#there's the one with the rebels up near the bulwark

[hzdtrees]

Fireclaws

[wings-of-the-ten]

Chapter 6 opening/WIP snippet...

Here’s a long snippet from the start of Chapter Six of ‘What I Choose’.

For those who are looking forward to a little canon divergence, it’s coming up after the end of Chapter Six (or the end of the Kulrut)... It involves a party, some intense pining, and a cheeky friend from the Desert Clan... 

For now though, here’s a 950-word chunk of preview for you if you’ve followed me for Kotaloy/What I Choose stuff.

___

Aloy absolutely had not meant to spend a week in the Bulwark, but she felt she owed it to the rest of the Sky Clan to help out after she’d blasted a massive chunk out of their defences.

To her surprise, most of them didn’t actually seem to mind her continued presence in their lofty settlement, but to her growing horror, she found herself with a new epithet. ‘Wall-breaker’ wasn’t the most elegant of her accrued titles, but on reflection it wasn’t the worst. It was certainly a million times better than ‘Saviour’. That one always made her dry-heave a little, especially given that she usually heard it in her mind in Avad’s voice, accompanied with wide, adoring, imploring eyes that resonated with unspoken words. To his credit, he had backed off after the final time she’d turned him down, but a hope like his was hard to crush completely. It had an unwanted tendency to pop up again and again. Like a burrower.

Aloy wasn’t about to admit it, but another reason she lingered at the Bulwark was to find out a little more about the kind of people that had raised a man like Kotallo, and sure enough, she found the Sky Clan gruff, direct, and unimaginably tough.

Cresting the rise of a brutal climb near the top of their sacred mountain, however, Aloy did begin to wonder if she’d finally bitten off more than she could chew. A teenager with a lot to prove lost amid a raging snow-storm, in fading daylight, up a climbing route ravaged by storms and winter avalanches, and, oh yes, two stalkers, a bunch of leaplashers, and now a sodding great frostclaw.

“I’ll handle it!” she yelled at the wiry teen as Penttoh ducked without argument and rolled beneath an enormous gout of chillwater, followed up almost immediately with a barrage of shock attacks that made her hair stand on end and her skin prickle.

By the skin of her teeth, Aloy made it back down the mountain afterwards, though not without with a nasty bruise on her shoulder and three extremely delicate ribs, and she promised Wekatta that the kid wasn’t far behind. At the summit, she’d pressed one of the blood-red blossoms Penttoh had given her between two plates of machine casing in her pouch, though she couldn’t quite have said why. Perhaps she’d show it to Kotallo and watch his eyes sail wide with astonishment again.

Kotallo.

No one mentioned him around the settlement, as though his very name was a taboo not worth breaking, but she saw echoes of him in the features of every warrior, in the colours of beads and the patterns of ink and paint, and in the fighting stances of the warriors in the melee pit. ‘I bet he’s a sight in a melee pit,’ she thought, unbidden, and flushed immediately. He’d certainly been a vision in battle with the rebels against that tremortusk, and she could still remember with stunning clarity the way he’d felt between her thighs as she’d come up atop him in the grass. He’d looked… stunned… at the sight of her straddling him, though he could have simply hit his head during his heroics in saving her from a wayward rebel that she should have seen coming a mile off. Still, it was hard to forget a man like Kotallo, and she found herself in no hurry to do so.

At the Bulwark’s cook fire that night, she wondered what Kotallo’s tastes in food were while she sank her teeth into a haunch of ‘sheerside mutton’ and felt the medicinal herbs soothe her aching ribs and shoulder. Drakka had tried to foist the spiciest bird wings imaginable off on her, and he’d had laughed uproariously as her face had burned and her tongue felt like it as blistering, but something told her Kotallo wouldn’t be so childish. She did snort to herself at the memory of the glint in Drakka’s eyes though. Whatever else he was, he wasn’t dull. She wondered fleetingly if he and the other Desert Clan warriors she’d met along the way would be at the Kulrut. Part of her hoped to see him again, with all his boundless, twitching energy and awkward innuendos, but another part of her wished he’d stay as far away from it as possible, if Regalla really was going to attack. She’d lost too many good people already, and Drakka, inexperienced and naive in some ways as he was, was one of the good ones.

Tekotteh never emerged from his rock-hewn burrow all the while the ‘Wall-breaker’ remained in the Bulwark, but after a week of helping out, Aloy knew she’d have to leave soon. If the Chaplain were to be believed, Hekarro would be putting on the Kulrut very soon, and Aloy had given her word to be there. It wouldn’t do to have Hekarro renege on his word if she missed the start of his sacred contest, and if there was a strong chance Regalla would show up, Aloy knew she’d have to be there to help counter her. Whatever Sylens was up to, she recognised his hand in all the endless meddling, and after his betrayal with Hades at the Alight, she was not about to let him get away with anything a second time. Not that she thought for a moment he would be at the Kulrut in person, but he would be watching through Focuses he had gifted out, she was sure.

Before dawn on her eighth day after bringing down the Bulwark, Aloy hurled herself off the top of the wall for the last time, and turned her steps towards the Grove.

___

Head on over to my AO3 to read the whole thing, and bookmark it for updates if you’re interested!

[webcricket]

Winter’s Eye

Pairing: AU!CastielXReader Word Count: 1525 (Ch. V) Story Summary: Season 13 canon tells you how AU!Castiel’s story ends, this is how it begins. The deranged and damaged iteration of Castiel we met in the apocalypse universe - an obedient soldier to Michael’s cause barely in control of his vessel’s frayed and erratically firing nerves whose inherent kindness toward humankind appeared entirely obliterated - wasn’t always an unfeeling angelic weapon of interrogation. Once, he sympathized with the plight of humans; one, he loved. Chapter Summary: Coffee and a conversation - neither the reader or the angel suspects how a sweetly simple start will lead to heartbreaking complications.

Series Masterlist

V.

Castiel notices the alteration of a week’s long routine immediately upon entering the cabin; his final armload of tinder teeters when he perceives in his preliminary survey of the space he expects to see you occupying the you-sized void located beside the stove.

Every morning prior you huddled as a human pillow fort there; blanket draping your bulwark frame, despotic frown armoring your aspect, you dwelt near the heat source prepared to catch his eye as soon as he sought for yours to commence his daily plea for armistice to end that siege of silence.

The composure ruffled for a moment by the dread of a renewed isolation returns to the angel in the galvanizing sound of a heartbeat resonant somewhere within; casting his focus backward along the wall, he hones in on the owner of that soothing pulse.

On this morning, you sit at a rustic stout log-legged table constructed from the lacquered cross-section of a hundreds of years old oak not unlike the one you nearly perished under; the rings signifying the tree’s longevity multiply like ripples of a stone tossed in a stream, so tightly stacked as to be indiscernible from infinity itself. Situated beneath a square western facing window, gauzy gingham curtains pinned aside permit both a wash of light and the wintry view an entrance.

You seem lost in the vista; outward gaze unperturbed, your lips purse to cool the coffee raised to them. The dimmed gold diffusion that suffices for a sunrise these days radiates in halo effect around your profile.

Of secondary - albeit curious - concern to the relief he feels in what appears to him to be a positive and heavenly amendment of attitude in a heretofore dourly resigned disposition, a second untouched mug occupies the tabletop. Dwelling out of your easy reach, the significance of the surplus cup puzzles him.

Even more so unnerving to him is the enigma of the chair opposite you shifting suddenly asunder the table; in his distraction, he perceives the movement as occurring seemingly of its own volition rather than relating to the slide of your socked foot inviting him to fill the seat.

“I made you a cup of coffee,” is all you say, outward glance through the glass unbroken.

Balancing the heaped wood long enough to pivot and let it loose in a controlled, but raucous, roll from his arms onto the stack adjacent the door, he mostly manages to stifle the shock subverting his angelically stoic sensibilities over the scene.

When he wheels round, your focus is fixed on him; amusement hints in laugh lines skirting your mouth and a glint of mischief in your gaze.

He doesn’t drink coffee, but he’s astute enough to understand the gesture is more than just a cup of coffee - it’s an olive branch. He brushes off the bits of bark and incorporeal clumsiness clinging to his vessel and crosses the room in a brisk stride.

Sinking onto the seat, spine rigid, he clasps his fingers on the glossy ringed surface in an effort to affect an appearance of relaxation; fidgeting in their ill-feeling fitment, he ultimately relegates the difficulty of the calloused and uncalm digits into his lap and out of your sight.

“Um-” peering into the mirrored surface of the murky brown drink, bright block of window light shimmering your reflection thereon, he recalls the human proclivity for niceties in lieu of satisfying outright an inquisitiveness to know what caused your reconsideration of his charity- “thank you.”

You wince a little at that; the judder of the table undulates your image in his cup. It’s you who should be thanking him. You wouldn’t even have coffee if he hadn’t resupplied the cupboard a few days ago from God knows what resource he found in his wanderings.

All subtle trace of gaiety flees from your features; your chin bobs once under the burden of the guilt-ridden acknowledgement. Bringing the rim of the mug to your mouth, you sip, swallow hard against the throat thickening reminder of your boorish behavior, and permit a sliver of apologetic humility to emerge as a quiet murmur. “It’s the least I could do.”

Following your cue, glad to give one of his hands a useful purpose, he takes a tentative sip from his cup. The heat and acidity of the molecular explosion tickles his vessels tongue. While the impression is by no means a pleasant one, it’s one he bears out by forcing a compact semblance of gratitude into the curvature of his standard pout.

“It’s-” he clears the cough contracting his lungs- “uh-”

“It’s terrible.” You chuckle, allaying his stuttered struggle to maintain diplomacy. “Trust me, the taste improves with cream and couple pumps of cinnamon dolce and vanilla syrup, but even the Starbucks on every corner business model couldn’t survive in the present market climate.”

Your attempt at levity face plants in the slow-motion tilt of Castiel’s head and introspective tapering of his lashes that tell you he doesn’t get that particular reference.

He watches you endure another self-deprecatory gulp of the scalding stuff. “I’ll take your word for it,” he determines, although the doubt deepening his tone insinuates he’s not at all convinced.

No longer able to mince matters of caffeine with those regarding his celestial origin - the elephant in the room trumpeting caution in affront to your humanity - you set your mug and elbows before you to put his intent, once again, to the test.

Intensity shines in your irises as you lean forward on your seat, asking, “What’s really your deal anyway?”

He doesn’t so much as blink those blues at the rapid difference of direction from the realm of the mundane to more mortal concerns. He also misconstrues your meaning by offering a curt correction that, “Deals are for demons.”

You clarify. “I mean, what’s an angel doing patrolling out in the middle of no man’s land?”

The drop of his gaze and slouching of shoulders betray his discomfort, yet no immediate reason springs to his mind to evade providing an honest answer. “It’s a punishment.”

“For what?”

Pain dampens the countenance that rises to resolve on yours. “Pride.”

Your brow quirks, “Pride?”

He nods; hesitance to speak aloud for the first time about his past and how much to share stymies his tongue. He runs a broad fingertip along the outline of a blackened ring on the tabletop, relaying the outermost layers of his remorse as he absentmindedly follows the ashy line.

“When I realized angels were purposely abetting the breaking of apocalyptic seals, I rebelled. It was already too late to stop that seizure of power which was set so precipitously in motion, but I thought absolute disaster might be mitigated. Many of my brothers and sisters died because they followed me believing we had a chance to save this world for humanity. We– I- failed. And now-” He averts lashes wetly damned by sorrow to the window and all the barren ‘and now’ plainly evidenced beyond it.

You slump backward into the chair, astonished by the unguarded anguish of a being whose species as a whole you lately considered as incapable of feeling genuine emotion. “This … this isn’t what I expected.” The muffled acknowledgement of his outstripping your expectations isn’t one you necessarily meant to utter aloud.

He sniffs against the well of tears he thought long ran dry and looks once more at you. “I don’t think this is what any of us expected.” He judges the confusion contorting your forehead at his restatement as a want of further elucidation rather than his misunderstanding yet again what you’ve said. “That is to say except maybe the Apostle John, but he always was something of a catastrophic thinker. None of us could have guessed the Book of Revelation would prove so, well-” he pauses to exhale a sigh redolent of regret at not heeding the warning- “prophetic.”

“I meant you. You’re not who I expected you to be,” you add fuel to the foray of misperceived meanings hovering in the air between you. “That’s a good thing,” you reassure the fret of his brow; a small smile brews on your lips as you raise your cup. “So what happens now? I know you said angels don’t do the whole deal thing, but this seems a little unfair, you taking care of me. What do you get out of it?”

Mimicking the casualness of your sip, he picks up his mug and swirls a mouthful; there’s a subtle sweetness he could grow accustomed to underlying the molecules this time. Adams apple bobbing as the coffee trickles down his gullet, he says, “More of this, I hope.”

“Stale coffee?” you tease; sloshing the grainy dregs around the bottom of your emptied cup, the porcelain emits a hollow thud when you set it on the table.

Tone softened by a sincerity of want toward your continued company, he corrects, “Conversation.”

“I think I can do that.” You accept terms that, despite their being undemanding on his part in exchange for his invaluable protection, leave the angel feeling he’s gotten the better end of the bargain.

Next Chapter: VI

[antoine-roquentin]

US diplomats shaken by Trump decision to exit Syria

But US officials, speaking not for attribution, and Syria experts who consult with the US administration said that this time they believe Trump’s decision is real, and will not be reversed by a bureaucracy that has urged him to keep US forces in Syria longer.

“This time it’s real and truly catastrophic,” a US official, speaking not for attribution, told Al-Monitor. “The president is just done” and said "leave."

Trump’s decision to withdraw US forces from Syria came in the wake of a phone call between him and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday in which Erdogan said Turkish forces could finish off IS remnants and other terrorist groups, Syria experts said.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton met Monday, when Trump was said to formally decide on a US withdrawal from Syria. Multiple US officials argued against an abrupt US withdrawal, but were said to have given up trying to get Trump to change his mind by Tuesday night. US officials began to notify allies of the decision Tuesday.

“The push back from DOD, State and NSC stopped [Tuesday] night,” said one regional expert who consults with the US administration, referring to the Department of Defense, the State Department and the National Security Council....

“Amb. Jim Jeffrey … has long been advancing a Syria policy divorced from the president’s own views,” Wittes wrote on Twitter. “I don’t fault Jeffrey at all for trying to create some coherence and leverage to achieve desirable outcomes. But it was futile without Trump fully on board.”“

The other big US policy loser here, of course, is Pompeo/Bolton/Hook’s Iran policy of 'maximum pressure,'” Wittes added, referring to US envoy on Iran Brian Hook.

US approves Patriot missile sale worth $3.5bn to Turkey 

The United States has said it approved a sale of $3.5bn in missiles to Turkey amid tensions between the NATO allies over Ankara's plans to buy them from Russia.

The State Department on Wednesday said it had informed the US Congress of plans to sell Turkey a Patriot package that includes 80 Patriot missiles, 60 PAC-3 missile interceptors and related equipment....

Ankara a year ago announced a deal to buy S-400 missiles from Russia, drawing rebuke from its allies in NATO, a bloc originally formed as a bulwark against the former Soviet Union.

A State Department official, talking to the AFP news agency, said Turkey was jeopardising participation in another US military programme - the coveted F-35 fighter jets - if the country still went ahead with the S-400 sale.

Turkey could also face sanctions on defence purchases under the US law if it goes ahead, the official reportedly said, on condition of anonymity.

Turkey Planning to Buy Both Russian and U.S.-Made Missiles

The U.S. had earlier resisted selling Turkey the Patriot because it objected to Ankara’s demand to share technology. But as tensions with Iran rise, it wants to bring the Turkish government more firmly within NATO’s orbit.

Ankara is trying to diversify defense suppliers, and one big advantage of the Russian systems is that it gives the buyer some control over the technology, unlike American counterparts, said Konstantin Makienko, deputy head of the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, a Moscow think tank.

“There is a 90 percent chance that the Russian contract on the S-400s will be implemented,” Makienko said. “They also may buy Patriots in the future.”

Erdogan says Turkish troops to march into northeast Syria (Dec 12)

The most curious facet of his speech was that he was telling the YPG in advance that he was going to attack it. “If you want to do something like that, you have to do it suddenly without announcement,” Hasan Koni, a professor of international law at Istanbul Kultur University, told Al-Monitor.

This suggested that Erdogan was testing the waters of international opinion, wanting to see how strongly the world would react.

“If (the United States) doesn’t let it happen, it doesn’t happen,” said opposition legislator Hisyar Ozsoy, deputy chairman of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, the pro-Kurdish and third-biggest party in Turkey....

But liberals said Erdogan is trying to divert attention away from the poor state of the economy, where unemployment is over 11%, inflation is 22% and the IMF says growth will be 0.4% next year. Turkey holds municipal elections March 31.

“Erdogan is in need of garnering the support of nationalist voters,” said Murat Ozcelik, a former Turkish ambassador to Iraq and special envoy to Iraq’s Kurdish region.

Ozcelik told Al-Monitor that he saw Erdogan’s announcement as “a gimmick more for domestic use rather than a real invasion.”

“I don’t think he will be able to do a major operation while US soldiers are there,” he said. “The best he can do is some attacks.”

Pointing to the announcement’s effect on the exchange rate, where the Turkish lira slightly strengthened against the US dollar Tuesday, closing at 5.36, Ozcelik added: “Even the markets didn’t buy it.”

However, HDP legislator Ozsoy said Erdogan should be taken seriously.

“He’s not bluffing,” Ozsoy told Al-Monitor. “If there’s no strong (world) reaction, he could do it.”

Ozsoy said this would not be the first time Erdogan begins an election campaign with a military operation. His campaign for the presidential elections in June began with his sending troops into northwest Syria in January, Ozsoy said.

14,000 strong FSA army ready for Turkey’s Euphrates op 

The FSA completed its preparations for the operation on Wednesday, coinciding with Erdoğan’s announcement. FSA’s 14,000-strong force will serve as an advance guard and their numbers will increase once the operation begins.

The TAF’s commando and Special Forces units were informed that they would partake in the operation, and were allowed to visit their families before deploying.

Thirty armored personnel carriers dispatched from the border province of Kilis headed toward the Syria border, which is where they will be stationed. The convoy of military vehicles is protected by a wide range of security measures.

Over the past 15 days, military deployments to the Syrian border have been increased. Armored vehicles, tanks and personnel were deployed from Şanlıurfa to Akçakale. 

.

Regime Axis Forces are withdrawing forces from Hama and Idlib and are sending them to Deir Ez Zor 

Indeed. Posted today by an Assad's soldier "from Idlib to DeirEzzor". 

.

2/ What the Kurdish population fears most at this stage is an Afrin-like scenario in the North of Syria. They fear that Turkey and Turkey backed rebels will take control of territories in Northern Syria currently controlled by SDF/ YPG. 

3/ Without U.S. in their areas, Kurds will try to reconcile with Syrian gov. However deal is not guaranteed. As we've seen earlier in Afrin, Kurds wanted deal with Syrian gov to avoid Turkey attack. But Russians blocked it as they were looking for better relations with Turkey. 

4/ Situation bit differnet now from Afrin as Russia might be annoyed by Turkey purchase of $3.5 billion of U.S. weapons. In all cases, with sudden withdrawal of U.S. troops, Kurds are in position of weakness. Any deal with Damascus better for Kurds than Turkish offensive.

Islamic State kills 700 prisoners in east Syria: Syrian Observatory 

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Wednesday that Islamic State militants had executed nearly 700 prisoners in nearly two months in eastern Syria.

The UK-based war monitoring group said the prisoners were among 1,350 civilians and fighters that Islamic State had been holding in territory near the Iraqi border.

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2/ Trump is going to hand over north eastern Syria to Turkey and its local Sunni extremist mercenary forces who hate the Kurds, like militias from Der Ezzor who are part of Euphrates Shield forces, in addition to Jeish al Islam remnants from Douma. 

3/ This will create the perfect zone for a revival of ISIS and similar forces who will have a second chance to pursue their goals and threaten the fragile stability that was emerging in Iraq and Syria. 

quite shocked that trump didn’t listen to his neocon advisors for once. 2.5 likely options i see. one is re-integration with the syrian state in the model of reconciliation agreements. collapse of socialist pyd economy back into syrian neoliberal capitalism. sdf military formations are integrated into syrian govt ones, disbanded, go underground, or are moved to safe zones in iraq. syrian police are integrated with local police to a degree, but likely continue harassment, torture, and execution of political dissidents as in days before. no ethnic cleansing, which is preferable. two is turkish invasion and partition of syria long-term along the lines of cyprus. locals considered undesirable are ethnically cleansed, political reliables are resettled on the cleared territory, relieving population pressures in idlib and in refugee camps in turkey itself. since a syrian govt attack would activate nato protocols, it can never be retaken. refugees forced on iraq and syria, straining those governments in the near-term. would also be another blow to the saudi axis in favour of the qatari one, given that the saudis maintain troops in sdf territory. perhaps some kind of international incident. 0.5 is an isis resurgence that manages to beat back both syrian and turkish offensives and holds its own, leading to major embarrassment for trump and a renewed american military commitment. unlikely, but possible.

[klcthebookworm]

Mission on Mimban 11 of 12

Previous Installments

Introduction, One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten,

What Happens in the Chapter

The Coway are nice enough to delay the party until Luke has dried out. Large platters of exotic-looking foods were passed around a series of concentric circles around the pond. The visitors were entertained by endless dancing. Halla points out what is safe for humans to eat and that only steers the Yuzzem wrong a couple of times. Luke complains to himself about the taste of some of the edible food, but it's fresh and he's starved for that after the concentrates. Leia enjoys the dancing display and admits that she found her way to the Rebellion looking for creative vitality. These two crazy kids are having a moment™ when Luke has a reaction™.

Suddenly his hand opened as if he'd been shot. The pink bulb fell to the ground as Luke stood bolt upright, eyes open and staring. The Princess rose, tried to make something of the gaping expression on his face.

...

"He's coming," he murmured, every letter resounding. "He's near, very near."

"Luke boy, you'd better start making some sense or I'll have Hin hold you down and feed you dipills," Halla said. "Who's coming?"

"There was a stirring," Luke whispered by way of reply. "A profound disturbance in the Force. I've felt it before, weakly. I felt it most strongly when Ben Kenobi was killed."

Leia finally gives a name before Halla makes good on her threats, Lord Darth Vader, a dark lord of the Sith.

A Coway courier runs into the assembly shouting his story. One of the three chiefs tells the Coway what's going on and panic seizes the crowd. The chief then comes over and explains the situation to Halla. "Humans are coming. Hard-shelled humans. Down the main passage from the surface. The way we came in." Leia questions Halla as to how the Imperials found them so quickly (answering my question on how easy is the trail to spot from way back in Chapter Seven), and Luke finally hypothesizes the Force did it. Vader has more experience and if Luke can sense Vader, the opposite is probably true.

The Coway chiefs look to Luke, since he defeated their champion he is the greatest warrior present. Leia's all for fighting, pointing out that the Coway took down two Yuzzem with just their spears and axes and that the Coway have the home field advantage. Luke isn't convinced and tries to tell the Coway to negotiate with the Imperials. The Coway won't; they recognize an invasion force when they see one. Leia points out that they have to fight Vader because he won't stop chasing them. Halla puts in that they've said they are different from the mining officials, now they have to show the Coway they meant what they said.

Luke finally agrees to fight and is admiring the Coway warriors preparations for fighting back. They are experienced warriors. They outfit themselves. Hin hands his heavy energy rifle to Leia since he prefers the enormous axe the Coway offered him. Luke is given a pistol that Halla and the Yuzzem had brought into the cave system. They take positions. Coway started to vanish before Luke's eyes, moving, jumping, secreting themselves where no hiding place seemed possible. They disappeared into crevices and cracks, into the ground, slipped into holes in the cave ceiling, froze behind false flowstone curtains. While taking cover behind a bulwark of striped travertine, Leia makes Luke promise to kill her if it looks like Vader's going to take them prisoner. Luke mumbles his agreement and then they are hushed by a Coway warrior and Halla.

Numerical superiority means nothing in this fight. The advance Imperial stormtrooper scouts are taken out and their weapons given to the ones who use them (Luke and Leia), the rest march into the kill zone three and four abreast. The Coway also use sound and echoes to add to their attack. Halla and Kee in one spot fire into the crowd of stormtroopers while Luke and Leia do the same from their cover. Once the Coway are mingled with the Imperial troops, Luke charges in with his lightsaber and Leia goes with him. Luke blocks a shot from behind with the lightsaber. Luke yells for Vader's attention from where he is on the sidelines, and the Lord of the Sith ignites his red lightsaber and strides into the fray, cutting his way toward Luke. Leia meanwhile finds a new high perch.

Grammel sends ten stormtroopers to the high ground in the tunnel. They reach the summit of the small ridge and just when they were lining up their weapons on the crowd below, Hin and his Coway pals drop on them from the cavern ceiling above. No Imperial survivors. Vader realizes the way the battle is going and calls for the retreat without having reached Luke. The Coway do not let all that many retreat as their reserve forces come into play now, dropping stalactites and nets onto the Imperials.

Leia takes her shot at Vader and hits him, but not hard enough to do lasting damage.

A powerful beam of energy struck him in the side, sent him spinning to the ground. Leia smiled. Her joy turned to disappointment when she looked back through the blunt telescopic sight.

Vader had rolled over and was beating at the smoke issuing from his left side. There was a gaping hole in his protective cloak and the black armor beneath it had been partly melted away. But the full force of the energy bolt had missed him.

Vader appears to stare straight at her, but does nothing else before turning and heading back up to the surface. Leia climbs back down to find the Coway killing the wounded and Luke rather distraughtly trying to stop them. She finds this behavior almost human, and tries to encourage him to find the rest of their group and celebrate the victory. "There's nothing here I want to celebrate," he tells her before leaving the scene of the battle.

What I Liked

The worldbuilding on the Coway is fascinating. I'd like to see a New Republic anthropologist do a professional study of their culture. And I do appreciate the reminder of alien biochemistries can't all eat the same things.

Luke sensing Vader through the Force is well done. I got shivers. Good job, Foster.

Leia finally sounds like herself as she concentrates on more Imperial atrocities. "Using energy weapons on primitive sentients," she muttered in outrage. "Another gross violation of the original Imperial charter. Another reason for the Alliance to fight on."

"Don't you two ever shut up? Hush now, children ... company's coming." No, they don't, Halla, and they pick the worst possible moments to act just like children. I fully expect for Halla to find an audience whenever Luke Skywalker's and Leia Organa Solo's names hit the HoloNet for something heroic and newsworthy and say "Let me tell you about the time those two almost got themselves killed while mud wrestling on Imperial controlled world!"

Oh I like the detail given when Luke deflects blaster bolts.

Without realizing it, he then swung blindly backward. The blue of his saber intersected a beam fired point-blank at him by an Imperial rifle.

Turning, he barely had time to utter a silent thanks to Ben Kenobi. The trooper was so shocked at the apparent coincidence of having his shot blocked that he didn't react in time. Thinking something had to be wrong with his weapon, he readjusted it to compensate for the imaginary fault. As he swung it upwards again Luke jabbed him through the sternum.

All that practicing with Ben's remote is paying off!

What I Found Problematic

No mention is made while Luke is drying his clothes by the bonfire and getting dressed again of what Leia and Halla are doing. I really hope it's not ogling Luke, as tempting as it is.

Leia's Rebellion journey, wow am I glad Foster's version didn't stick.

"[The Empire]'s art has grown as decadent as the government. Both suffer from a lack of creative vitality. That's what originally drew me to the Alliance, not politics. Politically, I was probably almost as naive as you."

"I don't quite see," he said drily.

"When I was living in my father's palace, I was utterly bored, Luke. Examination of why I found nothing entertaining led me to discover how the Empire had stifled any original thought. Long-established totalitarian governments fear any kind of free expression. A sculpture can be a manifesto, a manuscripted adventure can double as a cry for rebellion. From corrupt aesthetics to corrupt politics was a smaller step than most people around me realized."

I appreciate what he's saying about art and do agree with the freedom of self-expression is important, but again word choices matter. My first impression when I read this bit:

Leia: "Daddy, I'm bored."

Bail sets down his datapad and looks at his pre-teen daughter. "I'm part of an alliance of rebellious cells that wishes to overthrow the Emperor and usher in a New Republic. Fitting payback since he morphed the Old Republic into his Empire. Do you want in?

Leia: "Sure, I don't have anything better to do."

That the Empire puts hard limits on artistic expression to curb rebellious sympathies, I have no problem believing and it's a good observation. It just needs more tweaking to be believable from Leia, Imperial Senator and Rebel spy and now is taking the lead in a diplomatic mission to get systems to join the Rebellion. Politics has always been her thing.

Word choices, Foster. We have had this discussion before.

"What do you expect," he mumbled, laughing at himself, "from an untutored country boy?"

"I think," the Princess responded softly, not looking at him, "that for an untutored country boy, you're one of the most sophisticated men I know."

I'm all for finally paying Luke a compliment here, Leia. He carried your butt out of the lake, but no sophisticated is not the word to use. I think sincere is a good one for Luke, but not the comparison he started off with. Maybe wisest?

Alright Vader's on Mimban, now it's epically exciting! Wait, where's the pinch point scene in which we are treated to the Imperial pissing contest that Grammel is in no shape to ever win? It doesn't exist. Why doesn't it exist? Let me back up and explain. Both Pinch Points, which are set between the Plot Points, are times to see the antagonist's power and to remind the reader what the protagonist is up against. When I'm composing a story that has multiple points of view, this is where I make certain to have the antagonist's POV scenes. You're not limited to that, but you have to show the threat the antagonist is to the protagonist. That's why I identified Luke and Leia's meeting with Grammel as the First Pinch Point. They see how brutal he is and he wants the Kaiburr crystal. The Midpoint is Luke and Leia breaking out of the prison and destroying Imperial headquarters in their wake. But the last time we saw Grammel was when he was getting stitched back together. Good scene, but it didn't "bring the antagonist force front and center to foreshadow the coming Third Plot Point and to break up the remained of the Second Act." (5 Secrets of Story Structure by K.M. Weiland) It didn't give the reader anything to truly fear, just a "damn Luke missed that a-hole" moment.

Now what if instead the exposition while our gang of protagonists is traveling, we have a scene of how Grammel's search for them is interrupted by Lord Vader's arrival on Mimban. Grammel makes a worse impression on Vader than he did on Governor Essada and now they're both working together to find the Rebels. Then readers go back to the wandrella attack and Luke and Leia's cave hike with mounting dread because they know something the characters don't. The battle with Vader and the stormtroopers versus the Coway and Luke and Leia is more the Third Plot Point because their victory is a hollow one and Vader is heading straight to the Kaiburr crystal.

And once again Threepio is RIGHT THERE not translating anything for the Coway. Over six million forms of communication, and all he does is try to turn himself off in the droid equivalent of a faint when he hears Vader is coming.

Oh, I found the steel kitten description that Blue Milk Special made fun of. "Swear it!" she demanded, her voice that of a steel kitten. I'm having trouble with this metaphor. Kittens make adorable sounds, metal does not. Kitten also does not symbolize fierceness and Leia is asking for Luke to kill her if this all goes south rather than face Imperial imprisonment again.

What Changes in My Fic

Concentrates versus ration bars: I think I'm bringing back ration bars. There's just something too Jetsons Space Age about one pill keeping you fed for several hours, even though I appreciate the work Foster put into creating them.

The art comparison is a perfect one for Mara to make. Raised in the Imperial Court in the heart of Coruscant, trained in dance as her cover but it and music for dancing were probably the one fun thing she was allowed once her training began in earnest, she has the technical expertise and the Force Sensitivity to figure out what is different between the Coways' dance and the Imperial ballet corps. She wants to dance with the Coway to combine their moves with the ones she was taught. Will she get the chance? Will she take the chance?

Vader or not to Vader: To be honest, I had thought about leaving Vader out of my version of this story despite his pose on the cover art.

Grammel is the big bad at the beginning, so I was considering ways he could continue being the big bad all the way through. Or if he absolutely couldn't, make concrete the more Emperor's Hands with a new character taking Vader's spot to get rid of Luke Skywalker once and for all. But since Foster neglected to give Vader his proper due, I'm back to wanting him. And it will do Anakin some good to be rejected by Luke three times in the series. Trust me.

Plot events time. Helping Writers Become Authors further explains this breakdown. I've added in the scenes in between the eight critical scenes, so I hope it's easier to see where the story broke format to its detriment.

Hook 1% mark = Crashing onto Mimban

Set-up 1% - 12% =

Reuniting Leia and Threepio with Luke and Artoo,

Leia sinking in quickclay,

hiking and camping

Inciting Event 12% mark = Finding the Imperial mining outpost

Build-up 12% - 25% =

Disguising as miners,

Ordering food in the tavern,

Discovered and Luke lies to Imperial

1st Plot Point 25% mark = Luke and Leia agree to find the Kaiburr crystal with Halla

Reaction to 1st Plot Point 25% - 37% =

Mud-wrestling,

Fight with miners,

Captured by stormtroopers

1st Pinch Point 37% mark = Meeting with Grammel

Realization 37% - 50% =

Grammel talks with Essada,

Luke and Leia meet Yuzzem,

Halla finds them

Midpoint or 2nd Plot Point 50% mark =

Prison break,

Blowing up Imperial headquarters

Action 50% - 62% =

Stealing the crawler,

Grammel's medical care,

Wandrella chase,

Lake monster fight,

Coway attack,

Canu's judgment fight,

Coway feast

2nd Pinch Point 62% mark

Renewed Push 62% - 75% = Coway prep for battle

3rd Plot Point 75% mark = The battle with Vader and the stormtroopers

Recovery

Climax Begins 88% mark

Confrontation

Climactic Moment 98% mark

Resolution

[thursdayfilebuzz]

French elections: all you need to know As the candidates in the French presidential election prepare to meet on Tuesday evening for the second televised debate, we look at what they stand for and which one is most likely to win by Jon Henley, European affairs correspondent - Tuesday April 04, 2017 - https://www.theguardian.com What’s the story and why is it important? France elects a new president in two rounds of voting on 23 April and 7 May. Opinion polls have forecast for more than two years that the populist, nationalist, authoritarian Marine Le Pen could win the first round. The polls suggest that Le Pen, who has promised to take France out of the euro and hold a referendum on France’s EU membership, would then lose in the second round run-off to a more mainstream candidate. On present form, that will be Emmanuel Macron, a former Socialist economy minister running as an independent centrist, or – less likely – François Fillon, a former rightwing prime minister hit by an alleged corruption scandal. But after the shocks of Britain’s Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump in the US, many are wary of polls. The campaign has sprung any number of surprises and a Le Pen presidency is seen as at least possible. While it might be hard for her to deliver on many of her pledges, a President Le Pen would deal a massive symbolic blow to Europe, send financial markets into turmoil, and be seen as the next step in a populist, anti-establishment insurgency. A victory for Macron, on the other hand, would point to a future for centrist, pro-European politics and, after the defeat of Geert Wilders in recent Dutch elections, suggest the 2016 UK and US upsets may not necessarily herald the end of liberalism and the EU. What’s the political landscape and how does the system work? Eleven candidates, each backed by at least 500 mayors, MPs, MEPs or senators, have qualified for the first round. Assuming none wins a majority, the two highest scorers face off two weeks later. The winner needs more than 50% of the vote. The two-round system, also used in parliamentary, local and regional polls, was introduced in 1962 by Charles de Gaulle to keep extremists out of power: you vote first with your heart, the French say, then with your head. Whoever wins, this is already an exceptional election: on present polling, neither of the traditional centre-right and centre-left parties that have governed France since the 1950s will be represented in the run-off. Le Pen’s far-right Front National has been advancing steadily; it controls 14 town halls and has two MPs. In 2015’s regional polls it won 28% of the vote, its highest ever score. But France’s two-round system has so far kept it from power. This year, with the leftwing Socialist party (PS) in disarray after the disastrous five-year term of the outgoing president, François Hollande, former prime minister Alain Juppé from the rightwing Les Républicains party was the early favourite. But after unexpectedly defeating Juppé in the party’s primaries, Fillon, a self-styled “clean hands” candidate, was accused of giving his wife and children taxpayer-funded fake jobs and is now under formal investigation. He has plunged in the polls. Who are Le Pen, Macron and Fillon and what do they want? After studying at the elite Sciences Po and École Nationale d’Administration, Emmanuel Macron, 39, was briefly a civil servant before becoming a Rothschild’s banker and then an adviser and economy minister in Hollande’s government. He has never held elected office and says he wants to break the “complacency and vacuity” of French politics. An energetic optimist who claims to be neither left nor right but “pragmatic and fair”, he is economically liberal and pro-business but a progressive on social issues. Marine Le Pen, 48, is the third daughter of FN founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, who made the run-off in 2002. A lawyer, she has both detoxified the party and distanced herself from it since taking over in a bitter power struggle in 2011. Le Pen – who is also embroiled in a fake jobs scandal, but at the European parliament – wants to end immigration, slash crime, eradicate Islamism, pull France out of Europe and save it from globalisation. Her “economic nationalism” will favour French business, she promises, while “France-first” social policies in housing, health, education and employment will favour French people. Fillon, 63, was former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s prime minister for five years. An archetypal provincial French conservative, he appeals particularly to France’s Catholic right – still loyal, despite his judicial woes – and its desire to preserve traditional family values. Economically he is way more radical, promising shock Thatcherite reforms including cutting taxes and public spending, slashing public sector jobs, raising the retirement age, freeing up labour laws and breaking trade union power. What are the issues? The Paris and Nice terror attacks that claimed nearly 230 lives in 2015 and 2016 weigh heavily on this election and have helped Le Pen drag the agenda onto her preferred ground of security, immigration, Islam and national identity. To this she has added the question of Europe, from whose yoke she says France must free itself before it can flourish. And she rails against an immoral, out-of-touch elite – territory Fillon has also explored with attacks on the judiciary and media. But the 2017 French election is also, and perhaps mostly, about the persistent malaise of a country whose economy has stagnated for years now and where unemployment is stuck stubbornly above 10%. Labour laws, job creation, taxation and social and welfare provision are all key campaign themes. Who else is Standing? Of the eight remaining candidates in the first round, only two are currently polling above 10%: Benoît Hamon, the official Socialist party candidate, and the far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Hamon, 49, a former education minister and leftwing rebel, aims to move his party firmly to the left after Hollande’s dismal, muddled presidency left it divided and demoralised. His most eye-catching policy, besides legalising cannabis, is the introduction of a universal basic income. Mélenchon, 65, was once a junior Socialist minister and finished fourth in the 2012 presidential race. As the brash, outspoken head of La France Insoumise (Unbowed France), he wants a Sixth Republic, fiscal justice, an end to austerity and a new ecological order – including pulling France out of nuclear power. Who will win? The polls have not shifted significantly for some time: Le Pen and Macron are neck-and-neck in the first round, with Fillon seven or more points behind and Hamon and Mélenchon trailing. In the second round, Macron is predicted to beat Le Pen by 20-plus points. Fillon, should he make it, also beats Le Pen, but by less than half the margin. (That looks a more uncertain scenario: many on the left would find it hard to vote for Fillon.) Most observers doubt Le Pen can win more than 50% of the second-round vote. But there are caveats. Her support is more solid: in surveys, Le Pen’s voters mostly say they are certain to support their chosen candidate; Macron’s tend not to be so sure. There is no precedent for a Macron victory: no centrist has ever occupied the Elysée palace, nor any candidate running without the political and logistical backing of one of the traditional left or rightwing parties. In past elections, the two-round system has allowed voters from both left and right to form a united “Republican front” against any FN candidate who makes it to the second round. So far, that pact has largely held. But some observers worry it is now vulnerable. They say voters are so disaffected, and consider politicians so corrupt and ineffective, that the pact could be seen more as the political class saving its skin rather than a bulwark against extremism. One recent survey showed 89% of French voters believe politicians do not listen to them. How angry, demoralised people vote will be decisive. And an unforeseen event, such as another major terrorist attack, could yet change the whole dynamic of the race. What happens after the new president is elected? Critically, a month after the second round of the presidential poll, France holds legislative elections, also over two rounds, on 11 and 18 June. How those turn out will determine whether the new president can actually govern. Macron, who will field candidates from his youthful En Marche! movement, would need to build a new kind of majority from however many of his own candidates win seats, plus centrist MPs from both sides of the political divide. The FN, which currently has only two MPs, would be extremely unlikely to get anywhere near the 289 Le Pen would need for a majority in the assembly – effectively leaving her unable to run the country. She could face other obstacles. Article 88-1 of the French constitution, for example, states that France is part of the European Union. Constitutional change requires the backing of both the lower house and the senate, plus in some cases a referendum. And while presidents can in principle call a referendum without parliamentary support, they now need the approval of the constitutional court to do so. In practice, Le Pen may find a plebiscite on leaving the EU impossible. -- thursdayfile.com

[ericfruits]

Jordan plays it safe

IF ONLY he knew which way to turn. Last week King Abdullah of Jordan went to Moscow to meet Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, to discuss how to stabilise Syria under the continued rule of Bashar al-Assad. This week he has been in Washington, DC, anxious to explore how Jordan might help President Donald Trump to implement his idea for carving up Syria into safe zones.

Playing great powers off against one another has long been a Hashemite trademark. King Abdullah’s great-great-grandfather, the Sharif of Mecca, dallied with both the Ottoman and British empires, before going for British gold. Before the invasion of Iraq in 2003 King Abdullah received envoys from both Saddam Hussein and President George W. Bush, auctioning his backing to the highest bidder. Now, as funding from Saudi Arabia dries up, the king (via the Russians) is in contact with the Saudis’ arch-rival, Iran, whose forces operate on his borders with Syria and Iraq. He once sounded the alarm over a “Shia crescent” extending Iran’s influence to the Mediterranean; now that it is materialising he is coming to terms with it.

In this section

Such realism goes against advice from a think-tank in Washington, which last year called on him to create “Greater Jordan” by incorporating “elements of Iraq and Syria” into his kingdom. The region’s ungoverned spaces would have a pro-Western monarch, argued the Washington Institute of Near East Policy, thus stemming Iran’s westward advance. In return, Jordan would gain two major rivers, oilfields and large phosphates deposits.

But King Abdullah knows the dangers of overreach. Over the past century, the Hashemites called themselves Kings of the Arabs but lost two major capitals, Damascus and Baghdad, and Islam’s three holiest places, Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. The king’s grandfather, Abdullah I, raged against his confinement to a desert kingdom like “a falcon in a canary’s cage”. But he lost half of Palestine, and his son, King Hussein, lost what remained. By contrast, the current king is the first monarch “with Jordanian, not regional ambitions”, says Oraib Rantawi, a political analyst.

Take Syria. King Abdullah was the first Arab leader to urge Mr Assad to quit. With Saudi and Qatari largesse, he funnelled intelligence, weapons and cash to favoured rebels in Syria’s south. But the fighting sent around a million refugees into Jordan, so priorities shifted from offensives against the regime to defending the border from global jihadists, many of Jordanian origin. With few exceptions, the rebels in Syria’s “Southern Front” have held their fire against the regime for almost a year.

Some Jordanians still toy with the idea of deploying the Southern Front to create a sanitised belt 10km wide on Syria’s side of the border, which might meet Mr Trump’s demand for safe havens. It would offer protection from refugees and Islamic State, whose suicide-bombers have tried to ram Jordan’s border four times since the summer, most recently last week.

But senior Jordanian generals suggest co-operation with Mr Assad’s forces. Were the Southern Front to pull back from Nassib, a former border crossing that is now closed, Jordan could reopen its northern crossing. With the highway from north to south back in Mr Assad’s hands, trade might again flow from Turkey via Jordan to the Gulf. Jordan’s economy could then profit from Syria’s eventual reconstruction.

In Iraq, too, Jordan is weighing the aspirations of émigrés against relations with the existing regime. Rich Iraqis who decamped to Amman, the capital, after the American invasion of 2003 have helped turn it into one of the region’s fastest-growing cities. Living in mansions, Sunni tribal sheikhs exiled from Anbar, Iraq’s western province, broadcast appeals on their satellite networks to establish an iqlim, or autonomous region for Sunni Arabs, as the Kurds have done. Connected to Jordan, together they would build a Sunni bulwark against Iran’s advance west. But Jordan’s trade with Anbar pales in comparison with the potential of ties with Iraq as a whole. A bilateral agreement to build a pipeline from Basra’s oilfields to Jordan’s port of Aqaba promises to turn the kingdom into an energy hub.

On Palestine King Abdullah is most cautious of all. Palestinian nationalists shot his grandfather dead after he split Jerusalem with the Zionists in 1948. His father, Hussein, only just survived a Palestinian revolt in September 1970. Abdullah prefers to keep out of the fray. Jordan First, he tells the Palestinians who make up most of his population, rejecting a larger West Bank role. Better a falcon in a cage than a bird shot down in mid-flight.

http://ift.tt/2jHBL7L

[travelguideworldtour-blog]

10 Best Places to Visit in Haiti

Haiti can be a parcel of heaven shot directly using spectacular sunsets, misty mountain tops and waves lapping at shores. It’s found on the next biggest island at the Caribbean, Hispaniola, also stocks its own idyllic atmosphere with all the Dominican Republic.

Afterward Haiti may be where to be, if trying to find enthralling shore beauty in addition to historical monuments. This is our guide to one of the many areas in the area.

  Bassin Bleu

Bassin Bleu is really just a waterfall in the mountains of Jacmel, Haiti. Travelers spend swimming at the water leaping out of the waterfalls and appreciating the cap of this vegetation and can trace a trail. This spot’s solitude can make it feel just like heaven.

  Labadee

Labadee is also a bit of heaven, and also actually a vent. Inspired by crystal clear water, the sandy shores and the Royal Caribbean International railway organization making it among the destinations in the island.

Besides relaxing by the sea in the shore, people may select from an assortment of vendors, take part in water sports or decide to try their own hand.

  Saut-Mathurine

The waterfall Saut-Mathurine, in the region can be an cascade from Haiti’s region. The Rivière p Cavaillon supplies the origin for your waterfall’s flow, and also its particular own neighboring waters can be all readily accessible for swimming and paddling pool.

The driveway to Saut-Mathurine offers the verdant greenery on either side and amazing views of the nation.

  La Citadelle la Ferriere

Clinging enjoy a excellent rock limpet into the ridges of Bonnet that a L’Eveque mountain a brief drive south outside of Cap Haitien, this colossal fortress (certainly one of the largest at the full Americas in-fact ) rarely does not draw out a gasp.

The Haitian slave rebels increased it from early years of the century, also thought in the aftermath of the country liberty as a bulwark against invasion.

  Jacmel

Innumerable souvenir emporiums that are neighborhood along with galleries on the roads, and it will be likely to obtain famous brands multi coloured fresh fruit bowls made out of head gear trinkets and timber.

Jacmel is about shopping. When town’s got such promenade and a beach, fringed with palm trees and sprinkled with enticing fish grills loaf of spices and jerk!

  Sans-Souci Palace

Situated to the Citadelle la Ferriere, that plots at the top of the mountain tops above, this complex that is crumbling was formerly the house of both the king, Henri Christophe and pioneer against the French throughout the wars of independence. It was constructed mimicking the fashions of manor houses in a series of excellence and art.

Visitors may observe the area where suicide was committed by King Henri, allegedly in 18-20, with a bullet.

  Furcy Forest

Adventure travelers must remember to create a bee line for its Massif de la Selle, at which in fact the Furcy Forest could be located down to the ridges and peaks that grow above the Caribbean Sea to more than 2,500 metres.

Famous for his or her woods, wooded paths, and panoramas across this coast’s waves, these sylvan slopes are among the greatest regions.

  Grand Rue Musee d’Art

The grand-rue Musee d’Art could be seen inside the middle of both sprawl also a junk yard on another and using a car mechanic on either side. Which mayn’t be farther away from the reality, although its name could suggest something historical and regal.

Actually, grand-rue is a make-shift and random conglomeration of sculptures and sculptures, art installments and mechanical characters produced of materials that were found. There are characters generated from the remains of engines.

You will find metallic scifi productions wrought by axels, and Voodoo effigies having a motorbike border. Simply take a stroll to see this selection of imagination that is Haitian that is home grown.

  Fort Jacques

Even though bigger than its big brother Fort Jacques remains a remnant of the castle construction era of Haiti. Like its own compadre on the mountain, it had been increased by the country’s powers to fend of attack at the century’s early decade. But, the woods across port au prince shroud Jacques and is far trodden and less busy.

Visitors may see the remains of arms depots and wax houses, visit cannons and cannon balls and also relish panoramas across the central plains of the country.

  Pic la Selle

Clocking up a meters above sea level, the Pic la Selle could be your point in the Chaine de la Selle of Haiti, also something among the highest in the region on top of that. It includes criss crossed by a collection of paths that are accessible and hiking trails and towers near the border also looms.

The path on the very best starts at town of Mare Rouge, weaves through a few blossom woods and a set of farming hamlets before hitting on on the summit. The trip leaves panoramic views across that the cooling breezes of this highlands on the way, and of course the collections!

  10 Best Places to Visit in Haiti

[investmart007]

GENEVA | UN experts: Possible war crimes by all parties in Yemen

New Post has been published on https://is.gd/3CtGJ5

GENEVA | UN experts: Possible war crimes by all parties in Yemen

GENEVA — U.N. human rights experts said Tuesday the governments of Yemen, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia may have been responsible for war crimes since Yemen’s conflict intensified 3�� years ago, including rape, torture, arbitrary detention and use of child soldiers.

Their report — the first since being mandated to investigate by the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council nearly a year ago — is increasing international pressure on the Saudis’ Western-backed coalition that already has been widely condemned for devastating airstrikes on civilians as well as combatants.

The U.N. panel also pointed to possible war crimes by the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels who have been fighting the coalition that gets support from the U.S., Britain and France.

In one of the first reactions to the report, a Saudi diplomat told The Associated Press that the findings were “not accurate.”

In 2015, Saudi Arabia announced it would lead a coalition of countries against the Houthi rebels who had ousted Yemen’s internationally recognized government.

In the years since then, the U.N. says the conflict has become the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with more than 22 million people in desperate need in what is already the Arab world’s poorest country. The experts documented 6,475 deaths from March 2015 until last June, but said the real figure is likely to be significantly higher. Other groups have estimated that more than 10,000 have been killed — excluding over 2,300 cholera deaths since April 2017 amid pitiful water supplies.

“Despite the severity of the situation, we continue to witness a total disregard of the suffering of the people of Yemen,” said one of the experts, British human rights lawyer Charles Garraway. “This crisis has reached its peak, with no apparent sight of light at the end of the tunnel.”

“It is indeed a forgotten crisis,” he added.

The report said the experts from Britain, Tunisia and Australia have “reasonable grounds to believe that the governments of Yemen, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are responsible for human rights violations.”

Among the violations were unlawful “deprivation of the right to life,” arbitrary detention, rape, torture, enforced disappearances and child recruitment, the report said, adding that the Houthis were to blame for many of the same abuses.

Much of the onus fell on Saudi Arabia, criticized for airstrikes that have hit schools, hospitals and wedding parties. One airstrike struck a bus near a market in Saada province, a Houthi stronghold, in northern Yemen on Aug. 9, killing more than 50 people, including 40 children, and wounding dozens.

Nearly a dozen deadly airstrikes the experts investigated in the last year “raise serious questions about the targeting process applied by the coalition,” the report said. It chastised some in-the-field coalition fighters for “routinely” failing to seek information about targets on official “no-strike” lists that should have been avoided.

At a Pentagon news conference Tuesday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said the U.S. intends to continue backing the coalition despite civilian casualties and questions about the Saudis’ commitment to avoiding killing innocents.

He defended U.S. support for the coalition, saying American influence on the Arab air campaign has made a difference in reducing instances of errant bombing and the targeting of civilians.

He noted, however, that U.S. support is conditioned on a Saudi commitment to doing “everything humanly possible” to avoid any loss of innocent life and Riyadh supporting a U.N.-brokered peace process to end the civil war. The U.S. provides the coalition with intelligence, aerial refueling and military advice, but U.S. forces are not directly involved in the airstrikes or other fighting.

The experts’ report urged the international community to “refrain from providing arms that could be used in the conflict”— an apparent reference to Western countries that have sold sophisticated weapons systems to the Gulf states. It also was an apparent reference to Saudi nemesis Iran, which the coalition has accused of arming the Houthis.

They sharply criticized work by the coalition’s Joint Incidents Assessment Team, which was set up as a bulwark against possible rights violations. They questioned the JIAT’s explanations for the airstrikes that have killed civilians, and challenged its “independence and its ability to carry out impartial investigations.”

The experts began their investigation following a rights council resolution in September 2017 — with the assent of the Saudis themselves. The Saudis repeatedly had resisted earlier diplomatic efforts to organize a more-intrusive investigation of possible crimes and rights abuses in Yemen, and criticized the experts’ findings.

The experts said they drew up a “confidential list” of people suspected of committing international crimes and are giving it to the office of the U.N. human rights chief. They declined to specify the number or say whether they were on rebel or government sides.

The AP reported last year that the UAE and its allied militias were running a network of secret detention facilities, beyond Yemeni government control. In June, the AP reported hundreds of detainees had been subjected to sexual abuse and torture.

The Shiite rebels control some of Yemen’s most populated western and northern areas, and human rights advocates have faulted them for planting land mines and targeting religious minorities and imprisoned opponents.

Abdulaziz al-Alwasil, the Saudi ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, told the AP that the report was “not accurate” and overlooked the bigger picture of an armed Houthi militia illegally seizing territory from an internationally recognized government and at times firing missiles in Saudi Arabia.

“It (the report) is surprising for us because it doesn’t reflect the reality,” he said. “We genuinely want to improve the situation in Yemen: We are spending money there, our people are getting killed there. And Yemen is not a wealthy state . it’s just our neighbor. And we think it is our responsibility to make sure that this country is not used to attack the neighboring countries.”

Al-Alwasil insisted the coalition regularly reviewed its operations and would do so “with or without” the report.

“I don’t think it’s going to have a major impact in the way that we review our procedures or the way we conduct our military operations,” he said.

In his response to the report, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash tweeted that his country “must review it, answer its merits and review what it says about the horrors of the Houthis.”

The U.N. refugee agency, meanwhile, said more than 450 civilians were killed in Yemen in the first nine days of August, making it one of the deadliest periods since the start of the war. Since June, the coalition has waged an offensive to clear the port city of Hodeida — pivotal for the entry of humanitarian aid — of the Houthis and restore government control.

By JAMEY KEATEN , Associated Press ___

[topmixtrends]

I.

“IF I AM out of my mind, it’s all right with me,” announces the narrator of Saul Bellow’s Herzog. Moses Herzog’s personal life has gone to pieces and having a PhD might be part of the problem. His study of Romanticism — “eight hundred pages of chaotic argument” — molders in his closet.

In Bellow’s fictional worlds, being cultured and crazy often go together. The narrator of The Adventures of Augie March is Sancho Panza to a string of Quixotes. Augie can’t resist illusion-chasing screwballs — from his brother with his get-rich schemes to a lover’s ambition to train eagles in Mexico. Toward the end of the novel, Augie’s warship is torpedoed and he finds himself in a lifeboat with a self-described “psycho-biophysicist” named Basteshaw as his sole companion. Basteshaw confides that he has managed to create living cells from inorganic matter and prophesies that his research is on course to discover a serum which will finally end human ignorance, strife, and suffering. “If he wasn’t a genius, I was in the boat with a maniac,” reflects Augie. When Augie tries to signal to a passing allied ship, Basteshaw wallops him with an oar. The psycho-biophysicist would rather drift toward the Canary Islands, to be interned on neutral Spanish territory, in order to continue his research. They struggle, Augie prevails, and they are saved. What’s more, they were never anywhere near the Canaries: “This scientist Basteshaw! Why, he was cuckoo! Why, we’d have both rotted in that African sea, and the boat would have rotted, and there would have been nothing but death and madness to the last.”

After the rescue, Basteshaw is decidedly cool with Augie. “The power of the individual to act through his intellect on the reason of mankind is smaller now than ever,” opines the lunatic.

In his earlier books, Bellow took down the intellectual life playfully. From the 1970s on, he came to examine madness as a political rather than a purely personal phenomenon. To be deluded was more than a foible in a supposedly cultured world capable of genocide. Did intellectuals and writers bear some responsibility for the disaster that had befallen Europe? Or were Pound, Heidegger, Hamsun, Céline, and all the others just sideshow clowns, fundamentally irrelevant to the great events that unfolded, and perhaps interesting only as examples of a general malaise?

Bellow had been wrestling with these questions for decades, even if they were not immediately reflected in his fiction. During his time in Paris between 1948 and 1950, he heard firsthand about life under the Nazis and the deportations of Jews, and read Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s “crazy, murderous harangues, seething with Jew-hatred.” In 1954, when William Faulkner led a group of writers petitioning the United States government for the release of Ezra Pound from a mental institution — had Pound been judged sane, a death sentence for treason for his collaboration with the Axis would have been mandatory — the dissenting voice was Bellow’s. He wrote to Faulkner that treating Pound’s advocacy of “hatred and murder” as eccentricity rather than insanity was symptomatic of the stunning indifference to recent events: “[B]etter poets than he were exterminated, perhaps,” wrote Bellow. “Shall we say nothing on their behalf?”

  II.

In 1945, Europe was threatened by famine and epidemic disease. Millions of refugees had to be resettled and ruined cities and infrastructure rebuilt. The postwar denazification policies imposed by the occupying powers in West Germany focused on rehabilitating all but top-level administrators in order to create a viable state that would be a bulwark against further Soviet advance west. It was not until the 1960s, with the return of prosperity and a semblance of stability in international politics, that the subject of genocide began to be addressed. The first steps in a historiography of the Nazi Final Solution were taken in the United States, most notably with the appearance of Raul Hilberg’s The Destruction of the European Jews in 1961. That year also saw the trial in Jerusalem of Adolf Eichmann, the logistician of the Holocaust. The proceedings, under the scrutiny of television cameras and the world press, included dramatic testimony from survivors. Hannah Arendt covered the trial for the The New Yorker, and recast her articles for the book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963). In Germany, too, a new mood took hold. For the first time, the West German state tried concentration camp administrators and others who had assisted in the massacre of civilians.

“Eastern Europe has told me a lot about my family — myself even,” Bellow wrote in 1960 after a journey he made the previous year. “[W]hat I saw between Auschwitz and Jerusalem made a change in me.” Among the stories he heard from survivors were those told by his own relatives:

Cousin Bella […] tells me of one of our cousins who now lives with her husband in Geneva. During the German occupation of Riga this cousin and her sister were slave laborers in a factory that made army uniforms. Before the Germans retreated they exhumed thousands of bodies from the mass graves and burned them. A sudden sensitivity about evidence. The two young girls were among the hundreds forced to dig up putrid corpses and put them in the flames. The younger sister sickened and died.

  III.

Solomon Bellows was born in Montreal in 1915 to orthodox Jewish parents from the Russian Empire. In 1924, the family moved to Chicago. Yiddish was the language of the home. For the adolescent Bellow, religion was immigrant baggage to be ditched on the road to American modernity. He became a Trotskyite. At university, he studied the radical new social science of anthropology. The publication of argotic, freewheeling Adventures of Augie March in 1953 marked him out as a literary innovator.

By the 1960s, however, America had changed. The Chicago of Augie March no longer existed. Poor but dynamic neighborhoods had transformed into an inner-city wasteland of drugs, crime, and despair: “The slums, as a friend of mine once observed, were ruined. He was not joking.” Bellow began to reflect on what had been lost, turning back toward Europe and the Jewish world.

Bellow’s detractors identify Mr. Sammler’s Planet (1970) as the point when the young literary rebel became a middle-aged champion of the elitist culture of dead white males. He was called a misogynist and even a racist. And the depiction of the United States through the eyes of Artur Sammler, a Polish Jew and refugee, is certainly provocative: “New York was getting worse than Naples or Salonika. It was like an Asian, an African town […] You opened a jeweled door into degradation, from hypercivilized Byzantine luxury straight into the state of nature, the barbarous world of color erupting from beneath.” Sammler sees a generation seeking “the free ways of barbarism” while protected by a civilized order, wealth, technology, and property rights.

Sammler has landed in the middle of a cultural revolution where nobody over 30 can be trusted. On the shores of this new world, it means nothing that he has lost his eye in the war, that his wife has been killed by a racist regime, or that he has known the foremost intellectuals of interwar London. His voice is capable of speaking of an Eastern Europe buried under communist totalitarianism, of an Ashkenazi-Yiddish civilization obliterated by genocide, and an extinct interwar intellectual order. But nobody wants to know. It is as though none of it ever happened.

Sammler cannot relate to the stew of politicized thinking around him not because it is too radical for his tastes but because it is hopelessly innocent. If America is unable to comprehend what has happened not 30 years earlier on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, then America is incapable of talking sense. Social breakdown is Bellow’s theme, but Sammler is not — solely — about the United States. In depicting countercultural America busting its mental seams through the eyes of a Holocaust survivor, Bellow is widening his lens in an attempt to take in the recent history of the planet. If in his earlier novels he was happy to study individuals who were “nuts” or “cookoo,” now he ponders the reality of insanity as a collective phenomenon.

Intellectuals deal in reason, but their subject — human life — refuses to act reasonably. “Like many people who had seen the world collapse once,” Bellow writes, “Mr. Sammler entertained the possibility that it might collapse twice.”

  IV.

The idea that modern life makes an impossible demand on the individual mind is one of Bellow’s great themes. “Too much of everything,” says Augie. “Too much history and culture […] too many details, too much news, too much example, too much influence […] Which who is supposed to interpret? Me?” Augie has no clear idea of his own what this world is but he has a strong intuition that there are as many ideas of the world as there are human beings, that each is provisional, and that all are competing for recruits. Life is a project, reality an individual projection. In this, he sees to the heart of modern — American — life. He surfs the confusion of this world, freestyle; in place of trials and anxiety he has adventures.

But by the time Bellow came to write Sammler, he had a less thrilling take on the effect of so much freedom:

The many impressions and experiences of life seemed no longer to occur each in its own proper space, in sequence, each with its recognizable religious or aesthetic importance, but human beings suffered the humiliations of inconsequence, of confused styles, of a long life containing several separate lives. In fact the whole experience of mankind was now covering each separate life in its flood. Making all the ages of history simultaneous. Compelling the frail person to receive, to register, depriving him because of volume, of mass, of the power to impart design.

The idea that modern man recoiled in despair before meaningless choice and a deluge of information was one Bellow shared with Mircea Eliade, a colleague at the University of Chicago. Eliade had been a famous novelist in interbellum Bucharest and was widely acknowledged as the intellectual leader of Romania’s younger generation of writers and thinkers. He had settled in Chicago in 1957 and, as a philosopher and historian of religions, had enjoyed huge success with the English-language publication of his book The Myth of the Eternal Return, which had sold over 100,000 copies in various editions. Bellow had come to know him in the years prior to writing Sammler.

Eliade argued that man is religious by nature, and that the fundamental feature of religious thinking is the distinction between the sacred and the profane. The sacred is all that is unchanging and essential, the profane is all that is provisional, historical, and subject to decay. The basic characteristic of all religions, Eliade maintained, is that man makes sense of the world by cultivating an awareness of the sacred, and seeks through ritual to recreate it and participate in it. Mythical thought is an attempt to reconstitute the world of the sacred, which all cultures conceive of as a prehistorical Edenic era. Traditional societies impart meaning to existence by being centered on sacred time. Modern rationality recognizes only historical time, producing “spiritual aridity” and an anxiety that Eliade called “The Terror of History.”

Eliade was Bellow’s kind of European intellectual — polyglot, intensely erudite, with more than a dash of religious mysticism thrown into the mix. Bellow’s fourth wife, Alexandra Bagdasar, whom he married in 1974, was a Romanian expatriate from an old and very cultivated Bucharest family, and the Bellows and Eliades frequently socialized. Bellow and Bagdasar divorced in 1985. Eliade died in 1986, and Bellow delivered a reading at his funeral. At this point, Bellow must have believed that the “Romanian” period of his life was over. But rumors had long been circulating about Eliade’s association with Romania’s wartime fascist Iron Guard, and they became undeniable with the 1988 publication of Mircea Eliade: The Romanian Roots, 1907-1945 by Mac Linscott Ricketts, which uncovered a series of articles Eliade had written for the Romanian fascist press in the 1930s.

  V.

Ricketts, a devoted pupil of Eliade’s, was interested in his master as a philosopher and literary figure. The section on Eliade’s political writings in the 1930s takes up a few dozen pages in a two-volume work of over a thousand pages — almost as though Ricketts had accidentally tripped over a bundle of newspapers while on other business — but the contents of these articles is stunning in the context of Romanian politics in those years. In them, Eliade comes across as another Basteshaw, theorizing manically while the boat drifts the wrong way; the serum that will end the ignorance, strife, and suffering of the Romanian nation, he proposes, is nationalism.

Eliade believed that democracy was inherently unsuitable for Romania, and that democratic politics was wearing itself out with its fixation on un-Romanian “abstractions” such as the rights of minorities and freedom of political expression. And when democracy wobbled, he argued, it tended to wobble toward anarchy and communism. Only a sense of national greatness and purpose could unify the nation. In a 1936 article titled “The Democracy and the Problem of Romania,” he wrote:

Whether or not Mussolini is a tyrant is a matter of complete indifference to me. Only one thing interests me: that this man has in fifteen years turned a third-rate state into a leading power […] In the same way, I’m completely indifferent to what will happen in Romania after the liquidation of democracy. If, in overcoming democracy, Romania becomes powerful, national and well-armed, and aware of its powers and destiny — history will judge this act.

Eliade was intensely anxious about the dominance of minorities in parts of Romania and about a presumed “invasion” of Jewish immigrants spilling in from the north. His concern with the physical decline of the national stock was among the intellectual banalities of the era; in one article he proclaims that Romania cannot assimilate foreigners as it did before because the peasantry was weakened by pellagra (from a change of diet), alcoholism, and syphilis — all, he observes, due to foreign influence.

Eliade fantasized of a coming spiritual revolution. By 1936, he was projecting a transfiguring “mystical spirit” and “Romanian messianism” on the Iron Guard, while writing for its press and being seen as its leading ideologue. Perhaps Eliade found the national dream so beautiful that he was willing to overlook the violent anti-Semitism of his fellow fascists. Or perhaps he had accepted that the Jews would have to absorb the inevitable collateral damage in the creation of a national state in which every Romanian had a sense of “belonging to a chosen people.” By 1938, he was convinced his country was on the brink of transformation and claimed that the fire of Romanian Orthodox Christianity was about to “dominate” Europe with its spiritual light.

In 1937, Eliade told his friend Mihail Sebastian that he supported the Iron Guard because he had “always believed in the primacy of the spirit.” Sebastian, who was Jewish, recorded in his diary: “He’s not a charlatan and not demented. He’s just naïve. But how is such catastrophic naiveté even possible!”

“I believe in the future of the Romanian people, but the Romanian state should disappear,” Eliade told Sebastian in October 1939. In September 1940, Eliade’s wish was fulfilled: Romania became a National Legionary State, with the Iron Guard ruling in alliance with the Romanian Army. By this time Eliade was abroad, having been appointed cultural attaché to the Romanian Embassy in London in April 1940, then to the embassy in Portugal in February 1941. In June 1941, Romania began fighting alongside the Wehrmacht. At this point, Eliade turned to nebulous theorizing on the common “Latin” character of the Portuguese and Romanian peoples, and the creative and civilizing destiny of the “Latin” race. In 1943, he wrote The Romanians, Latins of the East (a slim volume that Ricketts describes as “cultural propaganda”), in which he extols Romania’s historical destiny as the protector of the fringes of Europe from Oriental barbarians. The war in the east, Eliade says, in defense of “Christian European values” — Romanian troops were at this point fighting alongside the Germans to take Stalingrad — was the latest chapter in this glorious narrative of self-sacrifice.

Ricketts’s academic biography, curiously, never mentioned that the wartime Romanian state was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews. But a compelling 1991 essay in the New Republic by expatriate Romanian writer Norman Manea clearly connected Eliade with Romanian fascism. A second New Republic essay by Manea, in 1998, focused on Mihail Sebastian’s Journal (1935 to 1945). The Journal, which documents Romania’s slow slide into fascism, was published for the first time in Romanian in 1996. Along the way — as in the extracts quoted above — it records Sebastian’s sadness and perplexity at the deterioration of his friendship with “Mircea,” as Eliade’s commitment to the Iron Guard intensifies and his public expressions of anti-Semitism become more marked.

It must have occurred to Bellow by the late 1990s that Eliade had reasons of his own for feeling “a terror of history” when he asked rhetorically, in his best-selling book, how man “can tolerate the catastrophes and horrors of history — from collective deportations and massacres to atomic bombings — if beyond them he can glimpse no sign, no transhistorical meaning.”

  VI.

When I met Norman Manea in 2014, on one of his trips back to Romania, I suggested that knowledge of the Holocaust as a Romanian phenomenon was not widespread in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. “Absolutely not,” he agreed. “And this was another shock [for Bellow]. And Eliade was this great intellectual, praised in America.”

Manea and Bellow met on several occasions in the 1990s but the subject of Eliade was tactfully avoided, though Bellow certainly knew what Manea had written about Eliade. (In a letter to Philip Roth in 1997, Bellow asked for a copy of Manea’s article, remarking, “You do well to direct me, or connect me, to Eliade.”) “There was no mention of him and there was certainly at the beginning a reluctance, on his part, to meet me,” said Manea. “He was a very close friend with Eliade, he knew a bit about this story but not enough. And suddenly he felt that he was in a kind of story where he may be also partially guilty, because he was friends with him. Philip Roth used to tell me, ‘Look, Saul smells an anti-Semite a hundred miles away.’ Well, this did not occur in this case and it’s not by chance. Eliade was a refined intellectual.”

There is an additional reason why Bellow may have had difficulty discussing his friend with Norman Manea. In 1942, while Eliade was serving the regime in Lisbon, Romanian Jews were being deported to camps in Romanian-occupied Ukraine. The five-year-old Norman Manea, along with his family, was among those expelled. Over a hundred thousand of the deportees died in the camps, on the road of cold, famine, and disease, or from incidents of random violence. It is estimated that around 400,000 Jews were killed by the Romanian authorities in Romania and in the area of Ukraine under Romanian wartime occupation.

In December 1999, Bellow appointed Manea to interview him for the Jerusalem Literary Project, over the course of three two-hour videotaped sessions. But Bellow resisted Manea’s attempts to draw him out on the subject of Romania and made no mention of Ravelstein, which was months away from publication.

Almost certainly, Bellow had been learning of the contents of Sebastian’s Journal while working on what was to be his final novel. And he must have been aware that the publication of an English edition was imminent. Manea had known about the diary even before its Romanian publication — fragments had begun to appear in English in the late 1980s — and Roth had taken a great interest in its contents. “Some fragments appeared, much before, not about Eliade, exactly, but from the diary, and yes, we discussed this […] I’m presuming Philip said [to Bellow], ‘Look! You see! Here’s the real proof of everything Manea was saying before but didn’t have the documents [to prove].’” As the US publication of Sebastian’s journal drew closer, Roth was promoting it vigorously behind the scenes.

It is not surprising that Bellow, a Nobel laureate in his 85th year, should have wished to account for the fact that he had been sipping tea and conversing with a Mircea Eliade — much as Mihail Sebastian had, half a century before. And so, Bellow included a fictionalized portrait of his relationship with Eliade in what was to be his last novel, Ravelstein.

Both Sebastian’s Journal and Ravelstein were published within months of each other, in 2000.

  VII.

Manea’s remark that Bellow “found himself in a kind of story” is particularly telling. Ravelstein is a roman à clef, in which Bellow set out to become the master of his story once again by presenting a version of his friendship with Eliade. The Ravelstein character is based upon Bellow’s close friend Allan Bloom. Eliade appears as a secondary character, the academic Radu Grielescu, who gallantly opens doors and pulls out chairs for the ladies, remembers birthdays and anniversaries, engages in hand-kissing and bowing — and had once written of “the Jew-syphilis that infected the high civilization of the Balkans.”

Bellow (“Chick” in the novel) goes along with the charade because the Grielescus are “socially important” for his Romanian wife. He banters in French with Madame Grielescu and never probes Radu about “people he might have known slightly with the Iron Guard.” Grielescu fidgets with his pipe and does most of the talking, the subjects ranging from yoga to Siberian shamanism to marriage customs in primitive Australia:

How could such a person be politically dangerous? […] I suppose I said to myself that this was some kind of Frenchy-Balkan absurdity. Somehow I couldn’t take Balkan fascists seriously […] But what is one to do with the learned people from the Balkans who have such an endless diversity of interests and talents — who are scientists and philosophers and also historians and poets, who have studied Sanskrit and Tamil and lectured in the Sorbonne on mythology?

Ravelstein’s judgment on the historian of religions, the theoretician of myths, is more down to earth: he asks the unworldly Chick to remember when the Iron Guard hung up Jewish corpses on meat-hooks in a slaughterhouse in the pogrom in Bucharest in 1941. “The Jews had better understand their status with respect to myth,” he says.

Why should they have any truck with myth? It was myth that demonized them. The Jew myth is connected with conspiracy theory. The Protocols of Zion for instance. And your Radu has written books, endless books, about myth […] Just give a thought now and then to those people on the meat hooks.

Bellow had criticized Hannah Arendt on several occasions since the 1960s for having been enamored of Heidegger and what Bellow called the “eros” of German culture. Now Ravelstein was reproaching Chick for a similar error.

Mircea Eliade — with his ability to make lucid sense of myth and at the same time to disappear into an unmoored world of fantasy when touched by real events — resembled a character Bellow might have created at any stage of his career as a novelist. And in his last book, Bellow himself becomes one of these foolish characters, entranced by a veneer of culture, the charm of ideas, and a world of intellectualism that reveals itself as shoddy and inadequate when set beside the brutal facts.

¤

Philip Ó Ceallaigh is short story writer as well as a translator. In 2006, he won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. His two short story collections, Notes from a Turkish Whorehouse and The Pleasant Light of Day, were short-listed for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. He lives in Bucharest.

The post “The Terror of History”: On Saul Bellow and Mircea Eliade appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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