#this just is manifestly not the case

[unimportant-ramblings]

I'm so sorry guys I know that everyone knows this here but the rhetoric of "alw is closing Phantom Broadway for Bad Cinderella" will in fact kill me

[qqueenofhades]

I don’t have any words right now for what’s happened. Where in the fuck do we go from here?

I don't know. I really, truly don't know. We can't sugarcoat how bad things are going to get, and we can't pre-emptively give into it anyway. This is going to be an unprecedented time in American history (if, sadly, not world history) and the forces conspiring to make you obey will gain much of their power from you doing so in advance, without a struggle. It seems fair to say that America as it has always been historically constituted is over, and may not return in our lifetimes, but we also do not know that for a fact. If nothing else, the fascists will find it very hard to cancel competitive elections, and we cannot sit back, throw up our hands, conclude that voting is clearly meaningless, and let them do that. There are a lot of other things that we need to do, but that's one.

There are various postmortems to be written and nits to pick, but Harris was thrown into an impossible situation and did the best she could in 100 days. Even her critics agree she ran a pretty much flawless campaign. But this country simply decided that a well-qualified black woman could not be preferred over the most manifestly and flagrantly unfit degenerate to ever occupy the office. They decided this for many reasons, not least because large swathes of the country now live in curated misinformation bubbles that, under Government Czar Musk, will only get much, much worse. They were helped by the cowardice and complicity of the "mainstream media" that could have ended Trump's career exactly like they did to Biden after the first debate, but chose to preserve the profits of their billionaire oligarch owners and did not do so, giving Trump the benefit of the doubt and normalization at every turn. They also hounded Biden relentlessly over the four years of his presidency, never reported on the good things he did, and drove him to the historically bad approval ratings lows for a president who was by any metric, quite successful (and will quite possibly be our last ordinary American president for a very long time). Along with the searingly ingrained racism and misogyny and misinformation, Harris could not overcome that.

Democrats clearly had a messaging problem, but it's also true that the country, quite simply, does not care about "democracy" when the economy is perceived to be at stake. Not to over-egg the Hitler parallels, but yeah. This is how Hitler returned to power in 1933 -- on the backs of widespread economic collapse of the Weimar Republic; voters decided they just didn't care about the overtly fascist stuff, which he then proceeded to you know, do with genocidal vigor. Except the American economy in this case was actually doing well, which makes it even more baffling and indefensible. Enough people simply memory-holed Trump's crimes (aided at every turn by SCOTUS, Mitch McConnell not convicting him after January 6, Merrick Garland being far too slow and timid, the corporate media), liked the racist fascist behavior or felt that it wasn't a dealbreaker, and decided that in this election, he was the "change" candidate. It's insane by any metric, but that's what happened.

The country is deeply sick. We do not know what will happen. It's going to get bad. Barring a miracle, we will not have federalized abortion rights again in my lifetime, and there will be widespread attacks on public health, women's rights, immigrants, transgender people, and other vulnerable people. Even and especially the ones who voted for Trump. Never Thought Leopard Would Eat My Face, etc. Alito and Thomas will swiftly step down and allow their seats to be replaced by 40-year old wingnuts hand-selected from the worst the Federalist Society has to offer. SCOTUS is gone for the next generation at least. There is very little prospect of it being ever fixed in the foreseeable future.

Trump will never face a scintilla of consequences for his previous crimes; all the open federal cases will be closed as soon as he takes office and fires Jack Smith. The best we can hope for is that he dies in office, but then we get Vance and the cadre of alt-right techno billionaires ruled directly from the Kremlin. Putin is celebrating this morning and with good reason; he's gotten everything he wants. Trump will egg on Netanyahu in Gaza and abandon Ukraine. Democracy across the world will remain even more fragile and badly under threat. Authoritarians will be empowered and American withdrawal from international systems will percolate in very dangerous ways that cannot and will not be fixed in the short run. I really hope all the leftists who celebrate this as the "defeat of the genocide candidate" will enjoy all the genocide and suffering that's about to come. And yes, I do think the Israel-Palestine war fucked us in a large way. Jewish voters perceived the Democrats as insufficiently pro-Israel due to the presence of far-left antisemitism, even as the far left attacked the Democrats relentlessly and never targeted the Republicans. Arab voters abandoned them, possibly deservedly. What would have happened without the war? We don't know. You get the historical period that you get. Netanyahu and Trump can now do anything they want. Hope it was worth it.

As I said, I can't sugarcoat it. We are going to be paying for this in some form for the next decade, and probably longer. I'm not as absolutely shattered as I was in 2016, but I am much, much angrier. We all thought, we all hoped, America was better than this. It isn't. That, however, is something that has also happened before. What we decide to do next will shape how the next chapter unfolds.

This would be a great time to stock up on needed medicines, renew your passport online, and anything else you need to do in preparation for next year. Many of us simply do not have the wherewithal, whether financial or otherwise, to leave the country. I don't know what will happen with me. I don't know what will happen to any of us. This was utterly avoidable and yet, America didn't want to avoid it. At some point, there's nothing else you can do. You can point to media cronyism, Russian influence, etc etc., but the fact that two of the most qualified presidential candidates who happened to be women have now lost to Trump twice makes it unavoidable. The virulent rightward shift of young men (of all races) in particular paints a grim picture as to how the reactionary misogyny of the 21st century is going to essentially undo most of the progress for social and gender equality in the 20th. The patriarchy has been a problem for most of human history. Doesn't really seem like it's going to change.

The end result of this, however grim: we're still here. We are still living within our communities. If (and this is a big if) Democrats can retake the House, they can put some checks on the process for the next two years. At this point, we are in full-out buying-time, trying-to-prevent-the worst mode. We could have continued fixing things, but we won't be doing that. We will only be trying to preserve ourselves and our friends and our smaller spheres of influence. It sounds very trite to say that we have to have courage, but we do. There's not much else.

It's going to be an awful winter. We have two and a half months to see this coming and know how bad it's going to be, and... yeah. I don't know how soon the buyer's remorse will inevitably set in, but it will. Tough luck, people. You voted for him. You get the country that you decide to have. But the rest of us are also here, and what Gandalf says is still true. We wish the Ring had never come to us, we wish none of this had happened, but we still have to decide what to do with the time that is given to us.

I don't have a lot more. I'll probably be logging off for a while. I don't need to look at the internet for.... yeah, a long time. (Will I do it anyway? Probably.) I don't know what else to leave you with, aside from again:

Do not obey in advance. Do not act as if everything is foreordained and set in stone. Fascist regimes end. They always do. We are going to have to figure out how, and it will suck shit, but the alternative is worse.

Take care of yourselves. I love you.

[neil-gaiman]

These are impressive, by author Steve Erickson. A small sample, but please go and read the whole:

WE DO NOT HAVE THE LUXURY OF CONFUSING AN IMPERFECT CHOICE FOR AN UNCLEAR ONE Any dispassionate observer can reasonably conclude Biden should drop out of the campaign. It’s not ageist to suggest that though he’s not too old for the job at the moment, he will be sometime in the next four years, and from a political standpoint his age now so permeates the collective perception of him that nobody can see him straight; his poll numbers are almost perversely at odds with everything about his job performance. But presently every indication is that Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee, and sometime soon it will be time for the rest of us to just shut up about it. Whatever one thinks of his age or Israel policy or Afghanistan withdrawal or anything else, he’s still the only one of the two prospective nominees who will defend your right to call him unfit for the job. Now and then a choice can be at once profoundly imperfect and manifestly clear anyway. WE DO NOT HAVE THE LUXURY OF DEUS EX MACHINA While wishing Trump to be accountable before the law, we must accept that any trial or decision by a higher court is unlikely to spare the country what it karmically doesn’t deserve to be spared: a national political referendum on who we are as a people. Otherwise Trump will evermore in the eyes of history — not to mention his supporters, who will find a way to believe it in any case — be martyr to a systemic technicality. Trump needs to be rejected electorally by every single patriot who can drag her- or himself to the polls to do so. Which brings us to the final resolution....

[with-my-murder-flute]

I'm still kind of puzzled at the people who think Thara was confused about whether Iäna was into him.

I think he knows. That the answer is yes. That's why he freaked out so hard.

And like, he's Thara, so he was definitely open to the possibility that he was wrong and Iäna didn't like him. Outing and embarrassing himself to no purpose would be bad.

But the scarier answer (and the one he wants) is yes. In which case his first reaction is: "I would be trapped into having to insist that he had made a terrible mistake and having to leave."

He's not some big dummy who doesn't know what gay sex is. He's had previous relationships. There's a reason the possibility occurred to him!

I think this is him being scarred. And scared. He absolutely knows that his society, religion, vocation, and hierarchical superiors all deplore marnae. And on top of that, he has very personal trauma that says initiating intimacy with a man is a great way to kill him.

To have a forbidden relationship, you need to give society the appearance of plausible deniability. Oh, we're not gay, haha; there's some other totally believable reason for what we're doing. Just bros! Gal pals! Hahaha.

Thara specifically says: “And was that denial the truth? Had he recognized my alarm? Or was he denying preemptively so that he didn’t have to admit the truth, either?”

The truth is that he's been gone on Iäna since their very first meeting. And he suspects that the truth is, Iäna's into him too.

It's a possibility he isn't closed off from, but rather, one he is choosing to turn around and walk backwards into. It's a practiced form of self-deception, an incremental movement towards something so frightening and painful that he instinctively flinches back from it.

What he did, by not asking, was keep the opportunity open. Because he was having fucking panic attacks over the very idea of it, and manifestly not able to seize it right there, right then. And then kept coming back to Iäna while their denials got steadily less plausible.

In other words, it's exposure therapy. He's deliberately and methodically exposing himself to the thing that scares the shit out of him. It's the same thing as choosing to make his pilgrimage to the top of the Sanctuary's roof when the stairs are scary, he doesn't like heights, he already finds its gardens restful, and he goes there all the frigging time to see Ulzhavar. It's not comfortable! It's not necessary! But he's very very good at forcing himself into situations other people would run from.

Maybe I'm just too much into queer trauma and self-deception and navel-gazing and this is basically equivalent to being a big dummy in other people's books. But what I see in his relationship with Iäna is Thara playing a chess game against himself. And Iäna is the prize.

[transingthebourgeoisie]

I will never understand why people keep recommending linux mint to people. people keep saying oh it's like windows and like. they are literally just wrong; every time you tell someone Mint is like Windows you are setting them up to spend 20 minutes on Mint and then run into an obstacle and pay for a windows license. no matter what kind of mediocre UI they dress it up with, despite everything, it is a linux distribution and thus, crucially: not windows. It's popular I guess so it's better than hyperspecific micro-distro of the week or, arch, because people keep recommending arch for some unknowable reason.

I'm going to be real here: if you are new to this just use ubuntu. ignore everyone else. if looking at the gnome GUI makes you want to start killing hostages like it does for me, you can just get it packaged with KDE by default and that's a very familiar and intuitive UI to a windows user. it's called Kubuntu they put out their own little thing and everything it's easy. and unlike mint, it's vastly more likely to just, actually work, and be compatible with software. it will be a learning experience; you are switching to a fundamentally different OS, one that still has deep roots in enthusiast preferences and a whole different crop of bizarre decisions that made sense to some guy who thought the GUI would be a passing fad. and that's fine. you had to learn all this for windows too, you just did it when you were like 7. stick with it and it'll make sense quickly even, as unlike windows, Linux is highly transparent in most cases; it will usually tell you what the problem actually is, even if you don't understand how to fix it.

speaking of which: don't be afraid of the terminal. It's daunting, it's initially opaque, and yes, it is entirely possible to horrifically mangle your install with it. You cannot be afraid of it. you don't have to learn every facet of it; frankly I hate the thing and I refuse to accept any distro where it is expected that the user crack open the console to do basic tasks. Ubuntu - or yeah mint I guess - do not require this. 9 times out of 10, you will use the terminal to enter one command that you stole off a tech support forum where the kind of people who use Arch have magically fixed the incredibly specific problem you're having 13 years ago and it still works. I have been using linux semi-regularly (yeah yeah I still have a windows 10 install sue me) for a year now, and barring one particular incident attempting to install GZDoom where it was manifestly my fault, that has been the extent of my interaction with the terminal. I have opened it like 3 times total.

I highly recommend learning what the basic structure of a command is - get a general idea of what it is doing. you don't have to be able to write these things from scratch, but getting just that basic understanding will make your life so much easier. here's a first step for you: if you see 'sudo' in a command, that means the command makes use of admin authority, and will bypass any protections or restrictions on what it is trying to do. scary! it is the effectively same thing as when you click on a program on windows and it throws that shitty little popup window asking if you're *really* sure you want to run the program as admin. not scary; you do that all the time.

linux is more consistently and straightforwardly usable than it has basically ever been; if you are willing to spend a week or so getting used to it, you'll do fine. if you have a spare drive - hell even a USB stick, you can literally boot into Linux straight off USB, it's that easy, - you can dual-boot and still have a windows install to fall back on in case you absolutely positively just need something to work or just cannot get it to run on linux.

[vickyvicarious]

Something I noticed is that Dracula has now resorted to killing his aides when he can to cover up his tracks and make it look like a human did it, he didn't use to do that, so Jonathan kept interviewing them

I suppose it depends to an extent on who you consider Dracula's aides. Because we see him deliberately turn on people who have unintentionally aided him (the Demeter crew), who have been forced to aid him (Jonathan), and who have aided him but then turned on him (Renfield). Jonathan's the only one who gets out alive from that, and it's largely due to Dracula's personal like for him/schedule constraints.

But even if we limit the category to people he has hired to do a job for him and who know who he is, I still think he has done that previously. Or rather, he had plans to do that, or at the very least was prepared to do so as needed. It just depends on what his main goal is at the time. I feel like I've talked about this earlier this year, but I can't find it right now, so let me just restate.

On looking at it I found in certain places little rings marked, and on examining these I noticed that one was near London on the east side, manifestly where his new estate was situated; the other two were Exeter, and Whitby on the Yorkshire coast.

On May 7, Jonathan notices several key locations marked off on Dracula's map. His arrival to Whitby is marked off, as is his first estate in London. But so is Exeter, where both Jonathan and Hawkins live. Unlike the other circled spots, Dracula never goes to Exeter. So why circle it?

One explanation which at least partially explains this: I think he deliberately chose a lawyer who wasn't based in London, in order to minimize the chances that local people would notice said lawyer going missing and connect it to the latest client arriving in town. Because it is very evident that he always intended to kill Jonathan. The man was not meant to leave the Castle, one way or another. Dracula had his whole letter scheme to disguise that fact and to separate Jonathan's disappearance from the time spent with Dracula (the cover story was obviously 'something happened while traveling home'). But if that failed and Hawkins seemed likely to raise any kind of stink, I think Dracula would have happily gone and killed him. But the man didn't contact him again about Jonathan so he didn't have to bother with that.

Similarly, Dracula doesn't kill any of the people who moved his boxes. But the thing is, that would have drawn way more attention. He didn't know that Jonathan was following his paper trail and interviewing them all, and killing a bunch of people all of whom worked for him would have been way more suspicious than just leaving them alone and hoping no one found out. So that's what he did! Not killing these people was the smarter move as far as he could see, the best way to hide his tracks. No need to have murders associated with him in England; he wants to be an unnoticed predator and to leave behind the place where everyone is onto him. Even if people still think he's human, getting associated with murders isn't a look he wants.

He's thinking long-term when he arrives in London. And he may well still have the idea of coming back and killing people later, when they're no longer so associated with working for him, but certainly in the moment it doesn't make sense to do so. Similarly, it didn't help him when leaving Transylvania. The people who work for him there are either scared enough or willing enough to do what he says, so why deprive himself of this resource in case he needs it in future? There are plenty of others to hunt instead, and no one he needs to hide his tracks from. The Demeter served a function too - first, he wanted a ghost ship so he could get ashore more easily. Second, he probably wanted to tank up before arriving in England so that he could fully use all his powers both to manipulate the weather for the crash and to shift to wolf form to get ashore. Once he's starting killing some of them, better to kill all of them so no one can tell the tale. Also, I bet he wanted to let loose and in the middle of the ocean was a good place to do so without causing any harm to his future plans.

This time around is different. He knows he's being hunted, so he's not worried about drawing attention. It's already on him regardless. All he cares about is hiding the exact information of where he's gone in order to slow them down, and the surest and most convenient way to do that is by killing the man who arranged it for him. So he does.

He is resorting to it, but not necessarily because he's finally driven to it when he normally wouldn't do that, so much as because the situation now makes it a more reasonable choice for him. I think it would have been just as much an option on the table the entire time for him.

[serial-serializednovelreader]

Nova’s Notes - Dracula Daily - July 20

In which Seward completes his thought (it only took him *checks notes* TWELVE days to cook it up but it’s here)…

Again, Seward uses a lot of ableist language in this entry that I do not relish. There is also implied animal death (not “shown”, just said to have happened) and mention of drugging someone. To get around this, I won’t quote these parts and will only describe them as little as I can (under the cut). I’ll also post this with the appropriate tags. If I don’t see you in this one, I hope to see you in a bit of a lighter entry! Your mental health matters <3

“Visited Renfield very early, before the attendant went his rounds. Found him up and humming a tune. He was spreading out his sugar, which he had saved, in the window, and was manifestly beginning his fly-catching again; and beginning it cheerfully and with a good grace. I looked around for his birds, and not seeing them, asked him where they were. He replied, without turning round, that they had all flown away.”

I know we have a lot to get to, but at least I finally have an answer as to how he’s catching flies — sugar! That makes sense! (Yes, that is what I’m focusing on, no I’m not sorry about it — I’ve been asking Seward about methodology for WEEKS and he just got back to me with this /j) I do wonder where he gets the sugar to spread though…I suppose if Seward is supporting his “pet endeavors” to this end, he is probably allowing him to keep sugar for this purpose. I guess that makes sense. I’m also just imagining Renfield dancing around and humming while spreading sugar…a fun image, to be sure.

Here’s where it gets bad. Last warning, y’all!

What’s not fun is that we can’t see where the birds went. And Renfield isn’t forthcoming on where they went….the fact he won’t turn around while speaking to Seward is telling in and of itself.

So Seward looks further about the room and sees two signs that point to Renfield lying about the birds flying away: feathers scattered about the room, and a drop of blood on his pillow.

Not a good sign!!! Not a good sign at all!!!! I knew this was coming, but I do love that Stoker *evokes* the message of what happened, rather than outright saying it by showing the image of blood and feathers. The art of show don’t tell comes into play once more.

A bit later in the day at 11 a.m., an attendant affirms what Seward already knows: those birds did not just “fly away”. How do they know? Well, Renfield is now sick and is…throwing up feathers. Yeah, this isn’t good.

Twelve hours later, we get an update: that Renfield was given some medication to put him to sleep and Seward took his notebook to read.

Ok, so initially when I read this I was like, “he drugged him without his consent???? To take his notebook???? How DARE he????” And yes, we can definitely look at it in that light, but before doing so, I’d recommend reading this post with the note at the bottom by @rosetyler42 (and also has really good points by @animate-mush for the later points in this post, which I’ll also address). TL;DR, the point raised is that there’s a good chance Seward actually gave Renfield the medicine to help him go to sleep because of his illness. I agree that he likely has food poisoning after what he’s eaten and, as someone who’s had this, you do not feel very good! It would make sense that Seward — as a doctor — would give him medication to treat it, though in this case, the treatment would likely mean putting him to sleep for a time. With all of the nausea and pain he’s in, that actually has some sense to it.

Of course, in the meantime, Seward *will* take the opportunity to read Renfield’s journal. He may be treating his patient (and whether you believe he actually is treating him, or that he solely drugged him to get the notebook is your choice — I know he hasn’t being the most ethical person lately), but he’s not going to miss the chance to peek through the personal belongings while he can! That’s just how Seward is.

Note: this next part is where he uses the majority of his ableist language. I don’t mention it in my thoughts, but wanted to give a heads up for anyone who hasn’t read the entry yet and was wondering where this starts.

Seward finally completes his thought (and I can’t really skate around the implications, so apologies for this): Renfield is setting out to absorb as much life as he can, and he intends to do this by way of a mini food chain, with him as the top predator. Seward is quite interested in what would have been his later steps, and if anything scientifically important could be achieved by this.

Yes, this is where he brings up vivisection, but as the post I linked states, this is more of an example of what was considered to be a strange scientific method that turned out to be useful, rather than him wanting to perform this on Renfield. Don’t get me wrong, the fact that he brings up vivisection as his first thought is…strange, I won’t deny that. But I think it’s more his brain nerding out on science things, rather than wanting to do a vivisection. What he does what to do is get to the heart of what Renfield’s science could be capable of, if anything. However, and this is important to note, he won’t do that because he is not willing to go this far into unethical territory by continuing the experiment. Why? There’s not enough sufficient evidence to indicate positive results, as evidenced by this passage:

“If only there were a sufficient cause! I must not think too much of this, or I may be tempted; a good cause might turn the scale with me, for may not I too be of an exceptional brain, congenitally?”

(Lol, yes Seward you’re smart too <— edit: he actually means out of the norm/neurodivergent here, not smart) He also speculates on the value Renfield places on a human life — many or just one. I do think this is interesting to consider, as some of us humans do eat meat! I don’t like where Seward is going with this though!!!

I do like where he closes this train of thought with:

“He has closed the account most accurately, and to-day begun a new record. How many of us begin a new record with each day of our lives?”

That…that is very profound, Seward. You didn’t have to put that in your musings about Renfield, but you did. Something that I enjoy about Seward’s character is that he likes to get lost in philosophical musings and this is a good example of that.

“To me it seems only yesterday that my whole life ended with my new hope, and that truly I began a new record. So it will be until the Great Recorder sums me up and closes my ledger account with a balance to profit or loss. Oh, Lucy, Lucy, I cannot be angry with you, nor can I be angry with my friend whose happiness is yours; but I must only wait on hopeless and work. Work! work!”

Oh, Seward! And here we reach the root of the problem, one he’s been avoiding talking about for a long time: Lucy. After all, this whole experiment-fiasco has been a distraction to keep himself from thinking of her. But what has that done for him, truly? He still ends up thinking about her, regardless. It breaks my heart a bit that he called her his new hope and that he had to begin anew after that 🥺 it’s never good to put hope as a person but…I understand what he means and it hurts!

Seward comparing God to a “Great Recorder” who will “sum up his account” is so interesting to me! It’s cool to get an insight as to his perspective on religion and how he thinks of it in a more “logical” way (and I do understand he could just be using a metaphor here, but I do think this is his logic and that’s fun to think about lol).

Finally, I love that while he still feels hopeless and bogged down by the fact that all he has to look forward to is his work, he emphasizes that he’s not angry at Lucy *or* Arthur. He wants them to be happy! It doesn’t mean he won’t still be sad, though :(

In the end, he wants a cause like Renfield has — a “strong” one he can turn to that will give him “happiness”. Will that give him real happiness though? Because Renfield sure doesn’t seem happy after his illness today. I’m just saying…

That’s all for this one! Will be putting out the others soon — sorry for the late entry on this one.

[shinyhappygoth]

A field guide to weird quasi-human beings in The Magnus Archives and The Magnus Protocol

Because I've seen plenty of people going "This statement/case prominently features weird people, must be the Stranger!" It is not that simple, my friends!

The Stranger specializes in people who aren't just odd, they approach the Uncanny Valley from either side. Either they are almost but manifestly not quite human, or are clearly not human but are human-shaped enough to produce that same human-but-wrong reaction. Mannequins, dolls, automata, people like Breekon and Hope who actively seem fake and feel wrong when you touch them. They definitely exist, and although not human, they are still people, with distinct personalities. (Please note that just having a clown theme does not guarantee that one belongs to the Stranger! I would be inclined to say that Mr. Bonzo is too inhuman to qualify for this one, besides the fact that we've already seen him to have aspects of the Slaughter and the Buried, depending on whose experience you're looking at.)

The Lonely frequently features unpeople. They may look entirely human, or they may just be cloaked figures with Greek drama masks, but their distinguishing feature is that they are not anyone. They have no inner life or personality, and if you break their surface they may turn out to be physically empty. They sometimes speak pseudo-linguistic babble, particularly if there's a crowd of them; individuals may speak intelligibly, but tend to repeat sentences robotically.

The Spiral features people who seem human, at least at first (they may or may not stay this way), but who mess with your sense of reality in some way. We all know the Distortion, but we've also seen Father Burroughs' encounters with Father Singh and the altar server, both of whom looked human but acted wrong and led him through unreal scenarios. In MAGP 7, "Give and Take", the volunteers individually seemed normal enough, perhaps a bit oddball, but they multiplied exponentially and made things increasingly surreal and there was no proof they were ever there...

The other powers have their avatars and assorted weirdos, of course, but they can largely be judged on their actions. The three above are the big ones.

[celticcrossanon]

Hello Celta,

You and Mad World Tarot are the only two tarot readers that describe and pick up on Haz brattish energy. She did a reading on January 24th, that looked at the political fallout from the Jamaica pop up visit. Right away she picked up Haz energy, RX KOW, the ruckus fire starter. It was the last stand, the BRF and Haz, 9 of Wands. Granny PROMISED me I’ll be King of the Commonwealth. As an aside, is this why Charles asked his mom specifically if she can declare him head of the commonwealth?

Anyway in answer to the question, Will Haz face any consequences, he emerges as the Prince of Wands, facing away from the situation and leaving the tarot spread. So he faces some loss, and is reduced in rank since he enters as the RX King of Wands and leaves as the Prince of Wands.

I think the Foreign Office and the British government are spitting bullets, particularly Rishi Sunak. They cannot be happy with this. When William was sounding the alarm during and after the Caribbean tour, the other BRF family members were mocking of him. Now they know the malicious Sussex squad is a reality, and were behind those attacks. I honestly hope the government does take action, even if Charles doesn’t. And what a time to do this, when the king and the POW are out of commission on medical leave.

Hi Anonymous Retired,

I think that Jamacia stunt has quite a few political implications. I hope the government does take some sort of action on it. As to what they do, I will leave that up to them.

I think the timing was deliberate. I think it was a clumsy PR attempt to show how loved the Harkles are by the Commonwealth Realms and therefore they should immediately be back in the BRF, especially in the current time of need. Too 'pushy' for me, and manifestly untrue, as if the Harkles were that loved and that important they wouldn't be in the 6th row in the movie theatre. The photo with the Prime Minister is another case of PR spin, I think, although it has been somewhat effective imo.

The Head of the Commonwealth of Nations is a symbolic position that is voted on by all the Commonwealth Nations. It is not something like a patronage that King Charles can hand over to Harry.

"Head of the Commonwealth

His Majesty King Charles III is Head of the Commonwealth.

The role:

is an important symbolic one

has no maximum fixed term

is not hereditary, and future Heads will be chosen by Commonwealth leaders."

from https://thecommonwealth.org/about-us

As for 'King of the Commonwealth', no such position exists or will ever exist. The King of the UK is the Head of State of the Commonwealth Realms, but that position goes with being the monarch of the UK. It is not something that The King can peel off and give to whoever he likes. That is like saying that The King could make Harry the Defender of the Faith or any other position that is tied to being the monarch of the UK.

If the other members of the BRF are just now waking up to the Harkle malice and their use of their extreme fans to manipulate the media, then all I can say is that it has taken them a while. I was appalled by the lack of support from the BRF for Prince William and Princess Catherine during their Caribbean Tour, and I hope it comes back to bite them hard in the future.

[meimi-haneoka]

heya cinzia! hope you're having a lovely day. i'm sorry i'm always bothering you with questions 😅 but do you know if there are any forums or communities for ccs fans other than tumblr? i've been a fan for so long but always too intimidated to make ccs friends ;;

Hiiii Doublechocolate!!

I'm quite fine, I'm recovering from a nasty cold! 😅I hope you're having a lovely day too!

You're not bothering me at all 😁 Truth to be told, I probably am not the best person to answer to this question because I've quitted several CCS communities long time ago. They were all becoming full of bullshit, so to speak, and you perfectly know what I'm talking about. I became tired to waste my words and effort in places where there are so many people, each one with their biased ideas and prejudices and in many cases completely unwilling to spare a bit more effort to understand a story, so quick to label it as "boring" or "not making sense".

The only community I still am present in (but I rarely write in anymore) is the Tomoeda server on Discord: the admin is a dear friend and she and her collaborators are managing the community in a healthy way, so I still feel comfortable being there. I've been able to talk about Kaito and Akiho (up to a certain extent....) without any problem and for me this became basically a decisive factor in choosing any place/community where I can talk about CCS with other people. Truth to be told, the community is a bit "dead" now that the manga is over and there isn't a monthly chapter keeping things exciting every month, but we're all expecting the 2nd season of the anime to hopefully revive things. The link to join is here: https://discord.gg/CFgHGFS .

Nowadays I prefer staying on my personal accounts on Twitter/Tumblr/Bluesky. If people are interested in what I say and find some worth in my posts, they will come to me and start an interaction on their own. I'm frankly at this point very very very wary about seeking interaction first, in this fandom. It happens only with people I can see are manifestly Kaito/Akiho fans. I can't even trust my fellow SyaoSaku shippers anymore, because despite the characters, that's not a guarantee that they'll be accepting of my own views and favorite parts of the story at all. I've learned the hard way that just because someone loves a series or their characters doesn't give a shred of guarantee that person will be sharing the series' same wholesome views and messages.

[nicnacsnonsense]

At the end of “Selfless” Anya says that her whole life she’s just clung to the first thing that came along, but that’s just… manifestly not true?

You could make the case that’s what happened the first time she became a vengeance demon, that she had just broken up with her boyfriend (by turning him into a troll) and immediately hopped on the vengeance demon gig when it was offered and turned it into her whole personality. But that’s not what happened with her relationship with Xander. He wasn’t just an opportunity that came along, she picked him to go to prom with because she found him the most appealing of the guys in the school. And rather than clinging to him, she left town for a while when she heard about the mayor, and then came back later to try to pursue a relationship again. And then while she was still in the relationship with Xander she started working at the Magic Box and ended up making that just as large a part of her identity as her relationship with Xander, so which one are we claiming she was clinging to? And even when she became a vengeance demon a second time I wouldn’t call that clinging to the first thing that came along, that was her regressing to old habits looking for comfort while she was heartbroken. And she definitely didn’t cling to it.

It makes sense to me that she might be having an identity crisis in that moment, and it makes sense that she wouldn’t want Xander specifically to be the one to comfort her right now given where their relationship is currently at, but the rest of it just isn’t true.

[darkmaga-returns]

By Andrea Widburg

Many people are angry that because Joe Biden pardoned Hunter Biden, who engaged in a seemingly endless laundry list of manifestly illegal activity (illicit drugs, prostitution, lying on a gun application, laundering money to hide it from the IRS, underpaying his taxes, etc.), means Hunter walk on all current and future federal convictions and charges. However, Anony Mee believes that justice may yet come for Hunter. The icing on the cake is that Joe Biden may have been too smart for his own good. For Joe, the pardon may prove to be a case of “hoist by his own petard.”

In an admirably concise tweet, Anony Mee points out that Hunter’s wrongdoing wasn’t limited to America. Instead, it took place in Ukraine. Indeed, that’s what Trump’s first impeachment was about—Burisma’s and Hunter’s corrupt conduct in Ukraine:

At the end of the day, Hunter may wish that he were still safe in an American prison rather than finding himself moldering in a Ukrainian prison on a sex crime conviction.

It’s not just Hunter who may regret this pardon. Because Hunter Biden has a full federal pardon, when he’s asked questions about his criminal acts, he may no longer plead the Fifth. That’s because the Fifth Amendment protects a person from being forced to incriminate himself. With the pardon at his back, incrimination is no longer an issue for Hunter.

Mike Davis warned Joe Biden about this before Biden even issued the pardon:

[stoicbreviary]

Dio Chrysostom, On Kingship 2.6 

"There are many other lessons and teachings in Homer, which might be cited, that make for courage and the other qualities of a king, but perhaps their recital would require more time than we now have. 

"I will say, however, that he not only expresses his own judgment clearly in every instance—that in his belief the king should be the superior of all men—but particularly in the case of Agamemnon, in the passage where for the first time he sets the army in array, calls the roll of the leaders, and gives the tale of the ships. In that scene the poet has left no room for any other hero even to vie with Agamemnon; but as far as the bull surpasses the herd in strength and size, so far does the king excel the rest, as Homer says in these words: 

And as a bull amid the horned herd  Stands eminent and nobler than the rest,  So Zeus to Agamemnon on that day  Gave to surpass in manly port and mien  The heroes all. 

"This comparison was not carelessly chosen, so it seems to me, merely in order to praise the hero's strength and in the desire to demonstrate it. In that case, it seems that he would surely have chosen the lion for his simile and thus have made an excellent characterization. No, his idea was to indicate the gentleness of his nature and his concern for his subjects. For the bull is not merely one of the nobler animals; nor does it use its strength for its own sake, like the lion, the boar, and the eagle, which pursue other creatures and master them for their own bellies' sake. For this reason one might in truth say that these animals have come to be symbols of tyranny rather than of kingship. 

"But clearly, in my opinion, the bull has been used by the poet to betoken the kingly office and to portray a king. For the bull's food is ready to hand, and his sustenance he gets by grazing, so that he never needs to employ violence or rapacity on that score; but he, like affluent kings, has all the necessaries of life, unstinted and abundant. 

"He exercises the authority of a king over his fellows of the herd with good-will, one might say, and solicitude, now leading the way to pasture, now, when a wild beast appears, not fleeing but fighting in front of the whole herd and bringing aid to the weak in his desire to save the dependent multitude from dangerous wild beasts; just as is the duty of the ruler who is a real king and not unworthy of the highest honor known among men. 

"Sometimes, it is true, when another herd appears upon the scene, he engages its leader and strives for victory so that all may acknowledge his superiority and the superiority of his herd. Consider, again, the fact that the bull never makes war against man, but, notwithstanding that nature has made him of all unreasoning animals the best and best fitted to have dominion, he nevertheless accepts the dominion of his superior; and although he acknowledges his inferiority to none as regards strength, spirit, and might, yet he willingly subordinates himself to reason and intelligence. 

"Why should we not count this a training and lesson in kingship for prudent kings, to teach them that while a king must rule over men, his own kind, because he is manifestly their superior, who justly and by nature's design exercises dominion over them; and while he must save the multitude of his subjects, planning for them and, if need be, fighting for them and protecting them from savage and lawless tyrants, and as regards other kings, if any such there should be, must strive with them in rivalry of goodness, seeking if possible to prevail over them for the benefit of mankind at large; yet the gods, who are his superiors, he must follow, as being, I verily believe, good herdsmen, and must give full honor to their superior and more blessed natures, recognizing in them his own masters and rulers and showing that the most precious possession which God, the greatest and highest king, can have is, first himself and then those who have been appointed to be his subjects? 

"Now we know how wise herdsmen deal with a bull. When he becomes savage and hard to handle, and rules outrageously in violation of the law of nature, when he treats his own herd with contempt and harms it, but gives ground before outsiders who plot against it and shields himself behind the helpless multitude, yet, when there is no peril at hand, waxes overbearing and insolent, now bellowing loudly in a mena­cing way, now goring with leveled horns any who cannot resist, thus making show of his strength upon the weaker who will not fight, while at the same time he will not permit the multitude of the cattle to graze in peace because of the consternation and panic he inspires—when the owners and the herdsmen, I say, have such a bull, they depose and kill him as not being fit to lead the herd nor salutary to it. 

"That bull, on the other hand, which is gentle towards the kine of his following, but valiant and fearless towards wild beasts, that is stately, proud, and competent to protect his herd and be its leader, while yet submissive and obedient to the herdsmen—him they leave in charge til extreme old age, even after he becomes too heavy of body. 

"In like manner do the gods act, and especially the great King of Kings, Zeus, who is the common protector and father of men and gods. If any man proves himself a violent, unjust and lawless ruler, visiting his strength, not upon the enemy, but upon his subjects and friends; if he is insatiate of pleasures, insatiate of wealth, quick to suspect, implacable in anger, keen for slander, deaf to reason, knavish, treacherous, degraded, willful, exalting the wicked, envious of his superiors, too stupid for education, regarding no man as friend nor having one, as though such a possession were beneath him—such a one Zeus thrusts aside and deposes as unworthy to be king or to participate in his own honor and titles, putting upon him shame and derision, as methinks he did with Phalaris​ and Apollodorus​ and many others like them. 

"But the brave and humane king, who is kindly towards his subjects and, while honoring virtue and striving that he shall not be esteemed as inferior to any good man therein, yet forces the unrighteous to mend their ways and lends a helping hand to the weak—such a king Zeus admires for his virtue and, as a rule, brings to old age, as, for instance, according to tradition, Cyrus​ and Deïoces​ the Mede, Idanthyrsus​ the Scythian, Leucon,​ many of the Spartan kings, and some of the earlier kings of Egypt. 

"But if the inevitable decree of fate snatches him away before reaching old age, yet Zeus vouchsafes unto him a goodly renown and praise among all men for ever and ever, as indeed," concluded Alexander, "he honored our own ancestor, who, because of his virtue, was considered the son of Zeus—I mean Heracles."  Now when Philip heard all this, he was delighted and said, "Alexander, it wasn't for naught that we esteemed Aristotle so highly, and permitted him to rebuild his home-town Stagira, which is in the domain of Olynthus. He is a man who merits many large gifts, if such are the lessons which he gives you in government and the duties of a king, be it as interpreter of Homer or in any other way." 

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

My starting point when it comes to the consideration of any issue relating to free speech is my passionate belief that the second most precious thing in life is the right to express yourself freely. The most precious thing in life I think is food in your mouth and the third most precious is a roof over your head but a fixture in the Number 2 slot for me is free expression, just below the need to sustain life itself. That is because I have enjoyed free expression in this country all my professional life and expect to continue to do so, I personally highly unlikely to be arrested for whatever laws exist to contain free expression, because of the undoubtedly privileged position that is afforded to those of a high public profile. So, my concerns are less for myself and more for those more vulnerable because of their lower profile. Like the man arrested in Oxford for calling a police horse, gay. Or the teenager arrested for calling the Church of Scientology a cult. Or the café owner arrested for displaying passages from the bible on a TV screen.

When I heard of some of these more ludicrous offences and charges, I remembered that I had been here before in a fictional context. I once did a show called Not the Nine O’Clock News, some years ago, and we did a sketch where Griff Rhys-Jones played Constable Savage, a manifestly racist police officer to whom I, as his station commander, is giving a dressing down for arresting a black man on a whole string of ridiculous, trumped up and ludicrous charges. The charges for which Constable Savage arrested Mr. Winston Kodogo of 55 Mercer Road were these:

‘Walking on the cracks in the pavement.’

‘Walking in a loud shirt in a built-up area during the hours of darkness’ and one of my favourites ‘Walking around all over the place.’

He was also arrested for ‘Urinating in a public convenience’ and ‘Looking at me in a funny way’.

Who would have thought that we would end up with a law that would allow life to imitate art so exactly. I read somewhere, a defender of the status quo claiming that the fact that the gay horse case was dropped after the arrested man refused to pay the fine and that the Scientology case was also dropped at some point during the court process was proof that the law working well, ignoring the fact that the only reason these cases were dropped was because of the publicity that they had attracted. The Police sensed that ridicule was just around the corner and withdrew their actions. But what about the thousands of other cases that did not enjoy the oxygen of publicity? That weren’t quite ludicrous enough to attract media attention?  Even for those actions that were withdrawn, people were arrested, questioned, taken to court and then released. That isn’t a law working properly: that is censoriousness of the most intimidating kind, guaranteed to have, as Lord Dear says, a ‘chilling effect’ on free expression and free protest.

Parliament’s Joint committee on Human Rights summarized, as you may know, this whole issue very well by saying ‘While arresting a protestor for using threatening or abusive speech may, depending on the circumstances, be a proportionate response, we do not think that language or behaviour that is merely insulting should ever be criminalized in this way.’ The clear problem with the outlawing of insult is that too many things can be interpreted as such. Criticism is easily construed as insult by certain parties. Ridicule is easily construed as insult. Sarcasm, unfavourable comparison, merely stating an alternative point of view to the orthodoxy can be interpreted as insult. And because so many things can be interpreted as insult, it is hardly surprising that so many things have been, as the examples I talked about earlier show.

Although the law under discussion has been on the statute book for over 25 years, it is indicative of a culture that has taken hold of the programmes of successive governments that, with the reasonable and well-intended ambition to contain obnoxious elements in society, has created a society of an extraordinarily authoritarian and controlling nature. It is what you might call The New Intolerance, a new but intense desire to gag uncomfortable voices of dissent. ‘I am not intolerant’, say many people; say many softly spoken, highly educated, liberal-minded people: ‘I am only intolerant of intolerance’. And people tend to nod sagely and say ‘Oh, wise words, wise words’ and yet if you think about this supposedly inarguable statement for longer than five seconds, you realize that all it is advocating is the replacement of one kind of intolerance with another. Which to me doesn’t represent any kind of progress at all. Underlying prejudices, injustices or resentments are not addressed by arresting people: they are addressed by the issues being aired, argued and dealt with preferably outside the legal process. For me, the best way to increase society’s resistance to insulting or offensive speech is to allow a lot more of it. As with childhood diseases, you can better resist those germs to which you have been exposed.

We need to build our immunity to taking offence, so that we can deal with the issues that perfectly justified criticism can raise. Our priority should be to deal with the message, not the messenger. As President Obama said in an address to the United Nations only a month or so ago: ‘Llaudable efforts to restrict speech can become a tool to silence critics or oppress minorities. The strongest weapon against hateful speech is not repression, it is more speech.’ And that is the essence of my thesis, more speech. If we want a robust society, we need more robust dialogue and that must include the right to insult or to offend. And as, even if, as Lord Dear says, you know, the freedom to be inoffensive is no freedom at all.

The repeal of this word in this clause will be only a small step, but it will, I hope, be a critical one in what should be a longer-term project to pause and slowly rewind a creeping culture of censoriousness. It is a small skirmish in the battle, in my opinion, to deal with what Sir Salman Rushdie refers to as the ‘outrage industry’ – self-appointed arbiters of the public good, encouraging media-stoked outrage, to which the police feel under terrible pressure to react. A newspaper rings up Scotland Yard: ‘Someone has said something slightly insulting on Twitter about someone who we think a national treasure. What are you going to do about it?’ And the police panic and they scrabble around and then grasp the most inappropriate lifeline of all, Section 5 of the Public Order Act, that thing where they can arrest anybody for saying anything that might be construed by anyone else as insulting. You know, they don’t seem to need a real victim, they need only to make the judgment that somebody could have been offended if they had heard or read what has been said. The most ludicrous degree of latitude. The storms that surround Twitter and Facebook comment have raised some fascinating issues about free speech, which we haven’t really yet come to terms with. Firstly, that we all have to take responsibility for what we say, which is quite a good lesson to learn. But secondly, we’ve learnt how appallingly prickly and intolerant society has become of even the mildest adverse comment.

The law should not be aiding and abetting this new intolerance. Free speech can only suffer if the law prevents us from dealing with its consequences. I offer you my wholehearted support to the Reform Section 5 campaign. Thank you very much.

[hedonistbyheart]

I have a lot of feelings about the contrast in Hobie’s expressions here:

He looks manifestly worried once Miles has gone on ahead. 

There’s definitely a level of just keeping an eye on Miguel in the way Hobie stays in the back while Gwen and Miles talk to Miguel as well, he’s demonstrative enough that Miguel gets annoyed too, even though he says nothing and is greyed out the whole time. He’s expecting things to blow up and he’s watching in case they need him. Miles does, as it turns out. 

[nicklloydnow]

“In any serious strategic calculus, the “Samson Option” refers not just to a last-resort spasm of pure national vengeance, but to a purposeful set of specific operational threats. When examined together with Israel’s still intentionally ambiguous nuclear strategy (a doctrine most commonly referred to as Israel’s “bomb in the basement”), it becomes evident that these carefully fashioned threat postures are designed to enhance Israeli nuclear deterrence. Indeed, any such enhancement would represent this unique doctrine’s most obvious raison d’être. But are there further steps that would enhance the Samson Option’s effectiveness in this context?

There is more. Because strategic crises in other parts of the world could sometime “spill over” into the ever-unpredictable Middle East, dedicated strategic planners in Tel Aviv should already begin their preparations to “think Samson.” This is especially the case wherever the possible “spill” could concern the threat or actual use of nuclear weapons.

(…)

Among other things, this means meticulously conceptualizing—or perhaps re-conceptualizing—the prospective role of any calculated Samson Option.

Whatever this option’s more precisely nuanced goals, its key objective must always remain exactly the same. That objective is to help keep Israel “alive.” In this duly considered objective, Israeli policy must very conspicuously deviate from the otherwise useful biblical metaphor—Samson, after all, lost his own life when he tore down the temple on his Philistine captors—drawn illustratively here from the book of Judges.

Ultimately, in relevant military nuclear matters, “Samson” must be about how to best manage certain urgent processes of strategic dissuasion. Here, the primary point of Israel’s nuclear forces must always be deterrence ex ante, not revenge ex post. For now, at least, Israel’s presumed nuclear strategy, while not yet articulated in any precise or publicly ascertainable fashion, is likely oriented toward nuclear war avoidance, not nuclear war fighting. From all potentially concerning standpoints, including even the well-being of Israel’s pertinent national adversaries, this is the indisputably correct orientation.

At its conceptual analytic core, the Samson Option references a deterrence doctrine based upon certain implicit threats of overwhelming nuclear retaliation or counter-retaliation—responses for more-or-less expected enemy aggressions. Any such doctrine could reasonably enter into force only where the responsible aggressions had first credibly threatened Israel’s physical existence. In other words, considered as a potentially optimal element of dissuasion, it would do Israel little good to proffer “Samson-based threats” in response to “ordinary” or manifestly less than massive forms of anticipated enemy aggression.

(…)

The bottom-line reasoning here is as follows: Exercising a Samson Option is not likely to deter any aggressions short of nuclear and/or massively large-scale conventional or biological first strikes.

All things considered, Samson’s overriding rationale must be to bring the following clear message to all identifiably potential attackers: “Israel may sometime have to accept mega-destructive attacks, but it surely won’t allow itself to ‘die with the Philistines’ or become the combatant country to suffer more dire consequences.” By emphasizing some overtly symmetrical exposure prospects to existential harms—”Israel won’t die alone”—the Samson Option could continuously serve Israel as a distinctly meaningful adjunct to nuclear deterrence and also to certain more-or-less corollary preemption options.

Significantly, the Samson Option could never protect Israel as a fully comprehensive nuclear strategy unto itself. This option must also never be confused with Israel’s more generalized, or “broad spectrum,” nuclear strategy, one which must always seek to maximize national deterrence at recognizably less apocalyptic levels of possible military engagement.

(…)

Concerning long-term Israeli nuclear deterrence, recognizable preparations for a Samson Option could help to best convince certain designated enemy states that massive aggressions against Israel would never be gainful. This stance could prove especially compelling if Israeli “Samson” weapons were (1) coupled with some level of nuclear disclosure (thereby effectively ending Israel’s longstanding posture of nuclear ambiguity); (2) to appear sufficiently invulnerable to enemy first strikes; and (3) plainly counter-city/counter-value in their declared mission function. Furthermore, in view of what nuclear strategists sometimes refer to as the “rationality of pretended irrationality,” Samson could more generally enhance Israeli nuclear deterrence by demonstrating an apparently tangible Israeli willingness to take various existential risks.

To a manifestly variable and possibly even bewildering extent, the nuclear deterrence benefits of “pretended irrationality” could sometime depend upon a prior enemy state awareness of Israel’s counter-city or counter-value targeting posture. Worth noting here is that such a posture had been expressly recommended more than fifteen years ago by the private “Project Daniel Group,” in its then confidential report to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. At present, it would appear plausible that this posture is also actual policy.

(…)

In those cases concerning Samson and Israeli nuclear deterrence, any recognizable last-resort nuclear preparations could enhance Israel’s preemption options by underscoring a singularly bold national willingness to take presumptively existential risks.

(…)

If left to themselves, neither deterred nor preempted, certain enemies of Israel (especially after any nuclear strike or exchange elsewhere on the planet) could convincingly threaten to bring the Jewish state face-to-face with the familiar torments of Dante’s Inferno, “Into the eternal darkness, into fire, into ice.” Such a portentous scenario has been made even more probable by the latest geostrategic strengthening of Iran in certain parts of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. This strengthening is taking place despite the US president’s withdrawal from the July 2015 JCPOA, or perhaps even because of this unilateral American abrogation.

At some point, various ominous intersections between a US-North Korean war and an expanding Iran-Hezbollah offensive could create wholly unprecedented perils for Israel. All such intersections, moreover, would be taking place within the broadly uncertain context of a second Cold War.

In extremis atomicum, these synergistic hazards could sometime become so unique and formidable that employing a Samson Option would seemingly represent the best available strategic option for Israel. In a more carefully structured world order, Israel would have no need to augment or even maintain its arsenal of deterrent threat options—especially the most perilous nuclear components—but this more ideal reconfiguration of world politics is still a long way off. Nonetheless, at some point, Israel, together with other future-oriented states, will somehow have to collaborate toward the incremental replacement of Realpolitik (power-politics) or “Westphalian” dynamics of international interaction, an intellectual collaboration that would largely be based upon a too long-delayed awareness that our earth is best conceptualized as an organic whole.”

“Iranian security officials helped plan Hamas’s Saturday surprise attack on Israel and gave the green light for the assault at a meeting in Beirut last Monday, according to senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah, another Iran-backed militant group.

Officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had worked with Hamas since August to devise the air, land and sea incursions—the most significant breach of Israel’s borders since the 1973 Yom Kippur War—those people said.

Details of the operation were refined during several meetings in Beirut attended by IRGC officers and representatives of four Iran-backed militant groups, including Hamas, which holds power in Gaza, and Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group and political faction in Lebanon, they said.

(…)

A direct Iranian role would take Tehran’s long-running conflict with Israel out of the shadows, raising the risk of broader conflict in the Middle East. Senior Israeli security officials have pledged to strike at Iran’s leadership if Tehran is found responsible for killing Israelis.

The IRGC’s broader plan is to create a multi-front threat that can strangle Israel from all sides—Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in the north and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, according to the senior Hamas and Hezbollah members and an Iranian official.

At least 700 Israelis are confirmed dead, and Saturday’s assault has punctured the country’s aura of invincibility and left Israelis questioning how their vaunted security forces could let this happen.

(…)

Iran has been setting aside other regional conflicts, such as its open feud with Saudi Arabia in Yemen, to devote the IRGC’s foreign resources toward coordinating, financing and arming militias antagonistic to Israel, including Hamas and Hezbollah, the senior Hamas and Hezbollah members said.

(…)

The strike was intended to hit Israel while it appeared distracted by internal political divisions over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. It was also aimed at disrupting accelerating U.S.-brokered talks to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel that Iran saw as threatening, the senior Hamas and Hezbollah members said.

Building on peace deals with Egypt and Jordan, expanding Israeli ties with Gulf Arab states could create a chain of American allies linking three key choke points of global trade—the Suez Canal, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Bab Al Mandeb connecting the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea, said Hussein Ibish, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.

(…)

Iran has long backed Hamas but, as a Sunni Muslim group, it had been an outsider among Tehran’s Shia proxies until recent months, when cooperation among the groups accelerated.

Representatives of these groups have met with Quds Force leaders at least biweekly in Lebanon since August to discuss this weekend’s attack on Israel and what happens next, they said. Qaani has attended some of those meetings along with Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, Islamic Jihad leader al-Nakhalah, and Saleh al-Arouri, Hamas’s military chief, the militant-group members said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian attended at least two of the meetings, they said.

(…)

Egypt, which is trying to mediate in the conflict, has warned Israeli officials that a ground invasion into Gaza would trigger a military response from Hezbollah, opening up a second battlefront, people familiar with the matter said. Israel and Hezbollah exchanged fire briefly on Sunday.

(…)

The Iranian official said that if Iran were attacked, it would respond with missile strikes on Israel from Lebanon, Yemen and Iran, and send Iranian fighters into Israel from Syria to attack cities in the north and east of Israel.

Iran’s backing of a coordinated group of Arab militias is ominous for Israel. In previous conflicts, the Soviet Union was the ultimate patron of Israel’s Arab enemies and was always able to pressure them to reach some type of accommodation or recognize a red line, said Bernard Hudson, a former counterterrorism chief for the Central Intelligence Agency.

“The Soviets never considered Israel a permanent foe,” he said. “Iran’s leadership clearly does.””

“US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Sunday he has ordered the Ford carrier strike group to sail to the Eastern Mediterranean to be ready to assist Israel after the attack by the Hamas terror group that has left more than 700 dead. Americans were reported to be among those killed and missing.

The USS Gerald R. Ford, the Navy’s newest and most advanced aircraft carrier, and its approximately 5,000 sailors and deck of warplanes will be accompanied by cruisers and destroyers in a show of force that is meant to be ready to respond to anything, including possibly interdicting additional weapons from reaching Hamas and conducting surveillance.

The large deployment, which also includes a host of other ships and warplanes, underscores the concern that the United States has in trying to deter the conflict from growing. Israel’s government formally declared war Sunday and gave the green light for “significant military steps” to retaliate against Hamas, a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said US President Joe Biden and other Western leaders had backed Israeli freedom of action to retaliate.

(…)

Along with the Ford, the US is sending the cruiser USS Normandy, destroyers USS Thomas Hudner, USS Ramage, USS Carney, and USS Roosevelt and the US is augmenting Air Force F-35, F-15, F-16, and A-10 fighter aircraft squadrons in the region.

(…)

In addition, the Biden administration “will be rapidly providing the Israel Defense Forces with additional equipment and resources, including munitions. The first security assistance will begin moving today and arriving in the coming days,” Austin said.

Congressional support for aid to Israel is up in the air amid chaos in the House of Representatives after speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted last week.”