#EU Clash of Countries

[dividedindiversity]

EU Clash of Countries Final

After four rounds of intense voting, finally, the finale of the EU Clash of Countries is finally here!

27 countries make up the European Union. 25 have been voted out so far.

But we all know that the EU is not a closed union. There’s no less than ten countries currently working on joining the EU in various stages. And over the last year, one of those has shown its ability to achieve unexpected victories. For this reason, Ukraine will be included as a wildcard in the final.

Previous rounds: Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 Round 4

#EU Clash of Countries #Final #Ireland #Czech Republic #Ukraine

[qqueenofhades]

what gets me is whenever any of these people says not to vote, and you ask them what the alternative is, they usually throw some tantrum about how it shouldn't be their job to fix this country and they're not expected to know (or start calling you a neoliberal or a bootlicker lmao) and i just. i don't get that? not voting, especially in the current climate, is a big deal. i don't think it's unreasonable to ask anyone who advocates for that what the alternative is. i'm not expecting you, online leftist, to magically know how to fix everything. i am expecting something from you if you're gonna tell me not to vote, especially when we both know that helps the gop. like, how dare we ask them to defend this big choice they're telling us to make?

their position boils down to helping trump and the republicans but any time you remind them of that they get upset. what is the alternative? what plan do they have? it would be one thing if there was another option that they'd come up with, but they haven't and don't seem interested in doing so. mutual aid and organizing is only going to take us so far and it'll be a hell of a lot easier to do it with biden in office than trump

The whole "it doesn't matter who's president/in charge of the government because mutual aid and organizing is the only valid way to do community engagement" is the leftist version of the Brexit nutcases who, and I swear I am not making this up, argued that it was fine if the UK left the EU trading sphere/single market/customs union with nothing to replace it, because "Britain is a nation of farmers and can grow food in our back gardens!!!!" Yes, because you're so devoted to your stupid ideology that you think the large-scale collapse of society, a major world power, a western democracy, and everything else will have no effect, and you can just do your little Facebook mutual aid groups and happily shout on Twitter at anyone who disagrees with you. Never mind the fact that this would obviously and immediately harm vulnerable people the most and that nobody, not even the Online Leftists themselves, actually wants to live in the Violent Revolution Total Anarchy World they masturbate to. Maybe this makes me a neoliberal corporate shill, but I'd rather that the world got better, instead of worse. I would actually prefer that myself, my friends, my family, my whole life, the whole country, and the rest of the world wasn't sacrificed on the Great Revolution Altar, but I shouldn't worry. We have mutual aid. At least as long as a) you have never said anything the Online Leftists even slightly disagree with, since they're sure as hell not the kind of people I would trust to have my back in any large-scale societal collapse, and b) I guess they'll all be growing food in their back gardens too, rather than using any of those dirty "government" or "society" things to supply their basic needs. We're saved! No need to worry. Bring on the anarchy.

Aside from the fact that Online Leftists, as I have said before, think that moral action begins and ends with posting the Right Opinions on social media at the correct timeframe and any other action or engagement with a flawed system or basic reality is heresy, they don't like being challenged -- i.e. "if we don't vote, then what do we do?" -- because a) it questions their authority as supreme arbiters of morality, and b) it means that there should actually be an action in place of cutting out something so consequential as voting, which likewise clashes with their "everything will be fixed by Magical Thinking" viewpoint. They don't want to be asked what to do in place of voting, or in anything at all; they want to think their correct thoughts and judge anyone who doesn't, regardless of how logically incoherent these things are or the inevitable outcome of those decisions, because nothing bad is ever their fault, or even the Republicans' fault, or anyone else at all except for the Democrats and/or "the West." I mean, yeah, if they're going around to preach the Don't Vote Because It's Actually Evil gospel, it's the bare fucking minimum to expect that they have something to offer in return besides Ye Olde Bolshevik cosplay fantasies. Since they don't, they get tetchy when you point that out.

Also, while I know it's the social media fashion that everything has to be the worst thing ever and we have plenty of the "Biden is also a genocidal fascist but I guess vote for him or something" utterly-minimum-standard posts going around, I will point out why that rhetoric is a) wrong and b) unhelpful. (Not that I expect it will make a single difference to anyone who has to get their internet cred by yelling about how Biden is a fascist, but still.) No, Biden is not a fascist by any logical definition of the word, you would have to do a lot of work to convince me that he is personally genocidal beyond what is demanded of any post-1948 American president who exists in an extremely complicated international sphere with long-standing alliances (such as, yes, with Israel) and indeed not quite a bit more progressive than literally every one of his predecessors, and it makes those actual words useless. If you claim that "Biden and Trump are both genocidal fascists," you are utterly effacing those categories as any kind of critical or useful distinction. You can't argue for any difference, you can't point out policy essentials or nuances, you can't make the most basic of empirical observances or come to a judgment on whether any part of that statement is true, because language has been deliberately stripped of meaning and used to score Cool Internet Leftist points. How can we explain what fascism or genocide actually are and what to do about them, if it's just what you call everyone as a matter of course whenever they disagree with you? You can't. That's the point.

Once again: I strongly disagree with the idea of just giving Israel/Netanyahu a blank check to keep committing atrocities, but I also need to repeatedly point out that Biden isn't doing that. His initial unconditional support of Israel after October 7 (which at the time was the correct response) has shifted to a much more measured and conditional approach where he has muted the overtly pro-Israel statements and started talking about a two-state solution and the need to protect the lives of civilians and trying to keep a lid on what could become a REALLY bad situation with all kinds of war-hungry powers eager to jump into the Middle East and blow it completely to hell. As I have said in my other posts, Trump will not do this. Trump will do the exact opposite. Which is why Netanyahu, who doesn't like having his hands tied precisely in the way Biden is doing, is trying so hard to get Trump back in. This also extends to the people who think that the West/the U.S. is the source of all evil in the world, but they're somehow the only people that can make actual choices or have real agency. Everyone else is just an American puppet; everyone is being lied to or manipulated by America/the West; nobody ever chose anything of their own free will; America/the West could roll in and put a stop to everything bad if they "really wanted to," but choose not to because etc. etc., Evil. As such, this completely fact-free belief is basically the central starting point for Online Leftism, which as I have also said, is now beyond useless and verging on just as deranged and actively dangerous as the fascists, especially since they are 100% willing to enable far-right fascism however and whenever they can because something something, That Will Show Us.

Anyway. Yes. Whew.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts #israel hamas war #okay i think i'm done talking about this for today #but yes

[arthurs-notes]

Linguistic Identity: Existential Crisis of Polylingual People

I remmener the day I've written my first article for the syg.ma project. It was a rainy day, I was sad and to overcome this blue mood I've pushed myself towards writing. I would like to share my work with you. I think that I gonna continue to share my texts like that with you guys, just let me know what do you think about it.

In nowadays reality linguistic questions appear more seldom than usual. I observed that my Instagram feed was submerged with different posts concerning linguistic identity. The era of globalization, mass migration, provoked by the War in Ukraine, economic crisis all these factors increase drastically the level of migration, according to the EU’s migration poll. [1] 

Subsequently, I was touched by this trend. I have a lot of friends from different countries and some of them use several language codes in their daily life. The least numerous group of my friends is polylingual. One week ago, we discussed what we think about the sociolinguistic point of the actual conflict. The situation is particularly interesting: the most frequently recalled question was “who am I and what is my mother tongue?”. On one hand, the answer is simple “a mother tongue is the language that you use in your everyday life” or “a mother tongue is a language that you use to think”. But what should you conceive if a person uses several languages to think and to communicate if this very person lives in two, three, or even four different linguistic realities? Who is he/she/they? 

To answer this tricky eternal question, I will enlighten several concepts that I consider to be abstract and they need several levels of determination to be analyzed. Firstly, I am going to talk about linguistic identity itself and how it affects our lives, then, I would like to be precise about what is it like to be a polylingual person, after we are going to look at how migration changes the context of existence and the perception of reality. Finally, we are going to clash all these three parts of your cognition in the conflict of identity crises, we will see how the pluralism of assimilation could change each static universals into always changeable substance.

2. Linguistic identity

When I heard the expression of “Linguistic identity” for the first time I was really surprised. Primo, this term comprises ‘identity”, something that we have already heard about. Putting it simply, that’s the way we see the world, our relation to life, and the way to live it. Second, the linguistic part pushes us to suppose that it specifies the given concept by adding the image of language. However, this is not as simple as it could seem. 

First of all, we need to understand that “identity” in language learning research is not a concept but a construct that is way more complex than an object because it takes part in social interaction, not only in perceiving reality. The language constructs a meta-person’s relationships across time, and space and changes the vision of a person’s identity and its vision of the future. The identity, at the same time, influences the language of a meta-person, by modifying lexical preferences, grammar, and syntax. They are linked and cannot exist one without another. [2]

To imagine this in a better way, try to draw a picture in your mind where the identity sphere has a language part inside and the language one has an identity part inside. Depending on a starting point of analysis, we can consider “identity” or “language” as a nucleus or a periphery, or form and content 

This language duality was firstly described in “Cours de Linguistique Généralé” by Ferdinand de Saussure. Using the introspective approach, we can observe that “identity” and “language” do possess the nucleus and periphery sides. [3]

People generally tend to associate themselves with one or more social groups to perceive reality, and the way it works, and to make decisions. [4] The question of language identity was always crucial not only for linguists but also for politicians as a really strong construct that can form some sort of ideology based on different levels of culture, where the language itself makes a part. Depending on your language, your vocabulary in some spheres will differ drastically from others. For instance, In Japanese-speaking reality, there would be more words to describe senses, tastes, and colors. The reason for that is hidden in Japanese education, where the empiric and observational approaches are deeply integrated into the school system. [5] 

The most cited example is the word umami which means a taste that describes as savory and is characterized by broths and cooked meats. Even if we could imagine this concept, several languages do not possess such a word for umami, which leads people to loan this word in their languages. That was a strict nucleus, the heart of a language, something that describes the reality of the world where a meta-person lives. As for the periphery, a language, forms to some extent, your vocabulary. If a language is fusional, or a language that uses a single morpheme to form new grammatical or semantic features, it is possible, that your language would be more open to new cultural codes, and terms and assimilate them in a faster way, comparing it with the analytic one.

As for the nucleus of the identity part, it helps you to choose the linguistic reality. If you consider yourself French, you could speak French, so you don’t have a dissonance in your world’s perception, you acquire the inherent logic of the language, e.g. tenses, word structure, phonetics, etc. The periphery part links to the culture. I have already mentioned that language is a part of a culture. It goes with the history of people speaking this language. We cannot forget about songs, movies, books, ideologies, and other important parts consisting of the cultural iceberg.

One identity differs from another, and by choosing one of them, several individuals could even change some physical features such as mimics, facial expressions, and furthermore. These two parts create the Linguistic identity, a strong social construct that leads people, it can be used as a manipulation instrument or even a weapon. Hence, I have explained the reality of a monolingual person which is a rare phenomenon in the world. Taking into consideration the fact, that the vast majority of people live in multiple linguistic realities, we should turn to bilingual people or even polylingual ones.

3. Who is a polylingual

The definition of this term was always problematic through the ages. Several specialists in different domains gave so many descriptions of this term that is it impossible to pick one that is suitable for each situation. I consider that we need to determine the limits of this notion before speaking about polylingual people. [6]

The vast majority of definitions differ depending on the “donor” of language. Here, I am talking about the person who transmits the language to the child. Even the motivation of the word “mother tongue” means that, in general, a child takes the language from its mother, and less frequently, from its father. Taking into the consideration increasing level of immigration and globalization, the situation, where each parent represents different language communities has become usual. This reality pushes language specialists to consider this fact, so the number of definitions concerning the ability to speak multiple languages is always increasing. [6]

In the aim to understand all the complexity of terminology in this field, I propose you imagine that there are several families: Family A, Family B, and Family C. We are going to study their cases, and after that, I propose you talk about the definition itself. 

For each situation, we can enumerate external and internal factors that could be named as context. The external context is the language environment of the majority of the population placed in a given territory, while external ones are mostly conventional and depend on the parents. I have omitted several factors such as language status, like the situation with the Tatar language in Russia, to shorten my essay, which is slightly becoming a novel. Here, we are going to imagine the situation by putting it through some level of generalization. The way people perceive a language is way too complex to put into several words. 

For instance, In Family A, parent 1 speaks French, while parent 2 speaks English, both of them are living in France, where the official language is French. Taking into consideration the internal factor, parent 1 and parent 2 can decide which strategy should they choose to communicate with. their child. There are three possibilities. 

The French domination. Both parents speak French, but parent 2 does not speak English and a child would not be able to learn it, in the condition of both of them do not speak English. In the opposite situation, the child would be able to analyze the language, decorticate it, subconsciously, and learn English. 

The English domination. Both parents speak English to the child, parent 1 does not speak French and the child would not be able to learn it with the same conditions. 

The bilingual environment. Both parents use two languages in their communication, mixing them, or switching them with the child. The final result would give a certain level of fluency. 

As for external factors, you remember, that all of them are living in France, so the child would be exposed, sooner or later to the French language outside of its household. In the case of French domination, the child would be a monolingual person, because she was not exposed to several language systems. In the case of English domination, the child would become a monolingual person too, however, its situation will be different. As the child lives in France, sooner or later, he would be exposed to French, and he would learn it at school with his friends and relatives. Furthermore, everything depends on a symbiosis of external and internal factors, we do not know if a child is going to pass more time with his parents or with his friends at school. In general, children tend to distance themselves from their parents, from the age of 10, and then, progressively, they would gain their fluency till the beginning of puberty. 

And finally, the most interesting case, the bilingual domination, where a child would speak both French and English, hens, without a strict distinction between the two of them. However, with the age, the child would use more French in his life. If we imagine that it would use the same strategy as a child, raised in an English-dominated environment, it would be more fluent in French as well. 

The situation with Family A shows us that a person cannot physically know two languages at the same level, because we cannot control their usage. One of them is going to be dominant. 

If we switch the language in Family B, of Parent 1 into Russian, and would keep the language of Parent 2 as French by default, for example, there would be the same situation, however with little differences, as the language itself is far more distant from French on the level of structure, grammar, lexis, morphology, etc. The more the difference is significant, the more the situation changes. 

To illustrate this, imagine child B is risen in a Russian-dominated environment, where Parent 1 and Parent 2 tend to speak Russian only, supposing that Parent 2 is fluent in Russian and possesses a C2 level certificate. In that case, while in Family A, English would not influence the French language of Child A on the level of pronunciation, because there is a native reference (a slite difference could be remarked on the level of prosody), in Family B, Russian would influence several lexical and their semantic structures because of a big number of loan words and expressions. For example, let us look at the expressions that are semantically close in both languages. They mean “Speak of the Devil”:

• “Вспомнишь Солнце — Вот и лучик/Vspomnish solntse vot i luchik”. 

• «En parlant du loup».

These two expressions can mix and several parts of them could be mutated. In this situation, the child C could transform these sentences into:

• «Вспомнишь волка вот и он/Vspomnish volka vot I on», transposition and interference;

• «Кстати о волке/Kstati o volkie», a literate translation from French.;

• «En voyant une lueur», literate translation from French. 

This situation changes with the begging of the academic experience. Child B would use more French expressions and would probably loan them in Russian. 

In the French-dominated situation, there will not be any drastic differences from Family A. To be fair, according to my personal experience, I could tell, that several Russian expressions were loaned into my French language vocabulary. 

In the bilingual situation, the level of modifications and linguistic experimentations in a child’s B brain is constantly growing with age till the end of puberty. The further situation depends on the symbiosis of factors that would help child B choose a dominant language. 

Since the Economic crisis of 2008, there is another interesting tendency that could be illustrated by Family C. In this case, we use the same parameters as for Family A, P1 speaks French and P2 speaks English, one parameter that is changed is the external factor. Family C lives in Germany. In this case, child C enters into the three-dimensional linguistic reality, where the result would not be the same as for Families A and B. [1]

As was already told, there could be three possible scenarios, based on conventional relations between the P1 and P2 in Family C. In this situation, the external factor gives three additional scenarios: German dominated environment, Bilingual dominated environment with French and German, and three lingual-dominated environments. So, just to be precise and to better understand the situation, Family C could be: 

• French-speaking;

• English speaking;

• Bilingual (Fr-En); 

• German-speaking; 

• Bilingual (Fr-De);

• Three lingual (Fr-En-De).

In all of the cases mentioned, child C would speak German, because of the German-speaking environment, especially with age, however, we need to take into consideration multiple varieties of socioeconomic factors such as the city’s population, its region, municipality area, scholar establishment, etc. 

These factors are too numerous to illustrate each situation, however, it gives a perfect example of the complexity of the studying subject. As we have already seen, in several situations, a child could become a bilingual person and even in this, it would not be able to speak languages at the same level. Even if the difference is not drastically evident, one of the languages, one of the language would be dominant. [7]

The next important question, a bilingual person is complex and constructed, living in two linguistic dimensions, and different cultures, and sometimes, the child is exposed to more than two cultures. This tendency created a dilemma in the determination of a bilingual person. 

I will not bother you with some further examples on this topic, but, an individual has an identity, the essence that is closely connected with his language and culture. Not all bilinguals in the world become bilinguals from the very beginning. They could be born into a monolingual family and then change their country of residence. In that case, they would not be able to stay nontransitional and they would become a bilingual person, taking into consideration the age of the person. 

This occurs because a child will be integrated into the society of the majority’s language. His friends, teachers, neighbors everybody speaks another language. However, what should we call a person that starts to speak another language after puberty starts? The teenager’s new language would become its mother tongue in the condition it would acquire it by the age of 14-15 years old, till the end of the puberty period, because the way of perceiving the world will change. [8]

There are too many questions and particularities that are used to understand bilinguals. I must inform you that I need to use the generalizing approach to facilitate the comprehension of this interesting and never dying subject. 

So, who Is polylingual? I gave you examples of people speaking two or three languages, and society calls them bilingual and trilingual people, however, there is a more general way to call this — multilingual or polylingual, or just polyglots. 

According to the Oxford dictionary, the definition of the term multilingual is the following: “speaking or using several different languages”. It is considered that it is more than one language. It is important to understand that in Europe the fact to speak several languages is no longer surprising. It highly depends on the economic center of the country and in rural areas, it is not considered a norm. If we are talking about enormous, large business centers such as Paris, Rome, Milano, London, Berlin, etc, globalization, international trade, and cultural openness has created an advantageous situation for the people living there.

In general, the vast majority of Europeans, more than half of its total population claim to speak several languages, hence, in practice their level is not homogeneous. Some individuals can write, some of them read, and third ones can read, write and understand several languages but they use only one of them. 

It is understandable, taking into consideration the level of information we need to deal with in our life. People need to filter this information, and multiple languages' knowledge ability does not help it. Thanks to our brain, a fantastic machine that decides to optimize our way of thinking to economize power, it redirects the placement of these languages from the active area to the passive one. 

Some children were able to acquire two languages natively from an early age, and they are called simultaneous bilinguals. 

Knowing the constantly increasing number of terms describing bilingualism, I am going to use the term polylingual in my article. My choice is motivated by the will to call a situation of people that are the subject of my work. When I say a polylingual person, I mean a meta-person that was born in a multicultural context and speaks more than one language, from a very young age, on a daily bases. So this meta-person is living in a two-dimensional world. 

When I say a multicultural context, I mean a meta-family, speaking two languages, and at least one of them is not the language of the majority living on the given territory. 

We have discussed the linguistic identity of a person that comprises the cultural iceberg and world perception globally. In the case of polylingual people, they see the world divided by two, three, or more linguistic realities. 

So, as you can see, multilingualism is a highly complex subject that is studied by multiple domains, however, because of its complexity, we can not consider a single situation suitable for all multilingual people. The generalization is necessary in that case. 

4. Migration and linguistic identity

This ability could be seen as advantageous for polylingual as they are opened to new ways of seeing the world. Hence, we are speaking about the situation where they are living on a given territory and when a person leaves the territory, all the factors change. 

I propose you talk about people that moved in their post-puberty age for humanitarian, economic, or political reasons. 

In this situation, polylingual people enter a new linguistic reality. In general, bilingual and polylingual people tend to choose a country of one of their Level 1 languages e.g. if person A speaks both French and English, he or she lived in the USA, this person A could choose several French-speaking countries. The cultural descendants of one of the relatives help to determine the final choice. Let us suppose that this person’s mother was born in France or has a French heritage. In this case, person A would choose France for the settlement. [9]

We can also think that the assimilation process would be easier in this condition because the mother of person A transmitted not only the language but the French culture. That is true but to some extent. We do not know the exact amount of culture transmitted to the child if it could be possibly measured, and we do not know what were the conventional principles of his or her education, so I propose to you imagine that this person was raised in some kind of a mix of French and English culture. I am going to describe his or her life briefly, to analyze it better. 

Paul Lapain is 32 years old, he was born in the city of New York, New York state in the mid-nineties, he lived with his French mother Monique et his American dad Peter in a small apartment in the Bronx where he went to a simple school and lived a simple double-culture life. At home, they used to speak both French and English. French was a lingua franca in their family, because Monique was a little bit ashamed of her accent, even if her husband, Peter, tried to persuade her that her pronunciation was good. They used English to talk about concepts that are purely American and related to the administrative sphere of life, migration lexis, etc. 

Paul watched movies both in French and in English. Monique tried to choose the newest cartoons that were available, however, in the majority of cases, she preferred those she watched when she was little. She read books by French authors to Paul, so he could conserve her part of the culture. Do not think that Monique was open to different cultures, no, she was not as progressive as it might seem, she was not a cosmopolite and even if she lived in the USA she dreamed to move back to France. 

When Paul graduated from school, Monique proposed to him to apply to a French university, because it was free and the higher education system is considered to be one of the most performant in the world. He did not hesitate for a lot of time and, after being accepted, he moved to France. 

The first two weeks were full of joy and new experiences for Paul. He rediscovered the country of his mother. However, after these two weeks passed, he started to realize that he imagined things to be in another way. He tried to make some French friends, but the way they spoke was a bit different from that of his mother. There were more closed and distant. Small talks were not his strong part too. His new acquaintance from the university was choosing topics he was not so performant in, such as cuisine, and medieval culture.

Time passed. One year later, he made a great friendships with some of his university mates, he find an internship and everything seemed to be perfect for him, but, unfortunately, he felt lonely, and was not understanding much. New jokes, memes, and song artists, there was too much information to digest, and everything he learned differed from his mother’s perspective. 

Do you see the problem? Exactly, Paul moved to France, bringing the culture of his mother’s youth, of the France of the 1980s. His brain is shocked by the number of changes and he started to feel the cultural choice. These two visions of the same country co-exist in his brain creating a dichotomy in the world’s perception. 

His education plays a big role too, but the fact of being conserved in some kind of a time capsule perturbates him. In this very particular case we can see, that even if a language identity was already formed, we cannot say it was a universals, something that is not changeable. Arriving in France, he was forced by the will of integration into society to learn some new cultural and linguistic codes. This forms a new linguistic identity. 

It could seem evident that in this case, we are talking about a new linguistics identity, what if it is not new, but a changeable one? 

This kind of identity is a social construct that is considered externally as a stable, consistent thing, comprising a lot of different branches of our life. Even Paul considers himself as a strict point, a substance that is not changed. We could agree with his point of view, but there is a thing, he does not analyzes his status, he prefers to confront a conflict and to stay with what he already has. 

We observe him, as a human being, and we see that he uses terms, and definitions, he tried to understand who he is and what or whom he would like to become. But who is he? Is he American? Is he French? Maybe both? 

On one hand, there is a simple answer to that. He has an American passport, so he is American. But he speaks French, his mother is French and he decided to move to France. So who is he? What is that being American or being French? 

According to Napoleon Bonaparte’s law on immigration, being French means speaking French, sharing the Republic’s values, and being catholic. This concept has changed with time, and Catholicism was replaced by laïcité or secularism, to put it simply. But is it enough to be conformed to these three simple rules to become, or to be French? 

This principle was and is today debatable. The jus soli and jus sanguinis are the main points of all political discussions on TV, on the radio, and in the newspapers. France is a multicultural country with a long history of immigration and this social construct of being French is also changing to something more open and inclusive. 

It was the administrative part, something that we could place into the brackets, something that is describable. But what about Paul? Does he need a passport to be considered French? Can he become French? And what is it “becoming French”? 

In his had there are two worlds, two perspectives to understand and to make decisions, he tries to choose the variant that he considers to be more “right”, and “socially acceptable”. He lives in a society, where everyone speaks French and thinks French. I would like to emphasize this part. Everybody thinks French. It means that a language is a code that we use to give labels to things of non-linguistic reality. So, people who speak several languages can understand the world in different ways. That is the dilemma. He is both American and French, but too American to be called French, and too French to be called American. 

He is called like this by society, by his friends and family, and, as you have certainly remarked, they use adjectives. I adore this part of the discourse because adjectives are subjective, they describe things that we see, based on our experience, taste, and mother tongue. 

For instance, think of a noise. There are a lot of cars, and business people walking, they speak loudly, and everything is loud. That’s it! They speak loudly. That is how an English speaker would say it. But would a French say it like this? No, a French would say “ce bruit il est trop fort”, “le bruit est fort”. In the French language, a noise could be strong and not loud. But we see the same thing, we understand the same thing. Is it so the same? We code it differently and you can see the difference in the world’s perception.

The substantives “American” and “French” could be easily transformed into adjectives, if we transpose them into another grammatical class, they will be still the same words with the same characteristics, but the semantics would change. They are not objective anymore. They passed from the static substance to the non-static one. 

Now we can choose the level of Frenchness that we would like or Americanness. So, these two non-constant characteristics need to be applied, to see, if could they be changeable or not, helping our poor Paul to find his identity. To do that, let us do the permutation. 

• Paul is (American) and he is (French).

• Paul is X and he is X.

You can put every adjective that you would like to, starting with good, bad, nice, sportive, and beautiful, try it by yourself. The more you permutate the X, the more you feel the subjectiveness of these terms. for example:

• Paul is (good) and he is (nice). 

To what extent is Paul good? Is he the best person that you have ever met? Or on the planet. Or he is better than your friend, or your teacher. We do not know. We need a certain point to compare it with the actual Paul at this moment in time. I emphasize this moment because he could become better or worst, or something could become better than Paul or visa-versa. Some concepts could go away from the discourse, and we need to fix all the parameters to make a decision.

Then, change your adjectives to American and French. Do you feel the difference? The same questions. To what extent is Paul American? Is he more American than his friend? What are the criteria to determine the level of Americanness? And so forth. 

The subjectiveness opens Paul to the reality that everything is changeable, everything is moving in time and space, because, new subjects create new terms and new characteristics. They enter the world of perception and their Americanness or Frenchness can be compared with him, or with others. 

Being American or French is an essence, something determined, something objective but the way of living your life to become one is existence, something that you live not only in society but with yourself too, with your thoughts, feelings, and fears. One sort of action will make you more American, and others do not. 

If we return to Paul, at this time and space, he lives with the vision of an American who would like to become French, to connect himself to his mother’s culture. He lives in another country by himself and all alone, so he searches for a social group to be associated with. We remember that his mother is conservative this reflects in her vision of the world, where everything is predetermined. Monique gave to Paul Aristotle’s vision of things — static and predetermined. You are American, or you are French. 

Paul thinks that his essence precedes existence which is the source of the internal conflict. He has a real existential crisis, everything that he loved and cared about so much is falling apart and he does not know what to grab to be saved. But this is a part of assimilation that is also a complex subject that I will cover in the next article. 

Paul’s identity is based on his linguistic identity which comprises culture, history, stereotypes, and a whole world of vision. The problem of polylingual people is that they cannot find their way in the world, because they always have two roads, three, and sometimes even more. Language is not always just a bunch of grammar structures, it is the logic, the way a group of people decided to understand the world we live in. Two identities, two problems, two sufferings. In this case, I could only propose Paul remember Spinoza’s and Simone Weil’s advice: suffering is important to save your dignity.

“Too American to be called French and too French to be called American.”

References

1. « Statistics on Migration to Europe ». European Commission — European Commission, https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/promoting-our-european-way-life/statistics-migration-europe_en. Consulté le 20 octobre 2022.

2. Norton, Bonny. Identity and language learning: extending the conversation. Second Edition, Multilingual Matters, 2013.

3. Saussure, Ferdinand de. Cours de linguistique générale. Payot, 1995.

4. Firth, Alan, et Johannes Wagner. « On Discourse, Communication, and (Some) Fundamental Concepts in SLA Research ». The Modern Language Journal, vol. 81, no3, septembre 1997, p. 285 300. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.1997.tb05480.x.

5. Sugimoto, Yoshio, éditeur. The Cambridge companion to modern Japanese culture. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

6. Romanowski, Piotr, et Małgorzata Jedynak, éditeurs. Current Research in Bilingualism and Bilingual Education. Springer International Publishing, 2018. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92396-3.

7. Anderson, Benedict R. O’G. Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Rev. and Extended ed, Verso, 1991.

8. Taeschner, Traute. The Sun Is Feminine: A Study on Language Acquisition in Bilingual Children. Springer, 1983.

9. Peirce, Bonny Norton. « Social Identity, Investment, and Language Learning ». TESOL Quarterly, vol. 29, no 1, 1995, p. 9. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.2307/3587803.

#free wrting #creative writing #article #sociology #philosophy #existentialism #writer #writer on tumblr #journal #foreign languages #immigration #language learning #langblr #language #languages #books #bookblr

[mariacallous]

Alexandru Musteata, director of the Moldovan Intelligence and Security Service, SIS, said on Tuesday that Russia is involved in a malign operation to compromise Moldova’s EU accession hopes by interfering in its electoral processes.

Musteata said that Moscow first targeted Moldova’s local elections in November 2023 and will now seek to meddle in presidential elections and the country’s EU integration referendum this autumn and parliamentary elections in July 2025.

“Now they are trying to complete the next two stages, to interfere in this year’s electoral processes. We have information that attempts are being implemented to compromise the referendum for European integration, to interfere in the presidential elections, and to denigrate political institutions and candidates that will promote EU accession,” said Musteata.

The head of the SIS explained that Moscow will support various different kinds of political actors under the direct or indirect control of the Russian Federation, who, once elected, will serve the hostile interests of the Kremlin.

“Openly declared pro-Russian political actors, they have direct and confirmed links to Russian special services, political consultants, organised crime groups under Kremlin leadership, oligarchic groups and political actors who declare that they support the state, hiding behind neutral foreign policies, declaring that they defend the national interest, neutrality and statehood, but in fact, their purpose is to serve Moscow in a camouflaged form,” he said.

Musteata named politicians connected to organised crime groups led by fugitive Moldovan oligarchs who are wanted for arrest.

“All of them are planning economic and social crises, social clashes to incite inter-ethnic hatred, security or public order crises, including in the region of UTAG [the pro-Russian region of Gagauzia] or on the left of the Dniester River [the separatist region of Transnistria],” he added.

The SIS chief predicted that the destabilisation attempts will be controlled by the fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor and will be initiated from Gagauzia in the south of Moldova, where Shor is highly influential and spends considerable sums of money on organising protests and violent actions.

“This strategy can already be seen publicly. These forces will promote the false message that the Republic of Moldova’s accession to the EU would affect the country’s sovereignty,” said Musteata.

Musteata also drew attention to the use of the Telegram and TikTok apps to spread disinformation, but also attempts to use TV channels for propaganda.

Moldova has banned the main Russian TV channel alongside domestic TV channels owned by the fugitive oligarchs Shor and Vlad Plahotniuc. But a channel owned by Shor, TV6, which was banned at the national level, has started to broadcast its programmes again via Gagauzian local TV station Gagauz Radio Television, GRT.

The deputy secretary-secretary of NATO, Mircea Geoana, also said on February 15 that Russia will try to obstruct Moldova’s path towards EU membership using hybrid tactics.

“It is clear that in the Russian Federation there is an obvious interest in derailing the pro-Western path of the Republic of Moldova or other candidate countries for EU accession,” Geoana told TVR Moldova.

[autogeneratedkahootnickname]

Ok stuff's been happening in the world of UK politics and I need to share it with you before I scream.

So first, some important context. Way back in the 1920s when Ireland left the UK, the province of Ulster, by this point predominantly Protestant, remained, splitting from the rest of the nation. However, as is always the case with partition, it wasn't a clean break: people got stuck on sides of the border they weren't necessarily happy with, and over time, historical political and cultural divides were exacerbated by a new concrete separation that culminated in the Troubles, a period of violence in NI between the 1970s and the 1990s as radical nationalists (the IRA) clashed with the UK military over control of the region. This was largely ended in 1998 by the Good Friday Agreement, tearing down the hard border across Ireland and facilitating free movement of goods and people. In order to preserve the peace, a power sharing mechanism was implemented in Stormont (NI's assembly) whereby the government had to consist of two equal and codependent parties. The first minister was from the party who won the elections, the deputy minister was from the opposition, etc. This system worked well enough at suppressing Unionist/Nationalist tensions for about 20 years and was considered one of the greatest diplomatic achievements of British and Irish history.

Flash forward to 2016, and the UK votes to leave the EU. Overall. Within the nations, it's a different story, and while Scotland's desire to remain gets most of the press, Northern Ireland also voted disproportionately to remain. And as the Conservatives would discover, they kind of had to.

Because you see, a big part of the reason why the Good Friday Agreement worked is because both parties were EU members, so they were already part of the Single Market, meaning free movement of goods and services wasn't an issue since it was already European policy. Now Britain wants to leave the Single Market, we have an issue.

If you were looking at memes around 2017, you'll be familiar with the term 'Hard Brexit'. What that means is the UK is fully cut out of all the various levels of EU membership: the free trade, the external tariffs and, most importantly, the regulatory framework of the Single Market that allows goods to be easily traded across borders. As you may also know, the EU takes regulation very seriously, so ensuring imports are up to code is a lengthy and time-intensive process. If Britain wants a Hard Brexit, and they're cut out of the Single Market, there has to be a point where goods being traded in and out of countries still in the framework are checked. Say, for instance, in Ireland.

One problem: this entails a hard border. Not for people, perhaps, but for products, and people need products to make a living. On top of that as well, Northern Ireland would be cut out of the free trade area and potentially face massive import duties, massively increasing costs and threatening demand. Even on a symbolic level, its a firm dividing line across Ireland. And the Good Friday Agreement is very clear about the No Borders thing because Look What Happened The Last Time There Was A Border. If the Conservatives try and surround the UK with a hard customs border, Northern Ireland will fall.

But the alternative is either not having a Hard Brexit, the entire point of their manifesto, which would be political suicide, or leaving Northern Ireland behind basically in the EU, creating a border not across Ireland but across the UK. And if that happens, Northern Ireland will fall because of the radical unionists.

(Alternatively the solution was 'No Brexit in the first place' but too late for that now ig.)

David Cameron resigns before having to sort this out. Theresa May spends her entire premiership trying to sort this out while part of a coalition with the DUP (the leading Unionist party, at this point the largest party in Stormont and basically NI's Tories) and she can't, forcing her resignation. Then Boris Johnson comes along and finds a 'temporary' solution to get the paperwork signed: put the border between Great Britain and Norther Ireland, keeping Good Friday intact, until they can find a better way. Until then, Northern Ireland abides by EU trade regulation and future amendments: the Northern Ireland Protocol. And they wait. And they wait. And they don't.

As this shitshow is going down, Northern Ireland is getting increasingly tired of Westminster's routine (and the DUP's dumpster fire coalition attempt) and pivots towards new kid on the block, the party of compromise, Alliance. The Nationalists, led by Sinn Fein, lose votes through this too, but to a far lesser degree. DUP loses 10% of the vote share in the 2017 election, putting them and Sinn Fein neck and neck.

And in 2022, for the first time, Sinn Fein wins Stormont. The nationalists are in power in Northern Ireland. Or rather, they're half in power.

Because as we established, Northern Ireland has a power sharing system. And the DUP have boycotted Stormont. They aren't happy with the potential of being pulled away from the UK, so they decide if they can't have NI, no-one can. By refusing to participate in the coalition government, the Sinn Fein half is prohibited from governing alone, forcing the government into shutdown.

That shutdown has lasted for a year.

This happened around the time Boris Johnson started sinking over Partygate, followed by whatever the fuck happened with Truss, so NI got overshadowed in the news cycle but over the course of 2022, order has been breaking down in Northern Ireland as radical unionists begin to stir trouble. Indeed, it looks like Northern Ireland is heading straight back to the Troubles, and no-one seems to want to do anything to fix it. In fact, the Conservatives seem to want to declare war with the EU through a proposed override of the Protocol, dismantling decades of diplomatic hard work and plunging the continent into anarchy.

In October, Rishi Sunak is 'elected' Prime Minister, and he sets out to solve the Northern Irish issue. For all her many faults, Truss was pretty cordial with Europe, and Sunak continued that trend well into his premiership. Combined with the looming threat of Russia over European stability, the EU is in a compromising mood, and agrees to help work out a new system that tears down the border between the UK and Ireland. The plan is: separate goods going to Northern Ireland and goods going to the EU. Why it took them 7 years to sort that out I don't know but huzzah, a solution. But on top of this, they also implement the Stormont Brake: whereas before, EU law applies automatically in Northern Ireland, Stormont can veto proposed amendments from applying in Northern Ireland if they're too radical. This is a hugely generous concession by the EU since this is a major compromise on a lot of their core principles, since Northern Ireland is now part of the Single Market but theoretically exempt from following it, and by extension a huge win for Rishi Sunak. While the DUP have lost all credibility, this will hopefully be enough to get them back into Stormont. This new arrangement is called the Windsor Framework, and buries the final major hatchet in the Brexit divorce proceedings.

OK, LENGTHY context complete, lets discuss what's happened. Because turns out, there's opposition to this new framework.

Who from?

WHY ITS BORIS JOHNSON AND THE CHUCKLEFUCKS.

Basically, leading members of the Johnsonian and Trussian governments (including both PMs) explicitly said they wouldn't support the deal. They don't have an alternative. A plan. Anything. They just won't support it.

Joining them is, you guessed it, THE FUCKING DUP. No matter what happens, they're refusing to go back to Stormont. Just to spite their rivals.

Some more important context, the Conservatives are on the verge of self destructing since vast swathes of the party believe Johnson is a martyr and Sunak is not the True King, so getting the Conservatives to vote together is a massive challenge. If this vote passes, it'll give the Tories a lifeline to the next election, possibly their one positive achievement since 2016 outside of 'not actively backing Putin'. If it fails, the Conservatives are history. Making matters worse in the best way, Keir Starmer pledges Labour's plurality in support of Windsor, saying, to paraphrase, 'if you fucks can't get it together we'll do it for you.' Iconic. By doing so, Labour guarantee the vote passes unless the entire Conservative party rips itself in twain, but potentially force the PM to rely on the OPPOSITION over his OWN PARTY to pass groundbreaking legislation, which is almost worse for Sunak than the bill failing.

The vote took place today and the Conservatives, despite a massive rebellion, barely managed to vote in favour on their own majority alone. Barely. We're talking single digits. Two dozen Tory MPs rebelled, and 3 dozen more abstained. With no alternative. They would rather have chaos in Northern Ireland than be forced to work with the EU when the EU is bending over backwards to make this happen.

Today is a positive for the UK's future, but it reaffirms that the Conservatives need to go now more than ever.

#uk politics #northern ireland #windsor framework #long post #stormont #sorry for the long post i just needed to vent #i hope its accurate if its not ill make edits

[legilimensims]

yesterday in italy was national holiday, every year on april 25 we celebrate the liberation from the nazi fascist regime. as usual, i’ve seen scenes on my tv from various protests/manifestations around the country, declarations of politicians etc that made me deeply ashamed of being born here. i don’t know what disgusted me more - the pro israel vs pro palestine clashes that used a national holiday to create chaos, the manifestations against ukraine with the usual “ukron*zi” propaganda, our own politicians currently governing that refused to pronounce the word “antifascism”, but also those that said that antifascism = extremism, that the holiday has been hijacked by the “communist left” so now the left is fascist…? i don’t even know. the level of gaslighting in this country is astounding, we are finished.

and you know i could go on about how we are being progressively denied free healthcare (which is our constitutional right), the government used EU funds to put “pro-life” fanatics in our “consultori” - which are kinda our version of planned parenthood clinics - so abortions rights are at risk….but that’s a rant for another day.

#nonsims #personal #saviourhide

[dividedindiversity]

#EU Clash of countries #Round 3 #Ireland #Estonia

[beardedmrbean]

1. Free legal advice phone line available from 13 April

Citizens with legal queries about issues such as neighbourhood disputes or employment contracts will be able to call a free phone line for guidance from 13 April, between 09:00 and 16:00. Read more.

2. Can Brussels turn the Toison d’Or into a Champs-Élysées?

The short shopping stretch from the Porte de Namur to Place Louise, known as the Toison d’Or, is essentially two distinct sections bisected by a busy highway and tunnels. The city has new plans to make the zone more user-friendly. Read more.

3. Brussels Porn Film Festival returns to Belgian capital next month

Inspired by thriving festivals in other European capitals and the success of its two previous editions, the Brussels Porn Film Festival (BxlPFF) is returning to independent cinemas in the Belgian capital next month to offer "a window into contemporary alternative pornography." Read more.

4. Bouchez-Hedebouw debate: PTB and MR disagree on everything, except tax reform

After last week's clash between Prime Minister Alexander De Croo (Open VLD) and Paul Magnette (PS), Wednesday's televised debate pitted the leaders of the Francophone liberal MR Georges-Louis Bouchez and the radical left Belgian Workers' Party (PTB-PVDA) Raoul Hedebouw against each other. Read more.

5. Cycling in the EU: Road safety key for boosting cycling across Europe

The EU institutions adopted on Wednesday the European Declaration on Cycling to reduce pollution, promote good health and transform urban transport.  Read more.

6. Go for Palmerston, not Ambiorix, says Pope Francis

History does not repeat itself. But there is nothing else we can learn from. The names given to two parks in Brussels’ European Quarter remind us of two ways in which a war can end, 2000 and 200 years ago but also today. One of them enjoys the Pope’s preference. Mine too. Read more.

7. Proportional representation in Belgium: How does it work?

Expats are eligible to vote in two of the five elections taking place in Belgium this year. But understanding how the electoral system works – especially how it differs from your home country – will have practical and democratic repercussions. Read more.

#nunyas news

[leeenuu]

the german magazine der spiegel released an article a few days ago on how germany (specifically the former chancellor kohl and the foreign minister genscher) in 1991 tried to stop the collapse of the soviet union and the east-ward expansion of nato.

and some highlights:

kohl thought that the dissolution of the union would be a "catastrophe" and anyone who was in favour of the union collapsing was an "ass"

and he repeatedly lobbied in the rest of the western countries to stop the baltic states and ukraine from gaining independence

even though west germany never recognized the annexation of estonia, latvia and lithuania by stalin in 1940, when the baltics moved toward independence, kohl felt that they were on a "wrong path"

and yet germany got reunified asap but the baltics should have waited at least 10 years to be free... and even then, those countries should be neutral and not become the members of nato and the european community (later the eu)

also ukraine should've remained in the soviet union, so that the union could've lived on

once they realised that there was no stopping the union from collapsing, kohl in november 1991 offered yeltsin to "exert influence on the ukrainian leadership" to join a confederation with russia and other former soviet republics

two weeks later, over 90% of ukrainians were in favour of indenpendence, which made kohl (and genscher) change course

genscher tried to stop poland, hungary and romania from joining nato because the union was concerned

nato membership for eastern-central europeans was "not in our interest" and also those countries have the right to join the alliance but the west should be ensuring "that they don't exercise that right"

they even wanted nato to declare that nato wouldn't expand eastward. only after the foreign minister visited the us in may 1991 and was told that an expansion "cannot be excluded in the future", they backed off

kohl was an big supporter of gorbachev because he had allowed germany to reunify and kohl was very thankful for that so he supported gorbachev's attempts to keep the union together

kohl and genscher believed that if the baltics left the union, ukraine would follow and after that the soviet union would collapse which meant the fall of gorbachev (which did happen) but kohl doubted how peaceful the dissolution would be, feeling that a "civil war" was possible

also that if the baltic states became independent once again, "the clash with poland will start (anew)". poland and lithuania fought against each other in 1920

but if u think that only kohl and genscher were such bastards, then of course not. they weren't the only ones:

french president mitterrand had complained about the baltics, saying "you can’t risk everything you have gained (with moscow – eds.) just to help countries that haven’t existed on their own in 400 years."

and bush sr had complained about the forcefulness of the baltic politicians as they pushed for independence

and to finish a direct extract from the article because this is just so enraging:

"Germany’s friendship with the Kremlin even led Chancellor Kohl to overlook a criminal offense on one occasion. On Jan. 13, 1991, Soviet special forces in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius were unleashed on the national independence movement there, storming the city’s television tower and other buildings. Fourteen unarmed people were killed and hundreds more injured.

The protests from Bonn were tepid at best.

Just a few days after the violence, Kohl and Gorbachev spoke on the phone. The diplomat listening in on the call noted that the two exchanged "hearty greetings." Gorbachev complained that it was impossible to move forward "without certain severe measures," which sounded as though he was referring to Vilnius. Kohl’s response: "In politics, everyone must also be open to detours. The important thing is that you don’t lose sight of the goal." Gorbachev concluded by saying that he "very much valued" the chancellor’s position. The word Lithuania wasn’t uttered even a single time, according to the minutes."

#fck them all!! that's it!! #it's so fckn enraging how always someone tries to make decisions for us and i just wanna scream #germany #estonia #latvia #lithuania #ukraine #poland

[huariqueje]

Peru: Statement by the Spokesperson on the ongoing protests in the country

Violent clashes between protesters and police forces have continued in Peru over the last few days. The European Union deplores the very large number of casualties since the start of the protests.

Peaceful social protests respecting the rule of law are legitimate in a democratic society. The EU reiterates its condemnation of the widespread acts of violence as well as the disproportionate use of force by security forces.

We welcome the recent visit to Peru by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to observe the human rights situation in the context of the current institutional crisis and social protests, and trust that the national institutions will investigate and bring to justice those responsible for abuses or violations of human rights. The ongoing social and political crises should be addressed in full respect of the constitutional order, the rule of law, and human rights.

The EU calls on the government and all political actors to take urgent steps to restore calm and ensure an inclusive dialogue with the participation of civil society and affected communities as the way out of the crisis. The EU is fully committed to support Peruvian efforts in this regard.

#Peru unrest #Lima Peru students repression #Human Rights #European Union #Peru social protests #Peru indigenous repression

[invested-in-your-future]

What's so different that you'd need to rewrite everything? Can you share some of it ???

Hm I can paraphrase some of the lore changes, for example, because otherwise it would take (even more) walls of text otherwise.

For example:

My take on Mistral is that its a bit of a weird kingdom in that its actually more like multiple kingdoms mashed together (as a meta way to solve the eastern inspired stuff clashing with obviously greek stuff).

It's essentially three pretty different countries that were kind of forced to come together out of necessity (since I am running full on with the idea of the importance of the towers) or fall alone. So you have Haven at the center of it all as a sort of newer location that is officially "the central city" pushed by Ozpin's influence, but really beyond it's position and the way the communications array and academy being there ties the kingdom together, the three regions all have their own defacto (way older) capital cities, power structure, myths and beliefs. So you have a sort of an EU situation where on the surface you have unified interests, but behind the scenes different aspects of it are locked in a power struggle on where they want the whole "Kingdom" to go and which parts of the continent they see as "true" Mistral.

One unifying aspect between three regions is that they all share the same creation myth and thus believe that Continent of Anima is where civilization itself began. Each of regions has their "patron god", which is essentially deified aspect of the creation myth tied to their capital city. Given, its unknown how much of the actual myth is based in truth, because passage of time tends to distort some things and embelish others (especially with V3 already establishing Ozpin is not beyond making certain truths stay buried), but the folklore behind it is a unifying aspect nonetheless. You don't need gods to be "real" to use them in plot in a sensible way. Just legends and myths scattered in time.

You have three different regions with different influential people with their views, then you have WF subset that operates in Mistral and how they are taking advantage of the situation and on top of that you have other factions that see the shaken status quo as a chance to "make it right". And with the Fall of Beacon and the whole communication array becoming worthless (running off the WoR line about how if one tower falls, all stop working), those conflicts and interests slowly grow larger. For example, there would absolutely be those who would feel the outcome of "Great War" has "wronged" them and who have been trying to push laws to "rein Faunus in". Fall of Beacon would obviously be the proof that the faunus are to not be trusted for them and a way to build more political capital in the kingdom.

Likewise with communication deteriorating, it makes for an easy way to use distorted or false information for your benefit. For example, it would absolutely be in WF's benefit to try to paint Fall of Beacon as an attempt by Vale and Atlas to eradicate the Faunus and WF under Adam "valiantly fighting back". Likewise some would more likely find it favorable to paint Atlas as invaders who brutally betrayed their valuable ally, Kingdom of Vale and are coming for Mistral next.

The thing about a status quo is that while comfortable, it also sort of works like a leash. And once there's no status quo, a lot of aspects that worked together would see that as a green light to act on their interests.

And in that kind of mix and match of ideas, politics and worldviews, you'd have huntsmen and the kinds of roles they would have to take there, which ties into exploring just what it means to be a huntsman and whether the idolized view of "Being the Hero that Fights Monsters" always holds up.

So that's the kind of Kingdom of Mistral that's used as the setting.

You'd still have next arc after V3 go to Mistral and you'd still have some characters ending up there (but for different reasons, for example the reason JNRR are going there are to give back Pyrrha's mementos to her family (because NO you ain't using them to make you some new gear) and Blake is going there because she ain't going to some trip to Menagerie and is resolved to hit Adam where it hurts the most), but with no gods, no relics, no Salem's Evil Council of Evil and with a different lore and set up for the Kingdom, the outcomes and what happen there would have to be very different.

For one, it wouldn't be just a forest walk and the focus would be different (for one, Ruby having an actual story arc focus and Neo playing a role as Mistral would be kind of primarily Ruby and Yang's story). Some parts would still make sense (for example Nora and Ren backstory which was mostly nearly perfect in V4-proper still), but a lot would go pretty differently (can you believe Neptune actually plays a role in plot and has a character arc?!)

Which in turn has domino effect on how one would redo everything after too and it kind of snowballs into an avalanche of very different outcomes.

#RWBY #RWBY meta stuff mine #Ruby Rose #rwde

[djuvlipen]

Greek Roma are also warning that during the last year, several such police interventions have ended in serious injury, Agence-France Presse (AFP) reports. According to police, more than 11,000 people have protested in Athens, Thessaloniki, and other Greek cities.

The BBC and The Guardian reported that protesters have been chanting “Stop this murderous policy!” The unrest broke out after people heard that an officer had fired his gun twice at the 16-year-old Romani boy, wounding him seriously; police were chasing him after he drove away from a gas station in Thessaloniki, allegedly without paying the EUR 20 bill.

According to CCTV footage, the police officers were sitting at the gas station when the Romani teenager allegedly drove off without paying. The officers began pursuing him by motorcycle.

“I fired once into the air and once at the vehicle. The lives of my colleagues were in danger,” a 34-year-old officer involved in the incident said.

On Tuesday, the officer defended himself in court for having used his firearm, allegedly to save his colleagues’ lives. He said that the Romani teenager had attempted to use his car to bring down the motorcycle police.

Parents of the boy say their son is “between life and death”. Doctors removed the bullet from his head.

Immediately after the shooting, about 100 Romani men set up barricades and set garbage cans on fire in front of the hospital where the boy was being treated, and 1,500 demonstrators clashed with police on the streets of Thessaloniki. The protests continued on Tuesday and were attended by the father of the Romani boy who had been shot.

“What, he didn’t pay? Did they have to kill him for that?” the father is quoted by Greek media as saying, adding that if the boy had made a mistake, the police should have arrested him at home.

On social media, video footage has begun to go viral showing police officers intervening against the father of the boy as well. The incident is not the first of its kind in Greece.

Last year an 18-year old Romani man, Nikos Sampanis, was fatally shot by police during a car chase near Athens, and on 6 December 2008 a 15-year-old boy was shot by a police patrol at night in the capital. According to the chair of the Greek Confederation of Roma, Vasilis Pantzos, members of that minority face a racist approach from the state authorities and police brutality in the country.

“This is a tragic incident, the fourth such incident in our community during the past year,” Pantzos told AFP. According to him, Romani people and other vulnerable groups facing hate and prejudice are the most likely to be subjected to police brutality.

The association chair is pointing out that most Romani people in Greece live in poverty and social exclusion. According to the most recent report from the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) on Romani people in selected EU Member States, more than 90 % of Romani people in Greece are at risk of poverty.

More than 40 % of Romani respondents to the FRA survey reported having experienced ill-treatment during the past year because of their ethnicity. The police are trusted by roughly half of Romani people, significantly less than the rest of the Greek population; between 170,000 – 300,000 Romani people are estimated to live in Greece.

#kostas frangoulis #police brutality

[mariacallous]

V4 REALITY: TUSK AND FIALA SHOUTED AT ORBÁN WHILE FICO SAT IN SILENCE

This is exactly how the Visegrád Group prime ministers’ meeting in Prague on February 27 was described to me by two government-connected Czech sources with knowledge of the discussion: “It was very wild,” one of them said. Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala previously had made it clear that no meeting would be possible unless Hungary approved Sweden’s NATO membership – which eventually happened, but only the day before the Prague meeting. After a long period without PM-level meetings and Visegrád cooperation openly deteriorating, the prime ministers wanted to clear the air and have an unfiltered discussion – hence they didn’t let any staffers join them, according to my sources. It was just the four leaders in the room, and their discussion went on for almost an hour longer than was scheduled. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Fiala questioned Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Russia policy, asking why he is trying to block and hinder EU support for Ukraine. According to my sources, the debate was so heated that they were actually shouting at each other. The most revealing part of the scene was, however, that Slovak prime minister Robert Fico, who himself pedals the same anti-Ukrainian narratives and claims to play second fiddle to Orbán, simply sat there in silence instead of trying to help him out. (As I described in a previous newsletter, Fico’s attitude is pro-Russian in the streets and pro-Western in the meet(ing)s.) In the end, the joint press conference had to be delayed and the leaders of the Visegrád Group countries all came out looking visibly tense.

WHY KEEP VISEGRÁD ALIVE? TO PRESSURE THE HUNGARIANS AND SLOVAKS

Just after the PMs’ meeting, speakers from the various Visegrád Group parliaments also met in Prague. The event’s host, Czech Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Markéta Pekarová Adamová, also invited President of Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Ruslan Stefanchuk, turning the meeting into a V4+Ukraine format – making it even more uncomfortable for her Slovak and Hungarian counterparts to hold their anti-Ukrainian line during the meeting. “The Czech thinking is that the V4 formats still make sense and are good to pressure and confront Slovakia and Hungary,” a Czech source familiar with the meeting told me. “The numerical superiority also helps. Poland and the Czech Republic have a two-chamber parliament, while Hungary and Slovakia only have a one-chamber parliament, so it’s four against two, and this time, together with Ukraine, it was five against two,” the source added. While this meeting was much calmer than the one in which prime ministers screamed at each other, there was still a clash over support for Ukraine. According to my source, Pekarová Adamová made a witty offer to Hungarian Deputy Speaker Csaba Hende and Slovak Speaker Peter Pellegrini. She said that if their countries don’t want to provide direct funding for Ukraine to buy weapons, they could simply just give that money to the Czech Republic — which would in turn buy the weapons for them. “Pellegrini of course was more moderate than Fico, he just repeated the usual ‘we want peace’ narrative and that it makes no sense to give military support to Ukraine. Otherwise, he behaved nicely,” the source said.