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In 1993, Britain deployed a mechanized infantry brigade to the Balkans. This was in response to the growing violence brought upon the region via the Yugoslav Wars of Dissolution and the resulting First Eastern European War. This UN-led intervention would last a total of twenty-one months, in which time the British Army would begin taking delivery of its first batch of FV4034 Challenger II MBTs. Eager to get raw field data, a squadron of FV4034s forward deployed to the Balkans and was attached to the Royal Tank Regiment towards the end of 1994. Immediately, it became apparent that the Challenger II featured significant logistical challenges. At roughly seventy short tons when stripped to the basics, the Challenger was a behemoth that required a robust logistical network to operate effectively. Furthermore, the new tank had its share of technological teething problems, but those would come be ironed out with time. Regardless, the Chally would continue to be deployed across the globe to either conduct exercises with various members of the Commonwealth or in active security campaigns like those of Afghanistan in 1997. Each new deployment, however, made the earlier logistical hardships more and more pronounced. Rather than the Chally challenging the enemy, it challenged its operators and allies.
In the latter 2000s, Britain was once again forced to deploy combat units abroad, this time in response to the destabilization occurring in Al Dabir. Although British presence in the region would be fairly light compared to the Balkans, it was still necessary to deploy a score of tanks in a fire support capacity. Discouraged by the problems associated with the Challenger II, however, Britain besought defense companies around the globe to help retrofit some of its incumbent MBTs and make them more expeditionary-oriented. Naturally, BAE Systems--the new producer of the Challenger II--took up the call first. Working in conjunction with the King Abdullah II Design and Development Bureau (KADDB) of Jordan, BAE managed to create a stripped down tank that still possesses considerable defensive and offensive capabilities. Utilizing an altered version of KADDB's low volume Falcon turret, BAE was able to remove a considerable amount of weight from the basic Chally and create something much more versatile when deployed overseas.
Maintaining a 120mm smoothbore main gun with twenty rounds kept in an automated magazine and loading system, the rebranded FV4036 Crusader II is more than capable of eliminating conventional and unconventional targets alike. Beyond that, the Crusader's electronics suite is perhaps more capable and proactive than that of the Challenger (which is now relegated to home defense duties and Commonwealth exercises), making it an incredible hunter with full situational awareness. Furthermore, the Crusader has the capacity to scale its combative or defensive potency with tremendous ease. With an open architecture design, the FV4036 is able to plug in electronics and additional weapon systems within mere hours, ensuring it has all the tools necessary to efficiently conduct its missions.
One item that has faced much criticism from defense analysts within and without the UK is the Crusader's perceived lack of physical protection as the vehicle often deploys without skirts or ERA to defeat RPGs, ATGMs, and all the like. Although this critique holds fast for simple kinetic penetrators (e.g. a 40mm AP round), it does not hold water with reference to most AT munitions. Integrated across the tank are six modified Zaslon-L active protection units. Working in conjunction with NATO-partnered Ukrainian defense institutions, BAE found a market-ready APS that is able to physically defeat most anti-tank systems by detonating projectiles prior to their contact with the vehicle. The four modules mounted on the hull are typically enough to intercept most incoming threats; however, there are an additional two modules able to slave the turret to defeat projectiles coming from higher attack angles. This intelligent protection system proved critical in convincing the British Ministry of Defence to fast-track the Crusader's introduction into service in 2011. Since then, the Crusader has seen considerable action in the Near East via Al Dabir/Kurdistan and in Eastern Europe in response to transgressions against Bulgaria and Ukraine in 2016.
Per usual, shoutout to the homie Lego Pilot for rendering this and to Evan for doing some editing!
I saw these guys out the window of the car and we stopped for a few photos.
This is from series of photos that I took in North Africa and the Middle East in 2008. I was lucky enough to travel through these areas a few years before the current destabilization. In my solo travels from Morocco to Pakistan I experienced nothing but warmth and generosity from the people I met. Without the help and support of countless strangers it would have been impossible to complete this long overland journey.
I was recently challenged by one of my contacts to step out of my comfort zone… and to try something completely different.
Although I have already created several composite images in the past… I’ve never done anything that qualifies as “Political Satire”. I’m actually quite surprised that I’ve never considered doing something like this before… some of our politicians say the most ridiculous things… it’s the easiest thing in the world to find satirical subject matter in South African politics!
So… not only am I completely out of my comfort zone here… but I’m probably also stepping out on a (very fragile) limb with this image!? Next thing there’ll be a loud knock on my door… and some government security official will come and take me away (and lock me up (and throw away the key))!
Many thanks to Dave Berryman who provided the inspiration for creating this photo… you can see Dave’s “apple-face” photo here.
Julius Malema is arguably the biggest racist in South African politics. His radical utterances and threats of violence have destabilized our economy and is dividing our country along racial lines. He thinks nothing of publicly referring to all white South Africans as criminals… calling international journalists “bloody agents” and “bastards”… or calling any black person who doesn’t agree with his radical ideas… a “coconut” (black on the outside, white on the inside)!
This is what Wikipedia has to say about Julius Malema.
Latest Update: Yesterday afternoon the ruling ANC (African National Congress) expelled Julius Malema from the party… for saying things that brought the party into “disrepute” (I love it when politicians use fancy words like this).
ABOUT THE CARBONE VARIATIONS
The Carbone Variations are short exhibitions of four
paintings exibited in Second Life.
Every first week of the month, there will be a new exhibition on a theme. The four pictures are variations on the monthly theme.
Each of the bunker’s facades is staged so that you can take a selfie or an art photograph.
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The Carbone Variations 4 - ARTISANS
The invention of machines has vastly improved our physical and intellectual abilities, profoundly altering our world and potentially leading to self-destruction. Currently, global machine power equates to 200 slaves per person.
By 2050, Artificial General Intelligence might surpass the intellect of history’s greatest geniuses. Oil-powered machines have destabilized our planet, threatening our existence. History suggests we’re unprepared for AGI, but hope may lie in our artisan spirit, the one that, before machines, led us to know how to control our hands to make artifacts.
The spirit of Homo habilis that inhabits the artisan inspires patience, care, attention to detail, precision of gesture, responsibility towards the other user. It could save us from Homo Economicus, the irresponsible, pleasure- seeking consumer, that degenerate, moronic branch of the human species that proliferates like a cancer and devours us.
I hope that the artisan within us will wake up and make each and every one of us responsible and benevolent creators of a harmonious and peaceful reality, each on our own scale.
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More infos about The Carbone Variations
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Visit The Carbone Studio
Milena Carbone's art studio
Unreal novels - digital art - virtual dance performance
Web : The Carbone Studio News
These guys were providing the music at the polo club. The vibe was unreal.
This is from series of photos that I took in North Africa and the Middle East in 2008. I was lucky enough to travel through these areas a few years before the current destabilization. In my solo travels from Morocco to Pakistan I experienced nothing but warmth and generosity from the people I met. Without the help and support of countless strangers it would have been impossible to complete this long overland journey.
LT: "....what about the Agent? Is that piece of shit fine, too?"
JD: "Look at me. How do I look?"
LT: "....terrible, why?"
JD: "Well you should see the other guy."
LT: "So mission accomplished?"
JD: "Yep. We're done here. That means there's only one thing left to do. You got the phone, right."
LT: "Yeah. Here...."
JD: ".....Kilroy, do you reed? Kilroy!!"
"i'm SO close TO saTISfacTION."
JD: "yeahcoolwhatever. Look, mission accomplished. Time to leave it under the tree."
"ROgerROger. diSPENsing HYdroGEN fuel CORE."
*PPSSSSSSSSSSSSTT-CTCK*
"core DIspened. NOW uTILiZING backUP powER. DEstaBILZING proCESS enGAGED."
*BEEP*
*VRRvrrVRRvrrVRRvrrVRRvrrVRRvrrVRRvrrVRRvrrVRRvrrVRR*
"core DEstaBILized. DEtoNAtion IMiNENT in 5 minUTES."
JD: "You heard the mandroid. We gotta go."
LT: "That thing's not a man, J...."
Gli osservatori stranieri sono spaventati dalle elezioni italiane e a ragione: il forte risultato di Berlusconi Grillo, entrambi non destabilizzano solo l’Italia ma tutta l’Europa. Paul Krugman
Foreign observers are fearful of the Italian elections and for good reason: the strong result of Berlusconi Grillo, both of which do not destabilize only in Italy but throughout Europe. Paul Krugman
This is from series of photos that I took in North Africa and the Middle East in 2008. I was lucky enough to interdependently travel through these areas a few years before the current destabilization. In my solo travels from Morocco to Pakistan I experienced nothing but warmth and generosity from the people I met. Without the help and support of countless strangers it would have been impossible to complete this long overland journey.
i am thinking where we are going and what we are doing .........our country is in worst condition in these days flood,drone attacks , poor economy , poverty, destabilization, suicidal attacks,frustrated nation (killing each other without any reason), these kind of many problems we are facing but we are doing nothing to get rid off these problems ,
some body said,
"People may not always believe what you say, but they will believe what you do"
so we have to do some positive changes in our life to save our country ,we have to change our behavior, we have to change our mentality, we need to re-establish our connection with ALLAH ALMIGHTY. this is the only way to save Pakistan, no other system or policies can save us ,only ISLAMIC laws and systems can save us and our country ,we need to become true Muslims and need to develop a Muslim society like khulufa-e-rashadeen's era,
regards
Sand dunes in Sandbanks Provincial Park is a provincial park located on Lake Ontario in Prince Edward County near Picton, Ontario, Canada. The park is considered one of the best sandy beaches in Ontario and contains the largest bay-mouth barrier dune formation in the world. The 1,550.87-hectare (3,832.3-acre) park was established in 1970 and operates year round.
The dunes were formed by glaciers 12,500 years ago.[6] In the 1880s, due to a combination of timber cutting and poor farming practices, the soil inland from the sand dunes had become destabilized and the sand dunes were able to drift inland, increasing in size. In 1881, the West Point Road was buried under 30 metres (98 ft) of sand and the town of Athol, Ontario was forced to relocate after facing a similar event. In the 1920s, Sandbanks was the site of an intense reforestation project. The sand dunes extended over a further 34 hectares (85 acres). To recreate the Carolinian forest that had pre-existed there, the reforestation project used poplar to prevent the sand dunes from burying roads and orchards.[7]
Development of Sandbanks Provincial Park began in the 1960s. A development plan submitted in February 1964 placed a paved road through the sand dunes. After protests due to the damage that would cause to the dunes, the plan was abandoned and Parks Ontario pledged to protect the dunes.[8] The park was established in 1970."
Thanks for visiting and for your feedback, much appreciated enjoy each day.
NATO pulled out of Wohan Chu’s house with intel confirming a personal alliance with NATO allied factions though he held investments in foreign corporations. NATO troops would have seized Chu had he been at his home when the intel was uncovered. Now a short 5 hours later, approximately 9 in the morning, NATO surveillance drones would catch up with Chu’s movements to find that he was en route to personally oversee an arms transaction. Separate intel on the other side of the Zambia border told that the top rebel faction had doubled down the fortifications on their top leaders’ properties. This suggests HVT movement simultaneous with Chu’s movements. Quick cartography provided NATO with a position to meet up with Chu and an as of yet unknown rebel leader. The position was the abandoned Paradise Resort where UFA artillery had pounded it as it was an initial position of rebel forces at the beginning of the war. UFA forces still had lingering troops and a team of which would be called up for sniping duties to take out the rebel leader upon his arrival at the resort. NATO would eliminate Chu’s guard and capture him as well as the hardware of the transaction. All would be instantaneous; the same moment that Chu’s men hit the ground, so does the rebel’s brains.
Operation Cetshwayo outcome:
The UFA sniper team successfully eliminated the rebel leader and NATO secured Wohan Chu. Unbeknownst to NATO intel, Aku Partnership soldiers were crawling all over the ghost resort so as to provide Chu protection. Upon the execution of the rebel leader and subsequent apprehension of Chu, these spectral soldiers emerged, launching a large scale fire fight. The ensuing battle was a catalyst for global shock as a new faction entered the world stage during the war in Africa. Due to recce, planning, and the element of surprise, Aku forces repelled NATO though the latter held onto Chu. Chu's immediate cooperation in questioning cost him his investments with the very corporation that had just come into direct conflict with NATO. The information provided by Chu was invaluable and enabled UFA forces assisted by Oceania to totally destabilize the Zambian border. Although the war has culminated in a sweeping repelling of Eurasia to the Kisangani lateral, the concern of corporate military schemes has become paramount and casts a great shadow over global media and the governments of free nations across the world.
During a break on the final leg of an epic day-hike around Tre Cime in the Italian Dolomites, I took this self portrait to try and capture the sheer scale of the scene.
Although it was late May, we had been told that the hike between Rifugio Auronzo and Rifugio Antonio Locatelli remained closed due to heavy snowfall and so when we had planned to simply have a quick look at the trailhead before heading on with our day. On arriving though, we were tempted to see how far we could get along the walk anyway as the area was stunning and begged to be explored. Needless to say, we ended up doing the entire hike despite being hip-deep in snow and soaked for most of it. To make matters worse, we had no food as we had originally planned on having lunch back in town and so had to survive on one and a quarter of a Snicker bar each from 10am until dinner at 8pm that day.
On the way back, there was more sunshine, but also more snow as the weather began to destabilize. This made the going all the more difficult as not only did the wind kick up and the temperature drop, but the scenery became harder and harder to ignore, and on snowy slopes like the ones we were walking on, you really need to look where you're going! This photo was taken near the end where we were only an hour out from our car. It was easier to set up the camera on a rock and use the wifi trigger in the new Sony cameras to take this self portrait. I wanted to capture just how big the scene was (this is a photo from a 14mm lens) and how variable the weather was at this time. On the left of frame there are dark clouds and distant snowfall, whereas the right is bathed in near-June sunshine.
Tre Cime, Dolomites, Italy, 2014
Sony a7R with Samyang 14mm f/2.8 UMC
The city of Virellia rises like a hymn to gravity and grace. It is a dense, gleaming metropolis of towering spires engineered not just for function, but for awe—vertical ridges, buttresses, and domes echoing both cathedral and starship design. Soft clouds drift between the towers, partially veiling the lower city like a veil of mystery. Bridges and avenues connect the structures, suggesting a civilization that values both grandeur and cohesion. And above it all, those five massive moons hang like sentinels—close enough to feel their gravity tug at one’s imagination.
It’s the kind of image that doesn’t just depict a place—it invites us to invent its stories. Who lives here? What kind of culture builds cities that look like launch-ready vessels? What kind of physics allows such proximity between worlds?
Virellia’s towers are not merely buildings—they are memory spires, each one encoded with the lived experiences of its inhabitants. The tallest, known as the Kirell Spire, is both a monument and a living archive, its surface shimmering with the thoughts of those who have walked its halls.
The Virellians are not a single species, but a “concord of four,” each evolved on one of the moons that orbit their shared planet. Long ago, they discovered a way to bridge the gravitational divide using a technology called Luneth Threads—quantum filaments that allow instantaneous travel between the moons and the planet. Virellia was built at the convergence point of these threads, a city where four cultures collide and cohere.
•The Aelari (from the moon Thaleth): Ethereal beings of light and sound, they communicate through harmonic resonance. Their architecture is fluid, often appearing to ripple like water.
•The Dromari (from Kessun): Heavily armored and stoic, they value permanence and legacy. Their contributions to the city are the deep foundations and subterranean vaults.
•The Vennari (from Solun): Amphibious and poetic, they craft the bridges and cloud gardens, infusing them with bioluminescent flora.
•The Kirellans (from Lumen): Bipedal and empathic, they are the mediators and archivists, responsible for the memory spires and cultural synthesis.
Virellia is governed not by law, but by resonance councils—assemblies where representatives from each species share emotional impressions rather than arguments. Decisions are made when a shared resonance is achieved, a kind of empathic harmony that signals consensus. But harmony is not always easy. A recent tension has emerged: the Aelari have begun to vanish from the city, their harmonic signatures fading from the spires. Some say they are retreating to Thaleth, disillusioned by the increasing materialism of the Kirellans. Others whisper of a fifth species, long exiled, whose return could destabilize the Luneth Threads.
That fifth celestial body hanging in the sky, slightly apart from the others, is no moon. It’s Velis. Velis is not a natural satellite. It’s an ancient construct—a hollow world, engineered millennia ago by the Velari, a fifth species once banished for manipulating emotional resonance to control others. Unlike the moons, which orbit in predictable harmony, Velis drifts with a subtle defiance, its path governed by internal gravitic engines and a consciousness that never fully sleeps.
Mira, a young Kirellan archivist, is tasked with maintaining the emotional integrity of the Kirell Spire. She must decide: awaken the Velari and risk cultural upheaval, or seal the vault and preserve the fragile harmony of Virellia. But the spire begins to echo with Velari memories, and the city itself seems to lean toward awakening.
For years I muddied my thoughts with this unproductive mental dialogue fixated on the idea that I was not "ready" to do something.
"I can't write today - I'm uninspired".
"Lunch was unhealthy, so I can't be bothered with a healthy dinner at this point".
"Nothing catches my eye - I have no photograph to take".
It was a long journey with my health, beginning in February of last year, that disabused me of many such notions. Sure, I am still a victim of my own mind at times (aren't we all?) - but I now know there's faulty logic behind these destabilizing thoughts which can deviate us from the path of being the best we can be. For years I have tried to improve the state of my health (I prefer to term it that way rather than narrow the focus to something more specific e.g., 'gain weight'/'lose weight') but, frankly, consistency - not motivation - has made all the difference in the attempt that finally saw success. I'm not a paragon of supreme health - but that's the point. "All or nothing" isn't as helpful for me as "something is better than nothing". And more often than not, friends, just "something" is likely much better than you think it is. So yes, I suppose I have been 'uninspired' today - but I will write to you anyways. Even though I sound a little preachy (inadvertently). That's okay. I believe in me. I believe in you too.
Love,
Ru
It has all been said before.
This picture is of a monument dedicated to William Cooper, who in his lifetime achieved much. Please see his Wiki page, try typing in William Cooper Australian, and in contrast here is a link to a national Australian education page adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cooper-william-5773 . Interesting reading when doing a critical comparison, and one of many stimuli for this dairy entry.
(Musings from my diary.)
Despite my office 365-word processor giving me 100% editorial rating after correcting this writing, l recorrected my diary entry, so that it scores lower. I recorrected my dairy entry after rereading it, so it was more accurate. l think office 365-word is incredible, and l will admit that it did help me, but l needed to write my observations as untainted as possible… If that is at all achievable. This is not an argumentative essay, and office 365 had me talking in absolutes, defining a majority when I was discussing the influence of a minority over the majority. A personal consideration of current day hypocrisy and war.
Well, it is my diary!
Why is it so important to be apolitical when reporting on politics?
Personally, l feel that if a person reads the above question and does not know, they might have missed critically observing the last ten or so years of social division, and extremism, from both the right and left. Extremism that has cost lives and revealed ugly truths. I think as an Australian looking from geographical isolation at the world, everything might be a lot easier while viewing it all at a distance, and with hindsight. It leaves me a bit ignorant, but l think that helps with my objectivity.
Why did it happen? The causation was like a hydra, with multiple self-replicating heads, and it was like watching a social media battle between school children who had never been hurt in the real world. Not the type of hurt that you get when you metaphorically fall, skin your knee, and get back up, but the type you get when you enter a fight, get brutalised, and lose. Bones and tissue crushed by an opponent driven by a hatred so strong that they would injure you, another human being. Was it caused by people who had never learned that to enter a fight is to risk everything? That to fight is a last resort? This lack of political and social experience cost some their friends, loved ones, and others, members of their families. But it raised in me a question. Despite the efforts of the well-meaning, what did they achieve?
America the crucible for everything, descended into something that some would call near anarchy. Some on the left assumed both fascist and anarchist tendencies that go back to the 1930s, all the while not reading the social and political history of pre-World War Two Germany. That would have been militaristic and did not serve the narrative. A narrative produced to generate a political outcome. Could they have committed the errors of the past if they had read it? Given to wide a birth, media extremists influenced millions with emotive prompting. On the other hand, some on the right looking for relief from the relentless onslaught, sold out. Losing patience, self-fortitude, and political integrity. They reduced the work of their group’s past into a parody. Debasing the history of men and woman who had really made a positive impact. Like two spoilt children in the new education system, no one could suggest or admit that they had done wrong, while the media produced single sided political narratives, but in general did not report.
Political moderates and swinging voters pondered when it would end, while living in perpetual despair. Watching a school yard fight that had descended into a riot, one that involved the media as a cheer squad for two opposing sides. The radicalized media would not allow moderates to be objective, you had to be either a right-wing neo fascist or a left-wing neo fascist, with the spectre of your personal anarchy to drive your decision. You had to take a side. The mainstream media had descended into a form of politically opportunistic rhetoric, as if it had learnt the lessons of the sixties, but this time, it was not a foreign war, it was a form of civil war at home. One thankfully that lacked major armed war fare. Thankfully, the military were not involved. All credit due, but it left western law prostrate. The law could not be consensually blind. It was not a peaceful protest, people did not thread flowers down barrels of guns pointed at them in acts of peace, and monks did not self-immolate, producing images that moved millions to peace. Some asking for peace and equality, did the opposite, mostly peaceful protestors tried to immolate others. They tried repeatedly to incinerate living humans. It was shocking. The sixties saw the west implement peaceful protest, and we all saw how effective it was at causing change, but in the last decade those that referenced the sixties insighted indirectly by narrative omission the used Molotov cocktails and violence. Peaceful protest is notoriously difficult to combat, as the law was and is hamstrung with misdemeanours, aided by the images of people not harming others. But this new form of western protest differed. Who needs a little naked burnt Vietnamese girl running down the road to achieve peace, when you can try to incinerate a people, to force for peace? Simultaneously, the right with extraordinarily little representation outside of the lumbering behemoth of Fox, surrendered to social media, a place where the Kardashians once ruled. Quite a historical event. History was made, if you realise that one of the reasons for the development of the internet, was as a military defence system. One designed and built to defend communications, if all else failed. It was a war in which both sides lost, but extremism gained power. Media integrity on both sides was and is running ragged, with no one prepared to fly their flags at half-mast, to mourn the distress of western communications. Distress caused by the media’s dissemination of radicalized neo right-wing and neo left-wing politically biased narratives. Narratives enforced by wilful omissions of blatant historical truths and current day conduct.
The result was that America regardless of political persuasion had failed to successfully defend the constitution, not the second amendment, but the principle of the constitution. It was America’s greatest failing over the last ten years, but they were not alone in this failure. With the use of the internet and the world media, the world failed to defend the principle of a document that 620,000 lost their lives for, and it destabilized the world. A document that was purported by some in the world media as an antiquated inadequate document, neglecting the principle that all men are equal before the law, but not created equal. This consideration made me reflect heavily on me experience of university. The adage was, “…That the best you can do, is stand on the shoulders of giants….” And I wondered how a person could neglect the work and sacrifice of those that had built humanity. Institutions promoted as being pacifist and educated, institutions built to serve everyone, now indirectly instigated violence. In this new form of civil war, where was Hans Blix to say no weapons of mass destruction are to be found? Was this modern achievement, achieved by children, now adults, whose parents had lied to them? Where these the children that had been told they could do anything, or become anyone? It raised in me the rhetorical questions, did the neo right, and neo left media, use a military grade apparatus to wage a war? And had everyone forgot that the pen is mightier than the sword, and thus just as dangerous?
History education starts at school, and I personally had experienced the new education system as a stepfather here in Australia. When it comes to educating children, the new system that fails no one, has become a system that has already failed. How can you learn history, and think critically, if you cannot read? I considered the potential political motives for the instigation of an education system that does not indiscriminately educate, but selectively indoctrinates. I thought that it was an effective tool for maintaining power. It is something l heard about the church. Someone had told me that the church had only allowed priests to read the bible in Latin. It is said that this practice allowed those in positions of power to quote verse, and interpret codes of conduct, for those under them. It kept those who could not read Latin ignorant. This is an activity, that has now been banned by the church. It appears that the new education system has now adopted a similar practice. As a result, the education system, now has a new ignorant flock to shepherd. What happens when the history channel algorithms or sponsored feeds, have turned into a political shill? Yes, even history, is not apolitical. I think someone, somewhere, had read the adage, that “…those that win the war, write the history…” Ironically, someone was ignorant enough, not to know that it was not a term of endearment, nor did this fact entitle the writer a position of everlasting power. Ironically, people postured one position, and then did the reverse. Some in the media left and right, assumed what some would call, a militaristic imperialistic mode, using their viewers, fans, and their audience as cannon fodder. Driving them with politically vested rhetoric and association, to achieve a political end. Both sides looked for someone to blame other than themselves, or looked for someone other than themselves to pay.
Fascists once did this, now neo liberals and neo conservatives in the media looked for a group to classify as mentally deficient or ill. The mob had to become the populous, classifying the opposition as inferior. Someone to other, someone internally to blame for all the world’s problems. The language from both sides was remarkably familiar. It had all happened before. But on the media chanted like zealots, willingly oblivious to history like a petulant child, and it resulted in deaths. Instead of reporting, the media sold themselves to become a self-pontified populist political cheer squad of indoctrination. In this communications war, some in the media’s right, and some in the media’s left, had surrendered to a form of self-serving political prostitution. It produced 1930s like self-cannibalism. The radicalized political media’s appetite to feed their opposing mob’s zest, could not be quenched. They ate their own, seeing who could jeer the loudest, while destroying the integrity of all the institutions that surrounded them. Neo right, and neo left, used 1930s fascist language and influence, while relying on others to apply anarchy as the vector for change, thus negating any personal responsibility for death and violence.
I think back, and to be honest, what the west in the majority lacked, was apolitical reporting. The result over the last ten years, was that we had all lost. In a political war of words where the media became the protagonists, the west did not just sacrifice its integrity and dignity, the west surrendered lives.
NGC 5033 and others
So when planning this imaging session I wanted to choose something that may not be images alot....taking the road less travelled potentially and boy am i happy i did I have spent multiple weeks under botle 4 skys and an average of 25% moon to capture this gem. In this craft of astrophotography there are always ups and downs and things to learn within and without I have come along way but am still learning every time i sit out under that night sky. let me know your thoughts and i hope you enjoy my attempt at NGC 5033
if youd like to check out the full resolution image you can find it here www.astrobin.com/full/t28de5/0/
NGC 5033 is an inclined spiral galaxy located in the constellation Canes Venatici. Distance estimates vary from between 38 and 60 million light years from the Milky Way. The galaxy has a very bright nucleus and a relatively faint disk.
NGC 5033 contains a Seyfert nucleus, a type of active galactic nucleus. Like many other active galactic nuclei, this galaxy's nucleus is thought to contain a supermassive black hole. The bright emission seen in visible light (as well as other wavebands) is partially produced by the hot gas in the environment around this black hole.
Integral field spectroscopic observations of the center of NGC 5033 indicate that the Seyfert nucleus is not located at the kinematic center of the galaxy (the point around which the stars in the galaxies rotate). This has been interpreted as evidence that this galaxy has undergone a merger. The displacement of the Seyfert nucleus from the kinematic center may destabilize the rotation of gas in the center of the galaxy, which could cause gas to fall into the Seyfert nucleus. The gas would be compressed by the enormous gravitational forces in the center of the Seyfert nucleus and become hot, thus making the nucleus appear bright or "active".
Technical Stuff:
43H and 20MINs total hours of integration
233*300s L
96*300s H
54*300s R
70*300s G
67*300s B
Scope: ASKAR 130 PHQ (1000mm Focal length)
Guide scope: ASKAR OAG
Mount: Ioptron CEM70
Main Camera: ZWO 294mm pro (Bin 2 120gain)
Guide Camera: ZWO 174mm mini
Focuser: ZWO EAF
Filter wheel: ZWO EFW
Filters: ANTILA LRGB and 3nm HA
Capture Computer: MELE Quieter 3
Capture software: NINA
EDITINGL PIXINSIGHT
Dear President Widodo!
Dear colleagues! The world’s majority, which stands with us!
I address you in Ukrainian, but in front of each of you on the table you will find our proposals. In your language. In demonstration of respect for you.
I have just returned to our capital. Returned from the city of Kherson.
Kherson is one of the key cities in the south of our country and the only regional centre that Russia managed to occupy after February 24.
And now Kherson is already liberated.
What does it mean? For Ukraine, this liberation operation of our Defence Forces is reminiscent of many battles of the past, which became turning points in the wars of the past.
Those battles symbolized such changes, after which people already knew who will be victorious even though the ultimate victory still had to be fought for.
It is like, for example, D-Day - the landing of the Allies in Normandy. It was not yet a final point in the fight against evil, but it already determined the entire further course of events. This is exactly what we are feeling now.
Now - when Kherson is free.
To liberate our entire land from the Russists, we still will have to fight for a while longer... To fight! However, if the victory will be ours in any case, and we are sure of it, then shouldn't we try to implement our formula for peace to save thousands of lives and protect the world from further destabilizations?
That is why I want to present our vision of the path to peace - how to actually achieve it. And not only for us, but also for all of you, your allies and partners.
In my statement in September of this year at UN General Assembly, I presented Ukraine’s formula for peace. A formula of peace for the world.
Just when the world was hoping to recover from the blows of the pandemic, the Russian war provoked a whole series of new global challenges. This must be stopped!
There is a set of solutions that need to be implemented. And I want the conversation about it to be public, not behind the scenes. I want it to be discussed in specific terms, and not in broad strokes.
Maybe I'll go over the allotted time limit.
But the issue of peace is worth it.
I want this aggressive Russian war to end justly and on the basis of the UN Charter and international law. Not "somehow" - according to the apt formulation of the UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
Ukraine should not be offered to conclude compromises with its conscience, sovereignty, territory and independence. We respect the rules and we are people of our word.
Ukraine has always been a leader in peacekeeping efforts, and the world has witnessed it. And if Russia says that it supposedly wants to end this war, let it prove it with actions.
Apparently, one cannot trust Russia's words, and there will be no Minsks-3, which Russia would violate immediately after signing.
If there are no concrete actions to restore peace, it means that Russia simply wants to deceive all of you again, deceive the world and freeze the war just when its defeats have become particularly notable.
We will not allow Russia to wait it out, build up its forces, and then start a new series of terror and global destabilization.
I am convinced now is the time when the Russian destructive war must and can be stopped.
So, here are the proposals of Ukraine:
The first is radiation and nuclear safety.
No one has the right to blackmail the world with a radioactive disaster. This is an axiom.
However, in front of the eyes of the whole world, Russia has turned our Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant into a radioactive bomb that can explode at any moment. Where will the radiation cloud go? Perhaps towards the territory of the EU. Maybe to Türkiye. Maybe to the Middle East. I consider as criminal even a hypothetical possibility of such a scenario!
Radiation safety must be restored. The IAEA has already provided respective recommendations, confirming all the risks that we have repeatedly raised. Therefore, Russia must immediately withdraw all its militants from the territory of the Zaporizhzhia NPP. The station must be immediately transferred to the control of the IAEA and the Ukrainian personnel. The normal connection of the station to the power grid must be restored immediately so that nothing threatens the stability of the reactors.
We proposed that IAEA missions are sent to all Ukrainian nuclear plants - four of them, 15 nuclear units in total. Plus the Chornobyl plant, which has been shut down and is under conservation. Such missions can verify that any hostile activity against Ukrainian nuclear facilities has indeed ceased.
How long does it take to implement it? Russia can begin the demilitarization of the Zaporizhzhia NPP as early as tomorrow if it is really ready to restore the radioactive safety it violated.
The same goes for the crazy threats of nuclear weapons that Russian officials resort to. There are and cannot be any excuses for nuclear blackmail. And I thank you, dear G-19, for making this clear.
However, please use all your power to make Russia abandon nuclear threats. The basis for such efforts can be the Budapest Memorandum and respective capabilities of the signatory states.
The second challenge is food security.
Thanks to the strong participation of the UN, Türkiye and other partners, we have demonstrated how the cooperation of a few can restore food security for the many.
I believe our export grain initiative deserves an indefinite extension - no matter when the war ends.
The right to food is a fundamental right of every person in the world.
Since July, Ukraine has exported over 10 million tons of food by sea. We can increase exports by several million tons per month. Thus for this I propose to expand the grain export initiative to our other ports - in particular, to the ports of Mykolaiv and "Olvia" in the Mykolaiv region.
I also call on all countries – and in particular your countries, dear G-19 leaders – to join our initiative to help the poorest with food.
We have already launched the initiative – "Grain From Ukraine". And the first vessel - Nord Vind - leaves for Ethiopia with 27 thousand tons of wheat on board. This is the amount that can feed almost 100,000 people per year. There can be many such ships from Ukraine, and therefore there will be many people in poor countries who are saved from starvation.
Ukraine can export 45 million tons of food this year. And let a significant part of it be directed to those who suffer the most.
What do we propose exactly? Each country can join with a specific contribution and become a co-creator of the victory over hunger and the food crisis.
The third is energy security.
All of you can witness what the Russian terror is aimed at now. This is an attempt to turn the cold into a weapon. A weapon against millions of people.
About 40% of our energy infrastructure were destroyed by the strikes of Russian missiles and Iranian drones used by the occupiers. Every week, Russia blows up our power plants, transformers, and electricity supply lines.
A related goal of this terror is to prevent the export of our electricity to neighbouring countries, which could significantly help them stabilize the energy situation and reduce prices for consumers.
Russia is interested in the energy crisis. And we should all be interested in ending terror.
I thank all our partners who have already helped Ukraine with the supply of air defence and missile defence systems. This allows us to shoot down some of the Russian missiles and Iranian drones. But we must fully protect our sky. I ask you to increase respective assistance!
We have already proposed that a mission of UN experts is sent to the objects of critical energy infrastructure of Ukraine to assess the scope of damage and the needs for restoration, as well as to prevent their further destruction. We need to speed up the dispatch of this mission!
This will be a specific contribution of the international community to the stabilization of the energy situation in Ukraine and Europe, and therefore in the global energy market.
However, regardless of the decisions of the world, any day Russia on its own can simply abandon strikes on Ukrainian energy generation and water and heat supply facilities. Let Russia prove by its rejection of terror that it is really interested in the restoration of peace.
We must also take a fundamental step so that energy resources are no longer used as weapons. Price restrictions on Russian energy resources should be introduced.
If Russia is trying to deprive Ukraine, Europe and all energy consumers in the world of predictability and price stability, the answer to this should be a forced limitation of export prices for Russia. So that the export price was not higher than the production cost. That's fair. If you take something away, the world has the right to take from you.
The fourth challenge is the release of all prisoners and deportees.
Thousands of our people - military and civilians - are in the Russian captivity. They are subjected to brutal torture - this is mass abuse!
In addition, we know by name 11 thousand children who were forcibly deported to Russia. They are separated from their parents in full knowledge that they have families.
Apart from the children, whose data we know, there are tens of thousands of those who were forcibly deported and about whom we know only indirectly. Among them are many, whose parents were killed by Russian strikes, and now they are being held in the state that murdered them.
Add to that hundreds of thousands of deported adults, and you will see what a humanitarian catastrophe the Russian war has caused.
Add political prisoners - Ukrainian citizens who are held in Russia and in the temporarily occupied territory, in particular in Crimea.
We must release all these people!
I want to point out that we did not find support from the International Committee of the Red Cross. We do not see that they are fully fighting to gain access to the camps, where Ukrainian prisoners of war and political prisoners are held. Neither they are helping to find deported Ukrainians. This self-withdrawal is the self-destruction of the Red Cross as an organization that was once respected.
We cannot wait.
Therefore, we must unite for the sake of the only realistic model of the release of prisoners - "all for all".
And also for the release of all children and adults who were deported to Russia.
I thank the partners for their efforts, which allowed the release of many Ukrainians and foreign citizens, who were captured by the Russians. And let your leadership and the sincere heart of other leaders, who are present now, help free other Ukrainians as well.
The fifth – implementation of the UN Charter and restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and the world order.
Article 2 of the UN Charter defines everything very clearly. Everything that Russia violated by this war.
Therefore, we must restore the validity of international law - and without any compromises with the aggressor. Because the UN Charter cannot be applied partially, selectively or "at will".
Russia must reaffirm the territorial integrity of Ukraine within the framework of the relevant resolutions of the UN General Assembly and the applicable international legally binding documents.
It is not up to negotiations.
The sixth challenge is withdrawal of Russian troops and cessation of hostilities.
There is a clear understanding of how to achieve this.
Russia must withdraw all its troops and armed formations from the territory of Ukraine. Ukraine's control over all sections of our state border with Russia must be restored.
This will result in a real and complete cessation of hostilities.
Every day of delay means new deaths of Ukrainians, new threats to the world, and an insane increase in losses due to continuation of the Russian aggression – losses for everyone in the world.
The seventh – justice.
This is what stokes the greatest emotions.
Everywhere, when we liberate our land, we see one thing - Russia leaves behind torture chambers and mass burials of murdered people.
This was the case in Bucha and other cities in the north of the country after the occupation. This was the case in the Kharkiv region. The same we observe now in the Kherson region.
As of today, we have a full information about four hundred and thirty children killed by Russian strikes. Only children! And only those about whom we know everything for sure.
And how many mass graves are there in the territory that still remains under the control of Russia? What will we see in Mariupol?
That is why the world should endorse establishment of the Special Tribunal regarding the crime of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and the creation of an international mechanism to compensate for all the damages caused by this war. Compensation at the expense of Russian assets, because it is the aggressor who must do everything to restore the justice violated by it.
We have already proposed a resolution of the UN General Assembly regarding an international compensation mechanism for damages caused by the Russian war. It is endorsed. We ask you to implement it.
We are also preparing the second resolution - on the Special Tribunal. Please join and support it.
Because there is no such nation in the world that does not appreciate justice.
The eighth challenge is ecocide, the need for immediate protection of environment.
Millions of hectares of forest were burned by shelling. Almost two hundred thousand hectares of our land are contaminated with unexploded mines and shells. Dozens of coal mines are flooded, including the mine in which an underground nuclear test explosion was carried out in 1979...
This is the “Yunkom” mine in the Donetsk region. It is located on the territory occupied by Russia. It has been flooded for several years - precisely because of the occupiers. Everyone in Moscow knows what a threat it poses not only to the rivers in the Donetsk region, but also to the Black Sea basin. Only the de-occupation of our territory can provide the conditions for the elimination of this threat.
It is impossible to accurately calculate the amount of atmospheric pollution from burnt oil depots and other fires... As well as from blown up sewage facilities, burned chemical plants, innumerable burial sites of slayed animals.
Just imagine this – due to the Russian aggression, 6 million domestic animals died. 6 million! These are official numbers. At least 50,000 dolphins were killed in the Black Sea. Thousands of hectares of soil are contaminated with harmful substances - most of them are fertile soils. Were fertile soils.
During the last week’s Climate Summit in Egypt, I proposed a platform to assess the environmental damage of war. We have to implement it.
We must also find common responses to all environmental threats created by the war. Without this, there will be no return to a normal, stable life, and the reverberations of the war will remain for a long time - in the explosions of mines that will take the lives of children and adults, in the pollution of water, soil and atmosphere.
I thank all the countries that are already helping us with demining. There is an urgent need for an increased number of equipment and experts for these operations.
Funds and technologies are also needed for the restoration of water treatment facilities.
This is not just a Ukrainian problem. This is a challenge for the whole world.
The next - the ninth – is the prevention of escalation.
A risk that still exists and will remain until our security is properly ensured.
Ukraine is not a member of any of the alliances. And Russia was able to start this war precisely because Ukraine remained in the grey zone - between the Euro-Atlantic world and the Russian imperialism. Now we do not have any security assurances either. So, how can we prevent repetition of Russia’s such aggression against us?
We need effective security assurances. That is why we prepared a draft agreement – the Kyiv Security Compact, and have already presented it to partners.
Thus, we should hold an international conference to cement the key elements of the post-war security architecture in the Euro-Atlantic space, including guarantees for Ukraine.
The main outcome of the conference should be the signing of the Kyiv Security Compact.
We can do it any time - even this year. And we must do it.
And the tenth – confirmation of the end of the war.
When all the antiwar measures are implemented, when security and justice begin to be restored, a document confirming the end of the war should be signed by the parties.
I would like to emphasize that none of the steps above can take long. A month for one step at the most. For some steps, a couple of days are enough.
We already have a positive experience with the grain export initiative. How does it work?
There is the UN - and two other parties to the agreements: on one side Ukraine, Türkiye and the UN, and on the other side Russia, Türkiye and the UN.
Implementation of each of the points I have just presented can be worked out in a similar fashion. States ready to take the lead in this or that decision can become parties to the arrangement.
Once again:
radiation and nuclear safety; food security; energy security; release of all prisoners and deported persons; implementation of the UN Charter and restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and the world order; withdrawal of Russian troops and cessation of hostilities; restoration of justice; countering ecocide; preventing escalation; and finally - confirmation of the end of the war.
Dear leaders!
I have outlined the paths each of you can choose for yourself - how to become a co-creator of peace.
Please choose your path for leadership - and together we will surely implement the peace formula.
What will it do?
It will save thousands of lives. It will restore the validity of international law. It will revitalize the security architecture. It will return the global stability, without which the whole world is suffering. In essence – this is what the honest countries of the world are cooperating for.
Peace is a global value. That, which is important for every person in the world.
I am confident that it is likewise for each of you, leaders of G-19.
I have outlined specific, practical solutions. They can be implemented. Quickly. They are effective.
And if Russia opposes our peace formula, you will see that it only wants war.
Ukraine is grateful to everyone in the world who helps us to protect freedom and to restore peace.
Let our joint efforts be crowned with success as soon as possible and be reflected in the outcomes of this summit.
Thank you for the invitation!
Glory to Ukraine!
ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam (June 20, 2017) - Two U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancers assigned to the 9th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron, deployed from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, fly a 10-hour mission from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, with two Republic of Korea air force F-15s in the vicinity of the Korean peninsula, June 20, 2017. These flights with the Republic of Korea (ROK) demonstrate solidarity between the ROK and U.S. to defend against provocative and destabilizing actions in the Pacific theater. (Courtesy photo) 170620-O-ZZ999-0003
** Interested in following U.S. Pacific Command? Engage and connect with us at www.facebook.com/pacific.command | twitter.com/PacificCommand |
instagram.com/pacificcommand | www.flickr.com/photos/us-pacific-command; | www.youtube.com/user/USPacificCommand | www.pacom.mil/
Europe, Netherlands, Zuid Holland, Rotterdam, Kruisplein, Parkeergarahe Kruisplein (Maarten Struijs). (uncut)
The Kruisplein parking is part of the Rotterdam Central Station development and was opened last November. With 5 underground levels it is the deepest parking in the Netherlands (-20 m).
Check out architect Maarten Struis explaining his design on You Tube : here (sorry, Dutch only)
Maarten Struijs (now retired) worked for Municipal Works (Gemeentewerken) and is specialized in infrastructure and mobility architecture. He also designed amongst many other things Rotterdam Centraal subway station, some stations of the Benelux and Randstad (e.g. Blijdorp station) subway lines and the Willemsbrug.
One of his leading themes is creating architecture that’s not disciplinary and entices voyagers to experience travelling as more then going from A to B in a regulated and strict way. Struijs tries to tickle the imagination, maybe even get people to dream. For this he creates clear, easy to ‘read’ spaces and plays with ornamentation and light.
The Kruisplein Parking is the final incarnation of his functionalist / evocationalist program. He didn’t use tight curves and steeply graded ramps - ‘Driving should be a relaxed experience.’ And the 5 floors are identified in three different ways. Each floor has (obviously) its own well displayed number, its own colour and because the parking is so long it has its own photo-landscape at the end of parking. This has another function too – despite the low ceiling it lessens the ‘closed in’ feeling and it tries to destabilize the 'A to B mindset'. He enlisted light to make it even easier to navigate the garage and get ones bearing: when one drives in the northen direction the light is cold (blue-ish) when the direction is southern direction it is warm (yellow and red).
Shot on the deepest level (fifth) of the parking.
Throughout the war. the Maquisards, in their role as the hunted, gradually made the terrain of the hunt unpredictable for the hunters, and eventually dangerous. The Maquis’s goal was to destabilize Vichy authority, and they did this by simultaneously making themselves, as well as Vichy authorities, the ‘hunters’ and the ‘hunted’.
During the Allied invasion of Normandy, the Maquis and other groups played a role in delaying the German mobilization. The French Resistance ( FFI Forces Françaises de l'Interieur ) blew up railroad tracks and repeatedly attacked German Army equipment and garrison trains on their way to the Atlantic coast. As Allied troops advanced, the French Resistance rose against the Nazi occupation forces and their garrisons en masse. The Maquis groups took no prisoners so some German soldiers preferred to surrender to Allied soldiers rather than maquisards.
( For this digital reconstruction hanks to Jeff Wharton for “Maquis” photo, background from Bing )
On Thursday 12 July 2018, US president Donald Trump, the most dangerous man in the world, was welcomed to the United Kingdom by the British prime minister Theresa May. The following day the streets of London witnessed the biggest protest for over a decade as thousands marched on Trafalgar Square to express their anger at the British government extending a red carpet welcome for Trump.
Protesters pointed out the extreme threat to democracy, to those dependent on welfare, to womens' rights, to civil rights generally and even to the survival of humankind which Trump presents. Such assertions might seem extreme, but they are unfortunately fully justifiable.
As the president of what is by far the richest and most powerful country on earth, Trump has dedicated his term to accelerating the US addiction to fossil fuels and agribusiness, dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency and withdrawing America from the Paris Climate Accords, thereby accelerating global warming and climate change and presenting a huge threat to the continued existence of humankind.
Trump's presidency also marks another dangerous step in the erosion of democracy in the United States. Far from "draining the swamp" as he promised, Trump has surrounded himself with powerful figures from big business, especially major financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, as well as his friends and allies in the fossil fuel and defence industires.
Government policy, more and more, reflects the direct interests of concentrated private power with the public having less and less influence. At the same time the Trump presidency has allied itself with some of the most ruthless regimes in the world and is profiting from Saudi Arabia's illegal war of aggression in Yemen which has created the world's worst humanitarian crisis. A serious war crime in which Donald Trump and Theresa May are both complicit.
Trump has also been keen to patronise the extreme nationalist constituency in the United States and through preaching a propaganda of fear his presidency has managed to oversee some of the most racist immigration policies ever to be implemented in the United States, targeted almost exclusively at Muslim countries - Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Ironically, all of them have been massively destabilized and impoverished by US foreign policy.
He was also responsible for the ruthless decision to separate children from their parents as they cross into the United States from Mexico, in his determination to block immigration from central America, where decades of US illegal intervention, including the CIA funded Contra terror operations in Nicaragua and enforced free trade (under NAFTA or IMF rules) have devastated the region and merely enhanced the power of corrupt corporate elites and drug cartels.
As if this was not enough to worry about, Trump has also authorized a huge increase in both US defence spending and in the US nuclear arsenal, and changed the strategic posture of the US so that nuclear weapons can be used even for offensive operations and even when their use is not required to preempt a nuclear strike by an enemy power.
As any historian of conflict since the Second World War knows, it is only by a miracle that humankind has survived since 1945 without a nuclear war. Now the situation is more dangerous than ever before. Not only are we are now dependent on Trump's extremely unpredictable temperament but also increasingly on automated systems which can easily malfunction.
Trump and Republicans maintain they need to spend heavily on military equipment in order to counter the supposed Russian threat. However they seldom remind the public that the United States already spends almost as much as the rest of the world combined on defence and that Russia's expenditure is far behind both that of the United States and only on about the same level of Saudi Arabia, and spends only 10% of what NATO spends.
It has also to be remembered that it is NATO and US forces which are operating right on the Russian border, not Russian forces on the American border. Russia's defence spending is clearly recognised by academics to be primarily defensive and responsive to US spending. What is desperately needed is a serious international dialogue at the highest level to decrease the danger of conflict, especially the risk of a terminal nuclear war and begin a process of multilateral disarmament.
One of the more bizarre Dark Hunters, no one is quite sure what his origins are. He has no memory of where he originally came from, and his extremely odd physiology gives no real clues. He may be a Rahi, a freak of Karzahni, or the result of destabilized protodermis.
Regardless of origins, Poison is smarter than he looks. While incapable of speech, he is fluent in reading and writing, and has proven to have the skills needed to become a listed hunter. He likes to take advantage of his unusual appearance to feign being a Rahi, causing opponents to underestimate him.
His main asset is his venom. Delivered through the fangs, his venom can induce paralysis for hours on end, making him particularly good at kidnappings. His ability to fly silently and change color assist in these endeavors. After joining the Dark Hunters, he had his claws replaced with ones of Protosteel, allowing him to shred lesser metals with ease.
BATVARK # 1
Two-part “Secret Origin of Batvark”; “Batvark’s Credo” and finally an answer to “Is Batvark a Homophobe?” Plus reprints of the earliest Cerebus in Hell? online strips (6/24/16 to 6/30/16): first appearance of Fredric Nietzsche; King Solomon writes his lawyer; Literalistic Limbo; first appearance of Jingles, the world’s greatest collector of CGC-graded Dog Comics; Avengers movies remade with an all-Kardashian sister cast; Life With Archie Civil War; and more!
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: DIMENSION X # 5
The Turtles travel to the strangest planet of them all… one where all organisms function in perfect harmony… except for a group of new mutants who could destabilize the ecosystem of the whole planet—mutants who aren’t the TMNT!
REDHOOD AND THE OUTLAWS ANNUAL # 1
"Brothers in Arms"! When Red Hood discovers a new wave of criminal activity in Gotham City with a traveling circus at it's epicenter, he recruits Nightwing t help the Outlaws infiltrate the big top! Can the two would-be brothers put their differences aside and crack the case? Or will their division be the harbinger of their demise?
SUPERMAN REBIRTH # 1
'THE SON OF SUPERMAN' chapter one The Last Son of Krypton must decide whether to help his young son use his new and rapidly increasing abilities, or hide them from the world.
Europe, Netherlands, Zuid Holland, Rotterdam, Kruisplein, Parkeergarage Kruisplein (Maarten Struijs). (uncut)
The Kruisplein parking is part of the Rotterdam Central Station development and was opened last November. With 5 underground levels it is the deepest parking in the Netherlands (-20 m).
Check out architect Maarten Struis explaining his design on You Tube : here (sorry, Dutch only)
Maarten Struijs (now retired) worked for Municipal Works (Gemeentewerken) and is specialized in infrastructure and mobility architecture. He also designed amongst many other things Rotterdam Centraal subway station, some stations of the Benelux and Randstad (e.g. Blijdorp station) subway lines and the Willemsbrug.
One of his leading themes is creating architecture that’s not disciplinary and entices voyagers to experience travelling as more then going from A to B in a regulated and strict way. Struijs tries to tickle the imagination, maybe even get people to dream. For this he creates clear, easy to ‘read’ spaces and plays with ornamentation and light.
The Kruisplein Parking is the final incarnation of his functionalist / evocationalist program. He didn’t use tight curves and steeply graded ramps - ‘Driving should be a relaxed experience.’ And the 5 floors are identified in three different ways. Each floor has (obviously) its own well displayed number, its own colour and because the parking is so long it has its own photo-landscape at the end of parking. This has another function too – despite the low ceiling it lessens the ‘closed in’ feeling and it tries to destabilize the 'A to B mindset'. He enlisted light to make it even easier to navigate the garage and get ones bearing: .when one drives in the northen direction the light is cold (blue-ish) when the direction is southern direction it is warm (yellow and red).
Shot on the deepest level (fifth) of the parking. You can see that the floors double as ramps in this parking.
The next Chapter of Haymar's story. Prepare to be shocked!
Built for the Land of Roawia role-playing game on Merlin's Beard.com Come on over and join Lenfald the fun!
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A Shocking Betrayal!
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“Come on, move it ya larks!”
Haymar turned and glared at the Dragon soldier, who was prodding him in the back with his pike. The Dragon smiled evilly, and moved to prod Haymar again. He hastily picked up the pace to avoid it.
Mirranda trod despondently alongside Haymar, eyes on the ground, arms bound in front of her, just like Haymar. All their focus was on putting one foot in front of the other, over and over again. On all sides armed Dragons escorted them, while an Cabrak headed up the little party.
They had been walking all day long, with only two stops the whole time, and both of them were exhausted. Pressed from behind by the Dragons, Haymar and Mirranda stumbled on, trudging through the small canyon.
Minutes later, they reached they mouth of the canyon. Beyond was a vast forest of tall trees and hilly terrain. Directly across from the canyon was a large pool of muddy water.
Standing on a rock at the edge of the pool, with his back to the canyon, was a figure dressed in the uniform of a Queens Scout. Only the back of his well-groomed blonde hair was visible. The Scout leading them stopped underneath a large tree, turning to face them, as the party reached the pool.
Cabrak motioned for the party to come to a halt, then approached the Scout on the rock, stopping a few feet away.
“Rotheric found em’ just were you said they’d be. We caught them completely off-guard.”
“Excellent.”
The figure said, and turned around.
Mirranda and Haymar gasped in horror.
The figure…………
………………………………Was Laven!!!!!!!!
They were stunned speechless. How could this be? Laven had always been a good friend and valuable ally. This had to be an elaborate, (and very dangerous), rescue plan, didn’t it?
Laven grinned evilly.
“Didn’t expect me here, did you?”
Seeing the looks on their faces, he continued. “You’re probably wondering how I could be here, wearing the uniform of the ‘enemy’. You’re probably even thinking this might be some rescue plan I cooked up. The truth of it is however, the Queen was never my enemy. She and her forces have been my allies, and friends, for a very long time.” He paused, to gauge their reactions.
Haymar couldn’t believe the words coming his friend’s mouth. He wasn’t even sure he wasn’t still asleep, and that this was all a very bad dream. In fact, he hoped it was a dream. In his heart, he knew it wasn’t though.
“How?” Mirranda said weakly.
“Because,” Laven answered, “I was born an Outlaw. My father, an elf, was a close adviser to King Wensanclus, though he was secretly loyal to Galinar.
Incidentally, he hailed from Carenval province.
My mother was an Outlaw whom my father was supposed to kill, but he fell in love with her instead. He had her safely returned to the Outlaw lands, by a few friends who were also loyal to the Queen. We moved to the Magic Isles, where I was born, and raised for much of my life, by my mother, who was both my parent and my teacher. We lived on a little farm, and grew almost everything we needed. Interaction with the outside world was very limited, though my father would visit every so often. It was a simple life, and we enjoyed it. Sadly, it didn’t last.
When it was discovered that my father had not killed my mother, but had instead fallen in love with her, and, worse, helped her escape back to the Outlaw lands, he was imprisoned, tried, and eventually executed, for aiding and consorting with a convicted criminal, despite the fact that my mother hadn’t really done anything bad in her life. She was just practicing healing magic to help her community. But that didn’t matter to them. She was an Outlaw, and that was all that they focused on.
When we heard the news, my mother became very depressed, and fell ill. She passed away, and I was suddenly without parents, for they had been taken from me by the actions of those in power. Fortunately, one of my father’s friends took me under his wing, and introduced me to Galinar a few years later. She listened to my sad tale, and then encouraged me to join her following, and take revenge on those who had caused the hardships I had endured. I did so, and, with my inherent elven skills, quickly became a valued member of Galinar’s circle. It was years later, then, during the War of Roawian Succession, that she sent me out into Roawia, with instructions to find out the political and military standings within Lenfald, for I would blend in best there, and , when I could, report back to her. I entered through Loreos, meeting that fool Grintan along the way, and then crossed the border to Lenfald. The logical place for me to then start, was, of course, Carenval Province. It was soon after that we met, and I decided it would help my mission a great deal to become friends with the son of the lord of Carenval. And I’ve been spying on you for her ever since. I reported to her in the chaos of her takeover, and she told me I was doing excellently, and that I would be rewarded greatly when this was over, but she also asked me to stay with your group. This confrontation would have happened a lot sooner, except every time I left those stinking mines we were hiding in, you sent those accursed Snipers with me. There was never an opportunity to report to my superiors, Oslet and Cabrak, until the day of the Battle of Durrough. I was still unable to reach either of them, but I did get off a message to the Queen herself, before returning to you bunch. It was only later that I learned she had been poisoned by Maldrake, and that he had fled to his stronghold. I also learned that Oslet was killed, and Cabrak demoted, and in their collective place The General appointed.
I made contact with him, and learned that he, along with a detachment of soldiers, were going to escape back to the Outlaw lands. First however, he wanted to make Lenfald pay in some small measure, and, remembering what the Queen had promised me, Cabrak suggested to him we kidnap and kill you, and anyone else you were close to, including your father, if we could, thus destabilizing the province.
And we can all see clearly the intermediate results of that, eh?” He finished, spreading his hands to indicate the little party before him. Several of the Dragons nodded and laughed.
Haymar sighed heavily.
“What did she promise you? Control of Carenval province perhaps?”
Laven nodded.
“Yes, which is why I would want to kill you and your father. There was something else, too.”
A horrible suspicion formed at the back of Haymar’s mind. “What?”
A vicious smile creased the other’s face.
“Your sister, of course.”
“No!!” Haymar said, even though he’d suspected as much.
“Oh yes. You know I’ve desired her for a long time. And now, with you and your girlfriend in my possession, what was promised me is finally in my grasp. All that’s practically left for me to do is collect it.”
Haymar looked straight at the other, his gaze deadly cold.
“You will never get Ana. Even if it’s the last thing I do, I will stop you from getting her. She’ll stop you herself too, if necessary.”
Laven laughed. “There’s a problem with that. She still thinks I’m a loyal friend. She won’t realize until it’s too late. And you won’t be there to warn her, either.”
“Because you’ll be dead.” Cabrak said, the hateful glee evident in his voice.
“That’s true.” Laven admitted. “But enough talk. Time is wasting, and The General awaits our return.” He said, hopping off the rock, and starting off into the forest. The party followed him, Rotheric falling in at the rear.
As they were led off into the forest, Haymar and Mirranda were both thinking the same thing: If Laven was a traitor, had always been in fact, there was the very real possibility he had claimed to everyone he was just going out on a hike, and if that was the case, then no-one probably knew they had been captured, and wouldn’t for a while. If no-one knew, then nobody was going to come after them.
They were going to have to get out of this on their own.
—————————————————————————————————
So, hope that was a shocker for you all. If not, then I've failed. :(
In the next installment, you'll get to meet The General. But for now, you'll have to wonder, who is he? I know the angle of the photo isn't for everyone, but I took it from this angle so you'd be able to see Laven's face.
Hope you all like it!
On Thursday 12 July 2018, US president Donald Trump, the most dangerous man in the world, was welcomed to the United Kingdom by the British prime minister Theresa May. The following day the streets of London witnessed the biggest protest for over a decade as thousands marched on Trafalgar Square to express their anger at the British government extending a red carpet welcome for Trump.
Protesters pointed out the extreme threat to democracy, to those dependent on welfare, to womens' rights, to civil rights generally and even to the survival of humankind which Trump presents. Such assertions might seem extreme, but they are unfortunately fully justifiable.
As the president of what is by far the richest and most powerful country on earth, Trump has dedicated his term to accelerating the US addiction to fossil fuels and agribusiness, dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency and withdrawing America from the Paris Climate Accords, thereby accelerating global warming and climate change and presenting a huge threat to the continued existence of humankind.
Trump's presidency also marks another dangerous step in the erosion of democracy in the United States. Far from "draining the swamp" as he promised, Trump has surrounded himself with powerful figures from big business, especially major financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, as well as his friends and allies in the fossil fuel and defence industires.
Government policy, more and more, reflects the direct interests of concentrated private power with the public having less and less influence. At the same time the Trump presidency has allied itself with some of the most ruthless regimes in the world and is profiting from Saudi Arabia's illegal war of aggression in Yemen which has created the world's worst humanitarian crisis. A serious war crime in which Donald Trump and Theresa May are both complicit.
Trump has also been keen to patronise the extreme nationalist constituency in the United States and through preaching a propaganda of fear his presidency has managed to oversee some of the most racist immigration policies ever to be implemented in the United States, targeted almost exclusively at Muslim countries - Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Ironically, all of them have been massively destabilized and impoverished by US foreign policy.
He was also responsible for the ruthless decision to separate children from their parents as they cross into the United States from Mexico, in his determination to block immigration from central America, where decades of US illegal intervention, including the CIA funded Contra terror operations in Nicaragua and enforced free trade (under NAFTA or IMF rules) have devastated the region and merely enhanced the power of corrupt corporate elites and drug cartels.
As if this was not enough to worry about, Trump has also authorized a huge increase in both US defence spending and in the US nuclear arsenal, and changed the strategic posture of the US so that nuclear weapons can be used even for offensive operations and even when their use is not required to preempt a nuclear strike by an enemy power.
As any historian of conflict since the Second World War knows, it is only by a miracle that humankind has survived since 1945 without a nuclear war. Now the situation is more dangerous than ever before. Not only are we are now dependent on Trump's extremely unpredictable temperament but also increasingly on automated systems which can easily malfunction.
Trump and Republicans maintain they need to spend heavily on military equipment in order to counter the supposed Russian threat. However they seldom remind the public that the United States already spends almost as much as the rest of the world combined on defence and that Russia's expenditure is far behind both that of the United States and only on about the same level of Saudi Arabia, and spends only 10% of what NATO spends.
It has also to be remembered that it is NATO and US forces which are operating right on the Russian border, not Russian forces on the American border. Russia's defence spending is clearly recognised by academics to be primarily defensive and responsive to US spending. What is desperately needed is a serious international dialogue at the highest level to decrease the danger of conflict, especially the risk of a terminal nuclear war and begin a process of multilateral disarmament.
On Thursday 12 July 2018, US president Donald Trump, the most dangerous man in the world, was welcomed to the United Kingdom by the British prime minister Theresa May. The following day the streets of London witnessed the biggest protest for over a decade as thousands marched on Trafalgar Square to express their anger at the British government extending a red carpet welcome for Trump.
Protesters pointed out the extreme threat to democracy, to those dependent on welfare, to womens' rights, to civil rights generally and even to the survival of humankind which Trump presents. Such assertions might seem extreme, but they are unfortunately fully justifiable.
As the president of what is by far the richest and most powerful country on earth, Trump has dedicated his term to accelerating the US addiction to fossil fuels and agribusiness, dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency and withdrawing America from the Paris Climate Accords, thereby accelerating global warming and climate change and presenting a huge threat to the continued existence of humankind.
Trump's presidency also marks another dangerous step in the erosion of democracy in the United States. Far from "draining the swamp" as he promised, Trump has surrounded himself with powerful figures from big business, especially major financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, as well as his friends and allies in the fossil fuel and defence industires.
Government policy, more and more, reflects the direct interests of concentrated private power with the public having less and less influence. At the same time the Trump presidency has allied itself with some of the most ruthless regimes in the world and is profiting from Saudi Arabia's illegal war of aggression in Yemen which has created the world's worst humanitarian crisis. A serious war crime in which Donald Trump and Theresa May are both complicit.
Trump has also been keen to patronise the extreme nationalist constituency in the United States and through preaching a propaganda of fear his presidency has managed to oversee some of the most racist immigration policies ever to be implemented in the United States, targeted almost exclusively at Muslim countries - Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Ironically, all of them have been massively destabilized and impoverished by US foreign policy.
He was also responsible for the ruthless decision to separate children from their parents as they cross into the United States from Mexico, in his determination to block immigration from central America, where decades of US illegal intervention, including the CIA funded Contra terror operations in Nicaragua and enforced free trade (under NAFTA or IMF rules) have devastated the region and merely enhanced the power of corrupt corporate elites and drug cartels.
As if this was not enough to worry about, Trump has also authorized a huge increase in both US defence spending and in the US nuclear arsenal, and changed the strategic posture of the US so that nuclear weapons can be used even for offensive operations and even when their use is not required to preempt a nuclear strike by an enemy power.
As any historian of conflict since the Second World War knows, it is only by a miracle that humankind has survived since 1945 without a nuclear war. Now the situation is more dangerous than ever before. Not only are we are now dependent on Trump's extremely unpredictable temperament but also increasingly on automated systems which can easily malfunction.
Trump and Republicans maintain they need to spend heavily on military equipment in order to counter the supposed Russian threat. However they seldom remind the public that the United States already spends almost as much as the rest of the world combined on defence and that Russia's expenditure is far behind both that of the United States and only on about the same level of Saudi Arabia, and spends only 10% of what NATO spends.
It has also to be remembered that it is NATO and US forces which are operating right on the Russian border, not Russian forces on the American border. Russia's defence spending is clearly recognised by academics to be primarily defensive and responsive to US spending. What is desperately needed is a serious international dialogue at the highest level to decrease the danger of conflict, especially the risk of a terminal nuclear war and begin a process of multilateral disarmament.
On Thursday 12 July 2018, US president Donald Trump, the most dangerous man in the world, was welcomed to the United Kingdom by the British prime minister Theresa May. The following day the streets of London witnessed the biggest protest for over a decade as thousands marched on Trafalgar Square to express their anger at the British government extending a red carpet welcome for Trump.
Protesters pointed out the extreme threat to democracy, to those dependent on welfare, to womens' rights, to civil rights generally and even to the survival of humankind which Trump presents. Such assertions might seem extreme, but they are unfortunately fully justifiable.
As the president of what is by far the richest and most powerful country on earth, Trump has dedicated his term to accelerating the US addiction to fossil fuels and agribusiness, dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency and withdrawing America from the Paris Climate Accords, thereby accelerating global warming and climate change and presenting a huge threat to the continued existence of humankind.
Trump's presidency also marks another dangerous step in the erosion of democracy in the United States. Far from "draining the swamp" as he promised, Trump has surrounded himself with powerful figures from big business, especially major financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, as well as his friends and allies in the fossil fuel and defence industires.
Government policy, more and more, reflects the direct interests of concentrated private power with the public having less and less influence. At the same time the Trump presidency has allied itself with some of the most ruthless regimes in the world and is profiting from Saudi Arabia's illegal war of aggression in Yemen which has created the world's worst humanitarian crisis. A serious war crime in which Donald Trump and Theresa May are both complicit.
Trump has also been keen to patronise the extreme nationalist constituency in the United States and through preaching a propaganda of fear his presidency has managed to oversee some of the most racist immigration policies ever to be implemented in the United States, targeted almost exclusively at Muslim countries - Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Ironically, all of them have been massively destabilized and impoverished by US foreign policy.
He was also responsible for the ruthless decision to separate children from their parents as they cross into the United States from Mexico, in his determination to block immigration from central America, where decades of US illegal intervention, including the CIA funded Contra terror operations in Nicaragua and enforced free trade (under NAFTA or IMF rules) have devastated the region and merely enhanced the power of corrupt corporate elites and drug cartels.
As if this was not enough to worry about, Trump has also authorized a huge increase in both US defence spending and in the US nuclear arsenal, and changed the strategic posture of the US so that nuclear weapons can be used even for offensive operations and even when their use is not required to preempt a nuclear strike by an enemy power.
As any historian of conflict since the Second World War knows, it is only by a miracle that humankind has survived since 1945 without a nuclear war. Now the situation is more dangerous than ever before. Not only are we are now dependent on Trump's extremely unpredictable temperament but also increasingly on automated systems which can easily malfunction.
Trump and Republicans maintain they need to spend heavily on military equipment in order to counter the supposed Russian threat. However they seldom remind the public that the United States already spends almost as much as the rest of the world combined on defence and that Russia's expenditure is far behind both that of the United States and only on about the same level of Saudi Arabia, and spends only 10% of what NATO spends.
It has also to be remembered that it is NATO and US forces which are operating right on the Russian border, not Russian forces on the American border. Russia's defence spending is clearly recognised by academics to be primarily defensive and responsive to US spending. What is desperately needed is a serious international dialogue at the highest level to decrease the danger of conflict, especially the risk of a terminal nuclear war and begin a process of multilateral disarmament.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: President Hollande, Mr. Secretary General, fellow leaders. We have come to Paris to show our resolve. We offer our condolences to the people of France for the barbaric attacks on this beautiful city. We stand united in solidarity not only to deliver justice to the terrorist network responsible for those attacks but to protect our people and uphold the enduring values that keep us strong and keep us free. And we salute the people of Paris for insisting this crucial conference go on -- an act of defiance that proves nothing will deter us from building the future we want for our children. What greater rejection of those who would tear down our world than marshaling our best efforts to save it? Nearly 200 nations have assembled here this week -- a declaration that for all the challenges we face, the growing threat of climate change could define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other. What should give us hope that this is a turning point, that this is the moment we finally determined we would save our planet, is the fact that our nations share a sense of urgency about this challenge and a growing realization that it is within our power to do something about it.Our understanding of the ways human beings disrupt the climate advances by the day. Fourteen of the fifteen warmest years on record have occurred since the year 2000 -- and 2015 is on pace to be the warmest year of all. No nation -- large or small, wealthy or poor -- is immune to what this means. This summer, I saw the effects of climate change firsthand in our northernmost state, Alaska, where the sea is already swallowing villages and eroding shorelines; where permafrost thaws and the tundra burns; where glaciers are melting at a pace unprecedented in modern times. And it was a preview of one possible future -- a glimpse of our children’s fate if the climate keeps changing faster than our efforts to address it. Submerged countries. Abandoned cities. Fields that no longer grow. Political disruptions that trigger new conflict, and even more floods of desperate peoples seeking the sanctuary of nations not their own. That future is not one of strong economies, nor is it one where fragile states can find their footing. That future is one that we have the power to change. Right here. Right now. But only if we rise to this moment. As one of America’s governors has said, “We are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change, and the last generation that can do something about it.”I’ve come here personally, as the leader of the world’s largest economy and the second-largest emitter, to say that the United States of America not only recognizes our role in creating this problem, we embrace our responsibility to do something about it.Over the last seven years, we’ve made ambitious investments in clean energy, and ambitious reductions in our carbon emissions. We’ve multiplied wind power threefold, and solar power more than twentyfold, helping create parts of America where these clean power sources are finally cheaper than dirtier, conventional power. We’ve invested in energy efficiency in every way imaginable. We’ve said no to infrastructure that would pull high-carbon fossil fuels from the ground, and we’ve said yes to the first-ever set of national standards limiting the amount of carbon pollution our power plants can release into the sky.The advances we’ve made have helped drive our economic output to all-time highs, and drive our carbon pollution to its lowest levels in nearly two decades. But the good news is this is not an American trend alone. Last year, the global economy grew while global carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels stayed flat. And what this means can’t be overstated. We have broken the old arguments for inaction. We have proved that strong economic growth and a safer environment no longer have to conflict with one another; they can work in concert with one another.
And that should give us hope. One of the enemies that we'll be fighting at this conference is cynicism, the notion we can't do anything about climate change. Our progress should give us hope during these two weeks -- hope that is rooted in collective action. Earlier this month in Dubai, after years of delay, the world agreed to work together to cut the super-pollutants known as HFCs. That's progress. Already, prior to Paris, more than 180 countries representing nearly 95 percent of global emissions have put forward their own climate targets. That is progress. For our part, America is on track to reach the emissions targets that I set six years ago in Copenhagen -- we will reduce our carbon emissions in the range of 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. And that's why, last year, I set a new target: America will reduce our emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels within 10 years from now.So our task here in Paris is to turn these achievements into an enduring framework for human progress -- not a stopgap solution, but a long-term strategy that gives the world confidence in a low-carbon future.Here, in Paris, let’s secure an agreement that builds in ambition, where progress paves the way for regularly updated targets -- targets that are not set for each of us but by each of us, taking into account the differences that each nation is facing. Here in Paris, let’s agree to a strong system of transparency that gives each of us the confidence that all of us are meeting our commitments. And let’s make sure that the countries who don’t yet have the full capacity to report on their targets receive the support that they need. Here in Paris, let’s reaffirm our commitment that resources will be there for countries willing to do their part to skip the dirty phase of development. And I recognize this will not be easy. It will take a commitment to innovation and the capital to continue driving down the cost of clean energy. And that’s why, this afternoon, I’ll join many of you to announce an historic joint effort to accelerate public and private clean energy innovation on a global scale.Here in Paris, let’s also make sure that these resources flow to the countries that need help preparing for the impacts of climate change that we can no longer avoid. We know the truth that many nations have contributed little to climate change but will be the first to feel its most destructive effects. For some, particularly island nations -- whose leaders I’ll meet with tomorrow -- climate change is a threat to their very existence. And that’s why today, in concert with other nations, America confirms our strong and ongoing commitment to the Least Developed Countries Fund. And tomorrow, we’ll pledge new contributions to risk insurance initiatives that help vulnerable populations rebuild stronger after climate-related disasters.And finally, here in Paris, let’s show businesses and investors that the global economy is on a firm path towards a low-carbon future. If we put the right rules and incentives in place, we’ll unleash the creative power of our best scientists and engineers and entrepreneurs to deploy clean energy technologies and the new jobs and new opportunities that they create all around the world. There are hundreds of billions of dollars ready to deploy to countries around the world if they get the signal that we mean business this time. Let’s send that signal.That’s what we seek in these next two weeks. Not simply an agreement to roll back the pollution we put into our skies, but an agreement that helps us lift people from poverty without condemning the next generation to a planet that’s beyond its capacity to repair. Here, in Paris, we can show the world what is possible when we come together, united in common effort and by a common purpose.And let there be no doubt, the next generation is watching what we do. Just over a week ago, I was in Malaysia, where I held a town hall with young people, and the first question I received was from a young Indonesian woman. And it wasn’t about terrorism, it wasn’t about the economy, it wasn’t about human rights. It was about climate change. And she asked whether I was optimistic about what we can achieve here in Paris, and what young people like her could do to help.I want our actions to show her that we’re listening. I want our actions to be big enough to draw on the talents of all our people -- men and women, rich and poor -- I want to show her passionate, idealistic young generation that we care about their future. For I believe, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that there is such a thing as being too late. And when it comes to climate change, that hour is almost upon us. But if we act here, if we act now, if we place our own short-term interests behind the air that our young people will breathe, and the food that they will eat, and the water that they will drink, and the hopes and dreams that sustain their lives, then we won't be too late for them.And, my fellow leaders, accepting this challenge will not reward us with moments of victory that are clear or quick. Our progress will be measured differently -- in the suffering that is averted, and a planet that's preserved. And that’s what’s always made this so hard. Our generation may not even live to see the full realization of what we do here. But the knowledge that the next generation will be better off for what we do here -- can we imagine a more worthy reward than that? Passing that on to our children and our grandchildren, so that when they look back and they see what we did here in Paris, they can take pride in our achievement. Let that be the common purpose here in Paris. A world that is worthy of our children. A world that is marked not by conflict, but by cooperation; and not by human suffering, but by human progress. A world that’s safer, and more prosperous, and more secure, and more free than the one that we inherited. Let’s get to work. Thank you very much.
www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/11/30/remarks-pr...
Nearly 150 global leaders are gathering in Paris amid tight security for a critical UN climate meeting.The conference, known as COP21, starts on Monday and will try to craft a long-term deal to limit carbon emissions.Observers say that the recent terror attacks on the French capital will increase the chances of a new agreement.Around 40,000 people are expected to participate in the event, which runs until 11 December.The gathering of 147 heads of state and government is set to be far bigger than the 115 or so who came to Copenhagen in 2009, the last time the world came close to agreeing a long term deal on climate change.Rallies call for action.While many leaders including Presidents Obama and Xi Jinping were always set to attend this conference, the recent violent attacks in Paris have encouraged others to come in an expression of solidarity with the French people.Unlike at Copenhagen, the French organisers are bringing the leaders in at the start of the conference rather than waiting for them to come in at the end, a tactic which failed spectacularly in the Danish capital.On Sunday thousands of people took part in demonstrations worldwide to demand they take firm action.Considerable differencesDelegates are in little doubt that the shadow cast over the city by the attacks will enhance the chances of agreement."I believe that it will make a deal more likely, because what I feel from the parties is that they are very eager to move," said Amjad Abdulla from the Maldives, who chairs the Alliance of Small Island States in the negotiations.A former UK government adviser on climate change and now chairman of environmental think tank E3G, Tom Burke, believes that some leaders will push the line that, by tackling rising temperatures, you remove one of the causes of terrorism.One key problem is what form an agreement will take. The US for instance will not sign up to a legally binding deal as there would be little hope of getting it through a Senate dominated by Republicans."We're looking for an agreement that has broad, really full participation," said US lead negotiator Todd Stern at a news briefing earlier this week."We were quite convinced that an agreement that required actually legally binding targets would have many countries unable to participate."Many developing countries fundamentally disagree. As does the European Union."We must translate the momentum we have seen on the road to Paris into an ambitious, operational, legally binding agreement," said EU commissioner Miguel Arias Canete, in a statement.As well as the form there are also many issues with the content.There are a wide range of views on what the long-term goal of the agreement should be.While it will ostensibly come down to keeping temperatures from rising more than 2C above the pre-industrial level, how that will be represented in the text is the subject of much wrangling.Some countries reject the very notion of 2C and say 1.5C must be the standard. Others want to talk about decarbonising the world by the middle or end of this century.For major oil producers the very idea is anathema.While the fact that more than 180 countries have put forward national plans to cut emissions is a major strength of this conference, there are still big questions marks about how to verify those commitments that will actually be carried out."People in the negotiations, people outside the negotiations are going to be looking for the capacity to have trust and confidence in what countries say they are doing," Todd Stern told reporters."[You] can't run the system without that."COP 21 - the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties - will see more than 190 nations gather in Paris to discuss a possible new global agreement on climate change, aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the threat of dangerous warming due to human activities.While there is some consensus among the parties that the plans will need to be reviewed every five years, there is no question of punitive restrictions if a country doesn't meet its targets.And among the many other issues in dispute, almost inevitably, is money. While rich countries promised they would give $100bn by 2020 to the developing world back in 2009, the cash has been slow in coming. Right now there is no agreement about what happens after 2020.While there is a general air of optimism and a willingness to get a deal done, success isn't guaranteed this time round. Many believe that a country such as India, with close to 300 million people without electricity, will refuse to sign up to a strong agreement that limits future fossil fuel use.If that happens, the whole process could come unstuck, as nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.Tom Burke for one believes that going against the flow will be particularly difficult this time round."I think one of the reasons people will find it hard to hold out at the end will be because of the level of political capital that Obama has invested in climate change, making it clear it is a primary legacy issue for him," he said.
www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34950442
The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world as a result of increased CO2 from human activities. This is causing Greenland's ice sheets and glaciers to melt, contributing to sea level rise.On average, global sea level has risen almost 8 inches since 1901, coming from two main sources: rising ocean temperatures that cause water to expand, and melting glaciers and ice sheets which add water to the oceans.The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded the oceans will continue rising in coming decades, conservatively projecting up to a 3 foot increase in global mean sea level by 2100. Other studies project an even higher sea level rise if we stay near our current emissions path for carbon pollution. In our stories, we explore how sea level rise impacts homes, livelihoods, economies, and families around the world.In just 2012, the ice that melted in Greenland and flowed into the ocean was equivalent to the amount of water flowing over Niagara Falls for 5 straight years.
yearsoflivingdangerously.com/topic/sea-level-rise/
Adapting to Sea Level Rise in the Coastal Zone. Rising sea level settles border dispute.In an unusual example of the effects of global climate change, rising sea levels in the Bay of Bengal have helped resolve a troublesome territorial dispute between two of the world's most populated countries, a leading Indian oceanographer says.Sugata Hazra, the head of oceanography at Kolkata's Jadavpur University, says a flat muddy patch of land known as South Talpatti in Bangladesh and New Moore Island in India has disappeared under the Bay of Bengal. The landmass had been claimed by both countries but Professor Hazra says satellite images prove it has gone.''It is now a submerged landmass, not an island,'' Professor Hazra told the Herald.Sea-level rise caused by climate change was ''surely'' a factor in the island's inundation, Professor Hazra said.''The rate of sea-level rise in this part of the northern Bay of Bengal is definitely attributable to climate change,'' he said.
''There is a close correlation between the rate of sea-level rise and the sea surface temperature.''The island was once about 3.5 kilometres long and three kilometres wide and situated four kilometres from the mouth of the Hariabhanga River, the waterway that marks a stretch of the border between south-western Bangladesh and India.Scientists believe the disputed island was formed following a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal in 1970 and both countries laid claim to the land.
Bilateral negotiations were inconclusive and in 1981 the Indian government sent gunboats to the island and members of its Border Security Forces planted an Indian flag there.
The island was not inhabited but Bangladeshi fishermen were reportedly sighted there frequently during the dry season.
''This is a unique instance of how climate resolves a dispute,'' said Professor Hazra.''It also goes to show how climate can affect all of us beyond geographical boundaries.''The Indian government had once sent ships with guns to guard the island.''Now one will have to think of sending submarines to mount a vigil there.''Professor Hazra said sea-level rise, changes in monsoonal rain patterns which altered river flows and land subsidence were all contributing to the inundation of land in the northern Bay of Bengal.The low-lying delta region that makes up much of Bangladesh and the neighbouring Indian state of West Bengal are acutely vulnerable to climate change.The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts rising sea levels will devour 17 per cent of Bangladesh by 2050, displacing at least 20 million people. More than 155 million people live in the country.The Bangladesh non-governmental organisation Coastal Watch says an average of 11 Bangladeshis are losing their homes to rising waters every hour.Professor Hazra predicts that 15 per cent of the Indian Sundarbans region on the northern shore of the Bay of Bengal will be submerged by 2020.''A lot of other islands are eroding very fast,'' he said.The cyclone-prone region is also likely to experience more frequent and extreme storms as the sea-water temperature in the Bay of Bengal rises due to global warming
Read more: www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/rising-sea-leve...
Can we stop the seas from rising? Yes, but less than you think.
One of the main concerns with climate change is that it's causing the oceans to advance. Global sea levels have risen about seven inches over the past century and that pace is accelerating. Not only does this threaten coastal regions, but it also makes storm surges much worse — both for huge hurricanes like Sandy and for smaller storms too.And the oceans are likely to keep creeping up. Scientists project that if we keep warming the planet at our current pace, sea levels could rise between two and seven feet by 2100, particularly as the world's glaciers and ice caps melt. So that raises the question: Is there anything we can do to stop sea-level rise? How much would cutting greenhouse-gas emissions help?As it turns out, reducing our emissions would help slow the rate of sea-level rise — but at this point, it's unlikely that we could stop further rises altogether. That's the upshot of a recent study from the National Center on Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The study estimated that aggressive steps to cut emissions could reduce the amount of sea-level rise by somewhere between 6 and 20 inches in 2100, compared with our current trajectory. That's quite a bit. But sea levels will keep rising for centuries no matter what we do. We can't stop it entirely. We can only slow the pace.As NCAR's Gerald Meehl, a co-author of the study, explained to me by e-mail, it's a lot easier to stabilize global temperatures by cutting carbon emissions than it is to stabilize sea-level rise. The carbon-dioxide that we've already loaded into the atmosphere will likely have effects on the oceans for centuries to come. "But with aggressive mitigation," Meehl added, "you can slow down the rate of sea level rise, which buys time for adaptation measures."There are two ways that global warming causes sea levels to rise. First, as carbon-dioxide traps more heat on the planet, the oceans get warmer and expand in volume. Second, ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica as well as other glaciers start melting, pouring more water into the oceans. Once these processes get underway, they won't stop quickly, even if we ceased putting carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere tomorrow.The NCAR paper estimated that if emissions go unchecked, we could warm the planet 4°C over pre-industrial levels by 2100, causing sea levels to rise between two and five feet. By contrast, if we get really proactive at cutting emissions, we could probably keep the temperature increase below 2°C. But sea levels would still rise by between 11 inches and 3.5 feet. (The wide range is due to the uncertainties in modeling the behavior of glaciers and ice sheets—if the ice sheets destabilize, a bigger rise is possible.) That's progress, but not total victory.We're going to need to adapt to sea-level rise no matter what we do on carbon emissions. Even the "optimistic" scenario in the NCAR paper still envisions sea-levels rising roughly 11 inches by 2100. That's assuming we cut emissions drastically and the ice sheets don't do anything too unpredictable. Even then, New York City will have a bigger flood zone than it does today. Storm surges on the coasts will be much larger. Low-lying areas will be at greater risk. In Bangladesh, for instance, the area prone to severe flooding would increase by 69 percent (pdf) with just a foot of sea-level rise.That said, cutting emissions can make a significant difference this century. Keeping sea-level rise a foot or two lower than it otherwise might be is nothing to sneeze at. As this map of New York City shows, the flood zone increases dramatically with each additional foot of sea-level rise. A city like Norfolk, Va. could get swamped entirely by a Category 3 hurricane if ocean levels rose by two to five feet. Florida's adaptation costs go up by billions of dollars with each additional foot of sea-level rise. Every little bit helps.Sea-level rise is likely a much bigger problem for future generations. Not to get too morbid, but I'll probably be dead by 2100. So will most people reading this blog. So the main question at issue here is whether we want to leave our descendants a relatively stable coastline or an unstable one. According to NCAR projections, sea levels could rise as much as 34 feet, or nine meters, by 2300 if emissions continue unchecked (though modeling projections that far out have very large uncertainties, so don't take this as a definitive number). To get a sense of what a nine-meter rise would look like, check out this interactive map. South Florida would be underwater. So would New Orleans. And Shanghai. And the Netherlands. And Bangladesh. But this is also 200 years in the future. That's a big reason why climate change is such a difficult problem to deal with.
www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/11/01/can...
Les pays du monde entier vont vivre au rythme des négociations climatiques du 29 novembre au 11 décembre 2015. Un accord entre 195 pays doit être trouvé pour maintenir le réchauffement climatique en dessous des 2 degrés, d’ici à 2050. Mais comment se déroulent les négociations derrière les portes du Bourget, où 150 chefs d’états et plus de 40 000 personnes sont attendus? Nous suivons Caroline Tubercule, membre de l’équipe française de négociation dans son marathon pour sauver la planète.
En savoir plus sur www.lemonde.fr/cop21/video/2015/11/29/en-patates-comprend...
Malgré l'interdiction de manifester, 10.000 personnes se sont réunies dimanche à Paris pour participer à une chaîne humaine contre le réchauffement climatique, selon les organisateurs."cette chaîne humaine, c'est un contre-pouvoir citoyen à la conférence officielle qui sera contre-productive car elle est faite avec des industriels dont les intérêts sont contraires à l'écologie."
www.lesechos.fr/paris-climat-2015/actualites/021518198440...
A bio-mechanical weapon prototype, codename RIPPER, has been mistakenly activated due to a minor system malfunction on the lower deck. Designed to destabilize entire colonies aboard enemy starcrafts, the RIPPER mutilates what remains of the crew in Docking Bay A after an emergency quarantine is initiated. It sustains itself by feeding on living plant and animal tissue, which can sometimes be seen dangling from its (incomplete) torso.
The nature of the kinetic ballooning mode in the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) second stability regime is clarified through the behaviour of the eigenfunction. It is found to be a continuation of the MHD ballooning mode (not of the second mode with a smaller growth rate which coexists with the MHD mode). The kinetic shooting code is also applied to the parameters of TFTR in which the kinetic ballooning mode has recently been observed. The toroidal mode number and the frequency for the fastest growing mode are found to be consistent with the experimental observations. Finite-beta stabilization of the electrostatic ion temperature gradient (ITG) mode and destabilization of the ITG-driven ballooning mode are demonstrated. Also studied is the mode stability in the negative shear region, where the MHD ballooning mode is known to be stable. The kinetic ballooning mode persists for s > 0 with a narrow stable window near null shear.
Thank you borealnz for the TTV
And thanks Handmade Textures for Layers Group
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, also known as Mustafa Kemal Pasha until 1921, and Ghazi Mustafa Kemal from 1921 until the Surname Law of 1934 (c. 1881 – 10 November 1938), was a Turkish field marshal, revolutionary statesman, author, and the founding father of the Republic of Turkey, serving as its first president from 1923 until his death in 1938. He undertook sweeping progressive reforms, which modernized Turkey into a secular, industrializing nation. Ideologically a secularist and nationalist, his policies and socio-political theories became known as Kemalism.
Atatürk came to prominence for his role in securing the Ottoman Turkish victory at the Battle of Gallipoli (1915) during World War I. During this time, the Ottoman Empire perpetrated genocides against its Greek, Armenian and Assyrian subjects; while not directly involved, Atatürk's role in their aftermath has been controversial. Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, he led the Turkish National Movement, which resisted mainland Turkey's partition among the victorious Allied powers. Establishing a provisional government in the present-day Turkish capital Ankara (known in English at the time as Angora), he defeated the forces sent by the Allies, thus emerging victorious from what was later referred to as the Turkish War of Independence. He subsequently proceeded to abolish the sultanate in 1922 and proclaimed the foundation of the Turkish Republic in its place the following year.
As the president of the newly formed Turkish Republic, Atatürk initiated a rigorous program of political, economic, and cultural reforms with the ultimate aim of building a republican and secular nation-state. He made primary education free and compulsory, opening thousands of new schools all over the country. He also introduced the Latin-based Turkish alphabet, replacing the old Ottoman Turkish alphabet. Turkish women received equal civil and political rights during Atatürk's presidency. In particular, women were given voting rights in local elections by Act no. 1580 on 3 April 1930 and a few years later, in 1934, full universal suffrage. His government carried out a policy of Turkification, trying to create a homogeneous, unified and above all secular nation under the Turkish banner. Under Atatürk, the minorities in Turkey were ordered to speak Turkish in public, but were allowed to maintain their own languages in private and within their own communities; non-Turkish toponyms were replaced and non-Turkish families were ordered to adopt a Turkish surname. The Turkish Parliament granted him the surname Atatürk in 1934, which means "Father of the Turks", in recognition of the role he played in building the modern Turkish Republic. He died on 10 November 1938 at Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul, at the age of 57; he was succeeded as president by his long-time prime minister İsmet İnönü and was honored with a state funeral.
In 1981, the centennial of Atatürk's birth, his memory was honoured by the United Nations and UNESCO, which declared it The Atatürk Year in the World and adopted the Resolution on the Atatürk Centennial, describing him as "the leader of the first struggle given against colonialism and imperialism" and a "remarkable promoter of the sense of understanding between peoples and durable peace between the nations of the world and that he worked all his life for the development of harmony and cooperation between peoples without distinction". Atatürk was also credited for his peace-in-the-world oriented foreign policy and friendship with neighboring countries such as Iran, Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Greece, as well as the creation of the Balkan Pact that resisted the expansionist aggressions of Fascist Italy and Tsarist Bulgaria.
The Turkish War of Independence (19 May 1919 – 24 July 1923) was a series of military campaigns and a revolution waged by the Turkish National Movement, after parts of the Ottoman Empire were occupied and partitioned following its defeat in World War I. The conflict was between the Turkish Nationalists against Allied and separatist forces over the application of Wilsonian principles, especially national self-determination, in post-World War I Anatolia and Eastern Thrace. The revolution concluded the collapse of the Ottoman Empire; the Ottoman monarchy and the Islamic caliphate were abolished, and the Republic of Turkey was declared in Anatolia and Eastern Thrace. This resulted in a transfer of vested sovereignty from the sultan-caliph to the nation, setting the stage for Republican Turkey's period of nationalist revolutionary reform.
While World War I ended for the Ottoman Empire with the Armistice of Mudros, the Allied Powers continued occupying and securing land per the Sykes–Picot Agreement, as well as to facilitate the prosecution of former members of the Committee of Union and Progress and those involved in the Armenian genocide. Ottoman military commanders therefore refused orders from both the Allies and the Ottoman government to surrender and disband their forces. In an atmosphere of turmoil throughout the remainder of the empire, sultan Mehmed VI dispatched Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk), a well-respected and high-ranking general, to Anatolia to restore order; however, Mustafa Kemal became an enabler and eventually leader of Turkish Nationalist resistance against the Ottoman government, Allied powers, and separatists.
In an attempt to establish control over the power vacuum in Anatolia, the Allies agreed to launch a Greek peacekeeping force into Anatolia and occupy Smyrna (İzmir), inflaming sectarian tensions and beginning the Turkish War of Independence. A nationalist counter government led by Mustafa Kemal was established in Ankara when it became clear the Ottoman government was appeasing the Allied powers. The Allies soon pressured the Ottoman government in Constantinople to suspend the Constitution, shutter Parliament, and sign the Treaty of Sèvres, a treaty unfavorable to Turkish interests that the "Ankara government" declared illegal.
In the ensuing war, Turkish and Syrian forces defeated the French in the south, and remobilized army units went on to partition Armenia with the Bolsheviks, resulting in the Treaty of Kars (October 1921). The Western Front of the independence war is known as the Greco-Turkish War, in which Greek forces at first encountered unorganized resistance. However, İsmet Pasha (İnönü)'s organization of militia into a regular army paid off when Ankara forces fought the Greeks in the First and Second Battle of İnönü. The Greek army emerged victorious in the Battle of Kütahya-Eskişehir and decided to drive on the Nationalist capital of Ankara, stretching their supply lines. The Turks checked their advance in the Battle of Sakarya and eventually counter-attacked in the Great Offensive, which expelled Greek forces from Anatolia in the span of three weeks. The war effectively ended with the recapture of İzmir and the Chanak Crisis, prompting the signing of another armistice in Mudanya.
The Grand National Assembly in Ankara was recognized as the legitimate Turkish government, which signed the Treaty of Lausanne (July 1923), a treaty more favorable to Turkey than the Sèvres Treaty. The Allies evacuated Anatolia and Eastern Thrace, the Ottoman government was overthrown and the monarchy abolished, and the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (which remains Turkey's primary legislative body today) declared the Republic of Turkey on 29 October 1923. With the war, a population exchange between Greece and Turkey, the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, and the abolition of the sultanate, the Ottoman era came to an end, and with Atatürk's reforms, the Turks created the modern, secular nation-state of Turkey. On 3 March 1924, the Ottoman caliphate was also abolished.
The ethnic demographics of the modern Turkish Republic were significantly impacted by the earlier Armenian genocide and the deportations of Greek-speaking, Orthodox Christian Rum people. The Turkish Nationalist Movement carried out massacres and deportations to eliminate native Christian populations—a continuation of the Armenian genocide and other ethnic cleansing operations during World War I. Following these campaigns of ethnic cleansing, the historic Christian presence in Anatolia was destroyed, in large part, and the Muslim demographic had increased from 80% to 98%.
Following the chaotic politics of the Second Constitutional Era, the Ottoman Empire came under the control of the Committee of Union and Progress in a coup in 1913, and then further consolidated its control after the assassination of Mahmud Shevket Pasha.[citation needed] Founded as a radical revolutionary group seeking to prevent a collapse of the Ottoman Empire, by the eve of World War I it decided that the solution was to implement nationalist and centralizing policies. The CUP reacted to the losses of land and the expulsion of Muslims from the Balkan Wars by turning even more nationalistic. Part of its effort to consolidate power was to proscribe and exile opposition politicians from the Freedom and Accord Party to remote Sinop.
The Unionists brought the Ottoman Empire into World War I on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, during which a genocidal campaign was waged against Ottoman Christians, namely Armenians, Pontic Greeks, and Assyrians. It was based on an alleged conspiracy that the three groups would rebel on the side of the Allies, so collective punishment was applied. A similar suspicion and suppression from the Turkish nationalist government was directed towards the Arab and Kurdish populations, leading to localized rebellions. The Entente powers reacted to these developments by charging the CUP leaders, commonly known as the Three Pashas, with "Crimes against humanity" and threatened accountability. They also had imperialist ambitions on Ottoman territory, with a major correspondence over a post-war settlement in the Ottoman Empire being leaked to the press as the Sykes–Picot Agreement. With Saint Petersburg's exit from World War I and descent into civil war, driven in part from the Ottomans' closure of the Turkish straits of goods bound to Russia, a new imperative was given to the Entente powers to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war to restart the Eastern Front.
World War I would be the nail in the coffin of Ottomanism, a monarchist and multicultural nationalism. Mistreatment of non-Turk groups after 1913, and the general context of great socio-political upheaval that occurred in the aftermath of World War I, meant many minorities now wished to divorce their future from imperialism to form futures of their own by separating into (often republican) nation-states.
In the summer months of 1918, the leaders of the Central Powers realized that the Great War was lost, including the Ottomans'. Almost simultaneously the Palestinian Front and then the Macedonian Front collapsed. The sudden decision by Bulgaria to sign an armistice cut communications from Constantinople (İstanbul) to Vienna and Berlin, and opened the undefended Ottoman capital to Entente attack. With the major fronts crumbling, Unionist Grand Vizier Talât Pasha intended to sign an armistice, and resigned on 8 October 1918 so that a new government would receive less harsh armistice terms. The Armistice of Mudros was signed on 30 October 1918, ending World War I for the Ottoman Empire. Three days later, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP)—which governed the Ottoman Empire as a one-party state since 1913—held its last congress, where it was decided the party would be dissolved. Talât, Enver Pasha, Cemal Pasha, and five other high-ranking members of the CUP escaped the Ottoman Empire on a German torpedo boat later that night, plunging the country into a power vacuum.
The armistice was signed because the Ottoman Empire had been defeated in important fronts, but the military was intact and retreated in good order. Unlike other Central Powers, the Allies did not mandate an abdication of the imperial family as a condition for peace, nor did they request the Ottoman Army to dissolve its general staff. Though the army suffered from mass desertion throughout the war which led to banditry, there was no threat of mutiny or revolutions like in Germany, Austria-Hungary, or Russia. This is despite famine and economic collapse that was brought on by the extreme levels of mobilization, destruction from the war, disease, and mass murder since 1914.
Due to the Turkish nationalist policies pursued by the CUP against Ottoman Christians by 1918 the Ottoman Empire held control over a mostly homogeneous land of Muslims from Eastern Thrace to the Persian border. These included mostly Turks, as well as Kurds, Circassians, and Muhacir groups from Rumeli. Most Muslim Arabs were now outside of the Ottoman Empire and under Allied occupation, with some "imperialists" still loyal to the Ottoman Sultanate-Caliphate, and others wishing for independence or Allied protection under a League of Nations mandate. Sizable Greek and Armenian minorities remained within its borders, and most of these communities no longer wished to remain under the Empire.
On 30 October 1918, the Armistice of Mudros was signed between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies of World War I, bringing hostilities in the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I to an end. The Ottoman Army was to demobilize, its navy and air force handed to the Allies, and occupied territory in the Caucasus and Persia to be evacuated. Critically, Article VII granted the Allies the right to occupy forts controlling the Turkish Straits and the vague right to occupy "in case of disorder" any territory if there were a threat to security. The clause relating to the occupation of the straits was meant to secure a Southern Russian intervention force, while the rest of the article was used to allow for Allied controlled peace-keeping forces. There was also a hope to follow through punishing local actors that carried out exterminatory orders from the CUP government against Armenian Ottomans. For now, the House of Osman escaped the fates of the Hohenzollerns, Habsburgs, and Romanovs to continue ruling their empire, though at the cost of its remaining sovereignty.
On 13 November 1918, a French brigade entered Constantinople to begin a de facto occupation of the Ottoman capital and its immediate dependencies. This was followed by a fleet consisting of British, French, Italian and Greek ships deploying soldiers on the ground the next day, totaling 50,000 troops in Constantinople. The Allied Powers stated that the occupation was temporary and its purpose was to protect the monarchy, the caliphate and the minorities. Somerset Arthur Gough-Calthorpe—the British signatory of the Mudros Armistice—stated the Triple Entente's public position that they had no intention to dismantle the Ottoman government or place it under military occupation by "occupying Constantinople". However, dismantling the government and partitioning the Ottoman Empire among the Allied nations had been an objective of the Entente since the start of WWI.
A wave of seizures took place in the rest of the country in the following months. Citing Article VII, British forces demanded that Turkish troops evacuate Mosul, claiming that Christian civilians in Mosul and Zakho were killed en masse. In the Caucasus, Britain established a presence in Menshevik Georgia and the Lori and Aras valleys as peace-keepers. On 14 November, joint Franco-Greek occupation was established in the town of Uzunköprü in Eastern Thrace as well as the railway axis until the train station of Hadımköy on the outskirts of Constantinople. On 1 December, British troops based in Syria occupied Kilis, Marash, Urfa and Birecik. Beginning in December, French troops began successive seizures of the province of Adana, including the towns of Antioch, Mersin, Tarsus, Ceyhan, Adana, Osmaniye, and İslâhiye, incorporating the area into the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration North while French forces embarked by gunboats and sent troops to the Black Sea ports of Zonguldak and Karadeniz Ereğli commanding Turkey's coal mining region. These continued seizures of land prompted Ottoman commanders to refuse demobilization and prepare for the resumption of war.
The British similarly asked Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) to turn over the port of Alexandretta (İskenderun), which he reluctantly did, following which he was recalled to Constantinople. He made sure to distribute weapons to the population to prevent them from falling into the hands of Allied forces. Some of these weapons were smuggled to the east by members of Karakol, a successor to the CUP's Special Organization, to be used in case resistance was necessary in Anatolia. Many Ottoman officials participated in efforts to conceal from the occupying authorities details of the burgeoning independence movement spreading throughout Anatolia.
Other commanders began refusing orders from the Ottoman government and the Allied powers. After Mustafa Kemal Pasha returned to Constantinople, Ali Fuat Pasha (Cebesoy) brought XX Corps under his command. He marched first to Konya and then to Ankara to organise resistance groups, such as the Circassian çetes he assembled with guerilla leader Çerkes Ethem. Meanwhile, Kazım Karabekir Pasha refused to surrender his intact and powerful XV Corps in Erzurum. Evacuation from the Caucusus, puppet republics and Muslim militia groups were established in the army's wake to hamper with the consolidation of the new Armenian state. Elsewhere in the country, regional nationalist resistance organizations known as Şuras –meaning "councils", not unlike soviets in revolutionary Russia– were founded, most pledging allegiance to the Defence of National Rights movement that protested continued Allied occupation and appeasement by the Sublime Porte.
Following the occupation of Constantinople, Mehmed VI Vahdettin dissolved the Chamber of Deputies which was dominated by Unionists elected back in 1914, promising elections for the next year. Vahdettin just ascended to the throne only months earlier with the death of Mehmed V Reşad. He was disgusted with the policies of the CUP, and wished to be a more assertive sovereign than his diseased half brother. Greek and Armenian Ottomans declared the termination of their relationship with the Ottoman Empire through their respective patriarchates, and refused to partake in any future election. With the collapse of the CUP and its censorship regime, an outpouring of condemnation against the party came from all parts of Ottoman media.
A general amnesty was soon issued, allowing the exiled and imprisoned dissidents persecuted by the CUP to return to Constantinople. Vahdettin invited the pro-Palace politician Damat Ferid Pasha, leader of the reconstituted Freedom and Accord Party, to form a government, whose members quickly set out to purge the Unionists from the Ottoman government. Ferid Pasha hoped that his Anglophilia and an attitude of appeasement would induce less harsh peace terms from the Allied powers. However, his appointment was problematic for nationalists, many being members of the liquidated committee that were surely to face trial. Years of corruption, unconstitutional acts, war profiteering, and enrichment from ethnic cleansing and genocide by the Unionists soon became basis of war crimes trials and courts martial trials held in Constantinople.[citation needed] While many leading Unionists were sentenced lengthy prison sentences, many made sure to escape the country before Allied occupation or to regions that the government now had minimal control over; thus most were sentenced in absentia. The Allies encouragement of the proceedings and the use of British Malta as their holding ground made the trials unpopular. The partisan nature of the trials was not lost on observers either. The hanging of the Kaymakam of Boğazlıyan district Mehmed Kemal resulted in a demonstration against the courts martials trials.
With all the chaotic politics in the capital and uncertainty of the severity of the incoming peace treaty, many Ottomans looked to Washington with the hope that the application of Wilsonian principles would mean Constantinople would stay Turkish, as Muslims outnumbered Christians 2:1. The United States never declared war on the Ottoman Empire, so many imperial elite believed Washington could be a neutral arbiter that could fix the empire's problems. Halide Edip (Adıvar) and her Wilsonian Principles Society led the movement that advocated for the empire to be governed by an American League of Nations Mandate (see United States during the Turkish War of Independence). American diplomats attempted to ascertain a role they could play in the area with the Harbord and King–Crane Commissions. However, with the collapse of Woodrow Wilson's health, the United States diplomatically withdrew from the Middle East to focus on Europe, leaving the Entente powers to construct a post-Ottoman order.
The Entente would have arrived at Constantinople to discover an administration attempting to deal with decades of accumulated refugee crisis. The new government issued a proclamation allowing for deportees to return to their homes, but many Greeks and Armenians found their old homes occupied by desperate Rumelian and Caucasian Muslim refugees which were settled in their properties during the First World War. Ethnic conflict restarted in Anatolia; government officials responsible for resettling Christian refugees often assisted Muslim refugees in these disputes, prompting European powers to continue bringing Ottoman territory under their control. Of the 800,000 Ottoman Christian refugees, approximately over half returned to their homes by 1920. Meanwhile 1.4 million refugees from the Russian Civil War would pass through the Turkish straits and Anatolia, with 150,000 White émigrés choosing to settle in Istanbul for short or long term (see Evacuation of the Crimea). Many provinces were simply depopulated from years of fighting, conscription, and ethnic cleansing (see Ottoman casualties of World War I). The province of Yozgat lost 50% of its Muslim population from conscription, while according to the governor of Van, almost 95% of its prewar residents were dead or internally displaced.
Administration in much of the Anatolian and Thracian countryside would soon all but collapse by 1919. Army deserters who turned to banditry essentially controlled fiefdoms with tacit approval from bureaucrats and local elites. An amnesty issued in late 1918 saw these bandits strengthen their positions and fight amongst each other instead of returning to civilian life. Albanian and Circassian muhacirs resettled by the government in northwestern Anatolia and Kurds in southeastern Anatolia were engaged in blood feuds that intensified during the war and were hesitant to pledge allegiance to the Defence of Rights movement, and only would if officials could facilitate truces. Various Muhacir groups were suspicious of the continued Ittihadist ideology in the Defence of Rights movement, and the potential for themselves to meet fates 'like the Armenians' especially as warlords hailing from those communities assisted the deportations of the Christians even though as many commanders in the Nationalist movement also had Caucasian and Balkan Muslim ancestry.
With Anatolia in practical anarchy and the Ottoman army being questionably loyal in reaction to Allied land seizures, Mehmed VI established the military inspectorate system to reestablish authority over the remaining empire. Encouraged by Karabekir and Edmund Allenby, he assigned Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) as the inspector of the Ninth Army Troops Inspectorate –based in Erzurum– to restore order to Ottoman military units and to improve internal security on 30 April 1919, with his first assignment to suppress a rebellion by Greek rebels around the city of Samsun.
Mustafa Kemal was a well known, well respected, and well connected army commander, with much prestige coming from his status as the "Hero of Anafartalar"—for his role in the Gallipoli Campaign—and his title of "Honorary Aide-de-camp to His Majesty Sultan" gained in the last months of WWI. This choice would seem curious, as he was a nationalist and a fierce critic of the government's accommodating policy to the Entente powers. He was also an early member of the CUP. However Kemal Pasha did not associate himself with the fanatical faction of the CUP, many knew that he frequently clashed with the radicals of the Central Committee like Enver. He was therefore sidelined to the periphery of power throughout the Great War; after the CUP's dissolution he vocally aligned himself with moderates that formed the Liberal People's Party instead of the rump radical faction which formed the Renewal Party (both parties would be banned in May 1919 for being successors of the CUP). All these reasons allowed him to be the most legitimate nationalist for the sultan to placate. In this new political climate, he sought to capitalize on his war exploits to attain a better job, indeed several times he unsuccessfully lobbied for his inclusion in cabinet as War Minister. His new assignment gave him effective plenipotentiary powers over all of Anatolia which was meant to accommodate him and other nationalists to keep them loyal to the government.
Mustafa Kemal had earlier declined to become the leader of the Sixth Army headquartered in Nusaybin. But according to Patrick Balfour, through manipulation and the help of friends and sympathizers, he became the inspector of virtually all of the Ottoman forces in Anatolia, tasked with overseeing the disbanding process of remaining Ottoman forces. Kemal had an abundance of connections and personal friends concentrated in the post-armistice War Ministry, a powerful tool that would help him accomplish his secret goal: to lead a nationalist movement to safeguard Turkish interests against the Allied powers and a collaborative Ottoman government.
The day before his departure to Samsun on the remote Black Sea coast, Kemal had one last audience with Sultan Vahdettin, where he affirmed his loyalty to the sultan-caliph. It was in this meeting that they were informed of the botched occupation ceremony of Smyrna (İzmir) by the Greeks. He and his carefully selected staff left Constantinople aboard the old steamer SS Bandırma on the evening of 16 May 1919.
On 19 January 1919, the Paris Peace Conference was first held, at which Allied nations set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers, including the Ottoman Empire. As a special body of the Paris Conference, "The Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey", was established to pursue the secret treaties they had signed between 1915 and 1917. Italy sought control over the southern part of Anatolia under the Agreement of St.-Jean-de-Maurienne. France expected to exercise control over Hatay, Lebanon, Syria, and a portion of southeastern Anatolia based on the Sykes–Picot Agreement.
Greece justified their territorial claims of Ottoman land through the Megali Idea as well as international sympathy from the suffering of Ottoman Greeks in 1914 and 1917–1918. Privately, Greek prime minister Eleftherios Venizelos had British prime minister David Lloyd George's backing not least from Greece's entrance to WWI on the Allied side, but also from his charisma and charming personality. Greece's participation in the Allies' Southern Russian intervention also earned it favors in Paris. His demands included parts of Eastern Thrace, the islands of Imbros (Gökçeada), Tenedos (Bozcaada), and parts of Western Anatolia around the city of Smyrna (İzmir), all of which had large Greek populations. Venizelos also advocated a large Armenian state to check a post-war Ottoman Empire. Greece wanted to incorporate Constantinople, but Entente powers did not give permission. Damat Ferid Pasha went to Paris on behalf of the Ottoman Empire hoping to minimize territorial losses using Fourteen Points rhetoric, wishing for a return to status quo ante bellum, on the basis that every province of the Empire holds Muslim majorities. This plea was met with ridicule.
At the Paris Peace Conference, competing claims over Western Anatolia by Greek and Italian delegations led Greece to land the flagship of the Greek Navy at Smyrna, resulting in the Italian delegation walking out of the peace talks. On 30 April, Italy responded to the possible idea of Greek incorporation of Western Anatolia by sending a warship to Smyrna as a show of force against the Greek campaign. A large Italian force also landed in Antalya. Faced with Italian annexation of parts of Asia Minor with a significant ethnic Greek population, Venizelos secured Allied permission for Greek troops to land in Smyrna per Article VII, ostensibly as a peacekeeping force to keep stability in the region. Venizelos's rhetoric was more directed against the CUP regime than the Turks as a whole, an attitude not always shared in the Greek military: "Greece is not making war against Islam, but against the anachronistic [İttihadist] Government, and its corrupt, ignominious, and bloody administration, with a view to the expelling it from those territories where the majority of the population consists of Greeks." It was decided by the Triple Entente that Greece would control a zone around Smyrna and Ayvalık in western Asia Minor.
Most historians mark the Greek landing at Smyrna on 15 May 1919 as the start date of the Turkish War of Independence as well as the start of the "Kuva-yi Milliye Phase". The occupation ceremony from the outset was tense from nationalist fervor, with Ottoman Greeks greeting the soldiers with an ecstatic welcome, and Ottoman Muslims protesting the landing. A miscommunication in Greek high command led to an Evzone column marching by the municipal Turkish barracks. The nationalist journalist Hasan Tahsin fired the "first bullet"[note 4] at the Greek standard bearer at the head of the troops, turning the city into a warzone. Süleyman Fethi Bey was murdered by bayonet for refusing to shout "Zito Venizelos" (meaning "long live Venizelos"), and 300–400 unarmed Turkish soldiers and civilians and 100 Greek soldiers and civilians were killed or wounded.
Greek troops moved from Smyrna outwards to towns on the Karaburun peninsula; to Selçuk, situated a hundred kilometres south of the city at a key location that commands the fertile Küçük Menderes River valley; and to Menemen towards the north. Guerilla warfare commenced in the countryside, as Turks began to organize themselves into irregular guerilla groups known as Kuva-yi Milliye (national forces), which were soon joined by Ottoman soldiers, bandits, and disaffected farmers. Most Kuva-yi Milliye bands were led by rogue military commanders and members of the Special Organization. The Greek troops based in cosmopolitan Smyrna soon found themselves conducting counterinsurgency operations in a hostile, dominantly Muslim hinterland. Groups of Ottoman Greeks also formed contingents that cooperated with the Greek Army to combat Kuva-yi Milliye within the zone of control. A massacre of Turks at Menemen was followed up with a battle for the town of Aydın, which saw intense intercommunal violence and the razing of the city. What was supposed to be a peacekeeping mission of Western Anatolia instead inflamed ethnic tensions and became a counterinsurgency.
The reaction of Greek landing at Smyrna and continued Allied seizures of land served to destabilize Turkish civil society. Ottoman bureaucrats, military, and bourgeoisie trusted the Allies to bring peace, and thought the terms offered at Mudros were considerably more lenient than they actually were. Pushback was potent in the capital, with 23 May 1919 being largest of the Sultanahmet Square demonstrations organized by the Turkish Hearths against the Greek occupation of Smyrna, the largest act of civil disobedience in Turkish history at that point. The Ottoman government condemned the landing, but could do little about it. Ferid Pasha tried to resign, but was urged by the sultan to stay in his office.
Mustafa Kemal Pasha and his colleagues stepped ashore in Samsun on 19 May and set up their first quarters in the Mıntıka Palace Hotel. British troops were present in Samsun, and he initially maintained cordial contact. He had assured Damat Ferid about the army's loyalty towards the new government in Constantinople. However, behind the government's back, Kemal made the people of Samsun aware of the Greek and Italian landings, staged discreet mass meetings, made fast connections via telegraph with the army units in Anatolia, and began to form links with various Nationalist groups. He sent telegrams of protest to foreign embassies and the War Ministry about British reinforcements in the area and about British aid to Greek brigand gangs. After a week in Samsun, Kemal and his staff moved to Havza. It was there that he first showed the flag of the resistance.
Mustafa Kemal wrote in his memoir that he needed nationwide support to justify armed resistance against the Allied occupation. His credentials and the importance of his position were not enough to inspire everyone. While officially occupied with the disarming of the army, he met with various contacts in order to build his movement's momentum. He met with Rauf Pasha, Karabekir Pasha, Ali Fuat Pasha, and Refet Pasha and issued the Amasya Circular (22 June 1919). Ottoman provincial authorities were notified via telegraph that the unity and independence of the nation was at risk, and that the government in Constantinople was compromised. To remedy this, a congress was to take place in Erzurum between delegates of the Six Vilayets to decide on a response, and another congress would take place in Sivas where every Vilayet should send delegates. Sympathy and an lack of coordination from the capital gave Mustafa Kemal freedom of movement and telegraph use despite his implied anti-government tone.
On 23 June, High Commissioner Admiral Calthorpe, realising the significance of Mustafa Kemal's discreet activities in Anatolia, sent a report about the Pasha to the Foreign Office. His remarks were downplayed by George Kidson of the Eastern Department. Captain Hurst of the British occupation force in Samsun warned Admiral Calthorpe one more time, but Hurst's units were replaced with the Brigade of Gurkhas. When the British landed in Alexandretta, Admiral Calthorpe resigned on the basis that this was against the armistice that he had signed and was assigned to another position on 5 August 1919. The movement of British units alarmed the population of the region and convinced them that Mustafa Kemal was right.
By early July, Mustafa Kemal Pasha received telegrams from the sultan and Calthorpe, asking him and Refet to cease his activities in Anatolia and return to the capital. Kemal was in Erzincan and did not want to return to Constantinople, concerned that the foreign authorities might have designs for him beyond the sultan's plans. Before resigning from his position, he dispatched a circular to all nationalist organizations and military commanders to not disband or surrender unless for the latter if they could be replaced by cooperative nationalist commanders. Now only a civilian stripped of his command, Mustafa Kemal was at the mercy of the new inspector of Third Army (renamed from Ninth Army) Karabekir Pasha, indeed the War Ministry ordered him to arrest Kemal, an order which Karabekir refused. The Erzurum Congress was a meeting of delegates and governors from the six Eastern Vilayets. They drafted the National Pact (Misak-ı Millî), which envisioned new borders for the Ottoman Empire by applying principles of national self-determination per Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points and the abolition of the capitulations. The Erzurum Congress concluded with a circular that was effectively a declaration of independence: All regions within Ottoman borders upon the signing of the Mudros Armistice were indivisible from the Ottoman state –Greek and Armenian claims on Thrace and Anatolia were moot– and assistance from any country not coveting Ottoman territory was welcome. If the government in Constantinople was not able to attain this after electing a new parliament, they insisted a provisional government should be promulgated to defend Turkish sovereignty. The Committee of Representation was established as a provisional executive body based in Anatolia, with Mustafa Kemal Pasha as its chairman.
Following the congress, the Committee of Representation relocated to Sivas. As announced in the Amasya Circular, a new congress was held there in September with delegates from all Anatolian and Thracian provinces. The Sivas Congress repeated the points of the National Pact agreed to in Erzurum, and united the various regional Defence of National Rights Associations organizations, into a united political organisation: Anatolia and Rumeli Defence of Rights Association (A-RMHC), with Mustafa Kemal as its chairman. In an effort show his movement was in fact a new and unifying movement, the delegates had to swear an oath to discontinue their relations with the CUP and to never revive the party (despite most present in Sivas being previous members).[120] It was also decided there that the Ottoman Empire should not be a League of Nations mandate under the United States, especially after the U.S Senate failed to ratify American membership in the League.
Momentum was now on the Nationalists' side. A plot by a loyalist Ottoman governor and a British intelligence officer to arrest Kemal before the Sivas Congress led to the cutting of all ties with the Ottoman government until a new election would be held in the lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies. In October 1919, the last Ottoman governor loyal to Constantinople fled his province. Fearing the outbreak of hostilities, all British troops stationed in the Black Sea coast and Kütahya were evacuated. Damat Ferid Pasha resigned, and the sultan replaced him with a general with nationalist credentials: Ali Rıza Pasha. On 16 October 1919, Ali Rıza and the Nationalists held negotiations in Amasya. They agreed in the Amasya Protocol that an election would be called for the Ottoman Parliament to establish national unity by upholding the resolutions made in the Sivas Congress, including the National Pact.
By October 1919, the Ottoman government only held de facto control over Constantinople; the rest of the Ottoman Empire was loyal to Kemal's movement to resist a partition of Anatolia and Thrace. Within a few months Mustafa Kemal went from General Inspector of the Ninth Army to a renegade military commander discharged for insubordination to leading a homegrown anti-Entente movement that overthrew a government and driven it into resistance.
In December 1919, an election was held for the Ottoman parliament, with polls only open in unoccupied Anatolia and Thrace. It was boycotted by Ottoman Greeks, Ottoman Armenians and the Freedom and Accord Party, resulting in groups associated with the Turkish Nationalist Movement winning, including the A-RMHC. The Nationalists' obvious links to the CUP made the election especially polarizing and voter intimidation and ballot box stuffing in favor of the Kemalists were regular occurrences in rural provinces. This controversy led to many of the nationalist MPs organizing the National Salvation Group separate from Kemal's movement, which risked the nationalist movement splitting in two.
Mustafa Kemal was elected an MP from Erzurum, but he expected the Allies neither to accept the Harbord report nor to respect his parliamentary immunity if he went to the Ottoman capital, hence he remained in Anatolia. Mustafa Kemal and the Committee of Representation moved from Sivas to Ankara so that he could keep in touch with as many deputies as possible as they traveled to Constantinople to attend the parliament.
Though Ali Rıza Pasha called the election as per the Amasya Protocol to keep unity between the "Istanbul government" and "Ankara government", he was wrong to think the election could bring him any legitimacy. The Ottoman parliament was under the de facto control of the British battalion stationed at Constantinople and any decisions by the parliament had to have the signatures of both Ali Rıza Pasha and the battalion's commanding officer. The only laws that passed were those acceptable to, or specifically ordered by the British.
On 12 January 1920, the last session of the Chamber of Deputies met in the capital. First the sultan's speech was presented, and then a telegram from Mustafa Kemal, manifesting the claim that the rightful government of Turkey was in Ankara in the name of the Committee of Representation. On 28 January the MPs from both sides of the isle secretly met to endorse the National Pact as a peace settlement. They added to the points passed in Sivas, calling for plebiscites to be held in West Thrace; Batum, Kars, and Ardahan, and Arab lands on whether to stay in the Empire or not. Proposals were also made to elect Kemal president of the Chamber;[clarification needed] however, this was deferred in the certain knowledge that the British would prorogue the Chamber. The Chamber of Deputies would be forcefully dissolved for passing the National Pact anyway. The National Pact solidified Nationalist interests, which were in conflict with the Allied plans.
From February to April, leaders of Britain, France, and Italy met in London to discuss the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire and the crisis in Anatolia. The British began to sense that the elected Ottoman government was under Kemalist influence and if left unchecked, the Entente could once again find themselves at war with the Empire. The Ottoman government was not doing all that it could to suppress the Nationalists.
Mustafa Kemal manufactured a crisis to pressure the Istanbul government to pick a side by deploying Kuva-yi Milliye towards İzmit. The British, concerned about the security of the Bosporus Strait, demanded Ali Rıza Pasha to reassert control over the area, to which he responded with his resignation to the sultan.
As they were negotiating the partition of the Ottoman Empire, the Allies were growing increasingly concerned about the Turkish National Movement. To this end, the Allied occupational authorities in Istanbul began to plan a raid to arrest nationalist politicians and journalists along with occupying military and police installations and government buildings. On 16 March 1920, the coup was carried out; several Royal Navy warships were anchored in the Galata Bridge to support British forces, including the Indian Army, while they carried out the arrests and occupied several government buildings in the early hours of the morning.
An Indian Army operation, the Şehzadebaşı raid, resulted in 5 Ottoman soldiers from the 10th Infantry Division being killed when troops raided their barracks. Among those arrested were the senior leadership of the Turkish National Movement and former members of the CUP. 150 arrested Turkish politicians accused of war crimes were interned in Malta and became known as the Malta exiles.
Mustafa Kemal was ready for this move. He warned all the Nationalist organisations that there would be misleading declarations from the capital. He warned that the only way to counter Allied movements was to organise protests. He declared "Today the Turkish nation is called to defend its capacity for civilization, its right to life and independence – its entire future".
On 18 March, the Chamber of Deputies declared that it was unacceptable to arrest five of its members, and dissolved itself. Mehmed VI confirmed this and declared the end of Constitutional Monarchy and a return to absolutism. University students were forbidden from joining political associations inside and outside the classroom. With the lower elected Chamber of Deputies shuttered, the Constitution terminated, and the capital occupied; Sultan Vahdettin, his cabinet, and the appointed Senate were all that remained of the Ottoman government, and were basically a puppet regime of the Allied powers. Grand Vizier Salih Hulusi Pasha declared Mustafa Kemal's struggle legitimate, and resigned after less than a month in office. In his place, Damat Ferid Pasha returned to the premiership. The Sublime Porte's decapitation by the Entente allowed Mustafa Kemal to consolidate his position as the sole leader of Turkish resistance against the Allies, and to that end made him the legitimate representative of the Turkish people.
The strong measures taken against the Nationalists by the Allies in March 1920 began a distinct new phase of the conflict. Mustafa Kemal sent a note to the governors and force commanders, asking them to conduct elections to provide delegates for a new parliament to represent the Ottoman (Turkish) people, which would convene in Ankara. With the proclamation of the counter-government, Kemal would then ask the sultan to accept its authority. Mustafa Kemal appealed to the Islamic world, asking for help to make sure that everyone knew he was still fighting in the name of the sultan who was also the caliph. He stated he wanted to free the caliph from the Allies. He found an ally in the Khilafat movement of British India, where Indians protested Britain's planned dismemberment of Turkey. A committee was also started for sending funds to help the soon to be proclaimed Ankara government of Mustafa Kemal. A flood of supporters moved to Ankara just ahead of the Allied dragnets. Included among them were Halide Edip and Abdülhak Adnan (Adıvar), Mustafa İsmet Pasha (İnönü), Mustafa Fevzi Pasha (Çakmak), many of Kemal's allies in the Ministry of War, and Celalettin Arif, the president of the now shuttered Chamber of Deputies. Celaleddin Arif's desertion of the capital was of great significance, as he declared that the Ottoman Parliament had been dissolved illegally.
Some 100 members of the Chamber of Deputies were able to escape the Allied roundup and joined 190 deputies elected. In March 1920, Turkish revolutionaries announced the establishment of a new parliament in Ankara known as the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (GNA) that was dominated by the A-RMHC.[citation needed] The parliament included Turks, Circassians, Kurds, and one Jew. They met in a building that used to serve as the provincial headquarters of the local CUP chapter. The inclusion of "Turkey" in its name reflected a increasing trend of new ways Ottoman citizens thought of their country, and was the first time it was formally used as the name of the country. On 23 April, the assembly, assuming full governmental powers, gathered for the first time, electing Mustafa Kemal its first Speaker and Prime Minister.
Hoping to undermine the Nationalist Movement, Mehmed VI issued a fatwa to qualify the Turkish revolutionaries as infidels, calling for the death of its leaders. The fatwa stated that true believers should not go along with the Nationalist Movement as they committed apostasy. The mufti of Ankara Rifat Börekçi issued a simultaneous fatwa, declaring that the caliphate was under the control of the Entente and the Ferid Pasha government. In this text, the Nationalist Movement's goal was stated as freeing the sultanate and the caliphate from its enemies. In reaction to the desertion of several prominent figures to the Nationalist Movement, Ferid Pasha ordered Halide Edip, Ali Fuat and Mustafa Kemal to be sentenced to death in absentia for treason.
On 28 April the sultan raised 4,000 soldiers known as the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye (Caliphate Army) to combat the Nationalists. Then using money from the Allies, another force about 2,000 strong from non-Muslim inhabitants were initially deployed in İznik. The sultan's government sent the forces under the name of the Caliphate Army to the revolutionaries to arouse counterrevolutionary sympathy. The British, being skeptical of how formidable these insurgents were, decided to use irregular power to counteract the revolutionaries. The Nationalist forces were distributed all around Turkey, so many smaller units were dispatched to face them. In İzmit there were two battalions of the British army. These units were to be used to rout the partisans under the command of Ali Fuat and Refet Pasha.
Anatolia had many competing forces on its soil: British troops, Nationalist militia (Kuva-yi Milliye), the sultan's army (Kuva-yi İnzibatiye), and Anzavur's bands. On 13 April 1920, an uprising supported by Anzavur against the GNA occurred at Düzce as a direct consequence of the fatwa. Within days the rebellion spread to Bolu and Gerede. The movement engulfed northwestern Anatolia for about a month. On 14 June, Nationalist militia fought a pitched battle near İzmit against the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye, Anzavur's bands, and British units. Yet under heavy attack some of the Kuva-yi İnzibatiye deserted and joined the Nationalist militia. Anzavur was not so lucky, as the Nationalists tasked Ethem the Circassian with crushing Anzavur's revolt. This revealed the sultan did not have the unwavering support of his own men and allies. Meanwhile, the rest of these forces withdrew behind the British lines which held their position. For now, Istanbul was out of Ankara's grasp.
The clash outside İzmit brought serious consequences. British forces conducted combat operations on the Nationalists and the Royal Air Force carried out aerial bombardments against the positions, which forced Nationalist forces to temporarily retreat to more secure missions. The British commander in Turkey, General George Milne—, asked for reinforcements. This led to a study to determine what would be required to defeat the Turkish Nationalists. The report, signed by French Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch, concluded that 27 divisions were necessary, but the British army did not have 27 divisions to spare. Also, a deployment of this size could have disastrous political consequences back home. World War I had just ended, and the British public would not support another lengthy and costly expedition.
The British accepted the fact that a nationalist movement could not be defeated without deployment of consistent and well-trained forces. On 25 June, the forces originating from Kuva-i İnzibatiye were dismantled under British supervision. The British realised that the best option to overcome these Turkish Nationalists was to use a force that was battle-tested and fierce enough to fight the Turks on their own soil. The British had to look no further than Turkey's neighbor already occupying its territory: Greece.
Eleftherios Venizelos, pessimistic of the rapidly deteriorating situation in Anatolia, requested to the Allies that a peace treaty be drawn up with the hope that fighting would stop. The subsequent treaty of Sèvres in August 1920 confirmed the Arab provinces of the empire would be reorganized into new nations given to Britain and France in the form of Mandates by the League of Nations, while the rest of the Empire would be partitioned between Greece, Italy, France (via Syrian mandate), Britain (via Iraqi mandate), Armenia (potentially under an American mandate), and Georgia. Smyrna would hold a plebiscite on whether to stay with Greece or Turkey, and the Kurdistan region would hold one on the question of independence. British, French, and Italian spheres of influence would also extend into Anatolia beyond the land concessions. The old capital of Constantinople as well as the Dardanelles would be under international League of Nations control.
However, the treaty could never come into effect. The treaty was extremely unpopular, with protests against the final document held even before its release in Sultanahmet square. Though Mehmed VI and Ferid Pasha loathed the treaty, they did not want Istanbul to join Ankara in nationalist struggle. The Ottoman government and Greece never ratified it. Though Ferid Pasha signed the treaty, the Ottoman Senate, the upper house with seats appointed by the sultan, refused to ratify the treaty. Greece disagreed on the borders drawn. The other allies began to fracture their support of the settlement immediately. Italy started openly supporting the Nationalists with arms by the end of 1920, and the French signed another separate peace treaty with Ankara only months later.
Kemal's GNA Government responded to the Treaty of Sèvres by promulgating a new constitution in January 1921. The resulting constitution consecrated the principle of popular sovereignty; authority not deriving from the unelected sultan, but from the Turkish people who elect governments representative of their interests. This document became the legal basis for the war of independence by the GNA, as the sultan's signature of the Treaty of Sèvres would be unconstitutional as his position was not elected. While the constitution did not specify a future role of the sultan, the document gave Kemal ever more legitimacy in the eyes of Turks for justified resistance against Istanbul.
In contrast to the Eastern and Western fronts, it was mostly unorganized Kuva-yi Milliye which were fighting in the Southern Front against France. They had help from the Syrians, who were fighting their own war with the French.
The British troops which occupied coastal Syria by the end of World War I were replaced by French troops over 1919, with the Syrian interior going to Faisal bin Al-Hussein's self-proclaimed Arab Kingdom of Syria. France which wanted to take control of all of Syria and Cilicia. There was also a desire facilitate the return of Armenian refugees in the region to their homes, and the occupation force consisted of the French Armenian Legion as well as various Armenian militia groups. 150,000 Armenians were repatriated to their homes within months of French occupation. On 21 January 1920, a Turkish Nationalist uprising and siege occurred against the French garrison in Marash. The French position untenable they retreated to Islahiye, resulting in a massacre of many Armenians by Turkish militia. A grueling siege followed in Antep which featured intense sectarian violence between Turks and Armenians. After a failed uprising by the Nationalists in Adana, by 1921, the French and Turks signed an armistice and eventually a treaty was brokered demarcating the border between the Ankara government and French controlled Syria. In the end, there was a mass exodus of Cilician Armenians to French controlled Syria, Previous Armenian survivors of deportation found themselves again as refugees and families which avoided the worst of the six years violence were forced from their homes, ending thousands of years of Christian presence in Southern Anatolia.[146] With France being the first Allied power to recognize and negotiate with the Ankara government only months after signing the Treaty of Sèvres, it was the first to break from the coordinated Allied approach to the Eastern question. In 1923 the Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon under French authority would be proclaimed in former Ottoman territory.
Some efforts to coordinate between Turkish Nationalists and the Syrian rebels persisted from 1920 to 1921, with the Nationalists supporting the Faisal's kingdom through Ibrahim Hanunu and Alawite groups which were also fighting the French. While the French conquered Syria, Cilicia had to be abandoned.
Kuva-yi Milliye also engaged with British forces in the "Al-Jazira Front," primarily in Mosul. Ali İhsan Pasha (Sabis) and his forces defending Mosul would surrender to the British in October 1918, but the British ignored the armistice and seized the city, following which the pasha also ignored the armistice and distributed weapons to the locals. Even before Mustafa Kemal's movement was fully organized, rogue commanders found allies in Kurdish tribes. The Kurds detested the taxes and centralization the British demanded, including Shaykh Mahmud of the Barzani family. Having previously supported the British invasion of Mesopotamia to become the governor of South Kurdistan, Mahmud revolted but was apprehended by 1919. Without legitimacy to govern the region, he was released from captivity to Sulaymaniyah, where he again declared an uprising against the British as the King of Kurdistan. Though an alliance existed with the Turks, little material support came to him from Ankara, and by 1923 there was a desire to cease hostilities between the Turks and British at Barzanji's expense. Mahmud was overthrown in 1924, and after a 1926 plebiscite, Mosul was awarded to British-controlled Iraq.
Since 1917, the Caucasus was in a chaotic state. The border of newly independent Armenia and the Ottoman Empire was defined in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918) after the Bolshevik revolution, and later by the Treaty of Batum (4 June 1918). To the east, Armenia was at war with the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic after the breakup of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, and received support from Anton Denikin's White Russian Army. It was obvious that after the Armistice of Mudros (30 October 1918) the eastern border was not going to stay as it was drawn, which mandated the evacuation of the Ottoman army back to its 1914 borders. Right after the Armistice of Mudros was signed, pro-Ottoman provisional republics were proclaimed in Kars and Aras which were subsequently invaded by Armenia. Ottoman soldiers were convinced not to demobilize lest the area become a 'second Macedonia'.[149] Both sides of the new borders had massive refugee populations and famine, which were compounded by the renewed and more symmetric sectarian violence (See Massacres of Azerbaijanis in Armenia (1917–1921) and Muslim uprisings in Kars and Sharur–Nakhichevan). There were talks going on with the Armenian Diaspora and Allied Powers on reshaping the border. Woodrow Wilson agreed to transfer territories to Armenia based on the principles of national self-determination. The results of these talks were to be reflected on the Treaty of Sèvres (10 August 1920).
Kâzım Karabekir Pasha, commander of the XV corps, encountered Muslim refugees fleeing from the Armenian army, but did not have the authority to cross the border. Karabekir's two reports (30 May and 4 June 1920) outlined the situation in the region. He recommended redrawing the eastern borders, especially around Erzurum. The Russian government was receptive to this and demanded that Van and Bitlis be transferred to Armenia. This was unacceptable to the Turkish revolutionaries. However, Soviet support was absolutely vital for the Turkish Nationalist movement, as Turkey was underdeveloped and had no domestic armaments industry. Bakir Sami (Kunduh) was assigned to negotiate with the Bolsheviks.
On 24 September 1920, Karabekir's XV corps and Kurdish militia advance on Kars, blowing through Armenian opposition, and then Alexandropol. With an advance on Yerevan imminent, on 28 November 1920, the 11th Red Army under the command of Anatoliy Gekker crossed over into Armenia from Soviet Azerbaijan, and the Armenian government surrendered to Bolshevik forces, ending the conflict.
The Treaty of Alexandropol (2—3 December 1920) was the first treaty (although illegitimate) signed by the Turkish revolutionaries. The 10th article in the Treaty of Alexandropol stated that Armenia renounced the Treaty of Sèvres and its allotted partition of Anatolia. The agreement was signed with representatives of the former government of Armenia, which by that time had no de jure or de facto power in Armenia, since Soviet rule was already established in the country. On 16 March 1921, the Bolsheviks and Turkey signed a more comprehensive agreement, the Treaty of Kars, which involved representatives of Soviet Armenia, Soviet Azerbaijan, and Soviet Georgia.
Throughout most of his life, Atatürk was a moderate-to-heavy drinker, often consuming half a litre of rakı a day; he also smoked tobacco, predominantly in the form of cigarettes. During 1937, indications that Atatürk's health was worsening started to appear. In early 1938, while on a trip to Yalova, he suffered from a serious illness. He went to Istanbul for treatment, where he was diagnosed with cirrhosis. During his stay in Istanbul, he made an effort to keep up with his regular lifestyle, but eventually succumbed to his illness. He died on 10 November 1938, at the age of 57, in the Dolmabahçe Palace.
Atatürk's funeral called forth both sorrow and pride in Turkey, and 17 countries sent special representatives, while nine contributed armed detachments to the cortège. Atatürk's remains were originally laid to rest in the Ethnography Museum of Ankara, but they were transferred on 10 November 1953 (15 years after his death) in a 42-ton sarcophagus to a mausoleum overlooking Ankara, Anıtkabir.
In his will, Atatürk donated all of his possessions to the Republican People's Party, provided that the yearly interest of his funds would be used to look after his sister Makbule and his adopted children, and fund the higher education of İsmet İnönü's children. The remainder was willed to the Turkish Language Association and the Turkish Historical Society.
Viktoriaah was born on the planet Naboo in the coastal and tourist city of Kaadara on the edges of one of the numerous internal seas which counts the planet. Of noble family which since the colonization of Naboo is firmly settled there and from generation to generation offering their lives in the service for the Queens and Kings, the House of Zenoria have an huge and luxurious villa in Kaadara.
Viktoriaah had an already drawn future, she adores arts and culture. Since her childhood she excels at drawings and learning history of her planet and the Galaxy, this is a certitude she got a job into the government in Theed as to an adviser for the Royal Arts when she will have reached her majority. She liked to run into the green valleys thats surrounded the town of Kaadara and to make friends into the native Gungans population which guarded the city from the dangers of wild animals in the city surroundings.
At the dawn of her 14 years, she was sent to Theed the capital of Naboo with the Minister of the Arts and the Culture Kyu Tane to study the arts and the history of her planet. After one year spent to Theed, a battalion of the Great Army of the Republic has just settled in the capital in precautionary measure further to some separatist threats. The young Viktoriaah was interested by these strong men in uniform and armors, after some weeks she became friends with some pilots from the Naboo Royal Escadron who told her about the blockade of the CIS to the planet ten years ago. The same pilots liked making her discover the manipulation of the ship fighters and venture into the plains of the planet to train at shooting, Viktoriaah besides her huge knowledge culture of Naboo was on the right track to become a very good pilot.
Viktoriaah tried to join a first time the Great Army of the Republic without success because of her too young age, she resigned herself to do it for a short duration until a day when Separatist terrorist attack striked the city of Theed to destabilize the finances of the planet and killed dozen of citizens. Further to this event, she decided to lie on her age and to join the army.
She was trained to short-range blasters and with her pilot training and accuracy in the past she received a post aboard the small frigate Condor as deck assistant assigned to the 442nd Battalion of the Third Systems Army lead by the general Obi Wan Kenobi.
Aboard the Condor she met Z-6PO the astromech droid, both were being considered as the youngest aboard and they got naturally closer from each other. They became very close friends and almost inseparable.
After a long campaign and several years of war she was recognized by the Republic several time for heroic acts. Aboard the frigate Condor that transported one of the 442nd squadrons, Viktoriaah reached the different Republic Navy ranks and became the captain of the ship.
During the last years of the Clone War, Captain Viktoriaah became very respected by her crew and acquainted with the general of the Third Systems Army, Obi Wan Kenobi. Both used to discuss a lot about the sieges and assaults tactics and fights together during a lot of battles. The crew of the Condor at the end of the war was enormously reduced and the survivors of the 442nd continued to fall at measure that the war was ending.
During the battle of Cato Neimoidia in 19 before the Battle of Yavin, Viktoriaah was aboard of the Condor on the planet, the objective being to take a strategic fortress for the CIS where Nute Gunray the investigator of the blockade of Naboo, was settled in.. For Viktoriaah, besides an important battle, it was about a personal revenge to her people and her native planet, unfortunately for her, Nute Gunray successfully escape from the siege. Some time after Nute Gunray fled from the planet, Viktoriaah was following full speed in a intense pursuit several droids fighters together with a battalion of clones and the general jedi Plo Koon who piloted his Jedi interceptor, received a message by holo communicator to execute a certain Order 66. It is at this moment when she understood the order which lead to the execution of every Jedi through the galaxy. She didn't believe a single word and yet, she saw the fighters squadrons breaking formation to destroy without mercy the interceptor of the general Plo Koon. Her own brothers, the clones, the ones who fought alongside the jedis, had betrayed them.
"What I remember about the rise of the Empire is... is how quiet it was. During the waning hours of the Clone Wars, the 501st Legion and some transports like my ship were discreetly transferred back to Coruscant. It was a silent trip. We all knew what was about to happen, what we were about to do. Did we have any doubts? Any private, traitorous thoughts? Perhaps, but no one said a word. Not on the flight to Coruscant, not when Order 66 came down, and not when we marched into the Jedi Temple. Not a word."
Before the massacre of the Temple in Coruscant, Viktoriaah was like dead inside after the recent events that she lived during this horrible day. Thus, nothing more was worth fighting for freedom... When she received the transmission directly from the Senate and heard the Supreme Chancellor announcing the fall of the Republic for a reorganization into an Galactic Empire, she burst into tears and took off from the main landing area without any orders from the control tower, she fled far away from everything.
After few weeks she tried to come back in her native planet Naboo. When she landed on the planet, she was acquainted of the massacre of the native population of Kaadara which have tried to revolt themselves against the Empire recently set up. Her own parents was parts of the hundred victims, all her family, her wealth plundered and scattered into the abyss. She was now without any family, neither house, nor wealth.. The Condor became her home and her small companion Z-6PO her unique family. From this day she dedicated the Empire a merciless hate..
After several years on board of her ship, she became a good smuggler and maintain in good condition the Condor by bringing modifications all over the time to it. She acquired a small shuttle and to store it she ordered a custom build hangar bay in the Condor into the former capsule-lounge. Adding various armaments, turrets and decorations to erase a little bit the military side of the ship.
Meanwhile she received an order from a customer which looked for artifacts of a former civilization called 'Zakel'. After several days of search in archives and peddling she got some informations on the small unknown moon, Yavin IV. There was an old shipwreck of Zakel, thus she could find some artifacts for her customer. After few days of travel she made her way to the small moon, she taken her shuttle to go in the atmosphere of Yavin, leaving the Condor in orbit in the hands of Z-6. Viktoriaah started the searches of this big wreck which had been never plundered since thousands of years of existence for a reason that totally escapes her.. She entered into a dark room, and saw a dark shape kneeling down in the middle of the room sanctuary which seemed to pray. She drew her gun by automatism and approached, the dark shape seemed to be a woman who draw her own gun as well. Viktoriaah tells her that she just looked for some objects and did not want to warm her, the mysterious woman offered her help to find artifacts into the shipwreck and during the whole day the both women finished together friends and her name was Slennaa Akemi..
Viktoriaah tells her that she own a spaceship and her companion Z-6 waits for her in orbit and that she could leave with her to have a good dinner since the poor girl didn't eat meat for few days. While she got ready to leave, several small ships landed in front of Slennaa surrounding her. Viktoriaah contacted Z-6 aboard the condor to make come the ship in the atmosphere, after few minutes by listening to the conversation which became very tense, the Condor arrived in a loud and impressive noise and scared off the troop of bandits. She tells Slennaa to follow her aboard the Condor because these people seemed not alright and that the sector was not any more safe... Both found themselves aboard the Condor during several months and strong friendship and family links was made between them both. Slennaa decided to stay aboard the ship and to become a member of the crew and of the family of the Condor....
Several months later in a concern to make money, the crew went in the Outside Border to find wrecks to be plundered around some former moons of spices. In an uncertain sector the Condor going out of the hyperspace and went to one of these moons of spice, by entering the atmosphere of the planet with their small shuttle Slennaa and Viktoriaah saw a Mandalorian ship in free-fall and caught fire when it hits the low atmosphere, the ship crashed farther in a crater. Both were curious to see if there were survivors and especially if they could plundered some precious materials on a so beautiful ship. They went in the direction of the crash to explore the still smoking wreck. They cleared some fragments and among pieces of corpses, they discovered a Mandolarian woman in armor, unconscious and on the verge of death. The both took her aboard their shuttles to return aboard the Condor. They have taken care of the Mandalorian in the infirmary, the first days the medical droids tried to maintain her alive with much difficulty. The damages were very important but widely superficial except her right arm that she loses after an intervention of the medical droids. The small droid Z-6PO taken care to make her a mechanical arm prosthesis made from equipment stolen from hospitals and rare materials of the Mandalorian ship. After several weeks she woke up and made friends with Z-6 who made her mechanical arm, she told her story to the crew members which opened her the door of their family for more adventures ....
In June of 2002 the Hayman fire burned 138,000 acres southwest of Denver. The forest surrounding Cheesman Reservoir, Denver Water's 101 year old man-made lake, was the epicenter of the fire. It destroyed 900 year old trees and destabilized slopes that drain into the reservoir.
It was a different process than prior. It's almost non-human, completely normal and everyday, made extraordinary by being photographed in significant light. The everyday function is shifted into an almost sculptural-form whereas to activate spatial relationships with objects that obscure in light versus shadows as a similar affinity that suggest a destabilized notion between the two. If shadows are raked away, there would still be an expectation of nothingness, whereas the left eye leaves speculation, almost with a shared investigation, like a trace of breath left on a window unintentionally.
With a pack full of supplies, Luke hurriedly grabbed his 6-2Aug2 hunting rifle before calling out,
“I’m spending the night in the workshop Aunt Beru.” Faintly, he heard her response,
“Don’t stay up too late!”
“I won’t!” Luke called back halfheartedly before embarking up the steps out of the Lars homestead. Pausing only to admire the setting dual suns, he continued walking far past the workshop until he reached a small rock formation surrounded by moisture vaporators. It took the better part of a half an hour for Biggs to show up, grumbling to himself angrily while fumbling with his own supply pack. Chuckling, Luke asked, “Glad you’re going to the Academy now, aren’t you?”
“Oh, you know it. I only wish Fixer hadn’t-”
“Hey, it’s fine. We’ll make this fun, plus, think about what we can hold over Fixer after this. It’s not like he came to stay out here.” Luke finished his sentence while lowering his rifle to the ground to use it as a walking stick. Rolling his eyes, Biggs placed his backpack over his shoulder as the two began to walk towards the Jundland Wastes. Attempting to lighten the mood, Luke restarted a conversation the two had earlier, “Didn’t you have a story about the Clone Wars? One that you heard at the Academy induction ceremony? You never got to tell it.”
“Yeah, because Fixer’s a moof-milker...eh, I’ll drop that. Anyway, yeah, I have a Clone Wars story.”
“And?” Luke prodded, causing Biggs to think back before saying,
“It was something that happened here years ago. Nobody knew the names except they knew Jabba was involved and it was bit of a covert op. Basically, Jabba had a son-” Luke burst out laughing before composing himself and saying,
“I’m sorry. Just…Jabba had a…continue, please, go on.” Biggs gave Luke a look that suggested, well, where do you think Jabba came from?, before continuing his story,
“The Jedi were attempting to kill the child. Took it to some place called Rugosa. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, two Jedi went rogue and tried to bring the kid here to kill them in front of Jabba.”
“That doesn’t seem very Jedi-like.” Luke said suspiciously, to which Biggs replied,
“Luke, the Jedi tried to kill the Emperor. They tried to destabilize the government. This story was just an example of how it didn’t start just before that attack on Coruscant. The Empire’s told us all of this, you should know.”
“Yeah. I just have some…feeling, I don’t know, that maybe it’s propaganda.” Shrugging at this, Biggs replied,
“I wish at this point I could afford to believe it was propaganda, but who’s gonna prove the Empire wrong?” Luke sounded somewhat defeated as he said,
“No one, I guess. So, how’d the story end?”
“Oh, right, some Count that worked with the Confederacy saved the child and brought them to Jabba. The day was saved, the Jedi were forced back into the shadows, but the war still raged on for a few more years. Just think of all the lives that could have been saved if the Jedi had-” Biggs stopped mid sentence as he and Luke both recognized where they were. Black melons, opened and emptied inarguably by the Tusken Raiders that religiously feasted on them, marked the entrance to the Jundland Wastes.
“After you, Count Nefarius,” Luke said, half jokingly with a hint of spite behind his words due to his strange gut feeling on the subject matter they had been discussing, “Welcome to the Wastes.”
'My God, help me outlive this deadly love' by Dimitri Vrubel (1990)
30 years past the Cold War era, and the collapse of most of the Communist regimes worldwide,
nowadays in the times of global intercommunication, technological advancement and Androidification and yet, in a World of fanaticism, blind hatred and widespread clashes within and between similar and different civilizations, in a World of socio-economic destabilization, with unrests, revolts and divisions among, literally out of control and massively overgrowing, populations factually manipulated as "contemporary" and "progressive" pawns in the fields of global geopolitics.
Today and in view of the worldwide prevailing reality, the perspective of a peaceful and viable future for the next generations, seems far more obscure than 30years ago ....
... more Idealisms, Socioeconomic Realities & World Prospects
Destabilization.
النثر الرسمي تمديد العيوب التكوينية أهداف النفسية,
superioriteit ongevallen disposities rederijkers genegenheid bevoegdheden afgeleid visioenen,
perturbações imaginações Erroribus invenções permissiva direção furoribus desejos violentos,
осколки излагает основы гробницы скрытые величины пророчества отпечаток опасности большие,
conceptibus intellectus callidus influxibus peritiam sagacitate instructive phaenomena ingeniosa leges,
akute Auffassen unschuldigen Seelen anfällig Klugheit Entdeckungen Gründen kompliziert Motivationen gezogen,
impressionanti principi matematici manifestazioni esplicite di inerzia definitiva sillogismi percettivi insieme,
exemples nucléophiles Carbocation infrarouges alcools spectres solvants réactions sulfates solubles souche de clivage,
βιολογικές συνθήκες αλκένια προσθήκες άτομα σχηματισμούς παγίδες θερμοκρασία αλογόνου είναι αλλυλική βρωμίωση βρωμοηλεκτρονιμίδιο,
熱力学的に抱合産物の反応体を反転制御するラジカルアリル債ディールス運動障壁が提示します.
Steve.D.Hammond.
Piraeus port, Syria war refugees, little boy and a woman holding a kid
It's been, for long now, a common daily activity where hundreds of Syria War refugees along with illegal & undocumented Asian and African migrants are smuggled (in unseaworthy rubber boats and perilous conditions in the Aegean sea) from the Asian coast of Turkey to the Greek islands, by conveniently operating and hugely profiting traffickers (selling out even fake, water-absorbent life-jackets, to migrants), under the nose, if not guidance and pressure, of the Turkish coast guard, and despite the EU-Turkey Migration treaty.
Migrants arriving to Greek islands are then transferred by ferryboats to Piraeus with the prospect to be dispersed to "temporary" camps all over the Greek mainland, but most likely to remain "trapped" for undisclosed time, if not for ever, as far as the key migrant "European corridor" remains closed-down at the borders in the north region of Macedonia(Greece) with FYROM* in order to protect the rest of EU states (uneager to accept but a tiny number of documented refugees) and also discourage future migrants from heading to Europe.....
Meanwhile in Greece, migration inflow steadily surpasses outflow, as far as the war in Syria continues and Turkey capitalizes not only on Syrian refugees but on all its Asian and African migrants reaching swiftly (with cheap TurkishAirlines fare & e-visa) Istanbul, Europe's backdoor, by smuggling them to Greece so assisting its expansionist policy through the ethnological, cultural and economic destabilization of the small communities in the islands and (given the huge influx and the border blockage), all over Greece, while generating also an instability potential of the status quo in the Aegean Sea that Turkey's "deep state" would like to change by dividing it in the middle (if not by taking over whatever Greek land) at a given opportunity, alike with the Invasion of Cyprus in 1974 ...
Consequently, Greece, already suffering a deep socio-economic & political crisis under its divisive, incompetent and obsessed neo-communist leadership, is turned into a de facto European "migrant buffer zone", and has to manage alone, just with EU "technical assistance", the unstoppable migration influx from Turkey and an additional, social crisis. It looks as if Greece is declining into a state of uncontrolled anarchy (UPDATE MAR31 less than 24hrs after OP) while EU is imploding and fragmenting from the backlash of its own misdeeds and consequent crises ....
Crises that emerged from the geopolitical games and the wars imposed and/or exploited by the .... Great European Powers ( UK, France, Germany), along with the USA, NATO, as well as the Sunni Islamists of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and, last but not least, Turkey and its neo-ottoman styled leadership that promoted the war in Syria and cooperated undercover with ISIS, further escalating its own undeclared (civil) war against the Kurds, not just within Turkey, but also in Syria
Wars fancily dubbed as "against tyranny and terror", have in fact caused by far more misery, terror and havoc with the disintegration of Iraq, Libya and Syria, the eventual creation of Al-Qaeda, ISIS and the other jihadist organizations that preach and exercise blind hatred, and terrorism against the West, while they impose their domain and Brutal Rule of Terror on a number of regions across Middle East, Asia, and Africa.
UPDATES
MAR.31 : Migrants Clash at Pireus Port
APR .. 1 : Violence at Chios Island Migrant Camp
APR . 4 : First Deportations to Turkey While Migrant Boats Continue Ariving to Greek Islands
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*FYROM, (originally Vardarska or Vardar Banovina), a landlocked country and non EU member state, is usually referred as "Macedonia" in the "narrative overlay" of media such as CNN, BBC etc that systematically defy the only officially recognized (by UN, EU, NATO, IOC, IAAF etc. etc) name "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), for their very own reasons. if not for assisting the agenda of specific interests (of USA, NATO, UK, certain EU member states and, as usual, Turkey) in the allready quite broken apart and multi-divided, Balkans ...
FYROM also should not be confused, with the historical region of Macedonia in Greece as the later incorporates the whole area where Ancient Macedonian People firstly appeared and lived more than 2500 years ago, that is about 1000 years earlier than the arrival of the Slavs in the Balkans....
On Thursday 12 July 2018, US president Donald Trump, the most dangerous man in the world, was welcomed to the United Kingdom by the British prime minister Theresa May. The following day the streets of London witnessed the biggest protest for over a decade as thousands marched on Trafalgar Square to express their anger at the British government extending a red carpet welcome for Trump.
Protesters pointed out the extreme threat to democracy, to those dependent on welfare, to womens' rights, to civil rights generally and even to the survival of humankind which Trump presents. Such assertions might seem extreme, but they are unfortunately fully justifiable.
As the president of what is by far the richest and most powerful country on earth, Trump has dedicated his term to accelerating the US addiction to fossil fuels and agribusiness, dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency and withdrawing America from the Paris Climate Accords, thereby accelerating global warming and climate change and presenting a huge threat to the continued existence of humankind.
Trump's presidency also marks another dangerous step in the erosion of democracy in the United States. Far from "draining the swamp" as he promised, Trump has surrounded himself with powerful figures from big business, especially major financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, as well as his friends and allies in the fossil fuel and defence industires.
Government policy, more and more, reflects the direct interests of concentrated private power with the public having less and less influence. At the same time the Trump presidency has allied itself with some of the most ruthless regimes in the world and is profiting from Saudi Arabia's illegal war of aggression in Yemen which has created the world's worst humanitarian crisis. A serious war crime in which Donald Trump and Theresa May are both complicit.
Trump has also been keen to patronise the extreme nationalist constituency in the United States and through preaching a propaganda of fear his presidency has managed to oversee some of the most racist immigration policies ever to be implemented in the United States, targeted almost exclusively at Muslim countries - Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Ironically, all of them have been massively destabilized and impoverished by US foreign policy.
He was also responsible for the ruthless decision to separate children from their parents as they cross into the United States from Mexico, in his determination to block immigration from central America, where decades of US illegal intervention, including the CIA funded Contra terror operations in Nicaragua and enforced free trade (under NAFTA or IMF rules) have devastated the region and merely enhanced the power of corrupt corporate elites and drug cartels.
As if this was not enough to worry about, Trump has also authorized a huge increase in both US defence spending and in the US nuclear arsenal, and changed the strategic posture of the US so that nuclear weapons can be used even for offensive operations and even when their use is not required to preempt a nuclear strike by an enemy power.
As any historian of conflict since the Second World War knows, it is only by a miracle that humankind has survived since 1945 without a nuclear war. Now the situation is more dangerous than ever before. Not only are we are now dependent on Trump's extremely unpredictable temperament but also increasingly on automated systems which can easily malfunction.
Trump and Republicans maintain they need to spend heavily on military equipment in order to counter the supposed Russian threat. However they seldom remind the public that the United States already spends almost as much as the rest of the world combined on defence and that Russia's expenditure is far behind both that of the United States and only on about the same level of Saudi Arabia, and spends only 10% of what NATO spends.
It has also to be remembered that it is NATO and US forces which are operating right on the Russian border, not Russian forces on the American border. Russia's defence spending is clearly recognised by academics to be primarily defensive and responsive to US spending. What is desperately needed is a serious international dialogue at the highest level to decrease the danger of conflict, especially the risk of a terminal nuclear war and begin a process of multilateral disarmament.
Watching a thunderstorm approach Chowchilla, CA. I miss seeing these skies! I was chasing thunderstorms in the valley this afternoon! What’s crazy was that I almost didn’t venture out since there was really nothing noteworthy on radar. But a thunderstorm so-happen to drift over my area in San Jose around noon with hail and thunder so that finally motivated me to head out lol. As a reward, heavy rain, hail, thunder and lightning were all witnessed on this outing! The same storm system that had drenched us with widespread rain just the day prior was now ushering in a cold, unstable airmass (behind its main cold front), helping to destabilize the atmosphere to help fuel thunderstorm development, especially for the Central Valley. As for my storm chase, an area of t-storms had formed in the rural areas north of Los Banos around the 1 p.m. hour and then drifted down towards Chowchilla (where I witnessed the 1st encounter of the storm’s deluge of hail) and then continued (while intensifying still) southeast towards Madera/Fresno. Lots of hail and lightning was observed while traveling down the 99 towards Madera, while trying to get ahead of the storm. But due to traffic (likely due to the storm), I lost the chase to the storm and couldn’t get ahead of it anymore so I just exited on one of the exits to take in the lightning the storm was still putting out. Then I continued south a bit more and stopped around the northern areas of Madera to refuel at the Valero and had a quick snack (while also enjoying the winter wonderland of hail that the strong t-storm had left in its wake). As quickly as the storms came, skies turned bright and sunny again as I ate my snack and updated my socials lol. As it neared 4pm and after resting up, I went on the long journey back north towards home. I’ve never seen the air so clear… It has certainly been a while since I’ve chased in the valley. Just like old times! Until next time, happy storm chasing! (Storm chase taken place Thursday afternoon, March 13, 2025)
Les installations en forme d'oeuf sont des diffuseurs émettant des sons en rapport avec l'exposition.
C’est un lien à la guerre plus actuel qu’a choisi Ian Hamilton Finlay en reproduisant la bataille de Midway (1942). A mesure que l’on s’approprie la salle, le bruit des ruchers se révèle être celui des bombardiers et la forme bucolique prend un tournant meurtrier. Prégnante et déstabilisante, l’œuvre est à l’image d’un lieu de prestige apparent où l’art contemporain n’est pas seulement observé mais vécu intimement par celui qui y est confronté.
The egg-shaped installations are broadcasters emitting sounds related to the exhibition.
It is a link to the more contemporary war that Ian Hamilton Finlay chose by reproducing the Battle of Midway (1942). As the room is appropriated, the noise of the apiaries turns out to be that of the bombers and the bucolic form takes a deadly turn. Pretising and destabilizing, the work is like a place of apparent prestige where contemporary art is not only observed but lived intimately by those who are confronted with it.
On Thursday 12 July 2018, US president Donald Trump, the most dangerous man in the world, was welcomed to the United Kingdom by the British prime minister Theresa May. The following day the streets of London witnessed the biggest protest for over a decade as thousands marched on Trafalgar Square to express their anger at the British government extending a red carpet welcome for Trump.
Protesters pointed out the extreme threat to democracy, to those dependent on welfare, to womens' rights, to civil rights generally and even to the survival of humankind which Trump presents. Such assertions might seem extreme, but they are unfortunately fully justifiable.
As the president of what is by far the richest and most powerful country on earth, Trump has dedicated his term to accelerating the US addiction to fossil fuels and agribusiness, dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency and withdrawing America from the Paris Climate Accords, thereby accelerating global warming and climate change and presenting a huge threat to the continued existence of humankind.
Trump's presidency also marks another dangerous step in the erosion of democracy in the United States. Far from "draining the swamp" as he promised, Trump has surrounded himself with powerful figures from big business, especially major financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, as well as his friends and allies in the fossil fuel and defence industires.
Government policy, more and more, reflects the direct interests of concentrated private power with the public having less and less influence. At the same time the Trump presidency has allied itself with some of the most ruthless regimes in the world and is profiting from Saudi Arabia's illegal war of aggression in Yemen which has created the world's worst humanitarian crisis. A serious war crime in which Donald Trump and Theresa May are both complicit.
Trump has also been keen to patronise the extreme nationalist constituency in the United States and through preaching a propaganda of fear his presidency has managed to oversee some of the most racist immigration policies ever to be implemented in the United States, targeted almost exclusively at Muslim countries - Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Ironically, all of them have been massively destabilized and impoverished by US foreign policy.
He was also responsible for the ruthless decision to separate children from their parents as they cross into the United States from Mexico, in his determination to block immigration from central America, where decades of US illegal intervention, including the CIA funded Contra terror operations in Nicaragua and enforced free trade (under NAFTA or IMF rules) have devastated the region and merely enhanced the power of corrupt corporate elites and drug cartels.
As if this was not enough to worry about, Trump has also authorized a huge increase in both US defence spending and in the US nuclear arsenal, and changed the strategic posture of the US so that nuclear weapons can be used even for offensive operations and even when their use is not required to preempt a nuclear strike by an enemy power.
As any historian of conflict since the Second World War knows, it is only by a miracle that humankind has survived since 1945 without a nuclear war. Now the situation is more dangerous than ever before. Not only are we are now dependent on Trump's extremely unpredictable temperament but also increasingly on automated systems which can easily malfunction.
Trump and Republicans maintain they need to spend heavily on military equipment in order to counter the supposed Russian threat. However they seldom remind the public that the United States already spends almost as much as the rest of the world combined on defence and that Russia's expenditure is far behind both that of the United States and only on about the same level of Saudi Arabia, and spends only 10% of what NATO spends.
It has also to be remembered that it is NATO and US forces which are operating right on the Russian border, not Russian forces on the American border. Russia's defence spending is clearly recognised by academics to be primarily defensive and responsive to US spending. What is desperately needed is a serious international dialogue at the highest level to decrease the danger of conflict, especially the risk of a terminal nuclear war and begin a process of multilateral disarmament.
The Bank of Gotham building, Park Row. After the Great Depression, it was one of many branches to fall into disrepair. Decades later, it’s the site of a coin counterfeiting operation, one he'd been tracking for months. Nothing much is known about the leader, only his self-imposed title. The Penny Plunderer, the last remnant of Kuttler's network. There was always someone who'd slip through the cracks, wasn't there?
Bruce had told Jason he could go this alone. The boy needed to stay focused on his grades at the moment, which were slipping. He's much more reckless than Dick ever was, both Alfred and Bruce saw that.
Bruce sat atop the roof, surveying the room. Six targets, two armed. In the center of the room stood what must have been the ringleader, clad in a green suit. Bruce was ready for an introduction.
Leaping into the air, his feet smashed through the building's skylight, the glass stopping them from being able to look up. Bruce lands on his feet, the fall broken with his cape. His eyes lock onto the first gunman, already spraying bullets. After rolling towards him, Bruce deals him a kick to the shins. The second tries his luck, but a batarang flies into the muzzle, jamming the gun. By the time he deals with the remaining four men, the Plunderer is halfway down the fire escape.
'He's faster than he looks,' notes Bruce in his mind, watching the man make his way towards the Monarch Theater. Bruce bursts through the back door, dashing past horrified civilians. 'I need to secure the crime scene for Gordon's men, but I can't let him get away. I can't let him-'
"Bruce?"
Bruce's feet plant onto the ground as he hears the familiar voice call out. His head turns to the origin… to see his mother. He looks around, realizing his location.
Crime Alley. He brought him to Crime Alley.
'Crane…' Bruce deduces to himself. He swiftly reaches to the back of his utility belt, pulling out the vial of his fear-toxin antidote. After taking the serum, he turns to chase.
"Bruce, did you enjoy the movie?" His mother asks, causing his eyes to narrow.
'The toxin's effects should have worn off by now…'
"I would certainly hope so, Martha." Responds his father with a slight chuckle. He then turned his attention to Bruce. "He's only been begging for weeks…" His father's tone taking on a hint of irritation.
'This is perverted. Bruce thought to himself, staring at his parents. 'If not Crane, this is the work of another psychopath, Tetch, perhaps.' Bruce turns from his parents, already seeing the man walking towards them. 'Whoever they are, I won’t let them manipulate me, manipulate my memories. Not again.
"Hands up! I want wallets, cash. Put ‘em on the ground. And I’ll take those pearls too, lady." The man's hand visibly shook holding the gun. His free hand was held outwards to grab the pearls around Martha's neck.
“Do you think this frightens me? Do you think you can trick me, or haunt me? I’ve seen this nightmare every time I’ve fought Scarecrow! I hear my mother’s scream every time I close my eyes! Sometimes… Sometimes I’ll be washing my hands, and I won’t stop, because deep down, I’m still trying to wash off my parent’s blood. The simple truth is, they’ll never be clean, and I, I will never be free. So whatever twisted game you thought you had planned? It ends now. It ends tonight. I’m not afraid of you, and I’m not afraid of ghosts.”
Bruce reaches into his belt, pulling out a batarang. Raising his arm, he takes aim at the mugger and-
THUD
The batarang falls from Bruce's hand, making a clang sound as it hits the concrete. His eyes widen as he watches his father tackle the mugger.
-~-~-
Screams. That was the first thing Clark could hear upon arriving in Gotham. The city looked brutal from above. The world was in a global epidemic, and Gotham's underworld took the message loud and clear.
Open for Business.
He was currently flying through the air, looking for any signs of Bruce. The White Martians were playing on nightmarish memories, and boy did Bruce probably have a box set of those.
'He isn't at the Batcave, nor Wayne Enterprises… so where-' While lost in thought, Clark nearly crashes into an incoming hang glider. He narrowly dodges it, not used to sharing the airspace. As he flew past, he heard a faint, "Hell Yeah!" 'Must've been a thrill seeker.' Clark thinks to himself, shaking his head.
Suddenly a shriek catches his ear. A little girl. Turning his head towards the noise, he uses his x-ray vision to locate the victim.
Springer Apartment Complex, fourth floor. There was one man, a knife in hand, and a hostage. He couldn't just stand idle and let it happen, he needed to act.
He quickly shot through the window, hitting the attacker with enough force to knock him into the wall. He falls to the ground with a thud. Clark's eyes widen as a smell enters his nostrils.
Blood.
He turns his head, looking towards the girl. Taking a step forward, she skooches back a bit. Clark takes a knee, gently holding his hand out to her. "It's alright." He promises, a smile donning his face. The girl, no older than fifteen, hesitates. While staying in the position, he kept the smile on his face. She eventually reached out, placing her shaky hand atop his firm one.
"You, good sir, have just ruined my supper!" The voice behind him shrieked. It sent a chill down his spine, the victim falling into his chest trembling.
The attacker was bald, save for a few tufts of orange hair. His eyes bulged from their sockets and his teeth glowed a disturbing, stained yellow in the moonlight.
Clark ignores the man, hugging the girl closer, whispering calming words to her. He floats his body out of the window he broke through and up to the building's roof. Placing her on the surface, he assures her he'd return momentarily. He returns inside, staring at the attacker.
Quickly wrapping chains around him, hoping it would hold, he turns his head towards the smell once more. "Manners cost nothing, Superman."
"Quiet." He replies, stepping towards the smell. He approaches the kitchen seeing a saucepan on the stove's front right burner. Taking a closer look, his eyes widened.
Body parts.
"Y-your… supper?"
The man lets out a small chuckle. "I find a good human heart to be just the thing I need before I go to bed," he explains, his eyes twitching, his tongue swirling around his mouth. "Cornelius Stirk. Batman must have mentioned me."
Clark shakes his head. "Never."
"Then you won't know about my gift! The heart, not only being an excellent source of protein, also augments my Metahuman powers. You see, sir, I can trick lesser minds into coming here willingly, by projecting an image of who they trust most. That girl? She trusted you, a lot! After tonight... I don't think she'll trust you ever again!"
Clark felt guiltiness enter him for a moment, before turning to leave. "You're… that's… disgusting."
"Hmph, I think it's delicious."
Clark leaves the area, holding the girl and making a detour for the GCPD. Placing her outside, he tells the officer a quick rundown before turning to leave. He spots Gordon inside, the two exchanging a nod. A silent message translated.
"Find him, for me".
As Clark takes off, landing in another street, he still sees the images of Stirk's abattoir. The fear in the child's eyes. He understood. He understood why Gotham needed Batman… now, more than ever. Alas, he does his best to stop the rioting.
A lot of them are dressed in various costumes, Bruce's rogues gallery hosting quite the range. 'Bizzare…' Is Clark's only thought looking at the group. A bald man was hurling eggs at a storefront, dressed in a pristine white suit. Another, sporting a bright pink wig, was exiting a candy store, his shirt tucking over dozens of chocolates.
"That's enough." His voice booms with a commanding, yet calm tone. All of the rioters take a single look at him, dashing away and dispersing into alleyways.
'Bruce is somewhere… but where?'
His thoughts are answered as a thin man in a green suit comes stumbling out of an alleyway. He was screaming in-between his deep huffs of air. "The Bat's gone nuts! He's gone nuts!"
"Found you."
-~-~-
The Monarch Theater. He was eight years old again. His father had finally relinquished, taking the boy to see "The Mark of Zorro," a film both of his parents had grown up on. It was a perfect night, up until they exited the building. They were stopped, in the chill of the night, by a mugger. The man held them at gunpoint in the alley, demanding his mother's pearl necklace. His father tried to diligently reason with him, but his patience only ran so thin.
A hour later, the man was lying beaten on the ground. His father was wiping the blood from his knuckles as he answered the questions asked by the cops. His mother held him from behind, gently wrapping her arms around him and swaying side to side. The man in the young body gripped his mother's hand tightly.
He saw it. He saw his future, running his father's company. He saw himself meeting a beautiful woman. Falling in love. Getting married. Having children of his own. He saw happiness, for the first time in a long time.
'I'm going to be happy.'
His mother, who was gently stroking his head suddenly stopped. He turned his head, looking at her sadly smiling at him. She then began to fade away, electing Bruce to reach out to her.
"Bruce…"
Turning, he spots Superman, looking down to him. The young Bruce tilts his head to the side, in an inquisitive manner. "Wh-what? Clark?"
Clark watches the boy, his eyes boring into him. "It isn't real." The boy's face drops, his head facing downward. Like a glitch in a system, his body starts to distort.
"B-but…"
Clark places a hand on his shoulder. "Bruce, you know it isn't real."
The glitching stopped. In front of Clark now stood a man in a grey suit, a long black cape strapped over his shoulders. His head was adorned with a bat-shaped cowl. "I know. I…" Bruce's fist clenched as he closed his eyes. "I just… wanted to pretend. Even if it was only for a little while."
Clark simply nodded. He knew what it was like. To wonder about the life he never had. The life where Krypton was never destroyed. The life growing up with Jor-El, and Lara, playing fetch with Krypto, sneaking out with Kara to play games. It was something he'd dream about, but it wasn't a dream he wanted to obtain. He was living his dream. Meeting Lois, and Lana. Pete and Jimmy. Being raised by Ma and Pa. If Krypton hadn't been destroyed he wouldn't have met those wonderful people. He wouldn't have fallen in love, and he wouldn't have Jon.
"You can honour your parents, honour all of them, the same way you always have. By fighting. Fighting with everything that you’ve got, just like always. That’s what makes you special, that’s why they came after you, because you’ve never given up. Not against Blackfire, not against Scarecrow, and certainly not from us damn aliens"
Bruce lets off a smirk. "Of course not." Bruce lifts himself to a stand, Clark's hand grasped tightly. "Thank you." Whatever the nightmare was, he was glad. Glad that Clark was there to help him. He'd never admit it to him, but he wouldn't have anyone else at his side.
'J'onn, you can add Bruce to the link and pull us out.'
'I am sorry Superman, but I do not have the ability to pull you out of the mind. The psychosis state should destabilize itself.'
'Then what's-'
BANG
Clark stumbled back as the gunshot rang throughout the alleyway. His hand moved to his stomach, where a striking pain had hit. His fingers were warm. Moving them to his eye level, he saw blood. "That's… that's not good."
'Superman, in the psychosis state, the failsafe will have a direct means of harming you. You must take precautions.'
"That means that everything thrown at me is gonna be Kryptonite." He looks to Bruce, staring at the wound. He had gotten a little too used to being bulletproof. "In the real world, that would've cost me."
"Leaving? Oh, so soon? He. He. He."
The voice sent chills down Clark's spine. It was so gleeful, but so… unnerving at the same time. "That… that laugh? Is that Joker?"
Bruce's eyes were wide, his body stiff. "No," he spoke, his voice barely breaking a whisper. "Not Joker."
"Clearly someone lied about their resume… 'Faster than a speeding bullet?' my ass." The figure ginned as he chuckled, walking forward. His yellow, horrendous teeth were now exposed.
'It has to be him, there isn't anyone else it could be.' Clark thought to himself. Turning to Bruce. "Bruce, if not Joker… who is he?"
Clark watched as Bruce turned his head. Through the open mouth, he saw his friend's face pale, all the color being drained. "M-me. It's me."
"Say, when I'm done here, how about we visit your friends in the GCPD, and relieve them of duty? With all the outsourcing Gordon does, he's clearly not up to the task! I'm telling you, maybe the old guard had the right idea, bribes, bribes, bribes. With your checkbook, we could solve all crime in the city! And the ones that don't play ball? Well, we *did* need to recalibrate the Batwing's targeting software, didn't we? The ward can stay, mind. Every clown needs a harlequin."
The creature had Bruce's face, but his grin, his twisted sense of humour. Ever since Bruce first met Joker, this was what frightened him most.
What if all my fears, all my paranoia and anger drove me to become the very monsters I've been fighting since I was eight? There was nothing. No contingency I'd prepared that could possibly stop me. Alfred, Jim, Lucius, Dick, Jason, Barbara… all of them… targets. None of them… safe.
"Bruce, you aren't him! Understand? Clark yelled out as he swung at the fake Batman. He simply laughed, showing a glowing green knife into Clark's gut.
"All that Kryptonite… knew it'd come in handy one of these days. And to think, I stockpiled it in case you went rogue!" The laughter, filled with pure and unbridled malice consuming the alley.
"I don't… I don't know what created the Joker, Bruce…" Spoke Clark, kneeling with the knife still in his gut. He coughed up blood before speaking again. "Maybe he was always evil. Maybe he thinks what he's doing is right. It could've all happened with one bad day… I don't know."
The Laughing Batman kicked him in the head, sending him flat onto his back. Clark wheezed in pain, before looking at Bruce.
"But I do know… know you. You're strong. Stronger than… than you even know. You live with this… This burden everyday. Living with the burden so you can make sure others don't have to."
The Laughing Batman stepped down hard into the knife, digging it ever so deeper into Clark's abdomen. Clark bit his lip to suppress the cry of pain.
"That's… that's what makes you different. It's what separates you two. He let… the world break him. But you? You… you never will."
Bruce felt a single tear exit his eye. "That's all I needed to hear."
"You're right, Clark. You don't know. No one does. The Joker lives off pain, and death, but above all, he thrives on mystery. That's what terrifies Gotham, that's what terrifies me. He's an unpredictable, unrelenting psychopath. I can't predict him," Bruce begins to march forward, a batarang in his hand. "But I can predict me." The Laughing Batman pulls the knife out of Clark's abdomen, aiming it toward Bruce.
'The newest batsuit has five main weak points. I sacrificed armour in favour of flexibility.'
He goes for the arm tendons first, lacerating them and causing him to drop the kryptonite blade. Bruce quickly scoops it up, dropping it in a lead lined pouch. Clark would be regaining his strength soon now. Bruce then went for the knees, leaving two deep stab winds at the joints. Finally, the last weak point is the mouth.
Bruce swings, as hard as he can. The Laughing Bat's teeth shatter on impact, causing him to fall backwards.
"You're nothing!" It rasps through broken teeth. "Jusssssstice? The laaaaaw? Haha! You're just a bad joke! And you're just delaying the inevitable!"
"No. No! I am Vengeance. I am the Night. And above all-" Bruce yells, with a punch that cracks the fake's cowl apart. "I. Am. Batman!"
A sudden explosion of a blinding, stark white light occurs. Everything around Bruce fades away, an abyss of darkness being his only surrounding. He looks down to his hands, noticing them begin to fade.
"Even if it was my dream… everything I thought I ever wanted." He looks back to the ground, a tall shadow in the shape of a bat under his legs. "I wouldn't give this up. Never in a million years."
-----------------------------
Make sure you're following King Clown for the final two issues of Justice League, coming soon!
On Thursday 12 July 2018, US president Donald Trump, the most dangerous man in the world, was welcomed to the United Kingdom by the British prime minister Theresa May. The following day the streets of London witnessed the biggest protest for over a decade as thousands marched on Trafalgar Square to express their anger at the British government extending a red carpet welcome for Trump.
Protesters pointed out the extreme threat to democracy, to those dependent on welfare, to womens' rights, to civil rights generally and even to the survival of humankind which Trump presents. Such assertions might seem extreme, but they are unfortunately fully justifiable.
As the president of what is by far the richest and most powerful country on earth, Trump has dedicated his term to accelerating the US addiction to fossil fuels and agribusiness, dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency and withdrawing America from the Paris Climate Accords, thereby accelerating global warming and climate change and presenting a huge threat to the continued existence of humankind.
Trump's presidency also marks another dangerous step in the erosion of democracy in the United States. Far from "draining the swamp" as he promised, Trump has surrounded himself with powerful figures from big business, especially major financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, as well as his friends and allies in the fossil fuel and defence industires.
Government policy, more and more, reflects the direct interests of concentrated private power with the public having less and less influence. At the same time the Trump presidency has allied itself with some of the most ruthless regimes in the world and is profiting from Saudi Arabia's illegal war of aggression in Yemen which has created the world's worst humanitarian crisis. A serious war crime in which Donald Trump and Theresa May are both complicit.
Trump has also been keen to patronise the extreme nationalist constituency in the United States and through preaching a propaganda of fear his presidency has managed to oversee some of the most racist immigration policies ever to be implemented in the United States, targeted almost exclusively at Muslim countries - Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Ironically, all of them have been massively destabilized and impoverished by US foreign policy.
He was also responsible for the ruthless decision to separate children from their parents as they cross into the United States from Mexico, in his determination to block immigration from central America, where decades of US illegal intervention, including the CIA funded Contra terror operations in Nicaragua and enforced free trade (under NAFTA or IMF rules) have devastated the region and merely enhanced the power of corrupt corporate elites and drug cartels.
As if this was not enough to worry about, Trump has also authorized a huge increase in both US defence spending and in the US nuclear arsenal, and changed the strategic posture of the US so that nuclear weapons can be used even for offensive operations and even when their use is not required to preempt a nuclear strike by an enemy power.
As any historian of conflict since the Second World War knows, it is only by a miracle that humankind has survived since 1945 without a nuclear war. Now the situation is more dangerous than ever before. Not only are we are now dependent on Trump's extremely unpredictable temperament but also increasingly on automated systems which can easily malfunction.
Trump and Republicans maintain they need to spend heavily on military equipment in order to counter the supposed Russian threat. However they seldom remind the public that the United States already spends almost as much as the rest of the world combined on defence and that Russia's expenditure is far behind both that of the United States and only on about the same level of Saudi Arabia, and spends only 10% of what NATO spends.
It has also to be remembered that it is NATO and US forces which are operating right on the Russian border, not Russian forces on the American border. Russia's defence spending is clearly recognised by academics to be primarily defensive and responsive to US spending. What is desperately needed is a serious international dialogue at the highest level to decrease the danger of conflict, especially the risk of a terminal nuclear war and begin a process of multilateral disarmament.
On Thursday 12 July 2018, US president Donald Trump, the most dangerous man in the world, was welcomed to the United Kingdom by the British prime minister Theresa May. The following day the streets of London witnessed the biggest protest for over a decade as thousands marched on Trafalgar Square to express their anger at the British government extending a red carpet welcome for Trump.
Protesters pointed out the extreme threat to democracy, to those dependent on welfare, to womens' rights, to civil rights generally and even to the survival of humankind which Trump presents. Such assertions might seem extreme, but they are unfortunately fully justifiable.
As the president of what is by far the richest and most powerful country on earth, Trump has dedicated his term to accelerating the US addiction to fossil fuels and agribusiness, dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency and withdrawing America from the Paris Climate Accords, thereby accelerating global warming and climate change and presenting a huge threat to the continued existence of humankind.
Trump's presidency also marks another dangerous step in the erosion of democracy in the United States. Far from "draining the swamp" as he promised, Trump has surrounded himself with powerful figures from big business, especially major financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, as well as his friends and allies in the fossil fuel and defence industires.
Government policy, more and more, reflects the direct interests of concentrated private power with the public having less and less influence. At the same time the Trump presidency has allied itself with some of the most ruthless regimes in the world and is profiting from Saudi Arabia's illegal war of aggression in Yemen which has created the world's worst humanitarian crisis. A serious war crime in which Donald Trump and Theresa May are both complicit.
Trump has also been keen to patronise the extreme nationalist constituency in the United States and through preaching a propaganda of fear his presidency has managed to oversee some of the most racist immigration policies ever to be implemented in the United States, targeted almost exclusively at Muslim countries - Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Ironically, all of them have been massively destabilized and impoverished by US foreign policy.
He was also responsible for the ruthless decision to separate children from their parents as they cross into the United States from Mexico, in his determination to block immigration from central America, where decades of US illegal intervention, including the CIA funded Contra terror operations in Nicaragua and enforced free trade (under NAFTA or IMF rules) have devastated the region and merely enhanced the power of corrupt corporate elites and drug cartels.
As if this was not enough to worry about, Trump has also authorized a huge increase in both US defence spending and in the US nuclear arsenal, and changed the strategic posture of the US so that nuclear weapons can be used even for offensive operations and even when their use is not required to preempt a nuclear strike by an enemy power.
As any historian of conflict since the Second World War knows, it is only by a miracle that humankind has survived since 1945 without a nuclear war. Now the situation is more dangerous than ever before. Not only are we are now dependent on Trump's extremely unpredictable temperament but also increasingly on automated systems which can easily malfunction.
Trump and Republicans maintain they need to spend heavily on military equipment in order to counter the supposed Russian threat. However they seldom remind the public that the United States already spends almost as much as the rest of the world combined on defence and that Russia's expenditure is far behind both that of the United States and only on about the same level of Saudi Arabia, and spends only 10% of what NATO spends.
It has also to be remembered that it is NATO and US forces which are operating right on the Russian border, not Russian forces on the American border. Russia's defence spending is clearly recognised by academics to be primarily defensive and responsive to US spending. What is desperately needed is a serious international dialogue at the highest level to decrease the danger of conflict, especially the risk of a terminal nuclear war and begin a process of multilateral disarmament.
Throughout the war. the Maquisards, in their role as the hunted, gradually made the terrain of the hunt unpredictable for the hunters, and eventually dangerous. The Maquis’s goal was to destabilize Vichy authority, and they did this by simultaneously making themselves, as well as Vichy authorities, the ‘hunters’ and the ‘hunted’.
During the Allied invasion of Normandy, the Maquis and other groups played some role in delaying the German mobilization. The French Resistance ( FFI Forces Françaises de l'Interieur ) blew up railroad tracks and repeatedly attacked German Army equipment and garrison trains on their way to the Atlantic coast. As Allied troops advanced, the French Resistance rose against the Nazi occupation forces and their garrisons en masse. The Maquis groups took no prisoners so some German soldiers preferred to surrender to Allied soldiers rather than maquisards.
( For this digital reconstruction thanks to Jeff Wharton for “Maquis” photo, background from Shorpy )