#(even if its just to further complicate/bolster the choice being made)

[obibail]

"Still not helpful."

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Do you think Jesus was better or worse than his dad? I know there's probably an argument to be made that they're both terrible, but is one less terrible than the other?

I've long enjoyed Hitch's take:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g52sX8PgX8&t=1m50s

"The totalitarian concept of the afterlife: The hideous idea doesn’t even occur in the violent, rape and genocide filled books of the Jewish bible. There’s no punishment of the dead. When god has destroyed your tribe and had your virgins and your children murdered in front of you, and had your flocks and herds scattered and so on, and you also fall down to a bronze sword, he’s done with you. The earth can close over you. That’s it. You tangled with the wrong tribe, the one he favored.

Not until gentle Jesus, meek and mild, are you told: – If you don’t make the right propitiations you can depart into everlasting fire – One of the most wicked ideas ever preached, and one that’s ruined the lives and peace of mind of many, many children preached to them by vicious, child hating old men and women, in the name of this ghastly cult, which we’re met here to discuss tonight."

I think there's a pretty good case in the bible that Jesus is worse, simply because he's not better. He's supposed to be, but isn't. Lord is what he is - a violent, celestial overlord who acts simultaneously like a terrorist and a giant baby.

Jesus brought the "new covenant." He could have heralded all kinds of social improvements such as ending slavery, and revealing new knowledge. But he didn't. He could have brought the message that humanity’s greatest commandment was to bring peace and wellbeing to everyone on the spheroidal planet. But he didn’t. He could have told everyone that Lord is an eternal, immortal being, and mortal, temporal love for it doesn’t even make any sense whatsoever, that humanity’s efforts should be for each other, and doing that, seeing its children’s success, that will make Lord happy and proud. But he didn’t.

He was supposed to bring a new, better relationship with Lord. He supposedly brought all the love and hugs. But did he? You're with him or against him, you're to love him more than your family, he comes to bring a sword and division, he comes to fulfil the law, not replace or end it, commanded love remains the first obligation, and no evil is too bad for a believer to be denied paradise. All in the bible, as I’ve quoted before.

On top of this, he cranked up the manipulation another notch. orchestrating his own suicide-by-centurion in a public blood-magic ritual. Over a problem his dad created in the first place, and either couldn't or wouldn't solve. And then demands people thank him for this manipulation by pledging allegiance to him, or else be cast into eternal hellfire. Your choice.

Whatever "good" he did seems to have been for the spectacle of bolstering his own reputation and fan base, not for the good of humanity or the furthering of moral progress.

And of course, his ultimate objective is to come back and just fuck the entire world completely up, eviscerate everyone who was "not with me", demonstrating the black and white thinking one would expect from the psychopathic offspring of a psychopath. The same extinction-level Second Coming that Xians the world over are salivating for.

The difference between them really is a matter of technicalities. His father being a grandiose narcissist, and he himself a vulnerable narcissist. The grandiose narcissist is at least fairly up front about what he's doing - the logic of the Lord isn't that complicated: obey or die. Jesus wants to manipulate you into thinking he's doing you a favor.

It's sort of like the bully in the playground, who declares that everything there is hers, she makes the rules and everybody has to follow them, she'll take your lunch money, ban you from playing games she doesn't like, and forbids telling on her. Eventually she sits at the top of the slide and just glares at everyone.

Jesus is her weaselly friend who says "hey, don't worry, I gotcha. I'm here to make everything better, don't worry. All you have to do is declare your undying fealty to me, abandon all your friends, make me the center of your world, and I'll look after you. Of course, if you don't, I'll get her to beat the absolute shit out if you. To show you how much I want to protect you from the bully, who is my best friend., I'm going to give up Twinkies for you. Until the weekend, that is. That's how much I want to protect you from my friend, the bully. You'll owe me big for that. You're welcome."

Lord is the bully who wants to subjugate the entire world to its will. That is, of course, the entire point of the first couple of Commandments, and those didn't go away in the New Testament. (Believers like to pretend that “tHe oLd TeStAmEnT nO LoNgEr aPpLiEs!!!” but if they genuinely believed that, Xianity itself could not exist.) Jesus wants you to feel like that subjugation was your choice, that it was a good idea, that it was a loving act to set up this trap in the first place, and for you to thank him for it.

Such a level of manipulation while still positioned as "gentle Jesus, meek and mild" I find somewhat more disturbing than the unapologetic bluntness of Lord.

That said, the problem ultimately comes back to Lord anyway. If Lord wasn't such an unrelenting narcissist and malevolent sociopath, Jesus wouldn't need to be his standover merchant.

So, deciding which one is the worst is like...

Thank goodness that, like Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader, they're also both - and very obviously - complete fiction.

[jackdawyt]

Dragon Age: Inquisition is one of my favourite games of all time. I love everything about this game, from the compelling hero’s journey, to the roster of lovable characters, to making the Inquisitor my very own unique protagonist. Few games compare to the experiences and tremendous moments that Inquisition provides, not to mention the Trespasser DLC which revealed the true intention of the game’s villain, and paved the story forward for future titles.  

I think it’s rather telling how good this game is, considering we’re still talking about it nearly 6 years later after launch, discovering new theories and mysterious hidden deep within the lore. Heck, if Dragon Age: Inquisition was a mediocre experience, I don’t think I’d have a YouTube channel today with thousands of recurring views weekly talking about the game, and where the story is going to go since the events of Inquisition.  

However, there is something critical that I feel is necessary to discuss regarding Dragon Age Inquisition’s original marketing demos and the expectations they set for the finished game.  

Following up to the launch of Dragon Age: Inquisition, I used to obsessively re-watch the first original gameplay demo shown at Pax Prime 2013. At the time the game was in its pre-alpha build, however, there were many impressive features and dynamics showing just a glimpse of what we’d come to expect once we got our hands on the game.  

In retrospect, these promises were scrapped before the finished project released.

This post is not meant to be a negative outlook, poking holes at BioWare’s effort, but an investigation and critique into BioWare’s game design, more specifically, the cuts the developers made tackling Inquisition’s complicated release, and how they’ve learned since.  

For the uninitiated, Dragon Age: Inquisition released in November, 2014, a month after the next generation of consoles launched. As the game was jammed in-between two gaming generations, it was designed to ship on both the previous generation of consoles (Xbox 360/PS3) and the current generation (XB1/PS4).

In order for the game to predominantly run on the lower spec consoles, many gameplay cuts, downgrades and setbacks were made to the final project.  

I’m not talking about conceptual ideas in pre-production that were drafted for the game, like The Architect making a cameo appearance in a “Here Lies The Abyss” alternative twist, or the Hero of Ferelden, Hawke and The Inquisitor meeting up in a potential drafted prologue. Of course, there were plenty of ideas, concepts and story threads that were canned and reworked because the developers had better, and frankly more relevant plans for the game.

I’m talking about actual features and mechanics that were incorporated and designed into the vertical slice demo that was shown off to the fans at Pax Prime 2013, and then were removed later on just before launch.

I would like to point out that the gameplay I’m going to show was alpha footage, and the developers made sure we all understood that it could easily change, nobody lied to us. If anything, BioWare were so eager to show off the next Dragon Age game, that perhaps this was the biggest detriment to the project.

I’ll have the full Pax gameplay demo linked for those who want to watch it fully. But without further ado, I’m going to be revealing the Dragon Age: Inquisition we almost got.  

Cut Content:  

The demo starts with a significant cut, originally Dragon Age: Inquisition would’ve featured stunning party member cutscenes when entering new areas for the first time.  We see Varric, Cassandra and Vivienne discussing how prepared they are since the Inquisition formed. Varric banters that he’s outnumbered by the ladies once again.  

We can assume that these dynamic banter cutscenes based on your party members were replaced with Scout Harding’s area report.  

The models and textures for the characters and armours look very different too. Cassandra has a more angled facial structure, like her original concept art. And, the Inquisitor’s armour and textures don’t even exist in the final game, I remember attempting to recreate this look, a thousand times over, however, no fabrics in the game have this orange texture.

Helmets also appear in conversations, which is a huge pet peeve of mine, I’m still upset to this day that we can’t see helmets in conversations and there’s no mod to fix it. However, they added this feature in Mass Effect: Andromeda, so maybe we’ll see it in the future.  

In general, this demo showed that there was going to be a lot more cutscenes when entering new areas, in party banter, and for minor conversations with smaller characters.  

Upon inspecting the gameplay, we can see the camera’s placement was significantly adjusted. The demo had a third-person feel, whereas the game ended up with a pulled back camera, probably to suite the tactical camera for combat. Fortunately, there are mods that actually fix this issue.  

The UI has evolved since the demo, there used to be a Skyrim-esqe navigation compass that was replaced with a radar. And the party member icons are different, but that’s just nit-picking.  

The combat is more or less the same, however, it does seem more reactive and heftier in the demo. Most likely because the camera is more zoomed into the action. There are some tweaks though, the enemies react more to the Inquisitor’s attacks, the stumble, flail and even run away, as opposed to just taking the damage and then attacking you back.  

However, minor these cuts may seem to you; they did change the game a fair amount adding more immersion to the overall experience.  

Even so, the most obvious and upsetting cut when watching this demo regards the entirety of Crestwood, the area has been dramatically reduced in the final game.  

In this demo, the Inquisitor is given a conflict. One of the Inquisition’s soldiers asks the player how does the Inquisitor want to handle their armies' movements throughout the area.  

The Inquisitor could send the Inquisition army to save the town of Crestwood.  

They could lead the soldiers to tend to the nearby wounded.

Or they could bolster every solider to the Keep, leaving both the wounded and the town of Crestwood.  

Each choice had a consequence, and both Mike Laidlaw and Mark Darrah spoke on having multiple ways to approach the situation. For instance, in the demo’s scenario the Inquisitor decides to leave the town while it’s under siege, instead, they find a secret entrance towards the Keep. Using Antivan Fire, they burn the invaders’ boats which would prevent them from escaping after their attack. The Inquisition take the Keep, and head back to the ransacked town filled with newly fresh corpses. A dynamic cutscene of Varric mourning the dead plays out, adding emotional impact and weight to the decision the Inquisitor just made.  

And this was just a side questline...

The demo ends with the developers reiterated the tactical and dynamic approaches when showing the Inquisition taking over the Keep at The Western Approach.  

According to Mark Darrah, you could weaken enemy defences by doing things like drawing out the troops or poisoning their wells.  

Then, once you claimed the keep for yourself, you’d get a quest called ‘This Water Tastes Funny’, in which your Keep's well was poisoned and you’d have to go find fresh water.

The Keep’s themselves were originally designed to have a lot more influence and reactivity throughout the world. Once captured, the Inquisitor could choose a dynamic choice for the Keep’s overall goal, if you had enough Inquisition agents. 

The Keep could be specialised based on the Inquisition’s advisors. You could choose to run your Keep as a Military outpost, boosting fortifications. It could be a Keep of espionage and secrets, for information gathering, or you could make it a Keep of connections and merchants for diplomatic purposes. Each different speciality had a different advantage and aesthetic to suit its purpose.  

Adding more choices and roleplaying values for making the Inquisition your own army, having a say in what aspects it should grow in.  

That sums up the majority of the cuts made since this demo. I will say it’s unfortunate seeing these unfinished features that shaped the game in a completely different direction, that inevitably couldn’t make it into the finished project.  

But I think it’s wrong to pin the blame of this cut content on anyone because the developers were tackling a console generation shift, and they wanted everyone to have the opportunity to play the game without having to get a new console. Can you really blame them for that?  

Perhaps many of these features may be designed into a future title since the developers wanted them so much in Inquisition? And speaking of the future title, at least the next Dragon Age game won’t be coming out in between a console generation, it is being designed strictly for next-gen, so there shouldn't be any console setbacks and limitations.  

Even still, when Dragon Age 4 does eventually get a gameplay reveal, don’t set your expectations in stone based on that reveal. The finished project will look very different. These days gameplay previews aren’t always accurate, and that’s just a dilemma of the entire games industry, not just EA and BioWare.  

Wrapping up on a positive note, BioWare have learned from this experience, and they’re approaching Dragon Age 4 with a “show, don’t tell” strategy. They will be proceeding with caution when marketing and revealing the next Dragon Age game, and that may play a part in why we haven't and won't see anything official for a while.  

I don’t think I could end on a better note then the Narrative Director, John Epler’s message about Inquisition’s development. John said: “A good 90% of 'bad' decisions are, in fact, the best decision at the time. Game dev is all about making the best decision you can at the time, with the resources you have. A lot of stuff you thought was weird or awkward came down to a gut call of 'this is the best I can make this and I trust it's good enough'. Sometimes we're right, sometimes not.”

BioWare decided to make these cuts to Inquisition because they realised it was the right thing to do for the entire project, perhaps they felt they couldn’t deliver these features to their full capacity, or they wanted a change of direction. They believe these decisions were made for the greater good of the game, and I commend them for that.  

Dragon Age Inquisition is an incredible RPG with tons of personality, that not many games can even mimic. Although the game had some minor setbacks with the fair amount of content that was cut, the game is just as amazing without those initial features.  

Like I said, perhaps we’ll see these mechanics in the next game, if not, then at least it has been a learning experience for BioWare, that they can utilise for the development of Dragon Age 4.  

In any regard, let me know your thoughts down below on this gameplay demo relating to the finished game, and don’t forget to check out my latest news update!

[treacherycuphq]

I’m really interested in taking a star player / exploring a “fame monster” dynamic but I don’t want to step on a moderator’s toes - can you guys give some ideas as to how we can explore that without feeling like we’re stealing plots?

FIRST OFF - WE WANT TO SINCERELY THANK YOU FOR THIS QUESTION. IT WAS VERY COURTEOUS OF YOU TO REACH OUT WITH THIS, BECAUSE IT SHOWS YOU'VE READ OVER THE SAMPLE APP AND ENOUGH SKELES TO GET A GENERAL LAYOUT OF CHARACTER TRAJECTORIES & WERE ABLE TO IDENTIFY AN OVERLYING CONNECTION. WE APPRECIATE THE LEVEL OF CRITICAL THINKING THAT OCCURRED FOR THIS QUESTION. I'M ( MOD S ) GOING TO ASSUME THIS IS IN CONJUNCTION WITH MY CHARACTER, MARLENE, SO I'M GOING TO FINISH ANSWERING IT.

WE'VE MADE SEVERAL "STAR PLAYER" SKELES FOR THE PURPOSE OF "FAME MONSTER" EXPLORATION PLOTS, SO I WOULDN'T BE CONCERNED WITH "STEALING" ANYTHING FROM ME ! I PERSONALLY SEE THE CONCEPT OF FAME AS A MULTI-HEADED BEAST, AND DIFFERENT ASPECTS / SCENARIOS THAT ARE BORN FROM IT WOULD AFFECT CHARACTERS IN DIFFERENT WAYS. OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD, I KNOW AUGUSTUS ROOKWOOD, LUDOVIC BAGMAN, LUCINDA TALKALOT, AND EMMA VANITY ARE PRETTY CODED TOWARD "FAME MONSTER" PLOTS OUT OF THE QUIDDITCH PLAYERS. UNDER THE READ MORE CUT, I'M GOING TO LIST SPECIFIC PLOTS I'D LOVE TO SEE !

( SINCE THIS QUESTION SPECIFICALLY MENTIONED 'STAR PLAYERS,' I'M GOING TO FOCUS ON THEM, BUT I 100% SUPPORT THE FAME MONSTER PLOTS APPLYING TO OTHER CHARACTERS, OUTSIDE OF QUIDDITCH, AS WELL ! )

First, you need to address some key "Fame" thematics, before you tap into the monster portion:

Who was your character before they became famous, and who have they become because of the spotlight?

Does your character put on a facade for their public personality, or do they present themselves authentically for public consumption?

If they use a fake public personality, what do they do with the emotional dissonance of pretending to be somebody they're not? Does it affect their private relationships? How do they cope?

If they present themselves authentically, do they maintain healthy boundaries with the public? Can they separate their inner perspective versus the public perception of them? What happens when these two versions don't match up?

Do they have an ability to change back to who they were before fame, or has the appeal of the spotlight changed them, for better or for worse?

The "monster" portion of the fame monster trope really rests in your character responding to a slew of these circumstances negatively - similarly to a "bridezilla," the definition doesn't fit if it's not born of antagonism, y'know?

With all of that in mind, here's a non-exhaustive list of everything I could come up with re: alternate "fame monster" plots / dynamics that don't have any effect whatsoever over me & my current musings.

PLOTS:

BEST OF THE BEST OF THE BEST OF THE...: No one can be flawless forever. No one can be the best until they die. The best is the best until... what? Typically, we see the end of powerful reigns because something else begins to matter more: love, money, power, friendship, self-preservation, addiction, and anonymity are all well-known and valid reasons to finally break ties with the fame monster. Maybe your character did, and is dealing with the fallout from the limelight; maybe your character is about to, but is still trying to figure out what's worth leaving the fame monster behind.

THE LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH & FAMOUS: saying your character has adjusted to their celebrity status would be an understatement; they've flourished beneath the limelight, and now have a personal assistant, an agent, and a public relations manager to help offset even the barest inkling of a bad image. Heck, they've been famous for so long, they barely remember what life was like before - they've become someone that's lost their connection to their roots. However, that's all about to change... because where's the fun in not fracturing everything a person knows, for the sake of conflict?

ICARUS' LANDING: oh how high we fly! oh how far we fall ! your character has found themselves in a typical Icarian tragedy - their fame is hinged on the exploitation of their worst hubris, and they won't stop trying to succeed until it's far too late. Try as they damnedest to touch the sun and dazzle in its spotlight, so too will they find their end and burn beneath its brilliance; whatever your character is using to find fame, they will overindulge and find themselves plummeting toward normality far sooner than they'd ever think.

FAN BASE FAVOR: your character has fallen into the monotony of catering to their fan bases' every wish & whim, creating a public version of themselves that's simultaneously overly enthusiastic & underwhelming. That means that they constantly stop for pictures or autographs, to the point of near compulsion. If they're always willing & able to provide for their fans, what does that mean in terms of their public identity? Are they constantly putting on a show, in case fans are nearby? Do they feel invalidated if fans aren't screaming for their attention at all times? Do they lose hours upon hours responding to fan mail? How do the other people in their lives feel about this exhaustive fan service?

STARRING IN THE SHADOWS: your character's parent was famous, to a high enough caliber that their star power has created an everlasting shadow over your own reputation; nothing you do, nothing you say will keep them from being mentioned in the next sentence. But fame has sunk its teeth into you, and your left with two complex paths: do you cede under their spotlight, and hope it bolsters your own? Or do you try anything to break out of their typecast, and make a name for yourself, outside your family ties? More importantly, does anyone else in the world care? Do you talk about your complex relationship with your own privilege, or let sleeping dogs lie?

MY OWN WORST ENEMY: your character has a complicated relationship with hedonism; whether it be romantic entanglements, illicit substances, or general gluttony of all things sin, they compulsively indulge, with little to no discipline. Regardless of outside intervention, your character partakes time & time again, refusing help for what they don't see as a problem, just a "good time." There's only so long this lifestyle can be catered to, however, before they gain a level of notoriety that blackballs them from the famous circles they were once included in.

DANCING WITH YOUR HANDS TIED: your character has feelings for a certain someone, but is unable to act on it, thanks to their celebrity status. Maybe you're trying to exploit the pureblood/muggleborn dynamic? Maybe their interest rests on someone outside the public eye? Maybe that person has no interest in being brought into the public eye, making your celebrity status the difference between having or losing that special person? Can your character let go of the validation of many for the love of one? Do they even have a choice - stepping out of the public eye doesn't automatically free you from being a celebrity, ask any former child star !

DYNAMICS:

OBSESSIONS & CONFESSIONS: your character may be too famous, as they're currently trying to sidestep a stalker - or "obsessed fan," depending on your definition. Either way, no one enjoys invasions of your property or your privacy - does your character confront the stalker directly, in an attempt to gain their sympathy? Or do they take increasingly ludicrous measures in an attempt to ward them off? Maybe, they enjoy the newfound level of attention, and begin to build a complicated relationship with them?

CHASE YOU DOWN UNTIL YOU LOVE ME: Paparazzi, baby ! Love to hate them or hate to love them, the physical entity that is tabloid publication follows you around wherever you go. Does your character love the constant audience, or crave the solace of anonymity? Is the paparazzi better or worse than the rest of the world's consumption of you? Does one person in particular rile you up for the sake of a juicy photograph, leading to a cumbersome antagonism that's almost targeted at you? Does their presence give your character confidence or anxiety? Maybe your character gets on good terms with one of their paid stalkers, and hatches a scheme to always be on the front page in exchange for the juiciest weekly scoop? Maybe your character is trying to use the paparazzi to increase their celebrity status, which hasn't been fully realized yet?

PEOPLE I DON'T LIKE: there's nothing wrong with making famous friends for the sake of gaining more fame, but Lord, doesn't it get cumbersome constantly trying to please people you barely even like? The photographs may seem favorable enough, but behind closed doors & velvet ropes, these people are NOT your friends - but then what are they? And honestly, is anyone really your friend anymore? What defines friendship, in a world where the flashing light will always mean more than the people standing in front of it?

UPPER MANAGEMENT: all celebrities hit a streak of their pride where they become more eggheaded than egg-ceptional - whether your character is the celebrity or their support staff, the high horse of the limelight has finally caused a conflict between what you think you deserve & what you currently receive. Whether you're demanding a new agent, coach, assistant, or some other ludicrous proclamation, this sudden inflation of your ego has done nothing but piss off the people around you. Congrats ! Now it's time to deal with the fall out of your holier-than-thou expectations.

ASSIST ME: a niche dynamic of the one presented above, this deals with the relationship between star & personal assistant, and the synchrony needed to sail an exceptionally famous ship. Is the assistant good at their job? Is the star judgmental & opinionated, with unrealistic expectations? What does the personal assistant get from this dynamic? How does it further their career? Do they only do it out of contractual obligation to their client, or does their relationship with their assigned celebrity go far deeper than that?

SELL OUT YOUR HEART: your character wakes up one day to find that somebody close to them has leaked explicit information to the press about you. However, this source is left "anonymous." What does your character do? Do they root out the imposter, who sold their personal information for a quick dime? Do they want to know the identity of the perpetrator? Is it actually a betrayal in their eyes, or a product of their work? Or maybe your character picked out someone in their group who exclusively leaks these pockets of information for the sake of bolstering your reputation?

THE BOJACK HORSEMAN PLOT: your character has been playing the fame game long enough that the public has begun the enamored catcalls for a book about your life ! Your character's agent places them with a well-respected ghost writer to get things started; does your character enjoy their time with the writer, or do they find them judgmental / opinionated over your character's past? Does the writer respect your character's vision, or expect them to bend to narrative style of a story? Do they ruminate on ideas that your character finds hit a little too close to home, or maybe they won't write what your character wants at all? Does your character treat their sessions like therapy? Does it force them to confront deep personal issues & views they'd never questioned before? Or do they simply finish the endeavor & send them off, without ever thinking about their ghost writer again? Do they build a relationship with one another, or does it begin & end with work?

FAKE DATING AU: pretty self-explanatory & a fan favorite, especially for celebrity characters !

BODYGUARD AU: also self-explanatory & a personal favorite !!

[aion-rsa]

Attack on Titan Season 4 Episode 9 Review: Brave Volunteers

https://ift.tt/2MMruLT

This Attack on Titan review contains spoilers.

Attack on Titan Season 4 Episode 9

“Welcome to Paradis Island…”

Attack on Titan’s final season has expertly played with the viewers’ expectations, but “Brave Volunteers” feels like the most atypical episode of what’s been an extremely unpredictable season. 

On one level, an episode that’s largely set in the past and is almost entirely designed as an expository device shouldn’t be a very satisfying installment of Attack on Titan. The anime has done episodes like this before, but it actually feels appropriate for it to pump its breaks a little and take stock of everything that’s happened so far now that the season has passed the halfway point. 

This may technically be one of the “least best” episodes of this season, but it still works a lot better than something like this should. “Brave Volunteers” shows confidence build up in multiple characters as they become optimistic about the future, but in reality this episode is a study about just how much these characters don’t know, which is a stark realization that goes double for the audience. 

The final moments of Attack on Titan’s previous installment set up so many jarring twists and altered relationship dynamics. The audience is confused, much like Falco and Gabi are when they see Zeke working alongside the Eldians. It’s a major indication that the entire first half of this season has been a much more complicated plan than what’s initially been indicated and “Brave Volunteers” finally provides some helpful answers before the series takes another major turn towards its apocalyptic endgame. 

Some people may lament how much of “Brave Volunteers” is spent looking back at the past. However, this choice is excusable because it narratively works much better than if this material played out in chronological order at the start of the season and the audience were clued in to Eren’s plan. The season is stronger by essentially making the audience an unofficial Marleyan. “Brave Volunteers” is full of answers, but it still feels like there’s a lot to this plan that’s being kept in the dark to everyone.

The crux of “Brave Volunteers” comes down to Eldia’s invasion of Paradis Island and the unlikely arrangement that they enter with Zeke and a determined soldier named Yelena. A tense parley takes place between these factions and the Eldian and Marleyans reluctantly decide to pool their resources together to take on the larger threat of Paradis and the Founding Titan. There’s a lot to digest as Attack on Titan breezes through its plan and there are some enlightening glimpses into strategy, like how Eren wants Armin to tap into Bertholdt’s memories as a way to learn of their enemy’s plan and gain the advantage over them. Everyone is still planning multiple moves ahead in this metaphorical match of monster chess. 

Read more

TV

Attack on Titan: “No One is Safe” in Final Season, Stars Say

By Daniel Kurland

The secret alliances between Zeke, Levi, Eren, and Yelena are major turning points, but the biggest twist in “Brave Volunteers” is reserved for its ending. It turns out that Armin’s captive audience through this engrossing story is none other than Annie Leonhart, which is a major revelation that throws more significant players into the final chapter of this war.

The flashback nature of “Brave Volunteers” thankfully gives the audience a little more time with Sasha. It’s very fulfilling to see her in her element again, but it also makes every moment with Sasha incredibly bittersweet considering where things end. Her funeral is a rough scene, but it’s also an important moment for everyone to catch their breath after moving non-stop for so many episodes and not allowing themselves the opportunity to grieve. The pain of Niccolo, a completely new character, is proof of how much Sasha made a difference to those around her. At least she got to taste lobster before she went out.

A lot of this episode is constructed around characters slowly letting down their guards to strangers, whether it’s intentional or otherwise. The twisted “welcome wagon” skit that Hange engages in with the soldiers on Paradis Island is treated like an affable icebreaker as these characters broach new territory. However, from the point of view of these strangers it’s a gesture that paralyzes them in fear; not unlike the way a soldier may tease a prisoner of war or how a predator plays with their food before consumption. 

It’s another jarring reminder that this is a milestone event that’s depicted for the Eldian Warriors, but it’s also a momentous occasion for the people on the other side of this attack, yet for completely different and more harrowing reasons. Every episode from this season contains playful actions that are intentionally meant to be double-sided depending on from which side of this war they’re being considered.

The most dangerous example of this is present with Yelena, a ruthless and obsessed figure that’s determined for Eren to recognize his greatness. In the present it seems very likely that Eren has developed a God complex where he believes that everything that he does is justified and the necessary means to an end. Those kinds of feelings don’t just develop on their own and it wouldn’t be surprising if Yelena is the one that continually bolsters up Eren’s ego to the point that he’s beyond viewing himself as anything other than perfect. It’s a dangerous echo chamber of delusion for Eren. There’s already a very palpable sense of tension that accompanies everything that Yelena does. 

Yelena proves that she’s already willing to kill for Eren, but it’s enlightening to hear her explain her reverence towards seeing Zeke’s Beast Titan for the first time. She reveres the monster as a God. Yelena displays a fascinating perspective towards Titans that hasn’t been examined in the past, but makes so much sense in regards to how lost and disillusioned individuals will sometimes praise weapons of destruction. 

Yelena’s devotion to Eren also allows “Brave Volunteers” to dig deeper into where Eren’s head  is currently at and how much of his humanity he’s lost in the three years building up to the attack on Marley. They’re brief moments, but Eren appears to be getting numb towards death as he focuses more on the good that he’ll cause once all of this is over. He’s consumed over how the world views him and his kind as devils and he’s determined to either prove them right, or completely wipe them out so that there’s no one left to harbor these disparaging thoughts.

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These concerns over Eren grow greater while he innocently trains alongside Armin and Mikasa. It’s comforting to see these three together, but there’s an unspoken animosity that’s formed. Even Armin laments how he feels like he has no idea who Eren is anymore. It’s seriously chilling when Eren calmly talks about his Rumbling plan while he fires off rounds at the range. He’s completely hollow in the moment and Armin and Mikasa can sense it. 

Some powerful words that come out of Eren in this episode is how, “We can’t win if we don’t fight.” This philosophy may be true on some level, but what’s ultimately important is who is fighting whom, and over what. Eren’s bleak message radically contradicts what Willy Tybur preached during his final moments at the Liberio Festival: the only way that this war can be won and that peace can be achieved is if everyone works together. Eren has used his power to work together and build an army that intimidates the world into submission. He manages to take Tybur’s speech and weaponize it in a way that only further proves his point. 

Attack on Titan’s future is definitely going to feature more individuals working together, but it seems like it will be under duress and through Eren’s increasingly tyrannical rule rather than a mutual appreciation to fix the world. Oddly, it’s Onyankopon’s words that “Everybody exists because somebody wanted us to exist” that are unintentionally profound and speak to how everyone should be looking for ways to come together to do more good, not evil.

“Brave Volunteers” is a dense and necessary episode that leaves Attack on Titan in an exciting position as serious dissent begins to crop up around Eren. However, now everyone is too deep into this plan to abandon ship. It leaves the Eldians in rewarding territory and even though they now have more power than ever before there are much more fundamental problems that begin to arise. 

Eren is increasingly comfortable to embrace the devil role that the world has been all too eager to label them with rather than fight the narrative and prove that the only monsters here are the antiquated rules that the public has clung to in fear. The opening credits have been telling the audience since the very first episode of this season: You are the real enemy. 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

This empty threat suddenly feels crushingly authentic for the first time.

The post Attack on Titan Season 4 Episode 9 Review: Brave Volunteers appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2LsI2Ie

[alexsmitposts]

US Media Defends Al Qaeda in Syria When is a terrorist group not a terrorist group? Apparently when US foreign policy requires it not to be. This is precisely the case regarding Al Qaeda’s Syrian branch – Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) – the most recent rebrand of Jabhat Al Nusra – which currently occupies the northern Syrian governorate of Idlib. The US corporate media has recently attempted to generate public sympathy for HTS – as well as animosity toward Syrian, Russian, and Iranian forces seeking to liberate the supposedly one million people trapped under the terrorist organization’s rule. Another factor behind US media support for HTS is the necessity to explain why NATO member Turkey is providing direct military and material support for a US-designated terrorist organization, and why the US itself is in turn providing Turkey support to do so. Articles have appeared in Newsweek – for example – framing Russian opposition to negotiations with HTS as negative – and echoing US State Department efforts to support the terrorist organization despite it appearing on Washington’s official Foreign Terrorist Organization designation list. The article titled, “Russia Warns Against Any U.S. Talks with Militant Group It’s Bombing in Syria,” is actually referring to Al Qaeda’s HTS front when it refers to the “militant group” Russia is bombing in Syria. Newsweek places Russian statements regarding the US designation of HTS as a terrorist organization in quotes as if to question the veracity of the claim. However, a visit to the US State Department’s own website reveals a 2018 statement titled, “Amendments to the Terrorist Designations of al-Nusrah Front,” which openly admits: The Department of State has amended the designation of al-Nusrah Front – an al-Qa’ida affiliate in Syria – to include Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and other aliases. These aliases have been added to al-Nusrah Front’s designations as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, and as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) under Executive Order 13224. In January 2017, al-Nusrah Front launched the creation of HTS as a vehicle to advance its position in the Syrian uprising and to further its own goals as an al-Qa’ida affiliate. Since January 2017, the group has continued to operate through HTS in pursuit of these objectives. Thus – according to all sides of the Syrian conflict including Washington – HTS is without doubt – unequivocally a terrorist organization. And eventually – 5 paragraphs in – Newsweek also admits HTS is a US-designated terrorist organization – and even includes quotes from US military leaders admitting that Idlib is overrun by extremists. Yet the US-based publication still attempts to frame Syrian and Russian efforts to liberate Idlib from these extremists negatively. Newsweek is just one example of the US corporate media obliquely defending terrorism. The New York Times would provide a much more robust defense. New York Times Does PR for Al Qaeda in Idlib To illustrate just how far the US corporate media is willing to go to bolster Al Qaeda’s HTS and its Turkish and US backers, the New York Times claims its staff actually accompanied HTS terrorists in Idlib in order to write their emotionally manipulative article, “‘The Only Choice Is to Wait for Death’.” The article’s author – Carlotta Gall – claims: I made a rare visit into Idlib with a photographer and interpreter on Wednesday, crossing the border from Turkey. We were accompanied by relief workers of a Syrian charity and members of a jihadist rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which controls the province. While the identity or organization these “relief workers” are affiliated with is never mentioned in the article – they are almost certainly from the so-called “White Helmets” and their presence alongside Al Qaeda HTS militants would only further confirm that they themselves are nothing more than Al Qaeda auxiliaries. The article contains weepy anecdotes devoid of any actual evidence, playing on the familiar “humanitarian” concerns the US and its media often use to demonize its adversaries and justify its own – very real – aggression and abuse globally. In this case – the aggression and abuse the US and its media are attempting to justify is the continued existence of Al Qaeda’s HTS in northern Syria and its rule over an alleged population of “one million” civilians. The article describes Syrian and Russian security operations to liberate Idlib from Al Qaeda with paragraphs like: There has been no letup for the people of Idlib Province as the forces of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, backed by Russian air power, have smashed their way forward, demolishing towns and villages in the south and east of the province with punishing airstrikes. Only until twenty-five paragraphs into the New York Times’ article, does author Carlotta Gall finally admit HTS is a US-designated terrorist organization, claiming: Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, has been designated a terrorist group by the United Nations but recently allowed Western journalists into Idlib in cooperation with Turkey, which has wanted to build international pressure against Russia and Syria. In other words – Al Qaeda and its Turkish backers want to build pressure against Russia and Syria who are attempting to liquidate the terrorist organization and restore order to Idlib – and the New York Times is willingly – even eagerly – aiding Al Qaeda and Turkey in doing so. The US Has Flattened Cities and Nations in Pursuit of “Terrorists” Cities held by terrorist organizations – or even entire nations for that matter – have served as a pretext for the United States and its allies to carry out brutal military operations. For example – the alleged presence of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan served as the pretext for the now 19 year war the US has waged there since 2001. In 2004 – citing the presence of extremists in the Iraqi city of Fallujah – the US military would flatten the urban center not once – but twice. One might imagine that the US military and its allies would be eager to move against the northern governorate of Idlib in Syria – admittedly held by the terrorist HTS front. Yet here the truth about America’s so-called “War on Terrorism” is revealed. While extremists may have been based in Afghanistan in 2001 or active in the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004 – that is not why the United States moved against them. The US had overarching geopolitical plans that required the long-term occupation of Afghanistan – with the presence of extremists serving merely as a pretext to pursue these plans. In Fallujah it was not the militants or their extremism that bothered the United States – as Washington had previously armed and backed many of the groups there in proxy conflicts for decades beforehand and for nearly two decades since – it was their resistance to the US occupation that triggered the two battles for the city. Al Qaeda in northern Syria serves US interests – the fact that it appears on the US State Department’s own terrorist designation list is merely a political inconvenience at the moment – one the above-mentioned Newsweek article even admits US diplomats are trying to work around. Newsweek claimed: James Jeffrey, the U.S. special representative on Syria and special envoy to the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State militant group (ISIS), told a press briefing earlier this month he had not seen Hayat Tahrir al-Sham “planning or carrying out international terrorism attacks.” He made similar comments days earlier. The obvious implications of Jeffery’s comment is that – at the moment and despite HTS’ status as a US-designated terrorist organization – the US does not see it as one. And not because HTS isn’t a terrorist organization – but simply because at the moment – such a designation is not politically convenient for US objectives in northern Syria. So while the US has flattened entire cities in pursuit of “terrorists,” it currently seeks to complicate and draw out the Syrian conflict – placing the lives of “one million” civilians in the balance – in defense of terrorists. The malignant nature of US foreign policy is fully illustrated by Washington and the US media’s stance regarding Al Qaeda’s HTS in northern Syria – amid circumstances where unequivocal terrorists threatening the lives of what the US itself claims are “one million” civilians have attracted the attention and support of American journalists and diplomats. The coordinated nature of this support – spanning the corporate media and the US government itself – indicate just how deep the rot is within US foreign policymaking and helps explain why – no matter who sits in the White House – this agenda continues forward, unabated and unfazed no matter how much the light of truth is shone upon it. The fact that large amounts of resources are still being invested by Washington and the US corporate media indicates that US efforts to destabilize and destroy Syria are still very much in play – and now more than ever those seeking to restore order in Syria must guard against complacency.

[lavalampelfchild]

To Answer the Call, Ch. 1

Story Summary: The Fifth Blight is upon Ferelden.  The Grey Wardens are the only ones who stand between the people of Thedas and destruction.  But political conflict and dark ambitions severely complicate matters, leaving the Grey Wardens without support and without much hope.

Chapter Summary: Duncan has found five promising recruits for the Wardens, and now begins the journey back to Ostagar.

A/N: Multi-Warden fic with much canon divergence.

Link to Ao3: Here

Two months.  Two months since he’d set out with his Wardens to seek recruits, desperate to fill ranks too long too empty.  Two months ignoring tainted whispers tugging at his soul and crawling through his mind.  Two months of traveling, pushing onward despite exhaustion, despite fear, despite the inevitable.  

And now, nearly at the West Road, another recruit in tow, Duncan realized that he could delay no longer.

The horde was growing in the south.  It was hungry.  And it was ready to move.  Five recruits would have to be enough.  They had to get to Ostagar.

Duncan emerged by the Brecilian Forest and immediately turned his gaze to the sky.  The sun was well past its midday peak.  They had only a few hours of daylight left.

Behind him, young Velyn Mahariel stumbled and he turned.

“Do you need assistance?” he asked.  He reached for Velyn, ready to aid, but the elf tensed and spat at the ground before his feet.  Duncan stopped.  “…Very well. Then we press on.  Our camp is just ahead.”  

Velyn sneered and pointedly moved past Duncan, shooting him a vicious glower as he passed.  Duncan bit back a sigh.  He did not enjoy invoking the Right of Conscription if he could at all help it, but there was hardly a choice in the matter this time. If there was a chance that Velyn could survive his illness, and a chance that Duncan could bolster the Wardens’ numbers in Ferelden, then this was worth it.

All that remained now was to get him to Ostagar before his time ran out.  

Duncan and Velyn reached the camp as quickly as Velyn’s weakened state would allow.  Immediately, Duncan’s eyes sought out Aja Amell to assess her condition.  

She sat slightly removed from the others, leaning awkwardly against a tree.  She was completely out cold, and it certainly spoke to her level of exhaustion that she was able to fall asleep so easily in such an uncomfortable position.  Dunca’s gaze slid down to her feet and he winced.  

The wear of two months’ travel had taken its due, paid in the form of large patches of skin; Aja’s feet were red and chapped and swollen, covered with blisters and rubbed almost completely raw.  At least the wounds no longer bled.  The one silver lining of the whole thing.

It was an unfortunate and painful reality, Duncan knew, but they all had to start somewhere.  And he had a feeling that there would be many more forced marches for the Grey Wardens in the near future.  Better she build up that resilience now than later.

Duncan knelt by Aja and gently but firmly shook her shoulder.  She woke with a startled gasp, eyes wide and fearful for a moment as she flailed in confusion.  Duncan carefully removed his hand and waited patiently for her to find his gaze.  

“We must be moving now,” he said, solemn. “I am sorry to wake you, but we have no time to waste.”

Aja blinked rapidly and nodded, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and reaching for her boots.  Duncan found them first and placed them beside her.

“Wardens, recruits, ready yourselves.”  His Wardens were already on their feet, bags and weapons strapped to their backs.  Rondall gave him a nod and a small salute, while beside him Richu grunted and hefted his pack over his shoulder.  The young recruits – Gundhram excepted  - were slightly more sluggish in their movements. Duncan turned to face them all as they stood watching him, clearly waiting for their instructions.  He obliged.

“We make for Lothering. It’s a five days’ journey by the West Road.  From there, we make the four days’ journey to Ostagar.”  

The recruits nodded, grim-faced and determined.  Duncan took a moment to look over them all.  Gundhram Aeducan, former prince and commander in Orzammar.  Tristan Brosca, former carta member and (as far as Duncan was concerned) Champion of a Proving.  Ilhenan Tabris, former alienage elf and ruthless defender of her family. Aja Amell, former Circle mage and healer.  And finally, Velyn Mahariel, former warrior of the Mahariel clan and, reputably, a highly skilled bowman.  

He had hoped to have one other, but long before he reached Highever, word reached him that the Teyrnir was under new leadership, the Teyrn and his family reportedly killed.  That being the case, there had been no point in his going.  His presence would have helped nothing, and it wasn’t his place to interfere, no matter his inclinations or wishes—

Duncan shook the thoughts from his mind and turned his attentions back to the others.  

“Let us move.” 

He took point and led the party southwest.  Richu and Rondall took up the rear.  The recruits were staggered in the center.

They traveled in silence until nightfall, thankfully suffering few delays or pauses along the way. Duncan was debating the wisdom in pressing on for several more hours when Richu called to him.  

“Duncan.  We should stop.”  

Duncan turned. Hesitated.  Gestured Richu over to him.  The recruits paused and waited.

“What is it?” Duncan asked. Richu adjusted his pack and shot a glance over his shoulder.

“That Dalish isn’t lookin’ so good,” he grunted, trying to keep his voice low. “He’s barely keeping up and we ain’t even a day in.”  His eyes flickered to Aja.  “And don’t get me started on the mage.  I’d say she hit her limit back in Denerim.”

He was right on both counts, Duncan could see that.  It looks as though my decision has been made for me.  

“We’ll stop here for the night to rest,” Duncan announced to the group. “We leave tomorrow before sun-up.”

“I’ll get the fire going,” Rondall volunteered.  

“And I’ll get Aja a spot to rest.”  Richu began to make his way toward Aja, but Duncan halted him with a hand on his arm.

“Let me,” he said. “I wish to speak with her about something.  You scout the area.  I know the horde is further south, but…”  He trailed off and surveyed the surrounding area with wary uncertainty.  Richu huffed out a heavy breath.

“I feel it too.”  

“It seems the darkspawn are growing in strength.”

“Big damn surprise.”

Duncan held his breath for a moment, listening to the whispers that pulled at his mind and tugged at his soul.  They were getting louder.  “We must be prepared to move quickly.”  

Richu let out a scoff at that, glancing in the direction of the recruits.  “The dwarves and the alienage elf seem to be doing alright. But that Dalish looks like death warmed over.  And Aja’s ready to collapse, anyone can see that.”  Duncan turned and gave his companion a sharp look.

“Should it come to that, then we’ll carry her.”  He waited until he had Richu’s gaze.  “Velyn as well, or any of our recruits.  But if they do not survive…”  He placed a hand on Richu’s shoulder.  “Death is always a possibility, you know this.”

“Enough, I get it,” Richu interjected, waving a hand and shaking his head. “Can’t blame a fella for bein’ worried.”  Duncan almost chuckled at the gruff embarrassment coloring his comrade’s voice.

“I have faith in them, Richu,” he said simply.

“Yeah, yeah,” Richu huffed, gripping his sword and making his way toward the woods to the south. Rondall swiped at him as he passed, laughing as Richu grumbled and shot a halfhearted kick at his side.  Duncan hid a smile, waiting until Richu disappeared into the forest.

Around him, the recruits had found themselves their own places to set up.  All away from one another.  Not unexpected by any means, but not exactly promising.  They were soon going to be spilling blood together, eating, sleeping, living together in a way only the closest of soldiers and warriors did.  Amicable relations between them were most certainly preferable.

Biting back a sigh, Duncan made his way over to Aja, who looked as though she was about ready to collapse in the middle of the road.

“Allow me,” Duncan said, placing a hand at Aja’s back and gently guiding her to a place by the fire Rondall was starting up.  “I’m sorry to have put such a strain on you.  It is, unfortunately, necessary that we move as quickly as possible to cut off the horde before it can move further north.”  

Aja nodded and waved her hand in nervous dismissal.  “No, I understand!  I’m not—”  She paused and released a small sigh, barely hiding her frustration.  “I mean, I’m very sorry for slowing everyone down.  I tried to—”  Her lips thinned and she fell silent.  She took in a deep breath and turned to Duncan, determination and exhaustion at war on her face.  “I can handle it.”  

Duncan inclined his head, watching quietly as she returned her attention to her feet.  Her fists clenched at her side, and Duncan knew she was refraining from using her magic on her bruises.  

His eyes went to the blisters on her feet and he calculated silently.  They were nine days from Ostagar, and those nine days would take their toll.  Of that there was no doubt.  

Duncan gently placed a hand on her arm.  “If it would help, you may use a healing spell to ease some of the pain.”  

Aja’s eyes widened slightly and she turned to him in askance.  “What?  But what about…”

“The worst of our journey is behind us,” he explained. “And while the endurance – and some calluses – will be necessary on future marches, I see no reason to deny you a reprieve now.” She had certainly earned it, gamely keeping up with them all weeks prior, despite her lack of experience.

Aja seemed skeptical for a moment, but Duncan held her gaze, unblinking, as she searched his face for signs of… what?  Insincerity? Duplicity?  Duncan offered her a reassuring smile and some of the tension ebbed from her shoulders.  Almost tentatively, she unclenched her fingers and ran her hands slowly over her feet. A faint glow surrounded them, and Aja exhaled heavily, her relief clear.

“If you don’t mind, I have a request I would like to make of you,” Duncan continued.  Aja held her silence, waiting.  “Our newest recruit, Velyn—”  He indicated in the direction of the young elf.  “—Is currently suffering from a very severe illness that could end his life if left untended.”  Aja turned to glance at Velyn, brow furrowed.  “I hoped you might consider using a healing spell to stave off the worst effects of this illness.”  Aja turned back to Duncan and cast him a concerned expression.

“How long…?” she trailed off, lowering her voice as Velyn walked past them.  He took a seat a ways from the road, removed from the others. He was breathing heavily.  Aja winced.

“The illness was caused by exposure to darkspawn,” Duncan explained. “And its progression through the body does tend to vary somewhat, but Velyn has already proven extremely resilient, which gives me hope that he may survive the journey to Ostagar.” Duncan could see the alarm in Aja’s gaze as she met his eyes, and held up a calming hand.  “There is no cause to panic yet.  As I’ve said, Velyn is resilient and he has gotten through the very worst this illness has to offer.”  Here, Duncan paused and leveled Aja with a serious look.  

���But you must accept that his death is a distinct possibility.”  Aja’s eyes widened.  Duncan continued.  “There is nothing we can see in his condition now that indicates whether he will live or die, that is true.  But death is an inevitable part of being a Grey Warden, and accepting that is paramount. Do you understand?”  Aja nodded.  “Good.  Then may I count on your help?”  Again Aja nodded, a little more determination to the action this time.  Duncan returned the gesture.  “Excellent.  Thank you.”

Aja looked down at her feet and allowed the spell to taper, its light flickering out as the magic waned.  Tenderly, she began to press at the healed skin of her feet, brow furrowed, lips pulled downward.  Duncan observed quietly for a moment.

“It need not be immediate,” he offered. “I think it best that you be allowed to rest for a while before using your magic.  When Richu returns, that is when we shall have you perform the spell.  Will this do?”  

Aja nodded, leaning closer to the fire as it slowly crackled to life.  Duncan inclined his head and left her to herself.  He stood to his feet and turned to address Velyn.  

Of course, Velyn stiffened as Duncan made his way over, his distaste palpable.  Duncan proceeded regardless.

“To what do I owe the pleasure, shemlen?” Velyn sneered.  He straightened his back and narrowed his eyes at Duncan, chin tilted up defiantly, expression hard and unyielding.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, kneeling a respectful distance from the wary young elf. Velyn’s jaw tightened but he maintained his derisive look.

“Good of you to ask. I feel like my blood’s on fire, I can’t breathe sometimes, and every time I move one of my limbs I feel a shooting pain as though Elgar’nan himself is trying to rip them from my body.  I taste nothing but ash and blood, and there’s a damn buzzing in my ear that won’t go the hell away.  And my nose tickles.”  His hands clenched on the ground behind him and Duncan saw the fear swimming behind callous indifference in his eyes.  Still the sneer remained.  “So, really, I feel fine.”

“Are you finished?” Duncan deadpanned, unimpressed.  Velyn’s eyes flashed.  “If you are, I have a proposal for you, which I hope will help alleviate some of your pain.” He paused then, allowing Velyn a moment which he expected would be given to protest, but Velyn remained silent. Duncan inclined his head in silent relief and continued.

“Our mage recruit is a young woman named Aja, and is skilled in the healing arts.  Her magic has already proven useful to us in Orzammar, and I suspect the same could be true right now.  My proposal is that you allow her to use a healing spell on you.  It will not be nearly as effective as the old magic of your Keeper, but I believe it could be helpful nonetheless.”  

Velyn visibly fought a flinch at the mention of his Keeper and Duncan felt a small pang in his chest at the sight.  He pushed it down with practiced ease and waited patiently as Velyn turned to survey Aja. His eyes were inscrutable.  A moment passed.  

“…Why the hell not?” he finally mumbled. “Can’t imagine even a shem being able to make this worse.”  He turned to shoot Duncan a cautious glare.  “Now?”  

“I am allowing Aja some time to rest and prepare before performing the spell,” Duncan replied. “She will make her attempt once Richu returns.”  

Velyn grunted and turned away from Duncan, and that was that.  Duncan let him have his quiet as they waited for Richu, the camp in relative silence but for Rondall speaking casually with Gundhram.  

Richu returned earlier than Duncan expected him to, brow furrowed in irritation, but no sign of injury. Small mercies.  He shook his head as Duncan approached. 

“No darkspawn anywhere close to us,” he reported. “No people either.  I went down the road a ways, still nothing.  Ain’t nobody mad enough to attack a caravan of eight Grey Wardens armed to the teeth.”  Technically, not all are Wardens yet. Duncan smiled but didn’t bother to correct him.

Richu hesitated, his mouth twitching.  It was hardly obvious, but Duncan caught it anyway.  He waited.  Richu grunted and rubbed at his nose.  “Are we sure there aren’t any more Dalish clans nearby?  Ones that might be… less friendly than the sad sack’s over there?” He tossed his head in Velyn’s direction.

Duncan’s brow flattened into a hard line.  He understood Richu’s concern, truly, but this was not the time for it.  The Dalish were the least of their worries at the moment.

“Keeper Marethari assures me that her scouts have found no hostile clans this far north, and I take her at her word.”  His tone was firm.  Richu immediately backed off.

“Right, right, you’re the boss,” he said, holding up his hands in a ‘calm down’ gesture. “Just making sure.”  

“I understand,” Duncan inclined his head, lowering his voice. “But believe me, we have nothing to fear from the Dalish.”  And speaking of…

Duncan turned to look first at Velyn, who was struggling to maintain his sitting position, then at Aja, who seemed to be having the same struggle.  Duncan sighed.

“Aja will be using a healing spell on Velyn to see if it will help alleviate some of his pain,” he explained to Richu. “Understand; this is not the healing magic we have seen her use in combat thus far.  This magic takes time and careful preparation.  While she is using the spell, she will be vulnerable, and must be protected.  To that end, you and Rondall are to act as a first line of defense should anything come upon the camp while she is performing this spell.  Let nothing pass.”  

Richu nodded solemnly and unstrapped his sword from his back.  He went over to Rondall and gave the boy a smack on the back of his head, grunting at him to get his arse up.  Duncan made his way to Velyn.

“Time for the grand event?” Velyn drawled caustically as he approached.  Duncan nodded.  

“Are you ready?”

Velyn bared his teeth in a sharp grin.  “Are you?”

Fixing his features into an indifferent mask, Velyn pushed himself to his feet and began to make his way toward Aja.  

His fists clenched as he walked, soft tremors in his hands betraying his pain, though he maintained admirable control even in the face of that pain.  He had been through much in these recent days, far more than most could bear, and yet he endured.  Duncan could only hope that resilience would last them until Ostagar and the Joining.

As he approached Aja by the fire, Velyn tossed back his shoulders, pulling confidence over himself like a shroud.

“Well, at least I’m not surrounded by nothing but ugly shems,” he grinned, trying to lower himself smoothly to the ground.  He tossed his head carelessly in Ila’s direction.  “The flat-ear’s not so bad.”

Ila raised an eyebrow at him but said nothing in response.  Velyn winked at her, a crude expression on his face.  When she didn’t respond to that, he shrugged and leaned back on his elbows, turning his scrutinizing gaze onto Aja.  

“…Could be worse,” he mumbled. “So, what has the shemlen mage got in store for me?  Gonna magic the curse from my blood?  Good luck with that, I suppose.  My Keeper couldn’t manage it, and I’m guessing your magic isn’t quite up to Dalish Keeper standards, but hey.  Anything’s possible, right?”  His eyes flashed in the dark and Aja tensed.

“If you could hold still, please,” she requested, her voice terse.  Velyn chuckled. 

“No need to sound so formal, shem,” he shot. “We’ll be comrades-in-arms soon, won’t we?  Why, we should be—”

“Will ya shut your yap and let her get on with it, elf?” Richu growled from the edge of camp. “Had enough of your nonsense.”  

Velyn jerked at that and shot a glare at the offending Warden.  Aja was silent, but Duncan caught the barest upward twitch of her lips.

Well, this journey certainly wouldn’t be lacking in excitement.  

“…Fine then, shem.” Velyn turned his head away, expression guarded.  “Get to it.”

Aja inclined her head and inhaled deeply.  The camp fell to silence as she breathed; to Duncan’s eyes she seemed to be indulging in one final moment of preparation.  

A moment passed and she finally straightened her back and reached for Velyn.  He tensed in apprehension, but Aja’s hands never actually touched him.  They hovered above his head first, a light glow surrounding them, and then moved slowly downward, steady and purposeful. 

Duncan silently marveled at the young mage’s will that she should be able to maintain such a steady stream of mana despite her exhaustion.

She swallowed and stilled her hands above Velyn’s chest.  She seemed to have found the best place to focus her magic.  

Under her skilled ministrations, Velyn sat unmoving, rigid in silence, eyes wide with wariness and something that might have been awe.  It made him look younger and oddly vulnerable.  

The glow of magic surrounded and seeped into him, and the longer Aja held the spell, the more he seemed to lose the will to maintain his suspicion, reclining until he was flat on his back, eyes still straining to see her hands.

As the healing continued, Duncan allowed himself to survey the other recruits.  It occurred to him that this was likely their first time witnessing such magic.  As he observed, it became apparent that the dwarves were quite adept at shielding any curiosity they may have felt.  Tristan had subtly moved himself so that he was further from Aja and Velyn, his face inscrutable but for a small furrow at his brow.  Wariness was a likely cause of that, Duncan guessed.

As for Gundhram, he appeared to be… stoic.  His face was a mask of control and discipline, and if there lay any curiosity beneath that mask, Duncan couldn’t see it.  He found, in fact, that he had some difficulty in reading Gundhram’s expression.  

It was, to Duncan’s mild surprise, Ila who was the most expressive.  Her face revealed open curiosity and fascination, and her ears occasionally twitched in a way that Duncan had come to understand was a significant… tell for many elves.

He turned his attention back to Aja and Velyn.  His brow furrowed and he felt something heavy settle in his stomach.  

Several minutes earlier, her magic had been pouring from her hands in steady warm streams.  Now, it crackled and flickered as she struggled to hold the spell steady.  It did not look to be going well.

“Aja, that should be sufficient,” he said sharply, walking over to them and placing a staying hand on her arm.  She ignored him, still focusing on the spell.  At this proximity, Duncan could see just how tired she was.  Her face shone with sweat, her hands were shaking in earnest, and her breath was falling heavily from her lips.  “Aja.” She shook her head.  

“No, I can—!”  Her voice stuttered and she tried again.  “I can help!  He just-I just need to—”

“Recruit, that is enough. You will cease your actions immediately,” Duncan commanded.  Aja froze, her spell faltering.  A hush fell over the group, and after a beat of silence, Aja slowly pulled her hands back to her lap.  Duncan removed his hand from her arm and softened his voice.  “You did well, Aja.  Thank you for aiding him.”  Aja winced and determinedly avoided his gaze.

“…I do feel a bit better,” Velyn mumbled eventually, his eyes flitting to Aja and then away. Duncan held his silence.  In truth, Velyn looked no better or worse than he’d been before Aja had used her magic.

“You both need rest,” he said reasonably. “We make an early start tomorrow.”

“C’mon, girl, to sleep with you,” Richu made his way over and knelt beside Aja, a hand at her shoulder. Her lips thinned and she leaned slightly away from Duncan as she replied, “I should have been able to—”

“That’s enough out of you. You’re wasting valuable time with this.” He paused.  “Mine as well as yours, come t’think of it.”  Aja let out a huff of a breath that might have been a laugh, and Duncan watched as Richu coaxed her to her feet and led her over to one of the bedrolls, uncharacteristically gentle with her. 

Duncan remembered that Richu had left behind a daughter when he’d joined the Wardens.  

He turned back to Velyn. “Would you like to move to one of the bedrolls?  I’m sure that would be more comfortable than—”

“I’m fine,” Velyn hissed, turning roughly onto his side, away from Duncan.  Duncan only barely resisted the urge to shake his head in frustration.

Standing to his feet, Duncan spoke to the entire camp.  “We’ll take the night watch in two-hour shifts.  I shall take the first and last.  Rondall, you will take the second.”  Rondall nodded and settled easily into his bedroll.  “Richu, the third.”  Richu responded with a gruff “aye” and moved to his bedroll. “Gundhram, you will take the fourth.” Gundhram inclined his head.  “Before dawn tomorrow, we leave.”  There was a murmur of assent throughout the camp and Duncan, satisfied, began his watch.

His Wardens fell easily into a light sleep, used to taking rest wherever and whenever they could manage. For the recruits, on the other hand, sleep seemed slightly more elusive at first.  Eventually, however, they all settled, and Duncan allowed himself some measure of relief.  

They had all done well – the mage and dwarves especially – traveling for as long as they had, and it seemed as though they could at least manage some level of comradely interaction, though none went out of their way to befriend anyone else.  

Gundhram had been amicable enough with Aja after being recruited from Orzammar, though his attempts at friendly acquaintanceship with Tristan had been rejected with brusque indifference.  Ila, once she had joined, had proven to be quite capable of interacting positively with her peers, though she didn’t seem to enjoy socializing as a rule.  But now Velyn was added to the mix… 

This, his first interactions with his new companions, was not exactly promising.  Duncan suspected that he saw his fellow recruits as simply more of the same, more like Duncan, more of the group that coerced unwilling warriors into their ranks, and that that was why he reacted to them so strongly and negatively.  

Understandable, though worrisome.  If he continued to let sarcasm and rudeness guide his tongue, then it was very possible that he could drive a wedge between himself and his fellow Wardens in the future.

Though, it was possible that the others had thicker skin than Duncan gave them credit for.

But now was not the time for such thoughts.  Now was the time for vigilance.  

And so, as the moon emerged to light the sky, and the fire of their camp slowly died to a dim crackle, Duncan turned from the others and took up the watch.

[7newx1]

After more than a year of bitter political dispute and maneuvering, Israel is about to have a coalition government. It took three elections and an unprecedented public-health crisis to get the country to this point.Benny Gantz, a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces and the leader of the opposition Blue and White Party, was faced with a choice this week. He could join Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or he could stick to the commitment he’d made to his supporters to bring Bibi down. As the country dealt with the coronavirus pandemic, Gantz’s continued refusal to join a coalition would likely have plunged it into the agony of a fourth election in less than two years. He chose to throw in with Netanyahu.The price of that decision, which Gantz described as a patriotic duty at a time of national distress, was the destruction of the Blue and White. The year-old political alliance had presented the most potent challenge to Netanyahu’s grip on power in more than a decade, propelling Gantz to the brink of becoming his successor.In the new coalition, Gantz will reportedly serve as foreign minister, with Netanyahu continuing as prime minister. The agreement calls for him to switch places with Netanyahu after 18 months, ending the latter’s run as the country’s longest-serving prime minister. But this will not be a broad unity coalition with Netanyahu’s Likud and its right-wing and religious-party allies; rather, Gantz will take only part of his faction into the new government.Gantz took his decision in the midst of a tense and complicated squabble. The Knesset that was elected earlier this month struggled to organize itself in the absence of a governing majority for either Netanyahu or Gantz. Netanyahu and his bloc had 58 seats in the 120-seat parliament, leaving him three short of the votes he needed to continue in power. Gantz had the endorsement of 61 members, but that included the 15 seats held by the Arab Joint List, an alliance of four parties comprising Islamists, Palestinian nationalists, and Communists. A number of Knesset members from the Blue and White refused to serve in a government that depended on the votes of an alliance with the declared intent of ending Israel’s status as a Jewish state. Thus Gantz, too, lacked the votes to create a government.A similar impasse after the two previous elections, held in April and September 2019, had led to the March 2 general election. On both sides of the political divide, there were some who were prepared to take their chances a fourth time in order to get a decisive result. But fate in the form of the coronavirus pandemic intervened.Netanyahu, as the head of a caretaker government, embraced the crisis as only an experienced policymaker and wartime leader could. Some of his leftist critics decried the emergency measures he ordered to contain the coronavirus contagion, charging him with exploiting the crisis to bolster his political standing and to distract the country from the fact that he is still facing trial on three corruption charges. Indeed, some regarded his decision to close the courts, one result of which was to postpone the start of his trial, as an assault on democracy. But polls show that most Israelis believe he is once again demonstrating his competence in dealing with an emergency.The incumbent prime minister knew that, though his opponent couldn’t form a government, Gantz did have the votes to effectively prevent Netanyahu from remaining in power. The critical factor was the position of Speaker of the Knesset, which has been held by a Netanyahu loyalist. A coalition of the Blue and White, smaller leftist parties, and the Joint List could have elected a new Speaker, and the Knesset could then have passed a law banning anyone under indictment from serving as prime minister. To members of the opposition, this was Gantz’s golden opportunity to take Netanyahu down. Indeed, the Blue and White — a diverse alliance including former members of the once-dominant Labor Party, a right-wing faction led by former general and Likud defense minister Moshe Ya’alon, the left-leaning Yesh Atid Party, and Gantz’s own centrist faction — was united by only one common purpose: pushing Netanyahu out the door.Though Gantz entered politics as a much-needed fresh face a year ago, after three bruising election campaigns he is now widely seen as lacking the energy and political skills that Netanyahu possesses. Moreover, Gantz had campaigned on a promise not to form a government that would be dependent on the anti-Zionists of the Joint List, and his flirtation with that alliance in the weeks since the last election had soured voters on the Blue and White. Going to a fourth election was therefore a big risk for the party, with polls suggesting not a big or even a narrow win but in fact a decisive defeat. The electorate leans right to begin with, on top of which it was most likely to want a familiar steady hand to lead the country through the pandemic crisis. Thus Gantz came to the conclusion that joining the prime minister was the only reasonable choice.But if he thought he could bring all of his party with him into Netanyahu’s cabinet, he was dead wrong. Leaders of the factions within the opposition regarded Gantz’s decision as a betrayal, not only of them personally but of the million Israelis who voted for them. Much of Israel’s left-leaning mainstream media, especially columnists in Haaretz, the newspaper that dubs itself Israel’s version of the New York Times, echoed this sentiment, lambasting Gantz for his cowardice and for just being too exhausted to carry on the fight.So what becomes of the Blue and White? Some factions will stay in the opposition, and since they will have more Knesset seats than Gantz’s own faction, they will likely retain the Blue and White label. But in effect, this split spells the end of the party that had presented the most formidable challenge that Netanyahu has faced since 2009. Moreover, given that the factions disagree on most policy questions, the ability of the party, or what’s left of it, to serve as an effective opposition is questionable.The exact terms of Gantz’s deal with Netanyahu have yet to be formalized. Gantz signaled his deal with the prime minister by having himself elected Speaker of the Knesset with Likud support — presumably only until the final bargain is sealed. In doing so, he prevented the Blue and White from wielding any remaining leverage to block the coalition. The arrangement hinges on a rotation of the office of prime minister after 18 months and on allowing Gantz’s allies to lead the ministries of defense and justice. Having one of Gantz’s allies in the latter post will ensure that, once the national coronavirus lockdown has been lifted and the courts reopened, Netanyahu’s trial will go forward.As things stand, it appears that Netanyahu’s rule will end either with a conviction or with the prime minister’s scheduled handing over of the office to Gantz — whichever comes first. Still, many in the Likud as well as Blue and White believe that if Netanyahu is acquitted, he will find a way to renege on his deal with Gantz. Indeed, it may be that Gantz suspects the same thing.Gantz has gone from the savior of Israel’s left-wing opposition to its bête noire. But he understood that the political stalemate could not go on: It was preventing the country from passing a budget that was needed, most urgently, to provide relief to citizens in the face of the pandemic and to shore up the economy. Dragging out the stalemate was neither rational policy nor good politics. Deciding to end it may have cost Gantz a political future, since it’s unlikely he will be able to reassemble another formidable coalition. Whether or not he really does become prime minister in September 2021, Gantz decided that destroying his party was not too high a price to pay for saving his country from further chaos in the midst of a pandemic.

[newseveryhourly]

After more than a year of bitter political dispute and maneuvering, Israel is about to have a coalition government. It took three elections and an unprecedented public-health crisis to get the country to this point.Benny Gantz, a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces and the leader of the opposition Blue and White Party, was faced with a choice this week. He could join Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or he could stick to the commitment he’d made to his supporters to bring Bibi down. As the country dealt with the coronavirus pandemic, Gantz’s continued refusal to join a coalition would likely have plunged it into the agony of a fourth election in less than two years. He chose to throw in with Netanyahu.The price of that decision, which Gantz described as a patriotic duty at a time of national distress, was the destruction of the Blue and White. The year-old political alliance had presented the most potent challenge to Netanyahu’s grip on power in more than a decade, propelling Gantz to the brink of becoming his successor.In the new coalition, Gantz will reportedly serve as foreign minister, with Netanyahu continuing as prime minister. The agreement calls for him to switch places with Netanyahu after 18 months, ending the latter’s run as the country’s longest-serving prime minister. But this will not be a broad unity coalition with Netanyahu’s Likud and its right-wing and religious-party allies; rather, Gantz will take only part of his faction into the new government.Gantz took his decision in the midst of a tense and complicated squabble. The Knesset that was elected earlier this month struggled to organize itself in the absence of a governing majority for either Netanyahu or Gantz. Netanyahu and his bloc had 58 seats in the 120-seat parliament, leaving him three short of the votes he needed to continue in power. Gantz had the endorsement of 61 members, but that included the 15 seats held by the Arab Joint List, an alliance of four parties comprising Islamists, Palestinian nationalists, and Communists. A number of Knesset members from the Blue and White refused to serve in a government that depended on the votes of an alliance with the declared intent of ending Israel’s status as a Jewish state. Thus Gantz, too, lacked the votes to create a government.A similar impasse after the two previous elections, held in April and September 2019, had led to the March 2 general election. On both sides of the political divide, there were some who were prepared to take their chances a fourth time in order to get a decisive result. But fate in the form of the coronavirus pandemic intervened.Netanyahu, as the head of a caretaker government, embraced the crisis as only an experienced policymaker and wartime leader could. Some of his leftist critics decried the emergency measures he ordered to contain the coronavirus contagion, charging him with exploiting the crisis to bolster his political standing and to distract the country from the fact that he is still facing trial on three corruption charges. Indeed, some regarded his decision to close the courts, one result of which was to postpone the start of his trial, as an assault on democracy. But polls show that most Israelis believe he is once again demonstrating his competence in dealing with an emergency.The incumbent prime minister knew that, though his opponent couldn’t form a government, Gantz did have the votes to effectively prevent Netanyahu from remaining in power. The critical factor was the position of Speaker of the Knesset, which has been held by a Netanyahu loyalist. A coalition of the Blue and White, smaller leftist parties, and the Joint List could have elected a new Speaker, and the Knesset could then have passed a law banning anyone under indictment from serving as prime minister. To members of the opposition, this was Gantz’s golden opportunity to take Netanyahu down. Indeed, the Blue and White — a diverse alliance including former members of the once-dominant Labor Party, a right-wing faction led by former general and Likud defense minister Moshe Ya’alon, the left-leaning Yesh Atid Party, and Gantz’s own centrist faction — was united by only one common purpose: pushing Netanyahu out the door.Though Gantz entered politics as a much-needed fresh face a year ago, after three bruising election campaigns he is now widely seen as lacking the energy and political skills that Netanyahu possesses. Moreover, Gantz had campaigned on a promise not to form a government that would be dependent on the anti-Zionists of the Joint List, and his flirtation with that alliance in the weeks since the last election had soured voters on the Blue and White. Going to a fourth election was therefore a big risk for the party, with polls suggesting not a big or even a narrow win but in fact a decisive defeat. The electorate leans right to begin with, on top of which it was most likely to want a familiar steady hand to lead the country through the pandemic crisis. Thus Gantz came to the conclusion that joining the prime minister was the only reasonable choice.But if he thought he could bring all of his party with him into Netanyahu’s cabinet, he was dead wrong. Leaders of the factions within the opposition regarded Gantz’s decision as a betrayal, not only of them personally but of the million Israelis who voted for them. Much of Israel’s left-leaning mainstream media, especially columnists in Haaretz, the newspaper that dubs itself Israel’s version of the New York Times, echoed this sentiment, lambasting Gantz for his cowardice and for just being too exhausted to carry on the fight.So what becomes of the Blue and White? Some factions will stay in the opposition, and since they will have more Knesset seats than Gantz’s own faction, they will likely retain the Blue and White label. But in effect, this split spells the end of the party that had presented the most formidable challenge that Netanyahu has faced since 2009. Moreover, given that the factions disagree on most policy questions, the ability of the party, or what’s left of it, to serve as an effective opposition is questionable.The exact terms of Gantz’s deal with Netanyahu have yet to be formalized. Gantz signaled his deal with the prime minister by having himself elected Speaker of the Knesset with Likud support — presumably only until the final bargain is sealed. In doing so, he prevented the Blue and White from wielding any remaining leverage to block the coalition. The arrangement hinges on a rotation of the office of prime minister after 18 months and on allowing Gantz’s allies to lead the ministries of defense and justice. Having one of Gantz’s allies in the latter post will ensure that, once the national coronavirus lockdown has been lifted and the courts reopened, Netanyahu’s trial will go forward.As things stand, it appears that Netanyahu’s rule will end either with a conviction or with the prime minister’s scheduled handing over of the office to Gantz — whichever comes first. Still, many in the Likud as well as Blue and White believe that if Netanyahu is acquitted, he will find a way to renege on his deal with Gantz. Indeed, it may be that Gantz suspects the same thing.Gantz has gone from the savior of Israel’s left-wing opposition to its bête noire. But he understood that the political stalemate could not go on: It was preventing the country from passing a budget that was needed, most urgently, to provide relief to citizens in the face of the pandemic and to shore up the economy. Dragging out the stalemate was neither rational policy nor good politics. Deciding to end it may have cost Gantz a political future, since it’s unlikely he will be able to reassemble another formidable coalition. Whether or not he really does become prime minister in September 2021, Gantz decided that destroying his party was not too high a price to pay for saving his country from further chaos in the midst of a pandemic.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2Jn0s8O

[teeky185]

After more than a year of bitter political dispute and maneuvering, Israel is about to have a coalition government. It took three elections and an unprecedented public-health crisis to get the country to this point.Benny Gantz, a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces and the leader of the opposition Blue and White Party, was faced with a choice this week. He could join Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or he could stick to the commitment he’d made to his supporters to bring Bibi down. As the country dealt with the coronavirus pandemic, Gantz’s continued refusal to join a coalition would likely have plunged it into the agony of a fourth election in less than two years. He chose to throw in with Netanyahu.The price of that decision, which Gantz described as a patriotic duty at a time of national distress, was the destruction of the Blue and White. The year-old political alliance had presented the most potent challenge to Netanyahu’s grip on power in more than a decade, propelling Gantz to the brink of becoming his successor.In the new coalition, Gantz will reportedly serve as foreign minister, with Netanyahu continuing as prime minister. The agreement calls for him to switch places with Netanyahu after 18 months, ending the latter’s run as the country’s longest-serving prime minister. But this will not be a broad unity coalition with Netanyahu’s Likud and its right-wing and religious-party allies; rather, Gantz will take only part of his faction into the new government.Gantz took his decision in the midst of a tense and complicated squabble. The Knesset that was elected earlier this month struggled to organize itself in the absence of a governing majority for either Netanyahu or Gantz. Netanyahu and his bloc had 58 seats in the 120-seat parliament, leaving him three short of the votes he needed to continue in power. Gantz had the endorsement of 61 members, but that included the 15 seats held by the Arab Joint List, an alliance of four parties comprising Islamists, Palestinian nationalists, and Communists. A number of Knesset members from the Blue and White refused to serve in a government that depended on the votes of an alliance with the declared intent of ending Israel’s status as a Jewish state. Thus Gantz, too, lacked the votes to create a government.A similar impasse after the two previous elections, held in April and September 2019, had led to the March 2 general election. On both sides of the political divide, there were some who were prepared to take their chances a fourth time in order to get a decisive result. But fate in the form of the coronavirus pandemic intervened.Netanyahu, as the head of a caretaker government, embraced the crisis as only an experienced policymaker and wartime leader could. Some of his leftist critics decried the emergency measures he ordered to contain the coronavirus contagion, charging him with exploiting the crisis to bolster his political standing and to distract the country from the fact that he is still facing trial on three corruption charges. Indeed, some regarded his decision to close the courts, one result of which was to postpone the start of his trial, as an assault on democracy. But polls show that most Israelis believe he is once again demonstrating his competence in dealing with an emergency.The incumbent prime minister knew that, though his opponent couldn’t form a government, Gantz did have the votes to effectively prevent Netanyahu from remaining in power. The critical factor was the position of Speaker of the Knesset, which has been held by a Netanyahu loyalist. A coalition of the Blue and White, smaller leftist parties, and the Joint List could have elected a new Speaker, and the Knesset could then have passed a law banning anyone under indictment from serving as prime minister. To members of the opposition, this was Gantz’s golden opportunity to take Netanyahu down. Indeed, the Blue and White — a diverse alliance including former members of the once-dominant Labor Party, a right-wing faction led by former general and Likud defense minister Moshe Ya’alon, the left-leaning Yesh Atid Party, and Gantz’s own centrist faction — was united by only one common purpose: pushing Netanyahu out the door.Though Gantz entered politics as a much-needed fresh face a year ago, after three bruising election campaigns he is now widely seen as lacking the energy and political skills that Netanyahu possesses. Moreover, Gantz had campaigned on a promise not to form a government that would be dependent on the anti-Zionists of the Joint List, and his flirtation with that alliance in the weeks since the last election had soured voters on the Blue and White. Going to a fourth election was therefore a big risk for the party, with polls suggesting not a big or even a narrow win but in fact a decisive defeat. The electorate leans right to begin with, on top of which it was most likely to want a familiar steady hand to lead the country through the pandemic crisis. Thus Gantz came to the conclusion that joining the prime minister was the only reasonable choice.But if he thought he could bring all of his party with him into Netanyahu’s cabinet, he was dead wrong. Leaders of the factions within the opposition regarded Gantz’s decision as a betrayal, not only of them personally but of the million Israelis who voted for them. Much of Israel’s left-leaning mainstream media, especially columnists in Haaretz, the newspaper that dubs itself Israel’s version of the New York Times, echoed this sentiment, lambasting Gantz for his cowardice and for just being too exhausted to carry on the fight.So what becomes of the Blue and White? Some factions will stay in the opposition, and since they will have more Knesset seats than Gantz’s own faction, they will likely retain the Blue and White label. But in effect, this split spells the end of the party that had presented the most formidable challenge that Netanyahu has faced since 2009. Moreover, given that the factions disagree on most policy questions, the ability of the party, or what’s left of it, to serve as an effective opposition is questionable.The exact terms of Gantz’s deal with Netanyahu have yet to be formalized. Gantz signaled his deal with the prime minister by having himself elected Speaker of the Knesset with Likud support — presumably only until the final bargain is sealed. In doing so, he prevented the Blue and White from wielding any remaining leverage to block the coalition. The arrangement hinges on a rotation of the office of prime minister after 18 months and on allowing Gantz’s allies to lead the ministries of defense and justice. Having one of Gantz’s allies in the latter post will ensure that, once the national coronavirus lockdown has been lifted and the courts reopened, Netanyahu’s trial will go forward.As things stand, it appears that Netanyahu’s rule will end either with a conviction or with the prime minister’s scheduled handing over of the office to Gantz — whichever comes first. Still, many in the Likud as well as Blue and White believe that if Netanyahu is acquitted, he will find a way to renege on his deal with Gantz. Indeed, it may be that Gantz suspects the same thing.Gantz has gone from the savior of Israel’s left-wing opposition to its bête noire. But he understood that the political stalemate could not go on: It was preventing the country from passing a budget that was needed, most urgently, to provide relief to citizens in the face of the pandemic and to shore up the economy. Dragging out the stalemate was neither rational policy nor good politics. Deciding to end it may have cost Gantz a political future, since it’s unlikely he will be able to reassemble another formidable coalition. Whether or not he really does become prime minister in September 2021, Gantz decided that destroying his party was not too high a price to pay for saving his country from further chaos in the midst of a pandemic.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2Jn0s8O

[lovehardenemycollector]

After more than a year of bitter political dispute and maneuvering, Israel is about to have a coalition government. It took three elections and an unprecedented public-health crisis to get the country to this point.Benny Gantz, a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces and the leader of the opposition Blue and White Party, was faced with a choice this week. He could join Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or he could stick to the commitment he’d made to his supporters to bring Bibi down. As the country dealt with the coronavirus pandemic, Gantz’s continued refusal to join a coalition would likely have plunged it into the agony of a fourth election in less than two years. He chose to throw in with Netanyahu.The price of that decision, which Gantz described as a patriotic duty at a time of national distress, was the destruction of the Blue and White. The year-old political alliance had presented the most potent challenge to Netanyahu’s grip on power in more than a decade, propelling Gantz to the brink of becoming his successor.In the new coalition, Gantz will reportedly serve as foreign minister, with Netanyahu continuing as prime minister. The agreement calls for him to switch places with Netanyahu after 18 months, ending the latter’s run as the country’s longest-serving prime minister. But this will not be a broad unity coalition with Netanyahu’s Likud and its right-wing and religious-party allies; rather, Gantz will take only part of his faction into the new government.Gantz took his decision in the midst of a tense and complicated squabble. The Knesset that was elected earlier this month struggled to organize itself in the absence of a governing majority for either Netanyahu or Gantz. Netanyahu and his bloc had 58 seats in the 120-seat parliament, leaving him three short of the votes he needed to continue in power. Gantz had the endorsement of 61 members, but that included the 15 seats held by the Arab Joint List, an alliance of four parties comprising Islamists, Palestinian nationalists, and Communists. A number of Knesset members from the Blue and White refused to serve in a government that depended on the votes of an alliance with the declared intent of ending Israel’s status as a Jewish state. Thus Gantz, too, lacked the votes to create a government.A similar impasse after the two previous elections, held in April and September 2019, had led to the March 2 general election. On both sides of the political divide, there were some who were prepared to take their chances a fourth time in order to get a decisive result. But fate in the form of the coronavirus pandemic intervened.Netanyahu, as the head of a caretaker government, embraced the crisis as only an experienced policymaker and wartime leader could. Some of his leftist critics decried the emergency measures he ordered to contain the coronavirus contagion, charging him with exploiting the crisis to bolster his political standing and to distract the country from the fact that he is still facing trial on three corruption charges. Indeed, some regarded his decision to close the courts, one result of which was to postpone the start of his trial, as an assault on democracy. But polls show that most Israelis believe he is once again demonstrating his competence in dealing with an emergency.The incumbent prime minister knew that, though his opponent couldn’t form a government, Gantz did have the votes to effectively prevent Netanyahu from remaining in power. The critical factor was the position of Speaker of the Knesset, which has been held by a Netanyahu loyalist. A coalition of the Blue and White, smaller leftist parties, and the Joint List could have elected a new Speaker, and the Knesset could then have passed a law banning anyone under indictment from serving as prime minister. To members of the opposition, this was Gantz’s golden opportunity to take Netanyahu down. Indeed, the Blue and White — a diverse alliance including former members of the once-dominant Labor Party, a right-wing faction led by former general and Likud defense minister Moshe Ya’alon, the left-leaning Yesh Atid Party, and Gantz’s own centrist faction — was united by only one common purpose: pushing Netanyahu out the door.Though Gantz entered politics as a much-needed fresh face a year ago, after three bruising election campaigns he is now widely seen as lacking the energy and political skills that Netanyahu possesses. Moreover, Gantz had campaigned on a promise not to form a government that would be dependent on the anti-Zionists of the Joint List, and his flirtation with that alliance in the weeks since the last election had soured voters on the Blue and White. Going to a fourth election was therefore a big risk for the party, with polls suggesting not a big or even a narrow win but in fact a decisive defeat. The electorate leans right to begin with, on top of which it was most likely to want a familiar steady hand to lead the country through the pandemic crisis. Thus Gantz came to the conclusion that joining the prime minister was the only reasonable choice.But if he thought he could bring all of his party with him into Netanyahu’s cabinet, he was dead wrong. Leaders of the factions within the opposition regarded Gantz’s decision as a betrayal, not only of them personally but of the million Israelis who voted for them. Much of Israel’s left-leaning mainstream media, especially columnists in Haaretz, the newspaper that dubs itself Israel’s version of the New York Times, echoed this sentiment, lambasting Gantz for his cowardice and for just being too exhausted to carry on the fight.So what becomes of the Blue and White? Some factions will stay in the opposition, and since they will have more Knesset seats than Gantz’s own faction, they will likely retain the Blue and White label. But in effect, this split spells the end of the party that had presented the most formidable challenge that Netanyahu has faced since 2009. Moreover, given that the factions disagree on most policy questions, the ability of the party, or what’s left of it, to serve as an effective opposition is questionable.The exact terms of Gantz’s deal with Netanyahu have yet to be formalized. Gantz signaled his deal with the prime minister by having himself elected Speaker of the Knesset with Likud support — presumably only until the final bargain is sealed. In doing so, he prevented the Blue and White from wielding any remaining leverage to block the coalition. The arrangement hinges on a rotation of the office of prime minister after 18 months and on allowing Gantz’s allies to lead the ministries of defense and justice. Having one of Gantz’s allies in the latter post will ensure that, once the national coronavirus lockdown has been lifted and the courts reopened, Netanyahu’s trial will go forward.As things stand, it appears that Netanyahu’s rule will end either with a conviction or with the prime minister’s scheduled handing over of the office to Gantz — whichever comes first. Still, many in the Likud as well as Blue and White believe that if Netanyahu is acquitted, he will find a way to renege on his deal with Gantz. Indeed, it may be that Gantz suspects the same thing.Gantz has gone from the savior of Israel’s left-wing opposition to its bête noire. But he understood that the political stalemate could not go on: It was preventing the country from passing a budget that was needed, most urgently, to provide relief to citizens in the face of the pandemic and to shore up the economy. Dragging out the stalemate was neither rational policy nor good politics. Deciding to end it may have cost Gantz a political future, since it’s unlikely he will be able to reassemble another formidable coalition. Whether or not he really does become prime minister in September 2021, Gantz decided that destroying his party was not too high a price to pay for saving his country from further chaos in the midst of a pandemic.

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[thisdaynews]

Trump wants to talk. Iran isn’t interested.

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/trump-wants-to-talk-iran-isnt-interested/

Trump wants to talk. Iran isn’t interested.

“We are fully prepared to enrich uranium at any level and with any amount,” said Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, according to media reports. | Ebrahim Noroozi/AP Photo

Defense

When it comes to nuclear negotiations, Iran is not North Korea.

President Donald Trump wants to sit down with Iranian leaders — but they don’t share his eagerness to talk, revealing the limits of the president’s personal diplomatic overtures.

While another adversary, North Korea, has come to the table for one-on-ones with Trump, Tehran on Sunday responded to Trump’s combination of pleas and economic sanctions with provocation.

Story Continued Below

Iranian officials said they would, within hours, start enriching uranium above the limits set under a 2015 international nuclear deal, the latest in a series of potentially fatal stab-wounds in the agreement. They also said Iran would keep reducing its compliance with the deal every 60 days unless world powers shield it from the sanctions that Trump reimposed after quitting the agreement last year.

“We are fully prepared to enrich uranium at any level and with any amount,” said Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, according to media reports.

It’s an approach that has left the two countries at risk of an eventual military confrontation.

But Iran’s moves are a calculated gamble, officials and analysts said — an attempt to both rebuke Trump and pressure European leaders, who are trying to salvage the nuclear deal, to stand up to the United States. The Iranians also may be betting that Trump, who has shown little appetite for war, will fold first, lifting sanctions in exchange for talks.

Iran is “testing limits to gauge the response of the U.S. and the other key stakeholders,” said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran scholar at the Brookings Institution. “It’s a very effective way to try to read a mercurial U.S. administration and inject some greater urgency among the other parties to the deal.”

A U.S. official familiar with the issue told POLITICO on Sunday that the Trump team hopes for three things: that Europe imposes some sanctions on Iran to keep it from further violating the deal; that a financial mechanism the Europeans have set up to help Iran obtain non-sanctioned goods succeeds; and that recent U.S. military maneuvers in the Middle East are enough to deter Iran from further military escalation.

“Fundamentally, we want them to stay in the deal,” the U.S. official said, when asked why the Trump administration wants the European financial mechanism, known as INSTEX, to work. There’s no desire to engage in an all-out war with Iran or see it build a nuclear weapon, the official said.

Both Iran and North Korea have faced Trump’s fury over their nuclear programs, including his imposition of severe sanctions. But while North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, who already possesses nuclear weapons, has accepted talks, Iran’s Islamist rulers, who lack nukes, remain unwilling to talk to Trump.

The reasons are many. Iran has an anti-U.S. ideology forged during a revolution 40 years ago — its leaders rarely respond well to insults and threats from a country they call the “Great Satan.” And unlike North Korea, where Kim rules with an iron fist, Iran has competing political power centers, even if Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei technically has the final say.

Additionally, Tehran is still smarting from Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the 2015 nuclear deal. There’s also lingering suspicion in Tehran that the Trump administration really wants to oust the Iranian regime — not just change its behavior.

Kim, on the other hand, may see more use in talking to Trump than goading him, even if the pair traded heated rhetorical barbs in 2017. The 30-something dictator may be willing to try the negotiations route because he already has built a nuclear arsenal and is less worried about a U.S. attack.

Kim’s goal, some analysts say, is to improve his country’s economy, and bolster his rule, by convincing Trump to remove sanctions. Kim may be betting that he can convince Trump to at least offer some sanctions relief for limited nuclear-related promises on his part.

Iran, meanwhile, insists it has no desire to build a nuclear weapon. The oil-rich country has always said its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, such as generating energy. But there’s always the possibility that Trump’s willingness to sit down with Kim could lead Iran to decide that it needs to have a nuclear weapon for more long-term leverage.

Any such move by Iran, however, could have immediate consequences, including spurring a new Middle East war or a nuclear arms race. U.S. allies in the Middle East — notably Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — are loathe to see Iran become a nuclear state. Israel has even suggested in the past it would launch a preventive strike to keep Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

The possibility of a military confrontation is already high in the Middle East following a series of attacks on international oil tankers that the U.S. has blamed on Iran. The U.S. has sent hundreds more troops to the region as a hedge against Tehran.

To some Iran watchers, Tehran is erring by not talking to Trump now.

“Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei would be smart to follow Kim’s approach,” said Mark Dubowitz of the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which generally supports Trump’s tough policies toward Iran. “The deal of the century could await him if he put aside decades of anti-Americanism and met Trump at a summit.”

But to others, Iran’s reticence is predictable. “You can’t overcome some aspects of the revolutionary ideology still in Iran today,” Maloney said. Unlike North Korea’s Kim, “Iranians complicate their own path by being incapable of that kind of heroic flexibility.”

In any case, comparisons between the two countries can only go so far. “They’resuis generis. They’re extremely different,” a former top Obama administration official said. “They do watch each other, though, they do.”

Trump has repeatedly made it clear that he would rather talk to Iran than fight.

He called off a military strike on Iran at the last minute last month after it shot down a U.S. drone, has promised the country economic riches if it bends to his demands and has quite literally urged Iran to “call me.” The president and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have even said the U.S. is willing to talk to Iran without any pre-conditions.

It’s also clear that Trump worries that a war with Iran would hurt him with his Republican electoral base during the 2020 election. He ran for office promising to pull the U.S. out of Middle East entanglements.

But as he often does, Trump has undermined himself by being inconsistent. He has threatened to “obliterate” Iran, beefed up America’s troop presence in the Middle East and sanctioned Khamenei. The Trump administration has also threatened to sanction Iran’s foreign minister, a move that would further undermine a shot at diplomacy.

Last week, as it became clear Iran would move toward greater enrichment of uranium, Trump tweeted: “Be careful with the threats, Iran. They can come back to bite you like nobody has been bitten before!”

Trump has said the 2015 nuclear deal wasn’t long-lasting enough and that it should have covered Iran’s many troubling non-nuclear activities. In recent months, however, he’s further confused the situation by saying he simply wants Iran to give up any path to nuclear weapons. At other times, he has said he also wants Iran to stop funding “terror” groups.

Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader, has repeatedly dismissed the possibility of talking to Trump. The country’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, recently said Iran won’t bow to threats from anyone.

“We will not give in to international pressure and along with the people of the world,” he said, according to media reports. “We will make them talk to the people of Iran with language of respect and never threaten an Iranian.”

Trump initially pursued a tough approach with North Korea before turning to personal diplomacy. He threatened Kim with “fire and fury,” heaped sanctions on his regime and boasted that his nuclear button was “bigger” than the autocrat’s. Kim responded with insults, too, calling Trump a “dotard.”

Eventually, however, Kim and Trump met and have since showered each other with praise. At their first summit, in 2018 in Singapore, the pair signed a vague joint declaration saying they were committed to the path of denuclearization.

A second summit, in Vietnam earlier this year, ended early as neither side would agree to the other’s terms for a more substantive nuclear agreement. The two met in late June at the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South Korea.

It’s too soon to tell if the diplomacy at the DMZ will jump-start the stalled nuclear negotiations, and to date Kim has taken no serious step toward reducing his nuclear arsenal. But if Kim walks away with a good deal, Iranian leaders may reconsider talking to Trump.

The odds are, though, that Iran’s government would prefer to wait, hoping that Trump will not get re-elected in 2020. It would be easier for Khamenei to agree to talk with a new U.S. president than deal with a man who tore up the last deal the Iranian leader struck with America.

Given the damage done to the Iranian economy by Trump-imposed sanctions, however, Iran may have little choice but to talk to him if he is reelected. Still, the Iranians may insist that the U.S. offer some sort of limited concession before negotiations can take place, such as partial sanctions relief.

“To risk meeting Trump now while being pretty sure nothing substantive would come of it is to make yourself look small at home in front of your own people when you have said this man is not worth talking to,” said Alex Vatanka, an Iran specialist and senior fellow with the Middle East Institute.

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[renegadepharmacist]

“If Grandma Is on the Table, No One Will Blink at the Price”: A Former Drug Company Manager Talks About Price-Setting

By Fran Quigley

Frances Leath no longer works in management for pharmaceutical industry giant Eli Lilly and Company, but she keeps tabs on the company where she spent the first 15 years of her career. She still lives in Indianapolis, home of the company headquarters. She has watched as Lilly’s dramatic increases in the price of insulin have triggered regular protests by angry patients, class-action lawsuits, and Congressional criticism.

Yet the company has continued to ratchet up the price. The same vial of Lilly’s Humalog insulin that was priced at $21 in 1996 can cost as much as $275 today. Especially when research shows that the same vial is manufactured for about $5, and that Americans are suffering and even dying because they can’t afford their insulin, this approach can seem shocking.

Not to Frances Leath.  “I’m not surprised a bit,” she says.

It was not always this way at Lilly. When she started her career, there was an internal company slogan Leath would hear a lot: “We make drugs as if people’s lives depend on it.”

That was in 1987, when Leath was fresh out of DePauw University and working in Lilly’s finance division.  The company’s portfolio focused on medicines for acute illnesses, including several antibiotics. “One of the things I liked about working there was that the conversation was very much about patients,” Leath said. “You could see that our products like Ceclor were treating infections and saving lives.”

After going back to school to complete her MBA at Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management, Leath moved to Lilly’s business development and strategic planning division. In that role, she worked directly with senior management. So, when things changed, she had a front-row view.

It started in 2000, when Lilly was waging a court battle aimed at protecting their antidepressant medicine Prozac from generic competition. Prozac sales earned as much as $2.6 billion a year, a quarter of Lilly’s entire revenue.  When the company lost the case, its stock price dropped more than 30% in anticipation of Prozac’s patent expiring in August 2001.

The impact was immediate, Leath recalls. “There was a huge amount of external pressure to get earnings back up and the stock price along with them,” she says. “Inside the company, you had staff saying, ‘We just lost $2 billion a year. Am I going to get laid off?’”

Then, the company had a big win. In clinical trials, its Xigris product was proving to be effective at treating severe sepsis, a complication from infection that was killing 225,000 people each year with no approved drug to fight it. Just two months after Prozac lost its U.S. patent, the Food and Drug Administration gave Lilly the green light to sell Xigris. The timing could not have been better. “Xigris may be just what the doctor ordered for Lilly,” the Wall Street Journal reported in September of 2001.=

By then, Lilly leadership had spent several months discussing a potential price for Xigris. Leath recalls a preliminary consensus forming around a price of about $500 per dose. That was no bargain: $500 was a hundred times more than the company’s manufacturing cost and at the higher range of the medicine’s class. But, with Prozac sales plummeting and the medical community’s excitement about Xigris rising, that price began to seem inadequate. “All of a sudden, the price everyone talked about was $10,000 per dose,” Leath says. “Someone just pulled that figure out of their derriere, and then it became the number.”

“If Grandma is on the table . . .”

Leath’s observations about the random process of pricing Xigris is consistent with investigations into the opaque world of setting the price for monopoly-protected medicines sold to customers whose lives may depend on them. In 2015, the U.S. Senate Finance Committee conducted an 18-month investigation into how Gilead Sciences arrived at then-record prices of $84,000 and higher for its sofosbuvir-based Hepatitis C medicines. The Senate investigation found that the company considered the remarkable effectiveness of the medicine whose rights it had purchased, looked closely at what the market would bear, and set the highest price it thought it could get away with.

Gilead’s executives bolstered themselves for criticism. Once the drug was released, one company vice president offered a pep talk in an internal email. “Let’s hold our position whatever competitors do, or whatever the headlines,” he wrote in late 2013. “Let’s not fold to advocacy pressure in 2014.” They did remain steadfast, and that strategy combined with the take-it-or-leave-it nature of monopoly protection paid off: In the 21 months after the hepatitis medicines were introduced, the company collected $20.6 billion in revenue for them, fueling a breathtaking corporation-wide profit margin of nearly 50%.

That same year, the Wall Street Journal published an inside account of how Pfizer executives decided to set the price of a new breast cancer drug. As their Gilead counterparts did, Pfizer’s team ignored research and manufacturing costs, instead focusing on discovering the maximum price that insurers would be willing to pay, and at what price level physicians would balk at prescribing the drug. Worried about the intimidating nature of a $10,000 per month cost, Pfizer settled on the same approach that cause microwave ovens and flat-screen TV’s to so often carry price tags ending with 99 dollars or 99 cents. Executives decided that the new breast cancer drug would be sold at $9,850 a month.

But, in 2001, drug price tags like these were still unheard of. So Leath was stunned at the internal discussion of a $10,000 price for Xigris, which would make it the most expensive medicine on the market.  When she realized that the only ones sharing her concern were colleagues in middle management, she raised her objections to her boss. The new price could not be justified by research or manufacturing costs, Leath said, even with a healthy profit added in.

Her boss replied that justification based on company costs was irrelevant. “If Grandma is on the table, no one is going to blink at paying $10,000 to save her life,” he said. It was a phrase that came to be repeated in the Lilly executives’ pricing discussions from then on: “If Grandma is on the table . . .”

Raulo S. Frier, vice president of clinical services at pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts Inc., told the Wall Street Journal much the same thing.  After the rumored $10,000 cost for Xigris became public – the drug would eventually be priced at $6,500 – Frier was among many in the medical community who said there would be no choice but to meet Lilly’s demands. “A lot of hospital pharmacy directors are going to be hyperventilating over the cost,” Frier said. “But they will be under a world of hurt if they don’t use it.”

“Some drugs do not belong in the hands of a for-profit company”

In the end, Xigris did not live up to the hopes of either the company or patients. Although Lilly consistently made $100 million a year from the drug, it was pulled from the market in 2011 after further clinical testing showed it did not have a positive impact on patient survival.

By that time, Frances Leath was long gone. In her decade and a half with Lilly, she had received regular promotions, a six-figure salary, and annual bonuses averaging more than $30,000. She had every indication that those numbers would only continue to rise. Yet, for the granddaughter of a United Methodist minister and chair of Staff Parish of her own Methodist church in Indianapolis, money could no longer keep her in the Lilly fold. “I was struggling, both emotionally and physically,” she says. “I felt like I was participating in things that conflicted with being a Christian.”

Leath is now a realtor, a job she loves. “There is no better feeling than helping someone find the home that is perfect for them,” she says. When she sees the Lilly price-setting on insulin, she shakes her head in recognition of the phenomenon she witnessed first-hand. “They have not generated the next blockbuster drug, and they feel the pressure to make as much money as they did when they had a blockbuster,” she says. “So, they are making up the difference with their chronic care medicines. That strategy was an active part of conversation when I was there.”

To Leath, the lesson learned from her experience in the pharmaceutical industry is that its leaders are now laser-focused on profits, along with the stock prices, salaries, and bonuses that are tied to them. No one should expect those executives to voluntarily restrain themselves from price-gouging on a lifesaving medicine they hold the rights to.

“I’ve concluded that there are some drugs that simply do not belong in the hands of a for-profit company,” she says. “They are driven by motivations that have nothing to do with the health of patients.”

This piece was originally published in Faith In Healthcare on 7/1/2019.

MONEY   07.02.2019

[emailhostingindia9941-blog]

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[theinvinciblenoob]

Gather round. The EU has a plan for a big update to privacy laws that could have a major impact on current Internet business models.

Um, I thought Europe just got some new privacy rules?

They did. You’re thinking of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which updated the European Union’s 1995 Data Protection Directive — most notably by making the penalties for compliance violations much larger.

But there’s another piece of the puzzle — intended to ‘complete’ GDPR but which is still in train.

Or, well, sitting in the sidings being mobbed by lobbyists, as seems to currently be the case.

It’s called the ePrivacy Regulation.

ePrivacy Regulation, eh? So I guess that means there’s already an ePrivacy Directive then…

Indeed. Clever cookie. That’s the 2002 ePrivacy Directive to be precise, which was amended in 2009 (but is still just a directive).

Remind me what’s the difference between an EU Directive and a Regulation again… 

A regulation is a more powerful legislative instrument for EU lawmakers as it’s binding across all Member States and immediately comes into legal force on a set date, without needing to be transposed into national laws. In a word it’s self-executing.

Whereas, with a directive, Member States get a bit more flexibility because it’s up to them how they implement the substance of the thing. They could adapt an existing law or create a new one, for example.

With a regulation the deliberation happens among EU institutions and, once that discussion and negotiation process has concluded, the agreed text becomes law across the bloc — at the set time, and without necessarily requiring further steps from Member States.

So regulations are powerful.

So there’s more legal consistency with a regulation? 

In theory. Greater harmonization of data protection rules is certainly an impetus for updating the EU’s legal framework around privacy.

Although, in the case of GDPR, Member States did in fact need to update their national data protections laws to make certain choices allowed for in the framework, and identify competent national data enforcement agencies. So there’s still some variation.

Strengthening the rules around privacy and making enforcement more effective are other general aims for the ePrivacy Regulation.

Europe has had robust privacy rules for many years but enforcement has been lacking.

Another point of note: Where data protection law is concerned, national agencies need to be properly resourced to be able to enforce rules, or that could undermine the impact of regulation.

It’s up to Member States to do this, though GDPR essentially requires it (and the Commission is watching).

Europe’s data protection supervisor, Giovanni Buttarelli, sums up the current resourcing situation for national data protection agencies, as: “Not bad, not enough. But much better than before.”

But why does Europe need another digital privacy law. Why isn’t GDPR enough? 

There is some debate about that, and not everyone agrees with the current approach. But the general idea is that GDPR deals with general (personal) data.

Whereas the proposed update to ePrivacy rules is intended to supplement GDPR — addressing in detail the confidentiality of electronic communications, and the tracking of Internet users more broadly.

So the (draft) ePrivacy Regulation covers marketing, and a whole raft of tracking technologies (including but not just cookies); and is intended to combat problems like spam, as well as respond to rampant profiling and behavioral advertising by requiring transparency and affirmative consent.

One major impulse behind the reform of the rules is to expand the scope to not just cover telcos but reflect how many communications now travel ‘over the top’ of cellular networks, via Internet services.

This means ePrivacy could apply to all sorts of tech firms in future, be it Skype, Facebook, Google, and quite possibly plenty more — given how many apps and services include some ability for users to communicate with each other.

But scope remains one of the contested areas, with critics arguing the regulation could have a disproportionate impact, if — for example — every app with a chat function is going to be ruled.

On the communications front, the updated rules would not just cover message content but metadata too (to respond to how that gets tracked). Aka pieces of data that might not be personal data per se yet certainly pertain to privacy once they are wrapped up in and/or associated with people’s communications.

Although metadata tracking is also used for analytics, for wider business purposes than just profiling users, so you can see the challenge of trying to fashion rules to fit around all this granular background activity.

Simplifying problematic existing EU cookie consent rules — which have also been widely mocked for generating pretty pointless web page clutter — has also been a core part of the Commission’s intention for the update.

EU lawmakers also want the regulation to cover machine to machine comms — to regulate privacy around the still emergent IoT (Internet of Things), to keep pace with the rise of smart home technologies.

Those are some of the high level aims but there have been multiple proposed texts and revisions at this point so goalposts have been shifting around.

So whereabouts in the process are we?

The Commission’s original reform proposal came out in January 2017. More than a year and a half later EU institutions are still stuck trying to reach a consensus. It’s not even 100% certain whether ePrivacy will pass or founder in the attempt at this point.

The underlying problem is really the scope of exploitation of consumers’ online activity going on in the areas ePrivacy seeks to regulate — which is now firmly baked into dominant digital business models — so trying to rule over all that after the fact of mainstream operational execution is a recipe for co-ordinated industry objection and frenzied lobbying. Of which there has been an awful lot.

At the same time, consumer protection groups in Europe are more clear than ever that ePrivacy should be a vehicle for further strengthening the data protection framework put in place by GDPR — pointing out, for example, that data misuse scandals like the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica debacle show that data-driven business models need closer checks to protect consumers and ensure people’s rights are respected.

Safe to say, the two sides couldn’t be further apart.

Like GDPR, the proposed ePrivacy Regulation would also apply to companies offering services in Europe not only those based in Europe. And it also includes major penalties for violations (of up to 2% or 4% of a company’s global annual turnover) — similarly intended to bolster enforcement and support more consistently applied EU privacy rules.

But given the complexity of the proposals, and disagreements over scope and approach, having big fines baked in further complicates the negotiations — because lobbyists can argue that substantial financial penalties should not be attached to ‘ambiguous’ laws and disputed regulatory mechanisms.

The high cost of getting the update wrong is not so much concentrating minds as causing alarms to be yanked and brakes applied. With the risk of no progress at all looking like an increasing possibility.

One thing is clear: The existing ePrivacy rules are outdated and it’s not helpful to have old rules undermining a state-of-the-art data protection framework.

Telcos have also rightly complained it’s not fair for tech giants to be able to operate messaging empires without the same compliance burdens they have.

Just don’t assume telcos love the proposed update either. It’s complicated.

Sounds very messy. 

Indeed.

EU lawmakers could probably have dealt with updating both privacy-related directives together, or even in one ‘super regulation’, but they decided to separate the work to try to simplify the process. In retrospect that looks like a mistake.

On the plus side, it means GDPR is now locked in place — with Buttarelli saying the new framework is intended to stand for as long as its predecessor.

Less good: One shiny worldclass data protection framework is having to work alongside a set of rules long past their sell-by-date.

So, so much for consistency.

Buttarelli tells us he thinks it was a mistake not to do both updates together, describing the blocks being thrown up to try to derail ePrivacy reform as “unacceptable”.

“I would like to say very clearly that the EU made a mistake in not updating earlier the rules for confidentiality for electronic communications at the same time as general data protection,” he told us during an interview this week, about GDPR enforcement, datas ethics and the future of EU privacy regulation.

He argues the patchwork of new and old rules “doesn’t work for data controllers” either, as they’re the ones saddled with dealing with the legal inconsistency.

As Europe’s data protection supervisor, Buttarelli is of course trying to apply pressure on key parties — to “get to the table and start immediately trilogue negotiations to identify a sustainable outcome”.

But the nature of lawmaking across a bloc of 28 Member States is often slow and painful. Certainly no one entity can force progress; it must be achieved via negotiated consensus and compromise across the various institutions and entities.

And when interest groups are so far apart, well, it’s sweating toil to put it mildly.

Entities that don’t want to play ball with a particular legal reform issue can sometimes also throw a delaying spanner in the works by impeding negotiations. Which is what looks to be going on with ePrivacy right now.

The EU parliament confirmed its negotiating mandate on the reform almost a year ago now. But MEPs were then stuck waiting for Member States to take a position and get around the discussion table.

Except Member States seemingly weren’t so keen. Some were probably a bit preoccupied with Brexit.

Currently implicated as an ePrivacy blocker: Austria, which holds the six-month rotating presidency of the EU Council — meaning it gets to set priorities, and can thus kick issues into the long grass (as its right-wing government appears to be doing with ePrivacy). And so the wait goes on.

It now looks like a bit of a divide and conquer situation for anti-privacy lobbyists, who — having failed to derail GDPR — are throwing all their energies at blocking and even derailing/diluting the ePrivacy reform.

Some Member States appear to be trying to attack ePrivacy to weaken the overarching framework of GDPR too. So yes, it’s got very messy indeed.

There’s an added complication around timing because the EU parliament is up for re-election next Spring, and a few months after that the executive Commission will itself turn over, as the current president does not intend to seek reappointment. So it will be all change for the EU, politically speaking, in 2019.

A reconfigured political landscape could then change the entire conversation around ePrivacy. So the current delay could prove fatal unless agreement can be reached in early 2019.

Some EU lawmakers had hoped the reform could be done and dusted in in time to come into force at the same time as GDPR, this May.

That was certainly a major miscalculation.

But what’s all the disagreement about?

That depends on who you ask. There are many contested issues, depending on the interests of the group you’re talking to.

Media and publishing industry associations are terrified about what they say ePrivacy could do to their ad-supported business models, given their reliance on cookies and tracking technologies to try to monetize free content via targeted ads — and so claim it could destroy journalism as we know it if consumers need to opt-in to being tracked.

The ad industry is also of course screaming about ePrivacy as if its hair’s on fire. Big tech included, though it has generally preferred to lobby via proxies on this issue.

Anything that could impede adtech’s ability to track and thus behaviourally target ads at web users is clearly enemy number one, given the current modus operandi. So ePrivacy is a major lobbying target for the likes of the IAB who don’t want it to upend their existing business models.

Even telcos aren’t happy, despite the potential of the regulation to even the playing field somewhat with tech giants — suggesting they will end up with double the regulatory burden, as well as moaning it will make it harder for them to make the necessary investments to roll out 5G networks.

Plus, as I say, there also seems to be some efforts to try to use ePrivacy as a vector to attack and weaken GDPR itself.

Buttarelli had comments to make on this front too, describing some data controllers as being in post-GDPR “revenge mode”.

“They want to move in sort of a vendetta, vendetta — and get back what they lose with the GDPR. But while I respect honest lobbying about which pieces of ePrivacy are not necessary I think ePrivacy will help first small businesses, and not necessarily the big tech startups. And where done properly ePrivacy may give more power to individuals. It may make harder for big tech to snoop on private conversations without meaningful consent,” he told us, appealing to Europe’s publishing industry to get behind the reform process, rather than applying pressure at the Member State level to try to derail it — given the media hardly feels well done by by big tech.

He even makes this appeal to local adtech players — which aren’t exactly enamoured with the dominance of big tech either.

“I see space for market incentives,” he added. “For advertisers and publishers to, let’s say, re-establish direct relations with their readers and customers. And not have to accept the terms dictated by the major platform intermediaries. So I don’t see any other argument to discourage that we have a deal before the elections in May next year of the European legislators.”

There’s no doubt this is a challenging sell though, given how embedded all these players are with the big platforms. So it remains to be seen whether ePrivacy can be talked back on track.

Major progress is certainly very unlikely before 2019.

I’m still not sure why it’s so important though.  

The privacy of personal communications is a fundamental right in Europe. So there’s a need for the legal framework to defend against technological erosion of citizens’ rights.

Add to that, a big part of the problem with the modern adtech industry — aside from the core lack of genuine consent — is its opacity. Who’s doing what; for what specific purposes; and with what exact outcomes.

Existing European privacy rules like GDPR mean there’s more transparency than there’s ever been about what’s going on — if you know and/or can be bothered to dig down into privacy policies and purposes.

If you do, you might, for example, discover a very long list of companies that your data is being shared with (and even be able to switch off that sharing) — entities with weird sounding names like Outbrain and OpenX.

A privacy policy might even state a per company purpose like ‘Advertising exchange’ and ‘Advertising’. Or ‘Customer interaction’, whatever that means.

Thing is, it’s often still very difficult for a consumer to understand what a lot of these companies are really doing with their data.

Thanks to current EU laws, we now have the greatest level of transparency there has ever been about the mechanisms underpinning Internet business models. But yet so much remains murky.

The average Internet user is very likely none the wiser. Can profiling them without proper consent really be fair?

GDPR sets out an expectation of privacy by design and default. So, following that principle, you could argue that cookie consent, for example, should be default opt-out — and that any website must be required to gain affirmative opt in from a visitor for any tracking cookies. The adtech industry would certainly disagree though.

The original ePrivacy proposal even had a bit of a mixed approach to consent which was accused of being too overbearing for some technologies and not strong enough for others.

It’s not just creepy tech giants implicated here either. Publishers and the media (TechCrunch included) are very much caught up in the unpleasant tracking mess, complicit in darting users with cookies and trackers to try to increase what remain fantastically low conversation rates for digital ads.

Most of the time, most Internet users ignore most ads. So — with horribly wonky logic — the behavioral advertising industry, which has been able to grow like a weed because EU privacy rights have not previously been actively enforced, has made it its mission to suck up (and indeed buy up) more and more user data to try to move the ad conversion needle a fraction.

The media is especially desperate because the web has also decimated traditional business models. And European lawmakers can be very sensitive to publishing industry concerns (for e.g., see their backing of controversial copyright reforms which publishers have been pushing for).

Meanwhile Google and Facebook are gobbling up the majority of online ad spending, leaving publishers fighting for crumbs and stuck having to do businesses with the platforms that have so sorely disrupted them.

Platforms they can’t at all control but which are now so popular and powerful they can (and do) algorithmically control the visibility of publishers’ content.

It’s not a happy combination. Well, unless you’re Facebook or Google.

Meanwhile, for web users just wanting to go about their business and do all the stuff people can (and sometimes need to do) online, things have got very bad indeed.

Unless you ignore the fact you’re being creeped on almost all the time, by snoopy entities that double as intelligence traders, selling info on what you like or don’t, so that an unseen adtech collective can create highly detailed profiles of you to try and manipulate your online transactions and purchasing decisions. With what can sometimes be discriminatory impacts.

The rise in popularity of ad blockers illustrates quite how little consumers enjoy being ad-stalked around the Internet.

More recently tracker blockers have been springing up to try to beat back the adtech vampire octopus which also lards the average webpage with myriad data-sucking tentacles, impeding page load times and gobbling bandwidth in the process, in addition to abusing people’s privacy.

There’s also out-and-out malicious stuff to be found already here too as the increasing complexity, opacity and sprawl of the adtech industry’s surveillance apparatus (combined with its general lack of interest in and/or focus on security) offers rich and varied vectors of cyber attack.

And so ads and gnarly page elements sometimes come bundled or injected with actual malware as hackers exploit all this stuff for their own ends and launch man in the middle attacks to grab user data as it’s being routinely siphoned off for tracking purposes.

It’s truly a layer cake of suck.

Ouch. 

The ePrivacy Regulation could, in theory, help to change this, by helping to support alternative business models that don’t use people-tracking as their fuel by putting the emphasis back where it should be: Respect for privacy.

The (seemingly) radical idea underlying all these updates to European privacy legislation is that if you increase consumers’ trust in online services by respecting people’s privacy you can actually grease the wheel of ecommerce and innovation because web users will be more comfortable doing stuff online because they won’t feel like they’re under creepy surveillance.

More than that — you can lay down a solid foundation of trust for the next generation of disruptive technologies to build on.

Technologies like IoT and driverless cars.

Because, well, if consumers hate to feel like websites are spying on them, imagine how disgusted they’ll be to realize their fridge, toaster, kettle and TV are all complicit in snitching. Ditto their connected car.

‘I see you’re driving past McDonald’s. Great news! They have a special on those chocolate donuts you scoffed a whole box of last week…’

Ugh. 

Yeah…

So what are ePrivacy’s chances at this point? 

It’s hard to say but things aren’t looking great right now.

Buttarelli describes himself as “relatively optimistic” about getting an agreement by May, i.e. before the EU parliament elections, but that may well be wishful thinking.

Even if he’s right there would likely still need to be an implementation period before it comes into force — so new rules aren’t likely up and running before 2020.

Yet he also describes the ePrivacy Regulation as “an essential missing piece of the jigsaw”.

Getting that piece in place is not going to be easy though.

via TechCrunch

[fmservers]

ePrivacy: An overview of Europe’s other big privacy rule change

Gather round. The EU has a plan for a big update to privacy laws that could have a major impact on current Internet business models.

Um, I thought Europe just got some new privacy rules?

They did. You’re thinking of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which updated the European Union’s 1995 Data Protection Directive — most notably by making the penalties for compliance violations much larger.

But there’s another piece of the puzzle — intended to ‘complete’ GDPR but which is still in train.

Or, well, sitting in the sidings being mobbed by lobbyists, as seems to currently be the case.

It’s called the ePrivacy Regulation.

ePrivacy Regulation, eh? So I guess that means there’s already an ePrivacy Directive then…

Indeed. Clever cookie. That’s the 2002 ePrivacy Directive to be precise, which was amended in 2009 (but is still just a directive).

Remind me what’s the difference between an EU Directive and a Regulation again… 

A regulation is a more powerful legislative instrument for EU lawmakers as it’s binding across all Member States and immediately comes into legal force on a set date, without needing to be transposed into national laws. In a word it’s self-executing.

Whereas, with a directive, Member States get a bit more flexibility because it’s up to them how they implement the substance of the thing. They could adapt an existing law or create a new one, for example.

With a regulation the deliberation happens among EU institutions and, once that discussion and negotiation process has concluded, the agreed text becomes law across the bloc — at the set time, and without necessarily requiring further steps from Member States.

So regulations are powerful.

So there’s more legal consistency with a regulation? 

In theory. Greater harmonization of data protection rules is certainly an impetus for updating the EU’s legal framework around privacy.

Although, in the case of GDPR, Member States did in fact need to update their national data protections laws to make certain choices allowed for in the framework, and identify competent national data enforcement agencies. So there’s still some variation.

Strengthening the rules around privacy and making enforcement more effective are other general aims for the ePrivacy Regulation.

Europe has had robust privacy rules for many years but enforcement has been lacking.

Another point of note: Where data protection law is concerned, national agencies need to be properly resourced to be able to enforce rules, or that could undermine the impact of regulation.

It’s up to Member States to do this, though GDPR essentially requires it (and the Commission is watching).

Europe’s data protection supervisor, Giovanni Buttarelli, sums up the current resourcing situation for national data protection agencies, as: “Not bad, not enough. But much better than before.”

But why does Europe need another digital privacy law. Why isn’t GDPR enough? 

There is some debate about that, and not everyone agrees with the current approach. But the general idea is that GDPR deals with general (personal) data.

Whereas the proposed update to ePrivacy rules is intended to supplement GDPR — addressing in detail the confidentiality of electronic communications, and the tracking of Internet users more broadly.

So the (draft) ePrivacy Regulation covers marketing, and a whole raft of tracking technologies (including but not just cookies); and is intended to combat problems like spam, as well as respond to rampant profiling and behavioral advertising by requiring transparency and affirmative consent.

One major impulse behind the reform of the rules is to expand the scope to not just cover telcos but reflect how many communications now travel ‘over the top’ of cellular networks, via Internet services.

This means ePrivacy could apply to all sorts of tech firms in future, be it Skype, Facebook, Google, and quite possibly plenty more — given how many apps and services include some ability for users to communicate with each other.

But scope remains one of the contested areas, with critics arguing the regulation could have a disproportionate impact, if — for example — every app with a chat function is going to be ruled.

On the communications front, the updated rules would not just cover message content but metadata too (to respond to how that gets tracked). Aka pieces of data that might not be personal data per se yet certainly pertain to privacy once they are wrapped up in and/or associated with people’s communications.

Although metadata tracking is also used for analytics, for wider business purposes than just profiling users, so you can see the challenge of trying to fashion rules to fit around all this granular background activity.

Simplifying problematic existing EU cookie consent rules — which have also been widely mocked for generating pretty pointless web page clutter — has also been a core part of the Commission’s intention for the update.

EU lawmakers also want the regulation to cover machine to machine comms — to regulate privacy around the still emergent IoT (Internet of Things), to keep pace with the rise of smart home technologies.

Those are some of the high level aims but there have been multiple proposed texts and revisions at this point so goalposts have been shifting around.

So whereabouts in the process are we?

The Commission’s original reform proposal came out in January 2017. More than a year and a half later EU institutions are still stuck trying to reach a consensus. It’s not even 100% certain whether ePrivacy will pass or founder in the attempt at this point.

The underlying problem is really the scope of exploitation of consumers’ online activity going on in the areas ePrivacy seeks to regulate — which is now firmly baked into dominant digital business models — so trying to rule over all that after the fact of mainstream operational execution is a recipe for co-ordinated industry objection and frenzied lobbying. Of which there has been an awful lot.

At the same time, consumer protection groups in Europe are more clear than ever that ePrivacy should be a vehicle for further strengthening the data protection framework put in place by GDPR — pointing out, for example, that data misuse scandals like the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica debacle show that data-driven business models need closer checks to protect consumers and ensure people’s rights are respected.

Safe to say, the two sides couldn’t be further apart.

Like GDPR, the proposed ePrivacy Regulation would also apply to companies offering services in Europe not only those based in Europe. And it also includes major penalties for violations (of up to 2% or 4% of a company’s global annual turnover) — similarly intended to bolster enforcement and support more consistently applied EU privacy rules.

But given the complexity of the proposals, and disagreements over scope and approach, having big fines baked in further complicates the negotiations — because lobbyists can argue that substantial financial penalties should not be attached to ‘ambiguous’ laws and disputed regulatory mechanisms.

The high cost of getting the update wrong is not so much concentrating minds as causing alarms to be yanked and brakes applied. With the risk of no progress at all looking like an increasing possibility.

One thing is clear: The existing ePrivacy rules are outdated and it’s not helpful to have old rules undermining a state-of-the-art data protection framework.

Telcos have also rightly complained it’s not fair for tech giants to be able to operate messaging empires without the same compliance burdens they have.

Just don’t assume telcos love the proposed update either. It’s complicated.

Sounds very messy. 

Indeed.

EU lawmakers could probably have dealt with updating both privacy-related directives together, or even in one ‘super regulation’, but they decided to separate the work to try to simplify the process. In retrospect that looks like a mistake.

On the plus side, it means GDPR is now locked in place — with Buttarelli saying the new framework is intended to stand for as long as its predecessor.

Less good: One shiny worldclass data protection framework is having to work alongside a set of rules long past their sell-by-date.

So, so much for consistency.

Buttarelli tells us he thinks it was a mistake not to do both updates together, describing the blocks being thrown up to try to derail ePrivacy reform as “unacceptable”.

“I would like to say very clearly that the EU made a mistake in not updating earlier the rules for confidentiality for electronic communications at the same time as general data protection,” he told us during an interview this week, about GDPR enforcement, datas ethics and the future of EU privacy regulation.

He argues the patchwork of new and old rules “doesn’t work for data controllers” either, as they’re the ones saddled with dealing with the legal inconsistency.

As Europe’s data protection supervisor, Buttarelli is of course trying to apply pressure on key parties — to “get to the table and start immediately trilogue negotiations to identify a sustainable outcome”.

But the nature of lawmaking across a bloc of 28 Member States is often slow and painful. Certainly no one entity can force progress; it must be achieved via negotiated consensus and compromise across the various institutions and entities.

And when interest groups are so far apart, well, it’s sweating toil to put it mildly.

Entities that don’t want to play ball with a particular legal reform issue can sometimes also throw a delaying spanner in the works by impeding negotiations. Which is what looks to be going on with ePrivacy right now.

The EU parliament confirmed its negotiating mandate on the reform almost a year ago now. But MEPs were then stuck waiting for Member States to take a position and get around the discussion table.

Except Member States seemingly weren’t so keen. Some were probably a bit preoccupied with Brexit.

Currently implicated as an ePrivacy blocker: Austria, which holds the six-month rotating presidency of the EU Council — meaning it gets to set priorities, and can thus kick issues into the long grass (as its right-wing government appears to be doing with ePrivacy). And so the wait goes on.

It now looks like a bit of a divide and conquer situation for anti-privacy lobbyists, who — having failed to derail GDPR — are throwing all their energies at blocking and even derailing/diluting the ePrivacy reform.

Some Member States appear to be trying to attack ePrivacy to weaken the overarching framework of GDPR too. So yes, it’s got very messy indeed.

There’s an added complication around timing because the EU parliament is up for re-election next Spring, and a few months after that the executive Commission will itself turn over, as the current president does not intend to seek reappointment. So it will be all change for the EU, politically speaking, in 2019.

A reconfigured political landscape could then change the entire conversation around ePrivacy. So the current delay could prove fatal unless agreement can be reached in early 2019.

Some EU lawmakers had hoped the reform could be done and dusted in in time to come into force at the same time as GDPR, this May.

That was certainly a major miscalculation.

But what’s all the disagreement about?

That depends on who you ask. There are many contested issues, depending on the interests of the group you’re talking to.

Media and publishing industry associations are terrified about what they say ePrivacy could do to their ad-supported business models, given their reliance on cookies and tracking technologies to try to monetize free content via targeted ads — and so claim it could destroy journalism as we know it if consumers need to opt-in to being tracked.

The ad industry is also of course screaming about ePrivacy as if its hair’s on fire. Big tech included, though it has generally preferred to lobby via proxies on this issue.

Anything that could impede adtech’s ability to track and thus behaviourally target ads at web users is clearly enemy number one, given the current modus operandi. So ePrivacy is a major lobbying target for the likes of the IAB who don’t want it to upend their existing business models.

Even telcos aren’t happy, despite the potential of the regulation to even the playing field somewhat with tech giants — suggesting they will end up with double the regulatory burden, as well as moaning it will make it harder for them to make the necessary investments to roll out 5G networks.

Plus, as I say, there also seems to be some efforts to try to use ePrivacy as a vector to attack and weaken GDPR itself.

Buttarelli had comments to make on this front too, describing some data controllers as being in post-GDPR “revenge mode”.

“They want to move in sort of a vendetta, vendetta — and get back what they lose with the GDPR. But while I respect honest lobbying about which pieces of ePrivacy are not necessary I think ePrivacy will help first small businesses, and not necessarily the big tech startups. And where done properly ePrivacy may give more power to individuals. It may make harder for big tech to snoop on private conversations without meaningful consent,” he told us, appealing to Europe’s publishing industry to get behind the reform process, rather than applying pressure at the Member State level to try to derail it — given the media hardly feels well done by by big tech.

He even makes this appeal to local adtech players — which aren’t exactly enamoured with the dominance of big tech either.

“I see space for market incentives,” he added. “For advertisers and publishers to, let’s say, re-establish direct relations with their readers and customers. And not have to accept the terms dictated by the major platform intermediaries. So I don’t see any other argument to discourage that we have a deal before the elections in May next year of the European legislators.”

There’s no doubt this is a challenging sell though, given how embedded all these players are with the big platforms. So it remains to be seen whether ePrivacy can be talked back on track.

Major progress is certainly very unlikely before 2019.

I’m still not sure why it’s so important though.  

The privacy of personal communications is a fundamental right in Europe. So there’s a need for the legal framework to defend against technological erosion of citizens’ rights.

Add to that, a big part of the problem with the modern adtech industry — aside from the core lack of genuine consent — is its opacity. Who’s doing what; for what specific purposes; and with what exact outcomes.

Existing European privacy rules like GDPR mean there’s more transparency than there’s ever been about what’s going on — if you know and/or can be bothered to dig down into privacy policies and purposes.

If you do, you might, for example, discover a very long list of companies that your data is being shared with (and even be able to switch off that sharing) — entities with weird sounding names like Outbrain and OpenX.

A privacy policy might even state a per company purpose like ‘Advertising exchange’ and ‘Advertising’. Or ‘Customer interaction’, whatever that means.

Thing is, it’s often still very difficult for a consumer to understand what a lot of these companies are really doing with their data.

Thanks to current EU laws, we now have the greatest level of transparency there has ever been about the mechanisms underpinning Internet business models. But yet so much remains murky.

The average Internet user is very likely none the wiser. Can profiling them without proper consent really be fair?

GDPR sets out an expectation of privacy by design and default. So, following that principle, you could argue that cookie consent, for example, should be default opt-out — and that any website must be required to gain affirmative opt in from a visitor for any tracking cookies. The adtech industry would certainly disagree though.

The original ePrivacy proposal even had a bit of a mixed approach to consent which was accused of being too overbearing for some technologies and not strong enough for others.

It’s not just creepy tech giants implicated here either. Publishers and the media (TechCrunch included) are very much caught up in the unpleasant tracking mess, complicit in darting users with cookies and trackers to try to increase what remain fantastically low conversation rates for digital ads.

Most of the time, most Internet users ignore most ads. So — with horribly wonky logic — the behavioral advertising industry, which has been able to grow like a weed because EU privacy rights have not previously been actively enforced, has made it its mission to suck up (and indeed buy up) more and more user data to try to move the ad conversion needle a fraction.

The media is especially desperate because the web has also decimated traditional business models. And European lawmakers can be very sensitive to publishing industry concerns (for e.g., see their backing of controversial copyright reforms which publishers have been pushing for).

Meanwhile Google and Facebook are gobbling up the majority of online ad spending, leaving publishers fighting for crumbs and stuck having to do businesses with the platforms that have so sorely disrupted them.

Platforms they can’t at all control but which are now so popular and powerful they can (and do) algorithmically control the visibility of publishers’ content.

It’s not a happy combination. Well, unless you’re Facebook or Google.

Meanwhile, for web users just wanting to go about their business and do all the stuff people can (and sometimes need to do) online, things have got very bad indeed.

Unless you ignore the fact you’re being creeped on almost all the time, by snoopy entities that double as intelligence traders, selling info on what you like or don’t, so that an unseen adtech collective can create highly detailed profiles of you to try and manipulate your online transactions and purchasing decisions. With what can sometimes be discriminatory impacts.

The rise in popularity of ad blockers illustrates quite how little consumers enjoy being ad-stalked around the Internet.

More recently tracker blockers have been springing up to try to beat back the adtech vampire octopus which also lards the average webpage with myriad data-sucking tentacles, impeding page load times and gobbling bandwidth in the process, in addition to abusing people’s privacy.

There’s also out-and-out malicious stuff to be found already here too as the increasing complexity, opacity and sprawl of the adtech industry’s surveillance apparatus (combined with its general lack of interest in and/or focus on security) offers rich and varied vectors of cyber attack.

And so ads and gnarly page elements sometimes come bundled or injected with actual malware as hackers exploit all this stuff for their own ends and launch man in the middle attacks to grab user data as it’s being routinely siphoned off for tracking purposes.

It’s truly a layer cake of suck.

Ouch. 

The ePrivacy Regulation could, in theory, help to change this, by helping to support alternative business models that don’t use people-tracking as their fuel by putting the emphasis back where it should be: Respect for privacy.

The (seemingly) radical idea underlying all these updates to European privacy legislation is that if you increase consumers’ trust in online services by respecting people’s privacy you can actually grease the wheel of ecommerce and innovation because web users will be more comfortable doing stuff online because they won’t feel like they’re under creepy surveillance.

More than that — you can lay down a solid foundation of trust for the next generation of disruptive technologies to build on.

Technologies like IoT and driverless cars.

Because, well, if consumers hate to feel like websites are spying on them, imagine how disgusted they’ll be to realize their fridge, toaster, kettle and TV are all complicit in snitching. Ditto their connected car.

‘I see you’re driving past McDonald’s. Great news! They have a special on those chocolate donuts you scoffed a whole box of last week…’

Ugh. 

Yeah…

So what are ePrivacy’s chances at this point? 

It’s hard to say but things aren’t looking great right now.

Buttarelli describes himself as “relatively optimistic” about getting an agreement by May, i.e. before the EU parliament elections, but that may well be wishful thinking.

Even if he’s right there would likely still need to be an implementation period before it comes into force — so new rules aren’t likely up and running before 2020.

Yet he also describes the ePrivacy Regulation as “an essential missing piece of the jigsaw”.

Getting that piece in place is not going to be easy though.

Via Natasha Lomas https://techcrunch.com