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odinsblog · 8 months

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Israel’s campaign to displace Gazans—and potentially expel them altogether into Egypt—is yet another chapter in the Nakba, in which an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes during the 1948 war that led to the creation of the State of Israel. But the assault on Gaza can also be understood in other terms: as a textbook case of genocide unfolding in front of our eyes. I say this as a scholar of genocide, who has spent many years writing about Israeli mass violence against Palestinians. I have written about settler colonialism and Jewish supremacy in Israel, the distortion of the Holocaust to boost the Israeli arms industry, the weaponization of antisemitism accusations to justify Israeli violence against Palestinians, and the racist regime of Israeli apartheid. Now, following Hamas’s attack on Saturday and the mass murder of more than 1,000 Israeli civilians, the worst of the worst is happening.

Under international law, the crime of genocide is defined by “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such,” as noted in the December 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. In its murderous attack on Gaza, Israel has loudly proclaimed this intent. Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant declared it in no uncertain terms on October 9th: “We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we will act accordingly.” Leaders in the West reinforced this racist rhetoric by describing Hamas’s mass murder of Israeli civilians—a war crime under international law that rightly provoked horror and shock in Israel and around the world—as “an act of sheer evil,” in the words of US President Joe Biden, or as a move that reflected an “ancient evil,” in the terminology of President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen. This dehumanizing language is clearly calculated to justify the wide scale destruction of Palestinian lives; the assertion of “evil,” in its absolutism, elides distinctions between Hamas militants and Gazan civilians, and occludes the broader context of colonization and occupation.

The UN Genocide Convention lists five acts that fall under its definition. Israel is currently perpetrating three of these in Gaza: “1. Killing members of the group. 2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. 3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” The Israeli Air Force, by its own account, has so far dropped more than 6,000 bombs on Gaza, which is one of the most densely populated areas in the world—almost as many bombs as the US dropped on all of Afghanistan during record-breaking years of its war there. Human Rights Watch has confirmed that the weapons used included phosphorous bombs, which set fire to bodies and buildings, creating flames that aren’t extinguished on contact with water. This demonstrates clearly what Gallant means by “act accordingly”: not targeting individual Hamas militants, as Israel claims, but unleashing deadly violence against Palestinians in Gaza “as such,” in the language of the UN Genocide Convention. Israel has also intensified its 16-year siege of Gaza—the longest in modern history, in clear violation of international humanitarian law—to a “complete siege,” in Gallant’s words. This turn of phrase that explicitly indexes a plan to bring the siege to its final destination of systematic destruction of Palestinians and Palestinian society in Gaza, by killing them, starving them, cutting off their water supplies, and bombing their hospitals.

It’s not only Israel’s leaders who are using such language. An interviewee on the pro-Netanyahu Channel 14 called for Israel to “turn Gaza to Dresden.” Channel 12, Israel’s most-watched news station, published a report about left-leaning Israelis calling to “dance on what used to be Gaza.” Meanwhile, genocidal verbs—calls to “erase” and “flatten” Gaza—have become omnipresent on Israeli social media. In Tel Aviv, a banner reading “Zero Gazans” was seen hanging from a bridge.

—RAZ SEGAL, associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University and the endowed professor in the study of modern genocide.

#politics #raz segal #palestine #gaza #israel #🇵🇸#genocide #war crimes #ethnic cleansing

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knuckle · 10 months

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This is the article Melissa Barrera was fired from Scream for sharing - by Israeli Genocide Scholar Raz Segal

October 13, 2023

On Friday, Israel ordered the besieged population in the northern half of the Gaza Strip to evacuate to the south, warning that it would soon intensify its attack on the Strip’s upper half. The order has left more than a million people, half of whom are children, frantically attempting to flee amid continuing airstrikes, in a walled enclave where no destination is safe. As Palestinian journalist Ruwaida Kamal Amer wrote today from Gaza, “refugees from the north are already arriving in Khan Younis, where the missiles never stop and we’re running out of food, water, and power.” The UN has warned that the flight of people from the northern part of Gaza to the south will create “devastating humanitarian consequences” and will “transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation.” Over the last week, Israel’s violence against Gaza has killed more than 1,800 Palestinians, injured thousands, and displaced more than 400,000 within the strip. And yet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised today that what we have seen is “only the beginning.”

Indeed, Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza is quite explicit, open, and unashamed. Perpetrators of genocide usually do not express their intentions so clearly, though there are exceptions. In the early 20th century, for example, German colonial occupiers perpetrated a genocide in response to an uprising by the Indigenous Herero and Nama populations in southwest Africa. In 1904, General Lothar von Trotha, the German military commander, issued an “extermination order,” justified by the rationale of a “race war.” By 1908, the German authorities had murdered 10,000 Nama, and had achieved their stated goal of “destroying the Herero,” killing 65,000 Herero, 80% of the population. Gallant’s orders on October 9th were no less explicit. Israel’s goal is to destroy the Palestinians of Gaza. And those of us watching around the world are derelict in our responsibility to prevent them from doing so.

#Palestine #Melissa Barrera #Raz Segal #Scream #jenna ortega #gaza #genocide

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dresden-syndrome · 1 year

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Tell us a bit about your original whumpy world! What is it like?

-- @whumperofworlds

✨Thank you for asking!! Sorry for the long response, I really appreciate your curiosity!🥰

❇️After Germany lost the WW2, it was split to four occupation zones, with three of them governed by countries of the West and the fourth given to the USSR. The country spent a few years in poverty and uncertainty while the victorious superpower nations argued over its future, until in October 1949 the fate of Germany's Soviet part was sealed.

✳️Using their political powers and status, the USSR made it into a communist satellite state - German Democratic Republic. From that point, the alternative history timeline begins.

❇️The Soviets promoted their chosen candidate, Klaus Weninger, to rule the newly found state. Being an orthodox Soviet Marxist-Leninist with a tyrannical side, Weninger proudly considered himself "Comrade Stalin's first disciple", determined to rebuild East Germany by the Soviet dictator's views.

✳️As more Eastern European states started turning Communist by that time, he decided to take matter in his own hands. Suffering from USSR's pressure, these states were more eager to unite on European lands rather than stay under Kremlin's direct control. With Stalin's approval, Weninger's party began the unification process, and by the end of 1950 six countries formed their own communist state governed by East Germany: the EESU.

❇️Klaus Weninger aimed for a fast effective country restoration in his radical order. The EESU government was quick to estabilish the ideological basis. The ECP (European Communist Party) dominated over the state, declaring all opposing political parties illegal.

✳️Open displays of propaganda backed by material support became a common thing. With raising quality and stability of life, the people were worried yet quite supportive at first. But by the time the political tyranny started to show its claws, it was already too late.

❇️The first obstacle in the new state's life was the divided capital, Berlin. After lots of conflicts, with the help of the USSR and China Berlin was fully united by the end of 1953. There wasn't such thing as the Berlin wall in EESU - their infamous Cold War wall was way larger. A wall on the EESU - West Germany border, building since 1957. The Great Wall of Germany.

✳️The EESU's relationships with the West were extremely difficult, often balancing on the verge of an armed conflict. It led to a constant threat of the next World War both in the government and common folks' life.

❇️Children learned the basic military skills and evacuation plans from a young age, military bases and bunkers emerged near every town, calls for peace and bread were shouted alongside with "war to the West".

✳️EESU often imposed martial law in regions or the country as a whole, most of the times without fully informing citizens of the reasons behind, doubling down on terror, propaganda and surveillance for all the population affected. More often than not it became either cause or consequence of civil unrest.

❇️Science, healthcare and technological progress were one of the EESU's priorities. Careers in STEM and medical fields were highly respected and encouraged, lots of young scientists from EESU, USSR and China contributed to the country's advance, new hospitals and research facilities appeared at the record rate. By mid 1960s EESU was already recognized as having one of the most efficient healthcare systems in the world.

✳️Their dirty little secret? Advanced State Research. The strictly confidential country-wide program specifically for human experiments, obtaining the subjects from State Security prisons. With those regarded irredeemable (class 4) any tests, scientific or not, were justified by the government with no legal repercussions.

❇️Ah yes, human rights. Officially the EESU had a constitution, guaranteeing everyone's rights, duties, freedom and dignity. It's only that the ideology was above all laws. And it didn't worked during the martial law. And "everyone" there meant "every politically loyal one". And nobody was safe from being accused of political crimes. Not to mention the EESU political criminal classification in which the "irredeemable" offenders were legally deprived of the human status itself. A true democracy.

💫Sorry it turned out so long! If you've read it so far, treat yourself with something tasty for endurance, you deserved it!💫

#whump #whump community #whumpblr #historical whump #military whump #whump ask #ask answered #count it as an endurance test lmao

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cosmicanger · 11 months

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Palestinians look for survivors after an Israeli airstrike in Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip on October 12th, 2023.

AP Photo/Hatem Ali

ON FRIDAY, Israel ordered the besieged population in the northern half of the Gaza Strip to evacuate to the south, warning that it would soon intensify its attack on the Strip’s upper half. The order has left more than a million people, half of whom are children, frantically attempting to flee amid continuing airstrikes, in a walled enclave where no destination is safe. As Palestinian journalist Ruwaida Kamal Amer wrote today from Gaza, “refugees from the north are already arriving in Khan Younis, where the missiles never stop and we’re running out of food, water, and power.” The UN has warned that the flight of people from the northern part of Gaza to the south will create “devastating humanitarian consequences” and will “transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation.” Over the last week, Israel’s violence against Gaza has killed more than 1,800 Palestinians, injured thousands, and displaced more than 400,000 within the strip. And yet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised today that what we have seen is “only the beginning.”

The UN Genocide Convention lists five acts that fall under its definition. Israel is currently perpetrating three of these in Gaza: “1. Killing members of the group. 2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. 3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” The Israeli Air Force, by its own account, has so far dropped more than 6,000 bombs on Gaza, which is one of the most densely populated areas in the world—more bombs than the US dropped on all of Afghanistan in any year of its war there. Human Rights Watch has confirmed that the weapons used included phosphorous bombs, which set fire to bodies and buildings, creating flames that aren’t extinguished on contact with water. This demonstrates clearly what Gallant means by “act accordingly”: not targeting individual Hamas militants, as Israel claims, but unleashing deadly violence against Palestinians in Gaza “as such,” in the language of the UN Genocide Convention. Israel has also intensified its 16-year siege of Gaza—the longest in modern history, in clear violation of international humanitarian law—to a “complete siege,” in Gallant’s words. This turn of phrase that explicitly indexes a plan to bring the siege to its final destination of systematic destruction of Palestinians and Palestinian society in Gaza, by killing them, starving them, cutting off their water supplies, and bombing their hospitals.

Raz Segal is an associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University and the endowed professor in the study of modern genocide.

#palestine #theory #gaza

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nicklloydnow · 11 months

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“Analysts have expressed concerns that relations between Serbia and Kosovo — tense at the best of times — have become increasingly hostile in recent months. Violence erupted in northern Kosovo in September, and Belgrade responded with a military buildup on its border with its neighbor.

Now there are concerns that the volatility in this southeastern region of Europe could tip into an armed conflict while the world is distracted by the war in Ukraine.

(…)

"Resolving the dispute between Kosovo and Serbia is no longer just a political matter, but a serious security issue for the region and for Europe," Engjellushe Morina and Majda Ruge, senior policy fellows at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), wrote last week.

"For the U.S. and EU, the choice is no longer just between the failure and success of the dialogue but between stability and a further escalation of violence. The latter is most likely unless they finally acknowledge Belgrade's role in destabilising Kosovo and adopt a robust approach to counter it."

(…)

Northern Kosovo, which borders Serbia, has an ethnic Serb majority whereas the country as a whole is around 93% ethnic Albanian. Serbian capital Belgrade does not recognize its neighbor as an independent state.

A key recent tipping point was local elections in the spring that saw ethnic Albanians elected to a number of municipalities in northern Kosovo. The results caused outrage among the ethnic Serb community in the region who had boycotted the votes, saying their demands for more autonomy had not been met.

Tensions ratcheted up further over the summer and erupted in late September following a shootout between a heavily armed group of ethnic Serbs and Kosovo special police forces in the northern Kosovo village of Banjska in which one police officer and three gunmen were killed.

NATO has had a peacekeeping mission in Kosovo since 1999 following a bloody conflict between ethnic Albanians opposed to ethnic Serbs and the government of Yugoslavia in 1998. The military alliance reacted to the September incident by deploying additional peacekeeping troops to the region, while Serbia bolstered its military presence along its border with Kosovo.

(…)

"From zero land wars in Europe, we could conceivably be looking at two very shortly," Ian Bremmer, founder of the Eurasia Group, said in a note Monday.

He likened the tensions to the recent lightning-fast conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which culminated last month with the Azerbaijani military seizing the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh in a rapid offensive with little outside intervention.

"You have a long-simmering and unsustainable status quo being challenged by the dominant military, looking to see if anybody else cares enough to intervene," Bremmer said.

"In this case, that's NATO — less distracted than Russia, and much more likely to intervene directly — but the prospects of an invasion have gone way up over the past few days."

(…)

Tensions between Serbia and ethnic Albanians culminated in the 1998 Kosovo war between Yugoslav forces, led by Serbia, and a Kosovo-Albanian rebel group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army, who opposed the Serbian authorities and oppressive policies of Serb leader Slobodan Milošević.

Hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians were displaced by the conflict and numerous war crimes were committed by both sides, although the majority were attributed to Serbian and Yugoslav government forces.

The conflict ended when NATO intervened in 1999, launching air strikes on Yugoslav armed forces until their withdrawal from Kosovo. NATO's aerial bombing campaign remains controversial to this day although it is credited with bringing the war to an end.

Kosovo declared itself independent from Serbia in 2008, a proclamation that Serbia rejected, and tensions have simmered ever since, not helped by the election of nationalist leaders in both Serbia (President Vučić) and Kosovo (Prime Minister Albin Kurti).

Nonetheless, Serbia has aspirations to join the EU and is unlikely to want to jeopardize this, or to tempt a direct response from NATO, according to Andrius Tursa, Central and Eastern Europe advisor at risk consultancy Teneo.

"A direct military offensive by the Serbian army on northern Kosovo is very unlikely due to the presence of NATO peacekeepers and the risk of punitive Western sanctions as a result of such action," Tursa said in a note Tuesday.”

“An armed band of Serb militants recently ambushed police in Kosovo. In the resulting firefight and retreat, four people — including a police officer — died from their wounds.

The incident sparked official recriminations from both Kosovo and Serbia, culminating in Serbia moving its armed forces towards the countries’ shared border only to subsequently withdraw them due to pressure from the United States.

Tensions between the two countries are nothing new. Serbia and Kosovo were previously united under Yugoslavia. The collapse of the country in the 1990s, however, caused Kosovo to push for independence.

Kosovar forces, backed by NATO, expelled the remnants of the Yugoslav army in 1999. Kosovo, however, remains central to Serbian national identity and Serbia has never truly reconciled itself to Kosovo’s independence.

(…)

The overthrow of former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, and the EU identifying Serbia as a candidate for expansion to join the union in 2003, provided Serbian politicians with an alternative policy to the nationalism of the past.

Serbia officially submitted its application to ascend to EU member status in 2009. Unfortunately, Serbia’s progress towards that goal has been painfully slow.

Slovenia and Croatia, two other former Yugoslav states, ascended to the EU in 2004 and 2013, respectively. From formal submission to full member status took each country 10 years or less.

Serbia’s application, now in its 14th year, shows no sign of being formally processed as it fails to meet many of the judicial, economic and political standards the EU requires for membership.

Serbia has made several gestures towards achieving EU membership. Most notably, it agreed to a plan to normalize relations with Kosovo. For many Serb nationalists, the question of Kosovo’s independence elicits visceral reactions due to Kosovo’s prominence in Serb nationalist identity.

(…)

In Serbia, EU membership remains a distant possibility that will probably only benefit future generations. Today, Serbians are seeking alternate ideologies that promise more immediate returns.

Given the EU’s association with liberal democracy and globalism, some Serbs are embracing populism and anti-western nationalism.

(…)

The EU’s problem is that its domestic and international problems not only limit the ability to deal with Serbia, but Serbia-Kosovo tensions magnify the EU’s own issues. Hungary’s Viktor Orban, for example, has already stated his country — an EU member — would veto any sanctions against Serbia.

Serbia’s provocations against Kosovo also provide Russia with a potential wedge issue in its efforts to divide the EU, as demonstrated by Orban’s statement.

EU support for Ukraine is already facing challenges from members like Slovakia. The EU’s failure to deal with Serbia in the past will only stoke such challenges, and further inhibit the organization’s ability to respond to crises like Ukraine.”

“On Friday White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said the US had observed an “unprecedented staging of advanced Serbian artillery, tanks and mechanised infantry units” on the Kosovo border and called it a “very destabilising development”.

“We are calling on Serbia to withdraw those forces from the border and to contribute to lowering the temperature and the tension,” Kirby said, adding that Vučić and Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, had spoken about ways to defuse the situation.

International efforts to cool the tensions have mounted in recent days after a violent stand-off near a monastery in the Serb-majority north of Kosovo left at least four people dead, including a Kosovo police officer.

(…)

In a statement late on Saturday, the government of Kosovo said the Serbian army had indeed placed extra troops and equipment in 48 military and police bases within a few kilometres of the Kosovo border.

“In this placement, the placement of anti-air and heavy artillery is included… These bases serve to support possible military aggression against the Republic of Kosova,” the Pristina government said.

It demanded that Serbia “immediately withdraw all military troops from the border and close and demilitarise the bases, which pose a permanent threat to our country.””

#kosovo #serbia #balkans #balkanization #yugoslavia #war #wwiii #world war 3 #russia #ukraine #european union #eu #europe #ian bremmer

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wuxiaphoenix · 2 years

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Worldbuilding: What Everybody Knows That Isn’t So

Sometimes everyone in a setting “knows” something that turns out to be flat-out wrong. The world is flat, disease is caused only by evil spirits, sacrificing hearts on an obsidian altar keeps the sun in the sky. And sometimes... everyone knows what’s actually true, but upholds a polite fiction in public so no one has to officially notice and do something about it. No one really wants to do all the paperwork to haul in someone going three miles over the speed limit on the highway,

and - very often - no one wants to go to war when trade is much more profitable.

In the 1600s, given trade between China, Japan, the Ryukyu Kingdom, and Korea, this led to the invention of an imaginary country, Tokara.

The Tokara Islands actually exist; twelve small islands in a larger archipelago. Only seven are inhabited today. They have a native pony, and, on two islands, a native pit viper. What they don’t have are a lot of people. But... they existed, and were closer to Japan than Okinawa, which made them convenient for a diplomatic sleight of hand.

Long story short, the Ryukyu Kingdom had been a tributary state of the Ming Dynasty up until about 1609, when the Tokugawa Shogunate invaded and took over. The Tokugawa were not a tributary state of the Ming, very pointedly not. Which made things unexpectedly sticky. First, if the Ming had it rubbed in their faces that a tributary kingdom had been attacked, they’d have to do something about it. Ships, cannons, grand sea battles; very, very expensive to both sides. Second, and maybe worse - if the Ryukyus weren’t a Chinese tributary state anymore, the Ming might cut off trade.

Nobody wanted that.

Obviously face-saving deception had to be the order of the day. Officially, the Ming were not to know the Ryukyu Kingdom didn’t belong to them anymore. Officially, there were no Japanese on the islands. Nope, none, not ever. (They were actually supposed to hide on days the Chinese officials showed up - there were manuals written for it and everything.) And if by some accident someone turned up anyway with a Japanese hairstyle, other odd items, or speaking Japanese? Oh, silly us, that’s a traveler from Tokara! You know, that nation right next door that does a lot of trade with the Japanese, much more than we do? But they’re not Japanese, ha ha, of course not, what would Japanese be doing in the Ryukyus?

(Chinese officials in public: Solemn nod, because Of Course Not. No member of that barbarian nation that didn’t pay tribute to the Heavenly Emperor would dare. Of course not.

(Chinese officials back on the boat: Whew, crisis averted, I really don’t want to lose my head by hinting to the court that we lost control of a tributary kingdom... if the courtiers didn’t get me, the merchants would!)

This apparently kept Europeans believing there actually was a Tokara state until at least the mid-1800s.

I have to admit I find this all amusing in part because I am very bad at tuning in to what “everybody knows”. So this just strikes me as the usual social ridiculousness writ very, very large.

But also in part because this gives me a potentially interesting bit for the isekai, when Jason has to explain where he’s from to anyone who doesn’t know the whole story. He’s a historian with a focus on Early Modern Japan. He would know about Tokara.

So if he goes with “I’m from Tokara”, then anyone in trade or court-associated in Japan, China, or Korea can pigeonhole it into, “Oh, that mess No One Wants To Talk About. Got it. Moving on....”

(Info from various web searches and a very neat bit in Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai, edited by Tonio Andrade and Xing Hang.)

#creative writing #worldbuilding #ancient history #japanese history #chinese history #diplomacy #can be tricky indeed

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marcussour · 3 years

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So, I’ve seen a lot of people sharing these pictures online (even celebrities like The Weeknd), but I’d like to shine a bit more light on them.

These are players from the chilean football club C.D. Palestino, wearing keffiyeh before a match with Colo-Colo a couple of weeks ago, as part of the chilean first division. The players decided to wear the keffiyeh as a symbolic gesture in solidarity with Palestine, and were led in this idea by the team captain, Chile’s international (and former Internazionale, West Ham and other club’s) player Luis Jimenez.

But beyond this gesture (that came along with shirts with the phrase “O Palestine, here I am for you”), you can probably guess from the team’s name that there’s a long history regarding Palestine.

Palestino was founded in 1920 by palestine immigrants in Chile. In fact, outside of the countries located in west Asia, Chile houses the largest palestinian community in the world, with an estimated 500.000 members of the diaspora (2,5% of the total chilean population).

The palestinian community in Chile began forming in the 1840′s and 50′s, when many palestinians escaping the Crimea War, moved from Palestine to Western Europe, and then to South America, arriving in Chile thanks to the efforts of the chilean government to bring immigrants from France, Germany and England (most of these european immigrants ended up settling in lands belonging to Chile’s native people). Palestinians however settled mostly in urban areas and turned to commerce and the textile industry, where they soon became the target of xenophobics attacks by the chilean elite who looked down upon them in comparison with european or usamericans immigrants.

Palestinians and other immigrants from arab countries (like Syria and Lebanon) became widely known in Chile as “turks” (since at that time, they were all part of the Ottoman Empire), a term that was used first in a derogatory form and then evolved into one mostly affective. Most of these palestinians came from 3 cities: Bel Jalá, Bethlehem and Beit Sahour, with Chile having nowadays more christian palestines that even the population living in Palestine.

A second wave of palestinian immigration arrived in the 1910s and 20′s, following WWI, and then a third one in the 40′s and 50′s after WWII and the expulsion of many of them from Palestine after the creation of Israel. By this time, even though there was still discrimination from the wealthy chilean “elites”, the palestinian community had already integrated with the booming middle class and the lower income people, and had become staples and cornerstones from many communities, for example, in the Patronato neighborhood in Santiago, one of the most diverse and inclusive neighborhoods, home to many immigrant communities, with the palestinian and korean communities being the most prominent (the mayor of Recoleta, the Santiago municipality where Patronato is located, is Daniel Jadue of the communist party, who’s also part of the palestine community).

As time went on, the community diversified and mixed even more with the chilean society, which is why you can find today prominent members in different areas like sports (2 times olympic gold medalist and former ATP top 10 player Nicolás Massú for example) or some of the biggest fortunes of the country (like the Said and Yarur families, thanks to the textile, commerce and construction business), and across the whole political spectrum (support for the palestinian cause might be one of the few political issues where you can find support across most of the political spectrum and parties here in Chile, ranging from the right wing, all the way to the communist party -around 10% of the current serving members of congress are part of the palestinian community-). There’s even an old saying that states that if you go to any city or town in Chile, you’ll always find “a priest, a policeman and a palestinian”.

Immigration from Palestine and neighbouring countries still continue to this day, with Chile receiving many refugees, at least until before the pandemic started.

Returning to Palestino, the club not only is an important part of the palestinian community in Chile (many of it’s players have played both for the Chile national team, but also for the Palestine national team), but also has continously used the platform that football provide to show support por palestinian causes. There was even a time when they replaced all the “1″ in their jerseys with the historic map of Palestine.

Nowadaways Palestino shows many palestine symbols -including the map- in their jerseys, and the club (like keeping the keffiyeh motive as part of the shirt, as well as playing with the colors of the palestinian flag)

To close this post highlighting Palestino and the chilean palestinian community, here are some photos from today, where there was a 7km vehicle march (due to coronavirus restrictions) in support of the palestinian victims and protesting the apartheid in Palestine. There was also a message in support of Palestine projected in the Telefonica Building, one of the largest buildings in Santiago, located in the center of Santiago, in the Plaza Dignidad/Italia, the epicenter of the protests of the last few years against inequality in Chile that ended up bringing down the dictatorship era constitution in favor of a new constitution.

#chile #palestine #palestino

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sixth-light · 4 years

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The Crusades: A Fandom Primer

Like many of you, I am very excited to see a whole lot of fic about everybody’s favourite new Crusades-era Muslim/Christian immortal warrior husbands! However, a preliminary reading indicates that fandom is a bit hazy on what actually happened during the Crusades. Or where. Or why. They’re a much-mythologised piece of history so this isn’t surprising, but at popular request – ok like five people that counts – I’m here with a fandom-oriented Crusades primer.

Please bear in mind that I’m not a historian and this primer is largely based on my notes and recollections from several undergraduate history courses I took in the mid ‘00s. I expect the field has moved on somewhat, and I welcome corrections from people with more up-to-date knowledge! There’s also this very good post by someone who is a lot less lazy about links than I am.

Where did they take place?

The Crusades, broadly, describe a series of invasions of the Eastern Mediterranean (modern Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Beirut, Jordan, Cyprus, and parts of Turkey and Greece) by (mostly) Western European armies, religiously justified by their belief that the city of Jerusalem should be part of ‘Christendom’, i.e. ruled by a Christian monarch. In the first expression of European settler colonialism, nobles from the area of modern France and Germany founded four Crusader Kingdoms (aka ‘Outremer’, ‘overseas’) – the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and County of Tripoli.

After a first unexpected wave of success in the First Crusade (1096-1099), which surprised everybody including the participants by conquering Jerusalem, the Crusaders were gradually driven and the last part of Outremer was lost to European control with the fall of the city of Acre in 1291. Crusades after that still nominally aimed to take Jerusalem but rarely got very far, with the Fourth Crusade famously sacking the city of Byzantium, their nominal Christian allies, in 1204. During this whole period activity that can be considered part of the ‘Crusades’ took place around the Eastern Mediterranean.

The most important thing to remember is that modern national boundaries didn’t exist in the same way; Italy, Germany, France, Spain, and the UK were not unified nations. Most of the southern Iberian peninsula (modern Spain) was ‘al-Andalus’, Muslim kingdoms ruled by nobility originally from North Africa. Sicily had been an Emirate up until very recently, when it had been conquered by Normans (Vikings with a one-century stopover in France). Italy and Germany in particular were a series of city-states and small duchies; Genoa, if you’re curious about it for some reason, ;), was a maritime power with more or less a distinct language, Genoese Ligurian (their dialect had enough of a navy to qualify). England had recently become part of the Anglo-Norman Empire, which ruled most of England (but not Wales or Scotland) and also large parts of modern France, particularly Normandy.

The Muslim world was similarly fragmented in ways that don’t correspond to modern national boundaries - there were multiple taifa states in Iberia, the Almoravid Caliphate in Morocco, the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt, and (nominally) the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad, one of the great cities of the era, although the Seljuq Turks were the major power in Anatolia (modern Turkey) and what we describe as the ‘Middle East’.

The largest Christian unified power in the wider European/Mediterranean region was the Byzantine Empire, centered on the city of Constantinople (modern Istanbul), which quite fairly considered itself the direct continuation of the Roman Empire, the capital having been moved there by the Emperor Constantine in 323. In fact, the really big political and religious question of the time for Christians was who got to be considered the centre of Christendom (there was no real concept of ‘Europe’ at this point) – the Orthodox Church, the Byzantine Emperor, and the Patriarch of Constantinople in Constantinople, or the Holy Roman Emperor (er…dude in nominal charge of a lot of German and Italian principalities) and the Roman Catholic Church led by the Pope in Rome. The Orthodox Church in Constantinople and the Roman Catholic Church had agreed to disagree in 1054 in the Great Schism, so in 1096 this issue was still what you’d call fresh.

Onto this stage of East-West disagreement and the heritage of Rome crashed the Seljuq Turks, a Muslim group from Central Asia who swept through Anatolia (modern Turkey), Byzantium’s richest province, culminating in the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 which wiped out Byzantium as an independent military force. The southern provinces had fallen under Muslim rule long ago, during the era of the first Umayyad Caliphate – including Jerusalem, famous as the birthplace of Christianity and a holy site for Judaism and Islam as well, but also a fairly uninteresting provincial town. Until...

Until…what?

Here’s why all the geography matters: It is generally accepted that the First Crusade kicked off largely because Alexios I Comnenus, the then-current Byzantine Emperor, requested aid from Western Europe against the Muslim Seljuq Turks. Byzantium often recruited mercenaries from Western Europe; the Normans (aka the Vikings), who had settled Normandy and southern Italy in the past century were frequent hires. Hence those runes in the Hagia Sophia.

Meanwhile in Western Europe, the Pope – Urban II – was having difficulty with the current Emperor, and was eager to heal the Schism and establish the primacy of the Roman church. He declared that an expedition to aid the Byzantines would have the blessing of the church, and that a new kind of pilgrimage – an armed pilgrimage – was religiously acceptable, if aimed against the enemies of Christendom.

Pilgrimages (travelling to holy sites, such as churches that held saints’ relics) were a major part of European Christianity at the time and many people went on pilgrimage in their lives, so this was a familiar concept. Western Europe was also somewhat overpopulated with knights – don’t think plate armour, this is 1096, think very murderous rich men with good swords – who could always use forgiveness, on account of all the murder. The Roman Catholic church, unlike the Eastern Orthodox church, also subscribed to the concept of ‘just war’, that war could be acceptable for the right reasons. And so a whole lot of nobles from the area of modern France, Belgium, England, Germany, and Italy decided that this new Crusade thing was something they wanted in on – and they took several armies with them.

I’m going to skip over a bunch of stuff involving the People’s Crusade (a popular movement of poorer people, got literally slaughtered in Anatolia), the massacres of Jews in Eastern Europe, and a lot of battles, but the takeaway is this: Alexios probably thought he was getting mercenaries. He got a popular religious movement that, somewhat unfortunately, actually achieved its goal (Jerusalem), did next to nothing to solve his Anatolia problem, and gave a succession of Popes a convenient outlet for errant knights, nobles, and rulers: going on Crusade.

How many were there?

Official Crusades that anybody cares about: Nine, technically. Crusade-like military events that immortal soldiers might have got involved with, plus local stoushes in Outremer: way more. WAY more.

The First Crusade (1096-1099): First and original, set a frankly (heh) terrible precedent, founded the Crusader States and captured Jerusalem. Only regarded as a clash of civilisations by the Western Christians involved. For the local Muslims it was just another day at the ‘Byzantium hires Frankish mercenaries to make our lives difficult’ office.

The Crusade of 1101: Everybody who peaced out on the First Crusade hurried to prove they were actually up for it, once the remaining First Crusaders took Jerusalem. Didn’t do much.

The Second Crusade (1147-1150): The County of Edessa falls, Eleanor of Aquitaine happens (my fave), the only winners are the people who semi-accidentally conquer Lisbon (in Portugal) (but from Muslim rulers so that…counts?).

The Third Crusade (1189-1192): You all know this one because it has RICHARD THE LIONHEART and SALADIN. Much Clash of Civilisations, very Noble, did enough to keep the remaining Crusader kingdoms going but access to Jerusalem for Christian pilgrims was obtained by treaty, not conquest. Indirectly responsible for the Robin Hood mythos when Richard gets banged up in prison on the way home and is away from England for ages.

The Fourth Crusade (1202-1204): Aims for Jerusalem, ends up sacking the Eastern Orthodox city of Constantinople, just not a great time for anybody, more or less the eventual cause of the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453.

The Fifth Crusade (1217-1221): Still going for Jerusalem, starts with Cairo instead, does not get anywhere it wants to even after allying with the Anatolian Sultanate of Rum, making the whole ‘Christians vs Muslims’ thing even murkier than it already was post the Fourth Crusade.

The Sixth Crusade (1228-1229): Somehow these things are still going. Nobody even does very much fighting. Access to Jerusalem is negotiated by treaty, yet again.

The Seventh, Eight, and Ninth Crusades: Seriously nobody cares anymore and also nobody is trying very hard. Kings have better things to do, mostly. People end up in Egypt a lot. We covered these in one lecture and I have forgotten all of it.

The Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229): Why take a three-year trip to the Holy Land to fight pagans when you can fight the ones in your own backyard (southern France), AND take their stuff? Famously the source of the probably apocryphal ‘Kill them all, God will know His own’ quote, regarding the massacre of most of a city harbouring Cathars (a Christian sect deemed heretical).

Can we circle back to that ‘massacres of Jews’ bit? WTF?

Crusades, historically, were Not A Good Time for Jewish communities in Europe; when Christians were riled up to go and Fight The Infidel, it was a lot quicker to massacre local Jews than travel to the Holy Land. Also, then you could take their stuff. I will note here that it is VERY TACKY to use historical pogroms as backdrops for your non-Jewish main characters so keep this in mind but, like, use with extreme caution in fanfic, okay? Generally life was a lot easier for Jewish communities in Muslim-ruled states in this period, which is why so many Hispanic Jews ended up in Turkey after they were expelled from Spain.

What were they really about, then?

Historians still Have Opinions about this. Genuine religious fervour was absolutely a key motivator, especially of the First Crusade. The ability to wage war sanctioned by the Church, or to redeem your local sins by going and fighting against the pagans, was part of that, too. Control of key trade routes to the East was probably not not a part of it. The Crusader States were definitely Baby’s First Experiment With Settler Colonialism, and paved the theological and rhetorical ground for the colonisation of the Americas. But many individuals on the Christian side would absolutely have believed they were doing God’s work. The various Muslim rulers and certainly the local Christian, Jewish, and Muslim inhabitants of the Holy Land itself were mostly just getting invaded by Franks. As time wound on the Crusades became more and more political (frequently featuring intra-religious violence and inter-religious alliances) and less and less about their forever nominal goal, control of Jerusalem.

How’s Wikipedia on this?

Basically not too bad but I’m not totally confident on some of the bits about motivation (see: white supremacists love this period, ugh.)

Why did they stop?

The prospect of re-taking Jerusalem vanished entirely as the Ottoman Empire centralised and took a firm hold over most of the Levant (and made inroads into Europe, as far as Austria, taking Constantinople in 1453 and finally ending the continuous Roman Empire), the Spanish Reconquista and various intra-European conflicts (the Hundred Years’ War, for example) absorbed military attention, and then the Reformation happened and half of Europe stopped listening to the Pope and started stabbing each other over who was the right kind of Christian. But the concept lingered; white supremacists love the Crusades. Which is why it is a very good idea to be sparing with Crusader imagery around Niccolò in fanfic set in the modern era, and please for fuck’s sake stop with the ‘crugayders’ tag, Yusuf wasn’t a Crusader.

What other fun facts should I keep in mind re: Nicky | Nicolò and Joe | Yusuf?

· Genoa is not the same as Italy; Nicolò is Nicolò di Genova and would have spoken Genoese (Ligurian) and considered himself to be Genoese. Italian as a language didn’t really exist yet. The language he and Yusuf would most likely have had in common was the ‘lingua franca’ (Frankish language, literally) of the Mediterranean trading region, a pidgin based heavily on maritime Italian languages. Yusuf 300% would have thought of him as a ‘Frank’ (the generic term for Western Christians) and probably annoyed him by calling him that until at least 1200 or so.

· Yusuf is apparently from ‘Maghrib’, which I assume means al-Maghrib/the Maghreb (as his actor is IIRC of Tunisian descent), i.e. North Africa. He could have had relatives in al-Andalus (southern modern Spain), he may have spoken languages other than Arabic natively (Mozarabic or Berber), his native area had universities before Europe did. Basically: this is as useful as saying he’s ‘from Europe’, do better backstory writers.

· Taking the whole ‘Nicky used to be a priest’ backstory at face value: being a priest in 1096 looked pretty different to how it did even 200 years later. They were still working on the celibacy thing. The famous monastic orders were still forming. Some priests could and did hold lands and go to war (this wasn’t common but it happened, especially if they were nobles by birth). Nicolò di Genova would not necessarily have seen a conflict between going on Crusade and being a priest, is what I’m getting at. If he was ALSO trained as a knight, he was from a wealthy family; it took the equivalent several villages to support a knight.

· ‘Period-typical homophobia’ is going to look very different for this period. They are NOT getting beaten up for holding hands. Or sharing a bed! Or even kissing, depending on the circumstances! I am not an expert on Islamic sexual mores of the era but Christian ones were heavily on the side of ‘unsanctioned sex is bad, sanctioned (marital) sex is slightly less bad’, and there was no concept of ‘being gay’. An interfaith relationship would be in some ways more of a problem for them than the same-sex one (and in some ways less difficult to navigate than a heterosexual interfaith relationship.) The past is another country.

· Look just no more fanfics where Yusuf is trying to learn ‘Italian’ in the early twelfth century I am BEGGING you all

#the old guard #history #finally that BA gets a workout #fourteen years later

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mynawyspie · 3 years

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(Polish soldiers during the Polish-Bolshevik war)

The Battle of Warsaw 1920. The Defeat of the Empire of Evil

The Battle of Warsaw in 1920 was not only a culminating moment of the Polish-Bolshevik war but also one of the decisive events in the history of Europe and the world.

Led by Vladimir Lenin, once they seized power in Russia, the Bolsheviks strove to export the revolution to Europe. Their march to the West began in late 1918. The Communist International (Comintern) was founded in Moscow in March 1919 as a body to supervise communist parties from 32 countries across the globe, and a political tool of the Bolshevik Russia. In the summer of 1919, the Comintern’s Chairman Grigory Zinoviev stated: “One can say with full confidence: In just a year from now, all of Europe will be communist. And the struggle for communism will move to America, and perhaps to Asia and other parts of the world.” The Polish-Bolshevik war began in January 1919. The Commander of the Western Front Mikhail N. Tukhachevsky issued an order to his soldiers, addressing them with the words: “Fighters of the workers’ revolution! Fix your eyes on the West. It is in the West that the fate of the world revolution is being decided. Over the dead body of White Poland lies the way to the world fire of revolution.”

In the face of the deadly threat, the Polish nation got immensely mobilized, the Catholic Church also playing a big role in it. More than 100,000 volunteers responded to calls to join the army, including 30,000 citizens of Warsaw. Meanwhile, the Polish government sought help abroad. British prime minister David Lloyd George, however, offered only mediation in peace talks with the Bolsheviks. France behaved somewhat better as it offered substantial supplies of weapons and munitions. Pope Benedict XV realized how grave the situation was when he noted in a letter of August 5: “It is not only Poland’s existence as a nation that is imperiled, but the entire Europe faces the atrocities of a new war.” As part of its massive propaganda efforts under the slogan “Hands off the Soviet Russia,” Moscow had mobilized communist parties and leftist trade unions in all of Europe to act against Poland. Railway workers in Germany and Czechoslovakia blocked trains with military supplies to Poland. The governments of both countries silently sympathized with the Bolsheviks. The only safe passage for the transports led through Romania.

"We have the whole world against us" wrote Stanisław Posner in a report for Józef Piłsudski, submitted end of June 1920, after traveling through Western European countries. During his several-week expedition, he visited a few capital cities and returned with observations free of any hope. Posner highlighted that even those who had been siding with Poland, such as French President Alexandre Millerand, assuring of his support for Warsaw in the conflict with the Czechs ,"is siding with them and, in other matters, will always submit to the opinion of England, because he depends on her as a creditor." "The British Prime Minister Lloyd George played a sombre role in Spa, a provincial lawyer from Wales, promoted in world opinion to a national leader, prejudiced against Poles and clearly siding with the Bolsheviks" – said Mieczysław Jałowiecki, the representative of the Polish government in Gdańsk. In late summer of 1920, war correspondent Adam Grzymała-Siedlecki noted: "It was of no secret to anybody that the Germans are waiting impatiently to conquer Warsaw. […] Our surrounding neighbors were already preparing new partitions. The end of Polish statehood was spoken of as an absolute necessity. Was the situation presented differently at the offices of the Triple Entente? English policy, Italian neutrality, the stance of the Belgian cabinet regarding the transport of weaponry to Poland, all made it clearer than ever that helping us would be impractical and – who knows? – even harmful."

The Battle of Warsaw took place from August 12 to 15, 1920. The fiercest combats were fought for Radzymin, Ossów and Zielonka. Radzymin was reclaimed from the Poles by the Bolsheviks on August 13, yet a day later it was under Polish control again, after the rally of General Józef Haller and his chief of staff, Colonel Włodzimierz Zagórski, to be conquered by the Bolsheviks once more the next day. On August 15, it is once again taken back by Haller and Zagórski, both of whom personally led Polish troops to the attack. On the northern front, the 8th cavalry brigade of Colonel Włodzimierz Podhorski from the 5th Army of General Władysław Sikorski in a bold rally entered Ciechanów, where the command center of the 4th Red Army was completely destroyed. On August 16, 1920, the Polish offensive, led by the head of state – Józef Piłsudski, was launched from Wieprz river and eradicated the Mozyr group of the Bolshevik army. Budyonny’s cavalry army also began to retreat to Volhynia, as did the Gaj-Chan’s cavalry corps. The retreat of the Bolsheviks turned into a panic escape. The most significant role in this battle was played by the 5th Army of General Władysław Sikorski on the section of Nasielsk on Wkra river and General Franciszek Latnik on the outskirts of Warsaw. The Bolsheviks were beaten again in the Battle of the Niemen River from September 20 to 26, 1920. The Battle of Warsaw took place near Warsaw and Modlin in addition to the area of Góra Kalwaria as well as between Modlin and Ciechanów. The sides of the battle included the 1st Polish Army (directly defending Warsaw) and the 5th Polish Army (in the area of Modlin) as well as the 3rd, 15th and 16th Bolshevik Armies. It was carried out on the basis of the operational order of August 10, 1920 marked with a fictitious number 10000, signed on August 9 by General Tadeusz Rozwadowski, who provided for a double wing maneuver, so-called “Cannae” maneuver. It is worth adding that it was also vital for the course of the battle that on August 13, Polish cryptologists deciphered the Bolshevik telegram, which indicated that the attack on Warsaw was planned shortly.

The Battle of Warsaw marked the first defeat of the Soviet empire of evil, thanks to which the fate of the world took a different course than Lenin would have wanted. Soon after the defeat near Warsaw, he admitted: “The Polish war was the most crucial turning point not only for the politics of Soviet Russia but also for the world politics. (…) In Europe, it was possible to seize everything. But Piłsudski and his Poles inflicted a gigantic, unprecedented defeat to the cause of the world revolution.”

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moonlayl · 3 years

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In relation to the #StopAsianHate tag, it seems fitting to add this contribution since China has been doing a lot of horribly questionable things(to put it mildly), and this has led to a rise in anti-asian rhetoric, with extras on the anti-chinese rhetoric.

It has affected overseas Chinese-descendants and the Chinese diaspora around the world badly, since they had no hand in what China did, nor do they share the same sentiments of China, yet they still get harassed and targeted. Even to the point of cop agents admit to accusing a Canadian professor of Chinese descent of being a spy, Hongkongnese coworkers mistreating overseas Chinese not from China, and a British-born Asian man getting deported without question.

So in lieu of letting this storm rage over even more, the better option appears to be to address everyone's concerns and assumptions about people of Chinese descent who are citizens since birth in other countries and have never set foot in china before.

The main point is: NOT ALL CHINESE AROUND THE WORLD ARE WUMAO COMMUNISTS, NOT ALL CHINESE DESCENDANTS SHARE THE SAME SENTIMENTS AS CHINA OR DOING THINGS FOR CHINA. Got it?

Now, to move on to the other part of attacks on Chinese culture and shaming people just for being Chinese.

1.It is okay to be Chinese-born; there is nothing wrong that you happen to be a Chinese person. You deserve dignity, pursuit of happiness, liberty and respect, just like any other race of person, black, white, Jew, etc out there. You are a person too and don't let anyone treat you otherwise.

2.Chinese people are not "spawn of the bad" or "corrupted subhuman" or "tainted genome"; they are not inherently rotten just by being of Chinese descrnt. There is no proof of that, when you pick apart gene sequences from a Chinese descendant in the clinic, it's still very similar to any other person's dna. Just like every nationality, there's kind people and there's assholes. And just like most other countries, who also had monarchy inbreeding, illness, and radiation(did you know of the Radium Girls in the 1920s, or the very unsafe nuclear testing in the 50s to 90s? They even used to put Radium in wristwatches for citizens to glow in the dark so casually.), the Chinese are no different. Just like to bring up the good parts of others' history rather than focus on the bad so much like china.

3.Chinese history, philosophy and culture does not have all bad parts. Please read and analyze everything, good and bad parts, if you want to make a proper judgement. It is very shocking to hear everyone at this point, so comfortable with joking: "let's nuke the Chinese" or "hope we bomb china badly if there's a war" or "the British and Japanese were good to wipe out the Chinese first" so casually! It is not a fair sentiment nor anti-racist one. If it's wrong to say: "the native Americans should have gotten rid of the arriving pilgrims because they were gonna genocide them anyways so might as well" or "black people should be allowed to hurt white people now for all they've done" then statements of that nature against Chinese is also wrong.

And just like other nations who came before and around the same time, these other nations also had bad parts of their culture. No one seems to highlight how colonizers used to practice Safari Game Hunting in Africa for centuries which killed a lot of animals leaving endangered species, no one talks about the quack and irrational remedies doctors in medieval Ages used to do, how they used to mix arsenic in paint on toys in Victorian era, European wars against indigenous peoples, as much as they keep on bringing up Chinese history's weak points and irrationally using it as a weapon to hold against Chinese people irrelevant to the cause of their past generations for years. It is unfair to whitewash your history while scorning the Chinese people's past.

Some Chinese clothing is nice. Some Chinese food is delicious. Some Chinese architecture can be very beautiful. Some Chinese inventions are useful. Those are the good points of Chinese culture. Not everything is tainted.

4.Not all Chinese are ugly. Or yellow skinned. Or receded jawed. Some have hooded eyes, some have high cheekbones, bigger mouths, wonky noses naturally too. Please look at every Chinese person without plastic surgery and analyze the whole populations faces, before you pass a half-assed judgement of how "ugly" they are in general! Seriously, if not how can you make a proper judgement?

5.As for other Asians who are non-Chinese, please stop trying to compare your cultures against theirs, treat it like a contest and say which one is the 'better Asian' to the people of the Occident(white). It is not cool nor necessary. Just do your thing go brighten your own little corner and you'll be great. Not every wumao is stealing your culture all the time sometimes cultures and trads just overlap or happen to be similar or shared through separation and migration reasons. Yes, you are a different non-chinese Asian and unique, there's no need to make noise or insult Chinese people just to prove your point too.

6.Overseas Chinese had ancestors who suffered too hence their migration and diaspora. Read about the Nanking Massacre, their Opium Addiction, 731 labs, Mao's rule, and other conditions. A lot didn't migrate for fun and games.

This is not dedicated to defending China's misdeeds or the Wumao, this is dedicated to the OVERSEAS people of Chinese descent, the Southeast Asian Chinese, the Chinese diaspora in the west, and anyone who didn't ask to be born with Chinese genes or ancestry but got it anyway: it's not your fault. Don't let yourself be shamed for being born this way, even when it's 'cool' to make fun of Chinese, and find a little pride in yourself. Take care and look out for yourself. There may be 1.4 billion mainland Chinese(even with the birth control policies), but there are many more overseas Chinese who need to be understood as "overseas people of Chinese descent" and respected as such.

For those who are non-chinese reading this, please think carefully anytime you want to post something, is it attacking only the current leaders in china or also targeting Chinese people or overseas Chinese-descent peoples too, before you become the very bigot you hate against a group of people or do a hate crime you might regret. Take a moment, and calm down.

Whoever needs to see this, glad you seen it, even if you need it translated. If you can tag it that would be helpful as well.

#^^^^#important #to make it clear: I am NEVER referring to the people when i criticize a government or nation #unless I explicitly say so #stop asian hate #stop asian violence #china #racism

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eretzyisrael · 3 years

Text

Identity and Reality

This morning I picked up a book from my philosophy student days, “Identity and Reality,” by Emile Meyerson. It’s a book about the metaphysical foundations of science, but the title inspired me.

Everyone has an identity in the sense of their answer to the question “what are you?” Almost everyone has a need to find, adopt, or construct an answer. Often it’s a list of things: a mother, a Jew, a football fan, a plumber, and so on. Recently “gender identity” has been added.

There is no national identity with a longer pedigree than that of the Jewish people. For millennia Jews have had a unique language and religion, and a tradition that connects them to the Land of Israel, which (according to that tradition) was given to them by Hashem. Religious Jews explicitly remind themselves of this three times a day.

This makes “Jewish” a very desirable identity. As Jimmy Durante said (about something else), “everybody wants to get into the act,” despite the anti-Jewish attitudes that Jews have to deal with. Jewish identity is so sought-after, that one of the popular themes of antisemites is to claim that they are the “real Jews” and we are Khazars or just fakers. If a Jew chooses to live in the Land of Israel, they have additional prejudices against them. Recently a European “anti-fascist” said that as an Israeli Jew, I was “stealing the very air I breathe.”

But still, the Jewish identity is attractive because – here is the connection to the book I picked up – it is solidly grounded in reality. Lots of people hate Jews and even want to kill them, but no identity is better documented. Indeed, one of the most important parts of the cognitive warfare that is being waged against the Jewish people by its enemies is the effort to break down that identity; in particular, to disconnect us from the Land of Israel. So, for example, Palestinian Arabs go out of their way to destroy archaeological evidence of ancient Jewish provenance in the land, as they have done at the Temple Mount and numerous other sites.

Mahmoud Abbas has always insisted that “Jewish” refers only to a religion, not to a people, because a people can have ties to a particular land, and if there were a Jewish people, this would be their land. This is why he objected so strongly to the condition that he recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people, although he claims to recognize Israel’s existence. This is why the PLO has never agreed to the formulation “two states for two peoples,” although it claims to support a “two state solution.”

Tribal identities are important to Arabs, but attempts to forge a pan-Arab identity among Arabic speakers haven’t been particularly successful, because, for example, North Africans, Egyptians, and Syrians have little in common. A great deal of energy is put into the attempt to establish that there is a historical “Palestinian” identity, but the people who identify as “Palestinians” today have diverse origins, with many of them relatively recent (after 1830) migrants to the area. There is very little that is specifically Palestinian in their culture (as opposed to tribal, Arab, or Muslim), other than elements that developed in opposition to Israel. They didn’t even self-identify as “Palestinian” until the 1960s. That is not to say that there cannot be a “Palestinian people” – give them another 3000 years, and if they still remember the Nakba, they may become as well-established as the Jewish people.

The Palestinian argument is that we, the Jews, appeared from Europe in the 20th century and “colonized” a long-established indigenous “Palestinian people,” ultimately taking their land by force, driving most of them out of their homes and not allowing them to return. The Jews, according to this story, are not even a people, just a bunch of Europeans whose made-up religious myth connects them to what is actually the Palestinians’ homeland (I am not sure how they account for the more than 50% of Israelis who previously lived in various Arab countries).

Like all “Europeans,” the story continues, the Jews are white racists who exploit black and brown indigenous peoples like the Palestinians. Justice therefore requires that the Jews should give up control of the land to its “rightful owners,” the millions of descendants of the Arab refugees of 1948.

The Palestinian story is wildly wrong on several points. First, there were several ancient Jewish commonwealths in the Land of Israel, and some Jews always were present during the millennia in which the land was under the control of various outside powers. Doubtless some of today’s Palestinians are also descended from ancient residents of the land, but the great bulk of Palestinian families arrived much later. So the claim that Arabs are “more indigenous” than Jews is false. Arab families with names like “al Musri” (Egyptian) or “al Haurani” (Syrian) and numerous others testify to their origins.

Second, when the Zionists arrived and began developing what would become the Jewish state, it was not in the possession of the Palestinian Arabs – there was never a sovereign Palestinian entity in the land – but was a colony of the Ottoman Empire. Most private land belonged to absentee owners. Shortly thereafter the British Mandate was established, and the Arabs, led by Amin al-Husseini, who later cast his lot with Hitler, violently tried to prevent the advent of Jewish sovereignty. When the British were forced out, the Jews defeated the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab nations that invaded (who were interested in grabbing territory and kicking the Jews out, not in setting up a Palestinian state). The Jews did not “colonize” Palestine – they decolonized it, by ejecting the British.

Third, by the time the British left and the Arab nations invaded, the Palestinian Arabs had been fighting with the Jews for several months (with the connivance of the British, who preferred that the land come under Arab control). Much of the Arab elite fled early in order to avoid the conflict (some went to summer homes in Lebanon). The poorer Arabs fled for various reasons, including fear induced by propaganda about Jewish atrocities – which was not difficult for them to believe, since their own leaders planned to do the same to the Jews if they got the upper hand. Some Arabs were expelled (Lod or Lydda) because their towns or villages fought on the side of the Arab armies. Some 500-700 thousand Arabs left for various reasons, but there was no overall plan to expel them. In some cases (Haifa) Jewish authorities asked non-belligerent Arabs to stay.

After the war, only a few were allowed to return. The new state simply could not take the risk of allowing hostile Arabs to return and reignite the war. This was a classic ethnic conflict over land, and the usual result of these is either that the weaker side becomes refugees, or the winner massacres the losers. The leaders of the Arab nations did not hide their intention to massacre the Jews if they won. The 800,000 Jews kicked out of Arab countries at about the same time suffered a similar fate to the Palestinian Arabs.

Fourth, and finally, the whole “racism” theme is nonsense. Only a minority of Israelis ever lived in Europe. They range in color from black Ethiopians to white Europeans with red hair and freckles. Most are various shades of brown, as are Palestinians, who also include the descendants of black slaves and – if you remember her – Ahed Tamimi, who earned the nickname “Shirley Temper” for kicking and hitting Israeli soldiers, with her pale skin and blonde hair. The conflict is best described as national and religious, not racial.

But unlike other similar conflicts, the losers managed to persuade the world of the justice of their cause, with the help of the Soviet KGB, the Arab oil weapon, the liberal application of terrorism, and the exploitation of the always-present antisemitism of the west. Which is why my European anti-fascist acquaintance thinks I’m an oxygen bandit.

Abu Yehuda

#Israel and Palestinian Arabs #The Jewish people #Israeli or Jewish History

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avelera · 4 years

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I think my final weird historical ramble of the day As Brought to You By my research for Lights Out/Old Guard Nicky/Joe fic into the Crusades is how seeing Europeans as like a colonizing force during the Crusades or the Crusades as a “Clash of Civilizations”, East vs. West, Muslims vs. Christians, etc etc, the way many people view it in the US and indeed the way I was initially taught to view that conflict, is wrong because apparently it gives way too much credit for how haphazard, pathetic, and primitive the Europeans actually were.*

I mean, far from being some unstoppable European war machine of CONQUEST and EMPIRE, these hapless European, barely-more-than-barbarian-tribes, forces basically stumbled into establishing a Latin Christian presence in the Levant mostly because of internal political strife on the part of the defending Fatimid Caliphate + the Fatimid’s conflicts with the Seljuk Turks (both Muslims and often conflated by Westerners - basically, the players were Latin Christians and Byzantine Greek Christians, who were often infighting, Seljuk Turkish Muslims and Arabic Fatimid Caliphate Muslims, who were originally fighting but then later once the Europeans arrived were sometimes allied but also each of them respectively were sometimes allied with the Latin Christians once those forces got their feet under them and began to operate as just another political force in the region and ANYWAY THE POINT IS, this whole thing was a MESS and not a clash of two monoliths AT ALL at least not for the first HUNDRED YEARS of the conflict).*

(*according to several lectures I have listened to, please do not consider this comprehensive knowledge, it’s a product of around 100 hours of research, not a PhD)

The thing is, the Europeans didn’t set out to “conquer” the Middle East when they answered Pope Clement II’s call to “liberate” Jerusalem (which was more of a favor that Clement was doing for the Emperor of Constantinople anyway and it backfired for that Emperor in so, so many ways). The Casus Belli really was just to “liberate” the Holy City from the “pagans” (no mentions of Islam as a faith that they were fighting but, interestingly, the Latin Christians, at least the Italians, may not have even really seen Islam as a separate faith as such in fact some may have seen it as a heretical Christian sect which is kind of wild but also, like, a little closer to the reality in that both faiths are Abrahamic as compared to incorrect interpretations that it’s just an entirely “pagan” religion??). So the Christian forces were mustered, it seems for the most part, by Clement inspiring them based on the incredibly devout faith of the Europeans who stepped up for the call, NOT as much by inspiring in them the the hopes of gaining money or territory, except for by a few minor princes who figured out that there was an opportunity to gain territory only AFTER they were there. So, to characterize this conflict as financially motivated on the part of the European Crusaders is to ascribe modern motives to an ancient, truly religiously-motivated conflict.

Now, financially, fortunes WERE made in a very cynical way as a result of this conflict, but it was the CHURCH milking the Crusaders, not the Church expecting to gain any wealth from the Holy Land. They became a de facto bank lending money to Crusaders could buy equipment and horses in exchange for loaning or selling their lands and livestock to the Church (I’m sure Jesus would have LOVED that!) BUT the Crusaders all did so at a HUGE disadvantage because, uh, supply/demand kicked in because there was a TON of land suddenly up for sale and EVERYONE needed a horse (or 3) and weapons and armor and food so you see where this is going the Church made BANK and the Crusaders went BANKRUPT for this cause that they were pretty much doing JUST out of a desire to save their SOULS, NOT out of hope of plunder!

So they eventually get to the Holy Land, probably like 50% of the *knights* who set out to fight there die along the way, let’s not even get INTO the Peasants Crusade or the camp followers/civilians who tagged along. And really, the plan was to kick out the “pagans” from Jerusalem, in theory hand the territory back over to the Byzantine Christians in Constantinople and just... go home. Then a bunch of stuff happened and they stayed.

BUT to go back to my original point, acting like it wasn’t a total haphazard mess that led to the conquest of Jerusalem, let alone holding it, that the Europeans had any idea what they were doing, that they were anything more than just ANOTHER band of smelly barbarians rolling through, setting up some short-lived fortresses and then fucking off again once any kind of serious local resistance gets organized, is to give the Europeans WAY too much credit. They’re not the sophisticated war machines of modern era Imperial Britain or France, these are barely more than Frankish clans and German feudal lords along with a bunch of whackadoodle Christian believers, getting tricked more or less by their religious leaders to go maraud to a random place on the other side of the world, bankrupting and/or killing way more than half of these hapless guys, for reasons that were largely baffling to the more sophisticated governments currently “in power” (for a certain value of “power” given internal divisions in the Fatimid Caliphate).

TL;DR The Europeans were basically a barbarian hoard, who lacked the manpower to do more than cling to the edges of the coast for barely a century before being driven off again. If this was the Romans and the Gauls we’d consider this occupation a footnote, if not for the long-term ramifications that we continue to suffer from this event, but more from the PERCEPTION of this event more than the material reality of it, for the last 1,000 years.

And anyway, as an Ancient Rome/Greece nerd primarily, this has been an interesting thing to learn!

#tog meta #the old guard #kaysanova #tog fic #history #actual historians please be gentle this is as much me trying to put my 101 thoughts in order

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amphxtrite · 3 years

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The main point is: NOT ALL CHINESE AROUND THE WORLD ARE WUMAO COMMUNISTS, NOT ALL CHINESE DESCENDANTS SHARE THE SAME SENTIMENTS AS CHINA OR DOING THINGS FOR CHINA. Got it?

Now, to move on to the other part of attacks on Chinese culture and shaming people just for being Chinese.

Whoever needs to see this, glad you seen it, even if you need it translated. If you can tag it that would be helpful as well.

this right here 👏👏👏

i hope everyone remembers that it’s not all chinese people who are supporting the unjust things the government is doing. China in general is a very patriotic country and so when given the choice to believe something bad is happening or believing what they have been taught their entire lives (china is great and the best country in the world) they are going side with the statement that has been drilled into their heads since they were children. Chinese people aren’t ignorant they really just don’t know, every news outlet and media platform they use backs up the point that China is the best and they know if they step one toe out of line China is very powerful.

This is the government and the people of power’s doing and it doesn’t matter what the people think. The people either don’t know or don’t understand and it’s fry oho we many people repeatedly blame China as a whole for just a small part of it’s country’s doing.

What’s going on there is absolutely a violation of basic human rights and terrible but please take a moment to remember half the people don’t even know what is happening outside or inside their country because of how controlling everything is there.

Next, because everything there is decided by the government chinese immigrants have NO control over what happens there heck the people in china barely do. So the hate crimes in the west make no. fucking. sense. You’re not going to reach china by attacking u.a or canadian citizens you’re just adding to unnecessary violence. Elderly people, adults and children of north american citizenship are assaulted, harassed and bullied for somethings they cannot control and it’s terrifying how normalized the hate has become.

To all the chinese people seeing this stay strong, there’s no reason to be ashamed of where you or your family is from or how you look.

This anon put it best 🤍🤍

#stop asian violence #stop asian hate #lovely anon

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fr-economics · 3 years

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A Brief History of Neoliberalism #2

Here's the second post in which I summarize and discuss David Harvey's A Brief History of Neoliberalism. In this post, you'll learn:

how a specific group of people plotted to advance neoliberal theory and ideology

how the U.S. created the Iraqi and Chilean governments to benefit the wealthy

the historical events that led to the adoption of neoliberal policies

how the Darkest Timeline emerged, as the 1% started to consolidate political and economic power

Please feel free to ask any questions. This post is longer than the previous one and this material is a lot to take in.

Chapter 1: Freedom’s Just Another Word...

The founding figures of neoliberalism specifically aimed for neoliberal thought to become dominant. In order to do this, they advanced a “conceptual apparatus,” as Harvey puts it, that appeals to our intuitions, instincts, values, and desires.

They aligned their theory closely with "political ideals of human dignity and individual freedom." These were, of course, threatened "by all forms of state intervention that substituted collective judgements for those of individuals free to choose.”

So who were these founders? In 1947, Austrian political philosopher Friedrich von Hayek and a group of advocates (including Ludvig von Mises and Milton Friedman) created the Mont Pelerin Society. They called themselves neoliberals after liberalism, in the traditional European sense, because of their (supposed) commitment to personal freedom, and neoclassical economics from the 19th century.

In the 1970s, advocates of neoliberalism aimed to garner financial and political support, such as in think tanks and academia (most notably, the University of Chicago). The theory also gained credibility "by the award of the Nobel Prize in economics to Hayek in 1974 and Friedman in 1976."

The Creation of Neoliberal States

According to Harvey, a neoliberal state is "a state apparatus whose fundamental mission [is] to facilitate conditions for profitable capital accumulation on the part of both domestic and foreign capital."

The promotion of "freedom" was used as a key justification for invading Iraq by President Bush. However, Bush had no intention of actually promoting the well-being of the Iraqi people. In 2003, Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, promulgated orders for "full privatization of public enterprises, full ownership rights by foreign firms of Iraqi businesses, elimination of nearly all trade barriers" and more. However, the labor market was strictly regulated. Strikes were forbidden in key sectors and the right to unionize restricted.

Some argued these orders violated the Geneva Conventions, "since an occupying power is mandated to guard the assets of an occupied country and not sell them off." However, "they would become legal if confirmed by a ‘sovereign’ government." The interim government appointed by the US was given the power to only confirm the existing laws, not edit them for the benefit of the Iraqi people.

We've seen this creation of a neoliberal state under the "coercive influence of the U.S." before. This famously happened for the first time in Chile in 1973, when Augusto Pinochet enacted a coup against the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. This coup was backed not only by "domestic business elites threatened by Allende’s drive towards socialism" but also by U.S. corporations and the CIA.

This coup violently repressed and dismantled leftist social movements and popular organizations, such as community health centers. Pinochet then brought Chicago-trained economists into the government. Since the '50s, the U.S. had funded training of Chilean economists there "as part of a Cold War programme to counteract left-wing tendencies in Latin America." These economists "privatized public assets" and "opened up natural resources to private and unregulated exploitation." They also facilitated direct foreign investment.

Why the Neoliberal Turn?

After WWII, the aim of the "restructuring of state forms and of international relations" was to "prevent a return to the catastrophic conditions that had so threatened the capitalist order in the great slump of the 1930s." The new post-WWII states all accepted that "the state should focus on full employment, economic growth, and the welfare of its citizens, and that state power should be freely deployed, alongside of or, if necessary, intervening in or even substituting for market processes to achieve these ends.”

Keynesian policies were widely deployed to meet these goals. States regulated industry and constructed welfare systems, including healthcare, education, etc. State-led planning and even ownership of specific sectors were not uncommon. "This form of political-economic organization is now usually referred to as ‘embedded liberalism'," and it delivered high rates of economic growth in the '50s and '60s.

However, by the end of the '60s, problems emerged. Unemployed and inflation surged, causing "stagflation" well into the '70s.

One potential solution was to "deepen state control and regulation of the economy." "The left assembled considerable popular power behind such programmes," even in the U.S., where even Republican President Nixon oversaw a wave of regulatory reform, including creating the EPA. There was an "emergence of a socialist alternative to the social compromise between capital and labour" and "popular forces were agitating for widespread reforms and state interventions." This was obviously a threat to ruling elites.

Elites were also threatened by reduced economic growth in the ‘70s. U.S. control of wealth by the 1% plunged during this decade. Implementation of neoliberal policies in the ‘70s, such as deregulation under President Carter, helped the income and wealth of the 1% so much that some writers "have concluded that neoliberalization was from the very beginning a project to achieve the restoration of class power." "...Increasing social inequality [has] in fact been such a persistent feature of neoliberalization as to be regarded as structural to the whole project."

However, keen observers of American politics in the past couple of decades will note that there's often a tension or outright clash between actual neoliberal theory and what neoliberal politicians implement. There is even a tension within neoliberalism itself. For example, distrust of the state's intervention sits alongside the need for a coercive state that will enforce private property rights. Harvey says, "when neoliberal principles clash with the need to restore or sustain elite power, then the principles are either abandoned or become so twisted as to be unrecognizable."

Harvey concludes that the "theoretical utopianism" of neoliberal theory, meaning all that talk about human freedom and individual liberty, "primarily worked as a system of justification and legitimation for whatever needed to be done to achieve" the restoration of class power after the crisis of the 70s.

The Reagan Administration

Reagan's presidency was preceded by "the Volcker shock" in 1979. Paul Volcker, chairman of the US Federal Reserve Bank under President Carter, promoted "a policy designed to quell inflation no matter what the consequences might be for employment." This was in contrast to Keynesian policies that aimed for full employment. By steeply raising interest rates, Volcker jumpstarted a recession "that would empty factories and break unions in the US and drive debtor countries to the brink of insolvency."

Reagan himself, starting with the 1981 air traffic controllers' strike, began an "all-out assault on the powers of organized labour at the very moment when the Volcker-inspired recession was generating high levels of unemployment (10% or more)." This began the long decline in wages, and was accompanied by massive deregulation in many industries and huge tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy—the top personal tax rate was reduced from 70% to 28%.

A series of events had begun in the '70s which came to a head in the '80s. The OPEC oil crisis of 1973 led to Middle Eastern oil-producing states being pressured militarily by the U.S. to funnel their wealth through New York investment banks. These banks needed new outlets for this influx of funds, and turned their predatory gaze towards foreign governments.

Previously, the U.S. exerted military pressure on various nations to meet its own financial needs, and primarily exploited raw material resources or cultivated specific markets. However, the New York investment banks became more active internationally by lending capital to foreign governments. Developing nations were "encouraged to borrow heavily... at rates that were advantageous to the New York bankers."

However, since the loans were in U.S. dollars, any rise in U.S. interest rates "could easily push vulnerable countries into default," leaving the banks exposed to huge losses. This was proved when the Volcker shock drove Mexico into default in 1982. Reagan's administration oversaw the pioneering of structural adjustment, in which the IMF, World Bank, and other lenders rolled over debt in return for the debtor countries implementing neoliberal reforms, such as cuts in welfare, privatization, and reduction of labor protections.

Remember that tension between neoliberal theory and practice, though? If free market principles were truly implemented, then the lenders would be on the hook for the loss if their borrowers default. They took the risk of lending, so it's their problem. However, in this case, borrowers are forced by the U.S. to repay their debts no matter the consequences for the well-being of their people.

The Meaning of Class Power

"While neoliberalization may have been about the restoration of class power, it has not necessarily meant the restoration of economic power to the same people." There are several trends under neoliberalism that reorganized what it meant to be part of the upper class.

First is the fusion of ownership and management of companies, for example, CEOs being paid in stock options. Stock values are then prioritized rather than production. Second is the reduction of the gap between capital earning dividends/interest and production/manufacturing. Large corporations became more financial in their orientation. An example of this is car companies opening departments to finance car purchases, instead of simply making cars. Mergers helped spur this trend, creating larger and larger diversified conglomerates.

There were also new innovations in financial services, creating "new kinds of financial markets based on securitization, derivatives, and all manner of futures trading." "Neoliberalization has meant, in short, the financialization of everything." Finance's tentacles became embedded in all areas of the economy as well as the state, and companies became more profitable not through gains in manufacturing, but through increased financial services.

All of these changes allowed "new processes of class formation to emerge," for example, the creation of tech millionaires and billionaires who got newly rich on new technologies, as well as newly acquired wealth through creation of conglomerates.

#ABHON #economics #real world #ABHON post

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cornholio4 · 4 years

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Ladybug is Team Cap II

Former US Secretary of the State Thaddeus Ross fumed as coming up to the first days of his appearance in court for war crimes; his lawyer was once again telling him that his best bet would be to plead guilty to the charges and try to have his previous military record allow him to get a lighter sentence. He kept thundering that he will not admit defeat as he knew that he was right and he was doing what was best for the world and to keep the so called Superheroes in line. Finally his lawyer ended up snapping that he was not a subordinate for him to bark orders for and if he kept it up then he will be resigning and Ross could either final another lawyer or represents himself. Ross was furious about this as he remembered how this whole thing had started: not the beginning of the Sokovoia Accords as they were going well implementing them and using his position to convince undecided or Anti-Accords nations to sign while hunting down Steve Rogers and his band of rogue Avengers. Then some brat heroine of Paris who calls herself Ladybug put her nose into politics when she should have stayed out of this; telling a live TV network that she won't be signing the Accords if France does not and she had the nerve to verbally attack the Accords and to claim that the Representatives were falsely blaming incidents on teh Avengers when it wasn't warranted. The naive brat had no idea what she was talking about and that strong measures that to the normal mind would consider harsh and unfair were necessary to protect the world. However the Ladybug girl was popular enough that her speech inspired an Anti-Accords Movement in France and this was worrisome. During a conference when the Accords Committee would be trying to sway the French Government to their line of thinking; Stark was sent to convince her to play ball but he had failed. Of course he did because why did he think he would succeed when he had utterly failed in bringing in Rogers and Barnes as well as left him out to dry when Rogers broke his rogues out of the Raft. He had to go to his backup plan and hire a brand of Mercenaries with Chitauri technology powered weapons; they were made as part of a military and government operation that he was helping to lead. They would attack the so called heroes of Paris and retrieve the artefacts that gave them their powers; they didn't belong in the hands of children anyway who had no business playing heroes. They could be better served in his hands to enforce the Accords. He was curious when they were defeated by Ladybug with help from Rogers and his rogues; he swooped in with his men to arrest them only to meet resistance from the nearby citizens who were hostile to him and his men. The French police joined in and shouted to his men to drop their weapons. Then came the French Prime Minister and his men and he actually went straight to Ladybug , Rogers and the Rogues to give them their thanks and called Rogers' team Avengers. He went to talk to the Prime Minister but then the French government officials handcuffed him telling him he was under arrest. His ranting was met with hostility from the Prime Minister as his officials had Ross's men disperse unless they wanted to join him. Later that day he heard from his colleagues from the Accords committee who said that after his arrest; the French President and the Prime Minister ended negotiations with the Committee telling him that the decision is now final that France will have nothing to do with the Accords and they can might as well leave.

He was furious to learn that more European countries were now withdrawing from the Accords and the US was now joining in the Anti Accords sentiment. His fury and horror was upmost when he learned that the US will be throwing him to the vultures so to speak. While the US haven't signed the treaty with the International Criminal Court; the big international incident of the Secretary of the State of the US overstepping bounds and authority as well as trying to enforce Accords in another country that the country didn't sign was now growing big. The US Government couldn't afford to back him since it would hurt international relations so he was fired, any diplomatic immunity withdrawn and given over to UN Court for War Crimes.

He heard all this from a messenger hours after seeing the President of the US give a live conference disavowing him and telling him that the US will not have him in the government anymore; a war hero of his record and they couldn't even directly contact him to say he was fired in person before having to learn it off the news!

He had attempted to get help from his government and military contacts in the US but that failed as they were steering clear off him especially with the investigations into the Chitauri weapons and his name had already come up so they couldn't afford to try and help him. Then finding out that the Accords Committed threw him out and were trying to save the Accords itself.

He was fuming at the injustice of it all especially upon learning Rogers and his rogues were welcomed back with open arms.

While trying to think of a way to defend his actions, he heard a write in candidate had won the US Election so hopefully it would be someone smart enough to know that the Avengers and other so called Heroes needed to be kept on a tight leash. He ranted in a righteous fury of it all being a joke when he learned who the next President would be...

Tony Stark was left along from the other Avengers wondering how it all went wrong; he was sure the Accords were the answer. They all needed to be kept in check; Rogers and his supporters only made things more difficult especially after Barnes was the prime suspect of the UN bombing. They should have played ball and stayed out of things.

He thought he had taken it well when he decided to help Rogers when learning who the real bomber was only to learn that Rogers had known that his buddy had murdered his parents for who knows how long. He got Rogers' letter but concentrated on running Stark Industries and working with the Accords Committee.

Someone else made the Accords difficult; a young heroine (who would only be a year younger than his mentee Peter Parker) called Ladybug publicly called out the Accords and got her country on her side. She was too young to know how not black and white issues like these are.

He convinced Ross to leave it to him when they would go to Paris for the negotiations to try and convince the French government to sign. He tracked her down and tried to convince her to join up as well as give him a chance to explain the good that the Accords could do as well as work to fix the public sentiment issue her actions were caused. He said he wanted her to convince his partner Chat Noir and the other temporary allies she seems to have to sign as well. Ladybug it seemed was more confident that he thought at her age and was stubborn; he had to admit that it was a bit far when he gave an implied threat that if she doesn't sign then she won't have many options when she does mess up or when they convince France to sign.

Ladybug was absolute telling him that this was not up for discussion and there is no way that she is sitting back and do nothing when people need her help now and the villain Hawk Moth's Akumas are on the loose. He had learned about this magical bad guy with his butterflies but he grew making an intimidating stance saying they will work out the details later.

It seemed that he was unprepared since unlike Peter Parker; she was not looking for any parental figures (already having loving parents he would have guessed) for a wise mentor. She just coldly told him that they were done and it was only then did he realise the French citizens had became hostile against him as well.

He had to retreat and it seemed that now all he accomplished was turning France against him and the Accords as well. Then there were the issue of the mercenaries that Ladybug took down with help from Rogers and his rogues and they had the support of not only the French citizens but the Prime Minister as well. Ross had to go and forget he didn't have power in France and get himself arrested as well.

Later in the next scheduled meeting there came in the French Prime Minister and President who were furious, they cut off all talks saying their decision is now final and will be made public: they will not be signing the Accords and any further discussion or meetings will be cancelled. This sent them in a panic trying to give them graphs, studies they had concocted and documents that were to convince them but the President had them all given to an aide and said to throw the lot in the nearest paper shredder.

Ross it seemed allowed his ego to ruin everything as that domino led to the downfall of the Accords in Europe but then the world and the US as well with Rogers and his rogues welcomed back and Rhodey and Vision were more than happy to welcome them back as if nothing had happened. He just stayed in his office cursing Ross especially after learning that he had orchestrated the attack in the first place.

He had resigned from the Avengers yet again, not wanting to face Rogers and think about how to go forward. He wasn't very happy to learn that Rogers had unwittingly won the US Election despite not entering. At the inauguration he found Peter talking to a French girl that Rogers had invited and guessed it must be Ladybug especially with a glare that she had sent his way. He had thought about asking Peter to help him patch things up with him and the French Heroes but realised it would be a terrible idea.

He just kept thinking about what went wrong...

#Ml fic #Spiderbug #spideybug #Marinette Dupain-Cheng #avengers #mcu #captain America #pro team cap #pro Steve Rogers #also on fanfiction #also on ao3 #not exactly Tony Stark friendly #anti accords #anti sokovia accords #team cap fic #Peter x Marinette #Marinette x peter #anti Tony Stark

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