#anti agent brexit

[breckstonevailskier]

Yeah when the narrative framing is clashing with what we see onscreen, I'm going to have issues. Imagine if Tony Stark was properly framed as a villain. Imagine if Sylvie was framed as selfish and as a villain. Imagine if Peggy was framed as self-centered, selfish, and very pro-status quo...

Here's the thing I keep trying to articulate and possibly failing: I don't actually mind characters who are terrible people. I have enjoyed many. What I mind is characters who are terrible people while the narrative keeps trying to say that they are wonderful, often contradicting what the narrative shows us, with no self awareness

[azurecanary]

P*ggy: "Let's recruit "former" Nazis to help run SHIELD's science devision!"

Daisy: "You're telling me that this 20 year old goes on to help found a Nazi science devision? Aight, pull the trigger."

Yup, definitely besties /s

[ceasarslegion]

Uncle story?

Oh boy!

So the first thing i need to say about my uncle is that he is an idiot. Terminally stupid and also the most self-righteous bastard I've ever met. Truly deadly combo.

I must also start by clarifying that this is not the same openly gay uncle who is a Scottish lord and ran for mayor of a small Saskatchewan town because he was bored and won and then showed up to all the official things in a top hat. That is technically my great uncle and on my dad's side. We must not smear that uncle's name due to confusing him with my mom's brother who is too stupid to realize how stupid he is and thinks the fact that no one can understand what the fuck he's ever talking about is a sign of intelligence.

So my uncle is openly gay. And he lives in the UK as a dual dutch-canadian citizen. He is engaged to an Israeli man (do not discourse on this post. I mention his nationality to highlight something else I will mention. Just some guy who doesn't even live there is not responsible for a certain conflict going on). He also grew up in Dubai but family went back to Canada for a spell around when he entered high school. He works as a travel agent last time I checked, but he can never hold down a job for more than a few months without getting fired so who knows at this point.

You're with me, yes? Gay, immigrant, fiance from another country, grew up in the gulf?

This motherfucker. Said he would vote for Trump if he were american and that brexit was a good idea. And is anti-immigration. And thinks feminism is cancer. And once tried to convince my mom that men across the UK were being arrested for "stare-rape" which is apparently when you just look at a woman in public and she can then claim you raped her with your eyes. And thinks pride is pedophilic. And thinks bisexuality is just people who want to be special and can't pick a side. And the only person he's still on speaking terms with in my immediate family is my grandma who is just as toxic as he is stupid.

My dad once said, word for word, while a few drags into a blunt: "if I ever see [uncle] again, I'm going to beat the shit out of him for what he said about my son." I don't know what exactly happened to get him kicked out of my parents apartment when they cut ties with him during a visit, but I know it was a screaming match over something to do with me. I had long moved out at that point so I wasn't there to see it. And this is coming from the mouth of the same guy from my red bull and snickers post, my dad is not a violent or scary guy and I've never seen him lay a hand on anybody.

My uncle and I used to be really close when I was a kid because he's a very artistic person, and I was too. We were the two creatives in the family. Also as a queer kid who didn't know he was trans yet I was naturally drawn to queer masculine influences. This fell apart pretty quickly when I started like, growing into my own person instead of a carbon copy of the people around me. He was steadily becoming dumber and dumber to me but it really came to a head in 2016

So trump wins the US election. I am still living in Abu Dhabi at this point and I had just graduated high school in June of that year. My boss is American. She is devastated and says she's going home early that day because she needs a few hours to process what's gonna happen now. At my desk I make a Facebook post saying that if any of the americans I knew refused to vote over your own self-righteous bs that I don't want to talk to you again because you clearly cared more about having the moral high ground than sucking it up for the people who trump will go on to hurt. This post is a big hit among my Arab majority peers.

This goes on without incident. 3 months later my uncle comments a big essay on it sucking trumps dick and saying some pseudo-qanon shit about Hillary Clinton. I respond citing actual sources and hit him where it hurts: Mike pence's then-plan to divert AIDS research funding into conversion therapy.

I go back to work (I am at work when the response happens too). About an hour later my phone buzzes on my desk. I open it to an essay twice the size in my messenger DMs from him crytyping about how I've changed and turned into such a whiny SJW, how I'm no longer the same person i was when I was 11 (damn I hope so), how I'm such a bully now (YOU CAME ONTO *MY* POST 3 MONTHS LATER???), and uh, no word of a lie, that he can't be racist because he dated a black man in high school. I. I never mentioned race in the post or my response to him. He brought that up on his own.

I ended up calling him out on it by replying to his public comment with "hey if you're gonna cry about how you're not racist in my inbox for pages and pages on end like that because someone said you were being stupid at least do it in the same place you were flaunting your idiocy, damn."

We didn't talk for a good couple years after that. And then something came up and we talked again for a bit, I don't remember exactly what anymore but we had to interact in person for it. I was willing to be civil, he started by doing the equivalent of crossing his arms and pouting until I said sorry for how mean I was to such a sensitive little muffin on the internet. Very mature guy I'm related to here isn't he. Insane how he's the uncle and I'm the nephew huh

This lasted for a good 2 weeks. Because the pokemon sun and moon leaks happened and I showed him the character models for red and blue and joked that they looked like a newlywed couple on their honeymoon in Hawaii. Pokemon was one of the few things we could still agree on at this point, so i was trying to bridge a gap with a family member with it. Thinking that he would appreciate the joke as a gay man.

He exploded at me. Like full on screaming exploded at me over that. He yelled about how homophobic I was, that i had no right to call myself queer because I hadn't been sexually assaulted or threatened to be murdered (HE HASNT EITHER??? LIKE HE VERY MUCH HASNT 😭😭😭 also you are making a LOT of assumptions about the life of someone you made NO effort to be a part of despite him giving you every olive branch you could possibly grab), that it was insulting to every gay person in the world to say that the best representation we deserved was pokemon (THATS NOT WHAT I SAID??? Also what's wrong with a gay pokemon character 😭 how is that insulting 😭😭) and that I had no idea what it was like to suffer for my identity. He said this while I was living in a place where queer people got executed for being moral degenerates btw.

Something in me snapped that day and I responded with "oh tell me more about how hard your life was in your dubai villa with an in-ground pool and a hired nanny. I'll truly never suffer as much as you have. Tell me more about how you threw the first brick at stonewall."

My parents had to stop themselves from laughing at that response and steered me out before my uncle could explode even more, and I never talked to him again.

[valkyrieandstrangeridingaragorn]

Actually the MCU can be deeply disrespectful for those who've suffered because of the larger governing body's greed, harshness or failures.

Wanda who's family's home was destroyed and parents kill. Eventually looses her country and has no where to go. She just goes crazy and dies.

Bucky who suffered so much because of the failure of the US government. He needs to make amends and stop hiding behind his lack of control.

Bruce who has to live on the run because of the governments violent zealousness. Which only made treatment for condition nigh impossible. Whatever, don't you know how bad cat calling is?

Loki who his skin changed and felt out of place and unknowingly developed deep internalized racism till it all came crashing down. Why couldn't he just appreciate what he had?

Also everyone Stark has screwed over.

It's quite telling isn't it, that the victims are the ones being blamed while the authority and the system are justified? Every time, in all those you mentioned it always goes the same way.

Loki is the villain and the narrative never questions Odin, if anything he has every action excused and the blame falls solely on Hela in Ragnarok while he gets a heartfelt farewell.

Ross gets to give a speech in CW about accountability and the safety of the civilians as if he hadn't caused the destruction of Harlem in The Incredible Hulk.

Bucky was taken prisoner by Hydra and he's told he has to make amends but Agent Brexit is treated as a saint in all movies and series even though she hired Zola fully aware of what he had done to Bucky and the other soldiers in the 107th, which led to Hydra infiltrating Shield. And approaching the families of the victims in TFATWS is something that should have been done by the government but nope, they use Bucky as the scapegoat instead.

Wanda lost her parents and her home and she and Pietro joined the anti-US protests when Hydra lied to them and some other Sokovians in order to run experiments on them. But of course no one holds Stark accountable for this or any of the deaths his weapons caused, they'd rather call Wanda a nazi... it would seem hiring a literal nazi to work for the government doesn't turn you into one but unknowingly joining an organization that happened to be Hydra even if she didn't know that is enough to call her a nazi. Make it make sense.

In each and every one of those the victim is blamed and the authorities and the privileged are justified. It's ridiculous. And the scene that serves as closure for CW is Stark giving a Hydra speech. It's so pro-status quo it's almost funny.

[breckstonevailskier]

@therese-lokidottir @valkyrieandstrangeridingaragorn Hell, IIRC the Illuminati weren't mentioned again after Wanda's HEROIC act of giving them the fate that fascists like them deserve. 🤔

RIP Imposter Cap 😂. You are no Steve Rogers. 😂 Someone who collaborated with Zola and thus was complicit in Bucky's torture does not have the right to use Steve's catchphrase. 🤣

A fitting fate given that these assholes murdered their Stephen in cold blood. 🤨

Tell me, Mr. Boltagon, what good is a whisper if you are unable to speak? 😉

He totally had it coming. 😁

As did he. 😂

In all seriousness, these guys really only served to provide some familiar faces for Wanda to brutally kill for shock value.

Lots of people saying "don't worry, there are so many Loki variants and only one of them is in the tree so we'll see Loki again" but I've gotten attached to this Loki with this character arc and I want Mobius (and the others) to reunite with this Loki

[zee-man-chatter]

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/britain-has-succumbed-to-the-the-tyranny-of-the-minority

Allister Heath: Britain has succumbed to the tyranny of the minority

The U.K. is now an elite dictatorship where majority opinions are crushed

Allister Heath,  The Telegraph

LONDON — Britain’s deranged war on cars, our looming ban on gas boilers, the debanking scandal, the failure to prosecute crime, the attempted cancellation of women, the sabotage of the Brexit agenda, the scale of migration: welcome to anti-democratic Britain, where the beleaguered majority is increasingly subject to the whims of an entitled, activist elite that often seems to despise the people over which it exercises so much power.

All the policies listed above share a devastating commonality: they are deeply unpopular, and would be crushed in a referendum after a fair campaign, were the politicians courageous enough to grant the public a say (in the case of Brexit, they did, of course, and continue to this day to resist implementing the revolutionary change implied by the vote).

In a truly majoritarian society, one where the demos actually exercised kratos, no form of crime would be tolerated, and certainly not burglaries or muggings. Nobody would dare to indoctrinate school children with extreme trans ideology, and the green agenda would be centred around urgent technological innovation rather than seeking to prevent working people from flying to holidays in the sun.

Yet we live in a very different political reality, one in which public opinion is flagrantly disregarded whenever it doesn’t align with the views of the ruling class. Westminster has become cartelized: the large parties are committed to an unrealistic dash to net zero, refuse to discuss the gargantuan cost involved and omit to mention that Britain’s carbon emissions are about three per cent of China’s. On the great subjects of our time — family policy, the size of the state, the NHS and even planning rules — there is little difference between Tory, Labour and Lib Dem MPs, disenfranchising millions.

The intellectual conformity is stultifying, and has been reinforced by the emergence of an all-powerful Blob, the nexus of mandarins, policy advisers, quangocrats and other government agents, a class of “public servants” who don’t really like the public and are increasingly convinced that they have a constitutional duty to constrain and contain elected politicians. They are experts at delay, prevarication and lawfare, and are cheered on by the left-wing activists who have taken over the legal profession, our cultural institutions, academia, charities and even many big companies.

Thus even in the rare instances when the Tories attempt to think the unthinkable and respond to public opinion, as with the Channel crossings, the system does its best to block any change, empowered by quasi-constitutional legislation such as the Equality Act, the Climate Change Act and our membership of the ECHR.

The upshot is an extraordinary disempowerment of the electorate: is it any wonder that some voters fear we risk becoming a democracy in name only? Take the absurd war on cars: a tiny minority of activists, council planners, devolved administrations and ministers are seeking to discourage the mode of transport that the vast majority of the population relies on. Or consider immigration, which is a lot higher than the public would like: all potential solutions to reduce numbers while preserving the economy are lambasted as gimmicks, meaningless or self-evidently stupid. The Tories have promised to cut numbers in every single one of their manifestos since at least the 1990s, and yet aren’t even pretending to try any longer. How does this not disastrously undermine trust in politicians?

Until recently, all parts of British society bought into the democratic ethos developed after the great voting reforms of the 19th and 20th century, or at least paid lip service to it. It was deemed snobbish to dismiss the views of ordinary voters out of hand, and borderline insane to seek to reverse the expansion of the consumer society.

That consensus, already left fragile by the Blairite legal revolution and his massive increase in the number of university graduates, was finally shattered after the 2016 Brexit referendum. Most of our institutions are now controlled by a pseudo-meritocratic elite convinced that only it can prevent the masses from reverting to ignorance, racism and prejudice.

Our new ruling class is paternalistic, messianic even: in a post-religious age, it has taken on the role of priest and saviour of the common people. It still occasionally feels the need to legitimize unpopular ideas by pretending that they garner majority support, hence all the polls “proving” that people support net zero. Yet when asked to pay the price in terms of actual cash or drastically reduced convenience, the public immediately rebels.

There was a time when we worried, rightly, that the tyranny of the majority was the main threat to freedom and prosperity; today, it is the tyranny of the minority that poses the greatest danger. Our new task is to prevent the majority from being oppressed: how do we stop the capture of every institution by the radical left? How do we make Parliament more representative, and reduce the power of the Blob? One answer would be to use a lot more referenda, as the Swiss do; another would be radical reform of the civil service, turning ministers into CEOs with proper control over mandarins.

I’m well aware that the majority can have bad or evil ideas, or vote for maniacs. We need to retain — and in some cases, further develop — protections against majoritarian abuses, even if some of the current ones are no longer fit for purpose or have been hijacked. Elites have helped drive much good social change in recent decades, including by fighting racism and prejudice against all sorts of minorities.

But the pendulum has swung too far away from majoritarian rule, and too much power handed to social engineers. Today, the problem doesn’t lie with the public, which is largely tolerant and liberal-conservative, but with the elites, who have become authoritarian and anti-democratic, captured by wokery and a dislike of material aspiration.

What we call populism, in the current British context, is really the majority trying to reassert itself. Voters are developing a new form of class consciousness; “motorists” are becoming a political force. The Ulez fiasco is acting as a gateway, normalizing opposition to other excesses.

The message to politicians is clear: start listening to the voters again, or else Britain will soon face a popular uprising orders of magnitude greater — and more unpredictable — than Brexit.

The Telegraph

[mariacallous]

It was a revelation that astounded the Irish parliament — and prompted suspicions, accusations, denials and calls for inquiries among members and observers.

The Sunday Times told last week how Russian intelligence had recruited a politician to act as an agent for the Kremlin during the Brexit talks and that, remarkably, they are still at large.

The bombshell reverberated all week with some parliamentarians getting to their feet to deny they were the agent nicknamed Cobalt. But while the question for the tearooms and the pubs was “who is Cobalt?”, the more important question is “what does Russia want with Ireland?”

“It shouldn’t come as any surprise to any of us that Russia seeks to influence public opinion, distort facts, and is active in relation to that across the world — and Ireland is not immune,” Simon Harris, the taoiseach, said.

“We have seen a significant increase in that level of activity since the brutal illegal invasion by Russia of Ukraine over the last number of years. The gardaí and our security services take all of this extremely seriously.”

Yet it was not always thus. Historically neutral, Ireland is now facing the stark realities of Russian espionage, underscoring a new heightened awareness of the threats posed by the Kremlin and the malign activities of its intelligence services.

Ireland has quietly evolved into a strategic hub for Russian intelligence operations. Its geopolitical position on the western periphery of Europe, neutral stance and open economy have made it an attractive base for Russian spies to engage in active measures or covert actions targeting the UK and the EU.

“Russia’s interest in Ireland is the same as that of many multinationals. It’s an English-speaking country that serves as a backdoor into Europe, with weaker regulatory frameworks, meaning it doesn’t take foreign threats seriously,” said Professor Neil Robinson, an expert on Russian and post-communist politics at the University of Limerick.

“Ireland always thought of itself as neutral, not entangled in many of the world’s problems. It didn’t really see itself as part of the Cold War,” he said. “So the Russians were effectively given a free pass by the Irish state, and they used Ireland as a conduit for agents, intelligence and strategic information from its position as a gateway for technology and companies into Europe.”

For Ireland’s under-resourced military and security agencies, the writing has been on the wall for years. Russia has become increasingly active in Ireland’s air, sea, land and cyber domains, much to its embarrassment.

Russian military Tupolev TU-160 Blackjack bombers and anti-submarine patrol aircraft have buzzed Irish airspace to see how quickly Nato responds, as Ireland lacks its own fighter jets. The first publicised incursions were in 2015 when Tu-95 bombers crisscrossed important civilian airline traffic lanes. In 2017 the RAF scrambled Typhoon combat aircraft from its Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) stations to respond to a sortie by Russian strategic bomber aircraft that skirted close to Irish sovereign airspace. A pair of high-profile incursions in 2020 involving six Russian aircraft prompted Ian Paisley Jr to raise the matter in the House of Commons.

Russian warships, submarines, and more recently ghost ships — disguised as research vessels and fishing trawlers — have become frequent visitors to Ireland’s exclusive maritime zones off the south and west coast.

Russian warships regularly converge in Irish-controlled waters, causing concern on both sides of the Atlantic. But more recent Russian tactics fall firmly into the realm of hybrid warfare, which involves everything short of firing a shot.

Russia regularly mounts influence and disinformation campaigns to sway public opinion across Ireland. Russian compatriot groups, supported by its Dublin embassy, organise anti-Ukrainian demonstrations on the streets of Dublin in conjunction with fringe republican groups. Footage of the protests are later broadcast on Russian TV as propaganda.

In April 2022 a convoy of cars waving Russian flags and marked with the pro-war Z symbol paraded down the M50 in Dublin, Ireland’s busiest motorway. The Ukrainian embassy slammed the “disgusting disrespect” against the “Irish people who stand against Russia’s war on Ukraine”.

Most worryingly, Russia has begun to foster connections with loyalist, republican and ultra-left groups in Ireland, further deepening concerns.

Last month the Russian embassy in Dublin hosted a deputation led by John Connolly, a convicted Real IRA bomber, who now leads the Truth and Neutrality Alliance, an ultra-left group which campaigns to defend Irish neutrality and resist entry into military alliances such as Nato. Connolly is a hardline dissident who was sentenced to 14 years in jail after being caught with a large “barrack buster” mortar bomb in Fermanagh in 2000. His Truth and Neutrality Alliance has participated in protests against the use of Shannon airport in Co Clare by the US air force, often waving Ukrainian separatist flags.

Russian services have exploited all these factors to use the country as a platform for mounting broader operations across Europe and beyond.

Russian agents have also been found living long-term double lives in Dublin. It is not known when Russia first began sending these deep cover agents — known in the intelligence world as legends — to Ireland to create false identities and background stories but cases have come to light.

One involved Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov, a Russian military intelligence officer who spent four years studying at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) using a false identity.

Cherkasov purported to be a Brazilian named Victor Muller Ferreira, when he studied political science at TCD between 2014 and 2018 before moving to the United States to undertake a master’s at Johns Hopkins University, where he specialised in American politics. He was unmasked as a spy as he attempted to take up a post at the International Criminal Court in the Hague in 2022.

Dublin is also used as a staging ground for Russian intelligence operations in the UK and Europe. As a neutral and accessible European capital, it provides a convenient base from which intelligence activities are coordinated and launched, targeting both Ireland and neighbouring countries including the UK. Much of this activity is directed from the federation’s embassy complex on Orwell Road, a half-finished eyesore in the suburbs of south Dublin.

A massive expansion of the complex was halted when the government introduced emergency legislation to stop the project in 2018 after The Sunday Times revealed how the Kremlin was using its diplomatic post in Dublin to run a network of spies in Europe.

An analysis of the architectural plans had revealed a self-contained structure, the tell-tale sign of a signals base used to transmit and intercept secret communications. The embassy was already being used to assess intelligence collected by Russian spies across Europe before its transmission to Moscow by cypher clerks in Dublin, all working under diplomatic cover.

“Russian spies have always been a problem in Dublin,” said Liam Smaul, a retired Special Branch detective who worked in counterintelligence and spent much of his career monitoring the embassy.

“They came here to enter the UK during the Cold War. It was made worse because, at one stage, Aeroflot used to fly into Shannon. They had means and ways of getting their people in Ireland. Counter-intelligence was never a priority for the garda or the military.”

Declan Power, a defence analyst, said Ireland’s inability to understand the threat made the problem worse.

“No one in the government ever asks where the threats are coming from. We don’t act well on intelligence as policymakers don’t have a good understanding of the threat environment and where the problems are coming from,” he said.

The nature and complexity of the Russian threat now facing Ireland cannot be overstated. The Irish military and the garda intelligence division know the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service, and the GU, the military intelligence branch of the Russian armed forces, are both operating in Ireland. They also suspect the FSB, Russia’s principal security agency, is spying on multinationals based in Ireland, deploying vans full of equipment that can intercept private communications or planting agents inside the companies themselves. More recently, Ireland has been warned that Unit 29155, an elite GU unit that conducts sensitive foreign operations including assassinations and targeted attacks, might have members travelling through the Republic to enter Britain and France.

Of all the security and defence issues that could cause a problem for the government, the Russian threat to the undersea fibre optic cables that carry communication data and internet traffic between Europe to North America is top of the list. The geopolitical consequences if something were to happen are profound. Ireland has an important, often underappreciated, value as a central node in the network of communications cables that criss-cross the globe.

The first signs of Russian interest in the cables in Irish-controlled waters emerged in 2021 when Yantar, an intelligence collection ship, arrived unexpectedly off the northwest coast and began searching the area in a zigzag fashion, suggesting it was mapping the seafloor. The vessel belongs to Russia’s directorate of underwater research, which is part of the defence ministry. It is also capable of mounting underwater sabotage operations using submersibles. This is why Nato continually monitors its movements to assess if it is targeting European or American subsea communications infrastructure. GU agents have also been observed mapping the landing points of subsea cables that come ashore on the west coast, presumably should they ever want to damage them.

The revelation of Cobalt’s existence comes as Ireland swiftly enhances its defence capabilities and further aligns itself with European security frameworks — steps likely to attract the ire of Putin’s Russia. The department of foreign affairs in Dublin has already cut Russian diplomats in the capital from 30 to just five. Dublin has also boosted its defence budget, investing in maritime patrol aircraft, naval vessels, a new primary radar system and missile defence. Last week’s disclosures are expected to drive even more substantial actions.

Keir Giles, a Russian expert at Chatham House, the international affairs think tank, said: “Russia has always found it easier to operate in environments where it was not viewed as a threat.” Ireland, he continued, has now realised that neutrality provides no safeguard against a determined aggressor.

Giles expects Russia to remain a persistent threat in Ireland but foresees a shift towards using proxies to pursue its goals.

This type of action can include organising anti-Ukrainian protests and fomenting opposition to initiatives such as Brexit. By influencing, at times unwitting, factions to campaign against issues such as a border on the Irish Sea or land post-Brexit, Russian actors can cause maximum disruption behind the scenes, but with no attributable blame.

“Russia has demonstrated that it can extend its influence through various means, including organised crime, disaffected individuals and other proxies,” Giles said. “These agents are capable of carrying out espionage, spreading disinformation, and even executing acts of sabotage and arson across Europe. Ireland may yet face similar hybrid threats.”

[breckstonevailskier]

And when your only plausible explanations are "Peggy was incompetent", "Peggy was complicit", or "Peggy knew HYDRA was there but turned a blind eye so long as she benefited from it", it's obvious what the answer is.

keep thinking how interesting it would've been if instead of a vague acknowledgement of peggy letting hydra into shield they would've actually committed to it and revealed she had been helping them the entire time, maybe even that she had been a double agent during the war and nobody finding out till decades later in catws like i would at least love to see this in fic bc how horrifed would steve be not bc she was the "love of his life" but because he did to an extent know her and trust that they were on the same side so to find out otherwise would make the discovery that he hadn't in fact stopped hydra as he believed even more painful

[fredborges98]

Por trás de uma foto descortina-se toda uma história dramática, trágica e ao mesmo tempo de superação.Um deles irá viver, o outro terá um outro destino.

Mais um pôr do sol na terra do sol nascente, ela era fascinada por "fardas",ele por "fadas", ambos achavam que o destino havia os Unido num Reino perdido.Ele um fuzileiro naval russo, ela uma física nuclear, ambos conviviam com uma vida de identidades duplas, ela espiã da CIA, ele espião da KGB, especializado em perseguir e tornar a vida uma "fatalidade final" contra espiões russos, inimigos declarados de ditadores, de qual país? Não importa, quem fosse ditador e fosse aliado ao seu país.

Ela era perita em ataques terroristas.Ela começou como um segredo da Eureka — a primeira organização de inteligência política e militar da antiga União Soviética — e seu objetivo era "suprimir e liquidar" qualquer ato "contrarrevolucionário"ou oposto à linha política do país.

Assim como ocorreu com os serviços secretos soviéticos, o nome da fábrica de venenos também foi mudando com o passar do tempo. Originalmente, ela se chamava Sala Especial, depois Laboratório n° 1, Laboratório X e Laboratório n° 12, até que ficou conhecida simplesmente como Kamera, ou "a Câmara", sob o poder de Stalinin (ditador).

Embora ainda paire um ar de mistério sobre a fábrica, alguns detalhes das suas operações secretas foram revelados depois do colapso da União Soviética, confirmando o que dissidentes haviam revelado anteriormente.

Ele algoz, uma de suas vítimas, foi um emigrante da URSS, o escritor antissoviético Levy Rebets, morto em 1957. Acreditava-se que sua morte teria sido causada por um ataque cardíaco, até que o assassino da KGB desertou quatro anos depois e contou que havia lançado uma nuvem de gás venenoso de uma ampola de cianureto triturado no rosto de Rebets, ao encontrar com ele em uma escada em Munique, na então chamada Alemanha Ocidental.

Houve um outro político que foi assassinado por uma substância esfregada na sua lâmpada de leitura. O calor da lâmpada fez com que ela se dispersasse pelo quarto, sem deixar rastros.

Poderiam eles se apaixonarem? Sim, fardas e fadas se atraem e tudo começou quando tiraram a foto acima anexada, o que parecia um momento de diversão, se tornou um drama.

Onde tem amor,haverá sempre o Holodomor?

Por: Fred Borges

Entre 54°00'00.0"N 2°00'00.0"W , 36° 00′ N, 138° 00′ L, 8 00 N, 66 00 O, Latitude: 54.3169, Longitude: 80.4882 54° 19′ 1″ Norte, 80° 29′ 18″ E · 151 m e 38°53′42″ N e 77°02′11″ O, o casal de agentes secretos conhecidos como, ele- "Narcus 15474756", ela- "Traficus 4355374433" representando a extremas direita e esquerda e as malditas externalidades sociais da tragédia humanitária a perder de vista.

O nome dele Hankinson Putim, o dela Starietz Karamazovy.Ambos extremistas da direita e da esquerda, tiveram três filhas, as três amavam balé; Elsie, Alice e Bebe, a família se radicou no Reino Unido em Southport, mas tiveram um triste fim, foram as três filhas mortas por um maníaco.

Eles, em dois extremos, direita e esquerda no início se uniram, mas o radicalismo de ambos só se sustentou por algum tempo, tempo suficiente para se amarem e se odiarem, tempo para ambos serem convocados por " deuses decadentes" para liderarem ou sustentarem ondas de desinformação e manipularem a xenofobia e outras fobias e medos, e por implodirem ou detonarem ondas de antisemitismo,anti correntes migratórias nos seus países de origem e pelo mundo,ondas da maré vermelha do racismo, ondas que estouraram primeiro nas ilhas do mundo mais desenvolvidas, ditas "esclarecidas"; Inglaterra e Japão e depois espalharem-se como tsunamis para continentes inteiros.

A caracteristica principal de ambos os movimentos " cismicos" é a acefalia ou atrofia de lideranças, guiada pela ignorância e o senso comum do " Enough" ou "Basta" ,do " Brexit", basta do " Borderless World" ou " Mundo Sem Fronteiras",poderia o homem ser guiado pela acefalia, por uma explosão de rancor do "eu contra ele ou ela" ou do " nós contra eles" onde as extremas esquerda ou direita,"religiões" dos extremos, dos deuses do " paraíso" e do " inferno" se unam para combater a humanidade e o humanismo?

Seria o fim da humanidade ou do humanismo? Homem, assumindo a natureza do veneno do escorpião, do veneno da química fatal e das inconsequências políticas da Teoria da Relatividade, e dos monopólios ou oligopólios das redes sociais, redes locais, redes globais disseminando a parcialidade, o ódio,o "Enough" ou " Basta", onde políticos corruptos, sistemas corruptos, Deep State, Dark WEB, levaram ao nosso casal, de um amor ao rancor,de famílias se dissolvendo feito calotas polares, de icebergs se desmembrando ou se deslocando para ilhas, navios ilhas de emigrantes, pátrias-ilhas,ventres-vazios, terror, horror,rancor substituindo o amor?

Organizações,como a ONU promovendo ataques de terror, OEA sem voz, sem efeito,na teoria a prática é outra, organizações fundadas pós grande guerra sem representação, inodoras, inefetivas,inofensivas,nenhuma proatividade diante de ditaduras que "pipocam","consumidores-consumistas extremistas" que arriscam suas vidas por ditadores ou ditaduras disfarçadas de democracias.

Em nome do que seria o futuro de Elsie,Alice e Bebe, em nome de que seria o casal, em que um deles, somente um, viveria? Estranho é o amor virar rancor,esterilidade, impotência diante dos extremos, extremos se atraem e ao mesmo tempo se repelem, "fardas" e "fadas" se atraem e se repelem, é o fim. Fim.

[m58]

Four by nicky [nick-e] melville 

L-R top (click to enlarge) 'Disconnect Level 1', 'Disconnect Level 2' L-R bottom (click to enlarge) 'Disconnect Level 3' Disconnect Level 4'

Note from the author: In November 2022 I received an email from my letting agent with the subject heading ‘Preparing for Power Cuts or Planned Black Outs.’ News to me! (And to the staff of the letting agency I found out later.) The tone of the email presented this as an actuality rather than a possibility. The email then proceeded to give advice on what to do both before and after the looming black outs. Following this, I found HM Government’s contingency planning for an energy emergency, titled ‘Electricity Supply Emergency Code,’ which showed planning for national grid shutdowns over eighteen stages to complete blackout—societal breakdown in other words. The ‘Code’ dates from 2019, well before the current energy crisis so-called. ‘Power Cuts’ is a series of abstract representations of the planned pattern of national shutdown contained in the government’s plans. 

Bio:

nicky [nick-e] melville is a poet, creative writing teacher, curator, editor, musician and occasional artist, whose work takes aim at and interrogates the imperatives of capitalism, politics and ideology. He has been grafting on and in the margins for over twenty years developing a range of publications in a variety of forms and genres: found poetry and erasures, visual poetry, lyric experiment, conceptual and post-conceptual writing. A Selected poems, Decade of Cu ts, was published by Blue Diode in 2021 and his 400-page anti-poem-novel hybrid, THE IMPERATIVE COMMANDS, his PhD project, has just been published with Dostoyevsky Wannabe. Earlier books include selections and dissections (Otoliths Press, 2010), a collection of visual poetry, and his ABBODIES series (Sad Press) which explore the neoliberal and fascist elements of Brexit through the lens of ABBA songs, aliens and James Bond. He makes music as Fuck This: https://fuckthis1.bandcamp.com  

[richmond-rex]

Gregory re-imagines the Tudor accession and Henrician Reformation as fatal lapses in England’s past. Her conservative depiction of a Reformation England held hostage by cosmopolitan usurpers trampling on rights and traditions decouples the notion of English exceptionalism from the anti-Catholicism that has previously informed it and codifies present-day national grievances. Her Tudor England is severed from its past, and the forces that have invaded it are degenerate, degraded and culturally bereft. Her Henry VIII, who embodies Kingsnorth’s culture-sapping beast of progress, along with his agents, the men of nowhere, can be read in the contemporary context as the tyranny of Brussels, cosmopolitans, and the so-called metropolitan elite [...] Gregory writes a nation rooted in class and ethnicity (ultimately the basis of racist thinking) that is hostile to change and to those deemed outsiders. Given the sales figures of her books, there is every reason to regard her historiography as influential and certainly as a barometer of English consciousness in the age of Brexit.

— Siobhan O’Connor, ‘Brexit and the Tudor turn: Philippa Gregory’s narratives of national grievance’ | The road to Brexit: A cultural perspective on British attitudes to Europe (2020)

[breckstonevailskier]

@captainwidowspring @valkyrieandstrangeridingaragorn If anything, in the scene of Peggy shooting at Steve, they should've just had no music at all or had ominous music playing. That way the score would've properly matched up with what we see onscreen.

And what's worse, this is not even the only time that the music disagrees with how the characters are acting in its haste to glorify Peggy and promote Steggy. Later in the movie, after Peggy kisses Steve without his consent, a happy little horn melody plays, even though it is pretty clear that the kiss upset Steve, and did not please him. The music seriously did a surprising amount of heavy-lifting for Steggy. But in any case, this does help explain why so many people have no problem with Peggy assaulting Steve, and even see it as a good thing: the music is encouraging them to see it that way. This is yet another example of how influential framing can be.

This is very apparent when you compare how Pvt. Lorraine kissing Steve (which is what led to the moment where Peggy shoots at him) was framed: it was framed in a more sinister light, Steve's discomfort's on full display, and it's accompanied by ominous music.

I am currently writing a paper on the music of the Captain America trilogy, and this has caused me to notice an exceedingly interesting detail that I previously missed. In The First Avenger, after Peggy shoots at Steve, a melody that sounds very similar to the Captain America theme plays. This repeats twice: one time when she puts the gun down and stalks away, and again while Steve and Howard are so shocked by what Peggy just did that they stare after her even as they continue their conversation.

This is quite disgusting, as it rather implies that Peggy just did something noble and honorable, or something that Steve would approve of, when this is not even close to the case. Steve would never be so thoroughly irresponsible and reckless, nor would he approve of such pettiness, or partake in it himself. Indeed, it is clear to see how betrayed Steve felt when he was cautiously ensuring that she was done shooting at him. The music also disingenuously tries to reframe the characters' reactions to her outburst as positive. The fact that the almost-Captain-America theme continues after Peggy leaves Steve and Howard staring after her endeavors to make it seem like their reaction is because they're impressed, rather than because they are stunned and dismayed as is far more likely.

And what's worse, this is not even the only time that the music disagrees with how the characters are acting in its haste to glorify Peggy and promote Steggy. Later in the movie, after Peggy kisses Steve without his consent, a happy little horn melody plays, even though it is pretty clear that the kiss upset Steve, and did not please him. The music seriously did a surprising amount of heavy-lifting for Steggy.

But in any case, this does help explain why so many people have no problem with Peggy assaulting Steve, and even see it as a good thing: the music is encouraging them to see it that way. This is yet another example of how influential framing can be.

[laurelindebear]

Gods, I’m furious. (Shocker, I know - I’m usually so chill. /s)

Today’s update from Bullshit Island:

People are being arrested for anti-monarchist protests. One was for shouting at Andrew during the funeral procession, but two others were during accession announcements (eg the proclamation that Charles is now king.) One has since been ‘de-arrested’, a word I have literally never heard before in my entire 40+ years of life. This comes in the wake of the updated Policing Bill passed earlier this year which was already heavily criticised for its

A bank holiday has been declared for Monday. As there is only a week’s notice for this, this means:

Hospital appointments are being cancelled (bear in mind that wait lists for anything deemed routine have surged in the wake of Covid and loss of staff.)

There are reports that other people’s funerals are being cancelled in deference to, er, another funeral. This seems to be a decision made by individual providers, presumably based on staff requesting not to work on the bank holiday.

Every major supermarket is closing its stores on Monday.

A number of food banks are closing on Monday for the bank holiday as well, even though food bank usage has increased exponentially in the last few years. (Meanwhile, in 2010 the Queen applied for a poverty grant to pay for fuel bills for her palaces. The Crown Estate is worth something like £14B and the Queen herself had an estimated net worth of around £300M.)

Charles will not pay inheritance tax on what he gets from his mother, nor will any of the figures be released. (Second link is paywalled, but you get the gist.)

Royalists are twisting themselves into knots trying to justify the monarchy with all the usual arguments: they earn money through tourism, they do a lot of charity work, they serve the country, without a monarch we’d have the PM as President and nobody wants that.

Rebuttal: the palaces, the art, the crown jewels, etc will continue to exist without the royal family. People still visit Versailles and the Pyramids even though no king or pharaoh has been around for a long time now. They ‘serve the country’ exactly as much or as little as they wish to; not to mention that many of the places they ‘served’ did not want them there as subjugators in the first place. Whatever charity they contribute from their own wealth still raises the point of where they got all their wealth and privilege in the first place (hint, it was not through years of honest toil), and whether that wealth is in the best place and the best hands.

As for the ‘President’ angle, why do we need a ceremonial head of state in the first place? What does that provide that a government leader does not? Just someone to do all the hand-shaking photo ops the PM doesn’t have time for (in theory)? I don’t fancy the notion of ‘President Truss’ more than anyone else - she’s awful! Having something like the Royal Assent to provide checks and balances sounds good, in theory. But the people suggesting this also seem quick to point out that the Royal Assent thing hasn’t been invoked since something like 1708, because the monarchy is basically a formality. The Queen did meet with the Prime Minister quite regularly, but these meetings are under strict secrecy. The only things I’m aware she affected on government policy were things like getting herself exemption from disclosing her assets and complying with equalities legislation.

When Cameron and subsequent PMs committed to ploughing ahead with a disastrous no-deal Brexit even though their own reports and research (Yellowhammer etc) indicated it would harm the country? When Covid policy flip-flops and corruption left hundreds of thousands dead and friends of the government millions and billions in profit? When the son of a KGB agent was made a peer in the House of Lords? When the government and virtually all of the media are making a concerted effort to demonise trans people in order to splinter the LGBTQ+ movement? When the Prime Minster lied to the Queen’s very face? Crickets. Tumbleweed. At least, as far as we know.

So either we need the monarch to rein in the government, or the monarch is an empty figurehead without real power. Neither makes a good case for continuing it, frankly. If we need a check on the power of the government - and I would not dispute this - then why should such an important job default to someone who got there by an accident of birth? And if the monarch isn’t going to actually provide such a service and look out for the best interests of the country, then what bloody good are they and why should taxpayers fund their position when they are wildly, screamingly, privately wealthy already? Why can’t they pay for their own influence like every other billionaire? (Sarcasm, but not as much as I’d like.)

I’m not even going to get into the colonial BS because that’s been covered extensively by people who are much better informed and closer to the subject, but suffice to say, I stand behind the African, Indian, Indigenous, Irish, and other people expressing their concerns and dissatisfaction with the whole circus.

So no, I’m not mourning a very old, very privileged woman who died peacefully of natural causes. I’m definitely not mourning for ten days, and every new ridiculous bit of nonsense I see, every black profile picture, every obsequious tv or radio programme, every cap-doffing, head-bowing, knee-bending bit of performative pomp makes me angrier and even less well-inclined towards the whole lot of them.

No gods, no kings, no masters. Abolish the monarchy, and give their wealth to the people it came from, and the people of the country.

https://ko-fi.com/Post/Normal-Island-Mourns-By-Embracing-The-Cancel-Cultu-C0C2F0CVU

[newstfionline]

Friday, May 7, 2021

60 years since 1st American in space: Tourists lining up (AP) Sixty years after Alan Shepard became the first American in space, everyday people are on the verge of following in his cosmic footsteps. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin used Wednesday’s anniversary to kick off an auction for a seat on the company’s first crew spaceflight—a short Shepard-like hop launched by a rocket named New Shepard. The Texas liftoff is targeted for July 20, the date of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic aims to kick off tourist flights next year. And Elon Musk’s SpaceX will launch a billionaire and his sweepstakes winners in September. That will be followed by a flight by three businessmen to the International Space Station in January.

The U.S. birthrate is falling; other countries have faced the same problem (Washington Post) With the U.S. birthrate declining for the sixth year in a row and undergoing its largest drop in nearly 50 years, according to provisional data released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States is facing a dilemma with which many wealthy nations in Europe and Asia have long grappled. Instead of trying to ramp up immigration, some governments have tried subsidizing fertility treatments, offering free day care and generous parental leave, and paying thousands of dollars in cash grants to parents. But there’s little evidence that these policies have been effective on a large scale. South Korea, for instance, spent roughly $120 billion between 2005 and 2018 to incentivize having children, but its birthrate continued to fall. Singapore began offering new child-care subsidies, more-generous maternity leave policies and grants for new parents that today amount to $7,330 per baby. But those interventions didn’t reverse the trend: Singapore currently has the world’s third-lowest fertility rate. And Japan, Russia, Estonia and other nations have similar problems.

Protest road blockades halt Colombian coffee exports, federation says (Reuters) Road blockades connected to anti-government protests in Colombia, which marked their eighth day on Wednesday, have halted shipments of top agricultural export coffee, the head of the grower’s federation said. The protests, originally called in opposition to a now-canceled tax reform plan, are now demanding the government take action to tackle poverty, police violence and inequalities in the health and education systems. Twenty-four people, mostly demonstrators, have died. “We are stopped completely, exports are stopped, there is no movement of coffee to ports nor internally,” federation head Roberto Velez said in a phone interview.

20 dead in Rio de Janeiro shootout (Reuters) At least 20 people, including a police officer, died on Thursday in a shootout during a police operation against drug traffickers in Rio de Janeiro’s Jacarezinho shanty town, O Globo newspaper reported on its website. Two passengers on a metro train were also wounded in the shooting in the northern Rio neighborhood, the newspaper said.

Gunboats and blockade threats as U.K., France clash over fishing (NBC News) The U.K. and France were engaged in a naval standoff on Thursday as a long-simmering dispute over post-Brexit fishing rights escalated in the English Channel. France deployed two maritime patrol boats to the waters off the British Channel island of Jersey, its navy said, after the British Navy dispatched two of its own vessels to the area late Wednesday. The dueling moves came as a flotilla of French fishing trawlers sailed to the Jersey port of St. Helier to protest over fishing rights. The French government has suggested it could cut power supplies to the island if its fishermen are not granted full access to U.K. fishing waters under post-Brexit trading terms. Clément Beaune, the French secretary of state for European affairs, told AFP on Thursday that Paris will “not be intimidated” by the British. On the other side of the Channel, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged his "unwavering support" for the island after he spoke with Jersey officials about the prospect of a French blockade. Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands with a population of 108,000, is geographically closer to France than Britain. It sits just 14 miles off the French coast and receives most of its electricity from France via undersea cables.

Ukraine wants aid, NATO support from Blinken’s visit (AP) U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with his Ukrainian counterpart in Kyiv Thursday, telling him that he was there to “reaffirm strongly” Washington’s commitment to Ukraine’s “sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence.” Blinken also assured Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba that the U.S. was committed “to work with you and continue to strengthen your own democracy, building institutions, advancing your reforms against corruption.” By visiting so early in his tenure, before any trip to Russia, Blinken is signaling that Ukraine is a high foreign-policy priority for President Joe Biden’s administration. But what he can, or will, deliver in the meeting later with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is unclear.

India hits another grim record as it scrambles for oxygen supply (AP) Infections in India hit another grim daily record on Thursday as demand for medical oxygen jumped seven-fold and the government denied reports that it was slow in distributing life-saving supplies from abroad. The number of new confirmed cases breached 400,000 for the second time since the devastating surge began last month. The 412,262 cases pushed India’s tally to more than 21 million. The Health Ministry also reported 3,980 deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing the total to 230,168. Experts believe both figures are an undercount. Eleven COVID-19 patients died as the pressure in the oxygen line dropped suddenly in a government medical college hospital in Chengalpet town in southern India on Wednesday night, possibly because of a faulty valve, The Times of India newspaper reported. Hospital authorities said they had repaired the pipeline last week, but the consumption of oxygen doubled since then, the daily said.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid gains chance to form government, oust Netanyahu (Washington Post) Yair Lapid, a former news anchor and leader of Israel’s centrist opposition, was picked to negotiate a new governing coalition Wednesday, opening the possibility of Israel getting its first government not led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in more than a decade. President Reuven Rivlin tapped Lapid to make the next attempt to form a government one day after Netanyahu failed to assemble a parliamentary majority after 28 days of effort. Under Israel’s system, Lapid also has four weeks to craft a power-sharing plan. If he falls short, the president could open to the process to any member of the Knesset or call for Israel’s fifth election since the spring of 2019. Lapid will face a stiff challenge in trying to find common ground among the range of anti-Netanyahu parties elected in March. As a bloc, they would control enough seats to secure a majority. But ideologically, they range from the far right to the far left of Israel’s political spectrum. They also include Israeli Arab parties that traditionally play no part in supporting governing coalitions but that may be needed this time.

Instagram fuels rise in black-market sales of maids into Persian Gulf servitude (Washington Post) The advent of Instagram in recent years has helped create an international black market for migrant workers, in particular women recruited in Africa and Asia who are sold into servitude as maids in Persian Gulf countries. Unlicensed agents have exploited the social media platform to place these women into jobs that often lack documentation or assurances of proper pay and working conditions. Several women who were marketed via Instagram described being treated essentially as captives and forced to work grueling hours for far less money than they had been promised. “They advertise us on social media, then the employer picks. Then we are delivered to their house. We are not told anything about the employers. You’re just told to take your stuff, and a driver takes you there,” said Vivian, 24, from Kenya. Domestic servants sold on the platform described encountering threats, exploitation and abuse. The agencies which marketed them, meanwhile, made thousands of dollars. In response to a request for comment last month, an Instagram spokesperson asked for the list of accounts identified by The Post so company officials could investigate. Instagram has since deleted these accounts.

Nonuplets: Woman From Mali Gives Birth To 9 Babies (NPR) A Malian woman has given birth to nine babies, in what could become a world record. Halima Cissé had been expecting to have seven newborns: ultrasound sessions had failed to spot two of her babies. "The newborns (five girls and four boys) and the mother are all doing well," Mali's health minister, Dr. Fanta Siby, said in an announcement about the births. Professor Youssef Alaoui, medical director of the private Ain Borja clinic in Casablanca where Cissé gave birth, said the babies were born at 30 weeks. The newborns weighed between 500 grams and 1 kilogram (about 1.1 to 2.2 pounds), he told journalists. The clinic has deployed a team of around 30 staff members to aid the mother's delivery and care for her nine children.

Nigeria reels from nationwide wave of deadly violence (The Guardian) Nigeria’s president Muhammadu Buhari has come under mounting pressure from critics and allies alike as the country reels from multiple security crises that have claimed hundreds of lives in recent weeks. An alarming wave of violence has left millions in Africa’s most populous country in uproar at the collapse in security. Attacks by jihadist groups in the north-east have been compounded by a sharp rise in abductions targeting civilians in schools and at interstate links across Nigeria. Mass killings by bandit groups in rural towns, a reported rise in armed robberies in urban areas and increasingly daring attacks on security forces by pro-Biafran militants in the south-east have also all risen. In April alone, almost 600 civilians were killed across the country and at least 406 abducted by armed groups, according to analysis by the Council on Foreign Relations. The violence has left much of the country on edge and Buhari facing the fiercest criticism since he took office.

[eliotquillon]

mark walden and politics in h.i.v.e

as you probably all know by now (thanks to the j.k rowling fiasco), art and politics are inherently linked; whether it’s intentional or not, it’s difficult to extricate an author’s beliefs from the way they manifist in literature. and with that in mind, let’s talk about politics in h.i.v.e.

h.i.v.e is a series that has never exactly shied away from criticising the politics of the year each book was published in, and you can probably see this best in the character of matt ronson, who is the most obvious stand in for mitt romney that i’ve ever seen in my entire life. romney was running against obama in the 2012 election, and, coincidentally enough, matt ronson appears in deadlock, which was published in 2013 (and almost certainly written during 2012). in case you’ve repressed the events of deadlock (which i wouldn’t blame you for lmao), ronson’s a senior member of the disciples - he’s actually head of an entire cell - and is running for president in order to secure the disciples’ control over the united states. it’s not exactly subtle imagery. it’s definitely the boldest walden gets in terms of critiquing the state of late 00s-early 2010s politics, and is also the example that i think is easiest to pick up on, because of how similar ronson and romney’s names are, and how in-your-face the whole scene is. i mean, otto leaves ronson to die in a plane pre-programmed to crash in the middle of the ocean because when raven tells him that a bullet would’ve been quicker, his response is, quote, “too quick.” for further proof, if you check walden’s twitter, he’s pretty positive towards obama on the whole, which i imagine is why he decided to kill off obama’s presidential challenger.

but that’s not the first time politics gets infused in h.i.v.e. the first time - the one that actually serves as the catalyst for, well, everything - is otto deposing the prime minister by making him moon the nation on live television. book 1 was published in 2006; this was when tony blair was prime minister in the uk. if you’re unfamiliar with uk politics, blair is pretty harshly criticised on both sides of the political spectrum for his role in the iraq war/the 2008 financial crash (although he resigned and appointed gordon brown as his successor in 2007), and the fact that he created ‘new labour’, a movement which pushed the predominantly working class, leftist labour party further towards the ‘moderate centre’ in an attempt to capture more of the middle class vote as opposed to labour’s traditional post-industrial ‘northern heartlands’. the prime minister that otto deposes is blair, or at least a stand in for him; i’ll give proof below.

the important thing is that otto decides to get rid of the prime minister because st. sebastian’s is closing down, and st. sebastian’s is closing down because of the prime minister’s childcare reforms that result in, quote, “the restructuring of local childcare provision.” whether or not st. sebastian being closed would’ve been an overal net positive or not is debatable (otto mentions that the building was starting to become “genuinely unsafe”), but if you don’t know much about blair, he was BIG on restructuring, especially in london, where st sebastian’s is located, and something in particular that blair was fond of was giving more powers to local councils (essentially, shifting the uk to more of a federal system than a centralised one). you’ve probably already guessed, but yep, the letter that announces st. sebastian’s is closing comes from the local council. it’s also mentioned that the childcare reforms have “the prime minister’s personal backing”, and, yep, childcare budgets and early years spending increased exponentially under blair (he even renamed the department of education to the department of children, schools, and families, which was promptly renamed AGAIN once labour left office, but that’s a rant for another day). there’s also the fact that otto goes to brighton for the prime minister’s party conference - this is where the labour party conference is held, whereas the conservative party conference alternates between birmingham and manchester. finally, in zero hour (published in 2010) it’s mentioned that the prime minister resigned and that his party lost in the next general election - this is exactly what happened to blair and new labour after the financial crash. of course, this evidence is very circumstantial, but i don’t think that this is a coincidence, and, anyway, i struggle to see how walden could’ve been more explicit in implying that this is blair without facing parental backlash.

now onto the political commentary; i’ve already mentioned how everyone hates blair, and walden is no exception. the statement that otto makes the prime minister is absolutely damning. it’s too long for me to copy and paste the entire thing (i say, when this post is going to be ridiculously long anyway), but here are some highlights: “we hold you and your families in nothing but the deepest contempt”, “i don’t think that we get enough credit for having to put up with your constant whining”, “half of you can barely read or write, and the way the education system’s going, that’s not going to change any time soon”, “we don’t care” “all we care about is power and money”, “shut your mouths and cut the moaning, because we don’t give a monkey’s.” i think it’s pretty safe to say that this is not exactly positive. personally, i think that the “moaning” and “whining” walden refers to here is a reference to the anti-war protests about the us/uk invasion of iraq, and there were complaints about the scrapping of grammar schools/“dumbing down” of the GCSE qualifications (regardless of whether or not that was intentional) across the board for years both before and after blair got into power. but whichever way you look at it, this is not a glowing representation of blair. and if you look on walden’s twitter (again), he tends to retweet a lot from michael rosen and owen jones, both prominent labour members who are very staunchly anti blair and anti ‘new labour’.

also, while searching walden’s twitter for blair references, i also came across this 2019 tweet:

where, as you can see, he shares an anecdote about how his old house used to be next to an army range and that his neighbour told him that military helicopters were often “flown by a 21 year old with a hangover”. and, like, i’m not saying that that’s the inspiration for 13 year old laura being able to hack a military base so she could spy on her classmates, but i’m totally saying that.

anyway, there’s one more political figure i want to cover here, and that’s duncan cavendish, aka the prime minister in zero hour. anyway: duncan cavendish is former conservative prime minister david cameron (notice the identical initials). i did actually ask walden about this on twitter, and he said he ‘couldn’t possibly comment’, which imo most likely means that he’s unable to confirm because of contractual reasons. but anyway: zero hour was published in 2010, the year of the election which put the conservatives (for clarity’s sake, i’m going to be referring to them as tories for the rest of this post) back into power for the first time in 13 years (albeit in a coalition with the centrist libdem party), meaning that it was written in 2009 when cameron was party leader, and after the 2008 crash. i don’t think walden knew for sure that cameron would come to power (after all, in zero hour it’s stated that cavendish’s party won by a landslide, whereas the actual 2010 election resulted in ‘hung parliament’), but it wasn’t exactly a hard guess to make that labour would lose after the events of 2007/8 and their record in iraq.

something that particularly sticks out to me is cavendish thanking nero for switching him from the polfi stream to the alpha stream - in real life, cameron has an a level in economics, and studied philosophy, politics, and economics at oxford and his father is also a stockbroker, all aspects which certainly scream polfi to me. personally, i think this was a dig at cameron’s fairly elitist background, and the fact that he’s historically been seen as an opportunist rather than a real leader. also, cameron was once approached in the former soviet union by two men he suspected were KGB agents trying to recruit him, and i’m not saying that walden used this connection when linking cavendish to pietor furan and the disciples, but....yeah. there’s also the fact that nero references cavendish’s academic record of going to an elite boys’ school being fudged, and, yeah, cameron attended eton (he also got suspended for smoking cannabis, which is just. a lot to think about for a man who helped push through legislation that further penalised cannabis users). again, on twitter walden has been extremely outspoken against the tories in general, specifically about brexit, the referendum for which occurred under cameron’s government. also walden kind of predicted the future: in zero hour, cavendish is blackmailed by nero into resigning. in real life, cameron resigned the whip (left both his post and the tory party as an MP) in 2016 after the uk voted to leave the eu. obviously that’s not proof of anything but it just makes me laugh.

those are the specific figures - now let’s talk more about walden’s general ideologies. he’s very anti-gun on twitter, and this obviously links to wing and his refusal to wield guns/shoot people; wing’s arguably the most staunchly moral character in the series, which i don’t think is a coincidence. walden bashed mass surveillance by having otto abhor (and later destroy) echelon; echelon is actually a real international government project that was originally designed for military surveillance but later branched out into greater mass surveillance (also, fun fact! i only live about an hour’s drive from an echelon radome base, so i hope my mi5 agent is enjoying this post). we see walden criticise mass surveillance again with the existence of the artemis project (and also the disciples’ use of facial recognition software), and while i have no idea whether or not that’s real, i think everyone knows that there are multiple international coalitions devoted to gathering and sharing data on world citizens (google the nine eyes partnership if you want to give yourself a bit of a crisis). walden has reposted a picture that says ‘make orwell fiction again’ on twitter, so it’s pretty clear where he stands on that. in general, walden is left wing, and that shows in his books - while i’ve corroborated all of my assumptions here with evidence i found on walden’s twitter, i came to most of these conclusions on my own just from reading the source material.

and this is why i’m only 90% joking when i talk about walden lagging behind on book 9 because there’s so many different things he needs to satirize. the global stage has changed dramatically since deadlock’s publication, and if walden’s passionate about critiquing those in power, he’s got a lot of content to choose from - trump, obviously, but also boris johnson and theresa may over on this side of the pond (and he really, really hates johnson). h.i.v.e as a story is inherently political, and not just because of the more obvious “morally grey villains” trope. walden uses his fictional world to critique the real-life authority figures in control, and does so while keeping it subtle enough so as to not tip off most casual readers. overall, it’s pretty impressive.

[breckstonevailskier]

Suffice to say, these worldbuilders didn't exactly pay too much attention to their own continuity.

Even if you suppose Peggy was stupid enough to not notice all that in-person, it would still require her to be incapable of reading newspapers that feature her own employees. Stupidity and persistent incompetence notwithstanding, she’s simply too nosy not to have known. She’s complicit. And so is Howard.

She's complicit, and she didn't care about what Zola did so long as she lined her own pockets from it.

About your reply to the anon about Maria Stark:

I thought it was made clear Hydra covered up the Starks' deaths? Wouldn't it have been undercover Hydra agents who carried out the "invesigation"? Hydra clearly took possession of the tapes, which we see in Civil War, and therefore I assume also performed the autopsies, etc. People like Peggy would have had no idea the organisation was compromised at this stage and would have no reason to have questioned what the people they employed and trusted were telling them.

The thing that doesn't make sense to me is Howard telling Tony he was going to the Pentagon when Shield was based at the Triskelion, which we know from the Antman movies was in use at this time. Especially considering Howard had the serum - surely that was something that should have been in Shield's hands? I wonder if anyone at Shield knew Howard had successfully recreated the serum. We know Tony doesn't know about the existence of Shield or his dad's involvement until Fury tells him, so I wonder if either A) Howard lied about where he was going or B) suspected/knew Shield was compromised and Hydra found out which was why Hydra intercepted him on his way to the Pentagon/Department of Defence.

The thing I really don't understand is why the Soviet sector of Hydra got involved in it at all - why did the tapes end up in Siberia instead of being kept by Shield/Hydra in the US? Why did they use the serum and not the American sector of Hydra? Why did the Soviets have the red book with the code words and not pass it on to the Americans with the Winter Soldier after the Cold War?

This is going on a bit of a tangent now but I've also found it deeply interesting that Vasily Karpov hid himself and the book in Ohio after the Cold War, which is exactly where the North Institute was based (where Alexei Shoshtakov stole Shields/Hydra's work on chemical subjugation with Natasha, Yelena and Melina undercover in 1995). No way is that a coincidence because Melina explicitly mentions the research on the Winter Soldier being used for the project. I wonder if Karpov had any involvement in that Hydra/Shield project, and to what extent. Maybe he wanted a way to control the other Winter Soldiers? Yet I would've thought if he was working with Shield's Hydra after the cold war, he would've handed the code words over and the other supersoldiers in cyrofreeze.

I've spent way too much time thinking about this.

You know how I feel about Peggy and her “ignorance” about Hydra constructing a multimillion dollar tribute to Zola right under her office. Once again, there are only two options: she is either incompetent or she is complicit. I mean — how did Soviet Hydra know Howard was about to transport the super soldier serum with enough advanced notice to wake and prep and send the Winter Soldier all the way from Siberia? This is Howard we’re talking about, one of the highest ranked members in one of the most secretive government organisations in the MCU, delivering a load so secretive he didn’t even engage his own chauffeur. You think he would go around telling everyone about this plan? Or would he…most likely have only told the other person who is at a similar rank as him, aka Madam Margaret Carter?

As for the post-mortems, did Tony not even view her body? This is Tony Stark — I know I have a lot of snark about him on my blog but he is supposed to be one of the more intelligent and STEM-educated persons in the Avengers, who has always had major trust issues and frequently looks down on other people’s competency and insists on doing everything himself. You’re saying he would not think it’s weird that there’s a CCTV right next to the damn car and it would…conveniently be missing footage from around the incident? That a sober Howard would just drive into a tree in a night with good visibility and no other traffic around (assuming Bucky obscured the motorbike’s tyre tracks)? If Bucky didn’t obscure his own tyre tracks, Tony didn’t want to hunt down whose bike that was? What I’m saying is, as I’ve always said, is that the Starks’ deaths were a massive deus ex machina to get the fight between Tony and Steve to turn personal. It wasn’t fair to Tony’s characterisation, because it made it seem like he just rolled over and accepted a very strange circumstance as a straight forward car accident when he’s exactly the type of person who would kick up a stink and question everything. (AU where Tony discovers Shieldra 25 years early?)

The location of Karpov is interesting. If I recall correctly though, the Red Room was only sent to spy on them not to work with them? As for Karpov, it isn’t unusual for branches of agencies to hide important information from each other even in the law enforcement side, so even if Soviet and American branches of Hydra had a collegial relationship I wouldn’t be surprised if he wanted to keep his 5 frozen Winter Soldiers hidden. And you’re right, maybe he went to Ohio to see if there are better ways to subjugate the soldiers with the intention of bringing it back to Siberia to use it on the decommissioned Winter Soldiers.