#violated the terms first and defending people from them with secret powers no one can prove is a morally neutral act

[yourgamemasterthewhiterabbit]

It gave me weather, and... too much of my own shit to do, tbh, but also maybe I'm stopping extreme weather from killing people, who can tell if it's me, I don't need anyone to know. Maybe the lightning that hit Trump and Musk was me, maybe not, who can say? Those idiots went out on a yacht during a storm. Maybe sometimes weather is just weather, how can you tell it's mine? Prove it. I have groceries to do.

You discover that you have control over a certain thing, as determined by spinning this wheel. We're talking full-on magical girl/superhero/supervillain/your label of choice control.

[localguy2]

General analysis of DR Zane, S1 and S2 included (spoilers):

Man... Is this one a doozy...

Okay okay so, what I wanna touch on first and foremost is Zane's humanity, or his perception of his own humanity, because uhhh...

Folks the implications are NOT GOOD in the SLIGHTEST in regards to his Mental State and thinking process.

Something we've seen repeatedly throughout DR is that the merged realms and it's people in general don't view Zane as human, they don't see him as a person but more so a machine, or equipment.

We saw this first in S1E13 'Wyldly Inappropriate' we get introduced to "Zane Day", a day dedicated entirely to Celebrating Zane and who he is, and it sounds really sweet and it is- but...

It's celebrated in the worst possible way ever.

Zane is treated like a robot, like striaght up robot, when people speaks its all in an attempt to mimic a robotic voice, and sometimes people end up saying stuff that's really offensive to him (Zane look alike contest).

Heck, even other Nindroids are in on it.

This sorta paints a sad picture in regards to Zane, because it implies that the city (or maybe entirety of the Merged Realms) see Zane as just a robot ninja with cool powers, nothing more, nothing less.

And we see this a second time in S2E7 'Fugitives from Madness' and S2E8 'Secrets of the Wyldness', in which Zane and Cole fight off The Administration, and yet again we see how Zane's Humanity is absolutely disregard, heck it's even violated in this scenario, they don't even acknowledge him as a person, The Administration straight up calls him "Equipment".

Equipment that's to be destroyed when taken, and that's despite Zane proving himself to be an actual being multiple times to the agents.

So, what am I getting at here?

Well, in simple terms, The World of Ninjago Post-Merge doesn't really acknowledge Zane's humanity or his personhood, of course, the average everyday civilian to a lot less extent then say, an entire organisation, but the wholehearted confidence the Agents of the Administration say that Zane is an object calls into question whether it's their actual personal beliefs, or protocols set by the Administratior.

And... You know what's the absolute worst part?

Zane doesn't even TRY to defend himself.

Striaght up, he neither tries to explain what Nindroids are to people during Zane day, and just goes along with the flow.

And when fighting The Administration, he even OFFERS himself to them in exchange to let Cole and Bonzel get away, granted you could say it was part of his plan to buy him and the others more time, but his continued insistence on trying to find a compromise with The Agents sorta hammers home his whole hearted belief that he's:

A) Expendable.

B) Not a person, but a machine/"equipment".

Now, this might be over analysis on my end, but I would also like to point out the scene where he plugs himself into The Administration mech and tries to decode/hack their netrowk and systems.

In that scene, his mech gets stabbed in the back with a massive sword from one of The Agents, and instead of immediately getting the fuck out, he stays Plugged in and KEEPS trying to hack their stuff, all in the hope that he can finish it in time before he gets fried alive.

Unfortunately, that doesn't happen, his circuits get fried completely and he passes out.

But, it again (directly or indirectly) hammers in points A and B, Expendable, and Nothing more then a machine.

(I would like to add as well, his this parallels nicely with PIXAL in S11 during 'Kiaju Protocol', their stubbornness, and something I've neglected to mention about Zane which EVERYONE knows, is his Self-Sacrificial and Nobel tendencies).

And you don't even have to make that many assumptions for all of this to be considered true, just look at what he says...

In S2E5 'The Spell at the Waterfall', Zane finds a plush made for him by Frohickey, of Frohickey himself.

When Zane asks why Frohickey made him this plush, Frohickey says that he made it so if Zane had any issue to take up with him, he could talk to the Plush instead (reminiscent of his PIXAL-Brush coping mechanism in S1).

And Zane... Well he striaght up lies, he says and I quote:

"I do not expiernce heightened emotions."

Which, yeah, okay buddy, sure...

Just ignore the time you shut off your emotions... Sure

But anyway, this is really really unusual for Zane to say, he might not be good at emotions, but he'd never ever deny the fact that he feels all of them.

Well... Unless he fully believes he's just a machine.

See what I'm getting at here?

If he doesn't believe he's more then machine, then he sure as hell will make wrong assumptions and judgements on his own personhood and emotions, and... Why shouldn't he?

Everything and Everyone in the merged realms sees as him as nothing more than that, regardless of previous experiences and events that have impacted him personally.

It's wrong, really REALLY wrong, but in his mind, probably not so much.

So, what do I think they writers are doing this?

I think personally, this is all subtle and slow build up to give Zane an eventual arc, perhaps in Part 2 of Season 2, or in Season 3 even.

Because, even Doc himself recognised that Zane's character has become very stale and boring during the last few seasons, and given how pretty much EVERY CHARACTER in the show has gotten something to do that involves their character, it'd be particularly odd to leave Zane out (well unless they don't know how to write him).

And it's why they're deliberately making Zane go and say these things, it's subtle, but when it's time to give him his own time to shine, it'll make a lot more sense.

This could also related to the egg/pod thing he woke up in under Imperium, because Doc also said that it's a matter for later seasons.

But it remains to be seen if the future planned Zane arc/story is connected to the egg he was in, we'll just have to wait and see really...

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Patent troll's IP more powerful than Apple's

I was 12 years into my Locus Magazine column when I published the piece I'm most proud of, "IP," from September 2020. It came after an epiphany, one that has profoundly shaped the way I talk and think about the issues I campaign on.

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

That revelation was about the meaning of the term "IP," which had been the center of this tedious linguistic cold war for decades. People who advocate for free and open technology and culture hate the term "IP" because of its ideological loading and imprecision.

Ideology first: Before "IP" came into wide parlance - when lobbyists for multinational corporations convinced the UN to turn their World Intellectual Property Organization into a specialized agency, we used other terms like "author's monopolies" and "regulatory monopolies."

"Monopoly" is a pejorative. "Property" is sacred to our society. When a corporation seeks help defending its monopoly, it is a grubby corrupter. When it asks for help defending its property, it is enlisting the public to defend the state religion.

Free culture people know allowing "monopolies" to become "property" means losing the battle before it is even joined, but it is frankly unavoidable. How do you rephrase "IP lawyer" without conceding the property point? "Trademark-copyright-patent-and-related-rights lawyer?"

Thus the other half of the objection to "IP": its imprecision. Copyright is not anything like patent. Patent is not anything like trademark. Trade secrets are an entirely different thing again. Don't let's get started on sui generis and neighboring rights.

And this is where my revelation came: as it is used in business circles, "IP" has a specific, precise meaning. "IP" means, "Any law, policy or regulation that allows me to control the conduct of my competitors, critics and customers."

Copyright, patent and trademark all have limitations and exceptions designed to prevent this kind of control, but if you arrange them in overlapping layers around a product, each one covers the exceptions in the others.

Creators don't like having their copyrights called "author's monopolies." Monopolists get to set prices. All the copyright in the world doesn't let an author charge publishers more for their work. The creators have a point.

But when author's monopolies are acquired by corporate monopolists, something magical and terrible happens.

Remember: market-power monopolies are still (theoretically) illegal and when companies do things to maintain or expand their monopolies, they risk legal jeopardy.

But: The corporate monopolist who uses IP to expand their monopoly has no such risk. Monopolistic conduct in defense of IP enjoys wide antitrust forbearance. What's the point of issuing patents or allowing corporations to buy copyrights if you don't let them enforce them?

The IP/market-power monopoly represents a futuristic corporate alloy, a new metal never seen, impervious to democratic control.

Software is "IP" and so any device with software in it is like beskar, a rare metal that can be turned into the ultimate corporate armor.

No company exemplifies this better than Apple, a company that used limitations on IP to secure its market power, then annihilated those limits so that no one could take away its market power.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

In the early 2000s, Apple was in trouble. The convicted monopolist Microsoft ruled the business world, and if you were the sole Mac user in your office, you were screwed.

When a Windows user sent you a Word file, you could (usually) open it in the Mac version of Word, but then if you saved that file again, it often became forever cursed, unopenable by any version of Microsoft Office ever created or ever to be created.

This became a huge liability. Designers started keeping a Windows box next to their dual processor Power Macs, just to open Office docs. Or worse (for Apple), they switched to a PC and bought Windows versions of Adobe and Quark Xpress.

Steve Jobs didn't solve this problem by begging Bill Gates to task more engineers to Office for Mac. Instead, Jobs got Apple techs to reverse-engineer all of the MS Office file formats and release a rival office suite, Iwork, which could read and write MS Office files.

That was an Apple power move, one that turned MS's walled garden into an all-you-can-eat buffet of potential new Mac users. Apple rolled out the Switch ads, whose message was, "Every MS Office file used to be a reason *not* to use a Mac. Now it's a reason to switch *to* a Mac."

More-or-less simultaneously, though, Apple was inventing the hybrid market/IP monopoly tool that would make it the most valuable company in the world, in its design for the Ipod and the accompanying Itunes store.

It had a relatively new legal instrument to use for this purpose: 1998's Digital Millennium Copyright Act; specifically, Section 1201 of the DMCA, the "anti-circumvention" clause, which bans breaking DRM.

Under DMCA 1201, if a product has a copyrighted work (like an operating system) and it has an "access control" (like a password or a bootloader key), then bypassing the access control is against the law, even if no copyright infringement takes place.

That last part - "even if no copyright infringement takes place" - is the crux of DMCA 1201. The law was intended to support the practices of games console makers and DVD player manufacturers, who wanted to stop competitors from making otherwise legal devices.

With DVD players, that was about "region coding," the part of the DVD file format that specified which countries a DVD could be played back in. If you bought a DVD in London, you couldn't play it in Sydney or New York.

Now, it's not a copyright violation to buy a DVD and play it wherever you happen to be. As a matter of fact, buying a DVD and playing it is the *opposite* of a copyright infringement.

But it *was* a serious challenge to the entertainment cartel's business-model, which involved charging different prices and having different release dates for the same movie depending on where you were.

The same goes for games consoles: companies like Sega and Nintendo made a lot of money charging creators for the right to sell games that ran on the hardware they sold.

If I own a Sega Dreamcast, and you make a game for it, and I buy it and run it on my Sega, that's not a copyright infringement, even if Sega doesn't like it. But if you have to bypass an "access control" to get the game to play without Sega's blessing, it violates DMCA 1201.

What's more, DMCA 1201 has major penalties for "trafficking in circumvention devices" and information that could be used to build such a device, such as reports of exploitable flaws in the programming of a DRM system: $500k in fines and a 5 year sentence for a first offense.

Deregionalizing a DVD player or jailbreaking a Dreamcast didn't violate anyone's copyrights, but it still violated copyright law (!). It was pure IP, the right to control the conduct of critics (security researchers), customers and competitors.

In the words of Jay Freeman, it's "Felony contempt of business-model."

And that's where the Ipod came in. Steve Jobs's plan was to augment the one-time revenue from an Ipod with a recurrent revenue stream from the Itunes store.

He exploited the music industry's superstitious dread of piracy and naive belief in the efficacy of DRM to convince the record companies to only sell music with his DRM wrapper on it - a wrapper they themselves could not authorize listeners to remove.

Ever $0.99 Itunes purchase added $0.99 to the switching cost of giving up your Ipod for a rival device, or leaving Itunes and buying DRM music from a rival store. It was control over competitors and customers. It was IP.

If you had any doubt that the purpose of Ipod/Itunes DRM was to fight competitors, not piracy, then just cast your mind back to 2004, when Real Media "hacked" the Ipod so that it would play music locked with Real's DRM as well as Apple's.

http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3387871/Apple+RealNetworks+Hacked+iPod.htm

Apple used DMCA 1201 to shut Real down, not to stop copyright infringement, but to prevent Apple customers from buying music from record labels and playing them on their Ipods without paying Apple a commission and locking themselves to Apple's ecosystem, $0.99 at a time.

Pure IP. Now, imagine if Microsoft had been able to avail itself of DMCA 1201 when Iwork was developed - if, for example, its "information rights management" encryption had caught on, creating "access controls" for all Office docs.

There's a very strong chance that would have killed Apple off before it could complete its recovery. Jobs knew the power of interoperating without consent, and he knew the power of invoking the law to block interoperability. He practically invented modern IP.

Apple has since turned IP into a trillion-dollar valuation, largely off its mobile platform, the descendant of the Ipod. This mobile platform uses DRM - and thus DMCA 1201 - to ensure that you can only use apps that come from its app store.

Apple gets a cut of penny you spend buying an app, and every penny you spend within that app: 30% (now 15% for a minority of creators after bad publicity).

IP lets one of the least taxed corporations on Earth extract a 30% tax from everyone else.

https://locusmag.com/2021/03/cory-doctorow-free-markets/

Remember, it's not copyright infringement for me to write an app and you to buy it from me and play it on your Iphone without paying the 30% Apple tax.

That's the exact opposite of copyright infringement: buying a copyrighted work and enjoying it on a device you own.

But it's still an IP violation. It bypasses Apple's ability to control competitors and customers. It's felony contempt of business-model.

It shows that under IP, copyright can't be said to exist as an incentive to creativity - rather, it's a tool for maintaining monopolies.

Which brings me to today's news that Apple was successfully sued by a patent troll over its DRM. A company called Personalized Media Communications whose sole product is patent lawsuits trounced Apple in the notorious East Texas patent-troll court.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-19/apple-told-to-pay-308-5-million-for-infringing-drm-patent

After software patents became widespread - thanks to the efforts of Apple and co - there was a bonanza of "inventors" filing garbage patents with the USPTO whose format was "Here's an incredibly obvious thing...*with a computer*." The Patent Office rubberstamped them by the million.

These patents became IP, a way to extract rent without having to make a product. "Investors" teamed up with "inventors" to buy these and impose a tax on businesses - patent licensing fees that drain money from people who make things and give it to people who buy things.

They found a court - the East Texas court in Marshall, TX - that was hospitable to patent trolls. They rented dusty PO boxes in Marshall and declared them to be their "headquarters" so that they could bring suits there.

Locals thrived - they got jobs as "administrators" (mail forwarders) for the thousands of "businesses" whose "head office" was in Marshall (when you don't make a product, your head office can be a PO box).

Productive companies facing hundreds of millions - billions! - in patent troll liability sought to curry favor with locals (who were also the jury pool) by "donating" things to Marshall, like the skating rink Samsung bought for the town.

https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/why-south-korea-s-samsung-built-the-only-outdoor-skating-rink-in-texas

Patent, like copyright, is supposed to serve a public purpose. There are only two clauses in the US Constitution that come with explanations (the rest being "truths held to be self-evident"): the Second Amendment and the "Progress Clause" that creates patents and copyrights.

Famously, the Second Amendment says you can bear arms as part of a "well-regulated militia."

And the Progress Clause? It extends to Congress the power to create patents and copyrights "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts."

I'm with Apple in its ire over this judgment. Sending $308.5m to a "closely held" patent troll has nothing to do with the "Progress of Science and useful Arts."

But it has *everything* to do with IP.

If copyright law can let Apple criminalize - literally criminalize - you selling me If copyright law can let Apple criminalize - literally criminalize - you selling me your copyrighted work, then there's no reason to hate on patent trolls.

They're just doing what trolls do: blocking the bridge between someone engaged in useful work and the customers for that work, and extracting a toll. It's not even 30%.

There is especial and delicious irony in the fact that the patent in question is a DRM patent: a patent for the very same process that Apple uses to lock down its devices and prevent creators from selling to customers without paying the 30% Apple Tax.

But even without that, it's as good an example of what an IP marketplace looks like: one in which making things becomes a liability. After all, the more you make, the more chances there are for an IP owner to demand tax from you to take it to market.

The only truly perfect IP is the naked IP of a patent troll, the bare right to sue, a weapon made from pure abstract legal energy, untethered from any object, product or service that might be vulnerable to another IP owner's weapons.

A coda: you may recall that Apple doesn't use DRM on its music anymore: you can play Itunes music on any device. That wasn't a decision Apple took voluntarily: it was forced into it by a competitor: Amazon, an unlikely champion of user rights.

In 2007, the record labels had figured out that Apple had lured them into a trap, selling millions of dollars worth of music that locked both listeners and labels into the Itunes ecosystem.

In a desperate bid for freedom, they agreed to help Amazon launch its MP3 store - all the same music, at the same prices...without DRM. Playable on an Ipod, but also on any other device.

Prior to the Amazon MP3 store, the market was all DRM: you could either buy Apple's DRM music and play it on your Ipod, or you could buy other DRM music and play it on a less successful device.

The Amazon MP3 store (whose motto was "DRM: Don't Restrict Me") changed that to "Buy Apple DRM music and play it on your Ipod, or buy Amazon music and play it anywhere." That was the end of Apple music DRM.

So why hasn't anyone done this for the apps that Apple extracts the 30% tax on? IP. If you made a phone that could play Ios apps, Apple would sue you:

https://gizmodo.com/judge-tosses-apple-lawsuit-against-iphone-emulator-in-b-1845967318

And if you made a device that let you load non-App Store apps on an Iphone, Apple would also sue you.

Apple understands IP. It learned the lesson of the Amazon MP3 store, and it is committed to building a world where every creator pays a tax to reach every Apple customer.

[jq37]

The Royal Report– A Crown of Candy Ep 9 Safe Harbor

Out at Sea

We start this week on the recently commandeered La Fondue, milk raining down on our exhausted and injured PCs who are still reeling from Stilton’s betrayal. Most of Annabelle’s crew are even more badly injured so the PCs are forced to help sail the ship in a group skill check which 4/6 of them pass for a group pass. The gang watches the surviving enemy ships sail away and Jet considers blasting them with canons but the La Fondue doesn’t have artillery. Jet also asks Annabelle if maybe, now that they’ve saved all of their lives, they can break protocol and bring them to Candia instead of the Dairy Islands, a question she doesn’t answer at the moment.

(Edit: Wait! I should have called this section Sweet Life on Deck! Dangit! They better be on a boat again so I can use it!)

Most of the group start to fall asleep, understandable considering they’re living through the longest day of their lives, but Theo takes a second to talk to Cumulous first. He asks about Cumulous’s backstory and learns that the Spinning Star monks used to be able to teleport all over the place with teleportation circles made by Lazuli but, without her around to tend to them, they’ve been breaking down and are now unstable and dangerous to use. Him using one to get to them was a big risk and he really only made it because he’s one of the strongest monks. Additionally, as alluded to before, Candia being at war with the Concord released him from certain vows which allowed him to join the fight. They also bond over being the #1 and #2 Archmage Lazuli stans (or actually maybe #2 and #3 as we’ll find out soon) and Cumulous who is either really into magical weapons in general or magical weapons made by Lazli or a little of both gets emotional over Battlepop like he did over Sourscratch a scene before. 

The next day, there’s a funeral for the one sailor Annabelle lost in the fight. Ruby ties the milk-silk handkerchief from Primsy to her collar in solidarity. Speaking of, Primsy shows up--still injured from the attempt on her life--and invites everyone not to tea, but to a parlay. Clearly affected by the recent events, she declares that she doesn’t recognize the excommunication of Amethar and questions the church’s position on witchcraft considering all the witchcraft her Candian allies used to save her. She’s also pretty chill about the whole Stilton thing considering.

Primsy says she’ll help them but first wants them to fill in the gaps in Brie’s brief letter. Amethar explains about how he was excommunicated for still officially being married to Katherine Ghee. During an aside to this conversation, he drops what I naively thought was going to be the headline news from this episode: Caramelinda was engaged to someone else before marrying Amethar--Lazuli! It was for political reasons in part but also a love match and when Lazuli died, she ended up getting married to Amethar to at least maintain the alliance. Anyway, Ruby asks if Cara knew about Ghee and Amethar says no one knew except Jack, Belford (the priest), and Ghee herself (plus his sisters but they’re all dead). Annabelle and Primsy question whether Amethar didn’t try to have the marriage annulled and he says that he did right after the war but she couldn’t be found. Annabelle says that there are a lot of little islands she could have run to in the aftermath of the war (a smart move considering the target that would be on her back) and says that Dairy ships have a better chance at finding Ghee if she’s still around so she’ll help arrange that.  

They have a little convo-detour about various plot points:

Primsy asks how the Pontifex knew to ask Jack about Ghee in the first place. Ruby and Jet suggest she used magic or maybe found something in the files Ciabatta claimed had no Candian secrets. 

Annabelle questions the fact that Plumbeline would name Ciabatta as the successor right before having to swear on the Book of Leaves. That seems to indicate that either she’s not working with the Pontifex or the Pontifex wanted to specifically and publicly rule out Ciabatta as a possible candidate. 

Also, we learn that ex-communicating Amethar doesn’t take away his right to rule as Emperor. The Pontifex doesn’t have that authority, at least not on paper. But, as Ruby points out, she effectively has the authority by power. Still, if they can get the Book of Leaves and confirm Amethar was named emperor, that’s a huge point in their favor because he obviously wouldn’t declare war on Candia as emperor so the war would be without proper authorization and a violation of the Concord pact. 

Theo and Amethar speculate that the Pontifex doesn’t actually want to name a new emperor and want to just “provisionally” (but really indefinitely) fill the power vacuum herself.  

Anyway, Primsy reaffirms that the Dairy Islands are with Candia all the way and they continue to sail. They have 18 days before they land and Jet uses that time to finally read the rest of her banned book. You’ll remember that she already read about the first thing--the Profidian Heresy--which was an old, now heretical belief of certain members of the church that the Hungry One was as strong as the Bulb. We get a little bit of new info on that: One person who believed that doctrine and was later killed for it was a Veduit Priest (fight me Brennan) named Bartholomew Brocolpatch who was a mentor to a young Belizabeth Brassica. 

Onto the second term--the Ramsian Doctrine (did not clock the Gordon Ramsay reference until it was mentioned on Adventuring Party). It is a full, end times, Revelations, Ragnarok type thing. Ruby helps with this because she speaks Bulbosi (which is like Candian Celestial or church speak). Basically what it says is that the Bulb can’t win until the Hungry One devours the world and the Hungry One won’t devour unhealthy souls (Ruby translates “healthy” from the Bulbosi phrases “farm to table” and “locally sourced”) so in order to bring about the end of days, there needs to be a destruction of all the trash people or, phrased differently because the word for people and food is the same in Bulbosi--the junk food.

Even knowing what happens later in this episode, this still might be the thing I'm most mad at Brennan about.

Cumulous later calls a meeting of all the Candians and drops a little more exposition on them. He says that the reason that Candia has magic and the other kingdoms largely don’t is because his order of monks curates and tends to the magic of the realm while other kingdoms neglect their sources of magic. He also says that the church’s power comes from others not having it. After Ruby mentions that she sees Lazuli on a semi-regular basis through her magic, Cumulous drops the bombshell that his power comes from the Hungry One--though he doesn’t worship them. It’s just like a power source. They also discuss Jet’s research on the end of days stuff and Jet thinks maybe the move is to spread as much junk food as possible to delay the apocalypse.  

Homecoming 

After a long time out at sea, the gang arrives at Port Syrup at the mouth of the Cola River. As they sail in, they see three sunk Imperial warships and that the port is heavily defended. Clearly they got the memo. And we quickly see who gave it to them when Brie and Manta Ray Jack run up to meet them! Amethar is super happy to see his friends alive and they also confirm that Cal made it out and so did basically everyone except the Swirlies (RIP). The Jawbreaker castle--Castle Many-Licks--is under siege but it’s very hard to break into and it seems like most of the rest of Candia is doing OK.

Brie thanks Ruby for her help in finding Manta Ray Jack and then confirms Amethar/Theo’s suspicions that the Pontifex is ruling in the absence of an emperor (she says that until Candia is back in the Concord, technically, there can be no emperor). He also swears to duel Liam who truly cannot stop putting his foot in his mouth (this time about the church and a *very* confusing..complement?), after the war.

Amethar and Cumulous have a quick aside where Cumulous once again says that his mission is more to protect the magic of Candia than them specifically. It just so happens that, right now, those two things are pretty aligned.

As they make their way back to Castle Candy (w/ their Dairy Island friends), the citizens are pretty stoked to see them so it seems that war with the Concord has not lessened the populace’s love for their king. They take a pit stop and get a war update. The mountains are full of Imperial soldiers and random marauders plus there are reports of “Long Live the Queen” written in Imperial soldier blood on the side of a mountain which isn’t ominous at all. Also, there’s a call for all the help they can get to defend Castle Candy because an army from Comida is coming. Ruby tries and succeeds in communing with Lazuli who sends her a vision: to help Castle Many Licks troop-wise, they’d have to leave Port Syrup defenseless basically which would be a huge strategic loss. Meanwhile, the army coming to Castle Candy is full of discord so there’s a better chance at being able to muster (not mustard) troops there and be successful. The Dairy peeps say they’ll help as well and leave for Lacramore--except for Brie who holds down the fort in Port Syrup and Jack who goes with them to Castle Candy.

They make it there, at like 4am and Carmelinda is there to meet them, full weeping in relief at her daughters’ safe return. Cal is also there (with fancy new pants) and very happy to see Amethar. Caramelinda is less happy to see Amethar and you can clearly feel the tense conversation they’re gearing up for. The girls want to stay but Cara lays down the mom hammer and starts lecturing them. They all try to stealth away (non-daughters included) but Cara goes Full Mom and hits a Nat 20 to eyes-on-the-back-of-her-head notice. She stomps her foot and traps them all in caramel, demanding they all stop messing around and go to bed. Theo Messages her to give a quick word in favor of the girls and their maturity and battle prowess which Cara acknowledges.                   

Cal gets acquainted with Cumulous while Amethar follows Cara into their chambers for a convo that had me feeling like *I* was in trouble. She’s emotionally overwhelmed in a kind of understated and detached way as she talks to Amethar--she’s again openly weeping but not really about him. She doesn’t expect much from him. Him never telling her and hoping the problem would go away like a child makes sense. But his sisters knew which means Lazuli knew and never told her which hurts a whole lot more because, “Lazuli I loved with all my heart and this is just politics.” Ow. Amethar promises he’s going to do better. She doesn’t seem convinced as she leaves the room.      

Later (Note: I’m not 100% clear on the timeline since Siobhan says when they wake up but it seems like it’s still dark in the next scene), Ruby takes the “For Candia” note from Lapin and brings the rest of the PCs to the Sugar Plum Fairy’s standing stones to have a little funeral. Liam finds a peppermint seed and puts it down for Preston. Cumulous is also there and has the urge to meditate while everyone goes back to the castle.

Rocks Fall 

Ruby and Jet see, as their mom walks out of her study, a piece of tearaway lingerie in her desk as she locks the door behind her. And it’s not Jet’s. You know the girls gotta investigate that and Ruby, of course, gets a Nat 20 to pick the lock. In fact she doesn’t have to pick it. She approaches it with an air of mischief and it yields to her, opening without her even having to break out her thieves' tools. They find a letter from Lazi Fierce (interesting name choice) of Lazi Fierce Lingerie who apparently has been spying on them for their mom since they were little (which is funny considering she seemed outraged about their buying lingerie in ep 1). The letter also cryptically refers to something she’s keeping hidden in the attic of her shop and that she needs to leave and she doesn’t know when she’ll be back so if Cara needs it, she should go get it. Much like Siobhan/Adaine stealing that book in S1 of Fantasy High, there is no way the girls were gonna get that info and *not* follow up on it. They grab Liam and go.

With a 25, Ruby easily picks the lock and...we cut to Cumulous. 

As he’s meditating, the Sugar Plum Fairy appears to him in a traditional, cutesy form. Cumulous sees through the glamour and asks what she wants. She says she wants the magic of Candia safe, same as him and says she would owe him a boon if he brought the royal family (who she needs safe) to the Great Stone Candy Mountain. She says there’s safety there for them and Candia’s magic. Maybe not in the way Lazuli planned but this is a better plan. Cumulous says he’ll think about it.

Calroy finds Amethar and takes him to the ramparts of the castle to have a guy chat and also talk strategy. As they get up there, Amethar sees that there’s a ton of soldiers in tents out in the fields. And then he feels a knife in his back. Brennan asks for 3 Con saves.

Water dagger.

He takes 34 points of damage (about half his HP) and is paralyzed as Cal starts to monologue about how he’s always hated Amethar for being so lucky. Fifth in line and somehow makes it to the throne while he’s stuck having to wheel and deal for everything he has. He reveals that he had Rococoa killed when she found out he was selling weapons to Cersians AND that the tents in the field aren’t all Candian tents. Some of them are Ceresians. He got Stilton interested in Primsy. He set up the cheese ambush. He worked with Alfredi to get the water daggers to Kerradin. He told the Pontifex about Ghee (he was in that conversation you’ll remember). He *also* says that, in her younger days, the Pontifex had Citrina (who he claims to have actually liked) killed in the street by Vegetanian knights. 

“I wonder if they’ll call you Amethar the Unfallen after this.”

Boom, Amethar is sent over the castle walls. 

Jet, Ruby, and Liam are in the attic and they see a gleam of golden light from a chest where something is clearly being held. Brennan makes everyone roll Initiative as they walk in and Liam sees four shapes in the room move, all masked, dressed in black, and holding water-steel daggers.  

Ally scrambles for combat dice--because this is a STORY episode what is HAPPENING--and attacks for, in total, 67 damage to one guy who smells of sourdough and does not drop. He hides and Ally, in a burst of realization, puts together that it must have been Ciabatta, something confirmed by Brennan’s coy smile as he rolls a million dice.

Emily and Siobhan hold hands and brace for whatever’s coming. 

Ruby is hit by a dagger and Jet, it seems, is hit by two (since she takes 6 saving throws to Ruby’s 3). Ruby takes 49 damage (down to THREE) and Jet takes 53+51, dropping her and poisoning her. She has to make a death save with disadvantage (bc of the poison) which she passes.   

Ruby wants to stay and fight but Liam and Jet insist she run so, visibly distraught, she casts Invisibility on herself and runs for Theo. Liam casts Rope Trick, grabs Jet, and brings her into a little pocket dimension with him. Ciabatta takes off his mask and tells his men to find them and they say, “Yes Imperator.” They leave. We’re out of combat.

But Jet still has death saves to make.

Nat 1.

That’s two fails.

Liam tries to make a DC 15 medicine check to stabilize her or at least give advantage but fails.

She rolls again.

Nat 1.

As she lays in the Rope Trick, bleeding out, Liam trying his best to stanch the wound, Jet feels a glow on her Locket of the Sweetest Heart. Ruby feels the glow as she sprints over the bridge back to the castle and as she reaches the other side, the glow extinguishes.    

“Tell Ruby I love her,” Jet says to Liam, not from her body, but standing above her body. “And tell her she did the right thing.”

The spirit of her aunt Rococoa shows up to ferry her to the other side.

“Good job soldier. You got her home. Ruby’s gonna be alright. Work’s not over. There’s plenty we can do from this side. You ready?” Oh, hell yeah she is.

Which brings us to Theo who is in the castle, looking for other knights, when he finds Sir Toby in his room, butchered. The door is slammed and locked shut behind him by some of Cal’s men who taunt him about eating Toby’s corpse to survive. But Theo isn’t just a brawn guy. He’s the ward of Archmage Lazuli. He casts Knock and the door flies open.                    

Cumulous hears shouting from the castle and runs towards it immediately.

And Amethar is still falling.

Brennan says he has the time to make 3 checks to come out of paralysis. He comes out of paralysis on his first turn and, as is mechanically useful and narratively appropriate, goes into a rage. As he falls he thinks about Ruby doing that slick aerial arrow shooting last ep and Jet stabbing that dude with him during the ambush. He sees a point of light across town cross the bridge and go out and he *knows* Jet is dead. If he wasn’t raging before, he’s raging now. He falls and takes 72 points of damage, halved to 36. He’s still up. Amethar the Unfallen, yet again. 

The sounds of war erupt and that’s where we end our ep.

Safe harbor my ass. 

In Memoriam

Oh, Jet.

I’ve known this was something I was going to have to write for ages now. I’m honestly only surprised this wasn’t the first one. Jet has had a date with the Grim Reaper for ages now and it was just down to confirming the date and time.

The moment she said, “I go on top of the carriage and lay myself perfectly to protect Ruby,” she might as well have started picking flowers for her grave. Her willingness to throw herself in harm’s way to protect anyone she held in any regard without the slightest hesitation was always going to be her downfall. A noble end to be sure, but still an end. And it sucks that, if she had to die, she didn’t die in a blaze of glory in battle, but she made the most of her senseless death. She died, telling Ruby to run, wishing she could have done more to save her, telling Liam to make sure she knows that she’s loved and that she didn’t abandon her, she did the right thing. Not a single thought for herself, only for her sister. 

Jet, who never wanted to be queen and now never will be.

Jet who longed for war and fell right on the cusp on the biggest one in years.

Jet who was forced by circumstances to step up and did so every time. 

I didn’t include her last exchange with Rococoa in the recap because I wanted to use those lines here. 

Her aunt says, “I have bad news. If you thought the adventure was gonna end, it’s not.”

“Well,” Jet replies with a slight smile, “if you thought the adventurer was gonna die, she definitely fucking wasn’t.”

The Bastard Jet Rocks. RIP.

1 Million Years Dungeon 

That damn cake bastard and his stupid fancy pants. I KNEW it I KNEW it I hate that I’m right but I KNEW IT.

Not that it was a crazy puzzle as a viewer. In a story like this there *has* to be a traitor to the king and for someone to be a traitor, they first have to be a friend. And Cal has been *real* friendly.  Brennan thought he could throw us off the scent by saying that Cal was is his DMNPC, as if we don’t already know he’s the enemy. That’s just more evidence for the pile baby! I SEE YOU VILLAIN. 

But damn if it didn’t still hurt when it happened. After what he’d just been through? That’s just insult to injury, or vice versa I suppose. And in a story ep???? Brennan?????

Wild that he waited 20 years to off this dude and then monologued his entire plan and didn’t wait to make sure Amethar--the famously Unfallen--was dead though.

Anyway, absolute BASTARD MAN (and not in the cool Jet way). I need him DEAD and I need that to happen ASAP.

(Also, this is more on Brennan but full-circling Lou’s “shit/piss” running joke with a MURDER ATTEMPT? That’s an extra year dungeon my guy.)

Sunnyside Up

“You’ve struck me. Why have you done this? It was wee and gentle but you've struck me nonetheless.” I love Primsy with my whole heart. 

The “slam down big style” line was, like, moderately funny when I first heard it but every repetition in and out of game made it exponentially funnier. 

“If we have to follow the rules, you have to follow the rules!” 

“Everyone needs to stop making sworn enemies. We already have enough.”

“I sentence you to death.”/“No let him do it.” and then his, “Later.” So good. 

It didn’t *end* funny but I maintain that that the, “There’s a *war* going on,” back and forth between Jet and Ruby was gold. 

This isn’t actually from the episode but everyone roasting Brennan with full lies when he gets up to use the bathroom in the Adventuring Party is one of the funniest things Dropout has ever put out. Also, Murph taking Brenna’s cookie story and Murphing it is very good. Just watch this week’s AP, even if you don’t usually. 

Things I’m Concerned About

Going into this battle ep, Ruby has THREE HP and Amethar has FIFTEEN. Like I know Rococoa said Ruby would be OK but I hope that has some mechanical effect because IDK ABOUT THAT.

Is Lady Donetta w/ Cal or was she just a pawn, like Primsy?

Also, idk if this matters but I can’t shake the thought that Cal murdered the Swirlies. Like it’s very probable that they just suck but the thought struck me. 

Don’t love that it seems like Cal is going right for Cara this ep. Hopefully Theo (who Big Brained on that clutch Knock) can help her out and, if not, it looks like she has some skills of her own. I’m pulling for her. 

How out the window is the format? Like, I’ve been concerned about a random combat ambush for a while now--partially because of the genre and partially because of how story heavy the tourney ep was. Things have been bleeding through already and now, at the halfway point, it seems like a plausible time for Brennan to fully throw the rulebook out the window and be like, “Game’s changed y’all.” They didn’t roll for initiative at the end of last ep. I wonder if that’s logistical or somehow relevant (like, are they going *right* into combat or not).

AHHHHHHH, OK, Jet’s death. As much as I felt it coming, ouch. And not just ouch for me Ouch for everyone. I am so worried about how this is going to break Ruby specifically. Like, poor Cara--she *just* got her daughter back only for her to die in her old stomping grounds because of a letter *she* had--poor Amethar--he’s outlived his firstborn who he saw safely through battle and loved more than anyone besides his other daughter, just like he outlived all his sisters--but Ruby? This is going to CRUSH her. She egged on the sneaking out. She ran instead of staying to try and help (correct move but total guilt trip). She’s never been alone before. I know we’ve all been kinda tense for whatever that, “Family is vulnerable,” line from Siobhan in the trailer is but man I’m *so* much more tense now. I wonder if she’s gonna take a class tweak like Liam did (I know he had more of a reason for it but still curious). 

(Also, Theo who’s whole purpose in life is protect the Rocks family having Jet die and Amethar almost die in one night? RIP to that dude’s mental health.)

Note: I recognize that there’s a theory floating around that Cara set up what happened as an ambush and is evil but I refuse to consider that and if that makes me boo boo the fool in two episodes, so be it.

Seriously though, Concerned about whatever that “Long Live the Queen” stuff is. Like it could be referring to Cara but it could be referring to someone else entirely. Either way, sketchy.   

Lol also the health food-pocalypse. That’s a thing. Extremely wild that that’s not even close to the headline of this episode. 

I may have trusted Lapin by the end but I do *not* trust the Sugar Plum Fairy. Whatever’s going on with her and Cumulous? Do not vibe. 

Ciabatta better be toast by the end of this show. This isn’t a concern. This is my Denny’s order. Toasted Ciabatta with a side of dice I can pour down Brennan’s throat.

Five More Things

So, Emily’s new character. I have two thoughts. One (and this was suggested to me by @buck92) is that she’s playing the Queen’s Champion--Ser Amanda Maillard who’s been mentioned twice--once in the first episode by Theo and Sir Toby and once this episode as part of the war effort (leading troops south). A named character doing important things but with no art sounds like a possible backup PC. Also, Emily getting to play this cool knight who Murph’s character is slightly jealous of would be A Dynamic. The other strong possibility is the Sugar-free chocolate warlock Brennan mentioned in episode 1 when they were on the way to Comida. I thought they were gonna get jumped by that character and they weren’t which makes me think that’s a PC too. It would also make Emily 3 for 3 on warlocks! 

RIP to all of us who made the Bread Wedding joke before the season started. We were right, but at what cost. 

Ruby talking about how it doesn’t matter what she does because she’s not next in line and then having Jet suddenly die and instantly becoming crown princess has painfully Big Amethar Energy. 

Also, a nat 20 to break in and find the letter and then two Nat 1 death saves? The dice REALLY wanted Jet dead. Addendum: Almost forgot! Liam *just* learned Twinspeak! Like, off. What a narrative hand-off having that happen right before Jet died. It was like written in the stars.

It’s just a little moment but I loved Cara including Liam in her lecture with a little, “You are included, Liam.” 

One More Thing!

This has been circulated a bunch already but I still wanted to shout out this very good video edit by @breadddie! It hit me real hard man. 

Also, I don’t think I can link this properly without tumblr getting mad at me but this animatic with Amethar’s Fall set to What’s Up Danger on Twitter is excellent!

Edit: Here’s a link to an ask where I link to the animatic! Novatank is the artist’s @ btw. 

[hhytheking]

Civilization VI:Gangster au—Leaders(Team US, CIV and etc.)

Team US members:

Teddy Roosevelt—One of the top agent of Southern and the leader of “Team US” and the mayor of the TR Town.He decided to stand a good term with “CIV” before he find enough evidence to prove them guilty.

Chandragupta—A homeless veteran and the second-in-command of Team US. He fear to retired of army and treat this chance as the second enlist of his life.

Tomyris—A local street punk whose friends got killed recently. She knew CIV was behind all these and join the team to revenge for her friends.

Alexander—A former SWAT who got fired because of his overaggressive and violation behaviors. He have no choice but to join the team to keep his career of fighting the criminals.

Wilfred Laurier—The coroner of the Western. Teddy promised him once he finishes his job he will unit all four departments into one. For that Wilfred decide to help him and join the team.

CIV senior members:

Gilgamesh—The 20th CEO of the CIV history. Owning many underworld companies and wants to use his power to rule the rest of the Zatlafford.

Qin Shi Huang—The First Warlord and leader of all Warlords. He is a successful businessman, one of the senior members of Imperial Party “Brightly Brick”and one of the candidates for the next mayor.

Cleopatra—The Second Warlord who takes charge of the nightclub business. Based on the rumor she became a senior member by flirting with Gilgamesh.

Gandhi—The Third Warlord, a famous local lawyer and the director of his own law firm. He mainly help other CIV members to get away with their crimes.

Cyrus—The Fourth Warlord and the head of the intelligence department of CIV. His opportunistic nature make him get a bad reputation and much hate among the CIV and the Warlords.

Tamar—The Fifth Warlord who is also the head of the security of CIV’s supreme headquarters. She is also a isolationist who never attend others’ business.

Pedro—The Sixth Warlord who takes charge of the smuggling business of CIV. He always think Cyrus will betray them and even gain a alliance against him.

Mansa Musa—The Seventh Warlord and the finance chief of CIV. He also runs the biggest casino and that make him the richest man in Zatalafford.

Kristina—The Ninth Warlord who likes to collect tens of thousands of historical relics and treasures from the world for CIV. Then she will sell them with the highest price to others at the auction

Lautaro—The new guy who became the Tenth Warlord recently. He’s job is to rule all the neighborhoods which under CIV’s control.

Others:

Gorgo—One of the Detectives of Western and Pericles’s partner. Following the order of her superior, she need find a way to overthrow CIV.

Pericles—One of the Detectives of Western and Gorgo’s partner. He was also ordered by his superior to overthrow CIV like Gorgo. But he is actually a spy and the Eighth Warlord of CIV.

Catherine De Medici—Current leader of the Banking Family “Medici”. She is working under CIV’s wing while sold information to others who need.

Gitarja—A junior member of CIV’s smuggling business. Her secret identity is a informer of Southern and her mission is to keep a eye on CIV.

Ambiorix—One of the main chiefs of the aboriginal community and the manager of Area West’s frontier. He also ally with CIV and help them train new guys or defend them from Trajan or other dangerous people.

If you want to know more details of those characters you can ask me.

[newstfionline]

Tuesday, November 24, 2020

OED Word of the Year expanded for ‘unprecedented’ 2020 (BBC) This year has seen so many seismic events that Oxford Dictionaries has expanded its word of the year to encompass several “Words of an Unprecedented Year”. Its words are chosen to reflect 2020’s “ethos, mood, or preoccupations”. They include bushfires, Covid-19, WFH, lockdown, circuit-breaker, support bubbles, keyworkers, furlough, Black Lives Matter and moonshot. Use of the word pandemic has increased by more than 57,000% this year. Casper Grathwohl, the president of Oxford Dictionaries, said: “I’ve never witnessed a year in language like the one we’ve just had. The Oxford team was identifying hundreds of significant new words and usages as the year unfolded, dozens of which would have been a slam dunk for Word of the Year at any other time. “It’s both unprecedented and a little ironic—in a year that left us speechless, 2020 has been filled with new words unlike any other.”

Jury duty? No thanks, say many, forcing trials to be delayed (AP) Jury duty notices have set Nicholas Philbrook’s home on edge with worries about him contracting the coronavirus and passing it on to his father-in-law, a cancer survivor with diabetes in his mid-70s who is at higher risk of developing serious complications from COVID-19. People across the country have similar concerns amid resurgences of the coronavirus, a fact that has derailed plans to resume jury trials in many courthouses for the first time since the pandemic started. Within the past month, courts in Hartford, Connecticut, San Diego and Norfolk, Virginia, have had to delay jury selection for trials because too few people responded to jury duty summonses. The non-response rates are much higher now than they were before the pandemic, court officials say. Judges in New York City, Indiana, Colorado and Missouri declared mistrials recently because people connected to the trials either tested positive for the virus or had symptoms. “What the real question boils down to are people willing to show up to that court and sit in a jury trial? said Bill Raftery, a senior analyst with the National Center for State Courts. “Many courts have been responsive to jurors who have said that they’re not comfortable with coming to court and doing jury duty and therefore offering deferrals simply because of concerns over COVID.”

The next few months could be rough for the U.S. economy (NYT) The next few months have the potential to be very unpleasant for the American economy. Many states are reimposing coronavirus restrictions, which will likely lead to new reductions in consumer spending and worker layoffs. As Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chairman, recently said, “We’ve got new cases at a record level, we’ve seen a number of states begin to reimpose limited activity restrictions, and people may lose confidence that it is safe to go out.” Adding to the economic risks, several of the government’s biggest virus rescue programs are scheduled to expire next month. It isn’t clear whether Congress will renew them, because congressional Democrats and Republicans disagree on how to do so. A lack of government support, Powell has said, may lead to “tragic” results with “unnecessary hardship.” The longer-term picture is more encouraging, though. There is reason to hope that the next economic recovery, whenever it comes, will be stronger than the frustratingly weak recovery after the 2007-2009 financial crisis. “It’s a good guess that we’ll get this pandemic under control at some point next year,” writes Paul Krugman, the Times columnist (and Nobel Prize-winning economist). “It’s also a good bet that when we do, the economy will come roaring back.”

Student loan repayments (WSJ) The U.S. government stands to lose more than $400 billion from the federal student loan program, an internal analysis shows, approaching the size of losses incurred by banks during the subprime-mortgage crisis. The Education Department, with the help of two private consultants, looked at $1.37 trillion in student loans held by the government at the start of the year. Their conclusion: Borrowers will pay back $935 billion in principal and interest. That would leave taxpayers on the hook for $435 billion, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The analysis was based on government accounting standards and didn’t include roughly $150 billion in loans originated by private lenders and backed by the government.

Brazil’s local elections (Worldcrunch) Brazilian local elections can be fun to watch. Candidates come from every walk of life, and are notably allowed to use nicknames on the campaign trail—and there have been some true gems over the years: a loud man with thick sideburns and bushy hair campaigned as “Geraldo Wolverine”; an elderly man in army uniform and full beard was “Bin Laden for Governor”; and we’ve also seen a tropical, chubby Spiderman, an old Robin, and Jesuses in various shapes and sizes. Earlier this month, as Brazilians headed to the polls to elect local leaders in the country’s major states and cities—including Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro—there were exactly 78 candidates who chose to run as some form of “Bolsonaro,” and even one as “Donald Trump Bolsonaro.” Results are in and 77 of them failed to get elected, including the president’s ex-wife, who campaigned as Rogéria Bolsonaro. The Brazilian leader personally chimed in on his social media accounts to endorse the 59 candidates (with and without familiar nicknames) he favored—only nine of whom got elected, according to Estadão de S. Paulo daily. Centrist and moderate parties made gains in the local contests, which also came at the expense of the other massive political force in the country, the leftist Workers’ Party.

Reporter Gatecrashes EU Defence Chiefs’ Video Call After Login Details Posted on Twitter (Vice) A Dutch journalist managed to join a video call for EU defence ministers, much to his and everybody else’s surprise. Video posted on Twitter shows Daniël Verlaan, a technology reporter for broadcaster RTL Nieuws, in disbelief as he realises he’s actually managed to jump on the call. RTL said that Verlaan was only able to do so because of information tweeted by Dutch defence minister Ank Bijleveld, including a photo (since deleted) showing five digits of a six-digit PIN needed to join the call. Defence ministers representing EU members and foreign policy chief Josep Borrell were on the call. When Verlaan joins, Borrell asks, “Who are you?” After exchanging pleasantries, and as laughter is heard in the background, Borrell asks the reporter if he knew he was “jumping into a secret conference.” “Yes, I’m sorry, I’m a journalist from the Netherlands,” Verlaan says. “I’m sorry for interrupting your conference, I’ll be leaving here.” A spokesperson for the Dutch ministry of defence told RTL a staff member had accidentally tweeted the picture containing information that allowed Verlaan to join the call. “This shows once again that ministers need to realise how careful you have to be with Twitter,” said Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

France’s Dragnet for Extremists Sweeps Up Some Schoolchildren, Too (NYT) Armed with assault rifles and wearing balaclavas, dozens of police officers raided four apartments recently in a sprawling complex in Albertville, a city in the French Alps. They confiscated computers and cellphones, searched under mattresses and inside drawers, and took photos of books and wall ornaments with Quranic verses. Before the stunned families, the officers escorted away four suspects for “defending terrorism.” “That’s impossible,” Aysegul Polat recalled telling an officer who left with her son. “This child is 10 years old.” Her son—along with two other boys and one girl, all 10 years old—was accused of defending terrorism in a classroom discussion on the freedom of expression at a local public school. Officers held the children in custody for about 10 hours at police stations while interrogating their parents about the families’ religious practices and the recent republication of the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in the magazine Charlie Hebdo. The fifth-grade classmates are among at least 14 children and teenagers investigated by the police in recent weeks on accusations of making inappropriate comments during a commemoration for a teacher who was beheaded last month after showing the cartoons in a class on freedom of expression. As France grapples with a wave of Islamist attacks following the republication of the Charlie Hebdo caricatures, the case in Albertville and similar ones elsewhere have again raised questions about the nature of the government’s response.

France’s Sarkozy goes on trial for corruption (Reuters) Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy goes on trial on Monday accused of trying to bribe a judge and of influence-peddling, one of several criminal investigations that threaten to cast an ignominious pall over his decades-long political career. Prosecutors allege Sarkozy offered to secure a plum job in Monaco for judge Gilbert Azibert in return for confidential information about an inquiry into claims that Sarkozy had accepted illegal payments from L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt for his 2007 presidential campaign. Sarkozy, who led France from 2007-2012 and has remained influential among conservatives, has denied any wrongdoing in all the investigations against him and fought vigorously to have the cases dismissed. Next March, Sarkozy is due in court on accusations of violating campaign financing rules during his failed 2012 re-election bid. Next March, Sarkozy is due in court on accusations of violating campaign financing rules during his failed 2012 re-election bid.

Merkel, Germany’s ‘eternal’ chancellor, marks 15 years in power (AFP) In power so long she has been dubbed Germany’s “eternal chancellor”, Angela Merkel marks 15 years at the helm of Europe’s top economic power Sunday with her popularity and public trust scaling new heights as her remaining time in office ticks down. With the coronavirus raging around the world, the pandemic has played to her strengths as a crisis manager with a head for science-based solutions. Merkel, 66, has said she will step down as chancellor when her current mandate runs out in 2021, and leave politics altogether. Assuming she finishes out her fourth term, she will tie Helmut Kohl’s longevity record for a post-war leader, with an entire generation of young Germans never knowing another person at the top. The brainy, pragmatic and unflappable Merkel has served for many in recent years as a welcome counter-balance to the big, brash men of global politics, from Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin, as liberals have looked to her as the “leader of the free world”. A Pew Research Center poll last month showed large majorities in most Western countries having “confidence in Merkel to do the right thing regarding world affairs”.

China tests millions after coronavirus flare-ups in 3 cities (AP) Chinese authorities are testing millions of people, imposing lockdowns and shutting down schools after multiple locally transmitted coronavirus cases were discovered in three cities across the country last week. As temperatures drop, large-scale measures are being enacted in the cities of Tianjin, Shanghai and Manzhouli, despite the low number of new cases compared to the United States and other countries that are seeing new waves of infections. On Monday, the National Health Commission reported two new locally transmitted cases in Shanghai over the last 24 hours, bringing the total to seven since Friday. China has recorded 86,442 total cases and 4,634 deaths since the virus was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.

Singapore, a City of Skyscrapers and Little Land, Turns to Farming (WSJ) In this skyscraper-studded nation of nearly six million people, all the farmland combined adds up to about 500 acres—an area roughly the size of a single American farm. That explains why more than 90% of the city-state’s food comes from abroad, a feat of globalization that plays out every day as beef is brought from New Zealand, eggs from Poland and vegetables trucked in from Malaysia. But recent developments—from Covid-19-related border closures to international trade fights—have shown that near-total dependence on the outside world may not be the best strategy in a shifting global environment. The Asian financial hub long focused on growing investment is turning to growing food. It can’t be done the traditional way, however. Land is so scarce in Singapore that the government continually reclaims territory from the sea to build new urban infrastructure. Instead, businesses are trying to reinvent agriculture. Industrial buildings are being converted into vertical farms with climate-controlled grow rooms. Rows of lettuce and kale are nourished not by soil, but via automated drips of nutrient-infused water. LED lights substitute for the sun. The government’s goal is to have 30% of the island’s nutritional requirements produced in Singapore by 2030, up from less than 10% today. Earlier this year, it shipped 400,000 seed packets to households to encourage home cultivation of leafy greens, cucumbers and tomatoes. In September, it announced about $40 million in grants to expand high-tech farms.

Reports: Israeli PM flew to Saudi Arabia, met crown prince (AP) Israeli media reported Monday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew to Saudi Arabia for a clandestine meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, which would mark the first known encounter between senior Israeli and Saudi officials. Hebrew-language media cited an unnamed Israeli official as saying that Netanyahu and Yossi Cohen, head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, flew to the Saudi city of Neom on Sunday, where they met with the crown prince. The prince was there for talks with visiting U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. A Gulfstream IV private jet took off just after 1740 GMT from Ben-Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv, according to data from website FlightRadar24.com. The flight traveled south along the eastern edge of the Sinai Peninsula before turning toward Neom and landing just after 1830 GMT, according to the data. The flight took off from Neom around 2150 GMT and followed the same route back to Tel Aviv. While Bahrain, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates have reached deals under the Trump administration to normalize ties with Israel, Saudi Arabia so far has remained out of reach.

Cyclone Gati hits Somalia as country’s strongest storm on record (Washington Post) Tropical Cyclone Gati struck the arid nation of Somalia on Sunday as the equivalent of a Category 2 hurricane with 105 mph winds, making it the strongest storm on record to hit the country. The cyclone made landfall after undergoing an extraordinary period of rapid intensification, which may have set a record for the entire Indian Ocean basin, at one point attaining the strength equivalent to a Category 3 storm, with 115 mph maximum sustained winds. Its landfall was farther south than any major hurricane-equivalent cyclone on record in that part of the world as well. Landfall occurred near Xaafuun, a small community about 900 miles northeast of Mogadishu, where the land juts east near the northern tip of the country. Hordio and Ashira, both desert communities, were also directly affected by the core of the storm. A broad four to eight inches of rainfall accompanied the system through northern Somalia, the driest part of the country, drenching desert regions with a year or two’s worth of rainfall in just a matter of hours to a couple of days. Rains also swept through the Gulf of Aden and brushed up against Yemen.

[mojave-pete]

Text of speech as posted on McConnell’s Senate page.

‘These past weeks, the Senate has grappled with as grave a subject as we ever consider: A request from a majority in the House of Representatives to remove the president. ‘The Framers took impeachment extremely seriously. But they harbored no illusions that these trials would always begin for the right reasons. Alexander Hamilton warned that “the demon of faction” would “extend his sceptre” over the House of Representatives “at certain seasons.” He warned that “an intemperate or designing majority in the House” might misuse impeachment as a weapon of ordinary politics rather than an emergency tool of last resort. ‘The Framers knew impeachments might begin with overheated passions and short-term factionalism. But they knew those things could not get the final say. So they placed the ultimate judgment not in the fractious lower chamber, but in the sober and stable Senate. ‘They wanted impeachment trials to be fair to both sides. They wanted them to be timely, avoiding the “procrastinated determination of the charges.” They wanted us to take a deep breath and decide which outcome would reflect the facts, protect our institutions, and advance the common good. ‘They called the Senate, quote, “the most fit depositary (sic) of this important trust.” Tomorrow, we will know whether that trust was well placed. ‘The drive to impeach President Trump did not begin with the allegations before us. ‘Here was reporting in April of 2016: “Donald Trump isn’t even the Republican nominee yet… [but] ‘Impeachment’ is already on the lips of pundits, newspaper editorials, constitutional scholars, and even a few members of Congress.” ‘Here was the Washington Post headline minutes after President Trump’s inauguration: “The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.” ‘The articles of impeachment before us were not even the first ones House Democrats introduced. This was go-around number seven. Those previously-alleged “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” included things like being impolite to the press and to professional athletes. ‘It insults the intelligence of the American people to pretend this was a solemn process reluctantly begun because of withheld foreign aid. No, Washington Democrats’ position on this President has been clear for years. ‘Their position was obvious when they openly rooted for the Mueller investigation to tear our country apart and were disappointed when the facts proved otherwise. It was obvious when they sought to impeach this President over and over. Here’s their real position: Washington Democrats think President Donald Trump committed a “High Crime or Misdemeanor” the moment he defeated Secretary Clinton in the 2016 election. ‘That is the original sin of this presidency: That he won and they lost. ‘Ever since, the nation has suffered through a grinding campaign against our norms and institutions from the same people who keep shouting that our norms and institutions need defending. ‘A campaign to degrade our democracy and delegitimize our elections from the same people who shout that confidence in our democracy must be paramount. ‘We have watched a major American political party adopt the following absurd proposition: We think this president is a bull in a china shop, so we’re going to drive a bulldozer through the china shop to get rid of him. ‘This fever led to the most rushed, least fair, and least thorough presidential impeachment inquiry in American history. ‘The House inquiry into President Nixon spanned many months. The special prosecutors’ investigation added many more months. With President Clinton, the independent counsel worked for years. ‘It takes time to find facts. It takes time to litigate executive privilege, which happened in both those investigations. Litigating privilege questions is a normal step that investigators of both parties understood was their responsibility. ‘But this time — no lengthy investigation. No serious inquiry. The House abandoned its own subpoenas. They had an arbitrary political deadline to meet. They had to impeach by Christmas. ‘So in December, House Democrats realized the Framers’ nightmare. A purely partisan majority approved two articles of impeachment over bipartisan opposition. And after the Speaker of the House delayed for a month in a futile effort to dictate Senate process to Senators, the articles finally arrived here in the Senate. ‘Over the course of this trial, Senators have heard sworn video testimony from 13 witnesses over 193 video clips. We have entered more than 28,000 pages of documents into evidence, including 17 depositions. Members asked 180 questions. ‘In contrast to the House proceedings, our trial gave both sides a fair platform. Our process tracked with the structure that Senators adopted for the Clinton trial 20 years ago. ‘Just as Democrats such as the current Democratic Leader and then-Senator Joseph Biden argued at length in 1999, we recognized that Senate traditions impose no obligation to hear new live witness testimony if it is not necessary to decide the case. The House Managers themselves said over and over that additional testimony was not necessary to prove their case. They claimed dozens of times that their existing case was “overwhelming” and “incontrovertible.” That was the House Mangers saying their evidence was overwhelming and incontrovertible at the same time they were arguing for more witnesses. ‘But in reality, both of the House’s accusations are constitutionally incoherent. ‘The “obstruction of Congress” charge is absurd and dangerous. House Democrats argued that any time the Speaker invokes the House’s “sole power of impeachment,” the President must do whatever the House demands, no questions asked. Invoking executive-branch privileges and immunities in response to House subpoenas becomes an impeachable offense itself. ‘Here’s how Chairman Schiff put it back in October. Quote: “Any action… that forces us to litigate, or have to consider litigation, will be considered further evidence of obstruction of justice.” ‘That is nonsense. “Impeachment” is not some magical constitutional trump card that melts away the separations between the branches of government. The Framers did not leave the House a secret constitutional steamroller that everyone somehow overlooked for 230 years. ‘When Congress subpoenas executive-branch officials with questions of privilege, the two sides either reach an accommodation or take to the courts. ‘That is the way this works. ‘Can you imagine if the shoe were on the other foot? How would Democrats and the press have responded if House Republicans had told President Obama, We don’t want to litigate our subpoenas over Fast and Furious, so if you make us set foot in court, we’ll just impeach you? ‘Of course, that’s not what happened. The Republican House litigated its subpoenas for years until they prevailed. ‘So much for “obstruction of Congress.” ‘And the “abuse of power” charge is just as unpersuasive and dangerous. ‘By passing that article, House Democrats gave into a temptation that every previous House has resisted. They impeached a president without even alleging a crime known to our laws. ‘I do not subscribe to the legal theory that impeachment requires a violation of a criminal statute. But there are powerful reasons why, for 230 years, every presidential impeachment did allege a criminal violation. ‘The Framers explicitly rejected impeachment for “maladministration” — a general charge under English law that basically encompassed bad management; a sort of general vote of no confidence. Except in the most extreme circumstances, except for acts that overwhelmingly shocked the national conscience, the Framers decided presidents must serve at the pleasure of the electorate and not the pleasure of House majorities. ‘As Hamilton wrote, “it is one thing to be subordinate to the laws, and another to be dependent on the legislative body.” ‘So House Democrats sailed into new and dangerous waters. The first impeachment unbound by the criminal law. Any House that felt it needed to take this radical step owed the country the most fair and painstaking process; the most rigorous investigation; the most bipartisan effort. Instead, we got the opposite. The exact opposite. ‘The House Managers argued that the President could not have been acting in the national interest because he acted inconsistently with their own conception of the national interest, a conception shared by some of the President’s subordinates. ‘This does not even approach a case for the first presidential removal in American history. ‘Such an act cannot rest alone on the exercise of a constitutional power, combined with concerns about whether the President’s motivations were public or personal, and a disagreement over whether the exercise of the power was in the national interests. ‘The Framers gave our nation an ultimate tool for evaluating a President’s character and policy decisions. They’re called elections. ‘If Washington Democrats have a case to make against the President’s re-election, they should go out and make it. Let them try to do what they failed to do three years ago and sell the American people on their vision for the country. ‘I can certainly see why, given President Trump’s remarkable achievements over the past three years, Democrats might feel uneasy about defeating him at the ballot box. But they don’t get to rip the choice away from the voters just because they’re afraid they might lose again. They don’t get to strike President Trump’s name from the ballot just because, as one House Democrat put it, “I’m concerned that if we don’t impeach [him], he will get re-elected.” ‘The impeachment power exists for a reason. It is no nullity. But invoking it on a partisan whim to settle three-year-old political scores does not honor the Framers’ design. It insults the Framers’ design. ‘Frankly, it is hard to believe that House Democrats ever really thought this reckless and precedent-breaking process would yield 67 votes to cross the Rubicon. ‘Was their vision so clouded by partisanship that they really believed this would be anywhere near enough for the first presidential removal in American history? ‘Or was success beside the point? Was this all an effort to hijack our institutions for a months-long political rally? ‘Either way — “the demon of faction” has been on full display. But now it is time for him to exit the stage. ‘We have indeed witnessed an abuse of power: A grave abuse of power by just the kind of House majority the Framers warned us about. ‘So tomorrow, the Senate must do what we were created to do. We have done our duty. We have considered all arguments. We have studied the “mountain of evidence.” And tomorrow, we will vote. ‘We must vote to reject the House’s abuse of power. Vote to protect our institutions. ‘Vote to reject new precedents that would reduce the Framers’ design to rubble. ‘Vote to keep factional fever from boiling over and scorching our Republic. ‘I urge every one of our colleagues to cast the vote that the facts in evidence, the Constitution, and the common good clearly require. ‘Vote to acquit the President of these charges.’

[apenitentialprayer]

The Grim Reminder

Attack on Titan and the Perpetual Crisis

(x) tl;dr: the fascist believes that the nation is continually under threat, finding enemies in other nations, but the worst and most dangerous enemies being dissent originating from within. This is currently a problem in the United States, especially (but not exclusively) with the Right, which often interprets disagreement as irrational, childish behavior that is destroying the nation. From the very first episode, the characters who inhabit the world of Attack on Titan are people in constant danger; some threats are obvious, like the nearly two hundred foot tall Titan that compromises the integrity of Wall Maria; others aren’t so much, like the incompetence and corruption of the city guards. But in any case, the one consistent thing you can expect in this story is that the very world itself seems to act as an obstacle that prevents the main characters from achieving their goals. There are enemies at every turn, because the world itself is an enemy. Opponents are inhuman, strangers are potential threats waiting for you to let your guard down, and even friends are ultimately not reliable. The world is in crisis, and the only person you can trust to fix these issues is yourself. This continuous crisis is a key part of any fascist narrative. If there ever was a golden age, it is long past; the golden age, a mythic period where the fascist’s group was the best, is something that must be regained. If it is based on an actual, historical epoch, the seedier qualities of society in that time period will be de-emphasized, if not ignored. And, luckily for the people living now, the golden age is something that can be brought back; it may even be on the verge of returning, were it not for the Perpetual Crisis, the way the enemies of the state always seem able to place a new obstacle that just barely prevents the total victory of the fascist movement. The golden age is definitely a rhetorical device deployed by Eren’s father in the episodes centered on his flashbacks, and thus by Eren as well. Ignoring the history of conquest, slavery, and eugenics of the Eldian Empire, Eren’s father presents a vision of the Eldian past where his ancestors brought civilization and progress to an otherwise backward world. The ancestors of Marley and all enemies of the Eldian Empire (which seems to have been pretty much everyone) were jealous of this past, and any and all criticism of the Eldians is best viewed as propaganda weaponized against the legitimate rulers of the world. The Eldian Empire must return; it is a matter of bringing the world back to an order that has been lost. The fact that the author has made it clear that this is a rhetorical device even in-universe may actually imply that the author is critical of the distortion of the past to support a present political agenda. But even if the use golden age rhetoric is implicitly criticized, the Perpetual Crisis is a reality of the world of Attack on Titan; the story, as presented so far, makes it clear that the multitude of enemies perceived by the main characters are truly there, and are truly obstacles preventing the fulfillment of their goals. First, we have Titans who have violated the sacred boundaries of mankind by breaking through Wall Maria. Second, we have Titans who have infiltrated humanity itself, sowing discord and paranoia from within. Third, we have leaders who oppose the views of the main characters, and are thus viewed as self-serving and incompetent. It’s never the main character’s fault when something goes wrong; what prevents the main character from achieving what he wants is always a ferocious enemy, an insidious plot, or a failure to trust in one’s own feelings over the opinions of others. That’s a dirty secret of the fascist view of the world; I’ve already said that the fascist cannot abide the thought of living in peace with a rival nation. But a fascist movement thrives off of the momentum of the perpetual crisis, and thus cannot exist without the rival to define itself against. As Ernest Gellner points out, if everyone in the world was to convert to Christianity or Islam, the concept of Christianity or Islam would still have meaning - these identity labels can exist meaningfully even without an Other to define itself against. This is not the case with a nation, which defines itself as a distinct set of people, and this is even less true of a fascistic nation, which thrives best when it has enemies both within and without. We see this clearly in Nazi Germany with the concept of the lebensraum, or “living space.” Simply put, according to the Nazi regime, the Germanic peoples did not have the room it needed to thrive, and thus needed to expand. The German people were supposedly in a seminal point in history, where it either had to both expand and purify itself, or go extinct. This was an apparently urgent need, something that had to be accomplished soon, a desire so strong that the two groups acting as obstacles to fulfilling this goal were oppressive by means of their very existence; namely, the Slav already living in the lands that the Nazi regime wanted, and the Jew living among the Germanic peoples. But these weren’t the only enemies, either; anyone who questioned the need for or methods of attaining this lebensraum were also enemies, and this category would expand to include basically anyone who didn’t explicitly affirm the idea. Communists, Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, non-Aryans; all of these interior enemies added to the crisis, necessitating witch hunts to “purify” the Germans, with horrific results. Now, there are a lot of groups and organizations that thrive on the concept of the perpetual crisis; the Catholic Church positions itself as the Ark of Noah, keeping the faithful safe in a sea of modernist heresy; the feminist movement in recent years has emphasized chronic feelings of fear that women experience in masculinized environments, with some prominent figures taking some pretty strong positions on the #MeToo movement (Michael Che’s Kavanaugh statement comes to mind). Neither of these stances are inherently fascist, though both have the potential to become fascistic. But let’s use a slogan that wraps both the Golden Age and the Perpetual Crisis up nicely: “Make America Great Again.” The slogan clearly presupposes two things; first, that America was great at one point, and second, America is no longer great. The “greatness” America experienced seems to be located sometime before the sixties, usually during or shortly after the Second World War; we fought the Nazis and won, after all! And we came out of the Depression. Things weren’t great for many Americans, but the subgroup that was usually identified with the nation itself (middle-class, White, native-born) was doing pretty well for itself. The groups associated with America’s fall from greatness (Marxists, civil rights activists, leftist politicians) are usually those groups that challenge this Golden Age narrative. The Nazis depicted the German nation as a defeated, emasculated nation that was suffocating under the weight of the pressure placed on it; it needed more living space. The less optimistic sections of conservative Americans depicts the American nation as a declining power, rotting from the inside because of people bashing the pillars that had allowed America to stand in the first place; the Christian nation is allowing more and more Muslim immigrants even as it faces the threat of Islamic terrorism; the primarily White nation must pander to black civil rights activists and Mexican immigrants even as these populations continue to increase; a proud nation of tradition is finding its traditional ways of life slowly eroding because of modernity and an enabling, multicultural, secular liberalism. I’m not saying that America doesn’t have problems. The way it is depicted above, however, encourages the suppression of minorities and encourages conservatives to see themselves as the True Americans defending what is left of Authentic America. Like the Eldians, who depose a king because of his policy of non-violence, some Americans would like to live in a world where agitating activists are at least silenced, if not eliminated (“If you don’t like it here, move somewhere else”). Faced with the possibility of allowing power to reside in a family that would rather keep the Eldians isolated from the world and at peace in the Walls, Eren opts to murder that family in order to seize power for himself. Having finally eliminated the threat of the Titans on the island of Paradis, Eren shifts his view to Marley across the sea. The survival of the in-group is what matters most, and in a fascist worldview you must be willing to do whatever it takes in order to ensure that survival. Every disagreement is a matter of life or death, every inconvenience an existential threat; the stakes can never be too high, and your side can never be too zealous in its actions. I’m not sure how to solve the problem of dealing with enemies from without; I’m not going to touch that. But in terms of dealing with struggle from within, I’d suggest first and foremost an elimination of the us vs. them attitude. The fascist sees disagreement as malicious sabotage. We have to see political opponents as people who are equally as invested in this nation, and whose disagreements with ourselves is coming from a place of authentic concern. We have to stop attributing malicious intent where other explanations are possible; a pro-choicer declaring that pro-lifers ultimately wish to control and punish women distorts their argument and demonizes them; declaring someone who doesn’t want limits on immigration to be pro-white genocide distorts their argument and demonizes them. As a final topic, it should be noted that fascists often claim to represent the true feelings of the people, and are thus justified in accomplishing their goals as ruthlessly as possible. One of the dangers of claiming legitimacy through the people, however, is that the people are more than capable of disagreeing with you; the fascist may ignore this, overriding the general will and choosing to do what they think is best for the people. Rabindranath Tagore wrote a book back during the first agitations for Indian independence, a book called The Home and the World. Using the metaphor of husband and wife, it argues that if you are going to treat a person or group of people as if they have the right to self-determination, you have to be prepared to accept decisions that you feel don’t reflect their best interests; if you’re going to treat a government as if its power ultimately comes from the people, you have to put your money where your mouth is and take their decisions and requests seriously. Just something to think about.

[lifeofresulullah]

The Life of The Prophet Muhammad(pbuh): The Treaty of Hudaybiyah and Calling the Great States of the World to Islam

The Conquest of Khaybar: Part 1

(7th year of the Migration, toward the end of the month of Muharram / AD 628)

Khaybar was a city located on a volcanic area and having seven strong castles. It was on the way of Damascus and in the north west of Madinah; it was about 100 miles (161km) away from Madinah.

Most of the Jews that were expelled from Madinah because they violated their treaty with the Messenger of God had settled there and they virtually transformed Khaybar to a center for Jews.

As we have mentioned before, the Jews living there caused the Battle of Khandaq to take place by organizing all of the Arab tribes around and leading them to Madinah. After the Battle of Khandaq, they did not behave well and they slandered and talked against Muslims everywhere.

On the other hand, they made a new treaty with Makkan polytheists. According to this treaty, the people of Khaybar would attack Madinah if the Prophet walked against Makkah; if the Prophet walked against Khaybar, the Qurayshi polytheists would attack Madinah. However, their plan failed due to the Treaty of Hudaybiyah.

The Messenger of God protected Madinah from the polytheists by signing the treaty with them. However, the north side (where Khaybar Jews lived) was still deprived of security. It was necessary for the acceleration of the Islamic development to make the north secure.

Besides, the greatest trade destination for Arabs was Damascus. The Jews were on this way and started to develop as a strong element. It was a danger in terms of Islamic development.

All of those reasons made it necessary for Muslims to settle the issue of Khaybar.

Moreover, God Almighty had promised Muslims the conquest of Khaybar in the chapter of al-Fath while returning from the Expedition of Hudaybiyah.

Setting off from Madinah

The Messenger of God decided to go Khaybar and told his Companions to get ready for the expedition.

Many people who had avoided joining the Expedition of Hudaybiyah due to their fear wanted to join the Expedition of Khaybar due to the booty to be obtained from this productive and fertile city. They said, “We want to go to Khaybar with you.”

Thereupon, the Prophet said, “Those who will fight in the way of exalting the name of God as it is necessary should get ready. Nobody else can come with us. They will not be given anything out of the booty.”He declared it openly to the people of Madinah.

This order of the Messenger of God clearly teaches us that jihad in the way of God needs to be made for the sake of God and without expecting or even thinking of any material returns.

Besides, the lofty and luminous aim of war in Islam is exalting the name of God.

Upon the order of the Messenger of God, Muslims gathered at once. There were 1600 people, two hundred of whom were cavalrymen.They were the Muslims that would set off from Madinah together with the Prophet. Afterwards, when the Prophet was in Khaybar, four hundred Muslims from the tribe of Daws, among whom was Abu Hurayra, and Muslim migrants who returned from Abyssinia would join the Islamic army.

Moreover, there were twenty women together with Umm Salama, one of the wives of the Prophet, in the Islamic army that set off from Madinah. They were going to treat the wounded mujahids, cook and meet the needs of the mujahids during the battle.

The Prophet appointed Siba’ b. Urfuta from Ghifar as his deputy in Madinah and set off toward Khaybar with his army toward the end of the month of Muharram.

The mujahids who had been painted by the spiritual paint of the prophethood proceeded with enthusiasm. Amir b. Aqwa, the poet, expressed his excitement and loyalty with the following poem: “O God! If you had not guided us, we would not have found the right path; we would not pay zakah nor perform prayers. When a nation walks against us and tries to make us exit from our religion, send tranquility to our hearts and make our feet strong when we fight.”

The Prophet asked who recited the poem. When he was told that Amir b. Aqwa recited it, he said, “May God show mercy on him!”

The mujahids hesitated for a second because this prayer meant that Amir was going to be martyred.

“He is neither deaf nor absent…”

The mujahids proceeded uttering takbirs. The earth and the sky resounded with the sound of takbirs. Once, they uttered takbir very loudly: “Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! La ilaha illallahu Allahu Akbar!”

Upon this act of the Companions, the Messenger of God said, “Show mercy to your souls; do not shout so loudly. You are not addressing a dead being or a being that is absent. You are praying God, who knows and hears everything and who is near to everything from anything else.”

Yes, God, to whom we pray, is neither deaf nor absent. He is nearer to us from our jugular veins with His knowledge, will and power: “It was We who created man, and We know what dark suggestions his soul makes to him: for We are nearer to him than (his) jugular vein.”

Only He knows the most secret things in our hearts; therefore, He answers our requests and meets our needs.

The Messenger of God prayed his lofty Lord as follows wherever he stopped for a break:

“O God!  I take refuge in you from the worries about the future, sorrows of the past, weaklessness, laziness, stinginess, cowardice, heavy debts, and the inflictions of oppressors and unjust people.”

The Islamic Army is in Raji’

The Prophet reached a place called Raji’ with his army and stopped there. It was a place between Kahybar and the land of Ghatafans. There was a reason why they stopped there. Khaybar Jews had asked helped from Ghatafans and they had accepted; they said Jews could come to their castles and fight against the Islamic army together.  The Messenger of God was informed about it. In order to prevent this help, he made this offer to Ghatafans:  “If you do not help Jews, we will give you the crop of the dates of Khaybar to be conquered for one year.” However, they did not accept the offer.

Thus, the Prophet aimed to prevent any help that could come from Ghatafans to Jews by settling there. As a matter of fact, Ghatafans could not help Khaybar Jews and had to stay in their land when the Messenger of God settled in Raji’.

The Islamic Army is in front of Khaybar

Later, the Prophet left Raji’ with his army and proceeded to Khaybar. They reached Khaybar at night. The Prophet did not use to attack at night; so he waited for the morning.  

The Prayer of the Prophet

When the Messenger of God reached in front of Khaybar, he prayed as follows: “O God, who is the Lord of the skies and what they shade! O God, who is the Lord the earth and those on the earth! O God, who is the Lord the devil and those that the devil misguides! O God, who is the Lord of the winds and what they blow! We wish from you the goodness of this city, the wellbeing of its people and the goodness of everything in the city. We take refuge in you from the evil of this city, of this people and of everything in it!”

The Prophet prayed like that whenever he entered a city.

When the people of Khaybar woke up in the morning, took their tools to go to their fields and left the castle, they saw the Islamic army in front of them. They were astonished; they shouted, “There is Muhammad and his army” and ran back to their castle.

They faced something unexpected. Many of them did not think it to be possible for the Prophet to leave Madinah and to come there to fight them. Their castle was strong; they had many men; they had plenty of weapons; therefore, they thought the Messenger of God could not face the risk of fighting them. That was what they had thought. However, it did not turn out to be like that; so, they were astonished.  

When the Messenger of God saw their astonishment and that they ran back to their castle in panic, he said,“Allahu Akbar, Allaha Akbar! Kharibat Khaybar [Khaybar was destroyed]! How bad is the state of a frightened tribe when we enter their land unexpectedly!”He repeated that sentence, which indicated the conquest of Khaybar, three times.

The Enemy Front

Khaybar Jews negotiated the situation and decided to remain in the castle and defend their castle.

The Jews that would fight gathered in the Castle of Natat, their strongest castle. They put their wives and children into other castles.

Fighting Starts

Fighting started when Jews started to shoot arrows at the mujahids from the Castle of Natat, where they had gathered. The Islamic army had encamped in front of the Castle of Natat.

The first day passed like that. About fifty mujahids were wounded by the arrows shot from the castles.

On the second day, upon the order of the Messenger of God, the Islamic army moved their headquarters to Raji’. Thus, the mujahids were protected from the attacks that could come from the houses around and they would be away from the swamp where they had encamped.

The Prophet and the mujahids took their weapons every morning and went to the upper part of the Castle of Natat, fought the Jews until the evening and then returned to Raji’.

The Prophet Gets Ill

Meanwhile, the Prophet had a headache. He could not go out near the mujahids. He appointed Hazrat Abu Bakr as the leader of the army to fight the Jews. Despite severe clashes, Khaybar was not conquered. Next time, the Prophet gave his white flag to Hazrat Umar and sent him to fight together with the mujahids. Severe clashes took place again but Khaybar was not conquered.

It went on like that for seven days.

Meanwhile, one person from the Islamic army was martyred: Mahmud b. Masla­ma... While he was resting in the shade of the Castle of Natat in a very tired state due to the hot weather and severe clashes, he was wounded in the head by a stone thrown by the Jews from the castle and was martyred three days later.

Amir b. Aqwa is martyred

Meanwhile, Amir b. Aqwa and Marhab, one of the famous heroes of the people of Khaybar encountered. They started to swing their swords against each other. When Amir hit Marhab’s leg severely with his sword, the blade of his own sword moved toward his leg and cut the vein in the middle. He was taken to the headquarters of the Islamic army in a wounded state. He died there due to the wound.The Prophet had pointed out before reaching Khaybar that he would be martyred.

The People of Daws Join the Islamic Army

Tufayl b. Amr, the poet, the leader of the Daws tribe had talked to the Prophet when he was in Makkah and become a Muslim. Since then, he had invited his tribe to Islam.

Tufayl b. Amr went to Madinah with about four hundred Muslims from his tribe in the 7th year of the Migration. When they heard that the Prophet went to Khaybar to fight, they came to Khaybar and joined the Islamic army and fought against the Jews.

Abu Hurayra, who was going to be famous later, was among the four hundred people.Abu Hurayra, who met the Messenger of God in Khaybar, joined the people of Suffa and never left the Prophet after that. Since God Almighty granted him a strong memory, he narrated many hadiths. He said, “Abdullah Ibn Umar knows more hadiths than me; he wrote what he heard but I did not write.”

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

I saw someone recently accuse Peter of being immoral, of being selfish and ‘gaslighting’ of his friends and family in withholding his secret from them. 

My kneejerk reaction to that is to defend the character, but I sat down and really tried to inquire about the question.

My conclusion is twofold:

It depends upon the context and

He wasn’t being very nice in deceiving them...but it was far from immoral or anything else for him to do so.

I really hate cynical hot takes on the character like that so let’s talk about it.

For a microcosm I’m going to be using Peter’s more iconic supporting cast members circa the Silver Age when he was at ESU, specifically up until issue #122.

Why? 

Well to examine Peter in high school is rather redundant. However much slack you could arguably cut college era Peter for his youthfulness, you go further for High school Peter. Also he didn’t have many friends in the first place. Finally the college era simply contains the most iconic iterations of Peter’s supporting cast and social group.

I’m also not looking at every supporting cast member because who cares that he didn’t confide in Josh (do you even remember him) or Jameson (obvious).

  Before I begin to look at any of these characters we should properly contextualize things.

Peter’s secret is no laughing matter.

It’s more than just his sense of privacy and anonymity being violated.

It’s more even than his ability to have a freer hand in fighting crime and thus work faster and more efficiently, saving more people.

If people find out who he is then between the law, Jameson, criminals and super villains, it’s open season for everyone Peter cares about or is too closely connected to him, not to mention Peter himself.

Peter’s experiences with Norman Osborn learning his secret in ASM #39 alone were a major example of what he risks, of how dangerous and violent, his life could become if even one bad person learnt his secret.

And the fact is the more people who know his secret, the more likely it is that it will become compromised. Even telling just one person, if they are the wrong person, could have devastating results.

Whomever Peter potentially trusts must be able to keep a secret, keep a secret under pressure, not give anything away, be able to deal with that massive burden day in and day out and above all else be loyal to him and stand a good chance of remaining loyal to him.

A great example of what it could mean to trust someone too hastily is provided in MIles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man. The young Miles reveals his identity to his girlfriend Kate Bishop and in turn she reveals it to her parents who are in fact HYDRA agents.

Whilst this is an extreme example it nevertheless illustrates the extreme risk of trusting the wrong person with something like this.

We must keep this in mind going forward.

One final thing to keep in mind is the timeline. We’re bouncing around a bit here but we’re essentially looking at broadly Peter’s start of college to Gwen’s death (ASM #31-ASM #121). We don’t have a pinned down timeframe for that. But we do know Peter’s college years lasted about 4 years, which is standard. 2 of those years elapsed between Gwen’s death and the 1970s Clone Saga. We then got 30+ issues until Peter graduated.

Those 30+ issues combined with ASM #31-121 must therefore account for another 2 years and given how the latter is a larger span of issues than the former ASM #31-121 can logically be presumed to transpire across over a year.

For the purposes of this essay, we are presuming 18 months.

Let’s tackle these guys one by one.

  Aunt May: Beyond a doubt from Peter’s point of view absolutely not could he reveal his secret to Aunt May.

  Nowdays we might argue it was corny, possibly sexist, possibly just dumb and convenient writing to have May be so frail that learning his secret would kill her. 

Nevertheless though, that was genuinely what he believed.

Now for sure Peter didn’t tell May his secret before this...but in fairness to him he was young, dumb and she did mention more than once how she didn’t approve or like Spider-Man. Coupled with his teenage concern that she’d hate him for his role in Ben’s death it’s entirely sympathetic that Peter would keep her in the dark, not to mention he knew how much she already worried about him. 

Furthermore whilst the idea of a big shock being fatal to her wasn’t brought up before ASM #39, you could very easily argue that Peter in observing her age, trips to the hospital and frailty made a perfectly sound decision to not put her through any huge shocks or massive concerns for him.

Going forward Peter maintaining the secret can be viewed as a force of habit and to be frank even in Len Wein’s run May in the mid-late 1970s May was keeling over from too much stress and stimulation. Before that in ASM #144 she already went to the hospital upon laying eyes on a seemingly resurrected Gwen Stacy. Learning her nephew was Spider-Man? The idea that very well could’ve killed her was an entirely reasonable presumption for Peter to hold going forward.

  Thus not telling her is not selfish on his part, it’s literally saving May’s life.

  By extension it also adds fuel for him to maintain his secret in general. It isn’t even that villains could target Aunt May, it’s that merely finding out could kill her as far as Peter knows.

 Flash Thompson: This one is also rather easy.

Peter and Flash were rivals in high school. They were rivals still in college but began to mellow. It took Gwen dying and Peter losing his home for the two to truly start to connect and that bad blood was still cropping up from time to time thereafter.

In the silver age though they were simply not nearly close enough for Peter to entrust something as dangerous as his secret to someone who’d shown so little trust and loyalty to him as Peter Parker. Flash may even in Peter’s mind resented learning his hero was the guy who had such a bad history with. It didn’t help that even though they mellowed somewhat in college Flash’s trips in the military meant he and Peter spent less time together TO get to know one another.

Mary Jane Watson: Of course with hindsight we know that MJ was aware of who Peter was and was totally trustworthy.

But Peter didn’t.

He was fooled by the scatterbrained party girl facade, the woman who seemed zany enough to be impressed by a big hole in a wall.

From his perspective MJ also didn’t seem all that loyal. As a friend they were not that close, merely going out a few times, bumping into one another at Anna or May’s, and hanging out as part of the larger group.

Yes MJ was seemingly interested in him due to her flirtations but from Peter’s POV at best this was her having some fun and at worst it was her just being like that with most people.

Also from Peter’s POV MJ crossed the line at times in her flirtations with him given her relationship with his friend Harry. If she was not particularly serious or loyal with him as a girlfriend there was little reason for her to trust her as a friend with a life or death secret.

If anything from Peter’s POV MJ was the most likely to spill the beans inadvertantly. It was a concern he held even up to the 1980s when she did reveal she knew the truth.

Harry Osborn: From a certain point of view, Harry seems like the best candidate for Peter to confide in.

He was Peter’s best friend and roommate after all.

The thing is...people do tend to exaggerate that. For sure they were friends, probably one another’s best friends even. But the term ‘best friends’ denotes images of staying up late to play video games, hitting the clubs, making a routine of catching movies together or regularly shooting the breeze.

This wasn’t the nature of Peter and Harry’s relationship. They hung out together of course, but their studies coupled with Peter’s relationship, work and Spidey troubles meant that they didn’t spend much on panel quality time together, at least not outside the main group. 

It happened, but not as much as you’d think.

They cared about each other, but not to the extent the films and TV shows might play up.

In a sense Harry was Peter’s best friend almost by default. As in he was relatively speaking the person who outside of romance or family, was closest to him.

Harry though was also initially a bully towards Peter. He was initially jealous and resentful over Peter and Gwen’s relationship and at times showed similar frustrations regarding MJ’s attraction to Peter. And all that is before you talk about his major drug problem, how many pills would Harry take to cope with the burden of being Spider-Man’s BFF?

All these factors combined made Harry probably too unreliable a candidate for Peter to confide in. 

But the single biggest problem...was his Dad.

Harry had major issues with his Dad and was damaged over losing his mother. Peter didn’t know just how deep those scars went but he could tell there were problems even early into their relationship.

 Now Harry’s issues alone should realistically have made Peter think twice about confiding in him.

But the fact that his Dad was also one of his villains, the one villain who’d know who he was if not for a case of inconsistent amnesia?

It was a non-starter.

If Peter told Harry, Harry (frequently vulnerable and ever keen to please his father) would be extremely likely to let something slip to Norman. Or worse simply confide in Norman.

If Norman rediscovered his identity it vastly increased the possibility of him regaining his memories of being the Green Goblin and then game over.

In fact given Norman’s sometimes ruthless businessman life (even before he go his powers) along with his connections to J. Jonah Jameson and another senior gentleman we will be discussing below, Norman learning the truth was a huge risk even if he didn’t remember he was the Goblin.

Not to mention to ask Harry to keep this a secret from his own father whom he valued so highly would’ve been a humongous ask of Peter’s. Harry may simply have refused to do it, more than likely believing his father could also be trusted.

Gwen Stacy: Perhaps the most obvious candidate was Peter’s girlfriend.

Gwen as a confidant was a non-starter early in their relationship when she was a bully. And the same goes for later on when she blames Spidey for her Dad’s death. She was so hung up on it from Peter’s POV convincing her otherwise wasn’t really an option (this was confirmed by Gwen’s clone’s reaction to learning his secret in Spec Annual #8); also Peter’s decision made particularly more sense in light of an issue discussed below.

But later on when they had grown closer and were making no secret of how much they loved one another?

Shouldn’t Peter have told her?

Shouldn’t he have been fair to her in letting her in on the big secret?

Well actually...he did....and she took it terribly!

In ASM #87 a sickly and dazed Peter revealed his identity to Gwen, MJ, Harry and Captain Stacy.

Gwen broke down in tears, arguably becoming borderline hysterical. She didn’t want Peter’s news to be true.

Her dialogue and reaction pretty much indicate when confronted with the truth her instinct was to believe the worst of Peter.

To believe not that the stories of how horrible Spider-Man was were in fact lies because she knew Peter, but rather her loving boyfriend was in fact a pretense in truth being the menace Spider-Man.

Now this issue alone would have both confirmed Peter’s worst fears of compromising his identity on simply a social level (he would be rejected) and also persuaded him that it’s best NOT to confide in any of the people in that room, all of whom were his closest friends.

But was he being unreasonable in lying to Gwen even before this issue?

Not really no.

Gwen’s character had come to show itself as a woman who broke down in tears very easily, someone who needed her Daddy’s shoulder to support her, someone who couldn’t look after herself all that well and just...not all that strong of a person.

Asking someone like that to shoulder the huge burden of a life or death secret, over someone they are in love with no less, is practically cruel.

From Peter’s POV, Gwen wasn’t made of strong enough stuff to shoulder that burden; arguably the same went for Harry.

Even if she just couldn’t handle the stress of being Spider-Man’s girlfriend and they broke up and she left NYC, she’d still wander through life having to keep in a secret that could get Peter, Aunt May, her, and her friends murdered.

A horrible fate for the type of person Gwen seemed to be, but more importantly from Peter’s POV...she didn’t even seem that capable of handling it. Nevermind she’d suffer if she kept the secret, she simply didn’t come across as though she’d ever be able to.

This was the woman after all who, if memory serves, was concerned over Peter merely taking pictures of Spider-Man. How was she going to cope over him being Spider-Man?

Well there was one way she could cope. The same way she coped with alot of things.

Turning to her father for support.

And that...was yet another major reason NOT to tell her!

Captain Stacy: We know now George Stacy knew Peter was Spider-Man and protected that secret.

But Peter didn’t. 

Captain Stacy seemed like a nice, honorable man though. An upstanding citizen through and through. And he liked Peter a lot.

So, why shouldn’t Peter confide in him?

...Because he had major police connections.

Spider-Man’s relationship with the police was testy at best. They’d been after him more than once.

Peter liked George Stacy but he had no reason at all to believe George would be a good secret keeper, especially when the secret he was keeping was in essence being an accomplice to vigilantism. Peter couldn’t be 100% sure that George wouldn’t value the law over Peter’s own brand of justice. Or that he wouldn’t trust the authorities to keep him, Gwen, Peter and Peter’s friends and family safe, which would involve even more people knowing. Possibly even Peter going public.

On top of all this, telling George would mean either telling Gwen or else asking George to lie to his own daughter which wasn’t going to happen. In fact Peter asking GWEN to lie to her own father wasn’t going to happen either. Gwen and her Dad were simply too close, with Gwen arguably caring more for her father than for Peter. Asking either of them to choose between Peter and their closest family would be cruel and just a non-starter.

So with the Stacys, Peter’s dilemma wasn’t that he’d have to trust one of them, but both. One who seemed like he could keep a secret but had close connections to people who could ruin his life, the other someone who didn’t seem like she could keep a secret at all.

Remember what I said, the more people who know the more likely it is for a secret to get out.

Mathematically either Stacy was a bad bet.

It didn’t help that George, Jameson and Norman all knew one other and that George more specifically had connections to someone else...

Joe Robertson: Robbie is another guy we know with hindsight was totally trustworthy, but at the time, he just didn’t seem that way.

He seemed like a nice guy of course, but how well did Peter actually know him?

How close was he to him?

A lot LESS close than Robbie seemed to be with Jameson.

Jameson, he of the Spider-Man smear campaign infamy. He of the Spider Slayers and Scorpion creation business.

Robbie wasn’t just close to Jameson on a social level, he literally worked in the same building with him, interacting with him regularly.

And, similar to George, Robbie seemed a man of integrity to the point where him lying to the public about who Peter was would be a questionable bet to place on him.

Compounding everything we’ve looked at is two key factors.

The first is that Peter grew up lonely and bullied. He didn’t have any peers to really trust and so when he got them, trusting them with his most valuable secret, the thing that could destroy him, Aunt May, them, everything in his life, would likely have been something he’d have found hard to do.We might also argue that in finding friendship and a social group for the first time in his life Peter might’ve been inclined to do what he could to not push them away, which he (not unreasonably) believed revealing his identity would do.

The second more important point is...he hadn’t known any of these people for that long.

For sure, you can forge a deep connection with someone in a short space of time for various reasons.

But given how Peter wasn’t spending most of his time with these people, and what time he was was hardly intimate quality time in most cases...would he have a truly ‘deep’ connection with any of these people?

No...they are just people he’s known for less than 2 years, probably around 18 months tops. He wasn’t even friendly with all of them for all that time either.

So all in all...Peter wasn’t nice in deceiving his friends.

But...it was also an entirely reasonable course of action to take.

[metacog]

Herbert Simon On Competition

(This post was excerpted from Chapter 7 of Models of My Life by Herbert Simon. Simon won the Nobel Prize in Economics and the Turing Award; his biography is a wonderful recollection of the life of an academic). Two other considerations have been of much greater importance than money for the path my career took: my attitudes toward competition, and the criteria that, at choice points, directed me down one path rather than another. This is perhaps a good place to review the rules of play, as I conceived them. The record makes clear that I have been, and am, a competitive person, and in addition to the intrinsic satisfactions of academic work, I have never been insensitive to the implicit competition with others that pursuit of a career entails. A highly competitive person has a hard row to hoe. There is no satisfaction in winning a competition unless it is a stiff and fair one. Stiff is easy to define; it is stiff if one’s own realistic assessment of one’s abilities make the odds long—the longer the odds, the greater satisfaction on winning. Fair is harder to define, for if one wins a contest against long odds, there must be a reason. The odds weren’t really long; they only appeared to be so. Isn’t it unfair to appear to be an underdog when one really isn’t? Let’s start with some obvious distinctions: A professional gambler needs to win in order to earn his living. Fairness is not his concern. He tries to be unfair in various ways: Keeping cards up his sleeve is one way that the rest of us universally deplore; the morality of concealing his skill to attract dupes is hardly less questionable. Fairness means at least an honest deal (no hidden cards) and no intentional concealment of one’s abilities. How do these criteria apply to the life of science? I advise my graduate students to pick a research problem that is important (so that it will matter if it is solved), but one for which they have a secret weapon that gives some prospect of success. Why a secret weapon? Because if the problem is important, other researchers as intelligent as my students will be trying to solve it; my students are likely to come in first only by having access to some knowledge or research methods the others do not have. For example, in tackling the problem of understanding human thinking, which will be the topic of chapters 13 and 14, the secret weapon that my research partners, Al Newell, Cliff Shaw, and I had was access to a digital computer, and an idea—derived from contact with computers—that it could be used as a general processor of symbols. The computer and the idea were not available to Gestalt psychologists who otherwise might have written the first programs for heuristic search. We were very pleased in the spring of 1956 when we realized that we had won this competition, that we were the first to explicate the symbolic processes that enable people to think and solve problems. But hadn’t we been unfair to take advantage of our private knowledge and our private access to computers? What merit was there in winning such a one-sided contest? One can see from this example that “fairness” in science is a rather strange, even arbitrary, concept. It isn’t unfair to be smarter than other people (but be sure you aren’t deceiving yourself!). It isn’t unfair to work harder than they do. It isn’t unfair to happen to know relevant things that they don’t know. It isn’t even unfair to happen to have the most powerful piece of equipment in the world. Nevertheless, in the contests we design for ourselves, we always have in mind some implicit criteria of fairness, and our victory is spoiled if the criteria are violated. As a boy, I used my intelligence to win in academic competition, but somehow felt superior to those who reached the same scores with less intelligence but by dint of more effort. Hence, when I was not valedictorian in my high school class, but graduated third (and shortly thereafter was also third in the University of Chicago Freshman Week examinations), I was not bothered by my ranking, for I knew that I had worked much less hard than my victorious competitors. They were overachievers! In my subsequent career, I have certainly had no aversion to being a workaholic, and have not enjoyed my successes less for having worked for them. In the high school environment, where bookworms were not suffered gladly, it was not “fair” to win by studying harder. In the world of science, with no holds barred, overachievement was the normal route to success. Nonetheless, I have probably never quite gotten over the “Look, Ma, no hands” syndrome. Success is especially pleasant when it is effortless—but it seldom is. To save appearances, one simply redefines work as fun (which, unaccountably, it usually becomes). But then, how about the long odds—the special pleasures of an underdog victory? In reviewing the record, I observe that I have always been pretty careful in setting the odds, and have usually behaved like an honest professional gambler, if that is not a contradiction in terms, taking my advantages where I could find them, never eschewing a (legitimate) secret weapon that I found at hand. In giving up thoughts of a possible political career, I felt that being a nonveteran and a Jew was too much of a good thing as far as underdogging was concerned. In one respect, however, I have quite consciously played the underdog. I have never believed that I had to be at Harvard or Stanford or M.I.T. to win the academic game. While I was a student at the University of Chicago, the university still played Big Ten football, although it rarely won a game. When one member of the team, Jay Berwanger, nevertheless made All-American during a season in which every game was lost, there was no doubt that his achievement had special luster. It was a personal achievement that owed nothing to the organization he belonged to. Although I don’t believe I consciously thought of it in this way, that was my ideal: to win without conspicuous social support, whether from family or university. Then it would be certain that I had won “fairly,” and not just by using the hidden, or not so hidden, weapon of a superior environment. I was exceedingly reluctant to leave Illinois Tech even when tempted by schools of greater reputation, and when I finally did leave in 1949, I felt a little disloyal in abandoning the challenge of helping raise IIT in the ranks of academe. Fairness is a tricky concept. Evidently it is not unfair to win the raffle of the genes—with respect to either intelligence or industriousness. It is not unfair to have the experiences or to be at the places that provide one with a secret weapon. It is unfair to inherit merit from the prestige of one’s family or organization. Put this way, the distinctions seem highly arbitrary, and I am not prepared to defend them. I simply report the rules of the game that guided my career and conditioned my feelings of success in competition. As it turned out, they provided me with an enjoyable and winnable game.

[multiverseforger]

Greer Grant was a native of Chicago, Illinois. She was a sophomore at the University of Chicago when she met her future husband, policeman Bill Nelson. She left college to marry him. The marriage was a strong one, flawed only by Bill's overprotective nature. Bill was killed in an off-duty shooting, and Greer had to find a job of her own. After weeks of searching, she ran into her old physics professor, Dr. Joanne Tumulo.

Dr. Tumulo was working on the human potential experiments that turned Shirlee Bryant into the super powered villainess called the Cat. Not trusting the test subject chosen by her financial backer, Malcolm Donalbain, Greer persuaded Dr. Tumulo to let her undergo the experimental treatments as well. She emerged with superhuman physical and mental capabilities. When Donalbain had Dr. Tumulo's lab destroyed with dynamite, Greer donned one of the dozens of Cat costumes that she had created and the doctor had appropriated and set out to put an end to his scheme. With her new abilities, she adapted quickly to the strange garb and wrecked Donalbain's headquarters. Rather than let himself be touched by the Cat's raking claws, Donalbain committed suicide. A fire set off by the ruined equipment destroyed Donalbain's headquarters.[6] Greer embarked on a brief crimefighting career as the Cat.[7]

Another of Donalbain's Cat costumes surfaced years later, when Patsy Walker discovered it while accompanying the Avengers. She donned it and called herself the Hellcat.[8]

TigraEdit

"The Tigra" is the historical defender/champion of the Cat People, a humanoid race created by sorcery during the Dark Ages. Concerned about the Cat People's uncontrollable population growth and savagery, a community of sorcerers eventually banished the entire original Cat People population to a demonic netherworldly realm.

The two very first Cat People, who were themselves very capable scientists and sorcerers, were able to evade banishment through their magic. They continued to live among humanity in secret and worked to refine the Cat People's biology to make a peaceful integration into the human population possible. They were constantly persecuted and required a protector. Discovering that the original spell for transforming cats into Cat People like themselves had been rendered inoperative, they created a process combining science, sorcery, and focused mental power that could transform a human female into a "Tigra", a humanoid tiger-like being with abilities that far surpassed those of either race.

This unnamed first Tigra defended the Cat People with great effectiveness, and allowed a new community to establish themselves on Earth, separate from the group that had been banished. This new population continued to live amongst humanity in secrecy through the present day, relying on enchantments that cast the illusion of a human appearance.

Nothing is known about the other Tigras who may have existed, or even if there have been more than two. At the time when Greer was transformed into Tigra, "the Tigra" was only remembered by the Cat People as a distant, but powerful, legend. It has been strongly implied that only one Tigra can exist at any given time.

Dr. Tumulo was revealed to be one of these modern Cat People.[9] When members of HYDRA tracked Tumolo down to obtain "the Final Secret" (the Black Death plague, which was another creation of the first two Cat People), Greer once again donned the Cat costume and drove them off. However, she was mortally injured by a blast from one of their alpha radiation pistols.

Greer regained consciousness in a Baja California cave, surrounded by a gathering of Cat People summoned by Tumolo. Rapidly dying from the radiation's effects, Greer was offered one last hope of survival: a combination of ancient science, sorcery, and mental power that would transform her into Tigra, the Cat People's legendary half-human, half-cat warrior. She readily consented, began wearing only her black bikini from this time on, and arose from the ceremony as a superhumanly-powered human-animal hybrid. Striped fur covered her entire body, her hands and feet bore razor-sharp claws, her teeth became long and pointed, and her eyes were now cat's eyes. In addition to superhuman strength and senses, she also gained many of the drives and instincts of a cat. Soon after, she encountered the Werewolf.[9]

Though initially unable to change back to her human self, Tigra received from the Cat People a mystical cat-headed amulet that allowed her to first create the illusion of her human form and later to change at will.[10] She seldom made use of it, preferring her feline superpowered form and mostly abandoning her life as Greer Grant Nelson.

Greer resumed her superhero career, with most of the world unaware that the woman who briefly fought crime as the Cat was now the feline Tigra. She fought alongside most of Marvel's heavy-hitters in wide-ranging adventures. She first battled Kraven the Hunter,[11] and then teamed with Spider-Man against Kraven.[12] She also became a friend and associate of the Fantastic Four.[13]

When the Avengers found themselves shorthanded, Moondragon used her mental powers to compel a dozen unaffiliated heroes (apparently selected at random) to travel to Avengers Mansion and audition for the vacant position. Though he disapproved of Moondragon's methods, Captain America offered Tigra a spot on the team.[14]

Although Tigra's first tenure with the Avengers was brief, she served well. She also aided the X-Men against Deathbird.[15] Her time with the Avengers was highlighted by her saving the world from destruction by the Molecule Man single-handed, who intended to consume the planet's energy, like Galactus. Alone among the Avengers, she was able to get close enough to him to talk him out of his plan. She convinced him to seek help from a therapist and the Molecule Man has ceased to be a threat to this day.[16]

The Avengers fought the Ghost Rider, who blasted the team with his terror-inducing hellfire. The nature of Tigra's powers caused her to be affected by the exposure on a far deeper level than her teammates. She was left with great self-doubts about her qualifications as a member of Earth's premier superhero team, particularly alongside such heavy-hitters as Thor and Iron Man. Ultimately she resigned her membership, leaving the team on good terms.[17]

She resumed her modeling career, moving to San Francisco when employers on the East Coast proved unreceptive to the idea of a cat person model.[18] There she befriended private investigator Jessica Drew,[19] and aided her on several cases, but had no better luck with modeling work there than on the East Coast and accepted an offer from the Vision to become a founding member of the Avengers' new West Coast-based team.[20] Alongside the new West Coast Avengers, she fought Graviton, and became a close friend of Wonder Man.[21] She also began a flirtation with Henry Pym.[22]

While with the West Coast Avengers, she seemed to have shed the remainders of her hellfire-induced self-doubt. However, the cat-like aspects of her personality (such as a penchant for savagery and a need for affection) had begun to dominate her human intellect, causing her increasing distress. She sought help from her Avengers teammates in overcoming the "cat" side of her personality, which had caused her to become the lover of both Wonder Man and Henry Pym. She also encountered and fought the Werewolf.[23] She was transported with the West Coast Avengers by Balkatar to the realm of the Cat People. Ultimately, she came into contact with the banished colony of Cat People, whose king agreed to resolve her crisis in exchange for carrying out her historical function by murdering the Cat People's longtime foe, Master Pandemonium.[24] Though she initially accepted their terms,[25] when the critical moment came at an arena in the Cat People's realm, Tigra refused to violate the Avengers' code against killing, and failed to kill Master Pandemonium. The Cat People stripped her of her "Tigra soul" (the peculiar articulation of her Tigra powers in this demonic realm). She was reduced to her normal, pre-transformation human state.[26]

The Hellcat, who had accompanied Greer and the West Coast Avengers, lent Greer the super-suit that she used to wear as the Cat, and a battle ensued. As the tide began to turn against the Cat People, their leader released the "Tigra soul" as a means of confusing Greer. The tactic backfired: the cat-suit had been designed by a Cat Person (Tumolo) specifically to amplify Greer's human capabilities, so instead of Greer being dominated by the "Tigra soul" as before, the suit caused her human and feline personalities to successfully integrate together.[26]

This time, Greer's transformation into the legendary cat-warrior was much more complete than before. Her strength and abilities were far greater than they were originally. Her appearance became more feline, and she grew a tail like the rest of the Cat People. She also lost the ability to shift back to a human form, though as before she showed no sense of loss for her human identity.[26]

Her transformation was so complete and the Tigra legend was so strong among the Cat People that they immediately ceased hostilities. Tigra continues to hold a position of significant reverence among the Cat People.[volume & issue needed]

The transformation also resolved the conflicts between the human and feline aspects of her personality. Tigra could now exploit the full range and ferocity of her abilities without fear of going so far that she would lose control of her actions, and she could also indulge her natural feline inclinations (such as hunting and chasing prey for enjoyment) without feeling guilty or self-conscious.[27] This integration was confirmed in concrete ways immediately upon the team's return to Earth. Tigra performed a sport dive off the highest span of the Golden Gate Bridge, exhibiting no signs of any injury or fear of the water. She also terminated her ongoing relationship with Hank Pym, explaining that although she no longer felt a cat-like need to seek affection at every opportunity, she had no conventional human desire to be tied down to one mate, either.[28]

She was captured by Graviton at one point, but freed the Avengers from him.[29] Around this time, the Arthurian Lady of the Lake summoned the West Coast Avengers to England to aid the superhero team Excalibur. With the others, Tigra ventured into the realm of limbo to help stop Doctor Doom's mad plans to gain power at the cost of killing everyone in Britain.[volume & issue needed]

Tigra briefly left the West Coast Avengers in a dispute over the Avengers' policy against killing. Tigra stated that she believed by her very nature that killing prey was sometimes necessary.[volume & issue needed] She joined Mockingbird and the Moon Knight in forming an independent group.[volume & issue needed]

After returning to the team, Tigra inexplicably underwent another "inversion" and transformed into a more animal-like feline form, losing her human intellect completely and becoming a danger to her fellow Avengers.[30] This was possibly due to the reality-warping machinations of Immortus, who at the time sought to distract the team so as to have unimpeded access to the Scarlet Witch. Tigra was forcibly shrunken down to sub-house cat size by Hank Pym and kept in a cage in his lab while the team tended to other urgent matters.[31] She escaped and traveled into suburbia, where she lived as a wild animal.[volume & issue needed] She was ultimately rescued and restored to her former appearance and stability by noted witch Agatha Harkness, who was an associate of the West Coast Avengers at the time.[32]

Tigra resumed her membership in the West Coast Avengers. On an intelligence-gathering mission in Japan, she and Iron Man battled a team of Asian supervillains known as the Pacific Overlords. During the fight, Iron Man was incapacitated and Tigra suffered a deep, critical stab wound to the abdomen before dispatching her attackers and making her escape. She flew away in the Avengers' Quinjet, intending to report back to headquarters on the Overlords' plans, but severe loss of blood caused her to lose consciousness and crash land in Arnhem Land, an Aboriginal territory in northern Australia. Rescued by Aborigines, she decided to stay put while she recovered from her wounds, naming Spider-Woman (Julia Carpenter) as her replacement. She briefly made Arnhem Land her home, enjoying the company of the Aborigines and the pleasures of living wild.[33][34]

After the West Coast Avengers disbanded, Tigra resumed her wide-ranging adventures. Though no longer an active Avenger, she continued to participate in Avengers operations when needed as a member of the team's extended family.[volume & issue needed]

With the aid of a new transformation device to disguise her true identity from her fellow officers, Tigra spent some time on the New York City police force. She focused much of her time on a personal case and in combating a force of vigilante police officers.[35]

Later, mystical forces which attacked all Avengers brought her to the Avengers Mansion. There, she and all the other Avengers were entrapped by Morgan le Fay, to live out in an alternate universe where le Fay ruled, fighting alongside the others as one of the "queen"'s guards under the name "Grimalkin". After the defeat of Morgan, Tigra went off into space with Starfox to enjoy the pleasures found there. She appeared off and on, having a series of adventures as part of the ad hoc space-faring Avengers Infinity team in which she helps in preventing an extra-universal race from destroying all life in our universe.[36]

Tigra returned to Earth with the Avengers Infinity team during the Maximum Security storyline, during which she helped to save the Earth from becoming a penal colony for alien criminals.[volume & issue needed] She played a particularly crucial role in events when the Infinity team were captured after discovering the Kree's role in recent events, with the Kree intending to lobotomize the team and make it appear as though they had destroyed another planet; due to the attention the Kree had paid to keeping the more powerful team members contained, they were unprepared for Tigra, the weakest member, to escape her bonds by returning to her smaller human form, allowing her to escape her shackles and free her teammates in time to reveal the truth.[37]

Civil WarEdit

Tigra fought along Iron Man's side during the Civil War. She supported the Superhuman Registration Act, although she expressed sincere concern about the fate of Captain America and the other heroes who opposed the Act and turned fugitive. Nonetheless, in Civil War Files, Tigra was listed not merely as having registered to comply with the law, but also as having become an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. to actively aid in its enforcement.[volume & issue needed]

Pretending to switch allegiances, she infiltrated Captain America's Secret Avengers team as a mole. She passed information to Iron Man undetected until the very end of the conflict, when she was discovered and "outed" by Hulkling, Captain America's own spy among the pro-registration forces. Captain America kept quiet, exploiting her presence to feed disinformation to Iron Man about his team's plan to rescue imprisoned heroes later that day.[38]

The InitiativeEdit

Greer has been identified as one of the 142 registered superheroes who are part of the Fifty State Initiative.[39][40] She served as a founding instructor at Camp Hammond, the training compound for the Initiative, and resumed her romantic relationship with fellow superhero Yellowjacket,[41] unaware that he had been kidnapped and replaced by a Skrull duplicate.

Tigra was captured by Chilean soldiers controlled by the Puppet Master, who sculpted a figure in her likeness and thus put her under his mental control. He used her and the other superhuman women he had enslaved (including Stature, Dusk, Araña, and Silverclaw) as elite guards at his South American base of operations. Tigra and the rest of the heroes were restored to their normal free will when Ms. Marvel and her S.H.I.E.L.D. strike team liberated the compound and killed the Puppet Master.[42]

Later she was shot and severely beaten by the Hood in her home in retaliation for having beaten Jigsaw, a member of his fledgling super-criminal organization. While Tigra was incapacitated, the Hood threatened the life of her mother, and Jigsaw stole the mystic talisman she occasionally uses to transform to her human identity.[43]

The Hood and his entire crew later appeared at her apartment, demanding to know the location of the New Avengers' secret headquarters. Tigra intentionally gave him information that led them into an ambush. She joined in the battle and personally beat down the Hood, saving the life of Iron Fist in the process. By the time of the Hood's second appearance in her apartment, she had completely recovered from her injuries and had either reacquired her talisman or replaced it with a close facsimile.[44]

Tigra continued to serve in the Initiative as a senior staff member of the central organization, and was the leader of the Arkansas Initiative team "the Battalion,",[45][46] until the Initiative was taken over by Norman Osborn and she learned of the Hood's role as his right-hand man.[47] She has also appeared as a member of She-Hulk's "Lady Liberators" team.[48]

After the Skrull invasion, Tigra reveals to the Hellcat and Trauma that she believes herself to be pregnant by Yellowjacket, though she is unsure if the baby is the real Hank's or the Skrull impostor's. She tells Trauma that she has decided to terminate the pregnancy regardless of the father's identity.[46] She later decides to leave the camp for Arkansas, planning to train Razorback, who had been replaced by a Skrull and recently returned, and was eager to take the impostor's place in the Battalion.[49] When she was nearly injured by Ragnarok's hammer, she seemed to show concern for the baby.[50]

When Norman Osborn told her that he was going to take her baby for genetic testing and that moreover he had made the Hood the chief operating officer of the Initiative, Tigra went on the run with Gauntlet despite having been offered her choice of prestige assignments as a registered hero. She co-founded the Avengers Resistance,[47] choosing its name as a means of restoring honor to the legendary team's traditions. Now wanted as an outlaw, she began exacting personal vengeance on members of the Hood's gang, starting by savagely attacking and beating one of the Brothers Grimm inside his home.[51] She serves as the team's de facto leader.

Tigra is later approached by Ultra Girl, asking why she and the Avengers Resistance are going after the villains in the Initiative. In response, she shows her a video of the Hood savagely beating her. Now, she wants to get back at them, by showing them that they are vulnerable...by making them scared and broken. Tigra later ambushes Mandrill.[52]

She claimed her final retribution against the Hood not on the battlefield, but after he was rendered powerless and taken into custody. After telling him that she was perfectly comfortable with the idea of taking his life, the sight of his baby in the hallway outside convinced her that dooming him to either a life in prison or on the run would be a far worse punishment, as he would never get to hold his child ever again; and to kill him would jeopardize her future with her own baby. Tigra gave birth to what is apparently a normal Cat Person kitten during the transition between Tony Stark's administration of the Initiative and Norman Osborn's; the gestation period was a mere two months, due to her feline physiology. She hid the infant from Osborn, entrusting its care to the Cat People until the end of hostilities. She named the child William, after her late husband.[53]

Heroic AgeEdit

At the conclusion of the Siege, Tigra stated a new motivation not only to restore the good name of the Avengers, but also to ensure that her child will grow up in a safer world.[53]

Following the arrest and incarceration of Norman Osborn, the dismantling of his criminal superhero teams, and the repeal of the Superhuman Registration Act, the President names Steve Rogers (the original Captain America) as America's new head of national security. Rogers seeks to assemble a collection of heroes to inspire the nation and the world as a new organization of Avengers. Tigra is among the 25 heroes he personally invites to join him in creating a new Heroic Age.[54]

Alongside Hank Pym, Quicksilver, Jocasta, Speedball and Justice, Tigra serves as part of the founding faculty of Avengers Academy, training a new generation of heroes in the traditions of the world's elite superhero team.[55]

During this time, Tigra learns that the Skrull posing as Pym was indeed William's father, but as he had disguised himself as Pym at the genetic level, it means that William is half-human, rather than half-Skrull, with Pym technically being the genetic father. After learning this, Tigra asks Pym to take care of William in the event of anything happening to her.[56]

When a former associate of The Hood plans to release the video of Tigra's beating commercially, Tigra arranges to have the footage air in its entirety during a live interview, so that her own experience may serve as an example to other trauma survivors and inspire them to seek help. During this same interview, she announces her formation of a series of "Always an Avenger" centers to provide veterans, children, spouses and any other trauma victims with needed counseling and resources.

Members of the existing Avengers Academy class react to the initial news of the video by tracking the unpowered Hood down, attacking him, and releasing video of the attack on the Internet, rather than taking the escaped Hood into custody and returning him to jail. Tigra becomes furious at their counter-heroic actions and by their refusal to appreciate the seriousness of their transgression; she summarily expels all those involved.[57] Later, after talking with the rest of the faculty staff, they decide to put all those involved on probation instead.[58]

She has slowly grown closer to Henry Pym and the two have resumed their romantic relationship.[59]

Tigra was one of 10 female heroes recruited by Misty Knight to aid her and the Valkyrie in repelling a group of Asgardian Doom Maidens. At the end of this adventure, the Valkyrie comes to realize that Tigra and three of the other heroines are among those deemed by the All-Mother to be worthy to become shield-maidens like herself, symbols of honor and valor and courage, to one day be led by the Valkyrie into battle and death.[60]

During the Secret Empire storyline, Tigra appears as a member of the Underground which is a resistance movement against HYDRA ever since they took over the United States.[61]

Tigra appeared in the Fresh Start revival of the West Coast Avengers, in which she had been changed into a giant 200-Foot tall woman with her mind set in a feral state.[62] After the new West Coast Avengers roster defeated her, they worked on stopping other feral giant women mutated into such by M.O.D.O.K. in his failed quest for love. Once returned to her original self, she thanked the WCA, went to hunt M.O.D.O.K. and wished the new WCA the best of luck.[63] During the 17th birthday party for Nadia van Dyne-Pym, the long lost daughter of Hank Pym, Tigra introduced William to Nadia as her half-brother. With the introduction serving as her birthday gift, Tigra had tears of joy that Nadia happily accepted her new brother and would be a big part in William's life

[newstfionline]

Thursday, April 29, 2021

Biden to propose free preschool, as speech details emerge (AP) President Joe Biden will call for free preschool for all three- and four-year-old children, a $200 billion investment to be rolled out as part of his sweeping American Families Plan being unveiled Wednesday in an address to Congress. The administration said the historic investment would benefit 5 million children and save the average family $13,000. It calls for providing federal funds to help the states offer preschool, with teachers and other employees earning $15 an hour. The new details are part of Biden’s $1 trillion-plus package, an ambitious next phase of his massive infrastructure investment program, this one focused on so-called human infrastructure—child care, health care, education and other core aspects of the household architecture that undergird everyday life for countless Americans. Together with Biden’s American Jobs Plan, a $2.3 trillion infrastructure investment to be funded by a corporate tax hike, they add up a whopping $4 trillion effort to fulfill his campaign vow to Build Back Better.

Navy SEALs to shift from counterterrorism to global threats (AP) Ten years after they found and killed Osama bin Laden, U.S. Navy SEALs are undergoing a major transition to improve leadership and expand their commando capabilities to better battle threats from global powers like China and Russia. The new plan cuts the number of SEAL platoons by as much as 30% and increases their size to make the teams more lethal and able to counter sophisticated maritime and undersea adversaries. That decision reflects the broader Pentagon strategy to prioritize China and Russia, which are rapidly growing their militaries and trying to expand their influence around the globe. U.S. defense leaders believe that two decades of war against militants and extremists have drained resources, causing America to lose ground against Moscow and Beijing.

Scientist: Extent of DDT dumping in Pacific is ‘staggering’ (AP) Marine scientists say they have found what they believe to be more than 25,000 barrels that possibly contain DDT dumped off the Southern California coast near Catalina Island, where a massive underwater toxic waste site dating back to World War II has long been suspected. The 27,345 “barrel-like” objects were captured in high-resolution images as part of a study by researchers at the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. They mapped more than 56 square miles (145 square kilometers) of seafloor between Santa Catalina Island and the Los Angeles coast in a region previously found to contain high levels of the toxic chemical in sediments and in the ecosystem. Historical shipping logs show that industrial companies in Southern California used the basin as a dumping ground until 1972, when the Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act, also known as the Ocean Dumping Act, was enacted. Disposing of industrial, military, nuclear and other hazardous waste was a pervasive global practice in the 20th century, according to researchers. The long-term impact on marine life and humans is still unknown, said Scripps chemical oceanographer and professor of geosciences Lihini Aluwihare, who in 2015 co-authored a study that found high amounts of DDT and other man-made chemicals in the blubber of bottlenose dolphins that died of natural causes.

Electric Vehicle Appeal Loses Steam (Nature.com/ArsTechnica) California is the largest market in the US for plug-in vehicles. But a new study in Nature Energy has found that about 20% of those early electric vehicle adopters have given up their EVs to return to fossil fuel-powered transport. Survey responders said what they liked most about their plug-ins were recharging costs, reliability, and safety. What they liked least were the driving range and convenience of charging. Not surprisingly, those who decided to keep their EVS had more access to level 2 charging (240 V AC) at home, as well as more access to charging generally.

The real crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border (Washington Post) There’s a crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border, but it isn’t the crisis that the media has been covering and that the Republican governors of Arizona and Texas recently blamed on President Biden. The crisis I’m talking about is the one that is eroding the livelihoods of U.S. citizens on the borderlands. Just ask Blanca Gallardo, 45, or her colleague Ivan Caballero, 39, two of the three workers left at La Familia, a mega-discount store in the border city of Nogales, Ariz. The store once employed 24 people. La Familia occupies a prime piece of real estate on Morley Avenue, Nogales’s Main Street. Like other retail businesses on and around this thoroughfare, La Familia depends almost entirely on shoppers who live on the other side of the border fence a short walk away—Mexicans who have not been allowed to enter the United States since March last year, when land ports of entry were closed to visa-carrying nonessential travelers in an effort to contain the coronavirus pandemic. The result has been devastating. Sheriff David Hathaway, a lifelong Nogales resident and the top law enforcement official in Santa Cruz County, one of four border counties in Arizona, said that 90 percent of local businesses have shut their doors and may never reopen. “There is no migrant crisis,” Hathaway told me. “What we have is a big economic crisis.” That’s not just a Nogales problem, though. One downtown merchant in the border city of El Paso told Border Report in November that his store had lost as much as 90 percent of its customers since last March.

López Obrador’s bid to alter Mexican Supreme Court seen as threat to judicial independence (Washington Post) He won the presidency in a landslide. His party dominates Congress. Now, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is in a battle over the country’s judiciary, as opponents and legal analysts accuse him of making an unconstitutional power grab. Lawmakers from López Obrador’s party have triggered outrage by voting to add two years to the four-year term of the Supreme Court chief justice, Arturo Zaldívar. Zaldívar is generally regarded as sympathetic to the president. As in the United States, where some Democrats want to expand the U.S. Supreme Court, there are fears that the judiciary is becoming increasingly politicized. But the Mexican measure carries especially grave implications, analysts say, because it appears to violate a constitutional limit on the chief justice’s term. López Obrador is increasingly challenging institutions created as part of Mexico’s transition to democracy, including the national elections board and the freedom-of-information institute. Critics worry that the president, who came to power as a leftist political outsider, could use his popularity to reestablish elements of the one-party system that reigned here for seven decades.

With pools closed, Peruvians turn to open-water swimming (AP) The swimmers began gathering even before dawn glimmers on Pescadores beach, plunging into the Pacific surf for one of the few athletic endeavors permitted under Peru’s strict pandemic restrictions. Swimming pools have been closed for more than a year, but government has since Oct. 30 allowed open-water swimming, even if relaxing on the beach is banned to prevent mass gatherings. Forty-three-year-old Lorena Choy said swimming “relaxes me, unstresses me. ... It helps a lot psychologically.” Swimming coach Víctor Solís, 47, said he estimated that the number of swimmers out each morning has multiplied fivefold recently.

UK to come under scrutiny in Italy’s largest mafia trial in decades (The Guardian) In a high-security, 1,000-capacity courtroom converted from a call centre, Italy’s largest mafia trial in three decades is under way in Lamezia Terme, Calabria. About 900 witnesses are set to testify against more than 350 defendants, including politicians and officials charged with being members of the ‘Ndrangheta, Italy’s most powerful criminal group. Several of the defendants will be asked to respond to charges of money laundering over establishing companies in the UK with the alleged purpose of simulating legitimate economic activity. The ‘Ndrangheta—based in the southern region of Calabria, the toe of the Italian boot—is reputed to be one of the richest and most feared criminal organisations in the world. A study by the Demoskopita Research Institute in 2013 estimated its financial strength as more than that of Deutsche Bank and McDonald’s combined, with an annual turnover of €53bn (£44bn). Investigators say the secret of its success lies in its ability to connect the underworld with the upper world, where often the “upper world” stands for London. In the last decade, hundreds of investigations have asserted how the ‘Ndrangheta has laundered billions of euros in the City.

The U.S. Built the Afghan Military Over 20 Years. Will It Last One More? (NYT) President Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that first propelled the United States into conflict, has prompted deep fears about the Afghan security forces’ ability to defend what territory remains under government control. For nearly two decades, the United States and NATO have engaged in the nation-building pursuit of training, expanding and equipping Afghanistan’s police, army and air forces, spending tens of billions of dollars in an attempt to build government security forces that can safeguard their own country. But despite this enormous effort, the undertaking has only produced a troubled set of forces that are woefully unprepared for facing the Taliban, or any other threat, on their own. What comes next is anything but certain. The Taliban already control vast amounts of the country, even with American military power present. Afghan units are rife with corruption, have lost track of the weapons once showered on them by the Pentagon, and in many areas are under constant attack. Some soldiers have not been home in years because their villages have been overtaken by the Taliban. Prospects for improvement are slim, given slumping recruitment, high casualty rates and a Taliban insurgency that is savvy, experienced and well equipped—including with weapons originally provided to the Afghan government by the United States.

In India, Illness Is Everywhere (NYT) Crematories are so full of bodies, it’s as if a war just happened. Sickness and death are everywhere. Dozens of houses in my neighborhood have sick people. One of my son’s teachers is sick. The neighbor two doors down, to the right of us: sick. Two doors to the left: sick. I’m sitting in my apartment waiting to catch the disease. That’s what it feels like right now in New Delhi with the world’s worst coronavirus crisis advancing around us. India is now recording more infections per day—as many as 350,000—than any other country has since the pandemic began, and that’s just the official number, which most experts think is a vast underestimation. New Delhi, India’s sprawling capital of 20 million, is suffering a calamitous surge. A few days ago, the positivity rate hit a staggering 36 percent—meaning more than one out of three people tested were infected. A month ago, it was less than 3 percent. The infections have spread so fast that hospitals have been completely swamped. Although New Delhi is locked down, the disease is still rampaging.

US Navy fires warning shots in new tense encounter with Iran (AP) An American warship fired warning shots when vessels of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard came too close to a patrol in the Persian Gulf, the U.S. Navy said Wednesday. The Navy said the USS Firebolt fired the warning shots after three fast-attack Guard vessels came within 68 yards (62 meters) of it and the U.S. Coast Guard patrol boat USCGC Baranoff. The incident Monday marked the second time the Navy accused the Guard of operating in an “unsafe and unprofessional” manner this month alone after tense encounters between the forces had dropped in recent years.

Hong Kong passes immigration bill, raising alarm over ‘exit bans’ (Reuters) Hong Kong’s legislature passed on Wednesday a controversial immigration bill, which lawyers, diplomats and right groups fear will give authorities unlimited powers to prevent residents and others from entering or leaving the Chinese-ruled city. The government has dismissed those fears as “complete nonsense,” saying the legislation, which will come into effect on Aug. 1, merely aims to screen illegal immigrants. The assurances, however, come in a climate of mistrust after the increasingly authoritarian path officials have taken the imposition of a sweeping national security law by Beijing last year. Lawyers say the new law will empower authorities to bar anyone, without a court order, from entering or leaving Hong Kong—essentially opening the door for mainland China-style exit bans—and fails to prevent indefinite detention for refugees. The Hong Kong Bar Association (HKBA) said in February the bill failed to explain why such powers were necessary, how they would be used and provided no limit on the duration of any travel ban, nor any safeguards against abuse.

[pawprintcooper]

  This is the TechSummit Rewind, a daily recap of the top technology headlines.

Justice Department files antitrust suit to block AT&T/Time Warner merger

The US Justice Department has filed a lawsuit to block the proposed merger between AT&T and Time Warner, saying that the combination of AT&T’s distribution networks and Time Warner’s news and entertainment products would harm competition. Time Warner is the parent company of CNN, TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, and HBO, among other properties.

“AT&T/DirectTV would hinder its rivals by forcing them to pay hundreds of millions of dollars more per year for Time Warner’s networks, and it would use its increased power to slow the industry’s transition to new and exciting video distribution models that provide greater choice for consumers. The proposed merger would result in fewer innovative offerings and higher bills for American families.”

The US Justice Department, in a complaint

In a press conference, AT&T’s executive leadership gathered in New York to rebuke the DOJ lawsuit and defend the merits and legality of the proposed $85 billion merger. According to AT&T CEO Randall Stevenson, the lawsuit “stretches the very reach of antitrust law beyond the breaking point,” but he suggested that he’s looking for a way forward.

“As we head to court we will continue to offer solutions that allows this transaction to close.”

AT&T CEO Randall Stevenson, in a press conference

However, Stevenson said that selling CNN is off the table.

High-profile media lawyer Daniel Petrocelli was also at the press conference, defending AT&T and the merger.

“The DOJ has to prove that this merger will harm competition, that this merger will harm consumers. It’s a burden that they have not met in a half a century and it’s one that they cannot and will not meet here.

“Under basic principles of law and economics, combining these two non-competing companies should pose no problem. The TV bill will not go up, and the combined company will not keep CNN, TNT, HBO, or any other network to itself. Simply put, the theories in the DOJ’s complaint filled about an hour ago simply have no proof and make no sense in the real business world. We are confident that the law and facts will prevail and that this merger will be allowed to proceed.”

Lawyer Daniel Petrocelli

Uber to buy up to 24K SUVs from Volvo equipped with autonomous technology from 2019-2021

Uber plans to buy up to 24,000 self-driving cars from Volvo. According to a statement from Volvo, it’ll provide Uber with its flagship XC90 SUVs equipped with autonomous technology as part of a non-exclusive deal from 2019 to 2021.

“Our goal was from day one to make investments into a vehicle that could be manufactured at scale.”

Uber head of automotive alliances Jeff Miller

According to Miller, a small number of cars would be purchased with equity and others would be bought with debt financing.

AWS launches Secret Region for intel agencies and their partners working with classified data

Amazon has announced that its AWS cloud computing service now offers a new region that’s specifically designed for the workloads of the U.S. Intelligence Community. The AWS Secret Region can run workloads up to the “secret” security classification level, and will complement the service’s existing $600 million contract with the CIA and other agencies for running Top Secret workloads on its cloud.

“The U.S. Intelligence Community can now execute their missions with a common set of tools, a constant flow of the latest technology, and the flexibility to rapidly scale with the mission. The AWS Top Secret Region was launched three years ago as the first air-gapped commercial cloud and customers across the U.S. Intelligence Community have made it a resounding success. Ultimately, this capability allows more agency collaboration, helps get critical information to decision makers faster, and enables an increase in our Nation’s Security.”

Amazon Web Services worldwide public sector vice president Teresa Carlson

The original, air-gapped Top Secret cloud, which AWS operates for the intelligence community, was limited to intelligence agencies. The new Secret Region is available to all government agencies and is separate from the earlier work done with the CIA and other agencies, along with the existing Amazon GovCloud.

DJI threatens legal action after researcher reports bug

An essay written by security researcher Kevin Finisterre explains that DJI’s bug bounty program isn’t off to a good start after launching in August.

Finisterre describes his interactions with DJI before and after he reported problems with the drone-maker’s security. Before getting too deep into it, he checked with DJI to see if their servers were included in the scope of the bug bounty program and DJI confirmed that they were on the table. After some digging, Finisterre put a 31-page report together that detailed what he and his colleagues found. That included the private key to DJI’s SSL certificate, which was leaked on GitHub, allowing Finisterre to see customer data stored on DJI’s servers.

Finisterre turned in the report and DJI said that the information warranted a $30,000 reward. After a series of negotiations over the terms of the deal focused mostly on what Finisterre could or could not say, he was advised by a number of lawyers that the agreement was risky at best and “likely crafted in bad faith to silence anyone that signed it.” He abandoned the deal after being sent a letter stating that he had no authority to access DJI servers and the company was reserving its right of action under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

“DJI asks researchers to follow standard terms for bug bounty programs, which are designed to protect confidential data and allow time for analysis and resolution of a vulnerability before it is publicly disclosed. The hacker in question refused to agree to these terms, despite DJI’s continued attempts to negotiate with him, and threatened DJI if his terms were not met.”

DJI, in a statement

Uber adds live location sharing, expands beacon program

Uber has added a few features that should make getting a ride a tad easier, including live location sharing that’ll let your driver see your location once you tap the gray icon on the bottom right of the screen. This can be helpful when you’re walking to your pickup location so your driver isn’t left in the dark.

Beacons are also being expanded to New York, Chicago, and San Francisco to help you identify your ride in a sea of Ubers. The company’s guest hailing feature has also been updated, letting you hail rides for friends and family and communicate with the driver via text message. Tap “where to,” and you’ll be able to see a different rider at the top of the screen.

Lastly, Uber has added in-app gifting, so you can send Uber credits to your friends without leaving the app.

All of these features are available today.

Tencent becomes first Chinese tech firm valued over $500B

Tencent has become the first Chinese company to be valued at over $500 billion.

Shares of the 19-year-old company, which is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, rallied to reach HK$418.80 ($53.62) to give it a market cap of HK$3.99 billion ($510.8 million).

Entry into the half-a-trillion dollar club comes a week after Tencent posted a profit of $2.7 billion on revenue of $9.8 billion for Q3 2017. Overall profit was up 69 percent year-over-year and revenue rose by 61 percent thanks to the company’s games business.

Uber fined $8.9 million by Colorado for allowing drivers with felony convictions, driver’s license issues

Colorado regulators have given Uber an $8.9 million penalty for allowing 57 people with past criminal or motor vehicle offenses to drive for the company, according to the state’s Public Utilities Commission.

According to the Commission, the drivers should have been disqualified. They had issues ranging from felony convictions to driving under the influence and reckless driving. In some cases, drivers were working with revoked, suspended, or cancelled licenses. A similar investigation done of Lyft found no violations.

“We have determined that Uber had background-check information that should have disqualified these drivers under the law, but they were allowed to drive anyway. These actions put the safety of passengers in extreme jeopardy.”

Colorado Public Utilities Commission director Doug Dean, in a statement

“We recently discovered a process error that was inconsistent with Colorado’s ridesharing regulations and proactively notified the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). This error affected a small number of drivers and we immediately took corrective action. Per Uber safety policies and Colorado state regulations, drivers with access to the Uber app must undergo a nationally accredited third-party background screening. We will continue to work closely with the CPUC to enable access to safe, reliable transportation options for all Coloradans.”

Uber spokesperson Stephanie Sedlak, in a statement

Uber handed the PUC over 107 records, and said that they removed those people from its system.

The PUC cross-checked the Uber drivers with state crime and court databases, finding that many had aliases and other violations. While 63 were found to have issues with their driver’s licenses, the PUC focused on 57 who had additional violations, because of the impact on public safety.

“What [Uber] calls proactively reaching out to us was after we had to threaten them with daily civil penalties to get them to provide us with the [records]. This is not a data processing error. This is a public safety issue.

“They said their private background checks were superior to anything out there. We can tell you their private background checks were not superior. In some cases, we could not say they even provided a background check.”

Doug Dean

The fine is a civil penalty assessment based on a citation of $2,500 per day for each disqualified driver found to have worked. Among the findings, 12 drivers had felony convictions, 17 had major moving violations, 63 had drivers’ license issues, and three had interlock driver’s licenses, which is required after a recent drunken driving conviction.

Uber has 10 days to pay 50 percent of the $8.9 million penalty or request a hearing to contest the violation before an administrative law judge. Afterwards, the PUC will continue making audits to check for compliance. The penalty could rise if more violations are found.

“Uber can fix this tomorrow. The law allows them to have fingerprint background checks. We had found a number of a.k.a.’s and aliases that these drivers were using. That’s the problem with name-based background checks. We’re very concerned and we hope the company will take steps to correct this.”

Doug Dean

PayPal partners with Acorns to help you invest your money

PayPal has launched a number of integrations with microinvestment platform Acorns.

Acorns rounds up your purchases once you connect your bank card to the app to the nearest dollar. Users can also set up recurring investments or make an one-time payment of up to $50,000 that will be invested on their behalf.

PayPal can now be used to fund an Acorns account for round up, recurring, and one-off investments.

PayPal users can also monitor or manage their Acorns investments in the PayPal app.

The new integrations are available now for “select” PayPal customers in the US, though it will open to everyone in the U.S. in early 2018.

FanDuel CEO and co-founder Nigel Eccles leaving to start an eSports company

FanDuel CEO and co-founder Nigel Eccles is leaving the company and stepping down from the company’s board, where he was chairman.

Eccles internally announced that he’s leaving to start an eSports company. Monday was his last day.

Matt King, who served as FanDuel’s CFO until the end of 2016, will replace Eccles as CEO. He then left and spent a year at insurance broker Cottingham & Butler. King is also taking a board seat.

FanDuel is also adding two more people to the board. Former Dish Network vice chairman and president Carl Vogel is joining as chairman, and former Fox Sports executive David Nathanson is also joining the board.

The Week Ahead

Today: Salesforce, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HP report earnings

Thursday-Sunday: No TechSummit Rewinds

In other news…

Seattle-based startup Pixvana announced a $14 million Series A investment led by Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital with participation from new investors like Raine Ventures, Cisco Investments, and Heart Ventures.

Health IQ, a startup that collects data to let health-conscious people save an average of $1,238 a year on their life insurance premiums, has raised another $76 million in venture capital.

Bloomberg’s Twitter network will launch on Dec. 18 with six founding partners: Goldman Sachs, Infiniti, TD Ameritrade, CA Technologies, AT&T, and CME Group.

Southeast Asia-based startup aCommerce, which helps brands get into e-commerce and digital media in the region, has raised $65 million in new funding led by Emerald Media.

According to Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun, Xiaomi will invest up to $1 billion in 100 Indian startups over the next five years.

TechSummit Rewind 206 This is the TechSummit Rewind, a daily recap of the top technology headlines. Justice Department files antitrust suit to block AT&T/Time Warner merger…

[xxruinaxxmcu]

Gates of Glory, part 4

Loki x Reader

previous part

Loki studied the woman in front of him. He realised that the power she held was great, greater than he wanted to admit. Not only were her skills on the battlefield remarkable, but her brilliance was intriguing. She posed a threat, unless she was made to be an ally. Loki wiped his shock and anger away, made a welcoming hand gesture and laughed: "My plan."

"Indeed", Y/N replied, "Let's think this through. You've got Thor banished, locked up in Midgard. Without Heimdall, he won't return. If you tell him to close the Bifrost, which, I suppose, you will right after our conversation, Thor cannot return until you allow it. As for Odin... well, he will awake sometime. What is it you want to do with the sceptre you're wielding in this limited time?"

"Asgard would have crumbled beneath the pressure of war, if Thor had taken the throne, we'd be having an eye to eye with Jotunheim this very second! By banishing Thor, I can delay his reign enough to fix the mistakes my brother has made", Loki answered, raising his voice just a little.

"That sounds", Y/N made an amused expression, "Very heroic. However, you wanted him to make that mistake, did you not? Without your little spell, he would not have entered Jotunheim in the first place. Loki, remember the talk we had just before the ceremony? On the terrace. You know I share your concerns regarding Thor. If I wanted to betray you, I could have done that by now multiple times. I could have warned Heimdall, the All-father on that evening. I could have gone to Heimdall after discovering your actions today, and I could have let him hear you. I did not do that. Why is that?"

Loki pressed his lips together before he raised his eyebrows: "I'm sure you will tell me right about now."

"Because I'm interested to see your strategy", Y/N elaborated, "and we have stood aside each other for a long time now. As said, I won't kneel to you, but I will assist you."

"What makes you believe I need your assistance?", he asked in a dismissive voice.

"You may not need it now", Y/N replied, "But if your plan were to fail and Thor to survive, then you might want to know a few people you can trust, as Asgard will chase you."

"You'd become a traitor for that?", he asked amusedly and dismissively at the same time.

"Not really", Y/N shrugged, "I can't become what I already am."

"A traitor?", he huffed, "Do you truly know what that implies?"

"Loki, I am not from Asgard", Y/N reminded him, "I chose to join the Gods that rule over my realm. For many, that would be treason. Furthermore, I never told Odin of your plans, which is a direct violation of my oath as his warrior. Are you blind to see you're not the only one who works... independently?"

"And what is your goal? The throne? Power?", he asked with an eyebrow raised.

"I am not interested in the throne. What I want, however, is to prove them wrong", Y/N hissed, "Your birth right was to be king, my birth right was to be burned in a sacrificial ritual!" Y/N turned her head away: "I do not know how much you know about Vanaheim, but some of them worship their ancestors as superior gods. Every 100 years, a child chosen by the eldest is burned during a sacrificial ritual. I was that child. My mentor, who had seen my talents, who had given me the power of Yggdrasil - she didn't want to lose me. So she made me lie to my parents to lead them into a trap. She killed them, escaped with me. We went into hiding for so long. Until I was strong enough, old enough to join Asgard's army."

Loki's gaze searched for Y/N's eyes: "And why are you telling me this now?"

Y/N laughed dryly: "I've lied long enough, did I not? No, I thought it was only fair for you to know me, my history, if we work together. Helgunn, that's how my parents called me. Y/N L/N was the name I took on whilst hiding. I've never returned to Vanaheim in all these years you have known me, because all that awaits me is a nation that once wanted to see me burn."

"And that's why you're here", Loki concluded, "To prove them that you were strong enough to survive."

"I am here", Y/N nodded, "To prove them that I do not need their dead's blessings to be worthy."

"Joining Asgard's army might just be the one thing they call unworthy", Loki stated flatly.

"I'd call my affiliation a lot more... ambiguous than that", Y/N retorted with a dry smile on her lips, "Asgard has the fighting spirit Vanaheim has been lacking. And, frankly, the resources my realm never had."

"Fine then", Loki reached out to Y/N's hand, "Under the terms that I will kill you if you tried to betray me, we have a deal."

"Under the terms that I will put up a fight", Y/N specified.

"You're talking to a god, remember?", he asked with a grin.

"You're talking to a warrior", Y/N replied flatly.

"Alright", Loki took Y/N's hand: "We have a deal, then."

____________________________

When walking to her chambers, Y/N thought about the plan Loki had told her after their handshake. It was a risky one, Y/N thought. There were too many variables, especially Heimdall was a danger. Y/N sat on her bed, staring at the wall. Her sword lay in her hands as she thought about the next moves. Y/N knew that Odin was out of the game for several days if not weeks, and, considering what Frigga had said, maybe forever. Thor, on the other hand, was the big X in the equation. Somehow, Y/N doubted he'd let him be locked up without his powers on Midgard forever. Though he had always had a thing for Midgard, he was too obsessed with his own greatness, with his own power to miss out on it. And the throne, how he adored the sceptre of Odin. Chances were that his friends, Sif, Fandral and the others would disobey royal orders again to go to Earth to help Thor find his hammer and get his powers back. That hammer was the loose end in the plan as no one really knew how it defined 'worthiness'. Y/N sighted quietly and opened her drawer with her weapons. She took them out, one by one, and started to clean and sharpen them. Not only did that kill time, it also served a practical purpose in case of an imminent fight.

"I didn't tell you the entire plan before", Loki announced the following night when they met near a cave next to a pond at the edge of Asgard, where it was easy to block Heimdall from seeing them.

Y/N's face didn't change: "To be honest, I am not surprised. You always keep secrets."

"No, not really. I mean, I do. But that's different. I... adapted the plan", Y/N could see the dark smile on his face, "After discovering my past."

"So what's the adaption? Do you want the frost giants to take over Asgard, rule over them and force the nine realms into submission?", Y/N asked sceptically.

Loki laughed amused: "I am no madman."

"Sometimes, it does feel like it", Y/N commented dryly.

"Brilliance is often confused with insanity", he replied, "But no, that is not the adaption. If anything, it's quite the opposite. I will lure Laufey into Odin's chamber where they will attempt to kill him. However, I will kill them before they do. Their infiltration will be the deceptive story that I need to destroy Jotunheim and every single being in it." His voice became determined, somewhat bitter. Driven.

"You want to destroy an entire realm?", Y/N asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Jotunheim holds no value to me, or Asgard. Its existence is a sheer... waste of nerves", Loki replied without a single emotion reflected on his face.

"I do not weep over a species I grew up fearing", Y/N retorted quietly, "But remember that killing them won't wipe your history. It may give you the illusion of redemption, but it will still be there. Watching my parents die didn't wipe the memories of them telling me my only purpose was to die for them."

Loki's eyes changed to something much darker, something, Y/N had never seen before but that second he struggled to find words when hearing the truth from Odin: "Yes. However, I am so familiar with illusions that sometimes, they just become the truth."

"You did not grow up in Jotunheim. Their customs are unfamiliar to you, their deeds not yours. Just because you have the same capability of them does not make you the same", Y/N stated quietly, unsure of what to say.

"Doesn't it? If it didn't, why did Odin want to save me from the truth? Being from Jotunheim isn't like being from Vanaheim. The frost giants might just be the only thing Asgard and Vanaheim hate equally - the feared monster, lurking behind the corner", Loki's voice had a calm bitterness to it that startled Y/N.

"You can try to run", Y/N spoke softly, "But you cannot outrun your true nature. You can only accept it."

"And even if I accepted this", Loki turned towards her, revealing his appearance of a frost giant, "How do you expect people to react?"

Y/N pressed her lips together and took his hand: "Loki, Asgard was built on the principal of tolerance. Whether they like it or not, they will have to accept it. And I... how can't I accept a foreigner when I myself am one? The most realms of the nine are not that different, Midgard, Asgard, Vanaheim, Jotunheim - so many ideological differences were created by ourselves. I don't care whether you are an Asgardian or a frost giant, we're just as different, no matter what you are."

"When I fought you in the hall that day", Loki spoke whilst looking at her hand in his, "I knew that you were unlike the rest. For a warrior, you are truly remarkable."

Y/N huffed sarcastically: "For a god and prince, you are unsurprisingly arrogant."

"Excuse me, but that was supposed to be a compliment", he retorted with a faint smile.

"Unnatural to hear that from you, considering you called me wretched creature about 24 hours ago", Y/N replied amusedly.

"You threatened me" he defended himself.

"I saw right through you, I did not threaten you", Y/N corrected.

"Well, I'd say I am not used to that very thing", he replied with a grin.

"Well, I'd say you better get used to it quickly", Y/N suggested, "I don't intend to run away just yet."

"Very well, Y/N. I shall be your companion, then", Loki stated quietly.

"I won't disappoint you", Y/N promised impishly.

"Till now", he replied, "I can't remember you ever have."

Tag list:

@ultrarebelheart @adidabach @aqswdefrgthzjukilop @bluev0dk4 @inselaire @jessialchihomie

[lifeofresulullah]

The Life of The Prophet Muhammad: The Treaty of Hudaybiyah

The Conquest of Khaybar: Part 1

(7th year of the Migration, toward the end of the month of Muharram / AD 628)

Khaybar was a city located in a volcanic area and having seven strong castles. It was on the way of Damascus and in the northwest of Madinah; it was about 100 miles (161km) away from Madinah.

Most of the Jews that were expelled from Madinah because they violated their treaty with the Messenger of God had settled there and they virtually transformed Khaybar to a center for Jews.

As we have mentioned before, the Jews living there caused the Battle of Khandaq to take place by organizing all of the Arab tribes around and leading them to Madinah. After the Battle of Khandaq, they did not behave well and they slandered and talked against Muslims everywhere.

On the other hand, they made a new treaty with Makkan polytheists. According to this treaty, the people of Khaybar would attack Madinah if the Prophet walked against Makkah; if the Prophet walked against Khaybar, the Qurayshi polytheists would attack Madinah. However, their plan failed due to the Treaty of Hudaybiyah.

The Messenger of God protected Madinah from the polytheists by signing the treaty with them. However, the north side (where Khaybar Jews lived) was still deprived of security. It was necessary for the acceleration of Islamic development to make the north secure.

Besides, the greatest trade destination for Arabs was Damascus. The Jews were in this way and started to develop as a strong element. It was a danger in terms of Islamic development.

All of those reasons made it necessary for Muslims to settle the issue of Khaybar.

Moreover, God Almighty had promised Muslims the conquest of Khaybar in the chapter of al-Fath while returning from the Expedition of Hudaybiyah.

Setting off from Madinah

The Messenger of God decided to go Khaybar and told his Companions to get ready for the expedition.

Many people who had avoided joining the Expedition of Hudaybiyah due to their fear wanted to join the Expedition of Khaybar due to the booty to be obtained from this productive and fertile city. They said, “We want to go to Khaybar with you.”

Thereupon, the Prophet said, “Those who will fight in the way of exalting the name of God as it is necessary should get ready. Nobody else can come with us. They will not be given anything out of the booty.” He declared it open to the people of Madinah.

This order of the Messenger of God clearly teaches us that jihad in the way of God needs to be made for the sake of God and without expecting or even thinking of any material returns.

Besides, the lofty and luminous aim of war in Islam is exalting the name of God.

Upon the order of the Messenger of God, Muslims gathered at once. There were 1600 people, two hundred of whom were cavalrymen. They were the Muslims that would set off from Madinah together with the Prophet. Afterward, when the Prophet was in Khaybar, four hundred Muslims from the tribe of Daws, among whom was Abu Hurayra, and Muslim migrants who returned from Abyssinia would join the Islamic army.

Moreover, there were twenty women together with Umm Salama, one of the wives of the Prophet, in the Islamic army that set off from Madinah. They were going to treat the wounded mujahids, cook and meet the needs of the mujahids during the battle.

The Prophet appointed Siba’ b. Urfuta from Ghifar as his deputy in Madinah and set off toward Khaybar with his army toward the end of the month of Muharram.

The mujahids who had been painted by the spiritual paint of the prophethood proceeded with enthusiasm. Amir b. Aqwa, the poet, expressed his excitement and loyalty with the following poem: “O God! If you had not guided us, we would not have found the right path; we would not pay zakah nor perform prayers. When a nation walks against us and tries to make our exit from our religion, send tranquility to our hearts and make our feet strong when we fight.”

The Prophet asked who recited the poem. When he was told that Amir b. Aqwa recited it, he said, “May God show mercy on him!”

The mujahids hesitated for a second because this prayer meant that Amir was going to be martyred.

“He is neither deaf nor absent…”

The mujahids proceeded to utter takbirs. The earth and the sky resounded with the sound of takbirs. Once, they uttered takbir very loudly: “Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! La ilaha illallahu Allahu Akbar!”

Upon this act of the Companions, the Messenger of God said, “Show mercy to your souls; do not shout so loudly. You are not addressing a dead being or a being that is absent. You are praying God, who knows and hears everything and who is near to everything from anything else.”

Yes, God, to whom we pray, is neither deaf nor absent. He is nearer to us from our jugular veins with His knowledge, will, and power: “It was We who created man, and We know what dark suggestions his soul makes to him: for We are nearer to him than (his) jugular vein.”

Only He knows the most secret things in our hearts; therefore, He answers our requests and meets our needs.

The Messenger of God prayed his lofty Lord as follows wherever he stopped for a break:

“O, God!  I take refuge in you from the worries about the future, sorrows of the past, weaknesses, laziness, stinginess, cowardice, heavy debts, and the inflictions of oppressors and unjust people.”

The Islamic Army is in Raji’

The Prophet reached a place called Raji’ with his army and stopped there. It was a place between Kahybar and the land of Ghatafans. There was a reason why they stopped there. Khaybar Jews had asked helped from Ghatafans and they had accepted; they said Jews could come to their castles and fight against the Islamic army together.  The Messenger of God was informed about it. In order to prevent this help, he made this offer to Ghatafans:  “If you do not help Jews, we will give you the crop of the dates of Khaybar to be conquered for one year.” However, they did not accept the offer.

Thus, the Prophet aimed to prevent any help that could come from Ghatafans to Jews by settling there. As a matter of fact, Ghatafans could not help Khaybar Jews and had to stay in their land when the Messenger of God settled in Raji’.

The Islamic Army is in front of Khaybar

Later, the Prophet left Raji’ with his army and proceeded to Khaybar. They reached Khaybar at night. The Prophet did not use to attack at night; so he waited for the morning.  

The Prayer of the Prophet

When the Messenger of God reached in front of Khaybar, he prayed as follows: “O God, who is the Lord of the skies and what they shade! O God, who is the Lord the earth and those on the earth! O God, who is the Lord the devil and those that the devil misguides! O God, who is the Lord of the winds and what they blow! We wish from you the goodness of this city, the wellbeing of its people and the goodness of everything in the city. We take refuge in you from the evil of this city, of this people and of everything in it!”

The Prophet prayed like that whenever he entered a city.

When the people of Khaybar woke up in the morning, took their tools to go to their fields and left the castle, they saw the Islamic army in front of them. They were astonished; they shouted, “There is Muhammad and his army” and ran back to their castle.

They faced something unexpected. Many of them did not think it to be possible for the Prophet to leave Madinah and to come there to fight them. Their castle was strong; they had many men; they had plenty of weapons; therefore, they thought the Messenger of God could not face the risk of fighting them. That was what they had thought. However, it did not turn out to be like that; so, they were astonished.  

When the Messenger of God saw their astonishment and that they ran back to their castle in panic, he said, “Allahu Akbar, Allaha Akbar! Kharibat Khaybar [Khaybar was destroyed]! How bad is the state of a frightened tribe when we enter their land unexpectedly!” ]He repeated that sentence, which indicated the conquest of Khaybar, three times.

The Enemy Front

Khaybar Jews negotiated the situation and decided to remain in the castle and defend their castle.

The Jews that would fight gathered in the Castle of Natat, their strongest castle. They put their wives and children into other castles.

Fighting Starts

The fighting started when Jews started to shoot arrows at the mujahids from the Castle of Natat, where they had gathered. The Islamic army had encamped in front of the Castle of Natat.

The first day passed like that. About fifty mujahids were wounded by the arrows shot from the castles.

On the second day, upon the order of the Messenger of God, the Islamic army moved their headquarters to Raji’. Thus, the mujahids were protected from the attacks that could come from the houses around and they would be away from the swamp where they had encamped.

The Prophet and the mujahids took their weapons every morning and went to the upper part of the Castle of Natat, fought the Jews until the evening and then returned to Raji’.

The Prophet Gets ill

Meanwhile, the Prophet had a headache. He could not go out near the mujahids. He appointed Hazrat Abu Bakr as the leader of the army to fight the Jews. Despite severe clashes, Khaybar was not conquered. Next time, the Prophet gave his white flag to Hazrat Umar and sent him to fight together with the mujahids. Severe clashes took place again but Khaybar was not conquered.

It went on like that for seven days.

Meanwhile, one person from the Islamic army was martyred: Mahmud b. Masla­ma... While he was resting in the shade of the Castle of Natat in a very tired state due to the hot weather and severe clashes, he was wounded in the head by a stone thrown by the Jews from the castle and was martyred three days later.