#Diplomacy

[pratchettquotes]

"Let me see if I've got this right," said Vimes. "Uberwald is like this big suet pudding that everyone's suddenly noticed, and now with this coronation as an excuse we've all got to rush there with knife, fork and spoon to shovel as much on our plates as possible?"

"Your grasp of political reality is masterly, Vimes. You lack only the appropriate vocabulary."

Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant

[petkittymeowmeow]

Halloween Spooktober Monster Month Season of the Witch

Must Be. The Season of the Witch

MUST BE THE SEASON OF THE WITCH

MUST

MUST

MUST

Must Be. The Season of the Witch

Must Be. The Season of the Witch

Must Be. The Season of the Witch

Must Be. The Season of the Witch

Must Be. The Season of the Witch

Must Be. The Season of the Witch

TONIGHT WE RIDE!!!

Izz sleep on tings. I’m freeky af right now for you macADaddy I fucken sense you with me. All the feelers! You. Are. All. Up. On. Me! Like a virus a cold bug no fighting it both are in it for de long hall ol towing the line Toeing the line

Trawling for trouble on the dubble

toil and trouble

boil and bubble

Yes Dorothy, generally freeking

Halloween is Double speaking

drop the mic

[vertigoartgore]

The Babylon 5 cast flipping the bird (with their looks from Season 4). From the 1997's TV Guide cover story about B5.

[alwaysbewoke]

[justacynicalromantic]

“I would sooner come to an agreement with the Martians than with the Russians”

The former head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine🇺🇦 speaks on his experience in working with Russian diplomats.

“I held many negotiations with the Russians. They don't want to come to an agreement. They spin like snakes on a frying pan, they lie, make promises, and don't fulfill them - that's their tradition.”

Volodymyr Ohryzko believes that, as of today, it is unrealistic to think that it is possible to sit the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin at the negotiating table. He can make concessions only after the loss of Crimea, which is of sacred importance to the occupiers.

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I was president of the USA... I'm not even American and now nothing about diplomacy. I did exile Elon Musk though. So a win is a win.

[quotesfrommyreading]

Much of the public discussion of Ukraine reveals a tendency to patronize that country and others that escaped Russian rule. As Toomas Ilves, a former president of Estonia, acidly observed, “When I was at university in the mid-1970s, no one referred to Germany as ‘the former Third Reich.’ And yet today, more than 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we keep on being referred to as ‘former Soviet bloc countries.’” Tropes about Ukrainian corruption abound, not without reason—but one may also legitimately ask why so many members of Congress enter the House or Senate with modest means and leave as multimillionaires, or why the children of U.S. presidents make fortunes off foreign countries, or, for that matter, why building in New York City is so infernally expensive.

The latest, richest example of Western condescension came in a report by German military intelligence that complains that although the Ukrainians are good students in their training courses, they are not following Western doctrine and, worse, are promoting officers on the basis of combat experience rather than theoretical knowledge. Similar, if less cutting, views have leaked out of the Pentagon.

Criticism by the German military of any country’s combat performance may be taken with a grain of salt. After all, the Bundeswehr has not seen serious combat in nearly eight decades. In Afghanistan, Germany was notorious for having considerably fewer than 10 percent of its thousands of in-country troops outside the wire of its forward operating bases at any time. One might further observe that when, long ago, the German army did fight wars, it, too, tended to promote experienced and successful combat leaders, as wartime armies usually do.

American complaints about the pace of Ukraine’s counteroffensive and its failure to achieve rapid breakthroughs are similarly misplaced. The Ukrainians indeed received a diverse array of tanks and armored vehicles, but they have far less mine-clearing equipment than they need. They tried doing it our way—attempting to pierce dense Russian defenses and break out into open territory—and paid a price. After 10 days they decided to take a different approach, more careful and incremental, and better suited to their own capabilities (particularly their precision long-range weapons) and the challenge they faced. That is, by historical standards, fast adaptation. By contrast, the United States Army took a good four years to develop an operational approach to counterinsurgency in Iraq that yielded success in defeating the remnants of the Baathist regime and al-Qaeda-oriented terrorists.

A besetting sin of big militaries, particularly America’s, is to think that their way is either the best way or the only way. As a result of this assumption, the United States builds inferior, mirror-image militaries in smaller allies facing insurgency or external threat. These forces tend to fail because they are unsuited to their environment or simply lack the resources that the U.S. military possesses in plenty. The Vietnamese and, later, the Afghan armies are good examples of this tendency—and Washington’s postwar bad-mouthing of its slaughtered clients, rather than critical self-examination of what it set them up for, is reprehensible.

The Ukrainians are now fighting a slow, patient war in which they are dismantling Russian artillery, ammunition depots, and command posts without weapons such as American ATACMS and German Taurus missiles that would make this sensible approach faster and more effective. They know far more about fighting Russians than anyone in any Western military knows, and they are experiencing a combat environment that no Western military has encountered since World War II. Modesty, never an American strong suit, is in order.

  —  Western Diplomats Need to Stop Whining About Ukraine

[ridenwithbiden]

PRESIDENT BIDEN BRINGS THEM HOME

PAUL WHELEN

AFTER 5 AND A HALF YEARS IN PUTIN'S RUSSIAN PRISONS

EVAN GERSHKOVICH NEW YORK TIMES REPORTER

ALSU KERMASHIVA 288 DAYS AS A POLITICAL PRISONER

PRESIDENT BIDEN'S LAPEL PIN OF AN AMERICAN FLAG

IN TIME FOR A LITTLE GIRLS 13TH BIRTHDAY WITH HER MOM

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN'S HISTORIC DIRECT DIPLOMACY

[lifeinpoetry]

I am / dust or nothing.

— Cynthia Dewi Oka, from "Diplomacy," A Tinderbox in Three Acts

[in-tenebris-et-in-solitudine]

[akaashmaharaj]

Moving the UN from Prim Words to Urgent Deeds

Our world is enduring the sixth mass extinction in its history: the Anthropocene Extinction. Species are disappearing at a thousand times the natural rate.

Unlike the great dyings of past epochs, this one is driven not by natural planetary catastrophes, but by human activity.

My role as a member of Canada’s state delegation at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity is to wield Nature Canada’s policy expertise, to press the treaty from prim words to urgent deeds.

🌱 http://via.maharaj.org/cop16

[pratchettquotes]

"Some of these are powerful nations, gentlemen. Many of them don't like Klatch's current expansionist outlook, but they don't like us much, either."

"Whyever not?" said Lord Selachii.

"Well, because during our history those we haven't occupied we've tended to wage war on," said Lord Vetinari. "For some reason the slaughter of thousands of people tends to stick in the memory."

"Oh, history," said Lord Selachii. "That's all in the past!"

"A good place for history, agreed," said the Patrician solemnly.

Terry Pratchett, Jingo

[thearunadragon]

Accents

(Art is mine) Reading Murtagh, the extent of accents in Palancar Valley is made painfully obvious. This means that Eragon very likely had a thick accent himself, and I have zero doubts within my mind that this is something he was forced to unlearn, at least to an extent (for coherency and diplomatic-appearance purposes.) Along with Brom’s instruction, Murtagh (during their travels together) would also try to train him to manage the accent, and Arya did the same later on. However, when he is excited, upset, or even especially tired, his natural accent easily slips through and he sounds like the most Carvahall-native boy in Alagaësia.

[lulublack90]

Prompt 27 - Diplomacy

@jegulus-microfic April 27, Word count 760

Previous part First part

He couldn’t believe Regulus was just going along with it. The boy’s hands were in his hair, nails scraping against his scalp. He’d never felt anything like it. James needed him to be closer, needed to feel him. So, without warning, James put his hands under his skinny thighs, and lifted him into the air, using the wall to take some of the pressure off his arms, he held Regulus. 

Regulus let out a small gasp as his feet left the floor. James had fully expected to be punched, but Regulus reacted positively. He wrapped his legs around James’s waist and deepened their kiss with his newfound height. 

James felt his whole body melting. He wanted to stay in this moment forever. Nothing mattered, only the boy in front of him. 

They broke apart, panting, hearts racing, gulping down air into their oxygen-starved lungs.

“Hi,” James smiled at him, tilting his head, so he could look into those sparking eyes. 

“Hi,” Regulus murmured back, the hint of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. James let his head thump forward into Regulus's chest and Regulus tangled his fingers still further into the short unruly curls. He angled his head and pressed open-mouthed kisses into Regulus’s neck.   

“What the bloody hell are you doing?” They froze as Sirius’s voice broke the silence of their corridor. “Get your hands off my brother!” James and Regulus looked at each other this was not going to go well. James tried to convince himself that all they needed was a little diplomacy, but with Sirius’s hot temper and Regulus’s sharp tongue, it would be a challenge to keep them quiet enough not to get caught out of bounds after curfew. 

Slowly, he lowered Regulus to the floor, and together they turned and raised their hands to Sirius.

“Why are you raising your hands?” He asked Regulus, confused. 

“I wasn’t sure which brother he was referring to, so I thought I’d better be safe.” He shrugged. James let out an almighty snort and had to bury his face in his arm to quell the laughter.

“Put your hands down you idiots.” Sirius rolled his eyes at the pair. “I came looking for you when I noticed you weren’t in bed. This,” He waved his hands at them. “Was not what I expected to find.” He looked wild like he was about to explode at any provocation. 

“It’s none of your business what we do, Sirius.” Regulus drawled. “I don’t know why you think you can make a fuss.” All mirth left James as he quickly started damage control to hopefully stop Sirius from seeing red. 

“Sirius go back up to the dorm, I’ll meet you there,” He cut Sirius off before he could complain. “I’m going to take Reg back to the Slytherin Common room first.” 

“I don’t need an escort, Potter.” Regulus griped. But James ignored him and began to pull out the invisibility cloak. Sirius stormed forward, shoved his hand into James’s pocket and stole the Marauder’s Map. 

“Best hurry, Prongs. I’ll be watching.” And with that, Sirius turned on his heel and disappeared into darkness. 

James sighed and covered himself and Regulus with the cloak. 

“You don’t need to do this, I am quite capable of getting back on my own.” Regulus clearly wasn’t happy. James grinned at him and, making sure Sirius was well and truly gone, pushed Regulus back against the wall and kissed him again. All the fight went out of the other boy. 

“We’ve got a couple of minutes before we need to move. Sirius will think we’re bickering still.” James said, pulling away for a moment before pressing his lips against Regulus’s again. 

Regulus turned his head slightly, breaking the kiss.

“What does this mean?” Regulus asked, his eyes overly bright as though he was nervous. James shrugged.

“I don’t know, but I like it so far.” He grinned, wriggling his eyebrows. Regulus rolled his eyes in a strange imitation of his brother. He pushed James away from the wall, but grabbed his hand and started pulling him down the corridor towards the dungeons.  

“What was that bit of parchment?” Regulus asked as they walked.

“Oh,” James paused, he didn’t know if he could trust Regulus with that information. “Just a useful tool for Mischief makers.” He gave Regulus a final kiss before watching him enter the Slytherin’s secret entrance and headed back to Gryffindor Tower where his best friend waited for him. Maybe he’d go sleep in moaning Myrtle's bathroom, he’d probably get more rest.   

Next part

[inconsistentcampfire]

I edited a short video from this where I used a Taylor Swift song and now I can't disassociate from that xd

[archtroop]

While you all were following the same chewed-up spat-out news pieces, Israel singlehandedly saved 7 musicians who stand vocally against Putin, from getting deported to Russia from Thailand, and ending up the devil only knows where, and in what state of physical and mental health.

While 4 of the 7 band members do have Israeli citizenship, Israel managed to arrange the full extradition of all the group to Israel.

B2 formed in 1988 in Belarus and are the spiritual heirs to Kino. They are globally known and popular and very vocal against Putin and Co.

The lead vocals and the head of the main duo was released to Israel yesterday. The others were cleared today.