#Eurasia Daily

[tamgdenettebya]

До выборов в Грузии три месяца: «Мечте» надо поднять всю нацию против Запада

С политической точки зрения предстоящая осень станет важным моментом не только для Грузии, но и для всего мира. Отбросив остальное, напомним, что в США пройдут выборы президента, Олаф Шольц будет стараться отстоять занимаемое им кресло канцлера Германии, за которое тоже предстоит непростая борьба. По идее, в подобной ситуации маленькая Грузия никого не должна интересовать, однако многие придают предстоящим в стране выборам едва ли не такое же значение, как американским.

Вообще, обстановка в Соединенных Штатах складывается неординарная и смутная. Либеральное крыло делает все для того, чтобы Дональд Трамп не сумел ни при каких обстоятельствах одержать победу на выборах, и с этой целью оно выключило из президентской гонки Джо Байдена, а Трампу был противопоставлен молодой конкурент. Тем не менее, вызывает большие сомнения, чтобы Камала Харрис сумела превзойти красноватолицего американца.

А что делает в этих условиях грузинская оппозиция? Поняв, что Трамп действительно может победить, ее лидеры, до этого называвшие его олигархом и американским вариантом Бидзины Иванишвили, теперь, видите ли, считают мистера Дональда, едва ли не ближайшим другом и гарантом демократии. Ну и что, если тот же Трамп заверяет, что через пару месяцев после избрания он завершит войну на Украине?! Главное, чтобы трамповская администрация «отмазала» те задумки, которые имеются у оппозиции с подачи нынешней байденовской администрации и европейских лидеров. А замыслы эти настолько незавуалированы и недвусмысленны, что вон председатель комитета по внешним связям сейма Литвы Жигмантас Павилионис откровенно рассказал:

«26 октября я не смогу прилететь на выборы в Грузию, потому что у нас тоже будут проходить выборы, и, похоже, состоится второй тур. Однако если Бидзина решит эти выборы украсть, можете не нервничать, я обязательно приеду вместе с другими вашими друзьями. Мой посыл грузинскому народу заключается в том, что это ваш решающий бой. Я наблюдаю, как последние 30 лет ведет борьбу за свободу белорусский народ, замечаю у вас те же тенденции, те же российские методы и считаю, что эти выборы в Грузии, возможно, станут последними. Сославшись на слова Байдена, можно повторить, что диктаторы и короли никогда не проигрывают, проигрывают люди. А потому если грузинский народ хочет мира в евроатлантической семье, вы должны определиться в отношении своих политических целей».

Наверное, помните, как то же самое заявил нам председатель комитета по международным вопросам немецкого Бундестага Майкл Рот. Выборы будут проходить и в Литве, и в Германии, но, тем не менее, тамошним политикам есть дело до Грузии. Почему? Причина очень простая — Грузия единственная страна в регионе, оказывающая Западу сопротивление. Даже Армения, которая, казалось бы, раньше не находилась на его стороне, теперь широкой поступью шагает в Европу и просит — предоставьте нам визалиберализацию. Правда, Азербайджану Европа грозит пальцем, как и нам, однако пока делает это крайне осторожно, поскольку Азербайджан имеет очень сильного союзника в лице Турции, и с ним надо быть предельно корректным. А вот Грузия пытается обрести независимость и подогнать себя под нейтральный статус, действуя в одиночку, и нам попросту всячески мешают это сделать.

Вон Павилионис утверждает, что в Литве предстоят тяжелейшие выборы со вторым туром голосования (то есть в стране явно не наблюдается стабильной ситуации, и большая часть населения отказывает в доверии какой-либо конкретной партии), что, однако, не мешает ему делать акцент на Грузии. И это тоже задание Запада — Павилионис наверняка считает, что Литве ничто не грозит — мало ли что после выхода из состава Советского Союза население страны уменьшилось почти на 800 тысяч человек! Сейчас главное поменять власть в Грузии, чтобы послушная оппозиция стала все делать так, как ей будут диктовать ЕС и США. При этом исполнила главное требование — открыла второй фронт против России, чтобы можно было смести Грузию с лица земли и задушить в долгах, как сегодня Украину. Да, согласно официальным расчетам, Украине для освобождения от долговых обязательств в лучшем случае потребуется 70 лет. Это при идеальном раскладе, потому что при любом другом на это не хватит и целого столетия. Уже было заявлено вслух, что 90% пом��щи, полученной от Америки, представляет собой, к примеру, обычную ссуду, а не подарок, как говорилось прежде.

Из заявлений представителей грузинской власти явствует, что они готовы к описанному нами развитию событий. В кулуарах правящей верхушки откровенно говорится о том, что выиграть выборы не составит для «Грузинской мечты» проблемы, но серьезная проблема кроется в другом — в их легитимации. Запад безо всяких прикрас заявляет, что в случае, если на выборах победит «Грузинская мечта», он не признает полученных результатов. То есть там не обещают, как обычно, что будут внимательно наблюдать, чтобы помочь победить сильнейшему, а прямо указывают — «Мечта» должна проиграть! При этом никого не волнует, какое решение примет грузинский избиратель, грузинский народ.

«Наши европейские партнеры говорят, что на выборах не будет присутствовать очень много наблюдателей от Европы и Америки, хотя они появятся сразу же после объявления результатов. Причем появятся в любом варианте: победит „Мечта“ — приедут опротестовывать, „Мечта“ проиграет — налетят, чтобы торжествовать и раздавать указания пришедшей к власти оппозиции. Мы к этому готовы и верим не только в свою победу, но и в то, что сумеем добиться ее легитимации, потому что у здешних наблюдателей и местных неправительственных организаций не будет шансов для составления жалоб», — заверил один из представителей власти.

Павилионис не случайно упомянул о Белоруссии. Если помните, в ходе последних президентских выборов Запад предпринял мощный штурм на действующего президента страны, и уход Александра Лукашенко был для них делом решенным. Однако невзирая на мобилизацию огромных финансов, Запад не располагал главным — человеческим ресурсом, и, несмотря на колоссальные траты, ему так и не удалось его пополнить. Именно на это реально рассчитывает и грузинская власть. Она надеется на мудрость нашего населения, однако руководству и правящей команде следует все-таки помнить о том, что в социальном отношении нация испытывает огромную нужду, и, конечно же, среди населения окажется немало таких, кто за 100 или 200 лари охотно согласится участвовать в акциях, а оппозиция попытается на этом фоне создать иллюзию массовости, как она делала это в ходе мартовских протестов, когда зрителям объявляли прямо с телеэкранов: вы только придите, а остальное пусть будет за нами.

Акции с учетом электрического освещения, питания, выплат участникам, обеспечения протестующих палатками и дождевиками ежедневно обходились в миллионы лари. И Запад взял на себя эти расходы, будучи уверенным, что это станет последним актом запланированного им сценария. Однако все завершилось, став лишь генеральной репетицией, которая в конечном счете сгодилось лишь на то, чтобы стать предпосылкой к попытке осуществить задуманное наступающей осенью.

Оппозиция хочет всячески продемонстрировать Западу единство своих рядов — дескать, вместе пасутся волки и овцы. Кто бы только мог подумать, что Алеко Элисашвили объединится под крылом Мамуки Хазарадзе?!. Тот самый Элисашвили, который в прямом эфире обозвал Хазарадзе коррумпированным ростовщиком, обвинив его в том, что в период правления «националов» он заставлял людей в 2−3 часа ночи закладывать имущество в банк и на кабальных условиях утверждал им кредиты. Затем эти кредитные средства расходовались на внесудебные соглашения, и освободившиеся бизнесмены становились лакомым кусочком для Хазарадзе и его банка. Элисашвили подетально изложил эту коррупционную схему, чуть ли не по матери обругал Хазарадзе в прямом эфире, а теперь… Теперь, оказывается, всем надо забыть о былых обидах, чтобы любой ценой победить «Мечту». Между тем, это была отнюдь не обида. Это было тяжелейшее обвинение, и если Элисашвили прав, то получается, что Хазарадзе подонок и преступник, а с такой личностью ни в коем случае нельзя объединяться. Если же Элисашвили лгал, подонком выходит он, и тогда уже Хазарадзе не должен иметь с ним ничего общего. Однако Запад требует объединения, а грузинская оппозиция просто старается рабски ему угождать и потому исполняет любые его указания, наступив ногой на собственное самолюбие и достоинство. Как еще иначе объяснить ситуацию, когда ты ставишь рядом с собой и садишься за один стол с человеком, который выдвинул тебе такие чудовищные обвинения, а затем даже не соизволил за них извиниться… Не знаю, что вам и сказать, разве лишь то, что люди, обладающие самолюбием, так себя не поведут…

До выборов остается меньше трех месяцев, и за это время власть должна добиться того, чтобы весь народ, вся нация были готовы опротестовать западный сценарий, а в случае необходимости решительно продемонстрировать всем, что эта страна наша, и им она не принадлежит!

[respect-the-locals]

Daily Ray Fact:

There is very little that is known about the Banded Eagle Ray despite that it is plentiful in many seas around Eurasia. The seas/oceans where it presides include the Indo-West Pacific: Persian Gulf to the Philippines, north to Korea and southern Japan, south to northern Australia and possibly in the Red Sea, as well as eastern and southern Africa. 

[ineffable-endearments]

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

Wow. There is...there is so much here.

First, a caution about the book itself: there is significant sexually violent narration, and lots of torture as well. This post is going to discuss these topics only in general terms - I don't think I need to go into detail to discuss what they mean for the story - but take care of yourself when you're deciding whether to read it. If you have any questions, always feel free to send an ask or message.

I am going to need to make multiple posts about this book. For this first one, I'll focus on summarizing the book and its main themes, especially the ones that I think relate to Good Omens. As always, I can't summarize it in a way that will give you a better understanding than simply reading the book, but summarizing it will help me put my own thoughts together and hopefully help you follow along as I try to articulate them.

Because it's impossible to miss, I think it is best to confront this issue at the outset: there is a lot of especially blatant misogyny on Winston's part in Nineteen Eighty-Four. This is not meant to be a good or sympathetic thing. It is a demonstration of how messed up he is, and how messed up everyone in that society is.

The Society

The plot of Nineteen Eighty-Four is tied up very much in the story's world. The characters are at the mercy of their society in this story, much more than in most. It will make sense to describe the world first. Indeed, a massive portion of the book is just information about Oceania itself.

In the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the entire planet is supposedly ruled by three perpetually warring authoritarian states: Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia, conglomerations of Earth's former independent nations. Through the novel, it is revealed that all three states have governments that are structured in largely the same way with approximately the same quality of life for their people, and the perpetual war is itself a way of controlling each population.

Technically, we don't know for sure that the war is really happening. In fact, we don't know that anything is true, because almost all the information the characters have comes from the Party, the government of Oceania, and the Party's operations revolve around reality control. The Party's "leader" is an enigmatic figure referred to only as Big Brother, who, of course, is watching.

Our protagonist, Winston, lives in Oceania. There are Inner Party members, who are the highest-ranking, with the highest responsibility and the highest quality of life. There are Outer Party members, who work for the Party, are heavily surveilled, and whose daily needs are all provided for with low-quality supplies; they have a highly regimented daily schedule. Inner and Outer Party members have telescreens, which broadcast Party propaganda but also have cameras to monitor all Party members. It is incredibly difficult to get away from telescreens, since there's at least one in every home and they're everywhere in public. Altogether, the telescreens form a panopticon that is hard to evade.

Then there are the proles, a shortened term for proletarians, who are the lower classes of Oceania and make up the majority of the population. The proles live in poor conditions and are constantly manipulated by State-generated propaganda. However, they have more freedom than Party members, in the sense that they are also largely ignored by the Party because they have no real power and are assumed to be incapable of engaging in revolutionary behavior. For this reason, proles get to have human relationships and enjoy pleasures, wherever they can find pleasures, in ways that Party members are not allowed. In reality, the Party's perpetual war is a way of grinding through resources in order to keep people, especially the proles, buried under work without improving their quality of life. This is because when people have free time, they can use it to learn and organize, and they might become a threat to the Party.

Winston is one of the Outer Party members. He works in the government department that rewrites history. See, every time a fact or anecdote in the media is inconvenient for the Party, the Party goes back and destroys all old copies of newspapers and books, all old video content, all paperwork, any scrap of evidence that anything was different. Newspapers are routinely reprinted with "updated" (falsified) information. For example, Oceania is always either at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia, or at war with Eastasia and allied with Eurasia, and as far as the Party is concerned, this has never changed. Every single time Oceania's alliance changes, the newspapers are updated so that the current alignment has always been true. Every time someone becomes a disgrace to the Party, their previous deeds are rewritten.

On the surface, this sounds difficult to implement, but over the story, one realizes the vast majority of the Party's operations revolve purely around the constant reshaping of history, control of people's memories, and control of people's emotions for the purpose of maintaining power eternally. Art produced by human beings is actively discouraged; instead, the Party mass-produces art, including novels, using machines, to control what kinds of ideas people are consuming.

The Party is essentially a machine that controls reality, or at least, what the people inside it consider to be reality. There are people who specialize in managing the thoughts of the public: the Thought Police. While they may technically not be able to literally see inside one's mind, they watch everyone carefully and are excellent at noticing everything: every facial expression, every eyebrow twitch, and every breath.

The Party rules through a series of four "ministries." These are the Ministry of Truth (like an educational ministry, responsible for producing propaganda), the Ministry of Peace (like a military, responsible for warfare), the Ministry of Love (like the correctional system, responsible for jailing and torturing dissidents), and the Ministry of Plenty (like the treasury, responsible for rationing).

When it suits the Party, anyone can be "vaporized." This means they are secretly murdered and all evidence of them - any existing record whatsoever, any news story, any list or database entry - is erased.

The Party has a new language they're developing as a method of thought control called Newspeak. The purpose of Newspeak is to make it impossible to articulate certain kinds of thoughts. The following is a character named Syme describing Newspeak:

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. ... In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."

It's worth noting that Syme is later vaporized, presumably just for being too insightful out loud about Newspeak. In Newspeak, people who have been vaporized, if they must ever be referred to at all, are called "unpersons." In this way, no one has ever been killed by the Party, because those people have never existed in the first place.

There's a key Newspeak word that appears over and over: doublethink. It's the ability to believe two contradictory things simultaneously, and unlike the way we usually experience cognitive dissonance, there is no urge or attempt to reconcile what is really true. With doublethink, the existence of two contradictory ideas at once is itself exploited to help Party members serve the Party.

The Party (and its equivalents in Eurasia and Eastasia) uses perpetual war to control the population by squandering the resources produced by human labor and keep people in a perpetual combination of patriotic fervor and fear. The war is infinite and can never be won; the whole purpose of the war is to be at war.

Socially, the Party has destroyed family life. Winston was married years ago. He and his wife are so estranged that he is no longer sure if she is alive. They did not have a good relationship. The Party does not want close emotional relationships between its members, so while they are strict about who is allowed to marry (not for love, strictly for procreation), they don't care if people continue to live together. However, the Party does not want people forming new relationships, so divorce and extramarital sex are also illegal. The Party has also turned children against their parents by encouraging children to report their parents' potential thoughtcrimes. All in all, family members are generally afraid of each other.

We see, over and over again, how the Party does its best to frame human beings as both inherently untrustworthy and as objects to be used. Pitting people from individual family members to entire classes, sexes, and races against each other is one of the Party's many techniques for controlling people, and it has seeped into Winston's everyday thought processes. Only actual experiences with other human beings even begin to break these ideas down.

Eventually, it becomes apparent that the Party's motivation is immortality through the denial of the individual. Human beings are denied their own personal thoughts, feelings, and bodies. Only their ability to be assimilated into the Party is permitted. Even thoughts and feelings about the greater good are unacceptable because these lead to regime changes and interfere with the raw totalitarian power of the Party. Every Party member in Oceania is meant to strive exclusively for the continued power of the Party. Dissidents are denied even the ability to be martyrs, because the Party does not kill people while they carry hatred for Big Brother; they simply change their thoughts until they are good Party members again, and then kill them later, when they are no longer dissidents and have no legacy of resistance to leave behind.

Winston's Plot

Winston has a secret desire to be free of the Party. He does get swept up in the Party's fervor when he's in the middle of it, but he also longs for the extremely basic pleasures and freedoms that have become taboo. For example, Winston secretly buys an old pen and journal to write in - a completely forbidden act that he has to conceal from the telescreen in his own apartment. He finds himself almost unconsciously writing things like "DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER" in that journal.

There is an Inner Party member named O'Brien who Winston admires greatly from a distance despite knowing only his appearance: "intelligent" with a "prizefighter's physique." Winston perceives that he and O'Brien "understand" each other somehow, and even believes O'Brien has spoken to him in a dream, saying they "shall meet where there is no darkness." Eventually, Winston imagines he is addressing his journal to the mysterious O'Brien, believing him to be an ally.

Winston has an acquaintance at work named Syme. Syme is very passionate about revising the Newspeak dictionary. However, he is a little too openly insightful about the true purpose of Newspeak for his own good. Even though Syme does not seem to have any intention of betraying the Party and in fact is extremely taken with Newspeak, Winston is convinced he will be vaporized, and sure enough, he is.

There is a woman Winston thinks he hates because she looks like the perfect Party member who would turn him in to the Thought Police. Actually, the narration outright states that he doesn't like women entirely, because he thinks they're too committed to the Party and enjoy betraying men. However, it turns out that this woman observes Winston by the shop where he bought his illegal notebook. By simply observing Winston in that shop, the Party would suspect he's committing thoughtcrimes, and Winston panics. However, the woman later bumps into Winston at work and passes him a note that says, "I love you." Winston then instantly decides he wants to be with her; the idea of not being with her never even occurs to him.

The woman's name is Julia. It turns out Julia is putting on an incredibly convincing act, but she hates the Party, too. Winston is technically married, so he can't legally marry Julia, and any kind of non-procreative sex is illegal anyway, so their relationship is entirely forbidden.

Winston and Julia meet up and have sex in secret. It's worth noting that during their first meeting, they enjoy listening to a thrush singing. During this first meeting, they go out to the countryside, where there are fewer telescreens and microphones; Winston comments that it's like the "Golden Country," his symbolic dream-place where people are free.

A man named Mr. Charrington owns the shop where Winston had bought his notebook, and he also owns a room for rent above the shop. It's an old-fashioned prole room without telescreens and with a great number of old-fashioned fixtures. Winston and Julia rent it to get away from Party life for a few hours every now and then. When they first start staying in the room, Julia observes a rat and throws her shoe at it. Winston is utterly terrified, showing that he has a serious phobia of rats; it is vaguely implied that he had a traumatic moment related to them as a child. Julia takes the rat in stride; they are everywhere. She promises to block up the hole so the rat does not return.

Julia and Winston spend time in their prole room knowing for sure that it will eventually lead to their capture, torture, and death, but they decide it will be worth it. Winston voices some interest in trying to work against the Party; Julia does not believe this is possible whatsoever, and is not interested in trying. She believes people are better off putting on a convincing act and getting away with as much as they can for as long as they can.

Meanwhile, during the workday, O'Brien speaks to Winston. He mentions Syme without using his name, which is incredibly unusual, since people who are vaporized are never ever acknowledged again; all their work is erased from history. But O'Brien mentions Syme's work on the Newspeak dictionary and gives Winston his home address so that Winston can borrow the dictionary. Party members also don't often give each other their addresses. Because of these unusual cues, Winston infers that O'Brien is inviting him over to conspire against the Party.

While Winston and Julia meet up and have sex, they also indulge in other pleasures of the world, like real coffee and chocolate, and proles singing outside their window, and art that hasn't been generated by the Party. Observing the proles and their richer emotional lives, Winston and Julia decide they are going to worry only about their feelings. The Party can coerce them to do anything, including to confess, but as long as the Party can't make them stop loving each other, they agree, they will never have betrayed each other. Julia says that for all the things the Party can do, they can't get inside their heads.

So seized are Winston and Julia by their conviction that they decide to go visit O'Brien together and confess to wanting to destroy the Party. O'Brien tells them they may join the Brotherhood, a mysterious group of dissidents working to bring down Big Brother, but they must be willing to sacrifice everything; they must be willing to not only suffer and die, but to murder civilians, to spread disease, to sow discord, to do anything the Brotherhood asks of them. They even, O'Brien says, must be willing to "separate and never see one another again." This is the only thing Julia and Winston are unwilling to agree to. O'Brien accepts them anyway and, many days later, gives Winston a book through a secret messenger.

This book contains the writings of Goldstein, the supposed leader of the Brotherhood, outlining the Party's core philosophy. Winston reads this to Julia, who is hinted to not be all that interested, but she does listen a little.

While they look out the window and contemplate that the proles are alive and the Party members are already dead, Winston and Julia are captured. It turns out Mr. Charrington was a member of the Thought Police and the room had surveillance in it. Winston and Julia are separated and dragged to the Ministry of Love.

While at the Ministry of Love, Winston spends a lot of time waiting, watching other prisoners pass through. Some of them are proles, and some of them are people he knows. The waiting room is enormous and brightly lit with telescreens on all walls. There are essentially no shadows.

Another familiar face appears at the Ministry of Love. It's O'Brien. Winston first thinks O'Brien has been captured, but it soon becomes apparent that O'Brien was masterminding this whole operation and is in charge of Winston's torture. They have, indeed, met "where there is no darkness" - because of all the telescreens and artificial lighting. O'Brien and other Party members even wrote Goldstein's book as yet another propaganda piece. O'Brien states the description of the Party in the book is true, although the book's implication that the Party can be defeated through a prole uprising is false because a prole uprising will never happen. (Note that Winston did not actually read the part of the book where "Goldstein" outlined how the Party should be defeated.)

Winston is tortured for an undetermined amount of time. He discovers that he is a prisoner of his body; his torturers can get him to say pretty much anything through punishment and reward. In fact, they can force him to feel certain ways, too. O'Brien and the Party aren't only trying to get Winston to give away information; they want him to really internalize sincere belief in the Party doctrine, like doublethink, symbolized by the concept that 2+2 equals 5.

Winston starts out promising to himself there are certain things he will never agree to or say out loud, but torture proves an effective method at getting him to say whatever O'Brien wants. Winston vows that he will recite the Party lines, but will not actually believe them. If he lies to get the torture to stop but still retains his ability to reason for himself, Winston believes, then he can beat the Party.

However, O'Brien and the torturers are slowly able to break that down, too, as they are good at reading Winston's emotions, and they torture him every time he recites their desired lines without the sincere belief they're looking for. Winston is highly resistant to the 2+2=5 idea, but as he is tortured over and over, he does come to believe that because the Party can define his reality through brute force, then 2+2=5 could very well be true. They can force it to be true. He has no choice but to believe it, because only believing it might possibly end his torture, and the torture must end.

In other words, Winston and Julia were wrong. The Party can, in fact, get inside your head.

When Winston starts to believe 2+2=5, O'Brien does indeed start to improve his treatment of Winston, providing him with food and comfort, allowing Winston to become much healthier over time. This bonds Winston to O'Brien and makes him feel attached. However, Winston has not forgotten Julia, and in an unguarded moment, he cries out for her. This prompts O'Brien to ask Winston his feelings, again, about Big Brother. Winston states that he hates Big Brother.

It is at this moment when O'Brien sends Winston to the notorious Room 101.

In Room 101, prisoners face their worst fears - which, of course, the Party knows, because they know everything about everyone. Winston, who we know has a phobia of rats, is shown a pair of cages with starving rats in them. He is told that the rats are, as everyone in this world knows, flesh-eaters, despite being rodents. Winston is restrained, his head held in place, and O'Brien informs him that the rats will be released to eat his face.

Winston realizes what O'Brien wants to hear: he realizes his torturers will probably not allow the rats to eat him if he is willing to inflict the torture on Julia instead. They want Winston's betrayal of Julia to be complete. They want him to stop caring for her, the one thing he and Julia had once agreed they would never, ever do. And Winston has reached his limit: he cannot tolerate the idea of being eaten alive specifically by rats. So Winston says, "Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia!"

And then he is finally let go.

We continue with Winston once again living on the outside. He has seen and spoken to Julia, who was also let go. But the bond between them is completely broken. Julia admits she also betrayed Winston when she was faced with Room 101.

"Sometimes," she said, "they threaten you with something---something you can't stand up to, can't even think about. And then you say, 'Don't do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to so-and-so.' And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't really mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself, and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself." "All you care about is yourself," he echoed. "And after that, you don't feel the same toward the other person any longer." "No," he said, "you don't feel the same."

In other words, by demonstrating to Winston and Julia that they ultimately cannot escape their own self-interest, O'Brien has caused them to reject each other.

At the tail end of the book, Winston is sitting in his usual spot at a place called the Chestnut Tree Café, pondering a happy moment from his childhood before pushing the memory away, believing it to be a false memory. When an enormous military victory is announced on the telescreen, Winston realizes that he finally, truly loves Big Brother.

Interpretation of the End

Although the events at the end of the book are pretty straightforwardly described, I found them slightly confusing on an emotional level. Winston and Julia aren't really angry at each other for their betrayals, it doesn't seem - in fact, they admit to each other that's what happened, and they agree on their mutual experience. But they don't love each other anymore, and Winston loves Big Brother instead.

So, here is my initial thought on what the characters went through:

For people to love each other, both need a sense of individuality. There needs to be a connection, but there also needs to be a specific You and a Somebody to love, to connect to.

Through torture, O'Brien has effectively torn away Winston's individual sense of self. I know that's a weird thing to suggest when the book repeats "all you care about is yourself" multiple times, but I think that by so completely obliterating Winston's ability to make anything resembling his own decision, O'Brien has essentially made "Big Brother" and "Winston ('yourself')" the same person. Big Brother's wishes are Winston's wishes. Winston has been assimilated into Big Brother. Winston and Julia's conversation at the end describes what it feels like to be liquidated as a person and assimilated into a collective.

Winston now knows that the one core impulse he can never escape is self-preservation, and the only one who can provide that, with infinite military might and an infinitely-deep torture repertoire, is Big Brother. Julia represents the ideal that caused Winston to estrange himself from the safety of embracing and trusting Big Brother. And because Big Brother is both eternal and almighty, giver of both life and death, he is the only one it is safe to trust.

By betraying Julia, Winston discovered that his own will inherently had limits; because he would always, eventually, revert to self-preservation, his will and therefore his identity became synonymous with the force that decided whether to preserve him. That's why the end of the novel involves Winston imagining that he has finally been shot in the head and killed; he has experienced the death of his sense of self. And this is exactly how "Goldstein's" book indicated the Party's operations work: eliminate individuals and assimilate them into a collective to achieve immortality.

Character and Faction Parallels Between Nineteen Eighty-Four and Good Omens

The Party and Heaven and Hell

They're both the one overarching power over everyone's existence. The inner workings of it are mysterious to the characters and even moreso to the audience. The main characters are agents working for these entities, and they are controlled through surveillance, punishment, and reward.

Although Heaven and Hell give the impression of being two large overarching powers, it seems apparent to me that the whole thing is really just one system that has intentionally split its workforce into factions. Ultimately I think we will see in the most explicit way possible that whoever is actively calling the shots in Heaven is also actively in charge of Hell.

Winston and Julia, Aziraphale and Crowley

Both pairs are agents who are in love with each other even though they're not supposed to be, who enjoy Earthly pleasures and experience the joys of humanity before getting arrested and dragged away by their authoritarian "employers."

It's tempting to try and figure out which character mirrors which - Aziraphale mirroring Winston, Crowley mirroring Julia? - but I think, sort of like with Nina and Maggie, the reflections work in every direction. The characters aren't literal stand-ins for each other, but they are exploring similar themes, including what happens to people when a society forbids intimacy.

O'Brien and the Metatron

"More even than of strength, he gave an impression of confidence and of an understanding tinged by irony." This line describes O'Brien from Nineteen Eighty-Four, but it sounds quite a lot like the Metatron's manner as he enters Aziraphale's bookshop. Confidence and an understanding tinged by irony indeed.

O'Brien seems to appeal to Winston's ideal in authority figures, appealing both intelligent and physically strong. The Metatron seems to have tailored himself to appeal to Aziraphale's ideal of an authority figure: someone who is calm and in control, but also has an exceptionally gentle manner (and this isn't really true of the Metatron, but he can make it look like it is).

There are more similarities. Winston thinks and hopes O'Brien will be a helpful figure, and O'Brien convinces Winston he's a helpful figure, but in the end, O'Brien is the mastermind behind Winston's capture and torture. Additionally, Winston assumes, during his torture, that the Party's drive for power is for the Greater Good. But O'Brien tells him this is stupid, and the Party's drive for power is just for the pure sake of having power, because that's the only thing that will guarantee the Party's immortality.

This reminds me a little bit of the Metatron telling Aziraphale the point of the war is to win it, not to avoid it. It also hits me as a potential motivation for Heaven - like, why do they do what they do instead of doing something else, since the universe seems perfectly capable of running itself? "Power" or "immortality" could be a reason, and it would also be a reason that would resonate with very human themes, since power and (symbolic) immortality are among the motivations that can drive real-life authoritarians.

The Proles and Humanity

The common people. The populations who are considered by the main characters' societies to be "beneath" them, but who the main characters become fascinated by, and whose lifestyles the main characters come to prefer.

Both Nineteen Eighty-Four and Good Omens contain in their narratives the notion that the prole or human way of life is where true meaning can be experienced. Winston and Julia go as far as to announce that proles are alive and Party members are dead. And at the end of Good Omens Season 1, Aziraphale outright tells Adam that being "human incarnate" is better than being Heaven or Hell incarnate.

This mirror is probably the one that brings up the richest speculation possibilities for me. I won't go in-depth here, but I see in both stories the main characters developing this love for the proles and humans while continuing to separate from them - even trying to turn around and exploit the very power structures that have oppressed them in an effort to fight against the oppression.

It's worth noting that in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Mr. Charrington, the man who Winston and Julia rented their secret love nest from, and whom they thought was a prole, was actually a member of the Thought Police who helped capture them, whereas in Good Omens, so far, the humans have just been humans, and while Adam Young started out as an incredibly powerful non-human, he later chose to be a human and used his power to reject authoritarianism.

The Themes

Authoritarianism and Power

Obviously, the whole overarching cautionary tale in Nineteen Eighty-Four is about authoritarianism and the insidious ways it affects populations. The Party's power is almost as absolute as it can possibly be. Big Brother really is almost always watching; there is almost always a telescreen somewhere nearby. Even when there isn't a telescreen, there are microphones. And unorthodox ideas and behavior are punished with annihilation - not just death, but the total annihilation of the self.

Doesn't this sound like a version of Heaven and Hell in Good Omens?

At first glance, it appears Oceania's Party is more aggressive about surveilling its Party members than Heaven and Hell are about surveilling Aziraphale and Crowley. One has to wonder if perhaps Heaven and Hell are just as aggressive with surveillance in the Upstairs and Downstairs themselves, but are less aggressive or maybe even less capable on Earth, just like the Party's surveillance is less in the countryside (although it is still a significant threat there).

But still, we see Michael pull out those photos of Crowley and Aziraphale through the ages, and we hear the Metatron refer to reviewing Aziraphale's "exploits," and we see Hell drag Crowley down in 1827, and we see both Crowley and Aziraphale anxiously glancing around throughout history with the assumption that someone might be listening, and we see how ready Heaven is to erase Gabriel's memories (his identity! his entire self!) from existence. We also watch Heaven and Hell try to make Aziraphale and Crowley disappear in a gout of hellfire and a tub of holy water after realizing that Aziraphale and Crowley do represent a threat to the current celestial order. Heaven and Hell's Nineteen Eighty-Four-esque insidious threat is clearly established in both seasons.

Vaporizing Dissidents

In fact, Heaven and Hell's arrest of Aziraphale and Crowley reminds me a bit of Winston and Julia's arrest, in the sense that the protagonists knew what was probably coming but not exactly when. And Heaven's attempted execution of Aziraphale in particular reminds me very much of the Party choosing to vaporize a dissident. They were going to try to disappear him. No angel or demon other than the ones who were involved would have known what happened to him. Hell's attempted execution of Crowley, meanwhile, reminds me of the Party's public executions of war prisoners.

Finally, the Party will attempt to erase people from existence by killing them and then erasing all records related to them, down to the very last detail. Meanwhile, the Archangel Michael threatens Aziraphale with being literally written out of existence in the Book of Life. There's lots of speculation about how possible this is. I wonder if maybe, it's a flawed process. Maybe erasing someone from the Book of Life can cut a hole shaped like them in the universe - but maybe it isn't that simple, and they don't actually get taken from anyone else's memories. Maybe, as people in Oceania haven't quite lost the ability to remember their dead, Heaven cannot actually erase the fact of anyone.

Social Disconnection

I see a lot of complaints online about the characters of Nineteen Eighty-Four being impossible to like. What tends to make characters likable? Their behaviors toward others, especially humor, compassion, individual quirks, and affection. Their moral strengths, like a sense of justice, might appeal to us, too. And what has the Party been systematically beating out of people for decades now? Anything that could possibly make fictional characters likable.

One of the Party's primary modes of social control is to keep people from having individual, intimate relationships outside of the Party. Each individual regards every other individual with distrust at all times, and only the Party is capable of providing safety. Winston mentions many instances in which he believes parents are afraid of their children, for example. There are also a number of people who he thinks would report him for thoughtcrimes.

This is getting into heavy speculation territory, but it hits me as a major motivation for the Fall in the first place. It's a great way to instantly divide Heaven itself in half, make everyone instantly suspicious of everyone else, and set up a whole bunch of rewards and punishments to hold over people's heads related to Falling.

One thing that's obvious, though, is the total lack of social connection in Heaven. Michael and Uriel are constantly treating each other with barely-suppressed contempt. Muriel wants approval so badly, but nobody has any patience for them. The "friendliest" any angels get are Gabriel and Sandalphon in Season 1, and that's still like, corporate-coworkers-style friendliness. Gabriel outright tells Beelzebub that no one has ever given him anything. Although it's...theoretically possible Gabriel is an outlier, I think his experience is probably representative of all the angels.

Bodily Experiences, Physicality, Gross Matter

There is a moment that made a big impression on me. Winston observes a prole woman outside singing a silly popular song at the top of her lungs as she works. This woman is not an attractive person by Winston's or Party standards; she is older, she is fat, she has a "lower-class" accent, her skin is weathered and reddened from working outside. But Winston, self-admitted misogynist who came of age on the Party's feminine ideal, thinks she is beautiful. He has a moment of realization that she's beautiful because the very things that theoretically would make her "unattractive" are evidence of a human life fully lived.

We also have Winston and Julia enjoying the world through their senses together in a way that they simply cannot in the grips of the Party. From listening to a thrush in the countryside to drinking real, delicious coffee, they experience pleasures that are denied to them and cause them to feel peaceful in a way that is denied to Outer Party members. As they experience life in a way that is much closer to the ways of the proles, they decide that only proles are alive; Party members are dead. It is at the moment when they speak this out loud that the Party chooses to capture them.

There's a darker side to the bodily experiences explored in Nineteen Eighty-Four, and that's experienced in the Ministry of Love. Here, Winston and Julia discover that their thoughts and feelings are indeed controlled by their bodies. There is only so much pain a human being can withstand before they will comply with their captors just to get the torture to stop. In fact, if the Party's psychological manipulation tactics haven't worked thus far to indoctrinate the population, then the body can be used to brute-force an attitude change.

The connection to Good Omens here is obvious. Aziraphale and Crowley are just like a couple of Outer Party members who haven't experienced real pleasure before, and then they discover wine and ox ribs and music and nice clothes and all those delightful human experiences that the other angels sneer at. It seems Heaven looks down on Earthly pleasure as a morally inferior, dirty pursuit, while Hell looks on Earthly pleasure as a kind of weakness, a pathetic softness. But Earth is where Aziraphale and Crowley have found meaning. Physical existence is where they've found themselves, where they've connected with each other, and where they've connected with the stuff of the universe itself.

Memory Manipulation and Thought Policing

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, there are massive governmental departments dedicated to revising all printed records, including reprinting newspapers as needed. Private writing is also not allowed. This means that even if a Party member has a memory, there is no physical evidence of it. Even if there were physical evidence, something a person had stuffed away in a safe place, there would be another, more "official" source to prove one's personal source wrong. Of course, anyone trying to make any kind of fuss about official sources being wrong would disappear, too, so no one will even try.

Winston mentions often in his narration that he has trouble remembering large portions of his life because of the way the Party has controlled the public narrative and obscured any fact that would once have been a point of reference for him. For example, Winston estimates that the date his journal starts would be April 4, 1984, but he actually isn't certain, not even about the year, because time isn't kept track of by those dates anymore. Historical facts, like events that led to the Party's ascent to power, have been rewritten so many times that Winston can no longer know what really happened. He can be sure there was chaos in the streets, followed by violence, and then proclamations from above about what was supposedly true, but one individual human being usually can't judge the big picture of what's going on in their entire society without a relatively objective source of information for major events.

Nineteen Eighty-Four also has literal thought police, Party members who study their fellow citizens for any sign of even the most remote disagreement with Party doctrine. If someone proves to be a problematic thinker, as Winston and Julia both did, they are dragged to the Ministry of Love to be violently re-educated. Using a series of punishments and rewards, prisoners are slowly broken down until they are unable to think for themselves at all.

Although it's unclear what Heaven is like in regards to spreading information, we've got the Metatron and the Archangels literally ready to erase Gabriel's memory. In Good Omens, since it's all dressed up in Heavenly attire and the characters have their unique attitudes, it comes across as less dystopian, more quirky and fantastical. But they are fundamentally threatening exactly what is done in Nineteen Eighty-Four. And based on Beelzebub's comment about how Gabriel's memory is "all your...you," the same identity issues would be at play. To erase Gabriel's memories would be to erase everything that makes Gabriel himself - an execution by another name.

Reality As A Construct (Or Not)

The Party's stance on reality is fairly simple: human beings perceive reality, so if human perception can be altered, reality can be changed and turned into whatever the Party wants it to be. This sounds wrong because it is wrong, but people who the Party has targeted for thought control don't get to think for themselves about it, because they can't withstand the torture.

This might be Heaven's approach to reality as well. Look at how questioning is discouraged, and how the angels choose to believe whatever is most convenient for Heaven, or whatever they believe should be true ("there are no back channels").

More importantly, though, we have characters in Good Omens who actually can change reality. In particular, this is what Adam Young does - and what he actively chooses not to do for the majority of the world, in the end. He only adjusts reality enough to be allowed to make his own decision: he's not the Antichrist anymore. Otherwise, he restores the world to its state from before he ascended to power (aside from a couple of tiny little eleven-year-old-boy-ish tweaks here and there; hey, you can't blame a kid for adding a few extras of his favorite books to the world).

Proles as the saviors of society

So this one is complicated because repeatedly through Nineteen Eighty-Four, we come across this feeling from WInston and Julia that the proles have some almost mystical connection to True Humanity which Party members have lost. However, there is also the repeated assumption that the proles are incapable of revolution on their own. And in a practical sense, this appears to be true. The intellectuals of their world look down on them for it, but the truth is that just as in real life, the proles are living in poverty and are far too desperate for their basic necessities to ever gain the class consciousness needed to overthrow the Party. This is, of course, by design.

Winston goes as far as to believe the proles might possibly rise up and overthrow the Party, but he never considers working with them. He goes straight into the jaws of the Inner Party instead! This seems to be for a couple of reasons, but primarily because Winston has formed this sort of attachment to O'Brien, his Inner Party member of choice.

In Good Omens, Season 1 and the book, humans do eventually save the world. Well, Adam - technically an Antichrist - saves the world by thinking like a human and accepting humanity as his true "side."

Free Will

"Free will" as a theme really ties into humanity as a theme in Good Omens, since Earth is neutral ground between Heaven and Hell and humans aren't born to a particular Side. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, of course, the Party's goal is to eliminate free will, while in Good Omens, Heaven and Hell are looking to eliminate humanity.

Individualism Versus Collectivism

Oh there it is! There's my pet theme!

I've always argued that in Good Omens, the core of the dualism explored between Aziraphale and Crowley is individualism and collectivism, with Crowley the dedicated individualist who nonetheless would like to belong somewhere, and Aziraphale the nervous collectivist who is secretly desperate to have an identity and belongings to himself. Good Omens has already touched on the notion that working together as a collective is necessary to keep the world turning, but it's also important to preserve individuality, so we have people to keep us company and meaning to live for. I think this will come up again.

Meanwhile, Nineteen Eighty-Four explores an authoritarian and destructive form of collectivism in which human beings are not allowed to have individual interests or experiences; everything flows toward the power of the Party. Individual identity is viewed as a weakness. With that said, Nineteen Eighty-Four does consider the potential power of collectives to overcome authoritarianism.

Mortality, Immortality, and Change

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, O'Brien eventually reveals that the goal of the Party is to become immortal through collectivism. While the fate of an individual human being is always to die, the Party believes a collective that is single-minded enough about maintaining power can live forever. In that way, people who submit to the Party's power can live forever, too. One has to wonder about the real point of all this, of course. The Party regards change as its downfall. For the Party to succeed, it must keep everyone moving toward the exact same goal of maintaining power forever.

In Good Omens, many of the characters are naturally immortal, as angels or demons. They don't have to change, and Heaven and Hell don't have to change. However, existing as immortals in Heaven or Hell, not experiencing any of the things mortals do in the physical world, all seems pretty obviously pointless. Aziraphale and Crowley, and then Gabriel and Beelzebub, and then Muriel, all start to find meaning on Earth among mortals. And I think this is all yet to be expanded upon, especially with the looming Second Coming.

Where Good Omens is concerned, the notion of change as a type of death and/or death as a type of change may be important (and ties into The Crow Road by Iain Banks as well).

By coming to Earth, the immortal characters are essentially doing the reverse of assimilating with the Party or Heaven and Hell: they're discovering themselves. With self-discovery comes the risk of change - changing from who they used to be in Heaven or Hell - and the reward of meaning.

The Party of Oceania wants to assimilate everyone into the same goal of maintaining the Party's power in order to make the Party immortal. While "maintaining power" is a "purpose" of sorts for the collective, on an individual level for any specific human being, it is nihilistic, since there is no place for the individual other than ensuring the success of the Party's destruction of the individual.

Freedom in the Natural World

In both stories, we've got the notion of nature as a place of freedom. The countryside where Winston and Julia first meet up lacks telescreens, and there are fewer microphones as well, allowing them to act naturally in a way that isn't usually permitted in the city. The room that Winston and Julia rent from Mr. Charrington is also so old-fashioned that it doesn't have a telescreen; they believe themselves to be momentarily safe in their own little world there. Unfortunately, Mr. Charrington is not really an ordinary prole, but a member of the Thought Police, which allows the Party to invade Winston's and Julia's space.

Of course, in Good Omens, Earth is the ultimate place of freedom. Heaven and Hell are both awful in their ways, hyper-controlled and devoid of real meaning. It's on Earth that Aziraphale and Crowley can begin to truly live. Of course, the safe little place they create together, the bookshop, is eventually invaded by Heaven and Hell.

I'd like to leave you with a pair of quotations.

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face---forever. ... And remember that it is forever. The face will always be there to be stamped upon. The heretic, the enemy of society, will always be there, so that he can be defeated and humiliated over again. Everything that you have undergone since you have been in our hands---all that will continue, and worse. The espionage, the betrayals, the arrests, the tortures, the executions, the disappearances will never cease." O'Brien Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell Part Three, Chapter III

"If you want to imagine the future, imagine a boy and his dog and his friends. And a summer that never ends. If you want to imagine the future, imagine a boot . . . no, imagine a sneaker, laces trailing, kicking a pebble; imagine a stick, to poke at interesting things, and throw for a dog that may or may not decide to retrieve it; imagine a tuneless whistle, pounding some luckless popular song into insensibility; imagine a figure, half angel, half devil, all human . . . Slouching hopefully towards Tadfield. . . . . . . forever. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

[drhoz]

2093 - Camponotus consobrinus - Banded Sugar Ant

I saw quite a few ant species on te Australian leg of my holiday, and this species, common enough to be a household pest in parts of the Eastern states, was the most common.

Originally described as Formica consobrinus in 1842. 'consobrinus' means cousin, referring to the resemblance the species has to C. herculeanus, although that species in from northern Eurasia and North America. Its actual relatives are in the nigriceps species group, which also includes C. clarior, C. dryandrae, C. eastwoodi, C. loweryi, C. longideclivis, C. pallidiceps and C. prostans and of course nigriceps itself, which replaces consobrinus as you move west into drier areas.

This species dominates the nocturnal ant community, and has a constant war going with the mostly diurnal meat ants (Iridomyrmex). Both species will block up the nest entrances of the other, and when daily rounds of sabotage aren't enough may invade the other nest and attempt to exterminate their rivals.

Sugar is a major part of their diet, and to bring other workers to a new food source they often run in tandem, physically carry one of their sisters, or leave a pheremone trail.

Nests may be found in holes in wood, among the roots of plants, insides the twigs of trees and shrubs, between rocks or in the soil, and under paving stones.

Mt. Ainsley, ACT

[szarolina]

intro

Witam! I had been lurking in the studyblr community before I left Tumblr a few years ago. Yet here I come again and hope I still fit since I'm not a student anymore. I hope we'll get along!

About

I'm Karolina and I'm 27 years old.

From Poland (with love ♡).

INTJ & 5w6 / 8w9

I'm a graduate of two Master degrees: 1) International Relations in Asia 2) Russian & Central Asian Studies. I'm currently writing two theses and hopefully finish them by December.

Next, I want to enroll in PhD program and focus on politics, economy and markets in East and Southeast Asia.

In the meantime I'm looking for a job in the field. I'm thinking of an analyst of the area (just Asia or better Eurasia so it would cover both my degrees), but mixing it with academic path, so while pursuing PhD degree.

One of my hobbies are foreign languages! Over time of my education I've managed to learn English, French, Russian and I'm still learning Japanese (currently at B1+ level). I used to learn Mandarin Chinese, but I intend to get back to it at some point. Also, I'm interested in picking Korean.

I like learning often just for sake of it since my mind needs to be constantly on the go (it gave me sleepless nights several times). It could be picking some textbook (I learnt bases of macroeconomics by myself), doing some online quizes on all seas, gulfs and straits or reading a popular history/science books (because of the Oppenheimer movie, I bought "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes and yes, that's my current read!). I just enjoy it.

I have a never-ending books list on my Goodreads account (2600+ and counting). I like nonfiction (history, biography, political science, business, economics, you name it) and catching up on classics. Also, a h u g e Nabokov fan.

I'm one of these people who need to write everything down, from day schedule, important dates and tasks to all kinds of lists, trackers and brain dump. My Filofax is with me everywhere I go.

In general, I tend to be super-organized and put together. That applies to my daily or at least weekly schedule, surroundings or appearance - otherwise I can't properly focus.

I can't live without good coffee and I'm very picky about it.

Blog

The plan is to make it more personal by posting original content: hopefully daily, realistically a few times per week - mostly covering my writing proccess and languages learning, but also other random things. I intend to reblog some posts too, but I wish to keep the balance between that and OC.

Tagging #szarolina and #karolinatalking

My inbox is always open! c:

[nichenarratives]

Hurricane Heller 15

A Niche Narratives Fanficiton.

last | first | next

[tw for: period typical anti-semitism, anti-semitic terrorism, mentions of ww1]

15. Chag Sameach

Of all the months in the year, Mordecai despises December. Not only is it unbearably cold for a short haired feline, but it's also the time of year that complete strangers feel the need to wish one another holiday greetings for a celebration he does not acknowledge, bid for charity, or generally put their noses where they don't belong. While such behaviour does lead to an increased interrogator workload, the anticipated flush of funds is swiftly swallowed by increased electricity or coal and wood costs, leaving him exhausted and miserable, with very little to show for his efforts.

However, with the United States' continued involvement with ongoing disputes in Eurasia, such restrictions would worsen swiftly; food, electric and fuel shortages plague the poorer sectors of the city, while continued contractions in economic growth and massive inflation raise domestic prices for what remains available. Despite hating the cold, Mordecai stops purchasing coal for the fire and rations what he has left, his home practically an icebox that wilts his plants and tests his immune system on a daily basis. 

All high calorie or shelf-stable food, especially wheat, meat and fatty foods, are harshly rationed so excess can be sent to the frontline. Kosher meat in particular gets increasingly more difficult to source, leading to a restricted diet of soups or broths that do little to warm or fill his stomach. He loses weight and has to layer numerous blankets to sleep at night, though often nods off in the warmer launderette back room due to restless nights as frost gathered along the windowsill.

Despite being willing to do his duty for a country that openly despises his people, Mordecai is swiftly removed from the conscription pool due to severe myopathy, instead watching his neighbourhood become almost a ghost town overnight. As one of the few remaining men, a cluster of those deemed too sickly or disabled to serve, he's highly aware glares and quiet remarks questioning his patriotism follow him down the street, but that's the least of his concerns.

It's never been more dangerous to walk the streets openly sporting a kippah or tallit, as rumours from the frontline of an Semitic conspiracy to transform Europe into a Jewish haven begin to infiltrate the city. While known to the family, most in his area of the city aren't aware of his religious affiliation, but that doesn't prevent his concerns regarding his mother; she still takes his sisters to Sabbath services each Sunday even as reports of arson attacks during prayer, rising assault cases and even false arrests hit the papers.

He's still not spoken to them since his brief interaction with Esther, but that doesn't abate his concern; estranged he may be, but he's far from distant. He still slips their - recently thinned - allowance under the door, but adds an afternoon walk past his childhood home to his schedule, to ensure smoke rises from the chimney as mother makes the evening meal.

It's a reassurance they made it home safe, one he clings to until before his next walk.

By the seventh of December and the United States' official declaration of war on Austria-Hungary, Mordecai is forced to shut down the two least profitable enterprise's, the races and the launderette, and moves his base of operations to the most stable business; the Casino.

A week before Christmas, the seasonal celebration most of the city has preoccupied itself with to feed their sullen souls, Mordecai gets an unexpected visit from Gabriel in his office at Casino Royale. Since they usually only converse at the old quarry - their new interrogation site, after the factory was reopened to manufacture artillery for the war effort - the tom is wary when the man is shown in. Offered a drink, Gabriel gladly accepts before sitting down in a plush chair opposite Mordecai with his usual broad, toothy grin. 

Working closely with the family for a year allowed Mordecai to gather more intelligence on his coworkers, and Gabriel is no exception. The pure white persian is Mr Savage's most trusted Cleaner, a man who finds, secures and after an interrogator is done with them, disposes of the loose ends that running a shady business tends to produce. He's also technically the monochrome tom's direct manager, paid enough to give Mordecai a third of it after his work is complete, a lucrative arrangement for the cheerful feline.

"Afternoon, Kosher," he states, taking off his hat and placing it on the desk before getting comfortable, slinging a calf onto the opposite knee and leaning back in his chair. Sharp eyes scale around a room far larger and more appealing than the Launderette store room before returning to bored emeralds, the cheerful feline digging in his breast pocket for a smoke. "Nice digs. Who'd you have to kill for this pretty piece?"

"Fiores," the monochrome tuxedo responds blandly, closing his ledger with a sigh as the persian cracks up with laughter,  an ear flickering in irritation as he waits for him to settle. It takes an enforcer placing a scotch on the rocks before him for Gabriel to quiet down, though he chuckles even through sipping the liquor. Mordecai sits back and regards him with narrowed eyes, unamused. "Why are you here, Gabriel? I'm exceptionally busy."

The man hums through a mouthful of whiskey and swallows with a gulp, lowering the glass slightly to point at Mordecai with his index finger. "You're always busy," he observes, not at all perturbed by the other, as he's grown accustomed to Isaiah Fitzgerald's direct style of communication. When he deepens his glare, Gabriel dips his spare hand into a pocket and withdraws a Christmas card, offering it across the table. "The boss asked me to deliver this in person."

Mordecai sighs softly before he leans over to take the card, placing it face down on the table, without looking inside, his gaze remaining on Gabriel. While unoffended by the gaudy, decorated tree and snow-surrounded robin on the front, he's had enough of the imagery already; the city seems to have gone mad with it this year. "Jewish practices don't observe Christmas," he states. "But I can send a return card, if that is customary."

Gabriel pauses to light up, apparently not put off by the lack of an ashtray. Mordecai wrinkles his nose as he sucks on the offensive stick, the scent of burning tobacco permeating the small office before he even exhales.

"Open it," the persian feline instructs, leaning back with that same irritating smile still plastered across his face. Mordecai begrudgingly opens it flat on the table and finds no seasonal greetings.or message besides the name 'Kosher', above a date and time, scrawled in the bottom left corner. Mordecai frowns and glances up. "It's an invitation," Gabriel clarifies. "To the boss' annual poker game; a Christmas thing, but I don't know anyone brave enough to refuse an invitation. I don't think you're fool enough to be the first, either."

He pauses to down the rest of his whiskey, the ice clinking against the glass, before placing the empty tumbler down and retrieving his hat. "Be outside and ready to go," Gabriel elaborates as he replaces his hat, wide smile not leaving his muzzle. "And bring a gift. We usually aim for about half a month's wage. Just don't try giving him money; if he wanted cash, he'd cut your wage."

The persian stands, laughs at his own joke and sees himself out of the office. Once he's gone, Mordecai frowns at the invitation again, holding the card open with a splayed palm. December 24th; 1300 hours. With no prior plans and certain a refusal will see him floating in the bay Christmas morning, Mordecai is forced to think on what gift he could source in six days for the head of New York's largest crime syndicate.

What do people even give for Christmas?

oOo

Unfamiliar with Christian traditions and without the energy or time to conduct sufficient research, Mordecai falls back on Passover tradition and purchases a bespoke Seder plate; a simple white ceramic with a gold leaf trim, and a central tree of life motif. The branches of the tree link to six shallow, gold trim bowls set into indents on the plate, as another gold tree motif adorns the interior of each bowl to match.

While a traditional Seder plate may possess inscriptions to denote intended contents of bowls, Mordecai is painfully aware Mr Savage doesn't care for Passover traditions, so forgoes the inscription to allow free use of the ceramic plate as a serving dish for any occasion. He even fills the bowls with dried fruits and nuts before boxing up the bastardized Seder, securing a simple card inscribed with the traditional chag sameach on top.

He waits outside on Christmas Eve in heavy winter gear; his coat collar popped against the cold, a deep red scarf tucked into his overcoat and thick leather gloves. Standing under the awning over his front door to avoid the wind, he still shivers, so is thankful when his ride is punctual. At exactly one, the usual estate car pulls up to the curb, and Mordecai wastes no time getting in if only to get out of the cold.

Placing the gift down on the left hand seat, Mordecai sits far to the right, diagonal to the driver, who only glances over his shoulder before they pull away. No words are exchanged, which isn't unusual, so Mordecai spends the time blowing into his palms or briskly rubbing his hands together in his gloves, shoulders hunched and coat pulled high around his neck, until he's sufficiently warmed up.

The drive downtown is short. They turn into a neighborhood the tuxedo isn't familiar with, though the tall, narrow homes, boarded windows where shattered glass would otherwise let in the cold and flaking exterior plaster is familiar enough as they pass through. 

Soon enough, they leave the slums and pass into a middle class area, before slipping into the entertainment district.

Mordecai has never been this far into the city before. Bright neon lights glimmer and shine outside every restaurant and bar, denoting cocktails, liquor or burlesque shows, all a stark contrast to the dim storefronts of his own neighbourhoods. In addition to the visual clutter, muted music thrums around the car, swelling and abating as they pass establishments in a constant tide against the dark.

Despite it being new and mildly overwhelming, he takes it all in through narrowed eyes, no change in expression besides folding ears back at the cacophony of conflicting sounds or squinting against the glare reflecting off his pince nez. Silently, he hopes he has no reason to return to this area of the city besides forcibly attend another of Savage's parties; it's abhorrent to tolerate.

A short while later, they pull up outside a diner deep in the heart of it all. Mordecai thanks the driver, tips him fifty cents and slides out of the cab with the gift box in hand, pausing to study his destination as the cab pulls off. Stanley's sports a cursive neon proclaiming its existence for miles, though its green and red words flicker as the power grid fluctuates and stabilizes, likely due to the egregious electrical consumption of the surrounding area.

The diner is double fronted, with large windows either side of an equally large door covered by drapes, reducing those inside to simple, dark shapes set to a blinding backdrop. A raucous racket escapes through windows, left ajar to vent cigarette smoke. Classic music rounds out the affronting mixture; one of a dozen Christmas songs on repeat all over the city, drawing guests into screeching along, many already half-drunk anr celebrating their half day off work.

Dark ears folding back, Mordecai grimaces. Establishments like these are a personal nightmare, usually filled with drunk patrons getting too handsy in dark corners, deafeningly loud conversation and a considerable lack of personal space. Yet I have no choice, do I? He thinks bitterly, his personal invite to this shindig tucked into a breast pocket. If I don't partake, I may as well sign my own death certificate.

With that sobering thought, he takes a steadying breath and stepping forward, pushes the door open to step inside.

The decor is excessively bright; chairs, tables and even wall decor of bright red is offset by plain white wall tiles, a single black accent tile periodically set in walls and floors. Booths line the walls, while metallic folding chairs and tables line up to create walkways between the booths and the counter, at which a number of red leather stools reside facing an open kitchen, the chef stressed and hot, sweat running down his face to the towel around his neck.

Classic Christmas music, jovial laughter and off-key singing assaults the tom's senses, accented by the clang of kitchen utensils and conversations being shouted over the noise of it all. Unable to spot Gabriel in the diner, Mordecai flattens his ears to his skull and carefully approaches the bar. 

He's briefly interrupted by a drunken construction worker tripping over his own feet, reaching for Mordecai to catch him; the monochrome swiftly pivots out of reach, present held away, and the man lands face-first in someone's side salad, the momentum of his fall dragging it to the floor with him. There's a heartbeat of mostly silence before the worker sits up and languidly licks mayonnaise and lettuce off his face, to which the whole dinner bursts out laughing, many a drunkard raising their glass in cheers to a fallen comrade.

Mordecai backs away from the scene, turning around only when his back hits the bar. A young woman behind the bar giggles as the construction worker tries to get back up, slips on a sliced tomato and falls right back down on his behind. The tom clears his throat, placing the gift box down on the counter once 'Kendall' meets his gaze. "My presence was requested by Mr Savage," he states, cringing as he's forced to raise his voice to be heard above the ruckus. "However, I cannot locate him. Please hand him this with my regards."

She looks him up and down, chewing gum with her mouth open, then Kendall smiles and leans her elbow on the bar, resting her chin in a palm to meet his gaze. "Well, ain't you a sight for sore eyes," she drawls, blonde ringlets framing her face having escaped the messy bun on her head. Mordecai wrinkles his nose as she leans closer and bats her lashes "You goin' home with somebody tonigh', sugar? 'Cause I'd sure like t'open you up after midnigh'."

Unable to decide if he finds her proposition or her incessant gum chewing more abhorrent, Mordecai is blunt, though the current political climate forces him to reconsider the obvious 'I'm Jewish' response. "I'm not interested," he states after a moment of consideration, pushing the present towards her across the counter. His own expression stays disinterested as her own smile sours. "But as previously stated, I'd appreciate it if this could be handed to Mr Savage. Tonight, if possible."

"You got an invite?" Kendall asks sharply as she straightens behind the bar, still obnoxiously chewing the wad of gum as she taps her claws on the counter top. She regards the tom with a slight glare, all semblances of friendliness gone. "Savage always sends 'em invites for private par'ies. Ya got one, ya can hand it to 'im ya'self. Otherwise it's goin' out that there door with ya."

With a tired sigh, he reaches into his coat and produces the invitation, holding it between his index and middle fingers as he offers it to her. Kendall takes the card and flips it open, then glares at Mordecai through thick lashes. "Should'a guessed you was the Yid, with them manners." White brows knit into a scowl, but Kendall only rolls her eyes, unlatches a hinged countertop and raises it, beckoning him through with a curled finger. "C'mon. The boss' waitin' on ya. This way."

[collapsedsquid]

The end of colonial empires in the 1960s and the end of Stalinist (“state socialist,” “state capitalist,” “bureaucratic collectivist”) systems in the 1990s has triggered a process never encountered since the Mongolian invasions in the thirteenth century: a comprehensive and apparently irreversible collapse of established statehood as such. While the bien-pensant Western press daily bemoans perceived threats of dictatorship in far-away places, it usually ignores the reality behind the tough talk of powerless leaders, namely that nobody is prepared to obey them. The old, creaking, and unpopular nation-state—the only institution to date that had been able to grant civil rights, a modicum of social assistance, and some protection from the exactions of privateer gangs and rapacious, irresponsible business elites—ceased to exist or never even emerged in the majority of the poorest areas of the world. In most parts of sub-Saharan Africa and of the former Soviet Union not only the refugees, but the whole population could be considered stateless. The way back, after decades of demented industrialization (see the horrific story of the hydroelectric plants everywhere in the Third World and the former Eastern bloc), to a subsistence economy and “natural” barter exchanges in the midst of environmental devastation, where banditry seems to have become the only efficient method of social organization, leads exactly nowhere. People in Africa and ex-Soviet Eurasia are dying not by a surfeit of the state, but by the absence of it.

Traditionally, liberation struggles of any sort have been directed against entrenched privilege. Equality came at the expense of ruling groups: secularism reduced the power of the Princes of the Church, social legislation dented the profits of the “moneyed interest,” universal franchise abolished the traditional political class of landed aristocracy and the noblesse de robe the triumph of commercial pop culture smashed the ideological prerogatives of the progressive intelligentsia, horizontal mobility and suburban sprawl ended the rule of party politics on the local level, contraception and consumerist hedonism dissolved patriarchal rule in the family—something lost, something gained. Every step toward greater freedom curtailed somebody’s privileges (quite apart from the pain of change). It was conceivable to imagine the liberation of outlawed and downtrodden lower classes through economic, political, and moral crusades: there was, crudely speaking, somebody to take ill-gotten gains from. And those gains could be redistributed to more meritorious sections of the population, offering in exchange greater social concord, political tranquility, and safety to unpopular, privileged elites, thereby reducing class animosity. But let us not forget though that the social-democratic bargain has been struck as a result of centuries of conflict and painful renunciations by the traditional ruling strata. Such a liberation struggle, violent or peaceful, is not possible for the new wretched of the earth.

Nobody exploits them. There is no extra profit and surplus value to be appropriated. There is no social power to be monopolized. There is no culture to be dominated. The poor people of the new stateless societies—from the “homogeneous” viewpoint—are totally superfluous. They are not exploited, but neglected. There is no overtaxation, since there are no revenues. Privileges cannot be redistributed toward a greater equality since there are no privileges, except the temporary ones to be had, occasionally, at gunpoint.

Famished populations have no way out from their barely human condition but to leave. The so-called center, far from exploiting this periphery of the periphery, is merely trying to keep out the foreign and usually colored destitutes (the phenomenon is euphemistically called “demographic pressure”) and set up awesome barriers at the frontiers of rich countries, while our international financial bureaucracy counsels further deregulation, liberalization, less state and less government to nations that do not have any, and are perishing in consequence. “Humanitarian wars” are fought in order to prevent masses of refugees from flowing in and cluttering up the Western welfare systems that are in decomposition anyway.

Citizenship in a functional nation-state is the one safe meal ticket in the contemporary world. But such citizenship is now a privilege of the very few. The Enlightenment assimilation of citizenship to the necessary and “natural” political condition of all human beings has been reversed. Citizenship was once upon a time a privilege within nations. It is now a privilege to most persons in some nations. Citizenship is today the very exceptional privilege of the inhabitants of flourishing capitalist nation-states, while the majority of the world’s population cannot even begin to aspire to the civic condition, and has also lost the relative security of pre-state (tribe, kinship) protection.

The scission of citizenship and sub-political humanity is now complete, the work of Enlightenment irretrievably lost. Post-fascism does not need to put non-citizens into freight trains to take them into death; instead, it need only prevent the new non-citizens from boarding any trains that might take them into the happy world of overflowing rubbish bins that could feed them. Post-fascist movements everywhere, but especially in Europe, are anti-immigration movements, grounded in the “homogeneous” world-view of productive usefulness. They are not simply protecting racial and class privileges within the nation-state (although they are doing that, too) but protecting universal citizenship within the rich nation-state against the virtual-universal citizenship of all human beings, regardless of geography, language, race, denomination, and habits. The current notion of “human rights” might defend people from the lawlessness of tyrants, but it is no defense against the lawlessness of no rule.

[jannasan]

daily reminder that elon musk is paying for twitter by dealing with and paying lip service to genocidal, warmongering nations.

FUCK ELON MUSK!

[mauriciomeschoulam]

Las piezas del ajedrez global: los movimientos de China-Rusia-Irán

Texto publicado originalmente en El Universal: https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/opinion/mauricio-meschoulam/las-piezas-del-ajedrez-global-los-movimientos-de-china-rusia-iran

El 24 de febrero de este año, justo el día del aniversario del inicio de la intervención rusa en Ucrania, supimos que la Compañía Industrial Marítima de Irán estaba reparando un barco ruso que se estrelló contra el hielo en el río Volga y se estaba sumando a China para ayudar a Rusia a dragar el canal que conecta al río Volga con el Don y el Mar Caspio (Eurasia Daily Monitor, 2023). El dragado se hace para aumentar la profundidad de un canal, lo cual permitirá a los buques de carga rusos, chinos, iraníes, indios y otros, transportar envíos más pesados desde y hacia el Caspio y de ahí a Europa. Además, estas acciones permitirán el tránsito de buques de guerra más grandes desde la Flotilla del Caspio de Rusia hasta el Mar de Azov, lo que facilitará su empleo por parte de Moscú contra Ucrania. En un evento aparentemente desvinculado con ello, pocos días después, se anunciaba el restablecimiento de relaciones diplomáticas entre Irán y Arabia Saudita, gracias a un acuerdo mediado por China. Este par de ejemplos nos dan una pista acerca de cómo se están acomodando las piezas en estos tiempos, lo cual tiene que ver con la guerra Ucrania, pero también con muchas otras dinámicas paralelas. De eso hablamos a continuación.

Lo primero es advertir que, en muchos casos, la palabra“aliados” tiende a emplearse con demasiada flexibilidad, obscureciendo la complejidad que se ubica detrás de la coordinación de políticas y acciones por parte de ciertos países. No es que las alianzas no existan, por supuesto que las hay. Pero en muchos casos, ciertos estados solo se sumarán a las posturas o acciones de otros estados mientras ello convenga a determinados intereses y agendas, aunque de igual modo, moderarán esas posturas o se retirarán de su aparente “sociedad” al menor signo que muestre que uno o más de esos intereses corre riesgo.

Es verdad que hoy se puede apreciar la formación o quizás solidificación de un eje que podría ser entendido como anti-Occidente, conformado por Rusia, China, Irán (y algunos otros países a quienes conviene hoy sumarse a este bloque como Siria, o Corea del Norte, entre otros). No obstante, esas aparentes alianzas tienen infinidad de matices. El reto actual consiste en examinar esos matices y determinar hasta qué punto la balanza sí se está, efectivamente, inclinando hacia la coordinación de sus decisiones y acciones.

Segundo tema: la guerra en Ucrania no es lo único que está alimentando esta serie de políticas y acciones coordinadas. La rivalidad entre las superpotencias (Estados Unidos-Rusia y Estados Unidos-China) viene creciendo desde hace tiempo y se manifiesta en incontables rubros—como la ciberguerra, las guerras informativas, la carrera armamentista, y la competencia por espacios de influencia, entre muchos más—desde hace varios años. Paralelamente, al menos hasta antes de la guerra en Ucrania, Estados Unidos se encontraba en fase de repliegue y retracción geopolítica, no en fase de expansión (sus repliegues en Irak y Afganistán, son solo dos ejemplos, hay muchos más). Esto ha producido vacíos en regiones como Medio Oriente o Asia Central, vacíos que otros actores buscan llenar. Lo han hecho Rusia o Turquía durante todo el período de las guerras en Siria o en Libia, o lo está haciendo China ahora mismo mediando un acuerdo entre Riad y Teherán que hubiese sido impensable que mediara Washington.

Tercer factor: no obstante, la guerra en Ucrania sí parece estar empujando estas dinámicas con mayor fuerza.

Esta serie de factores combinados nos obligan a evaluar con mayor detalle cuales son los elementos que empujan hacia el acercamiento de la colaboración entre esos países y qué elementos podrían tender a alejarlos de ello o a sopesar sus decisiones.

Pensemos por ejemplo el caso de Irán y Rusia, dos países que no hace demasiado tiempo mostraban cierta confluencia de intereses y coordinación de acciones, pero que en otros rubros exhibían conflicto o distancia. Por poner un caso, ambos apoyaron al presidente Assad en la guerra en Siria y fueron los pilares centrales que permitieron a su ejército recuperar la mayor parte del territorio que había perdido. Sin embargo, Irán aprovechó las circunstancias para afianzar sus posiciones en ese país, cosa que Rusia no veía con buenos ojos. Así, cada vez que Israel bombardeaba posiciones iraníes o traslados de armamento desde Irán destinadas a milicias proiraníes, Moscú—la aliada mayor de Assad y quien tiene una base naval y una base aérea en Siria—se hacía de la vista gorda, permitiendo implícitamente esos bombardeos. De hecho, el Kremlin negoció con Israel un mecanismo para reducir riesgos de potenciales conflictos en el aire entre las aviaciones rusa e israelí, lo que ha permitido cientos de bombardeos israelíes en territorio sirio. Éstos han ocasionado cientos de bajas de personal iraní, incluidos militares de alto rango. La grandísima mayoría de ocasiones, Rusia se mantiene en silencio.

Ahora mismo, sin embargo, las cosas están cambiando. Teherán se está convirtiendo cada vez más en una de las columnas de apoyo para la intervención rusa en Ucrania, no solo proveyendo a Moscú con drones y misiles, sino facilitando medidas como el dragado del canal arriba señalado o coordinándose con China para acciones económicas y diplomáticas comunes como ahora mismo, el acuerdo Irán-Arabia Saudita, que, entre otras cosas, deja fuera a Washington de la fiesta, y se suma a la desconfianza que existe entre la Casa Blanca actual y el reino saudí.

El tema de la “alianza” China-Rusia es incluso más complejo. De un lado, y con enorme peso, la rivalidad entre Beijing y Washington no hace otra cosa que crecer. En la visión china, Rusia es una socia crucial para la construcción de un orden multipolar que pueda contrarrestar a Occidente. En ese sentido, si Moscú termina debilitada a consecuencia de la guerra en Ucrania, y como resultado, tuviese que replegarse o disminuir sus demandas—como lo son las de poner límites a la OTAN—China se sentiría más aislada o menos acompañada en su estrategia de seguridad internacional. Beijing, en otras palabras, no desea ver a Washington fortalecida o exhibiendo mayor determinación y arrogancia como una de las consecuencias de esta guerra, pues eso impactará sobre temas que para Xi son cruciales como el caso de Taiwán.

No obstante, justo por ahí podemos empezar a matizar. Precisamente uno de los resultados de esta guerra es la concientización en Washington y sus aliados de la OTAN de que necesitan incrementar sus presupuestos militares, armarse de manera más sólida, desplegar tropas, barcos y posiciones de manera mucho más firme y buscar la contención y la disuasión como métodos para prevenir conflictos. Lo último que deseaba Xi era que, tras esta guerra, EU concluyera que necesita más buques y más despliegues militares para proyectar mayor fuerza precisamente en la zona geográfica de China y Taiwán.

Pero más allá de ello, hay que entender que China y Rusia no son aliadas, sino, de hecho, rivales geopolíticos históricos. Además de la propia competencia por espacios de influencia en la zona geográfica que comparten, Beijing tiene una visión de mundo y de su rol expansivo que difiere enormemente de la de Moscú. China no desea bloques, inestabilidad, inflación, crisis energética o cadenas de suministro bloqueadas. Xi Jinping quiere mantener a Europa más moderada en su tono y en sus vínculos con China y, en cambio, la situación actual le está orillando a posicionarse a lado de Rusia de formas que son muy mal vistas en las capitales europeas.

Navegar entre esa serie de factores no está siendo simple para Beijing y por eso hay quienes argumentan que a medida que pasen las semanas y los meses, su papel mediador irá creciendo como se ha empezado a apreciar en estos días. No obstante, también existe el potencial de que China decida proporcionar armamento crucial a Rusia, lo que alteraría sin duda el curso de la situación en Ucrania.

Con todo, si tuviésemos que evaluar el panorama general, considerando lo que viene sucediendo desde antes de la guerra en Ucrania sumado a las dinámicas que dicha guerra está empujando, parece evidente que: (1) Estados Unidos no está teniendo la capacidad de estar en todas partes del globo al mismo tiempo y que por tanto, su despriorización de determinadas regiones y alianzas está resultando en vacíos, los cuales tienden a ser llenados por potencias globales y/o regionales; (2) Un eje conformado por Rusia y China, al que se tienden a sumar otros actores como Irán o Corea del Norte, entre otros, se seguirá solidificando, incluso asumiendo las diferencias de visión y acción que existen entre esos actores; (3) Incluso si China interviene para mediar, será importante para Beijing que Rusia no salga tan debilitada del desenlace de su guerra como para dejar de contribuir a los propósitos comunes del eje señalado y del contrapeso que se busca para con Occidente; (4) La otra tendencia que está creciendo es la conformación de otro grupo de países, muchos, quienes no desean verse alineados con ninguno de los bloques, países que por ejemplo, deciden no sumarse a las sanciones contra Rusia, además de coordinarse con China, con Washington o con Europa por igual, cuando así conviene a sus intereses.

Esto, claramente, se asemeja mucho a los tiempos de la Guerra Fría. Pero 2023 no es 1955 y habrá que hablar acerca de las muchas diferencias. Lo haremos posteriormente. Por ahora, sin embargo, el ajedrez se encuentra en pleno movimiento.

Instagram: @mauriciomesch TW: @maurimmpd-blog

18 de marzo de 2023.

[mariacallous]

The Sino-Russian border, once the world’s longest land border, has received scant attention in histories about the margins of empires. Beyond the Steppe Frontier rectifies this by exploring the demarcation’s remarkable transformation—from a vaguely marked frontier in the seventeenth century to its twentieth-century incarnation as a tightly patrolled barrier girded by watchtowers, barbed wire, and border guards. Through the perspectives of locals, including railroad employees, herdsmen, and smugglers from both sides, Sören Urbansky explores the daily life of communities and their entanglements with transnational and global flows of people, commodities, and ideas. Urbansky challenges top-down interpretations by stressing the significance of the local population in supporting, and undermining, border making.

Because Russian, Chinese, and native worlds are intricately interwoven, national separations largely remained invisible at the border between the two largest Eurasian empires. This overlapping and mingling came to an end only when the border gained geopolitical significance during the twentieth century. Relying on a wealth of sources culled from little-known archives from across Eurasia, Urbansky demonstrates how states succeeded in suppressing traditional borderland cultures by cutting kin, cultural, economic, and religious connections across the state perimeter, through laws, physical force, deportation, reeducation, forced assimilation, and propaganda.

Beyond the Steppe Frontier sheds critical new light on a pivotal geographical periphery and expands our understanding of how borders are determined.

[zoologytopics]

Arctic Fox

The Arctic Fox goes by many common names: Arctic fox, white fox, polar fox, and snow fox. Their scientific name Vulpes lagopus means "fox hare-foot," referring to their insulated feet which resemble a rabbit’s.

They are found throughout Eurasia, North America, Greenland and Iceland. They live in the arctic and alpine tundras. They make dens in a low mound or in a ple of rocks at the base of a cliff. The dens have 4-8 entrances with a system of tunnels that cover as mich as 30 square meters. Some dens have been occupied for decades by the same fox family.

The Arctic Fox mates from April to JUly, with the first litter being born in April to June and the second born in July to August. They have a average gestation of 49-57 days. The number of pups born in a litter varies with food availability, typically 5-8 pups, however as many as 25 pups have been born in a litter. They are weaned at 2-4 weeks old, and at this age they also emerge from the den. They reach maturity at 10 months old. When prey is abundant and life is good, older offspring tend to remain with their parents’ for a following year or two to help with the next batch of kits.

Foxes live in family groups typically consisting of the mating pair, the litter and then likely one or two older kits helping raise the newest litter.

The Arctic Fox is a opportunistic feeder eating a wide variety of prey;insects, berries, carrion, and small mammals. Typically, their diet mainly consists of marine mammals, invertebrates, sea birds, fish and seals. For foxes that live mainly inland, they typically eat mostly lemmings. They also will store away food during summer where food is readily available. When prey is incredibly scarce, they are known to follow polar bears in hopes of getting some scraps. They are preyed on by polar bears, wolverines, red foxes and golden eagles. Not to mention, humans are regularly hunting them for their fur.

The Arctic Fox weighs 3-8 kg, though it varies based on the time of the year and their sex, and measures 75-110 cm long. They can cover over 96.3 miles in a single day and reach speeds of 50 km per hour.

During winter, their coats transform into their iconic, thick white coating. However, once summer arrives and the snow melts, they begin shedding their white coat and replacing it with a shorter and thinner fur with a wide variety of colors, ranging from dark and light grey, charcoal brown to bluish brown. The Arctic Fox has two color morphs known as the Blue Fox and the white morph. The Blue Fox retains a blue, brown or gray coat year-round. They reside in coastal regions, where their coat helps them to blend in with rocks. Their white morph obtains a brown coat during summer, and a white coat in winter, this helps them blend in and hide away from predators. Under their fur, they have dark skin, similar to their good old friend the polar bear, which helps them absorbe and retain heat which helps them greatly in Arctic.

Arctic Foxes have developed a unique way of retrieving lemmings and other rodents from their burrows. With their excellent hearing, they will pinpoint the prey’s location underfoot before then jumping several feet in their air and then diving nose first into the snow with the hopes of catching the rodent. Unfortunately, it takes quite a few tries to succeed in their attempts.

Adult Arctic Foxes’ survival rate depends greatly on their region, the availability of food, and finally the amount of predators in the area. On average, however, they live to about 3-4 years old in the wild.

The species split off from what we know as our pet dogs around 12 million years ago.

In 2018, a young female left her territory in Spitsbergen, Norway and traveled over 3,500 km across the Arctic to Ellesmere Island in north Nunavut, Canada. She completed this journey in about 76 days, travelling about 155 km daily. She currently holds the record for the fastest movement rate for this species, and likely the longest distance traveled in such a short time. Unfortunately, her fate is unknown, however tracking data has aided in researchers understanding how important sea ice is to aiding in arctic foxes in search of food and new territory.

Despite being recognized by the IUCN as Least Concern, they are endangered in northern Europe with fewer than 200 adults remaining in Norway, Sweden and Finland combined. They are also endangered on Medny Island. Despite it being illegal, they are hunted for their coveted fur.

Sources: https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Vulpes_lagopus/, https://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/wildlife/Arctic_animals/arctic_fox.php, https://www.thoughtco.com/arctic-fox-facts-4171585

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