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zvaigzdelasas · 8 months

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The International Court of Justice has issued a ground-breaking decision in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, ordering Israel to comply with six provisional measures to safeguard the right of Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from genocidal violence.

The court’s order is binding on Israel and formalizes the international legal obligations of other countries that are parties to the UN Genocide Convention.

Properly understood, the order should dramatically alter both the foreign and domestic policy decisions of Israel’s allies, including Canada and the United States.

Israel and its allies cannot dismiss or minimize the importance of this decision. In granting interim relief, the court concluded that South Africa’s allegations of genocide are, at a minimum, legally and factually plausible.

Crucially, the court expressly concluded, by an overwhelming majority, that Palestinians in Gaza face a “real and imminent risk” of genocide. This puts other countries on notice that they have an international legal duty to take steps to prevent genocide in Gaza in accordance with the court’s order.

As the court stated in a 2007 ruling when Bosnia accused Serbia of genocide, countries that are parties to the Genocide Convention have an obligation to prevent and a corresponding duty to act “the instant that the state learns of, or should normally have learned of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed.”

Both Canada and the U.S. have construed the court’s decision narrowly, suggesting it merely reiterates Israel’s right of self-defence and obligation to comply with international humanitarian law.

This is a legally indefensible reading of the court’s ruling.[...]

Statements of political support by the U.S. and Canada that Israel is abiding by the laws of war — contrary to the facts — cannot shield Israel or its allies from their legal obligations under the Genocide Convention. Those obligations — including to prevent genocide — are created via treaty and are interpreted by courts, the highest of which is the International Court of Justice.

The obligation to prevent genocide, combined with the court’s finding of a serious risk of genocide, means that all parties to the Genocide Convention must refrain from taking steps that would actively frustrate the effective implementation of the court’s order.[...]

But just hours after the court’s ruling, the U.S. announced it was suspending funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.[...]

The U.S. is the biggest financial contributor to UNRWA. Several other key donor countries, including Canada, quickly followed suit.

UNRWA is the largest aid provider in Gaza and a trusted lifeline to civilians in the territory. Even if the allegations are true, defunding the entire organization openly defies the court’s order and amounts to collective punishment of the civilian population in Gaza

Disturbingly, moves to defund UNRWA appear to help implement Israeli government plans to undermine the organization’s capacity to deliver aid to Palestinians in Gaza. Earlier this month, policy experts told the Knesset that UNRWA “must be dismantled and thrown in the dustbin of history” and that “no country that is a friend of Israel should provide them any money.”

The ICJ found that “the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is at serious risk of deteriorating further,” plausibly inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza.

Accordingly, any country’s action knowingly contributing to further deterioration would violate the obligation to prevent genocide and could amount to complicity in genocide.[...]

In 2022, Canada sent more than $21 million worth of military exports to Israel. The Export and Import Permits Act forbids arms permits to be issued if there’s a “substantial risk” that the goods could be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights law.

Because the ICJ found a serious risk of genocide in Gaza, continuing to export arms to Israel would be illegal. It would also be flagrantly inconsistent with Canada’s obligation to prevent genocide, and could expose Canada and Canadian officials to liability for participation in genocide.

We must reject the politics of deliberate indifference to atrocity currently on display in the Canadian government’s reactions to the ICJ ruling.

28 Jan 24

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gothhabiba · 1 year

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can i ask for you to elaborate on your issue(s) with those 'male positivity' posts? is it with the whole sentiment, or just with the "you're allowed to be angry" part? i agree w "you're allowed to be angry" being an oblivious at best statement. but i don't see any issue with the first two statements themselves (the "OP says..." and "commenter says...")

yeah so I already talked about some of this in the tags to those posts but sure, let's get into it.

OP says "if you’re a boy with a mental illness, a boy with a disability, a boy with a history of abuse, a boy who has an eating disorder, a boy with trauma, I need you to know that you are not a burden, that you don’t need to 'harden up', that you shouldn’t just have to 'get over it,' and that you are very brave" commenter says "once I transitioned I saw the change in people being like ‘Oh you poor thing I hope you’re coping alright’ to ‘Just get over it and man up’. Men, you’re allowed to suffer."

the implication of the original post is that men with these issues are told to 'toughen up' or 'get over it,' and conversely that women are not. the commenter then makes this subtext explicit by outright saying that people reacted more sympathetically to his trauma when they read him as a woman than when they read him as a man (at which point they switched to "just get over it"). the OP responds favourably to this addition, proving that the subtext "women don't experience this" was in fact subtext that they intended to be there.

I hope I don't have to explain how utterly absurd it is to claim that women have it easier in this regard, or that their emotions are granted more leeway or sympathy in any meaningfully systematic way. that is just MRA logic.

of course people's ideas about suffering, endurance, trauma, & emotion are gendered! people really do say things about how boys and men should just toughen up and not cry, &c. &c. MRAs, like a lot of other reactionary groups (like TERFs and SWERFs, or antisemites / white supremacists / conspiracy theorists who understand that something's not right with the economy but end up blaming 'minorities' instead of capitalists), take an idea with some truth in it somewhere, but twist it around into a conclusion that the idea in question does not entail on its own (here, "women are allowed to express emotion and garner sympathy by doing so") in a way that leads to resentment, disdain, & hatred for a marginalised group.

so, if it's true that (negative) emotion is thought of as a feminine weakness, why doesn't that translate to women being "allowed" to experience and express emotion, while men are not? for one thing, race has a lot to do with this—the myth of the Black "superwoman," for example, praises Black women for being (read: expects them to be) "tough," "strong," "brave," endless wellsprings of emotional / physical / financial support for others while requiring and receiving no support themselves. the assertion that women receive sympathy for their suffering thus reveals a serious ignorance of Black feminist thought on the part of the person making it.

for another thing, displays of emotion (mostly "negative" emotion, such as sadness) being thought of as primarily feminine means that women have to take especial care to avoid them in many circumstances, not that they're able to freely indulge in them! women's supposed heightened emotionality means that they're less likely to be thought of as capable of serious work, less likely to be promoted or hired, more likely to be financially and professionally penalised for any time they do display any negative emotion (or, rather, the other way around—the myth of women's heightened emotionality is used as an excuse to suppress women's earning potential & make them financially dependent on, and thus exploitable by, men).

on an interpersonal level, you're highly likely as a woman (and especially as a woman of colour) to have fairly mild displays of emotion be interpreted as hysteria, extreme anger, irrationality, volatility. you're highly likely to have your allegations of abuse disbelieved.

on an institutional level, you're highly likely to receive disdain and contempt if you engage in disordered eating habits or try to seek help for them, to have a request for help denied or neglected (disordered eating is just, sort of, what women do). you're also more likely to have a request for help turn into involuntary institutionalisation or psychiatric abuse (a lot of work has been done on the relationship between psychiatry and gender).

also on an institutional level, you are less likely to be believed about the pain you are in as a disabled, chronically ill, or otherwise sick woman (again, especially a woman of colour). you are less likely to receive medical care. you are less likely to have anyone give a shit about the pain you're in, since women are so emotional and melodramatic that you are probably exaggerating, and anyway, being in pain is just sort of women's natural state. you are certainly very unlikely to get any kind of medical care if you're a middle-class cisgender white (read: desirable) woman of 'childbearing age' & the extreme pain that you're in would require risk to your fertility to treat.

there's so much more I could go into here. the basic idea is that properly analysing the relationship between emotion, communication, trauma, abuse, race, class, gender, and the uses of rhetoric that references any of the above (e.g. "boys don't cry") is an enormous undertaking. any claim that implies that women (which women?) wholesale receive more sympathy than men (which men?) do for abuse or other pain that they experience, or that they are more free to express that pain, is both inconsistent with reality on a base level, and incredibly irresponsible. the fact (if it's even true) that "girls" are punished less for crying than "boys" does not a whole picture make.

and, like, think about it. we're living in a patriarchy wherein women are expected to care for and sympathise with men, to forgive men for varied wrongdoings in the family & in romantic relationships, to coddle them in order to avoid or appease their anger, to perform (depending on their class position) various kinds of domestic labour and social / planning work for men without recompense, acknowledgement, or thanks (because knowing how to do and plan housework is just, like, women's natural state of being)—a system where the family and the home faciliate and cover for mass amounts of traumatisation and abuse, including sexual abuse, of girls and women—a system wherein trans women are highly likely to be traumatised and yet disciplined out of expressions of anger or upset under threat of social exile—a system wherein cisgender women cannot be allowed to become too wary of or angry at men (read: too unwilling to continue marrying them and performing a significant role in the social reproduction of their class). how on earth could such a system also enable (rather than allowing for occasional escape valves for, but mostly seeking to supress or transform) women's free expression of upset, sadness, trauma, anger...?

this is the same kind of logic that leads people to believe and spread nonsense such as "people believe women who come forward about being abused and not men," which is just demonstrably inconsistent with everything that we can observe about reality.

#Anonymous #questions #gender

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racefortheironthrone · 1 year

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BOE, the Messenger(s), and the Trillionaires

Introduction

I’ve been doing a re-read of the Locked Tomb - although technically it’s a re-listen, because I like the audiobooks - and I stumbled across a particular passage that hadn’t stuck in my memory before that made me rethink my understanding of the origin of Blood of Eden. Ever since Harrow the Ninth and especially since Nona the Ninth, there’s been this common interpretation that the BOE are descendants of the trillionaires who abandoned Earth and that’s why John is at war with them. I’m not so sure that’s true any more.

Here’s why. In Nona, when the whole business with Crown/Corona infiltrating the barracks kicks off, there’s an interesting exchange between Camilla and We Suffer about the Oversight Committee that includes this statement:

“Hect, what you must understand about Blood of Eden is that we own things in common, we share responsibilities and resources in common. She could have moved these resources at will...but I must make one move at a time. And above all, I must place the safety of...Blood of Eden’s continuity...even above the mission.” (Emphasis mine.)

This took me aback somewhat, because the emphasis on militant communal ownership doesn’t really fit with the idea of “descendants of trillionaires.” I suppose one could say that it’s been ten thousand years, cultures change and drift over time...except that, as I’ll get into later, the BOE seems very very insistent on cultural preservation, so it would be a bit out-of-character if they changed that stance on this one particular issue.

And that’s what made me think: what if the BOE aren’t the descendants of the trillionaires? What if they’re the descendants of the non-trillionaires on the FTL ships?

East of Eden: A Theory About What Happened After the FTL Ships Jumped

So here’s the question that’s been percolating in my mind: once you’re out in space, why keep listening to the trillionaires, especially about the vital question of who owns the precious resources brought from Eden and who gets to decide happens next? There would probably be some residual cultural deference to the visionary disruptors, but the traditional answers of property law backed up by the state or men with guns paid to enforce the orders of the capitalists kind of break down when you consider that:

In John’s chapters (and verses) in Nona, we get an account of what happened leading up to and during the Resurrection: according to John, the trillionaires pulled a con job on the planet with their FTL ships, pretending that a fleet of twelve ships, each carrying a few thousand people (made up of “hand-picked guys” and “two hundred nominated people”), was merely the first wave of a planetary evacuation. As Mercymorn and others worked out, there were no future waves, no plan to come back and pick up more, the trillionaires had liquidated their cash and financial assets in favor of buying up material resources they’d need in space, and everyone else was being left for dead.

These twelve ships (possibly minus one, it’s not clear whether John managed to destroy the one he grabbed before it jumped) and the 20-odd thousand people on them must be the ancestors of exo-humanity as it exists in the myriadic year. But we know that of those 20-odd thousand people, only a “half-dozen” were the trillionaires. Everyone else was staff they’d selected to do the work of planetary colonization, plus a tiny group of people chosen by the governments of Earth Eden.

other than 200 randos who are likely to be recruited from the ranks of elected officials and upper management bureaucracy rather than Special Forces, the forces of the state are not only light-years away but also just got eaten by John Gaius.

it’s a bit harder to pull off the Jay Gould method when you’ve turned all of your cash into raw materials, there’s nowhere to spend cash in space, and it doesn’t take long for men with guns in that scenario to decide that the resources belong to them actually, because they have the guns.

While we know that some form of a market economy exists on New Rho and the other exo-planets, there doesn’t seem to be any sign of an oligarchical ruling class based on ownership of capital. Rather, we see a state of anarchy where there is no hegemonic entity but duelling centers of power. This suggests to me that the trillionaires’ power did not last very long after human settlement outside the solar system, possibly due to a (potentially bloodless) revolution in which the only surviving members of humanity just decided not to listen to six old (white) men and took their shit in order to survive.

In that scenario, I could see it being the case that the collective memory of communal ownership of property in the midst of a crisis could linger among a certain sub-population and provide the origin for this aspect of BOE’s internal culture.

So where did BOE come from?

Well, in large part it emerged as an organic response to John Gaius’ imperialist campaign against exo-humanity. As I noted elsewhere, John’s revenge against those who abandoned Earth in her hour of need is essentially a re-enactment of colonialism - the Cohort shows up with their overwhelming military might, forces the local population into subjugation with unequal treaties, imposes its language and customs, destroys the natural environment in a drive for short-term resource extraction, and then forces people into an endless cycle of being resettled on reservations over and over again - which makes a certain sick sense, in that it’s probably the worst thing that a Kiwi of Maori heritage could think of doing to their enemies.

He even goes to the extent of modelling the Cohort uniforms on 19th century British Army uniforms with the colors reversed, and coming up with his own gloss on the Christianity that was imposed on indigenous populations in the name of “civilizing” them. This campaign is only mystifying to outside observers like Augustine and Coronabeth because they don’t have the cultural context to know what John’s up to (in no small part because he’s used his necromantic powers and political position in order to suppress all knowledge of that context).

And thus, it’s not that surprising that John’s imperialism provoked anti-colonial resistance: when his Empire made contact with exo-humanity, to the extent that anyone still remembered him, it was as the horrific necromantic cult leader who murdered the ten billion and destroyed Eden, and now he’s come to finish the job in the name of collective punishment for the sins of six dead men, and by the way he’s bringing death and the defilement of the dead and the destruction of everything you’ve ever built with him. There probably have been dozens and hundreds of resistance movements - some local, some planetary, some multi-planetary - that rose up and got crushed over thousands of years.

So what makes BOE different from all other resistance movements?

The Messenger(s)

I want to go back a few thousand years and talk about what happened when the FTL ships managed to escape the solar system. While interplanetary colonization would always be an incredibly stressful experience even without a revolution, the fact that all of this was happening in the wake of John nuking Earth and killing the ten billion, then devouring the solar system, and their narrow escape from his wrothful grasp would have added an entirely different level of terror to the event - but also a new sense of responsibility.

Because - regardless of whether people on the FTL ships knew about the trillionaires’ supposed plan to abandon humanity on Earth or believed John’s accusations - they were now the sole survivors of humanity, the carriers of all culture and history. The ao3 author Griselda_Gimpel has a really good series of fics imagining the development of exo-humanity from the FTL ships onwards, and in one scene they mention the enormous sense of cultural loss that people on those ships would have felt when they realized that the internet was gone forever.

And this got me thinking: what if some nerds on those ships had that kind of profound reaction and decided to preserve as much of Earth’s heritage as possible? How would you do that with limited access to computer storage and humanity potentially scattering across multiple planets, and knowledge being lost forever with the march of time as the original settler generation died off and was replaced by new generations born outside the solar system? I think the answer is:

Oral tradition. See, one of the things that fans of the series have been talking about for a while is the implications of the myriadic duration of the Empire, what that would have done to language and culture in the Nine Houses and among BOE, how is it that people can still be speaking the same language or reading the same writing as from the time of the Resurrection, let alone remember memes and cultural references from the 21st century? This is a fair reaction from a Western perspective - after all, ten thousand years ago would be roughly 8000 BCE or smack dab in the Early Neolithic. Surely it would have been impossible for the memory of Earth to have survived that long.

But, as people have said, Tamsyn Muir is writing a very Kiwi series. And one of the things that is very distinctive about the culture of Aotearoa is the oral traditions of the Maori and Pasifika cultures more generally. While Maori oral histories go back to the 13th century CE when Aotearoa was settled, Australian Aboriginal oral tradition goes back as far as potentially 30,000-40,000 years. Oral tradition is not perfectly reliable, it undergoes drift and change over time, it can experience loss and disruption (from colonization, for example), but it can endure across millennia.

My theory is that these nerds on the FTL ships or their descendants dedicated themselves to the mission of cultural preservation through oral tradition, and thus the Messengers were born. And at some point, the Messengers met up with Blood of Eden and explained that John Gaius’ colonial campaign wasn’t just an unjustified act of aggression and imperialism, but an act of cultural genocide stretching back 10,000 years:

“I charge you with...the utter disintegration of institutions political and social, languages, cultures, religions, all niceties and personal liberties of the nations, by use of-”

“...they’re dead words--a human chain reaching back ten thousand years...how did they feel?” (Harrow the Ninth)

Somewhere around this point, then, BOE took as its mission the preservation of the Messengers, which is why they are given BOE bodyguards, why discharging a weapon in their presence is grounds for execution, and why they are both deeply respected and honored by BOE but kept away from sensitive missions and not necessarily kept in the loop on critical intel.

Why AIM is “They”

This part of my theory suggested an explanation for why AIM is called “they” by Blood of Eden, and why Palamedes Sextus sensed a necromantic implant when they “stumbled” into AIM at the school. We know that the Sixth House has been in contact with Blood of Eden for a very long time, and that Cassiopeia was not only responsible for the Sixth’s “break clause” but also was BOE’s “Source Gram.”

My theory is that Cassiopeia and the Sixth, being a bunch of librarian nerds obsessed with the preservation of cultural knowledge, would never have been entirely comfortable with taking John Gaius’ word for what happened during the Resurrection and what life was like on pre-Resurrection Earth. The natural place to look for an alternate source of documentation would be exo-humanity, and I think she/they went looking clandestinely and came across the Messengers and BOE. Somehow, they avoided killing each other and came to a modus vivendi.

I think part of this modus vivendi was an offer by Cassiopeia/the Sixth to provide the Messengers with an improved means of preserving their oral tradition: namely, a necromantic implant that would preserve the ghosts of dead Messengers and let them communicate with their successors, ensuring that the oral tradition could be passed down perfectly from generation to generation. After all, not only are the Sixth House spirit magicians, but they are specialist psychometricians who know better than anyone else how to pull information about and from the past from material objects, and it was Doctor Sex who gave Palamedes the idea for preserving revenant spirits after death by giving them a physical anchor.

Hence, AIM is they because they are a collective “human chain” of all the Messengers who came before them - they have the voices of hundreds of cultural preservations in their heads, telling them of all that was lost with the fall of Eden. No wonder they want to play school teacher and be “she” for a while.

Conclusion

TLDR: BOE aren’t trillionaires, they’re commie terrorists with a fetish for cultural preservation. So I guess this makes the whole war a case of leftist infighting, considered in the long run?

#the locked tomb #blood of eden #boe #aim #the messenger #the angel #ntn #ntn spoilers #nona the ninth #pash #our lady of the passion #the sixth house #cassiopeia #tlt

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the-eeveekins · 10 months

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I know a lot of people who stopped buying Gundam and Bamco stuff in the wake of the "Up to Interpretation" statement and I 100% stand by those that do.

I ultimately decided I want to keep buying stuff from G-Witch, especially the Sulemio merch. This show was so popular and was cited as the main reason Gundam had record sales numbers last fiscal year. But because of the fact it stumbled at the finish line and "Up to interpretation" (both of which I blame on the same group of people), it really feels like there's a push within the fandom to write the series off as unpopular and a failure and see it buried. And honestly it wouldn't surprise me if there are some within Bandai who feel the same.

So I'll keep buying G-Witch and Sulemio if for no other reason than to help keep sales strong so Bandai can't possibly ignore it. I won't let the sexist and homophobic pockets of the fandom bury the fact that G-Witch was a massive financial success that was one of the most popular Gundam series ever, and Sulemio played a major part of that.

#g witch #the witch from mercury #gundam

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loredwy · 8 months

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may i have a crumb of knowledge about what the actual fuck went down in niji recently

(I know you already got to the post explaining the context, but I may as well leave here some links for the ones still needing it LMAO)

Everything about this topic will have the #sink the yacht tag btw, so if more info appears it will be there.

It pretty much started with Selen uploading a music video without Nijisanji's approval, which they privated and she told people to just reupload because of the company's treatment towards her.

In this case it apparently was because of copyright issues... with themselves.

They suddenly terminated Selen.

She then posted about her situation.

Her fans started boycotting.

Anycolor posted a notice saying that it wouldnt affect the company.

She sued them, probably because of emotional and financial damage.

They answered by making some of their active livers defend the company, mentioning info from the lawsuit. <- fans interpretation: by saying their livers were in risk, they implied some of them were part of the bullying problem.

Guess what, sharing the info was immoral. And illegal.

They made more official notices.

Nijisanji actions made them known outside of the Vtuber side of the internet.

New Doki statement.

And as an extra: Vtubers that have graduated from Nijisanji this year, just for additional info. And it seems like more terminations will be happening after this... probably.

#nijisanji #selen tatsuki #sink the yacht #im gonna pin this lmao #asks

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the-joy-of-knowledge · 2 years

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Hi, you seem educated on the finance field.. what resources (websites, articles, good quality books, Youtube channels) you suggest for someone who willingly wants to be financially independent? i dont know from where to start exactly. Plus, Im glad i found your blog since Im in the same journey, you are very inspiring, I hope you continue to carry yourself like this, you got all my support ♥

Hi!

Thank you so much for your kind words and support. I will try my best to give you as many resources as I can.

Books

I can’t stress reading enough. I have listed books on personal finance, corporate finance, career development, and self development.

The Almanac of Naval Ramakant

The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch

The Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Obvious Adams by Robert Updegraff

I will Teach you to be Rich by Ramit Sethi

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

The Richest Man in Babylon by George Samuel Clason

What They Teach You At Harvard Business School by Philip Delves Broughton

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

Warren Buffett and the Interpretation of Financial Statement by Mary Buffet.

Websites & Articles

Bloomberg

CNBC

Business Insider

Kiplinger

Investopedia

Wall Street Journal

Forbes

Google Finance

New York Times: Your money

Consumer Reports

Youtube Channels

Finaius

David Rubenstein

Business Casual

CNBC Make It

Nate O'Brien

The Swedish Investor

Garry Tan

Business Insider

Business Stories

Ali Abdaal

I hope you found this helpful,

Love!!!

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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By Steven Lubet

In an unprecedented move, the Senate Judiciary Committee has advanced a bill requiring the Supreme Court to adopt a code of conduct and to create a mechanism for investigating alleged violations of the code and other laws.

It is no secret that the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal and Transparency Act was prompted in part by investigations into several Justices’ deficient financial disclosures, receipt of extravagant gifts, questionable transactions and misuse of staff. The full court has consistently resisted adopting such an ethics code, but certain Justices’ justifications for their questionable conduct only hurt their cause.

Their excuses were all remarkably flimsy, almost beyond belief.

Justice Clarence Thomas began the round of rationalizations when Pro Publica reported that he had enjoyed decades of lavish vacations at the expense of billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow — including cruises in Indonesia and the Greek Islands on Crow’s superyacht — none of which were included as gifts on Thomas’s financial disclosure forms as required by the Ethics in Government Act.

In a one-paragraph statement, Thomas opaquely claimed that he had sought guidance early in his tenure on the court from unnamed “colleagues and others in the judiciary,” who advised him that “this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends” was not reportable.

Thomas has never revealed the identities of his alleged ethics advisors, but it is notable that no Justice or Judge has stepped forward to take responsibility for his decidedly lax interpretation of the disclosure rules. Whoever may have mentored Thomas, it is highly unlikely, to put it mildly, that any federal judge in the early 1990s would have understood “this sort of personal hospitality” to cover the omission of 20 years of luxury vacations at a private Adirondacks resort, a Texas ranch and California’s Bohemian Grove, ferried on a private jet (not to mention payment of private school tuition for the Justice’s nephew and the purchase of his mother’s home).

As excuses go, “somebody once told me it was okay” is about a step above “the dog ate my homework,” but it is still better than Thomas’s earlier excuse for not disclosing years of his wife’s employment when Virginia Thomas was paid $686,589 by the conservative Heritage Foundation and Hillsdale College.

Upon amending 20 years of his financial reports, Thomas gave the far-fetched explanation that he had “inadvertently omitted” the information “due to a misunderstanding of the filing instructions.” It takes almost preternatural shamelessness for a Supreme Court Justice — whose job calls for parsing the most complex legislation — to insist that he misunderstood the plain meaning of “spouse’s employment” for 20 reporting years.

If Thomas’s excuses for nondisclosure were sketchy, at least he didn’t become visibly angry when he was caught. Not so Justice Samuel Alito, who made an irate preemptive strike via the Wall Street Journal editorial page when he learned that Pro Publica was about to publicize his own nondisclosures.

The Pro Publica reporters contacted Alito for comment before going live with their article about an Alaska vacation financed by prominent Republican donors. Rather than answer their questions, however, Alito took advantage of his contacts at the Wall Street Journal to get a jump on the story. He published his response several hours before Pro Publica’s post, in which he called the yet unseen article misleading and false.

There was no disputing the facts. In 2008, Alito enjoyed a three-day, all-expenses junket at a remote Alaska fishing camp owned by a wealthy conservative activist named Robin Arkley II which was apparently arranged by Federalist Society official Leonard Leo. Another guest was the billionaire Paul Singer, who flew the Justice to Alaska on his private jet. No details about the trip were listed as gifts on Alito’s disclosure forms.

Unlike Thomas, Alito claimed no preexisting friendships with his benefactors, which did not stop him from playing the “personal hospitality” card. Although the statutory disclosure exception clearly applies only to “food, lodging, or entertainment,” and not to transportation, Alito defended his nondisclosure by cobbling together several unrelated statutes in a tortured attempt to show that private jet flights constitute “hospitality facilities.”

The Justice seemed to argue that the trip had no value because he sat in “what would have otherwise been an unoccupied seat,” imposing no “extra cost” for Singer. One might expect an avowed textualist to pay more attention to the statutory definition of “gift,” which includes, for example, “free attendance at an event,” which also costs nothing to the host.

The most recent revelations involve Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s use of court staff to bolster her book sales at speaking engagements. That would have violated the lower federal courts’ Code of Conduct for United States Judges, which prohibits the substantial use of “chambers, resources or staff” to engage in otherwise permitted financial activities — if the Supreme Court had ever adopted its own version of the code.

Sotomayor’s excuse was that her “chambers staff” was only recommending “the number of books based on the size of the audience so as not to disappoint attendees who may anticipate books being available at an event.” In other words, the Justice admitted assigning a judicial assistant to keep track of book purchases relative to audience sizes, in order to maximize her potential sales.

The three Justices’ hollow rationalizations display a patronizing expectation that the public will ultimately buy whatever they say, no matter how implausible.

But to paraphrase the late Justice Robert Jackson: Supreme Court Justices do not get the last word because they are infallible; they only believe themselves infallible because they get the last word. When it comes to judicial ethics, that has to change.

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raynewton · 4 months

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𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝖉𝖚𝖊𝖑 𝖔𝖋 𝖍𝖔𝖓𝖔𝖗 𝖆 𝖑𝖆 𝕯𝖔𝖜𝖓𝖘𝖎𝖉𝖊

Sir Gilman: Sir, forgive this knight for not addressing you more respectfully, but your means of revenge are unacceptable!

Oralech: So what am I supposed to do?

Sir Gilman: You must challenge Master Sandalwood to a duel of honor! Choice of weapon--

Oralech: Great duel. The physician and the historian trying to stab each other! That rotten log doesn't even know which side to hold the sword on!

Sir Gilman: In that case, we must find some brave knights to fight on your behalf!

Oralech: It's all a bunch of hogwash!

Gareph: I like the idea! Let off steam, then do some chit-chat.

Sir Gilman: You describe the sacred ritual of a duel of honor too vulgarly, but in essence--

Oralech: Gareph, you too?!

Gareph: I'm done with freezing in the swamps! Gonna duff their nomad up and then finally talk!

Sir Gilman: Could this knight interpret your statement as a challenge?

Oralech: No! I did not consent to-- Stop, you undercooked noodle! Stop!

*a few hours later*

Sir Gilman: In the name of establishing justice, we are gathered on a star-blessed... khee... swamp to end years of strife through a glorious duel! Today, the former Master of the Nightwings Order, Volfred Sandalwood...

Sandalwood: I still find this idea highly questionable.

Sir Gilman: ...are fighting with Oralech, acting master of the True Nightwings Order!

Oralech: Idiotic.

Sir Gilman: Their seconds are Hedwyn the Deserter and Gareph the Shipwright. Exchange bows.

Hedwyn: *sharply nods*.

Gareph: *makes a mocking curtsy*

Sir Gilman: And the judges: this knight, who solemnly promises to act only according to the law, and--

Iq'sa: The magnificent and enchanting Lady Iq'sa!

Oralech: *facepalm*.

Sir Gilman: According to the fifty-third verse on chivalry of the Ores Codex, seconds are equal to knights of honor and shall fight among themselves if both duelists are from peaceful professions or have taken vows of nonviolence.

Hedwyn: So how does that apply to a military physician who spit on his vows from the heights of Alodiel?

Oralech: Oh, so you'd rather have your kidneys beat out by me personally?

Sir Gilman: As practice has shown, we have no evidence of a breach of physician's oaths.

Gareph: Are we just gonna keep talking?

Sir Gilman: Must choose the weapons. In a duel of honor, you may use swords, glaives, axes.

Gareph: Can we make allowances for the poor financial situation of the participants and fight with mallets?

Sir Gilman: In special cases it is allowed to fight hand-to-hand.

Hedwyn: Good, now I'm going to smack that desecrator of the Rites in the face!

Gareph: We're desecrators? It's shameful to look at your rabble from the stars, that's why the Scribes lost their nerves!

Hedwyn: You have defrauded the Rite system!

Gareph: And you rammed the blackwagons! You broke over the Tempers' trunk, you knocked down the Dissidents' zodiac, the Fates' blackwagon almost collapsed in mid-air!

Hedwyn: You got the drive-imps to pull the Pyrehearts' blackwagon aground!

Gareph: You put a spell on Lendel just because!

Hedwyn: And your demon got into the blackwagon and scared the Reader half to death!

Gareph: The Reader who gave the order to run him over with the blackwagon!

Hedwyn: So we're the villains and you're the nice and fluffy ones?

Gareph: We never thought we were good. And you sons of bitches are yelling on every corner what kind of good liberators you are! You accuse others of all deadly sins to make yourselves look better and cleaner against them!

Hedwyn: Come here, and I'll show you who is the son of a cur!

Sandalwood: My boy, calm down--

Gareph: I'd love to! Now I'll paint your pretty face in such a way that the Reader will never recognize it!

Oralech: Hey, you two! We agreed that you would fight for me and Sandalwood, not--

Gareph: To hell with your stupid squabbles!

*Hedwyn and Gareph throwing fists at each other*

Sandalwood: It's true what they say, like priest like people.

Oralech: Are you referring to yourself?

Sandalwood: Just thinking out loud. The wise one will understand.

Oralech: Your wisdom is beyond us, you shriveled splinter! Every word of Gareph should be written down and pasted under your agents' leaflets! A bunch of hypocrites!

Sandalwood: You're the one who provoked it.

Oralech: Me?! You think I encouraged Erisa to push me over the waterfall?

*they both lash out menacingly at each other*

Iq'sa: Hey, sir-wyrm, if both duelists and seconds are fighting, what are judges supposed to do?

Sir Gilman (confused): This knight knows of no precedent!

Iq'sa: Well, then the decision is obvious. For the True Nightwi-i-ings!!!

#pyre #supergiant pyre #sir gilman #hedwyn #volfred sandalwood #oralech #gareph #iq'sa #true nightwings #nightwings #fanfic #oh my gosh my first english fic

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zvaigzdelasas · 10 months

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The Communist Party’s main theoretical journal has laid out a new ideological framework for the financial system that emphasizes the primacy of China’s top leader and Marxist principles. [...]

The Communist Party issued a detailed ideological statement on Friday in Qiushi, the party’s main official theoretical journal, that made clear that it expected banks, pension funds, insurers and other financial organizations in China to follow Marxist principles [...]

The Qiushi paper, which was being closely studied by bankers and economists in China, could cut against efforts by Beijing to show that the economy is open to investment even as it places a heavier hand on business.

Barry Naughton, an economist at the University of California at San Diego who has long studied China’s transition to a market economy, said that the document signaled that the finance sector would be subject to ever-tighter oversight and forced to serve government policies more actively.

“The financial sector will not be expected to push for market-oriented reforms or even necessarily maximize profit,” he said. “As a program for the financial sector, it is ambitious, disappointing and somewhat ominous.”[...]

“Politics will for sure further dictate China’s finance, effectively moving China even closer to how it was before the reforms started in 1978,” said Chen Zhiwu, a finance professor at the University of Hong Kong.

Some of the policy targets set forth in the essay would not be unusual as regulatory goals in the West. For example, it calls for banks to emphasize financial services for the “real economy,” which the party has long interpreted to include ample financing for the country’s industrial base.

But it also calls for a strong role in finance for [...] Marxist ideology generally. That follows a pattern that emerged for other sectors during the national congress of China’s Communist Party a year ago, but has been less apparent in finance — until now. [...]

Moody’s, the credit rating agency, announced on Tuesday that it was lowering its credit outlook for the Chinese government to negative. It had previously assigned a stable outlook for the country’s credit rating, which remains at A1, near the top of the ratings scale. [...]

Qiushi is the main journal providing pronouncements on China’s current ideology, which is known as Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. The statement on Friday said that Mr. Xi’s speech to the financial conference, “is a valuable ideological crystallization formed by our party’s unremitting exploration of the path of financial development with Chinese characteristics.” [...]

“Politics affects all important areas, and economic or financial issues are themselves political issues,” he said. Indeed, Communist Party control over finance comes up repeatedly in the Qiushi statement. “We must unswervingly adhere to the centralized and unified leadership of the party Central Committee over financial work, uphold and strengthen the party’s overall leadership over financial work,” it said.

5 Dec 23

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vermillioncrown · 1 year

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so, what's up with korvin's parents?

they're just normal people. they just have their circumstances and korvin doesn't want people putting their ignorant opinions on them.

but what's really up with korvin's parents? (+ a deeper discussion on my other fics, why the SI MCs are the way they are)

Getting Real™️ warning: reading this might provide context that turns you off my fics.

if you want to keep enjoying light-hearted snark as it is, don't read. if you read this, i request you do not come to me to argue a contrary interpretation of my writing. i know where my brain worms come from, please and thank you.

===

They are stated to be undocumented persons in chapter 1. They intentionally abandoned Korvin in the US. Korvin's reaction is he does not want anyone's judgment on the situation, because chances are it will be 'well-intentioned' but without context, kinda racist and classist, and he's an adult in a kid's body. He gets the kind of pressure that he, as a 'weird kid', as who should be his parents' first-born son to make it in America, would put on his parents. There are no other relatives here to help. They are too poor to be careful parents and do more than financially support their child, just barely. Mental health and superstition are greatly tied in Chinese culture, so he also squicks them with his 'unnaturalness'.

Their choice to leave him in the US is a far-shot hope that while they can't support their kid properly, he'd at least be to stay as a Dreamer and somehow make it.

And how do you begin to explain all that to someone? And better yet, how do you control the gut clenching reaction to someone's judgment of your situation when there was no good choice? What if someone accuses you and your parents of taking advantage of the US legal system, as if you're cockroaches that don't 'deserve' where you are right now?

It's better to never leave an opening for someone to judge. Or if someone has to say something, you just smile and nod, because you usually can't afford to say anything back to them.

I don't make this blatant in the fic because that's 1) insensitive 2) I don't want to deal with people's ACTUAL ignorant opinions 3) it's kinda meta and ingrained for me to be circumspect about this stuff, even if it makes up an essential part of Korvin.

===

It's cosmic comedy, I think, that I'm doing an application that needs me to submit a statement on my academic interests and diversity within my professional career. What is my past experience with that? What is my future intent? How has this impacted my goal to join academia?

I'm almost 30. And growing up somewhere metropolitan, moving all over the country, interacting with people of many walks of life and knowing there are many more I don't interact with...I've been through a roller coaster of perspectives what makes a person distinct. Their distinctness isn't just personality, even if personality isn't so flimsy that a different day will change someone so completely. Yet, we're all shaped by where we come from. Our background, culture, class, sex, environment, etc.

This might be rather obvious, but over the years I've read fic I find that it's a quality and philosophy that doesn't come across often. I'll focus just on SI and OC-insert fics since that's the most relevant. Perhaps it's the type of fics I read, perhaps it's the fandoms, perhaps it's the demographic, perhaps we have too much practice in accepting some Everybody who is Everybody as a baseline regardless of how well that Everyone resonates with us personally.

Of course, not every fic is written for every audience. And different people will always have different perspectives. But I want you to ponder these metrics: I've read fanfic since 2003. Non-stop. I would average 20-50k words a week as a preteen, and ramped up from there. SI and OC make a big portion of what I engage with because I find it a fascinating examination of canon material using an external force, or something like that. They also have the potential to be deeply developed super quickly because we, as amateur authors, really can't help putting a lot of ourselves without filter into our creations. It can lead to polarizing feelings over them because of that.

It's been twenty years, and I can count on one hand the number of SI and OC fics where I legitimately felt that I understood where this character came from and they make sense to me. The rest...some I understood where they came from in the same way I need to empathize with the people around me so that I don't offend them. As a kid and teen, that meant ostracization and bullying. As a professional, it means missing opportunities, also getting bullied, being sabotaged, being used and tossed away. I have to show sympathy, bend my brain to see what makes them 'them' and see how sensible it is for them so that I can survive and thrive.

Some I had to accept that we either lived in vastly different realities in which such a character is sensible, and that's just the world we live in; or they're just bonkers. We move on.

I am compelled to write because I want to explore something that I find has not been explored. If it was already done to my satisfaction? I have literally felt my interest dip like a video game health bar in that situation.

My MCs as SIs cannot be divorced from my background. Ostensibly, that's the square-shaped brain with the math and engineering, the ADHD, and the internal snark. But those traits don't exist in a vacuum. Luckily my interests aligned with my parents' hopes and dreams for me as poor immigrants to the US and I am the first to have an advanced degree since my family has been wiped through the Cultural Revolution; though they were lucky enough to be sponsored by an aunt that married a missionary.

The ADHD was undiagnosed because god forbid I had Problems, "What do you mean Vermillion has problems? She's so bright! She never has to study! She has so much potential!" I have a brother who has problems, and both culturally American and Chinese I have been trained to Not Have Problems because I'm supposed to keep the household together. Plus, we're poor. We can't afford that! We're poor, we have family problems, AND our child has mental issues? They already say enough shit about Chinese people, jeeze.

The internal snark--it does hurt a bit inside whenever I see the reaction to my brand of humor in my fics as if it's meant to be expressed to tell people off, mic drop, actions having no consequences. You know what that is? It's coping. It's also developing the social wherewithal to be circumspect because your livelihood depends on it. And beyond just me, the internal pressure of carrying my family's expectations and wanting to not make their sacrifices in vain--that doubles the risk.

No fucking way do I mouth off without thinking (not since I was actually eight, and learning ever since), and that's why my characters are the way they are. We see a spectrum of them: Zhu Yunxun that needs to put up a front to maintain societal privilege and also is lucky to be born with money and lineage; SI!Taiga with money, physical + mental advantages, gender on his side, and talent; Lan Wenhui born into lineage, physical advantages, privilege, and talent, but still a woman; and now...Korvin Kwan with only the advantage of youth and male privilege. I am a point of departure for each of these and despite whatever gains that have been made with these new lives, I know myself well enough and have been burned before that it's instinctual to not grow into that privilege as if you've always had it.

Zhu Yunxun needs to walk a delicate tightrope of politics and intrigue and is wildly windmilling in the air, even if they're staying on.

SI!Taiga is so baffling to the Clown Gang because he doesn't act like a typical cocksure talented sports boy.

Lan Wenhui...she has her convolutions to be revealed.

Korvin is perpetually at the end of his fucking rope (like, what's Bat-WIng-Guy gonna do? Kill him for swearing? It'd at least cut out the middlemen for child trafficking), and just managed to trust Dick and Babs. Now that he has some sort of solid ground beneath him, that's where we get the chapter 4 code switching and masking.

Actions, and speaking is an action, have consequences and my SIs are me. They live with that philosophy.

We see ten million and one characters that like to loudly and boldly declare themselves, with the implication that they truly believe everything they say matters and will make a difference. They will be heard!

There's no catharsis for those who need to keep it in, where catharsis isn't actually worth it.

You might think: well, that's just on you. You choose to internalize this, you choose to make your family your pressure, you choose to not speak up--

And then I would point out, again, that culture and background makes people. Being diaspora, it influences what I find socially important. And it's even more important because I grew up poor. There's a realm of difference between the professional and well-off Chinese diaspora vs the ones that had to cram in the slums of Chinatown. My family was luckily not at the tail end, but we were nothing like the well-off (I'm lucky that we've essentially achieved the vaunted American Dream, now). To us growing up like that, family was your support network. Regardless of how shitty they are, what they do, the cost of cutting them out was rarely worth it.

And now that I've gone into my professional life--I'm lucky enough that I've either made others think they can't talk shit to my face, or my poker face was strong enough to survive the utter bullshit I've heard told to me like it was the weather. I thank them for their time, and I do what I need to do to navigate the situation. Usually, I don't have the power to do much but survive, so I did. And now, I've reached a point where 1) times are changing 2) I'm niche and competent enough that people are too busy listening to what I have to say than condescend me 3) I can shut them down if they do 4) the field I'm working in values circumspection as a whole.

===

Anyways, this is probably a big bubble burst for my fics. I know a lot of people enjoy them for the funnies, but the funnies come from somewhere. I think I build compelling characters and interpersonal relationships because I work to ground them in reality and what I know and have learned through my own experiences and needing to empathize with others.

My writing is my catharsis. Every time I'm able to resonate with someone out there, I'm happy if someone completely different from me can understand, and I'm even happier if I make another person like me feel seen.

Anyways, that's my kinda intense and sad TED talk, I need to go back to writing my application statement.

#opinionated verm #redglyphs #on tpac #on dbd #on bil #on larb

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leanelle03 · 11 days

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When Other Says Accountancy is Difficult 😢😢

Yes, But........

I am a student of Bachelor of Science in Accountancy, and this stems from my background as an Accountancy, Business, and Management (ABM) student. During my studies, I encountered many challenges, such as balancing figures, analyzing data, and interpreting financial statements. I also took the Bookkeeping NC III exam, which presented me with numerous challenges, but I successfully passed it. This achievement motivated me to trust in my abilities and showed me that I can excel even more in financial analysis and data management. I know that I will face more challenges in college, but I am confident that I can overcome them and successfully navigate through this journey😊

As the saying goes, "SUCCESS DOESN'T COME FROM WHAT YOU DO OCCASIONALY, IT COMES FROM WHAT YOU DO CONSISTENTLY." The Bachelor of Science in Accountancy (BSA) is not an easy path, but if you are committed to learning and developing your skills, the rewards are endless. It opens up numerous opportunities in the field of finance, business, and accounting. This course teaches you not only technical skills but also critical thinking and problem-solving that can be applied in real-world situations. If you’re ready for a challenging yet fulfilling journey, BSA is a course worth pursuing." ❤❤❤

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taurasiluvr · 3 months

Note

so crazy to me that nobody’s talking about azzi openly supporting nespresso and literally being a spokesperson for it even though nespresso is under nestle which is actively being funded by israel

not talking about you specifically but we can’t pick and choose who we hold accountable

personally i think being a spokesperson for a company that’s being funded by israel versus playing on a team in israel are two different things and being on the team during wartime is literally dismissing all the shits that’s happening, it’s two different things. like representing an israeli team is openly being a zionist (and before people come for me being like it’s not confirmed—i guess we’ll just have to see ig?)

it’s obviously still bad to be a spokesperson for a company that’s being funded by israel however literally every single company has some ties with israel. being a spokesperson for a company that has financial ties to israel can be seen as an indirect connection & many companies have complex funding structures, and it’s difficult to fully disentangle from such associations given the global nature of business

but, actively playing on a team in israel, especially during times of conflict is more direct endorsement of the state’s actions and policies. it can be seen as an overt display of support, this is because sports teams are often seen as national symbols, and participating in them can be interpreted as a public statement of solidarity, which is what emily is doing

while being a spokesperson for such a company is still bad , the level of complicity and the public perception are very differently from directly representing an israeli team

no hate to anon or anything just wanted to clear that up, again it’s my opinion and we should hold both parties accountable HOWEVER emily’s offense is 100x worse in my opinion 😭

#ry's anons #emily engstler

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etoile-filante222 · 1 year

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˖⁺｡˚⋆˙ scoups birth chart ˖⁺｡˚⋆˙

✧ 08.08.1995, 9:00 am in daegu

⊹₊┈ㆍ┈ㆍ┈ㆍ✧ㆍ┈ㆍ┈ㆍ┈₊⊹

✧ leo sun in the 12th house

scoups has healthy self-esteem and a natural feeling of leadership over others, he portrays calm dominance and a majority of the people around him don't mind conforming to his decision-making. his generousity, kindness, directness and attentivness are elemental characteristics, which makes scoups well liked by others. he is very proud while also respecting the pride of those around him. with his sun in the 12th house scoups has a desire for perfection. his efforts and abbilities may not always get recognized to their full extent, which he doesn't mind, since he knows what he's capable of. scoups may not always be in the spotlight at social events, but that gives him the chance to observe and analyse others.

✧ capricorn moon in the 5th house

scoups finds comfort and satisfaction in feeling useful to society. despite having a leo sun, his moon in capricorn makes scoups a bit shy and distant at first. his emotions and feelings are kept at bay, he tends to keep things for himself to appear more reliable on the outside. to get rid of his self-doubt, he tends to seek approval from the outside which causes him more harm than good. with his moon in the 5th house scoups is capable combining his emotions with creativity. he is also somewhat trusting, his safety is very important.

✧ leo mercury in the 12th house

scoups is very proud of his intellect and abilities. his mind is closely connected to his heart, so he doesn't shy away from speaking what's going on inside his head, there is passion and strength in his speech. he may have troubles accepting advice and criticism from people he is close to (or he just doesn't pay a lot of attention to it). his thinking is deeply influenced by his subconcious and past experiences, decisions are sometimes based more on emotions than logical thinking. scoups may have difficulties learning new things and expressing his opinions.

✧ leo venus in the 12th house

scoups likes to express his feelings or affection in a creative way, e.g. a poem, song or other forms of art. he is romantic and very enthusiastic in love, but his venus in leo does makes him rather flirty and confident in love. this can lead to him flirting with people other than his partner. it's more likely unserious for him and is just used as a confident boost, but if his partner does it, it may get him very upset. with his venus in the 12th house, scoups is a bit lonely and feels withdrawn from his relationships. he is very emotional, but manages to control them well.

✧ libra mars in the 2nd house

with his mars in libra scoups has troubles making decisions or statements, worried what others might think. he is quite indecisive and cares about other people and tries to combine his wants with the demands of others. he attracts energetic and irritable partners. with his mars in the 2nd house scoups seeks financial and material gain, which he is quite successful in. he has the energy to make money but he also spends a lot, he may have trouble controlling his finances. scoups is not afraid of taking risks, as long as he reaches his goals.

✧ virgo ascendant

scoups develops/grows the best through self-criticism and discernment. applying his knowledge and skills must be beneficial to the public, he is very analysing. with a virgo rising scoups probably focuses a lot on his health and body and spends a lot of time working on himself. precision and perfection dominate his mind, which can make him lose spontaneity and drive him into slight obsession. this can also reflect in his relationship, scoups may be slightly overbearing regarding his partners health/well-being and feels the need to supervise or take care of them. he needs to accept, that some things are out of his control and it's best to let things go.

⊹₊┈ㆍ┈ㆍ┈ㆍ✧ㆍ┈ㆍ┈ㆍ┈₊⊹

thank you so much for reading! ✧ let me know what your thoughts are

(this is only a rough interpretation, since scoups mentioned he was born around 9 am. so take eveything with a grain of salt!)

#astrology #kpop astrology #seventeen #scoups #seventeen astrology #scoups astrology #seventeen scoups astrology

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wonder-worker · 10 months

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(Dominic Mancini) believed that Edward IV had designated his brother Gloucester as Protector – a statement – a statement which he first introduces with a cautious ‘as they say’, but which then becomes the cornerstone of his argument. In the absence of formal evidence, this claim cannot be checked, but it has always been recognized that the choice of Gloucester to head the government was an obvious possibility for the dying king. If Edward wanted a protector, the duke was, indeed, the inevitable candidate. Gloucester’s position as sole surviving brother of the king, coupled with his outstanding record of service to the crown, would have made it impossible to pass him over, even in a society aware of the dangers which guardianship by a paternal uncle posed to the interests of the heir. But Mancini does not leave the story there. He claims that the council chose to ignore Edward’s wishes, preferring the immediate coronation of the young king to a formal minority. This decision was prompted by fears that a protector might usurp the throne, although Mancini adds that it was supported by the queen’s family, who wanted to prevent power passing to Gloucester. Having carried this initial point, the Woodvilles then proceeded to dig in militarily and financially. The picture is thus one of overt factions, with the Woodvilles manipulating the majority of the council against Gloucester and a small group of councillors who supported the idea of a Protectorate – an element usually identified with the dead king’s friend and chamberlain William Hastings.

…Mancini’s account, for all its overt criticism of the duke, may be based on a version of events originating in the circle around Gloucester. It casts the Woodvilles as the aggressors and Gloucester as the victim of circumstance. [According to this interpretation], the duke was virtually forced into some sort of counter-offensive to protect his own interests, and his seizure of Edward [V] at the end of April could even be justified, although Mancini does not say so, as a return to Edward IV's original wishes.

This raises the interesting possibility that Mancini’s insistence that Edward IV wanted his brother to be protector also derives from a version of events put forth by the duke after he had seized the prince and was seeking recognition as protector. Certainly one of the shakiest parts of Mancini’s account is his attempt to explain why, if Edward wanted a protector, the council sought to overturn his wishes. His suggestion that the council feared an usurpation displays the hindsight to be expected from someone writing after June 1483, when Gloucester had indeed used the protectorship as a stepping-stone to the throne. It is difficult to believe that anyone in April seriously feared that Gloucester had designs on the crown. The duke had a record of close cooperation with the Yorkist establishment, something at least as important in the context of 1483 as his much-emphasized loyalty to his brother. He was not an alien, northern magnate from whom anything might be expected, but a key figure in the reconstructed royal authority which now needed to be preserved for the young king.

This weakness in Mancini’s argument has, however, gone unremarked, largely because most commentators have chosen to emphasize Mancini’s second point and argue that the real reason for what happened was Woodville hostility to Gloucester. Mancini himself is clear that there was a long-standing rivalry between the duke and the queen’s family, and this has been accepted by almost every subsequent writer. A clash of interest was therefor inevitable once Gloucester had been chosen protector. But Mancini is here guilty of reading back into Edward IV’s reign the tensions which he observed after the king’s death. There is no contemporary evidence of hostility earlier than the end of April 1483. Although the personal attitudes of the protagonists are unknown, it is clear that their working relationship was one of co-operation.

This does not prelude the possibility that the Woodvilles turned against their former ally and in 1483 and cynically excluded Gloucester from the Protectorship in order to seize more power for themselves. But this would make nonsense of the events at the end of April, when Gloucester was able to seize possession of the (king) from an unsuspecting earl Rivers. The earl, who had apparently dispersed his men before meeting the duke, clearly expected no trouble from Gloucester – confidence which would be incredible if Gloucester had just been the victim of a Woodville coup.

Doubts about Mancini’s version are reinforced when it is compared with the account produced early in 1469 by the anonymous continuator of the Croyland Chronicle. The author was councillor of Edward IV and is in general a far more reliable source than Mancini. His facts (although not always his glosses) cannot be faulted, and he was ideally placed to give the definite account of events after Edward’s death. Although he evidently knew what the king had planned, he nowhere states it explicitly, and his silence has left the field to Mancini’s version. But this very silence casts doubt on Mancini’s central point that the council actually voted down the king’s expressed wishes. As a councillor himself, the author would have surely drawn attention to such a reversal. Instead he allows it to be assumed that the council’s plans for the coronation were in line with the king’s sagax disposito as embodied in the codils of his will. This makes it unlikely that Edward sought a protectorate. The implication instead seems to be that Edward’s ‘wise ordering’ did not envisage a formal protectorate at all, but entailed the immediate succession of his heir for which there was precedent in 1377, when the eleven-year-old Richard II had succeeded his grandfather. This is perhaps also implied by the chronicler’s comment that all the councillors were ‘fully desired the prince to succeed his father in all his glory’.

-Rosemary Horrox, "Richard III: A Study of Service"

*I just want to add that in 1475, when his son was only four years old, Edward IV's extant will did not desire a Protectorate (or regency, or lieutenancy); instead, he named his son 'Keeper of the Realm', placed him under the protection and control of the Queen, and appointed a Great Council to administer the realm. That should be kept in mind when discussing his potentially modified 1483 will, made when his son was twelve.

Simply put: Edward IV's 1483 will has not survived, we do not know what it says, we don't know what his codicils were or if they were even relevant to his son's minority (it could have been related to his children's marriages, for example). The Croyland Continuator mentions that he added codicils yet never claims or emphasizes that he appointed anyone Protector, and strongly implied that most of his 1475 will remained at full force. We can speculate, but we cannot state anything for certain, and insistent claims to the contrary (almost always to Richard III's benefit and Elizabeth Woodville's denigration) must necessarily be viewed as biased and shallow. Saying that Edward IV could have potentially named his brother Lord Protector is very different from looking at contemporary accounts and evidence to judge whether he actually did - which we ultimately don't know and won't know unless we find the actual deathbed will or another contemporary source. Nor does Edward IV's will actually matter on a practical level, because neither his council nor his queen were obligated to follow his wishes. Which, in turn, makes Mancini's insistence on the contrary (ie: claiming Richard was 'entitled' to the position as per law and his brother's alleged order, which is distinctly untrue: Richard was not entitled to anything on the basis of either of those things) all the more suspect and reinforces Horrox's point about him potentially being influenced by propaganda.

#richard iii #edward iv #wars of the roses #my post #queue

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