#was a result of the Nazis not distinguishing

[lyinginbedmon]

This line of thinking shows up a Lot when trans people try to talk about the impact of the Holocaust on the trans community, and yes part of the impetus for the destruction of the Institut for Sexualwisschenschaft and its library was that Magnus Hirschfeld was Jewish.

Except he wasn't there. He ultimately died of a heart attack in Nice, France.

And if the near-total destruction of early 20th century trans history and research was, as is often implied in such responses like this, just an accidental thing, just collateral damage... wouldn't it have stopped there?

Instead, trans people got sent to concentration camps along with every gay, Roma, or person of colour the Nazis could find. They may not have called us trans (the term transgender itself wouldn't be properly codified until 1965), but that was why they were putting us there.

The destruction of the Institut is legally considered part of the Nazi crimes during the Holocaust and one of its earliest contributing events. To deny that we were there is, legally, Holocaust denial.

[sixteenseveredhands]

Milunka Savić, the Most Decorated Female Combatant in History: Savić disguised herself as a man in order to join the Serbian army during the Balkan Wars, then served again during WWI, earning medals from Serbia, France, Russia & Britain; she also provided medical support to anti-fascists during WWII and spent 10 months in a Nazi concentration camp

This is a total rewrite of a post that I did last year, with much more detailed information, more photos, and some additional sources.

Milunka Savić is regarded as the most decorated female combatant in history. She fought for the Serbian Army during both of the Balkan Wars, before returning to the battlefield again during WWI. Savić was wounded in battle on 9 separate occasions and survived the Serbian Great Retreat, making the perilous journey across the mountains of Montenegro and Albania through the dead of winter with a serious head injury.

Her military career began during the First Balkan War in 1912, when her younger brother was called up to serve in the Serbian army, and she decided that she would covertly take his place. She cut her hair, wore men's clothing, and presented herself as her brother.

The First Balkan War, 1912: Milunka Savić as a young soldier during the First Balkan War, shortly after joining the Serbian army

She was able to hide her true identity for quite some time. Her skills as a soldier quickly became evident as the war progressed, and she earned her first medal/promotion during the Battle of Bregalnica in 1913. Unfortunately, she was hit by shrapnel from a Bulgarian grenade during her tenth deployment, causing injuries to her chest and abdomen, and those wounds (along with the subsequent medical treatment) ultimately led to the discovery that she had lied about her identity.

In recognition of her accomplishments on the battlefield, her commanding officer decided not to punish her for the initial deception, but informed her that she would not be allowed to return to combat -- as a woman, she could only be transferred to the nursing division instead.

As the story goes:

Savić was called before her commanding officer. They didn't want to punish her, because she had proven a valuable and highly competent soldier, and the military deployment that had resulted in her [sex] being revealed had been her tenth; but neither was it suitable for a young woman to serve in combat. She was offered a transfer to the Nursing division. Savić stood at attention and insisted that she only wanted to fight for her country as a combatant.

The officer said he'd think it over and give her his answer the next day. Still standing at attention, Savić responded, "I will wait." It is said he only made her stand an hour before agreeing to send her back to the infantry.

Savić was able to serve in a combat role throughout the remainder of the Balkan Wars.

The Second Balkan War finally came to an end in 1913, but that peace was short-lived, as World War I erupted just a year later. Savić returned to the military once more, serving in the elite "Iron Regiment" of the Serbian army.

World War I, c.1915-1916: Savić was no longer forced to hide her identity when she returned to battle during WWI, and these images show her posing in uniform with her hair grown out

Savić received the Serbian Karađorđe Star with Swords medal on two separate occasions during WWI; the second medal was given to her after the Battle of Crna Bend in 1916, where she was credited with single-handedly capturing 23 Bulgarian soldiers. She received several other medals throughout the course of her career, including the French Legion of Honor (twice), the French Croix de Guerre, the Russian Cross of St. George, the British Medal of the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael, and the Serbian Miloš Obilić.

WWI, c.1915-1916: Milunka Savić as a Corporal in the Iron Regiment

She suffered a serious head injury while fighting along the Macedonian front, and she was still gravely wounded when Austro-Hungarian, German, and Bulgarian forces gained control of Serbia in the winter of 1915. The Serbian army was then ordered to make a full retreat from Serbia; Savić and her fellow soldiers, along with the Serbian government and more than 200,000 civilians, were all forced to flee through the mountains of Montenegro and Albania in the dead of winter, hoping to reach Allied forces along the Adriatic Coast -- a perilous journey that would later be known as the Serbian Great Retreat (or the Albanian Golgotha). Roughly 400,000 people embarked on this journey, and less than 180,000 of them survived, eventually reaching the Allied ships along the Adriatic coast.

Despite her injuries, Milunka Savić was among the survivors. She was sent to an infirmary, where she spent several months recovering from her injuries, before she returned to the battlefield alongside Allied forces.

At the end of the war, the French government offered to provide Savić with a full pension and living accommodations in France, in recognition of her actions while serving alongside the French military during WWI. She ultimately declined the offer and chose to retire back in Serbia instead, where she and her husband settled down to raise their daughter and three other girls that Milunka had adopted. The couple would later separate, however, and Milunka was left to raise her children as a single mother, working at a local bank to make ends meet.

In 1941, Serbia (which was then part of Yugoslavia) fell under Nazi occupation. During this period, Savić was involved in providing medical support to local partisans and anti-fascists who had resisted the Nazi occupation. She was eventually arrested by German officers; there are differing accounts of the events leading up to her arrest, with some sources suggesting that she was arrested as a result of her involvement with the local partisans and other anti-fascist elements, while other sources claim that she was arrested after she offended several Nazi officials by openly refusing to attend a formal banquet that was being held in honor of the German military campaign. In any case, she was imprisoned at the infamous Baljinca Concentration Camp for ten months before finally being released.

She faced other forms of hardship in the aftermath of WWII, as she struggled to support herself and her children. She worked several low-paying jobs over the years, while living in a dilapidated, decaying house in Belgrade. Her name (and her long list of accomplishments) had largely faded into obscurity by then.

Serbia, 1972: Milunka Savić proudly displaying some of her medals in 1972, when her story became more widely known

It wasn't until the early 1970s that her involvement with the military finally began to receive more widespread attention, both in Serbia and abroad. Following the 1972 publication of an article that told her story, her local community in Belgrade quickly rallied to provide her with newer, more suitable living arrangements.

Sadly, she passed away within just a year of the article's publication.

In 2013, Milunka Savić's remains were relocated from the small mausoleum where they had been interred since 1973, and she was reburied in Belgrade's "Alley of the Greats," where some of the most well-known and most widely respected Serbians are laid to rest.

Sources & More Info:

Research Gate: Milunka Savić: the Forgotten Heroine of Serbia

Girl Museum: Milunka Savić

Law and Politics: The Position of Women in the Serbian Army

Medium: The Fearless Woman-Bomber Who Died Proud, Broke, and Forgotten

Wikipedia: Milunka Savić

Mental Floss: The Serbian "Great Retreat" Begins (WWI Centennial)

[bfpnola]

Myth: israel was created as penance for the Holocaust (excerpts)

Nearly 80 years before the Holocaust, a group which came to be known as the “Bilu pioneers” came to settle in Palestine. It was comprised of primarily Russian Jewish settlers who viewed their mission in Palestine as a pioneering one towards “the physical upbuilding of the land as contributing toward both a revitalization of the Jewish nation and the reemergence of Jewish masculinity and virility”. While this group predated Zionism as a political movement as we understand it today, it would not be unreasonable to call it proto-Zionist.

...

The Bilu pioneers would be followed by other groups, such as the Hibbat Zion. Some would fail and leave, others would remain. However, the shift in the quality and organization of Zionist colonialism would begin in 1897. Convened in the Swiss city of Basel, the first Zionist congress included over 200 delegates from all over Europe. The program of the congress called for establishing a Jewish state in Palestine, and to begin coordinating the settlement of Zionists there. The Zionist congress distinguished itself from previous attempts at settling Palestine by being the first to organize and marshal colonization efforts in a centralized and effective manner. All of these efforts to colonize Palestine began nearly a century before the Holocaust, and was already picking up steam after the first world war. By the end of the 1800s, Theodor Herzl -the founder of political Zionism- was sending out letters to imperialist powers all over the globe in an attempt to elicit their aid in colonizing Palestine. Perhaps the most infamous is his letter to Cecil Rhodes, arguing that Britain recognized the importance of “colonial expansion.”

...

This is the context of the establishment of Israel; it was supported by the hegemonic imperialist powers of the time, not because they suddenly grew a conscience, but because it was deemed strategic for their interests. A glimpse at the political landscape today reveals that remarkably little has changed with this arrangement. While Western countries pay lip service to the façade of a “rules based international order”, their actions betray their intentions. Human rights are only as useful as their ability to be instrumentalized to their benefit.

...

The Holocaust was undoubtedly one of the greatest tragedies of modern history, where millions of innocents were murdered in an unspeakably cruel and industrialized manner. Also true is that this was not the reason for the creation of Israel, which had its colonial seeds planted nearly a century prior. It was not remorse that motivated the colonial powers to support Israel, powers which were actively committing genocide against multiple colonized populations. Framing the creation of Israel as repentance for the Holocaust is not only historically inaccurate, but deliberately paints the legitimate rejection of its creation at the expense of the Palestinians as complicity with Nazi genocide. It transfers Europe’s guilt onto Palestinians, where they become the embodiment of everything the grandchildren of fascists claim to despise in their grand quest for (empty, symbolic) redemption. A redemption with the theatrics and loud proclamations of regret and change, but none of the substance. At the end of the day, nothing can justify the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, who share no blame for the barbarity of Europe’s pogroms and genocides.

Palestine has always been home to countless refugee populations; Jewish people fleeing persecution and finding a safe home in Palestine was never the issue. The issue is that these ideals of coexistence were never reciprocated by the Zionist movement, who showed disdain towards Palestinians from the very beginning and sought to take over the land. It sanctioned its own settlers working with Palestinians, even calling Arab labor an “illness” and forming a segregated trade union that banned non-Jewish members. In 1928, the Palestinian leadership even voted to allow Zionist settlers equal representation in the future bodies of the state, despite them being a minority who had barely just arrived. The Zionist leadership rejected this, of course. Even after this, in 1947 the Palestinians suggested replacing the Mandate with the formation of a unitary state for all those living between the river and the sea, to no avail. These gestures were brushed aside, as they did not benefit the Zionist leadership who never intended to come to Palestine to live as equals. For decades Palestinians have been massacred, their homes stolen and destroyed, ethnically cleansed into refugee camps and denied their right of return. The notion that these colonial powers were ever concerned about Jewish safety as they fomented the conditions that made pogroms possible and denied Jewish refugees safety within their own borders is absurd.

[secretgamergirl]

American Politics and Vampires

It's 2024, a capital-E Election Year in the U.S. and I am already starting to see the slow creep in my feed here of posts stressing the importance of voting, and the accompanying utterly infuriating mix of comments beneath them of sad little efforts from neo-nazis to counter that messaging and hot takes from clueless children that are pretty hard to distinguish from the former.

I was a little tempted after seeing a few of these today, but I didn't feel like being a big nag, and so instead I'm going to ramble about how a while back I saw someone ask a question that resulted in a really uncomfortable silence- "Why are there so many stories about vampires where they fought on the wrong side of the civil war?" (And yeah, these are actually very related topics.)

Let's picture for a moment your standard vampire. We've got someone who looks more or less like a normal human being, but is secretly a monster who is compelled to suck the blood out of normal humans, leaving them either dead, or as these sort of out of it, sickly, very suggestible types just barely going through the motions of life, and getting drained again before they can start to recover and escape. A given story might try to give you a more sympathetic vampire as an exception, because we don't generally enjoy reading stories about this sort of monster, but the typical standard vampire also totally loves their inherently predatory nature. They'll refer to the people they're draining as cattle or vermin or whatever, consider them to be lesser beings, and live in some big fancy castle or mansion or whatever, maybe getting all prideful about their ancestral lines or whatever.

Vampires aren't going to actively describe themselves as slave owners. They're going to talk about their familiars or servants or whatever, but let's be honest here. If you're a vampire in the U.S. in the lead-up to the civil war, there is zero chance you don't have a bunch of slaves and the federal government is formally abolishing that, you're not gonna like it and you're probably not going to have a problem killing people to be able to maintain your lifestyle.

Meanwhile, here's the quote people love tossing around about the group of people we refer to with a term that really doesn't fit anything about them: "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." - Frank Wilhoit

So... special people who consider themselves above normal humans, insist on being able to do things without facing consequences for them, and in particular being very keen on harming normal people who just have to deal. That kinda lines up perfectly with our description of vampires, doesn't it! And a hell of a lot of things, through the whole history of this country, make a hell of a lot of sense when you realize that roughly half of all politicians from the ones we have now all the way back to the founding of the country have been straight up vampires. Metaphorically speaking.

That's not to say that half the population of this country is comprised of vampires. It's more that vampires, by their nature, feel like they have to be in positions of leadership where they can control as much human cattle as they can, so they're going to claw their way to political power and hold onto it with an absolute death grip, any way they possibly can.

Like, knowing how bad this country has gotten about education on Certain Things, and other countries not having a particular incentive to learn these things, are we all aware of the three-fifths compromise? See, when this country was first founded it was really kinda 13 countries in this weird military alliance, and there was a lot of squabbling about who was paying for what and how to divide up this extra land everyone was collectively starting to acquire further and further to the west and everyone had to sit down and hash out the foundations of what's now the federal government. Part of that was establishing the whole congress deal, where rather than just putting some number of people in the seats from each state, there would be general elections of reps to fill seats based on total population. All well and good, except then a bunch of vampires stood up and went "hey so those population totals count our slaves, right? Because we've got a whole bunch of slaves, and obviously we're not going to actually let any of them vote because they're not really people but like they're mouths that need feeding within our borders so that counts right? We can send more vampires to serve in congress proportionate to all these slaves we have?"

Now you would HOPE the response to that would be "what? NO! Screw you! Quit having slaves!" or at least "what? NO! If you don't let slaves vote you can't count them as citizens for how many people you get to send in to represent your state you monsters!" What actually happened though, because there were already so many vampires in the room deciding this that just telling them all to screw off apparently wasn't an option was people went "OK we are not going to let you have 100 times the voting power of a normal human being because you're a vampire with 100 slaves... how about we just give you 60 times the voting power?" Which is completely absurd! But, yeah, half-vampire-run country. You'd also figure this particular awful disproportionate power grab issue would have died when we abolished slavery, but uh... we didn't actually do a super great job at that. The actual wording of our slavery ban has a heck of a loophole in it.

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." So you know, you're a vampire. You failed to overthrow the government and they made you release all your slaves, AND they're technically allowed to vote now. That's bad for you because not only can you not boss them around or get extra federal votes out of them, they're probably going to vote against your evil interests. Fortunately you argued for these loopholes about people in prisons, and hey, you can exploit the hell out of that! Build a ton of prisons! Pass laws that let you arrest huge amounts of people for... being former slaves essentially. Make huge huge numbers of arrests. Offer to house other states' prisoners too! All these people are totally living in your state, AND they're full citizens with voting rights, so, yeah draw those district maps up to count them all, but oh whoops, none of them can actually cast those votes, because they're in prison and all. Still, their bodies count for population proportion, so the one vampire with a residence next to the prison effectly just gets to vote for all of them. Oh and the way the 13th amendment is written you can totally have them all do any sort of slave labor you need done while they're in there. Dangerous firefighting, horrible no-shade road construction, whatever you like really.

There's all kinds of awful crap like this baked into our laws, and it's imperative that we get rid of it all, both because, you know, basic human rights, and because it's all in there explicitly to give disproportionate power to vampires and make it particularly hard to get rid of them. Meanwhile, yeah, the vampires are also very much aware of that, and doing everything they can to keep us from doing that, so they can continue to, you know, rule forever, kill us for a combination of the enjoyment they get and a means of population control to thwart all this pesky democracy stuff, etc.

Now, a big part of how all of this has shaken out is that America has profoundly bad system for handling elections. A lot of other countries do stuff where you rank a bunch of candidates and when the votes get tabulated there's this whole multistep process weeding out the ones with no chance and then counting based on people's second choices and all that, but no, we go with "this guy got 21% of the vote and the next highest only got 20.95% so first guy wins who cares about the rest of this" (at least for general popular vote stuff, there's special rules and exceptions for lots of stuff like... amending weird crap that keeps vampires in power where you need various wide majorities, naturally). Anyway all the vampires get this so they pool their resources and pick just one vampire to run for any given thing and throw all the votes they have (bloated by various messed up means of getting extra votes and not counting big piles that disagree with them) without any other vampires splitting the vampire vote. This kinda necessitates the counterplay of having just the one non-vampire run for any given office. So, how do we work out who this one non-vampire is? Well, in the vast majority of cases, people are so disinterested in politics that only one person is going to even bother to fill out the paperwork to run (or nobody will, just letting some vampire run unopposed!) but for higher profile stuff, presidency especially, there's usually enough people interested that we have (technically unofficial) votes to agree on who we're all going to vote for later. Which isn't the worst system? Think of it like a tournament bracket (and really it'd be better if we branched those more, or used one of those better systems other countries have).

Oh and this is also only covering the various government offices where people are voted for directly. There's a ton of others like, you know, the entire judicial branch, which is arguably the most important, because it ultimately doesn't matter what the law says about anything when a dispute, even one in incredibly bad faith, can be brought before a vampire judge who's just going to rule in favor of vampire interests. Nothing for it beyond keeping vampires out of office so they can't appoint other vampires as judges and such.

So... yeah. The most important thing in all this is hey, do absolutely everything you can to thwart the efforts of vampires. They're super well-organized and weirdly open about wanting to enslave or kill the rest of us, along with doing everything they can to get away from this whole voting thing and just kinda rule forever as feudal lords, free to claim the blood of all within their domain and all. Past that, you want people in power who are like... competent? Willing to thwart and dismantle vampire rule, while also actually doing whatever job they're in the running to go and do.

So basically, when it comes to matters of voting, the really important thing to do is not freaking blow everything off until the big vampire vs. non-vampire vote. If the non-vampire sucks at that point, that's on you for not pushing for and voting for someone who doesn't suck when the primary happened. And if all those people suck, it's on you for not opting to run yourself or pestering someone you like to do so. But yeah, if you spaced that long and now it's just a vampire or some jerk you don't like, deal with it, vote for the jerk. We need to protect the weak and vulnerable among us from the vampires first and foremost and keep them from outlawing stakes and garlic, people!

Oh and the other thing with American voting is that yeah sometimes in smaller local elections things get weird and there isn't a vampire in the running or there is but you know from polls that everyone has kind of agreed nobody's voting for the vampire and then cool you can maybe vote for some cool weirdo who didn't get party backing over someone who did. That's never going to happen in a big election though. There's too much infrastructure involved in getting viable candidates propped up, the vampire vote is going to be in play in a serious way, and any sort of third party/write-in candidate is just kinda going to be some weirdo who has no chance at all of winning and is just here on an ego trip, so, yeah just focus on disempowering vampires.

But again, I'm writing about vampires not voting strategy so uh... hey white supremacy kinda works as wannabe vampires with this metaphor. The vampires aren't going to turn anyone new into vampires most likely but they tempt weird pasty creeps with promises that they might get to be vampires later if they help the vampires with their agenda and bring them pre-battered victims and such. Oh and a lot of people would prefer to stake them than deprive them of political power and like, OK, put your money where your mouth is then. Talking about that sort of thing in public is just going to make them post more guards around their coffins. Vampire Hunters gotta work solo or in small well-vetted groups.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

There is a curious and curiously popular habit whereby people edit down the subjective truth in the statement “I am afraid we will lose” to the pseudo-objective declaration “We will lose.” My best interpretation of this, after seeing it time after time, in crisis after crisis, is that it’s how people hide from their own vulnerable emotions. It’s an interesting journey from real fear to false authority and projection of confidence. But why would you assert as fact and inevitability what you fear? What are you protecting? Maybe the self rather than the cause, but only protecting it from disappointment, uncertainty, risk.

When you assert that the future is already decided, you undermine the motivation to participate in shaping that future—which seems ridiculously obvious as I type these words, but doesn’t seem like it’s considered by these prophets of doom. Also when you turn your feelings into facts, you turn truth into fiction. Accepting defeat in advance is a curious form of self-protection. I want to see people protect the cause by distinguishing between these two things and maybe realizing that you protect the self by protecting the cause and the possibilities.

This is not an argument against fear. It’s an argument for clarity about what’s a feeling and what’s a fact and a contemplation of how our words shape our world. I’ve been saying for the last few years, in regard to climate, “I respect despair as an emotion but don’t confuse it with an analysis.” You can feel fear, despair, sorrow, anxiety without surrender; history is full of countless people who persevered under the grimmest circumstances, often with heavy hearts and no victory visible on the horizon, or success a wild unlikelihood. Sometimes they lost, but the only ones who won were the ones who stuck with it (or who benefited from someone else doing the work).

Here I’m arguing for what my friend Roshi Joan Halifax calls wise hope, not foolish optimism; there are times when an honest assessment of “this will not work” is the beginning of turning toward what possibly will. On the other hand, in my years on this earth, I’ve seen things declared impossible or unimaginable come to pass, notably the fall of the Soviet satellite states in 1989—I don’t think that even most of the people who toppled those regimes believed they could and would, until they did.

We make something more likely, more widely believed, by saying and repeating it. Our rhetoric encourages or discourages. Which is why sports teams chant a version of “I believe we will win.” A whole sector of the progressive/left/whatever, however, seems to be eternally chanting “I believe we will lose.” This is not something sports teams do, incidentally.

In life outside games, warnings matter, but warnings are not prophecies. Warnings say, “this could happen, or if this happens, the results will be that,” which is quite different from “this will happen” as a flat declaration of inevitability. From Orwell to Octavia Butler, the people who give us warnings believe we have choices to make; as Butler said: “The very act of trying to look ahead to discern possibilities and offer warnings is in itself an act of hope.”

I don’t love Winston Churchill’s politics, but I do like some of his rhetoric, namely his famous declaration of defiance: “We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall never surrender.” He said that on June 4, 1940, when he had just become Britain’s prime minister. The war was going terribly: Belgium had surrendered and the Nazis, having crushed France, were about to take Paris. Britain faced continental fascism largely alone and Churchill feared that Germany would invade the UK. He didn’t say that the Allies would win, but that they would not cease to try. And he saw his job as to feed their stubborn ferocity, not their fear.

In the wake of the 2016 election, historian Timothy Snyder issued his Twenty Rules for Surviving Tyranny. The first is “1. Do not obey in advance.” I would add to that “do not surrender in advance.” I shared that in the wake of the abysmal debate last week, adding: Do not surrender prematurely. Do not surrender maturely, for that matter. Do not surrender if there is any other option, and maybe don’t surrender then, either.

Snyder continues, "Much of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then start to do it without being asked. … Anticipatory obedience teaches authorities what is possible and accelerates unfreedom."

I have said, "Your opponents would love you to believe that it’s hopeless, that you have no power, that there’s no reason to act, that you can’t win. Hope is a gift you don’t have to surrender, a power you don’t have to throw away."

It was striking in the face of that terrible debate to see people decide we had already lost an election that will not begin until early voting this fall. You would never see this kind of public defeatism and infighting from the Republicans, not that their boundless loyalty to a deranged criminal is exactly admirable. But it is effective. On the other hand, saying we’ve lost or will inevitably lose the election helps lose it.

Sunday, facing the nightmare of the far-right party’s success in the French election, left-wing politician Jean Luc Melenchon declared in a nighttime rally in Paris, “French people, the future of our common homeland will depend on your choice, whatever our skin color, our religion, our gender. Nothing is decided. Courage, young people! Hold fast! The future is what we make of it!” He spoke in Place de la Republique, where the rights of man and the revolutionary values of liberté, egalité, fraternité are celebrated, reaffirming those commitments.

“With high hope for the future no prediction in regard to it is ventured,” said Lincoln in his second inaugural address, in the midst of that war over the future of slavery in the United States (which is itself a reminder that the people who decided to abolish that institution were at first a marginalized, mocked, and sometimes terrorized minority and abolition was widely regarded as impossible).

What has most moved me in public life over the past thirty or forty years is people facing terrible odds without surrendering. I’m old enough to remember the anti-apartheid movement when Nelson Mandela was still serving a life sentence, and the collapse of the Soviet satellite states thanks to nonviolent organizing and civil society engagement; I’ve seen it in more contemporary faces of resistance from Florida’s Coalition of Immokalee Workers to Chiapas’s Zapatistas to the Indigenous-led anti-pipeline activism at Standing Rock and western Canadian sites; I’ve seen it in the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, in the Chilean student movement a few years ago, in the South Pacific Climate Warriors, and in the Hong Kong protests of 2019-2020.

We are in a crisis like nothing before in this country—only the rise of the Confederacy, secession, and the Civil War are equal in import, but they are not equal in corruption at the heart of things—in Congress and in the Supreme Court, which has staged a judicial coup in its last few days of outrageous rulings.

If Trump resumes office, the third branch falls and they combine into an unholy cabal for at least an attempt at endless tyranny. We may not win, but it behooves us to do everything we can to do so, and that includes our words and their impact. This does not mean suppressing fear and dissent, but being clear about the difference between emotion and analysis and about the fact that our words shape our worlds.

It also means recognizing the arenas in which opinion and thereby consequences are being shaped. A bunch of pundits who presumably want the Democrats to win the 2024 presidential election have taken to calling for Biden to step down, apparently oblivious or indifferent to how that weakens his candidacy, while not demonstrating a convincing alternative path to the White House. They too seem to have taken their fears for analyses.

They are joined in this undermining of the candidate by the New York Times, which famously dragged (“but her emails”) the Democratic candidate in 2016 while saying little about the Republican candidate’s appalling record of racism, bankruptcy, corruption, and criminal associates. The paper has published mountains of articles and editorials on Biden’s age since February and a few days ago issued an editorial insisting he must step down. (Strikingly, only the Philadelphia Inquirer saw Trump’s criminality and threats of tyranny as grounds to declare he should step down.)

As a study of the newspaper issued this spring put it, "The Times is engaged in a game of circular narrative construction: first, cover an issue excessively relative to other equally or more important issues; second, conduct opinion polls and follow up reporting that offer respondents the opportunity to express concern about the excessively covered issue; third, cover the results of stage two as if they are newsworthy events that happened independently of any prior media coverage."

Words have impacts. We shape our worlds with them, and that’s a power that though not evenly distributed lies with nearly all of us one way or another. The poet Marie Howe famously recounted of the Soviet refugee she studied with, “One of my teachers at Columbia was Joseph Brodsky… and he said ‘look,’ he said, ‘you Americans, you are so naïve. You think evil is going to come into your houses wearing big black boots. It doesn’t come like that. Look at the language. It begins in the language.”

But there is another kind of language that opens the door and lets that evil into the house—including by saying it’s inevitable—and that issues from our mouths, not theirs.

[Rebecca Solnit]

[rachelkruglyak]

Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story (History Redesigned Panel Presentation)

What is the koinos kosmos (common world) and mutually assumed knowledge the series shares with viewers? 

Queen Charlotte and the Man in the High Castle both invite viewers to consider an alternative historical reality that results from a slightly different course of history. Both shows challenge the viewer to consider the different paths that history can take and to suspend some disbelief to imagine alternative worlds. In both shows, the viewers can be expected to know what is historically accurate. The true Queen Charlotte was a German princess selected to marry the future George III. In The Man in the High Castle, the viewer can be assumed to know that the allies, not the axis powers, won World War II. But both shows provide the viewer with a chance to wonder “What If?” What if a mixed woman from Germany was selected to become Queen? What if the axis countries had won the war. In describing Philip Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, James Thrall writes, of “Dick’s overarching project of inviting his readers to consider history itself as fluid by presenting our assumed past set slightly askew.” Indeed both shows present altered versions of the agreed-upon past. The Man in the High Castle presents a fictitious New York City ruled by the Nazi party and a San Francisco administered by the Japanese. Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story presents a fictitious Britain in the late 18th century in which the German young woman Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz has risen to prominence and power. In the show, Charlotte was brought from Germany to be the wife of King George III, an event that mirrors agreed-upon history. However, unlike the woman who was actually selected, Charlotte in the TV show is of mixed race, raising questions about the openness of the royal court and the British people to a ruler with a mixed race identity.

How does the series depict cultural hybridity through the altered history’s role in reflecting and reshaping cultural assumptions? 

Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story depicts cultural hybridity by imagining that the Queen of Britain and Ireland played by a mixed girl. The show plays out one possible version of how history might have looked with a mixed girl marrying the future king. Much of the show focuses on how different parts of British society react to a mixed race Queen, which would have been the first in British history. The Man in the High Castle also involves culture clash as the Germans are imagined to control the Eastern Coast of the United States while the Japanese control the West Coast. James Thrall writes, “His characters muse regularly about differences between types of people as indicated by, for example, distinguishing characteristics of Germans and Japanese. The rippling image of fused flags that concludes the credits encapsulates Dick’s presentation of these two countries as linked but uneasy and culturally distinct allies.” The interactions between the German and Japanese occupiers represents an important plotline in the show.

In Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, the presence of a mixed race Queen leads to some shifts toward a more inclusive society that receives a mixed response. After hearing from Lord Bute that there will be talk about Charlotte’s race and being told that it might be best to cancel the wedding, the King’s mother, the Dowager Princess, who thinks it’s too late to cancel, says it’s only a problem if the palace makes it a problem. She then says that people from Charlotte’s “court” are invited to the royal wedding. Later in the episode, at the wedding, the Dowager Princess continues this shift to a more inclusive nobility. She refers to Mr. Danbury, a Black British citizen, as “Lord Danbury,” which surprises him. The Dowager Princess says that he “shall be receiving the official proclamation from the King. You are honored to be Lord and Lady Danbury now. All the members of the ton must be titled.” She then goes on to say that it is time they were united as a society.

In episode 2, Lady Danbury tells the Dowager Princess that she needs her husband not to be denied entry to White’s, for him to be invited on hunts, for her to be able to cross the street to the best modiste, to take the finest seats at the opera. When the Dowager Princess says that this is unreasonable, Lady Danbury reminds her that she needs to know what is going on at Buckingham House and says that they need to be equal members of the ton.

The Danbury Ball in episode 3 is another example of cultural hybridity and reshaping cultural assumptions. After Lady Danbury expresses to the Dowager Princess that she would like to host the first ball of the season, the Dowager Princess is appalled and says it will not be accepted, to which Lady Danbury says that it would be difficult for the Dowager Princess to hear about the Queen being with child long after the fact. The Dowager Princess says she will take it up with Lord Bute, but later that day, before the Dowager Princess can come to a decision, Lady Danbury decides that she will just have to send out invitations first. The White members of the ton are reluctant to come until they receive a personal message from the King that he will be attending. During Charlotte and George’s dance at the ball, Lord Ledger, who is White, asks Lady Danbury to dance, which prompts more mixed pairings to be made. Later that night, George tells Charlotte that “with one evening, one party, we have created more change, stepped forward more than Britain has in the last century.”

How does the series depict the power of understanding world-creation? 

Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story exists in the world of lavish, opulent wealth of the British royal family. Queen Charlotte lives in a huge mansion with intricate furnishings. She has an entourage that dresses her in the morning, feeds her, and watches her as she eats. She has elaborate, high-style clothing and shoes. She wears expensive jewelry and her hair is fashioned in elaborate hairdos. In addition to the opulence and privilege, her movements are carefully prescribed and often criticized. There are members of the court who gossip about her and are seemingly in control her life. And, to her dismay, her new husband seems completely uninterested in spending time with her. Through scenery, costumes and styling, Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story transports the viewer to the world of British royalty. This ability to create a compelling and unfamiliar world is powerful as it invites the viewer to escape their daily life and become part of a world that is intriguing and beautiful even with its flaws.

In what ways do formulations of the past, present, and future engage with prospective realities of what might have been and what might be in the series’ altered history? 

Both Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story and The Man in the High Tower start with a different possible reality. They consider what might have been, but wasn’t, and the story unfolds from there. As James Thrall writes, Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's Tale stated, ‘[p]rophecies are really about now. In science fiction it’s always about now. What else could it be about? There is no future. There are many possibilities, but we do not know which one we are going to have’. Queen Charlotte tackles the fallout from one possible choice, one possible reality.

There are two timelines present in Queen Charlotte. One takes place in the present of Bridgerton, beginning in 1817 with the death of the royal heir Princess Charlotte, which causes the Queen to pressure her children into producing another royal heir. The other timeline begins in 1761 with Charlotte meeting and marrying King George III. This timeline explores the King and Queen’s marriage and the King’s mental illness.

In episode 3, after being told by the Dowager Princess to cancel her ball, Lady Danbury goes to talk to Charlotte about it. She asks if Charlotte could encourage the other ladies-in-waiting to attend. Charlotte doesn’t understand what the issue is. Lady Danbury says that the Dowager Princess asked her to cancel the ball. Charlotte wants to know how it applies to her. Lady Danbury says that Charlotte is the Queen and has that power. If she were not the Queen, her life in London would be completely different. She is the first of her kind. She opened the door and the titles given to Lady Danbury and the other colored folk of the ton are brand new. She tells Charlotte that she should focus on the fate of the country as she hold its fate in her hands. She accuses Charlotte of being unaware of what’s happening outside the palace walls. This scene shows that there is a decision point surrounding whether the ball will be held, and with time it is clear that the ball had a major impact on creating change in the ton.  

In episode 5, colored members of the ton meet with Lady Danbury and ask her what will happen now that the Lord Danbury has passed on. Lord Danbury is the first member of their side to pass on and the rules for inheritance have not been established. They want to know if Lady Danbury’s 4-year-old son will inherit the title, if the laws of succession from “their side” will apply to “our side.” Lady Danbury says she never realized, that they could lose it all in a generation. This too is a critically important inflection point because if the title ends with Lord Danbury, the transition to a more inclusive society would essentially end.

How do multiple realities or contemplations of multiple realities merge with questions of authenticity? 

There are two different questions of authenticity in Queen Charlotte that exist at different levels but ultimately merge and inform the other. At one level, there is the question of alternative reality being depicted. The TV show tells a story that did not actually occur as there was a real George III, who was married to Queen Charlotte, but she was not mixed race. On one level, the writers are attempting to convince the audience that this alternative reality is plausible, that 18th century English royalty, in hunting for a mate for the king, might select a woman like Queen Charlotte, and that a similar narrative could transpire. From this perspective, the writers seek to establish some level of authenticity in their attempt to convince the audience that this narrative represents a story that could have taken place.

At another level, within the story, the royal court is attempting to convince the rest of England that the woman they have selected to be Queen is in fact a legitimate Queen of England. In “The Great Experiment” they seek to convince any doubters of Charlotte’s suitability for the throne. This level of authenticity within the show also hinges on the same issue of whether Charlotte can convince the English nobility and population at large that she is an authentic Queen. In episode 2, Charlotte’s authenticity as Queen is said to hinge on whether she and George III consummate the marriage, something that everyone, including George’s mother, is concerned about. Indeed, in the present timeline, their concerns are warranted as George leaves the palace and spends all of his time at the observatory after his honeymoon, leaving Charlotte completely alone. However, through the flash forwards, the audience learns that George and Charlotte will have 15 children in the future. 

[clevervonskelli]

I finally edited my post-finale, notes-app thoughts so that they're somewhat intelligible and I'm leaving them here in one rambling lump. 

- ROSIE!! I would give this man all the screentime ever. The depiction of his mission and crash was executed so well! Nate did a stellar job with that and later at the concentration camp. 

- Take the "true" out of the "we were the masters of the air" part! I hate it. Who put that in there? It sounds corny, and weird, and like they achieved some sort of divinely dictated status and it really pisses me off. The vibe is manifest destiny, American imperialism-type shiz and I hate it. Just "we were the masters of the air" with a different emphasis in Anthony's Crosby voice would have been great. Miss me with that "true" bullshit. Yes, this miniscule moment is what I will fight over. 

- Ngl, I thought there was some sort of design/editing oopsie when a tumblr post last week zoomed in on the opening credits where it shows a collection of dudes standing beside a plane and one of the ones wearing a life vest had Rafe Law's face. But now I'm so happy that in the show Lemmons got to take flight and participate in such a cheerful mission. 

- The roles and screen time for the Tuskegee men: It should have been better for sure but it was at least tasteful?? as weird as that sounds. In my (white) opinion, their initial introduction offered a very limited look at the unit as a whole but still felt a lot more intimate than for other characters we have seen more often. In episode 9, Macon, Jefferson, & Daniels didn't say much but they felt so integral to the scenes they were in and had quiet moments (like the nods when they arrived at the new camp or being right in the thick of the scramble during the liberation) that felt all the more powerful because of the lack of dialogue. 

What I would have really liked is for their storylines to run through every episode as more of a parallel to those of the 100th, with equal attention dedicated to them/their missions, but at least they weren't simply tossed into the show in a way that felt careless or grudgingly forced. 

- I'm not sure I like Solomon as the one lifting the guard during the march. Yes, the circumstances really did lead to some of them helping each other like that, even as wild as prisoners toting the guns might seem, but having it be a Jewish POW in the show felt very morally pedantic, like some sort of Sunday-school lesson on being the bigger person. I can only speak as a non-Jew, but it felt odd! Instead of being an effective way to underline the complexity of the relationships between prisoners & captors or Germans & Americans it felt like it was trying too hard to also connect to the Holocaust elements of the episode. I feel like the result was clumsy and strange in a way that I don't think it would have been if it had been a character other than Solomon taking those actions. 

- And while I'm on the subject of the guards/prisoners angle...

That one guard yelling and bragging about how to handle the prisoners was awkwardly done. I can't remember it exactly, but if the show wanted to highlight that "not all Germans and not all the prison staff were Nazis but some definitely were and those ones were real bastards!" then they should have had the other guard looking conflicted or upset by it or something. There should have been some kind of nuance distinguishable to the audience.  Most of the faces were just so blank it felt like one guy was giving the scene his all while everyone else spaced for that take.

- They managed to convey the "old men and kids" thing pretty well without hitting us over the head or putting it in the voiceover. There's a more effective way for it to have been done, I just know it, but I have no actual suggestions and therefore must be gracious. I'm just happy they tried to show a tiny bit of how staggeringly drained and unrecognizable the entire German nation was by the end of the war. MotA's ✨bombing morality discourse✨ often felt unsettled throughout the show, but I think the attempt at illustrating that the first country the Nazis invaded/attacked was their own ended up being more successful. 

- I'm not sure exactly what they were doing with the moment where Buck and the horse stare into each other's souls but I love how it gives us the opportunity to have cracky, 'Cleven is a horse boy' jokes 🐎. 

(Ok, but seriously, what was with the horse? Were they trying to increase tension wondering if it would reveal them? Was it to show how dire things had become in Germany compared to when earlier they had such technological might? Was it supposed to be one of the emaciated horses they often passed while on the march? Is it for white horse symbolic reasons? Just for the aesthetic? WHY?!?). 

- I could have easily spent 40 minutes just watching the POWs trying to pack up for the march and I still wouldn't have had enough. I'm absolutely wild for the details and background stuff in Stalag III and I can't wait for all the gifsets and whatnot to be able to take a closer look at things ❤️

- They gave Crosby his locked supply shed moment!! I was really hoping for that, or when he intellectually destroys the 390th's navigator, to be included and it is so satisfying to see. I love having something else to focus on besides his voiceover and early episode struggles (both of which I do enjoy) or the weird af way they did the him+Sandra thing (which I quite despise). Add it to his Nietze quote and anxiety concerning their roles in the war and I feel like we got a decent characterization of him again. 

- I guess I can accept not enough budget for a 10th episode but there wasn't even enough for Meatball in the finale? Man, I'd sure like to go back in time and crowdfund that shit. 

- When Sammy yelled "they won!!" as the kiddos were playing after everyone leaves Thorpe Abbotts I got super annoyed. 

The hero worship would be very real of course, but Hanks & Spielberg can't convince me that a British kid who has been living a huge chunk of his life in a country at war would not make that a "we won!". Not only was England a part of the victorious side but Sammy was basically a part of the Thorpe Abbotts/100thBG family and therefore would likely feel like a part of any of their successes too. It's kind of petty but, again, it felt a little too "USA! USA!! USA!!!" for my tastes. 

- From the moment his casting was announced I expected Callum Turner to put his entire being into this role and he certainly has. They nabbed a 6'4 dude built like an old growth pine to play a man who was something like 5'6 and 120lbs soaking wet, but I could definitely see the vision. His dedication has been so clear in other episodes as well but there was just something about Episode 9 that went above and beyond. Maybe because there are scenes where Egan is alone more often (or at least separated somewhat from the others), just like when he first bailed, but Callum's facial work and body language was impeccable. 

[stromuprisahat]

I just couldn’t stand the Girl Bossing that happened s2 Sab. It seemed over the top, very flimsical and well it didn’t seem that they had to overcome or do anything substantial to get the attitude. Like what was Alina pretending to be so superior the entire show? Genya I can understand but why tf was she terrified of the Darkling before the Incident. Why look so terrified when getting rescued from cages and torture. Please explain. Less you talk of Zoya the better.

My favourite character in SoC was Inej but why turn her into fanatic.

No idea why Nina hates the Darkling? She is ok with her bf being a former hunter bit Darkling is BAD.

Ps- Dont like Tamar and Tolya

Also Alina had some of the cringiest lines - You envy our love

Ofc the darkling had The Worst lines. In both seasons.

Unfortunatelly, the writers have about two braincells to rub together, and the result looks accordingly.

Alina fell victim to the idea that a good heroine is a tough heroine, and a tough heroine has no feelings outside the preferred romance. Maybe some righteous anger, but what else could she need?!

Genya probably got kicked in the head, before they hung her in that cage, that's why she was constantly afraid and semi-hysterical.

Zoya's visibly the writers' fav. They're "subtly" setting her up for her queenship. (About as subtle as a herd of mammoths crossing a thawing lake, but nvm.)

Inej has the misfortune of being religious. More primitive mind cannot distinguish between that and a fanatic.

Nina hates the Darkling, because she adores Zoya, who hates him, and he wouldn't approve her semi-fictional relationship with Matthias (Remember that while she's frolicking around, sing-songing about their eternal love, he believes she betrayed him and got him into prison.). We shouldn't forget the Evil Dark Wizard sent one of his best men to look for her, when she was kidnapped by her bf's Nazi cult. Fucking cockblocker!

I've encountred an opinion that Bataar twins are better in the show. I don't know. I think the writers were relying too heavily on viewers already knowing them, but hey- if they don't have time to properly develop their MC, what else should we expect?!

I've written it before and I'll keep repeating it. I don't like book!Alina, but that self-important psychopath in the second season made me miss her. I feel genuinely sorry for Jessie. She deserved some consistency to play, instead of a flat, cruel, unfeeling amplifierfucker.

Aleksander wasn't half bad in first season, but the shit they made him do and say around Miss Psycho in season 2... I guess he's another candidate for brain damage...

[van-goghs-smoking-skull]

I got one hell of an anon (or so he thinks - great job outing yourself, sweaty) 'ask' in my inbox today, but it's so unhinged, I'm not answering it as intended, but simply posting about it. Not to worry, you won't miss much when a quarter of it was URLs to Youtube videos that supposedly prove god is real and being trans is ... idk, the devil, Ig.

He starts out with a URL, then goes off about how Snoopy (had to look that up, it's apparently a cartoon dog that sometimes imagines itself as shooting down a particular Nazi) was used as government indoctrination in school to make us believe in science. Ok, first off, we didn't watch cartoons in school. Snoopy was created by a cartoonist (so sayeth Wikipedia), and was not 'government indoctrination'. And as far as I can tell, it seems the cartoon celebrated play and pretend (you know, fiction?) and Snoopy's flights weren't science but imagination. Also, science is not a religion or any kind of belief system, so anyone 'believing in' science is doing science wrong.

Cue paragraph 2 with additional URLs to Youtube videos and a rant about how David Attenborough proves that there's something more than what's in the physical realm in his videos, proving god is real. This is that 'you sound like you live in an AU' thing I talked to you about. Yes, that does mean I know who anon is. I blocked him, so I don't remember the exact wording of his bio, but he's 'non-political' and 'libertarian' and 'liberal', and lists his Myers Briggs (which is just an early fandom-like quiz, not scientifically based at all) results, proud of himself for avoiding logic and reason and relying entirely on his feelings. David Attenborough is a biologist and I seriously doubt he's 'proving god is real', which in itself is impossible to do.

Then another URL and telling me I need to learn about Jesus so I can 'stop being a mess'. Funny thing- I read the Bible, multiple versions and cover to cover, which is why I'm no longer an Evangelical Lutheran and why I'm now an Atheist. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I've heard of Jesus. I just also happen to be good at distinguishing between reality and fiction.

[eliza-who-smiles-at-death]

new Worm plotbunny: Great Responsibility

beware big canon spoilers ahead

-Butcher comes from Zion, and the Warrior and Thinker have the same shards even if they use them differently, so Eden must have a Butcher-equivalent

-multiple-earths deals with dimensional/multiverse stuff

-marvel has the concept of Spider-totems, cosmic forces that weave the Web of Life and Death, select champions of each universe or cluster of universes

-Great Weaver, upon Entities' arrival, glimpses the earths of Worm and weaves the threads of fate together so that the local dimensional cluster will have a spider-champion

-Cauldron, before Manton's defection, discovers a single "living" shard in Eden, is somehow able to distinguish it from the others in a way they havent been able to before or since

-gives it to a subject, they get distinctive silver bio-electricity, ability to enhance cognition speed, transfer of shard connection and consciousness upon death to a nearby parahuman

-when they, and each successive inheritor dies, theres always someone specific nearby to inherit next, sometimes almost as if by fate :p

-gets transferred seven times, picking up various powers that stack or complement each other but don't necessarily have a unifying theme

-seventh holder dies in Brockton Bay after Taylor triggers, when she is the only person nearby in the alleyway, and before she arrives they thought the legacy might die with them. she goes to help immediately, and they laugh weakly about the others being right, that somehow fate always guides the power where it needs to go

-Taylor becomes the eighth holder

-power-reduction and stacking upon transfer means she ends up with essentially miles morales' powerset, plus biomimicry tinkering that for "some reason" ends up being focused on spiders/webs, plus her bug control

-She limits herself so people don't examine her "grab bag" too closely, staying within theme at the behest of the first user, who won't tell her about Cauldron but asks her not to use his electricity for fear of Cauldron recognizing it

-she only uses spiders instead of all bugs; she keeps the invisibility a secret; she doesnt adhere objects to each other, only herself to objects; she explains away her danger-precognition, balance, and sensory abilities as an extension of her bug-sense or as the result of practice and training; she doesnt use the bio-electricity; the various stacking brute packages are easy to explain as one brute ability; she only uses the tinkering for webs or for things that she doesn't use publicly; she doesn't join the wards

-because all the holders are heroes, they work more cooperatively than the Butchers and don't drive her insane, and shes able to push out their influence the way she does with the butchers in a couple fics because of the Queen Administrator shard

-Danny ends up getting fatally wounded by the Nazis pushing at the Dockworkers for influence, gives Taylor a version of the "with great power" speech before he dies

-She goes by Weaver of course

-Black-and-silver costume, sorta like if miles's costume from Spiderverse replaced red with silver and had spider-gwen's hood

-eventually adds the extendable gliding membranes

[unwelcome-ozian]

I read that in Asia the experiments did not have the same name like MK ultra, what would be the name in Russia? Would it be different? Also, do you know any programming called the hall of flowers and bunny programming?

Asia is a continent, so I need a country to provide an answer.

No, it wouldn’t be called MK-ULTRA in other countries. That was the American program. I don’t have the name for the Russian program.

Prior to the early 1960s there was virtually no research being conducted in the Soviet Union on implantation of recording or stimulating electrodes in the subcortical regions of the human brain. This hesitancy was in part possibly the result of an aversion to the type of medical experiments performed by the Nazis during WWII. Nevertheless, in 1951. The Soviets openly stated that one aim of their physiological research programs was to develop the ability to damage, repair, and control the central nervous system at will. During the late 1950s and early 1960s the nature of Soviet scientific research changed rapidly.

Soviet withdrawal from the rigidly Pavlovian-bound research philosophy led to a revitalised interest in the biophysics of behaviour, particularly with regard to the bioelectrical features of subcortical areas of the brain.

Bekhtereva reported in 1966 at a meeting of French and Soviet scientists that there were 200 human subjects at her Institute with deep implanted electrodes participating in experiments on stimulation control of human behaviour, memory and encephalographic measurement. Her basic premise was that the experimentation was necessary for the study of illnesses. When questioned on the number of subjects by a US scientist who suggested that she meant 20 rather than 200, she reportedly emphasised that the figure was in excess of two hundred. When questioned again in 1968, at an International Symposium on the Central Nervous System, Bekhtereva would only reply that the subjects were all Parkinsonian or epileptic patients and that the number was in excess of 100. However, a distinguished Western scientist reported that in an informal discussion, Bekhtereva indicated that not all her subjects were physically ill or otherwise impaired. In the opinion of a US neurophysiologist, if Bekhtereva poses a requirement to the chairman of the Soviet Academy of Medicine, the Academy could arbitrarily transfer the required number of patients to her for research purposes. if in fact Bekhtereva has experimented with normal human subjects, it is highly improbable that these subjects were volunteers. 

Dr. Natalya Zavalova, a Soviet psychologist is reportedly in charge of psychological testing and training for flight personnel in the Soviet Air Force. At an International Symposium devoted to research on the Central Nervous System in the US in February 1968, Dr. Zavalova reported that she had implanted electrodes in the brains of jet pilots. Actually, Zavalova's experiment was divided into two parts. The purpose of the first phase of her experiment was to examine the capability of aircraft pilots to make decisions under stress. These pilots were placed in either aircraft or simulators with a second pilot who had been directed to manoeuvre the aircraft into dangerous flight attitudes. The procedures the subject pilots were asked to perform to correct the "emergency" were not pre- announced and the "stress" situation in which they found themselves was reportedly life threatening. Assessments of their reaction times during response to the emergency were recorded. The second phase of the experiment was devoted to examining the impact of electrical brain stimulation on the capability of aircraft pilots to make decisions under stress. The exact same procedures were followed, however, this time when the plane was manoeuvred into dangerous flight altitudes, the electrodes in the pilots brains were simultaneously stimulated. Zavalova claimed that fear was controlled in the pilots when the electrodes were stimulated and that this control was indicated when pilot performance of emergency procedure checks was reduced from 30 to 5 seconds. Zavalova indicated that this experiment was undertaken to aid in the development of reliable methods for differentiating performance capabilities of pilots.

 Institute of Experimental Medicine which does the ESB data analysis has its own computer. Soviet scientists performing stimulation research have observed both simple and complex changes in mental activity during these experiments. Some of these changes include fluctuations in waking states, simple visual and auditory hallucination, diverse psychosensory disturbances and "body scheme" disorders, changes in memory, mood fluctuations, and development of attraction to repeated electrical stimulation inducing pleasant emotions. In general, electrical stimulation of the brain can produce a large variety of responses, from motor effects to emotional reactions. Some of these observations have raised questions among scientists regarding whether humans can be manipulated in such a manner that they can be transformed (in the words of one Soviet scientist), into "robots." This fear has been perpetuated by the fact that the Soviets appear to have more of an opportunity to experiment with normal human subjects rather than any hard and fast statistics on their actual capability to control human behaviour through application of electrical brain stimulation. 

Some Aspects of Parapsychological Research in-the Former Soviet Union Edwin C. May, Ph.D., Larissa Vilenskaya Cognitive Sciences Laboratory Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) Menlo Park, California Abstract This paper provides an in-depth discussion of research of anomalous mental phenomena (AMP) in the former Soviet Union. The authors spent approximately two months in Russia in 1992 and 1993, and interacted with researchers in Moscow and Novosibirsk. The authors primarily discuss experiments in anomalous perturbation (often referred to as psychokinesis--PK and bio-PK) which have been the main focus of anomalous mental phenomena (AMP) research programs in the Soviet Union. In particular, the authors discuss methodologies and results of experimental attempts by human operators to affect the following inanimate and animate target systems: (1) microcalorimeters, (2) electric noise generators, (3) cellular cultures, (4) plant seeds, (5) plant biopotentials, (6) frequency of impulses emitted by an electricity-generating fish, (7) eating behaviour of mice, (8) person's reaction time, and (9) parameters of human EEG. 

Bunnies and rabbits are used in programming. They tend to be used with Beta programming. 

Oz

[priestessofspiders]

The Tragedy of the Maimed Goddess

It is estimated that around half of all movies made prior to the year 1950 are gone forever. As soon as I learned about this statistic, it never left my mind. So many hours of work, so much artistic vision, lost to time. As mortals, we age and die, it is our lot in life, but we always hope to leave something of ourselves behind when we finally pass on. To know that one’s work may simply disappear is of the utmost horror to me; it robs us of our only chance for some kind of immortality.

It gets worse when you look at silent films, of which only an estimated 25% currently remain. Until very recently, I had assumed that The Tragedy of the Maimed Goddess was one such lost film.

The Tragedy of the Maimed Goddess is a 1937 horror film, made long after silent pictures had been relegated to ancient history. Keep in mind, this was over a decade since Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari first debuted, and the long shadows cast by Dracula, The Mummy, and Frankenstein firmly cemented the fact that talkies were the future of horror. However, The Tragedy’s director, Karl Falkner, was firmly convinced that silent films still had a place in the world.

Falkner was an open homosexual, crossdresser, and communist, a man infamous for flouting societal norms. Some of his earlier films have survived, either wholly or in partial form. The films that have withstood the test of time were mainly simple dramas or comedies, more interesting for their director rather than the actual content itself. The most memorable of Falkner’s earlier work are those featuring his then-lover, Dietrich Bauer.

Falkner was a rather small, effeminate gentleman, with a soft face and messy brown hair. In contrast, Bauer was a hulking giant of a man, over 6 feet tall with a strong jaw and a shock of light blond hair. In a handful of books relating to German films during the interwar period, one can find a photo of Falkner and Bauer side by side, both smiling for the camera. They enjoyed a modestly successful career throughout the mid 20s till the early 30s, but times soon changed.

During the time of the Weimar Republic, Falkner’s eccentricities were seen as interesting and exotic, but when the iron fist of fascism commenced to tighten its grip on public sentiment, such behavior was increasingly viewed as signs of degeneracy. Falkner fled for America in 1933 following the appointment of Adolf Hitler as chancellor of Germany. Rumor has it that Falkner begged his lover to leave with him, but that Bauer refused, choosing instead to change his name and continue his career as an actor. Allegedly, Bauer’s final acting credits were in a handful of Nazi propaganda films under a pseudonym, though the exact specifics are unknown. Dietrich Bauer’s strong-jawed, blue-eyed face is so stereotypical of the Nazi ideal that it is difficult to distinguish him from the scores of other actors in such films.

In any event, when Karl Falkner arrived in the United States in 1933, he found himself an unwanted stranger in an unfriendly land. The Great Depression was in full swing, and as a result work was rather difficult to find for the German expatriate. For 4 years Falkner lived frugally, his slender figure becoming skeletal in appearance, and his brown hair turning gray from stress.

Finally, in the spring of 1937, Falkner had saved up enough money to begin work on what was meant to be his magnum opus. Years of backbreaking work, living on scraps, the expense of his entire life savings, and, supposedly, involvement with organized crime culminated in the creation of The Tragedy of the Maimed Goddess.

Despite silent movies having been long deemed obsolete since the emergence of talkies, Falkner insisted that the movie feature no dialogue or sound effects, only a musical score played by a live orchestra. The production was written, produced, and directed entirely by Falkner, with every detail painstakingly arranged to perfectly fit his vision. Filming only took a matter of weeks, and only a month later, the film was ready for its first screening to a group of representatives from various film distributors.

There were no other screenings.

Every single member of the audience walked out of the theater in disgust before the film even reached the halfway mark. Marcus Finnegan, a representative of United Artists, described The Tragedy as “the most awful thing I’d ever seen. I have no idea how that kraut idiot thought it would get past the Hays code. Good God! I wouldn’t dare sit through it even for a million dollars!”

Shortly afterwards, Karl Falkner vanished without a trace, along with the only copy of The Tragedy of the Maimed Goddess. The popular view is that Falker had accrued a significant amount of debt with the mafia, and that he was quietly murdered after his film failed to turn a profit. The only surviving piece of media relating to The Tragedy is the original sheet music for the orchestra, which was covered as a concept album by the short-lived band Robert's Chamber in the late 90s.

Moving forward to the present day, let me tell you how I came to see Falkner’s supposedly lost masterpiece.

My name is Fran. I work at an independent movie theater in Southern California, lets call it the Cinepalace. It's nothing special, just a single screen with enough space to seat maybe 100 people at the most, but it's enough to make a meager profit off of popcorn sales and midnight showings of cult classics.

The owner of the Cinepalace is a middle aged gentleman named Alan. He purchased the theater in the early 2000s after the previous owners settled down to retire. I am his only employee. Alan handles the ticket counter, finances, and popcorn sales, leaving me to work the projection booth.

As I said, most of the films we show are far from blockbusters. The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Plan 9 from Outer Space, and Pink Flamingos have graced the Cinepalace's screen on multiple occasions. Aside from the midnight movies, during daylight hours we often show old Westerns and Dramas to attract an older audience.

As you've probably already guessed, the Cinepalace is rather old to say the least. The floorboards creak, the paint is peeling, and you can get a discount on popcorn for showing proof of a squished cockroach. Alan has tossed around ideas of refurbishment before, but both of us know it's just a pipe dream.

About a week ago, an earthquake hit our little town. It's not necessarily an uncommon occurrence in California, but it did succeed in adding an air of excitement to our screening of El Dorado. After the rather literal dust had settled and the old-timers had left the theater, Alan pulled me aside and pointed out an uncomfortably obvious crack in the drywall, perhaps 5 inches in width at the largest point.

"Jesus Christ, look at this. You see the crap I have to deal with? It's a wonder this decrepit wreck of a theater doesn't just fall apart at the seams. I'm going to run down to my house to get some stuff to fix this mess, I'll be back in an hour or so. In the meantime you try and see how bad the damage is and get everything closed up for the night" he said, hitching up his jeans as he began to head out of the building.

I wished him luck and turned back to the crack, pulling out a small flashlight from my coat pocket to peer around inside. I noticed a faint glint of something metallic reflecting the shine of my flashlight, and I carefully reached inside the crack to see what it could be.

My eyes widened as I pulled out the film reel, encased in its metal canister. I blew off nearly a century's worth of dust from the object, revealing a label, written roughly in marker: "The Tragedy of the Maimed Goddess Reel 1".

I was visibly shaking with excitement as I sat down in the folding chair by the popcorn machine, re-reading the label over and over, trying to convince myself I wasn't dreaming. This film had been a personal fascination of mine ever since I first stumbled across its existence while I was studying for a film degree. I wrote a paper on it, theorizing on what it may have been about. I never expected that I would ever be able to actually hold what may have been the only copy.

Carefully removing the lid, I looked inside. The 35mm film looked to be in perfect condition, despite its age. Giddy with excitement, I closed the canister once again and peered back into the crack with my flashlight, looking for more. Rummaging about for a bit, I found 4 more reels, each similarly labeled to the first. Combined with the first reel, that came out to around 50 minutes of film.

Completely ignoring my assigned task of searching for further damage, I raced to the projection booth with my prize, immediately clicking them into place into one of the smaller projectors and setting up a portable projection screen. We'd often run new films we got like that first, rather than trying them out on the big screen.

"Something is missing", I muttered to myself, before realizing what else I needed. Pulling out my phone, I quickly pulled up the album The Tragedy of the Maimed Goddess by Robert's Chamber before connecting it to a portable speaker.

With everything set, I started the projector and began playing the album simultaneously. To my surprise, no credits played, the film simply began abruptly.

The droning soundtrack blared over the cheap speaker as the projector showed an image of the moon, floating in an inky, starless night. The moon faded into a human eye, the camera zooming out to show its owner, a woman in a pale robe, the tiara atop Her head adorned with a stylized crescent moon. She sat atop a throne of antlers. I knew at once She was the titular Goddess.

The shot changed, showing a group of almost nude women dancing about the Goddess's throne. They seemed to be in a forest clearing, surrounded by trees on all sides. A bonfire and the full moon above provided ample illumination with which to see by. Dancing amongst the women was a tall, dark figure, clad in black robes. At first I thought he was wearing some sort of headdress, before I realized he had the head of a goat. The sound of drums and mad fluting filled my ears from the recorded soundtrack.

After many shots of the goat-headed man and revelers, another group of barely clothed women carried forth a young man, wrapped in primitive ropes and gagged with cloth. His eyes were filled with stark terror. One of the women drew forth a jagged flint knife from her belt, driving it into the man's neck.

As the Goddess watched, emotionless, dozens more of the dancing women all drew forth similar weapons and descended upon the young man, plunging mercilessly into his exposed flesh. Blood spewed forth from his wounds, covering all nearby with a shower of gore. The flutes and drumming increased in their frantic intensity.

A man, dressed in hunter's clothes, was shown cowering in fear in the bushes nearby, his eyes wide with the horror of all he has seen. The man was old, with scars on his face, as if he had been attacked by a wild animal in the distant past. He carefully slipped away, heading back into the forest. The camera followed the man, the flutes and drums fading into silence as he moved further from the clearing. The soundtrack occasionally played a soft piping sound, mimicking the hooting of owls. The strings of violins were plucked gently, creating an unnerving sound as the hunter crept through the darkened woods.

The whole time as the hunter fled into the woods, there was an air of tension, a sense that he, and by extension, the audience, was being watched. He would occasionally hide behind a tree, evidently trying to slow his breathing, and sometimes one could almost make out something lurking in the shadows, only for it to fade away moments later.

Finally, the hunter arrived at a village, whereupon he began knocking on the doors of every house, the staccato rap of his hand on wood imitated by the drums of the soundtrack. His face showed clear signs of speech, but there was no dialogue, no title cards appeared to show what the hunter was saying. As he continued knocking on doors, the villagers began to awaken from their slumber and leave their homes, with clarinets, trumpets, trombones, and other instruments adding to the score to indicate their commotion. Once a large enough crowd had gathered, the hunter stood atop a crate in the center of the village, and began speaking to the gathered crowd. Once again, there was no title card to indicate what he was saying, but the fury and terror on his face spoke for him. The camera panned over the crowd, and showed the growing fear and rage on their faces. They began to shout, the music becoming louder and growing into an almost militaristic fervor.

The hunter hopped down and began leading the villagers into the woods. As they marched forth, the villagers began to arm themselves with torches, knives, pitchforks, and other makeshift weapons. The camera followed them on their long trek through the forest, but gone was the furtive and unnerving plucking of violins. The villagers made no attempt to hide, to skulk in the shadows; they were out for vengeance.

The camera cut back to the clearing, where the dancing women and the goat-headed man continued their cavorting about the taciturn Goddess's throne. The only sign of their victim that remained was a pile of bones, picked clean of flesh and organs. The discordant drums and squealing flutes of their revelry were cut off by a violent crash of cymbals and the blare of trumpets as the villagers charged into the clearing, the hunter in the lead.

The worshipers were cut down by the dozen, each death punctuated by the crash of a cymbal. The goat-headed man tried to flee, but one of his horns was lopped off with a cleaver in the process, blood spewing from the wound as he stumbled off into the dark woods.

The Goddess's face turned from a stern, solemn expression to one of horror as Her followers were killed. She got up from Her throne of antlers, crescent moon tiara glinting in the light of the bonfire. However, as soon as She moved to leave, She was grabbed by the mob, Her screaming simulated by the discordant wailing of a violin.

With the dancers all either dead or fleeing, the mob turned their ire to the Goddess. A crude cross had been constructed out of wooden planks, and they swiftly tied Her to it with hempen rope. The hunter approached, wielding a makeshift spear. He put out the Goddess's eyes with the weapon, each strike punctuated with the shrieking of the violin. The music became very quiet as the camera zoomed in towards the Goddess's face, clearly showing Her bloodied eye sockets. The moon was directly above Her head. It went out.

The soundtrack began blasting horrible sounds; the screeching of string instruments, blaring of the brass, and the discordant piping of woodwinds. But, despite the cacophony, there was nothing on the screen. I paused the album and looked over at the projector, trying to see if something was wrong.

I was shocked to realize I had already gone through all 5 film reels, somehow changing them out while I watched. I was apparently so enthralled by the film that I had done it automatically, not even realizing.

I checked my phone to see how much of the album was left. There was another 10 minutes. The entire soundtrack was an hour in length, meaning that there must be a reel missing. I quickly put the reels back in their canisters and hid them among the other movies.

I ran back downstairs to the crack in the wall, frantically searching for the last reel. I had to see the whole film. I couldn't explain why, but it called to me somehow. I reached deep into the crack with my arm up to the shoulder, feeling around in the shadows, but there was nothing. I was about to pull my arm out and grab a sledgehammer to widen the gap, when something grabbed me by the wrist. I shrieked in terror and tried to pull back, but it gripped tighter, and tighter.

The door to the theater opened with the jingle of the bell and I fell backwards, sobbing, as whatever had grabbed me released its terrible grip.

"Whoa, Fran, hey, what's going on? Are you alright?" asked Alan, concern in his voice.

I tried to compose myself. "Um, yeah, yes, I'm fine. Sorry, there was, uh, a spider", I lied. I didn't know why I lied, it's not like he wouldn't have believed me. Alan trusted me, and he wouldn't have called me crazy if I told him what was going on. But something inside me wouldn't let me tell him.

"I have to go, sorry, I'm not feeling well", I muttered, before Alan could even respond to what I said. Not processing his sputtering protestations, I quickly walked out the door, rubbing my wrist with my free hand.

I didn't own a car, but I lived only a few blocks away. It was around 3 AM, and the night was dark, even more so than usual. Looking overhead, I could see no stars in the sky, just the shining crescent moon. It was strange, usually one could get a great view of the night sky around here.

Alan probably won't find the reels, I thought to myself, after all, he has little reason to do a thorough search of the projection booth unless he is doing inventory. I stopped walking for a moment, processing what I just thought. Why wouldn't I want Alan to see the film? I had hidden them almost on instinct, like it was the most natural thing in the world, but surely I wouldn't want to hide this find from him. Did I want fame? Fortune? The more I thought about it, the more I didn't understand my hesitancy. It felt almost like the possessiveness of a jealous lover.

Movement caught my eye, stopping my train of thought. Something was in the alleyway near me. I heard a hacking cough from within. Almost as though I were a puppet on strings, I felt myself stepping towards the sound.

I reached the mouth of the alleyway and drew forth my flashlight, shining it towards the coughing. I saw a man in ragged clothes, barely covered with a cheap blanket. Once my light touched him, he raised his head, staring at me.

It was the hunter from The Tragedy of the Maimed Goddess. Every detail, from his wrinkled skin, to the graying hair. Even the scars, carved into his face by some unknown beast.

I dropped my flashlight for a moment, so startled was I to see the man. I fumbled for it for a few seconds, before once again pointing the light at the man's face.

"Hey! Can't you see I'm trying to get some damn sleep!" cried out the homeless man whose eyes I was shining my flashlight into. His face had changed. He was younger now, without scars, a different hair color. He couldn't have been the same man I'd seen just a second before.

I muttered an apology and tossed some dollar bills on the ground at the alley's entrance. I continued the walk back to my apartment, a little faster than I had been going before. I looked back up at the sky, and the stars were back to normal, clear as could be.

I slept fitfully that night, tossing and turning. My dreams were vague, difficult to fully remember, yet disturbing nonetheless. I remember a sense of terror, a fear that I was being pursued. I was outside, in the dead of night, surrounded by trees on all sides. Occasionally I could hear the plucking of violins. I tripped over a root underfoot, and I knew that I was doomed.

Then I was awake, lying in bed. My phone chimed, informing me I had received a text. I looked over my notifications, seeing a number of messages from Alan, asking where I was. I checked the time, seeing that it was several hours past when I was supposed to have awoken. I shot him a text saying that I wasn't feeling well, that I was feverish, and then turned off my phone.

I needed to get some groceries, so I got dressed and headed out the door, walking a few blocks down to the grocery store. I wasn't fully paying attention to my surroundings. My mind kept thinking back to the homeless man in the alley, my dreams, and most of all The Tragedy. Lost in my thoughts, I simply grabbed the items on my list and headed for the check stand, not even processing the greeting of the cashier.

As I fumbled for my wallet, I looked up to apologize for my inattentiveness, whereupon I was greeted with a horrible sight.

The cashier's face was that of the Goddess, Her eyeless sockets boring into my very soul. Her face was contorted in a hideous grimace of agony, and I shrieked in terror, backing away quickly. I slipped and fell, landing on my backside. Looking up, I saw the cashier's face was simply that of an ordinary woman, a bit shocked at my outburst.

I mumbled out an apology, saying something about losing my balance, and quickly paid for my groceries before leaving in a hurry. As I walked down the crowded street back towards my apartment, I noticed that the hustle and bustle of conversation, cars, and movement all around me sounded more like the tuning of an orchestra than the day-to-day clamor of a busy street.

I could hear the sounds of clarinets, violins, trumpets, and even an organ, all mixing together to form something that sounded almost but not quite like a crowd. I looked around, and could see no source for such a din. I covered my ears as best as I could while still holding my groceries, and pressed forward through the crowd.

As soon as I reached my apartment building, I practically ran for the safety of my home. However, as I groped around for my keys, I noticed an envelope in front of my door, closed with a wax seal bearing the symbol of a crescent moon. I knew, deep down in my gut, that I needed to read it.

Setting down my bags, I broke open the seal and pulled out the note within. The paper seemed old, like the pages of a well-read book. Scratchy handwriting spelled out the words; It is time to finish what you've started. Meet me as soon as you can. Herzlicht, K.F. Below the message was an address, located somewhere in Los Angeles, near Hollywood.

I detected movement out of the corner of my eye, and looked quickly to see a black-robed figure turning a corner. Somehow I knew they must be the deliverer of the message. I ran over to see who it was, calling for them to stop, but as I rounded the corner, there was nobody there.

Later that evening, I purchased a train ticket for a trip to LA. I went to bed early to catch the bus to the station, and was once again subjected to a fitful, restless sleep.

I dreamt that I danced around a great bonfire, surrounded by an ancient forest. I shrieked with laughter as I circled the blazing fire, but no sounds left my lips, instead my ears were filled with the sound of drums and flutes. I was among friends, others who danced alongside me, fellow worshipers of the Goddess of the woods.

Suddenly, I felt a horrible, stabbing pain in my back, and I turned to see the vengeful glare of one of the village folk, his knife plunged deep between my ribs. I fell to the grass-covered ground, eyes open, as I looked upon the form of my Goddess sitting atop her throne of antlers.

I woke to the sound of my phone's alarm going off, reminding me that I needed to get to the bus in time to catch my train. I ate breakfast quickly, before throwing some clothes on and heading out the door. The bus ride was relatively short, and soon I found myself on a 4 hour train ride to the city of angels.

As I sat in my seat, looking out across the scenery, my mind was filled with countless questions. Am I crazy? Why am I obeying the letter's instruction? Who sent me the letter?

I hardly noticed when we arrived at our destination, and it took me a moment to snap out of my stupor and make my way on to the platform. Pulling out my phone, I opened up the navigation app and typed in the address indicated on the note.

Once again, the sound of the crowd was replaced with the cacophonous sounds of an orchestra tuning their instruments. There were no voices, just the sound of discordant music mimicking human speech. I kept my head down and tried to focus on my phone, though my nerves were beginning to fray.

I was instructed to turn down an alleyway by my phone, and soon found myself in a far less occupied part of town. I followed a path through what felt like a maze of tunnels, the sky a tiny patch of blue surrounded by brick and mortar. It went on far longer than it felt like it should, a labyrinth of fire escapes, trash cans, and back doors. It felt like hours, but whenever I checked my phone, it claimed only a few minutes had passed.

I could have swore I sometimes heard the distant plucking of a violin, or noticed a vague form dashing around a corner, but such moments passed so quickly it was difficult to know whether or not my mind was simply playing tricks upon me.

Finally, I found myself at my destination. It was a rundown apartment building, with a boarded up door bearing a sign labeled "CONDEMNED". I double checked the note, check to see if I went to the correct address, but there was no error.

I searched for a method of entrance, before spying a bit of graffiti above one of the boarded ground floor windows. It was a crescent moon, spray painted in a sickly yellow, with an arrow pointing downwards. Looking closer at the window, I noticed how loose the boards were, and I made quick work of prying them off and tossing them out of the way. Turning on my flashlight, I pulled myself through the opening and stepped inside.

The interior of the building was extremely dark, and smelled strongly of decay. I could faintly hear the sound of a piano playing from deeper within the building, and followed the sound as best as I could. Graffiti covered the walls, full of the usual suspects; swastikas, tags, profanity, etc. Yet as I continued deeper into the building, more and more often I began to notice the spray painted symbol of a crescent moon. It felt like it was following me, watching me as if it were an eye. The eye of the Goddess.

Eventually, the music became clear enough for me to distinguish that the tune was Debussy's Claire de Lune. A minute or two later, I reached the door from which the music seemed to be emanating from. It seemed to just be the entrance to an ordinary apartment. I hesitated for a moment, considering where I was, what I was doing. Maybe it would be best to try and see a doctor I thought to myself. But then I thought about the note folded in my pants pocket, and steeled myself. I opened the door.

Despite all natural laws of physics, the room beyond was far larger than it possibly could have been based on the exterior dimensions. It was a vast ballroom, beautiful, but in disrepair. Despite the daylight outside, the shattered windows showed a black, starless night. A crescent moon hung low in the sky, seeming to grin at me. There was no form of artificial illumination, yet I could see fairly clearly.

I wasn't alone in the ballroom. Two figures danced slowly to the haunting melody of Claire de Lune, which I could now tell was emitting from an antique phonograph. One was short, perhaps 5'6" or so, while the other stood well over 6 feet. The shorter figure was clad in a beautiful white ballgown, with messy gray hair, while the tall individual they danced with seemed to be wearing some sort of black suit.

It was only when I noticed the red armband on the left arm that I realized what he was wearing. It was the coal black uniform of an SS officer. The song came to an end, and the ballgown-clad figure separated from their fascist dance partner, walking calmly towards me.

I gasped as I realized who I was looking at. My mind flashed to the photograph of Karl Falkner I had seen in a few books on interwar German cinema, and compared the image to the man who now stood before me. His hair was gray from stress and age, his face slightly more lined, but it was definitely Falkner. I realized that the taller man in the black uniform must be Dietrich Bauer.

"You received my message, I take it?" asked the director, smiling faintly. The faintest hint of a German accent tinged his words.

I couldn't respond. I was standing before a man who should have died decades ago. Yet, as I looked upon him, he couldn't have been more than 50 years old. I just sat and stared, my mouth open.

"Tch, close your mouth child, you'll catch flies" said Falkner, before snapping his slender fingers. At once, the hulking form of Dietrich Bauer appeared, carrying two folding chairs, which he promptly unfolded and set down on the polished wooden floor. Up close, I could see that he had no eyes, his uniform stained with dried blood and vitreous fluid. The expression on the Nazi's face was blank, mindless. Whatever personality Bauer once possessed had long since been replaced with robotic obedience.

Falkner sat down on one of the chairs, motioning for me to take the other. I did so, still silent from shock.

"So, what did you think of my film?" asked Falkner, folding his hands on his lap. His red painted nails contrasted with the white of the ballgown. I tried to shake myself out of my confusion.

"Your film?" I asked.

"The Tragedy of the Maimed Goddess. Don't try to play dumb with me, I know you've seen it. You wouldn't be here otherwise."

I thought for a moment, genuinely unsure how to respond. Falkner sat patiently as I organized my thoughts. Finally, I spoke. "It was very... strange. The use of the orchestra not merely as soundtrack but as a substitute for dialogue, the lack of title cards, and the pagan symbolism, those elements gave the film an almost a dream-like quality. Like something out of a fairy tale perhaps. I wish I could have seen the ending."

Falkner gave a wry smile. "Aside from Dietrich and myself, nobody has ever seen The Tragedy's ending. Those idiot businessmen left the moment of the sacrifice scene. Stomachs were a tad less strong back then. Perhaps, for the sake of the world, that is a good thing."

I swallowed, looking over at Bauer's black-clad form standing behind Falkner. His eyeless face remained entirely expressionless.

"Don't expect him to say anything", said Falkner, his smile seeming to falter somewhat, "what is left of Dietrich may be an excellent dance partner, but as a conversationalist he is woefully lacking. Don't worry, he's perfectly harmless. My collaborators made sure of that." "Your collaborators?" He sighed, crossing his legs and holding out his hand, snapping his fingers again. Bauer silently produced a cigarette, ignited it with a silver lighter, and handed it to Falkner. He took a long drag before responding. "Yes. They're the ones who approached me with the idea for the film in the first place."

My head spun. The impossibility of what was happening was beginning to fray my nerves, but I tried to remain focused. "I thought you came up with the idea yourself? From what I've read, you worked almost entirely alone, aside from the actors. " "Well, my collaborators weren't exactly the sort who get much in the way of publicity", he leaned closer, his voice quieting, "they came to me in my dreams." There was a trace of simultaneous fear and reverence in his voice.

"Who are they?" "Oh now that's a very difficult question, very hard to explain. Tell me, have you ever been alone? Truly, entirely alone? When there is not so much as an insect buzzing to keep you company?"

I nodded.

"Now, seeing as you are entirely alone, and fully cognizant of your loneliness, have you ever felt like something was watching you? Have you checked corners, ceilings, even under beds, just to alleviate that nagging, itching feeling of being observed? They are the reason."

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and I suddenly felt incredibly exposed. I glanced around the vast ballroom, seeing nothing but shadows aside from Falkner and his companion. I wondered what might be hiding in those shadows. Becoming increasingly paranoid, I got up out of my seat, beginning to pace about the ballroom to steady my nerves. "Why is any of this happening? It's just a movie! This isn't real." "Just a movie? When the grim shadow of Count Orlok stretches his clawed fingers across the screen, do you not shiver with fear? When Chaplin's Little Tramp gets himself into some absurd situation, do you not laugh with delight? Stories affect us, child, since the earliest days of troglodytic proto-humans cowering around a campfire, drawing on the cave walls with charcoal. The Tragedy of the Maimed Goddess is no different, just somewhat more powerful, particularly the final reel. Some people can handle it, like myself, others..." Falkner trailed off, his gaze looking towards Dietrich's blank, eyeless stare.

"What is this place? Why are you here? Where is the final reel?" I asked the director, becoming increasingly aware of how bizarre my situation was, desperate for answers.

Falkner smiled sadly. "This place is my home now. My collaborators took me here after I finished the film. Time works differently here, as I'm sure you can tell. As for the final reel, I had it sent to Berlin following the disastrous first showing. I knew my time in the regular world was going to come to an end, so I sent it to the one person on Earth who I felt I would be able to spend eternity with. I was horrified to find what Dietrich had become in the intervening years, when They dragged him here in that horrible uniform, eyes gouged out and mind shattered."

In the far distance, I heard the sound of an orchestra beginning to tune their instruments. Falkner's sad smile fell away, replaced with horror, and he stood up from his chair. "Listen to me," he hissed, as if trying to yell and whisper at the same time, "it's too late for me, but you still have a chance. They want you to see the final reel, to share it with the world. I'm certain that They have already taken it to your home. But you have a choice, you don't have to do that."

He handed me a pistol. I've never been particularly interested in firearms, but even I can recognize a Luger when I see one. I looked over at the eyeless, silent form of Dietrich Bauer, noticing the empty holster at his side. "What am I supposed to do with this?" I asked, fearfully. The distant orchestra grew louder.

"End your life on your own terms, before it is too late. You've seen enough so far that they'll never leave you alone, the hallucinations will only get worse until you either go mad or do as they demand. Death is better than an eternity here!"

I was about to protest, when Falkner shushed me and looked over his shoulder into the gloom. I followed his gaze, but saw nothing. "Run!" he screamed, turning back around and pushing me towards the exit "They're coming!"

I stumbled backwards, steadying myself. I saw the crescent moon overhead, slowly waxing into a solid white circle, as though it were an all-seeing eye, watching me. I didn't need to be told twice, I ran for the exit. The orchestra swelled in intensity, till it felt as though my eardrums would burst. When I finally crossed the threshold of the ballroom, I slammed the door behind me, and suddenly all was silent.

I sat and caught my breath for a few moments, looking at the peeling paint of the old door. Part of me wondered if I opened it again, would I find that ballroom once more? Or would it just be a moldy old apartment? I decided not to risk it, and hurried my way outside, hiding the pistol in my backpack.

I caught the train home just in time, and tried to ignore the eyeless, bloodied stare of the Goddess's face on the ticket taker. I pretended I couldn't see the film grain that stained the sky as the sun slowly set, a crescent moon shining down upon me like a sardonic smile. I tried not to hear the sound of the orchestra replacing the chatter of the train's occupants.

When I finally arrived back home to my apartment, I found the final film reel laying on my bed, along with a projector already set up and pointed at my wall. The message was clear.

I've typed up this narrative because I have a decision to make. I have the pistol lying on my desk, and the film reel set up in the projector. From what Falkner tells me, if I watch the final 10 minutes of the film, I will join him and Dietrich forever in that unnatural, otherworldly ballroom. If I don't, I will be driven to madness until I seek out the sweet relief of a bullet to the head. Neither are particularly appealing. So I pose the question to you all; what do I choose?

[jasonsutekh]

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)

An American spy and a Russian spy have to team up to prevent a surviving Nazi column from accessing nuclear weapons.

 Unlike much of the earlier series on which this film is based, it justifies the protagonists’ involvement with the CIA by presenting cooperation as the result of blackmail, thus distinguishing him from the many CIA war crimes and making him a little more likeable. It combines the traditional enemy elements of Russia and the US creating conflict and resolution. It’s also appealing that it ties the story in with established real world events.

 Most of the plot is fairly basic although confusing at times and not in the way that later justifies itself by having a clever twist or conspiracy. Some of the more significant absences from the movie were the references to the source material, like a cameo from David McCallum. It also fails to make good, or even proper hints, at the clear gay subtext between the two partners, which felt necessary to call out Russia’s long-standing anti-gay policies, something that should be done on reflex by 2015 standards. The cast felt largely wasted as there were some good talents in there that didn’t get to show much, if any, range.

 There’s lots of action to cater to the lowest level entertainment crowds but it’s not innovative, just shooting and cars. The budget looked about as high as one would expect a modern Bond film to be although the directing didn’t quite reach the same gravitas. The story is fed directly to the audience so it at least works if you don’t have the brain power for even usual spy films.

 The confusing parts come when the music cues are so out of place that it makes the scene feel bizarre and the multi-shot action sequences where one doesn’t know quite where to look. All this isn’t helped by the occasional yellow subtitles when they’re presented on a bright background. The ending is unsatisfying because it doesn’t built up to a big finale, they squeeze in a solution they’ve already prepared and there’s the obligatory betrayal in there which doesn’t really come good because it’s excused by being a betrayal to a different opponent, which isn’t much better in terms of trust.

 3/10 -This one’s bad but it’s got some good in it, just there-

 -The footballer, David Beckham, has a cameo as the projectionist near the start.

-In both this film and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) Jared Harris’ character clears a crowded area by just raising his hand. Both films were by the same director.

-Delivered to theatres under the title “Waterloo”, a reference to the character nicknamed Napoleon.

[reasoningdaily]

Amid threats to elections officials, disinformation about the security of U.S. voting systems and ongoing fallout from the Jan. 6 insurrection, scientists who study social movements have a lot to teach us about how we got here.

In "Out of Hiding: Extremist White Supremacy and How It Can Be Stopped," three sociologists who have spent their careers studying racist movements in the U.S. detail how extremist white supremacist ideas, "once tucked away in society's corners," became a mainstream and significant threat to democracy.

Drawing on their decades of expertise and field research, sociologists Kathleen M. Blee, Robert Futrell and Pete Simi connect the dots from the ideas and customs of the extremist white supremacist movement they've tracked directly to the disinformation-fueled rage of the Capitol insurrectionists.

While domestic terrorism by racist extremists has long been a threat to U.S. stability, the authors identify three critical moments in recent history that are key to our current moment. These are the moments, they argue, when federal law enforcement, political and cultural leaders could have impaired extremist white supremacists' cultural and political momentum. This failure to act forcefully allowed for the movement to gain power.

"The Republican Party is more deeply connected to racial extremism than any major party since the Ku Klux Klan and other segregationists infected the 1948 'Dixiecrat' Democratic Party," the authors write. "Racist ideas and symbols, once tucked away in society's corners, are now widely circulated across digital landscapes and political discourse."

The first of these critical moments was the violent backlash to the 2008 election of the nation's first Black president, Barack Obama. The book shows how Obama's election energized extremist white supremacists, who organized in new ways and launched successful violent attacks like the 2012 shooting of a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and the murders of Black churchgoers in South Carolina. The movement, using emerging internet platforms and social media, rebranded its racial hatred under the banner of the "alt-right" and "white nationalism." It drew younger people and some who may have previously been unlikely to affiliate publicly with more traditional hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan or neo-Nazi skinheads.

The second key moment successfully merged this growing, disparate racist movement at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Despite arrests for violent beatings and the murder of an anti-racist protester by extremist white supremacists, the movement did not face strong government opposition, and was even supported in statements by Donald Trump.

The Jan. 6 insurrection, the third moment, was the result of this new, coalesced movement that was embraced by the then-president -- this only four years after the clear warnings of Charlottesville that the FBI and other agencies failed to address with the seriousness they deserved.

"Out of Hiding" reads like an academic study, which it is, but is gripping nonetheless because of these sociologists' decades in the field studying extremist white supremacist movements. The authors say that the Department of Homeland Security, and some other scholars, have resisted the designation of Jan. 6 as an extremist white supremacist uprising. Yet, they add, "efforts to distinguish ordinary from extreme at J6 missed the underlying constellation that squarely placed that event within the long history of white supremacist extremism in this country."

Because of this historical context, the authors caution that to view this racial extremism simply by flavor-of-the-month groups like the Proud Boys or Atomwaffen is a mistake. "As history shows, extreme white supremacist culture resonates over time as people seek scapegoats to explain threats they perceive to their power and privileges, or to explain their failings."

Trump and partisan news outlets like Fox News have exploited this racial resentment for political power, the authors write. As the nation gears up for the 2024 presidential election, "Out of Hiding" provides a clear picture for how the nation's polarization got to this point, and offers some ideas for what to do about it.

But there is no panacea. The Biden administration's National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism, launched in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection, is lauded as a start, but likely too little, too late. In the end, what will combat racial polarization is a mixture of individual action, use of current laws that are rarely invoked to prosecute domestic terrorists, and evidence-driven programs of deradicalization, some of which are finding success in European countries like Denmark and Germany.

"We need to stop telling ourselves and each other fictions about our present and future and replace false optimism with urgency and sober assessment," the authors warn. "Only then can we act in ways that directly confront rather than avoid the extremist realities that we face."

[poppinsposts]

This is someone I look up to and aspire to be like. I’m a bit of a chicken though. Need to get some balls🤣🤣🤣 bethy poo the spy.

It was late 1942, the Gestapo were closing in, and it was essential that she escape. She had been in France working behind enemy lines for the British for more than a year and the Nazis considered her the “enemy’s most dangerous spy”. She successfully managed her escape by walking to Spain - 50 miles over the Pyrenees in deep snow, in the dead of winter, with a wooden prosthetic leg(the result of a hunting accident).

What happened next? She was promptly arrested and held for six weeks because she lacked an entry stamp on her passport. She considered this incarceration only a temporary setback. After release, she became a spy for the American intelligence service, the OSS. She had her teeth ground down and learned to apply makeup so as to appear to be an elderly French milkmaid. In this guise, she developed a spy network of 1,500 people that blew up bridges, sabotaged trains, and called in air drops across occupied France. After the war, she was recognized by both the French and British governments and was the only civilian woman to receive the Distinguished Service Cross from the U. S. Government - all of this done privately with only her mother present as a witness.

The name of this incredible woman? Virginia Hall - the most famous spy we’ve never heard of…

[heavenboy09]

Happy Birthday 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊 To The Most Ravishing & Radiant British Redheaded Actress Of All Times.

She has starred in Countless Films 🎥 & A Iconic Television Series & Tv Movies Over Several Decades In Her Acting Career

Hailing all the way Uxbridge,  Middlesex Of England 🇬🇧

She was born to Mieke van Tricht (1914–2007),

a nurse, and Benjamin John Frankenberg FRCOG (1914–1990), a distinguished gynaecologist and obstetrician. Her father was Jewish; he was born in England, to a family from Nowe Trzepowo, a village in Poland. Her mother was a Dutch Protestant (with family from Deventer) who was a prisoner of war during World War II and had lived in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). Seymour has stated she learned Dutch from her mother and her fellow survivors from the Japanese internment camp, who frequently spent holidays together in the Netherlands when she was a child. Encouraged by her parents (who sent her to live with family friends in Geneva to practise her languages), she learned to speak fluent French.

In 1969, Seymour appeared uncredited in her first film, Richard Attenborough's Oh! What a Lovely War. In 1970, Seymour appeared in her first major film role in the war drama The Only Way. She played Lillian Stein, a Jewish woman seeking shelter from Nazi persecution. In 1973, she gained her first major television role as Emma Callon in the successful 1970s series The Onedin Line. During this time, she appeared as female lead Prima in the two part television miniseries Frankenstein: The True Story. She appeared as Winston Churchill's girlfriend Pamela Plowden in Young Winston, produced by her father-in-law Richard Attenborough.

In 1973, Seymour achieved international fame in her role as Bond girl Solitaire in the James Bond film Live and Let Die. IGN ranked her as 10th in a Top 10 Bond Babes list. In 1975, Seymour was cast as Princess Farah in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, the third part of Ray Harryhausen's Sinbad trilogy. The film was not released until its stop motion animation sequences had been completed in 1977. In 1978, she appeared as Serina in the Battlestar Galactica film and in the first five episodes of the television series. Seymour returned to the big screen in the comedy Oh Heavenly Dog opposite Chevy Chase

In 1993, Seymour was cast as Dr. Michaela Quinn in the television series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, a medical drama set in the Wild West which ran for 6 seasons and resulted in a further two Emmy nominations and four Golden Globe nominations, including one win. Seymour was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and, in 2000, was appointed an Officer Of The Order Of The British Empire

In addition to her acting career, Seymour is the founder of the Open Hearts Foundation as well as an author, having (co-)written several children's books and self-help books. Under the Jane Seymour Designs label, she has created jewellery, scarves, furniture, rugs, handbags, paintings and sculptures.

In the 2000's She returned back to Back Television in The WB'S/ CW'S Hit Superhero TV Series 📺 Based On DC COMICS Comicbook Character,  Superman 🦸‍♂️

SMALLVILLE

& appeared in Other films & tv shows later on

From Wedding Crashers 💒

To Modern Men

From How I Met Your Mother

To Dancing With The Stars 🌟

She has posed for Playboy 3 times over the her long time Career & At Her Age There Is No Stopping Her Ageless Beauty from Being More Ravishing then ever before.

She is The Greatest English Actress Of Pur Times Among All Of The Greatest Since the Early 1900's & Beyond

Please wish this Radiant Treasure ✨ Of A British Actress A Very Elegant & Graceful Happy Birthday 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊

You Know Her & You Just Gotta Love Her 💘

The 1 & The Only

MS. JANE SEYMOUR ♥ 👩‍🦰

HAPPY 72ND BIRTHDAY 🎂 💓 💗 💖 ❤ TO YOU MS. SEYMOUR