈義博〉

➤ Weekly Shounen Jump N°24 (June 1, 1992)

★ Chapter 72. "Surpass the Reigun!!" (霊丸を越えろ！！, Reigan o Koero!!)

Table of Contents:

"Once I started bowling with my left hand by an accidental mischief, I had mixed feelings. I have more potential on this side." - Yoshihiro

🇯🇵 ふとしたいたずらで左手がウリングを始めたら、こっちの方が筋がいい複雑な気分。〈義博〉

*On October 2, 1992, Volume 8 (Chapters 64 to 72) was published!*

▼ Togashi's comment from the dust jacket of volume 8. Translation by VIZ Media.

ᐊ Volume 7: Chapters 56 to 63 Volume 9: Chapters 73 to 81 ᐅ

#weekly shounen jump #table of contents #yoshihiro togashi #yu yu hakusho #volume 8 #chapters 64-72 #WSJ 15 to WSJ 24 (1992)

21 notes · View notes

somethingusefulfromflorida · 4 years

Text

If John F. Kennedy had not been assassinated, how long would he have lived for?

His father Joseph P. Kennedy lived to be 81, and his mother Rose Fitzgerald lived to be 104. Of his siblings who died of natural causes, Rosemary lived to be 86, Eunice 88, Patricia 82, Jean 92, and Ted 77.

JFK was chronically unhealthy, so he would probably skew low compared to his siblings. He was born in 1917, so he probably would have died in the mid-90s at the earliest. Can you imagine the Democratic Party if Kennedy were alive through the 70s and 80s? He would have been our Reagan, idolized even more as an elder statesman than he is as a martyr.

If he had survived his assassination, he almost certainly would have won re-election in 1964, would have passed the Civil Rights Bill and fought for de-segregation like LBJ did. Nixon probably would not have been elected president if Kennedy lived, either Kennedy, Jack or Bobby. He ran against JFK in 1960 and lost, then ran for governor of California in 1962 and lost again; at the time, California was a Republican stronghold, so it was a big deal that he lost in his own home state. Following that humiliating defeat, he threw a hissy fit, declaring that the media was the enemy of the people and threatening to leave politics altogether, “this is my final press conference, you vultures won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore!” Everyone thought his political career was ruined, but he managed to drag himself out of the hole he dug and back to the limelight by being a more appealing candidate in 1968 than Barry Goldwater had been in 1964. If JFK was still alive in 1968, the media would never stop comparing Nixon to him, and he would have been laughed out of the primaries.

It’s also important to realize that he only became president with 43% of the vote. Segregationist George Wallace ran a frighteningly successful third party campaign as a Dixiecrat (a conservative southern democrat, as opposed to the rising liberal wing from up north), receiving 14% of the vote and winning 5 states. If Kennedy had survived, his anti-segregationist policies would have made it impossible for Wallace to get any traction, so Nixon would have lost in 1968 anyway. Nixon and his main opponent Hubert Humphrey both got 31 million votes, but without Wallace running as a spoiler, Humphrey would have received a huge bump in both the popular an electoral college votes, almost certainly winning the presidency, though it’s uncertain if he would still have become the nominee in this version of 1968; he was LBJ’s Vice President, but if LBJ never became president, then Humphrey would have remained a Senator.

Maybe LBJ would have run in 1968, which would have hurt Wallace’s chances even more, as Johnson was a very popular southern Democrat. Johnson and Kennedy were not friends, there are rumors that Johnson blackmailed his way onto the 1960 ticket, and Kennedy’s secretary claimed years after he died that he would have replaced Johnson on the 1964 ticket with someone else, so I don’t know if a surviving incumbent Kennedy would have endorsed him in 1968. I’s likely that Kennedy would have endorsed his younger brother and Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, who would probably have survived his own assassination attempt just due to the butterfly effect; Sirhan Sirhan shot him for his support of Israel and the engagement of US troops in Palestine, but also because he was JFK’s brother. Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK for being anti-communist, which was also part of Sirhan’s motives in killing RFK. If JFK was never killed, the idea of political assassinations wouldn’t be as strong in the cultural zeitgeist, meaning it’s likely that Martin Luther King Jr and Bobby Kennedy both would have survived. MLK might have entered politics like AL Sharpton and John Lewis. Bobby would have run for president in 1968 or 1972.

The Democratic party was basically leaderless in our 1970s. Nixon won re-election in a landslide in 1972, and Jimmy Carter just barely eked by against Ford in 1976 because Ford lost all credibility when he pardoned Nixon for Watergate. If Kennedy assumed a leadership role in the 70s, it would have pushed the Democratic party into a much strong position going into the 80s. Ronald Reagan would have run earlier in this timeline; he was elected governor of California in 1966 and ran for president in 68, 72, and 76 before finally winning his party’s nomination in 80. Without Nixon and Ford, Regan would probably have run in 72 or 76, which means he would be the one who dealt with the Iranian Revolution, Oil Crisis, and Hostage Crisis, nuking his popularity and throwing a wrench in his economic plans, meaning he would be reviled rather than revered by the country. If Kennedy survived, there would be no Nixon, and a very different Reagan, meaning the entire last quarter of the 20th century would have gone differently,

How would the Cold War have ended if there was no belligerent Reagan followed by diplomatic Bush? Would Mikhail Gorbachev ever have come to power in the Soviet Union? He was chosen as the new leader in part because he was so young; his three direct predecessors had all died in office (Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko, the last two having only served about a year each). I can’t even picture the Soviet Union without Gorbachev. Kennedy wanted peace and conciliatory talks with Khrushchev, so perhaps relations would have normalized and the fight between capitalism and communism would have ended diplomatically instead of at the brink of war. Maybe the Berlin Wall would have fallen earlier, the Vietnam War could have been avoided or else won by the south, and the international space station would have gone up in the 80s instead of the 90s. With enough Gorbachev-esque reforms, the USSR might still exist today, in much the same way that the PRC still exists (China is capitalist in all but name, they only claim to be communist to “uphold the revolution”). Of course, without Gorbachev, such reforms would have been unlikely; Glasnost and Perestroika were overly ambitious, and his repeal of the Brezhnev Doctrine directly led to the fall of the Iron Curtain and the rise of democracy in Eastern Europe.

From Kennedy to Obama, the Democrats only elected southerners, so it’s likely that if Kennedy had survived the northern progressive faction would have been in a much stronger position in the 80s and 90s, meaning no Bill Clinton, which means no Republican Revolution under Newt Gingrich. Reagan still influences the GOP to this day, and he disappeared from the public eye immediately after leaving office because he brain was turning to mush. Imagine if the Democrats had a Regan-like figure to hold up, to model themselves after. Democrats are listless and leaderless, they’re not blindly loyal to whoever is in charge, so it would be a difficult sell to get them to all rally behind someone as divisive as Kennedy (because he WAS divisive; southerners HATED him, he only held the south because he had LBJ on his ticket), but were it to happen it would change the course of not just American history but world history over the last 60 years for the better.

31 notes · View notes