#as recent events have illustrated. terrible (refusing to be one)

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Golden Kamuy Volume 2 Data Hunting

So this is a collection of assorted information about Golden Kamuy Vol 2 inclusive of data, points to ponder, notable quotes and so on.

It was a terribly long work and I don’t expect it to be perfect. If you notice something is wrong (especially in the translation from Japanese) or missing please, feel free to drop me a note.

I will try to do something similar for vol 3 as well but I don’t promise at all I’ll manage it.

Anyway, I’ll hope you’ll enjoy this!

VOLUME 2

Cover: Asirpa & Retar

Chapters: 10

First printed: 19/February/2015

Volume only extras: Sugimoto’s black and white illustration, Retar’s tiny black and white illustration, reprint of Huci’s words to Sugimoto now translated, 2 page extra story about Sugimoto and Asirpa eating river otter, Asirpa wearing a Kaparamip, frontal and back image, the Ainu sentence ‘Kanto orwa yaku sak no arankep shinep ka isam’ (“Nothing comes from heaven without purpose”).

GENERAL INFO

Notable or recurring Characters: Sugimoto Saichi (杉元 佐一), Gotō (後藤), Wilk (ウイルク), Retar (レタㇻ), Toraji (寅次), Umeko (梅子), Toraji and Umeko’s child, Asirpa (アシㇼパ), pimp (妓夫太郎 ‘Gifutarō’), prisoner who was tailing Sugimoto’s group (杉元達を尾行していた囚人 ‘Sugimoto-tachi o Bikō Shite Ita Shūjin’), Hijikata Toshizō (土方 歳三) , Ogata Hyakunosuke (尾形 百之助), Tsurumi Tokushirō (鶴見 篤四郎), Shiraishi Yoshitake (白石 由竹), Noma (野間), Okada (岡田), Huci (フチ), Makanakkuru (マカナックル), Nikaidō Kōhei (二階堂 浩平), Nikaidō Yōhei (二階堂 洋平), Osoma (オソマ), Tamai (玉井), Tanigaki Genjirō (谷垣 源次郎), Tsukishima Hajime (月島 基), Ushiyama Tatsuma (牛山 辰馬), Wada (和田)

Maps of the places mentioned:

Meiji years mentioned: Meiji 9= 1876, Meiji 23= 1890, Meiji 37=1904, Meiji 38= 1905, Meiji 40= 1907, Meiji 41= 1908.

Weapons used:

- Arisaka Type 30 rifle: Sugimoto, Tamai, Noma, Okada, Tanigaki, Tsukishima, Nikaidō Yōhei, Nikaidō Kōhei

- Arisaka Type 30 bayonet: Noma, Sugimoto, Nikaidō Yōhei

- Ainu bow (Karimpaunku) and aconite poisoned arrow (Ay): Asirpa

- Ainu short knife for women (Menomakiri): Asirpa

- Ainu hunting knife (Tasiro): Asirpa

- Koishikawa Arsenal Type 26 revolver: Tamai, Ushiyama

- Murata Sword: Hijikata

- Borchardt C-93: Tsurumi

- Amappo: Makanakkuru

- Sutu: Asirpa

- Dango skewers: Tsurumi

Convict appeared and their tattoo owners (at the end of the volume):

1. Gotō: Sugimoto

2. Prisoner who was tailing Sugimoto’s group: Sugimoto

3. Hijikata Toshizō: Hijikata (original and copy)

4. Shiraishi Yoshitake: Shiraishi, Sugimoto (copy)

5. Tsuyama: Tsurumi

6. Ushiyama: Ushiyama, Hijikata (copy)

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 08. FLIGHT (逃走 TŌSŌ)

First printed: 09/October/2014 Weekly Young Jump 45

Characters: Asirpa (アシㇼパ), Sugimoto Saichi (杉元 佐一), Wilk (ウイルク), Tanigaki Genjirō (谷垣 源次郎), Tamai (玉井), Noma (野間), Okada (岡田), Ogata Hyakunosuke (尾形 百之助).

Location: Near Otaru.

Other Places mentioned: None.

Time: 1907/1908 (?) Late February.

Historical events mentioned: None

Includes flashbacks or info about the characters past: Yes, about Wilk.

Info and the characters’ theories about the ‘Noppera-bō incident’, the gold and the escape: None.

Character deaths: None.

Animal deaths: None.

New Ainu words:

- Isepo: “Small creature that cries ‘iii’”. Hare

- Pukusa: Alpine leeks

- Osoma: Poop

Food and drinks: Hare’s raw eyes. Citatap with hare and ohaw in which it’s cooked. Sugimoto adds to it Miso as well.

Useful info and points to ponder:

- The Ainu legend about why Ezo hare have black spots on their ear tips is a cautionary tale against greed ‘If you don’t let greed get the better of you, you won’t have to spend your life running’ that well end up mimicking what the characters will do, run around for more than a year searching for the gold.

- Asirpa offers Sugimoto’s the hare’s eyes as, by custom, the man who caught the hare, gets to eat the eyes… but actually it was Asirpa who caught the hare 2 chapters ago. Noda said Asirpa wants to genuinely share all the food she finds delicious with Sugimoto so she’s not trying to gross him out… but she’s definitely forceful  with him (with Ushiyama she’ll be much nicer) considering Sugimoto is clearly not willing to eat them.

- Sugimoto eat the eyes, same as in the past chapter he ate squirrel brain and says ‘hinna’ probably out of politeness, which might be why, after Ogata refused to eat animal brain and they reached an Ainu village, he told him to behave politely.

- Sugimoto literally says the warm food makes him alive again, not just that it gave him his strength back. That’s because not much before he risked dying by hypothermia, after falling in the frozen river.

- Asirpa is not against adding something she never heard about to the soup, she’s against adding MISO to it because she thinks it’s poop and, even though she forced Sugimoto to eat Ainu food when he  didn’t want to, she isn’t shy to refuse eating Miso rather vocally, insisting it’s poop and refusing to believe Sugimoto who, for three times, will say her it’s not, her comments ending up on making Sugimoto feel as if she’s implying he’s a freak.

- Sugimoto confirms he’s scared of bears when Asirpa orders him to check a bear den and he asks ‘why him?’ although he obeys. He claims his disliking of bears is due to their last encounter with one.

- Asirpa explains Sugimoto her father was so brave he would crawl into the den clutching a poison arrow and kill the bear himself with it. It’s a system to kill a bear that Sugimoto will deploy when the bear will attack Anehata.

- Asirpa’s father clearly underwent a change in character design as in this chapter he has much has sunken cheeks, the scar of his face is either missing or much shorter as it’s supposed to continue on his cheek and yet it doesn’t and his bear is much longer and the same goes for his moustaches.

- Although despite Asirpa telling him according to Ainu a bear doesn’t kill a human that enters its den Sugimoto is firm in how he won’t get in, saying they already have to handle convicts. He’ll change his mind when it’ll become a matter of survival.

- When refusing, Sugimoto acknowledge they’ve already to face dangerous prisoners (‘Kiken'na shūjin’ 危険な囚人). Sugimoto is aware the prisoners can be dangerous… and he also knows the 7th could be dangerous. In short he was already aware he was exposing Asirpa to risk but hadn’t developed with her a bond strong enough it made him think he should apologize for involving her in this and discouraging her from continuing.

- Tamai’s group manages to find the hut Asirpa and Sugimoto had left short after they did (the fire was put out recently).

- Tamai seems to have a good opinion of Ogata, thinking he wouldn’t let a hunter and a child take him down and that he didn’t push his body to the limit just to brag but to tell them something.

- Noma is more prone to think Ogata just fell on his own and wrote ‘immortal’ to brag about how he didn’t die. While it looks like he’s not having a good opinion of Ogata, there’s also to consider Tsurumi will comment Tamai, Noma and Okada are all experienced mountaineers, something Ogata probably isn’t. So Noma’s negative judgment might also stem from the fact Ogata went to wander on the mountain alone when he didn’t know it well and this might have lead him to make mistakes that experienced mountaineers wouldn’t do (like standing on a snow cornice like Sugimoto and Shiraishi in the past chapter).

- Okada has a very minor role but, interesting enough he asks about Ogata’s conditions.

- We learn in this chapter Ogata’s jaw got broken in the fall so he couldn’t talk, yet he did his best to communicate with the others. Vasily, who also can’t talk, except for his attempt to deliver, through drawings, who he was searching to Sugimoto, hadn’t really made an effort at communicating with others, though, to be honest, the others hadn’t done an effort to talk with him either.

- Ogata only wrote ‘immortal’ because he tried to write ‘Immortal Sugimoto’ (although in English we favour ‘Sugimoto the immortal’ in Japanese is ‘Fujimi no Sugimoto’ with “immortal” ‘fujimi’ written first) but, apparently, fall back to unconsciousness before ending the sentence. We’ve seen Sugimoto is pretty well known for his nick so, writing it down would have given people an immediate grasp of who had attacked him. It’s also worth to mention that the message was possibly aimed not at Tsurumi but at Tamai as we’ll discover Ogata was in a rebellion with Tamai, Noma and Okada.

- Noma’s sentence about Ogata claiming to be unkillable it’s actually “did he want to say ‘I’m immortal’?” which is, ironically, Sugimoto’s catchphrase and probably Noma himself, who had met Sugimoto at Port Arthur, slapped himself later on when he realized what Ogata was actually trying to say. On a sidenote as ‘Fujimi’ is generally translated as “immortal” but technically mean “not-dead/not-dying” maybe Noma meant Ogata only wanted to say something like “I am not ding” but this is a speculation I’ll let to who’s more knowledgeable of me in Japanese.

- Tanigaki do not take part at all in the whole discussion about Ogata. While it’s true it’ll turn out Tanigaki is not a chatter, it’s also worth to mention Tanigaki doesn’t like Ogata so he probably wasn’t interested in his whereabouts, although it’s also true he was busy searching for Sugimoto and Asirpa and he’s the one spotting them.

- When Asirpa sees the flashing light caused by binoculars she can’t realize what are they, although Sugimoto does. I guess this hints Asirpa has little to no experience with binoculars.

- Tamai, Noma, Okada and Tanigaki use “Karafuto-style” or “Russian-style” skis. Noda confirmed that back then ski weren’t in use in Japan yet but that he assumed they could have been introduced in Hokkaido due to the prosperous trade with Russia.

Notable changes from the magazine version: None

Notable quotes:

- Sugimoto: “So the moral of this story is…”If you don't let greed get the better of you, you won't have to spend your life running”…” (‘Tsumari sono ohanashi no kyōkun wa “yoku o dasanakereba nigemawaru hitsuyō mo nakatta”… tte kotoda na’ つまりそのお話の教訓は『欲を出さなければ逃げ回る必要も無かった』…ってことだな)

- Asirpa: “Here, Sugimoto. you can have the eyeball.” (‘Sugimoto, usagi no medama tabete yoi zo’ 杉元、ウサギの目玉食べて良いぞ Lit: “Sugimoto, you can eat the rabbit’s eyeball”)

- Sugimoto: “Ahh… It's warming me up from the inside. I can feel my strength coming back.” (‘Ā…-tai ga nukumaru. Ikikaeruu ~’ ああ…体が温まる。生き返るう～ Lit: “Ah... my body gets warm. I’m coming back to life~.”)

- Sugimoto: “This is already pretty delicious, but I bet If you added miso it would really enhance the flavor. What do you think?” (‘Asirpa-san, ko no mama demo jūbun umai ndaga, miso iretara zettai au n janai no? Kore’ アシㇼパさんこのままでも十分美味いんだが、味噌入れたら絶対合うんじゃないの？コレ Lit: “Asirpa-san, it is delicious enough as it is, but if you put in it Miso, it'll definitely fit well, right? I think this.”)

- Asirpa: “Are you trying to feed me poop!? I refuse to eat a bite!” (‘Watashi ni unko kuwa seru ki ka! Zettai tabenai zo!’ 私にうんこ食わせる気か！絶対食べないぞ！Lit: ‘Do you want me to eat poop?! I'll never eat it!’)

- Asirpa: “Eww, He's eating poor and smiling while he does it.” (‘Uwaa… unko tabete yorokon deru yo kono otoko’ うわあ…ウンコ食べて喜んでるよこの男 Lit: “Wow... he’s happy to eat poop, this guy.”)

- Sugimoto: “Don't talk about me like I'm some kind of freak.” (‘Hito o hentai mitai ni iu n jaarimasen yo.’ ひとを変態みたいに言うんじゃありませんよ)

- Asirpa: “There's an ainu saying that goes: a brown bear will never kill a human that enter its den.” (‘Ainu no iitsutae ni kō iu no ga aru “higuma wa suana ni haitte kita ningen o kesshite korosanai”’ アイヌの言い伝えにこういうのがある『ヒグマは巣穴に入ってきた人間を決して殺さない』)

- Sugimoto: “Hell no. I’m not going there. We’ve already got our hands full chasing dangerous criminals. It’s not like we starve if we don’t catch a bear right now. Let’s get out of here.” (‘Zettaiyada. Oretachi wa tadade sae kiken'na shūjin o tsukamaenaki ya naran noda. Ima sugu higuma kuwanakya uejini suru tte wake jane~eshi. Ikōze’ 絶対やだ。俺たちはただでさえ危険な囚人を捕まえなきやならんのだ。今すぐヒグマ食わなきゃ飢え死にするってわけじゃねぇし。行こうぜ Lit: “Absolutely not. We just have to catch dangerous prisoners. I wouldn't be starving to death if I didn't eat brown bears right now. Let's go”)

- Tamai: “It’s hard to believe a capable man like superior private Ogata was taken down by a couple of hunters… but maybe they know something.” (‘Ogata jōtōhei hodo no otoko ga ryōshi no oyako ni yara reta to na waru enga... Nani ka shitteru kamo’ 尾形上等兵ほどの男が猟師の親子にやられたとな悪えんが... 何か知ってるかも Lit: “A man like Superior Private Ogata being taken down by a hunter and his child seems (the) wrong (option)… They might know something.”)

- Noma: “It’s possible that he simply slipped and fell on his own.” (‘Tan no hitori de karraku shita dakedato waruimasuga nē’ 単のひとりで滑落しただけだと悪いますがねえ)

- Okada: “How's his condition?” (‘Yōdai wa?’ 容態は？)

- Tamai: “He managed to regain consciousness once. However he wasn't able to say much with a broken jaw. He used what little strength he had to write something with his finger. ‘Immortal’.” (‘Ichidodake ishiki o torimodoshita kirida. Ago ga warete hanasenakattaga. Sono toki-ryoku o furishibotte yubi de moji o kaita. “Fujimi”.’ 一度だけ意識を取り戻したきりだ。アゴが割れて話せなかったが。そのとき力を振り絞って指で文字を書いた。 「ふじみ」。Lit: “He managed to regain consciousness only once. His jaw his broken so he couldn’t talk. At that time, he collected all his strength and wrote some letters with his finger. ‘Fujimi’.”)

- Noma: “Perhaps he was trying to boast about being unkillable? To fall into a frozen river with injuries like that and come out alive is remarkable good fortune on his part.” (‘Ore wa fushida to demo ītakatta nodeshou ka ne?’ 俺は不死身だとでもいいたかったのでしょうかね？Lit: “Did he want to say ‘I’m immortal’?”)

- Tamai: “No, I don't think that's it... he pushed his body to its limits in order to tell us something. He wouldn't use that effort merely to brag or joke.” (‘Iya... Yatto no omoi de wareware ni tsutaeta noda. Karuguchi hazu ga nai’ いや... やっとの想いで我々に伝えたのだ。軽口はずが無い Lit: “No… he hardly managed to tell us. It couldn’t be a frivolous talk.”)

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09. CORNERED RAT (窮鼠 KYŪSO)

First printed: 16/October/2014 Weekly Young Jump 46

Characters: Sugimoto Saichi (杉元 佐一), Asirpa (アシㇼパ), Tamai (玉井), Noma (野間), Okada (岡田), Tanigaki Genjirō (谷垣 源次郎), Gotō (後藤), Shiraishi Yoshitake (白石 由竹), Retar (レタㇻ), Ogata Hyakunosuke (尾形 百之助).

Location: Near Otaru.

Other Places mentioned: 203 hill in Port Arthur (current Lüshunkou) (China)

Time: 1907/1908 (?) Late February

Historical events mentioned: Russo-Japanese war (8 February 1904  – 5 September 1905), Siege of Port Arthur (1 August 1904 – 2 January 1905), Hokkaidō shikaryō kisoku (北海道鹿猟規則 “Hokkaido Deer-Hunting Regulations”) (1876)

Includes flashbacks or info about the characters past: Yes, about Tanigaki, Noma and Sugimoto.

Info and the characters’ theories about the ‘Noppera-bō incident’, the gold and the escape: None

Character deaths: None

Animal deaths: None

New Ainu words:

- Kitura sisam ohaw or si omare wa e: The man I was with puts poop in his soup and eats it.

Food and drinks: None

Useful info and points to ponder:

- This is the chapter in which Asirpa teaches to Sugimoto that if he walks on bamboo grass his footprints will become less obvious. Sugimoto forgetting about this will become relevant in chap 228 when he’ll get lost and Asirpa will have troubles finding him.

- When realizing they can’t shake them Sugimoto will decide for him and Asirpa to split up, claiming that the soldiers would chase only the adult’s footsteps, not Asirpa’s. Tamai’s group will actually chase both, specifically sending Tanigaki to track her and Sugimoto was aware this could happen, as he specifically instructed Asirpa on what to do, should they find her.

- Sugimoto also, instead than hiding the skins somewhere, entrust them to Asirpa claiming that if they were to find them on him, they would kill him on the spot but that if they were to find Asirpa, she should hand them to them and pretend she knows nothing because they aren’t the types who would kill a kid. Not only this is purely Sugimoto’s assumption but he knows it’s baseless because later, acknowledging the 7th division is dangerous for Asirpa too, he will try to leave her behind. At the moment though, he entrusts the skins to Asirpa because he hasn’t developed a bond tight enough with her yet and therefore prioritized trying to protect himself and the skins, underestimating the danger he put her in.

- Sugimoto claims all Asirpa cares for is for someone to find the gold (so that Noppera-bō will be executed and her father avenged) therefore whoever were to do it would be fine for her. This remarks that Asirpa has no interest in the gold itself (which would therefore go all to Sugimoto if they were to find it) but also that Sugimoto didn’t realize Asirpa cares for him as well.

- Asirpa’s sad expression at such words and her warning he shouldn’t fight them or they would kill him prove she actually cares for him.

- To Asirpa’s words Sugimoto replies with his catchphrase “I’m Sugimoto the immortal”. It seems a cool scene because he’s the main character (so we know he’s not going to die) and because “Sugimoto the immortal” was introduced as his nick. When Tanigaki, in chap 231, will reply the same to Inkarmat in a scene that parallels this one though, we’ll realize how silly and unbelievable of a reply it is in a real life situation.

- It’s Okada who finds Sugimoto’s and Asirpa trails even if it’s Tanigaki who afterward tell them that Sugimoto and Asirpa split.

- Tamai sends Tanigaki after Asirpa. This is likely not really because Tanigaki is the best tracker and Asirpa is better than Sugimoto at hiding her tracks but likely because Tamai and the others are in a rebel group with Ogata and, if Sugimoto were to turn out involved in his incident, they wanted to question him without risking for Tanigaki to overhear something compromising.

- Tanigaki claims he’s a Matagi of Tohoku who has seen animals double back on their tracks countless times, basically telling us he’s a hunter. In fact he easily finds Asirpa.

- Asirpa tells Tanigaki a random sentence in Ainu to pretend she doesn’t know how to talk Japanese.

- Tanigaki doesn’t talk Ainu, not even a little bit.

- Although nervous, Asirpa decides not to hand the skin to Tanigaki and hides it on the tree she was hiding on. Ironically, one of the squirrels she loves to eat cause the skins to fall down and be seen by Tanigaki.

- Tanigaki asks Asirpa if the man with the army cap is her brother or father because 63 Ainu joined the army and so he’s thinking the man with the army cap is actually an Ainu related to her.

- When Tanigaki discovers the skin Asirpa attempts reaching for her poisoned arrows. Likely she only meant to scare him as she doesn’t want to kill anyone but Tanigaki can’t know this, which is likely why, later on, he’ll use her as a human shield seeing her as dangerous as the others despite her age.

- Although Tanigaki doesn’t point his rifle at Asirpa, he charges it, automatically becoming more threatening.

- Retar is then shown running toward Tanigaki from behind.

- An unclear scene shows Sugimoto running with his rifle on his shoulder but in the next panel he has it in his hands.

- Sugimoto lies and claims he escaped because he believed the soldiers were there to catch poachers and he was hunting deer illegally using an Ainu kid as his guide. He’s pretty smooth in his lie, showing he can be a good liar although his sentence is, in itself, too elaborate if he had really bee a poacher. Not only he confesses his crime too easily and too calmly despite having tried so hard to escape but he also adds unnecessary information as Asirpa being his guide. Tsurumi would have easily spotted his lie, but with Tamai’s group it can work.

- On a sidenote Sugimoto would be hunting illegally for two reasons, because he doesn’t have a hunting licence and because hunting deer was limited to a period that went from November to January.

- It’s worth to mention the deer hunting regulations greatly impacted on Ainu life (Japanese even forbid to everyone to hunt deer from 1890 to 1900), also forbidding to hunt them with poisoned arrows or amappo (they were supposed to use rifles like Kirawus does) and fundamentally making most of them illegal hunters.

- Noma says he saw Sugimoto at the field hospital in Port Arthur. As he knows Sugimoto’s division and also his nickname but Sugimoto doesn’t seem to know/recognize him, evidently he was merely pointed to Noma. There’s to say the two had crossed path in Mukden also, when Noma was among the men transporting Tsurumi and Tsukishima (Tamai was there as well) but, evidently, back then he hadn’t recognized him.

- As soon as Noma points out the one in front of them is Sugimoto the immortal, Okada immediately confirms to know him by reputation and Tamai also, like Noma, connects the dots and realizes Sugimoto is the one who attacked Ogata.

Notable changes from the magazine version: None

Notable quotes:

- Sugimoto: “Asirpa-san. Let's split up. I'm the one they're chasing not you. Here. Take the tattooed skin. I want you to hold on to it. If I'm holding it when they find me, they'll probably just kill me on the spot. If they happen to catch you, don't fight back! give them the skin! act like you don't know what's going on. they're not the type of guys that would kill a child. In the end, all that matters to you is that someone finds the Gold! So does it really matter who finds it!? Just do as I've said, Okay?” (‘Asirpa-san futa te ni wakareyou. Yatsu-ra wa otona no ashiato dake o karera ga anata o ou hazuda. Irezumi hito kawa kore o… Asirpa -san ga motte itte kure. Ore ga motte ireba osoraku sonobade korosa reru. Moshimo Asirpa -san ga tsukamattara issai teikō sezu ni yatsu-ra ni watase! Nani mo shiranai furi o shiro. Kodomo made korosu renchū janai! Asirpa -san ni totte wa kinkai sae mitsukete kurereba sore wa dare datte ī hazuda. Ore ga itta tōri ni suru nda zo ~tsuī na?’ アシㇼパさんふた手に分かれよう。やつらは大人の足跡だけを彼らがあなたを追うはずだ。刺青人皮これを…アシㇼパさんが持っていってくれ。俺が持っていればおそらくその場で殺される。もしもアシㇼパさんが捕まったら一切抵抗せずにやつらに渡せ！何も知らないふりをしろ。子供まで殺す連中じゃない！アシㇼパさんにとっては金塊さえ見つけてくれればそれは誰だっていいはずだ。俺が言ったとおりにするんだぞッいいな？Lit: “Asirpa-san. Let's divide. Those guys should chase only after the footsteps of the adult, not yours. The tattooed human skins, these… Asirpa-san should take them with her. If I had them I would probably be killed on the spot. If Asirpa-san gets caught, give it to them without any resistance! Pretend you don't know anything. Those guys are not those who would kill kids! For Asirpa-san, it’s important the gold is found. Whoever it, is fine. Do it exactly as I said it, okay?”)

- Tanigaki: “Aw, shucks. I have no idea what you're saying. I'm not some monster here to gobble you up. please come down.” (‘Maitta na sappari wakaran. Totte kuttari wa shinaikara orite oide.’ まいったなさっぱりわからん。捕って食ったりはしないから降りておいで Lit: “Annoying, I don't understand her at all. I won't catch and eat you, so come down.”)

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10. GAMBLE (博打 BAKUCHI) 

First printed: 23/October/2014 Weekly Young Jump 47

Characters: Sugimoto Saichi (杉元 佐一), Tamai (玉井), Noma (野間), Okada (岡田), Tanigaki Genjirō (谷垣 源次郎), Noma’s grandfather, Asirpa (アシㇼパ).

Location: Near Otaru.

Other Places mentioned: Noma’s grandfather charcoal-making hut, up in the mountains

Time: 1907/1908 (?) Late February

Historical events mentioned: None

Includes flashbacks or info about the characters past: Yes, about Noma.

Info and the characters’ theories about the ‘Noppera-bō incident’, the gold and the escape: None.

Character deaths: Tamai (killed by a bear), Noma (killed by a bear), Okada (killed by Tamai)

Animal deaths: Mother bear (killed by Tamai)

New Ainu words:

- Itatani: Cutting board used for meat

- Rikosinot: “Tossing up”. A bear attack in which the bear bites its target and throw it up in the air over and over.

Food and drinks: Bear citatap.

Useful info and points to ponder:

- During the confrontation between Tamai’s group and Sugimoto, it’s clear the 4 of them are all scared. Sugimoto is without weapons and against three armed men but Tamai’s group, due to Sugimoto’s legend of being immortal and dangerous, is also scared of facing him.

- Tamai is the one who manages to remain the calmest, ordering to shoot Sugimoto in the knees, a sign they didn’t aim to kill him, at least not at first.

- At the prospective of being shoot in the knees, screaming his catchphrase ‘I’m immortal’ Sugimoto decides to overcome is fear of bear and try entering in its den in hope Asirpa was right and the bear won’t attach him.

- Tamai is completely pissed off by what he judges an act of cowardice from someone who’s called ‘immortal’ and who fought like a ‘Kishin’ to the point he decides to shoot into the hole personally, even if this means he could kill Sugimoto and not get any info from him. It’s unknown if the fact that Sugimoto hurt Ogata, one of his underlings, also played a part in Tamai’s anger (Tanigaki had a good opinion of him so Tamai could be a superior officer who cares about whose under him and he also expressed appreciation for Ogata).

- Noma’s question is actually more vague as he says only they won’t be able to ask him what happened, without mentioning Ogata, even if it’s clear he’s referring to what happened with him.

- Despite being mountaineers, none of the three realize the hole is a bear den.

- Despite the shock of seeing the bear running toward him Tamai recharged his rifle but, as Nihei will point out later on, he didn’t manage to shoot the bear. The bear, with one paw, will manage to rip his face and his jaw away, the shock causing him to press the trigger and, inadvertently kill Okada.

- Regardless of the situation Noma remains calm and talks to the bear. He explains his grandfather worked up in the mountains making charcoal (this confirms Noma is a mountaineer and might point out he’s from Hokkaido). His grandfather warned him when meeting a bear running or playing dead won’t work. One has to stay calm and talk to the bear, looking at him in the eyes until it calms down and then shoot him in the head which Noma does, claiming this is revenge because a bear killed his grandfather while he was in his charcoal-making hut.

- Noma’s grandfather’s teaching were wrong. As Nihei will later do, Noma should have shoot the bear when the bear was standing, aiming for his heart and not for his head as a bear skull is really thick while the brain is small, hence it’s pretty difficult to kill the bear this way. As a result the bear gets up and attack Noma, his claws cutting his stomach and causing his intestines to come out, therefore giving him a fatal, although slow killing wound. Noma will still pull out his bayonet and stab the bear multiple times challenging the bear before the bear will toss him in the air over and over, causing him to end up on a tree where he’ll die, still holding his bayonet in his hand, albeit he’ll lose his shoes.

- Noma might have had some contacts with the Ainu as he’s aware they consider bears gods of the mountains.

- Despite the terrible wound he received, Tamai will manage to stand up again and shoot multiple times to the bear’s skull with his gun, until he’ll empty the revolver. Then, after giving a last glance to his fallen men he’ll die as well, probably of blood loss. Overall both Noma and Tamai revealed themselves as tough guys who, despite their terrible wounds, still managed to fight and eventually took down the bear.

- After he shows up, Sugimoto will comments Asirpa was right in saying a bear doesn’t kill who enters in its den and wonders if she threw off her pursuer already (he likely has realized since 3 soldiers came after him the 4th should have gone after her, proving they would chase both of them). He’s however clearly unconcerned and even takes time, before walking to help her against an adult soldier, to talk with the bear cub and hide it in his coat. This clearly implies back then he didn’t care for her as much as he’ll do later.

- Sugimoto, coming out of the bear den, was holding a bear cub in his arms as if he were a child. He claims since the cub’s mother is dead he can’t leave him there but he can’t promise Asirpa won’t turn him into Citatap. It’s not a joke but this will be developed in the next chapter.

Notable changes from the magazine version: None

Notable quotes:

- Noma: “But what if we hit him in the head and he dies? We won’t be able to ask him what happened with Ogata.” (‘Shikashi… Atama ni demo atete sokushi sa setara nani ga atta ka kikidasemasenyo’ しかし。。。頭にでも当てて即死させたら何があったか聞き出せませんよ Lit: “However… If we hit him in the head and kill him immediately he won’t be able to tell us what happened”).

Noma: “What's wrong!? You scared!? The Ainu call you a god of the mountain? Pathetic! I'll show you what it means to take on the 7th division!! Come and get me!!” (‘Dō shita a! Iru nda ka? ! Ainu ni yamanokami to agame rare teru bunzai de yō! Teikoku rikugun dainanashidan aite ni tada de sumu to omou na! Kakatte koi ~tsu!’ どうしたあ！怯んだか？！アイヌに山の神と崇められてる分際でよお！帝国陸軍第七師団相手にただで済むと思うな！かかって来いッ！Lit: “What's wrong! Are you frightened? ! Someone who has the social standing of being worshipped by the Ainu as the mountain god! Don't think you’ll win easily against the 7th division of the Imperial Army! Come on!”)

Sugimoto: “Your mom’s dead and I can't just leave you here. I'll take you with me… but I can't promise Asirpa won't make you into Citatap.” (‘Omae no kāchan shin jimatte hottokene~ekara tsurete kukedo… Asirpa-san omae o chitatapu ni shite kutchimau kamo na’ お前の母ちゃん死んじまってほっとけねぇから連れてくけど…アシㇼパさんお前をチタタプにして食っちまうかもな Lit: “Your mother is dead and I can’t leave you alone so I'll take you... but I'm afraid Asirpa-san might eat you as Citatap.”)

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11. AINU KOTAN (アイヌコタン AINU KOTAN)

First printed: 30/October/2014 Weekly Young Jump 48

Characters: Tanigaki Genjirō (谷垣 源次郎), Retar (レタㇻ), Asirpa (アシㇼパ), Sugimoto Saichi (杉元 佐一), Huci (フチ), Ekasi (エカシ), Hapo (ハポ)*.

Location: Near Otaru, Asirpa’s village near Otaru

Other Places mentioned: None

Time: 1907/1908 (?) Late February

Historical events mentioned: Hokkaido Wolf extinction (1890)

Includes flashbacks or info about the characters past: Yes, about Asirpa, her grandparents and her mother.

Info and the characters’ theories about the ‘Noppera-bō incident’, the gold and the escape: None.

Character deaths: Ekasi (illness)

Animal deaths: None.

New Ainu words:

- Horkew Kamuy: “Howling God”. Hokkaido wolf.

- Kotan: Village

- Nusasan: An altar. Objects like the skulls of the bears were enshrined there.

- Cise: House

- Mukkur: An Ainu musical instrument also known as Mukkuri. It’s a sort of mouth harp.

- Pu: A type of building used as a storehouse

- Huci: Grandmother

- Ekasi: Grandfather

- *Hapo: Mother (to be honest this word isn’t used in this chapter but as Asirpa’s mother is still unnamed and Asirpa names her relatives using Ainu words I listed her as such)

Food and drinks: Brain of a bear

Useful info and points to ponder:

- Differently from Sugimoto Tanigaki immediately realizes Retar is an Hokkaido wolf and not a white dog.

- Retar bites Tanigaki’s leg and use it to toss Tanigaki around, breaking his leg and causing him to go unconscious, before attempting to bite his throat and kill him. Differently from Tamai and Noma, Tanigaki won’t attempt to fight at all.

- Asirpa stops Retar from killing Tanigaki, saving his life. Later, fearing Sugimoto would finish him off, Asirpa will tell him he’s dead, potentially saving Tanigaki’s life a second time. Tanigaki will never thanks her for this, although, as he was unconscious, he might not have realized she had made sure he wasn’t killed.

- Between telling Sugimoto Tanigaki is alive and leaving him in Hokkaido’s wilderness Asirpa judges the safest option for Tanigaki is to be left there as she assumes he’s tough enough to survive this. Her assumption is slightly off as Tanigaki could have probably handle it on his own if he had tried going back, as Tanigaki tried to chase them he fainted and needed to be rescued by Nihei.

- Asirpa’s assumption on they being safe because he can’t go after them with his leg snapped like this is not taking into consideration that if Tanigaki had gone back he could have told to the other soldiers exactly where they met and who they are, with the result that many soldiers would came for them, aware they should search for a man and an Ainu child.

- Asirpa’s reasoning to stop Retar is she didn’t want him to become a Wen Kamuy due to her, though she thanks him for saving her.

- This time Retar not only approaches Asirpa and laps her face but let her rub his belly and scratch his favourite spots as he remained there with an expression of enjoyment. However, as soon as Sugimoto comes close, Retar takes a majestic pose and then hurries to leave.

- It’s worth to mention Asirpa too, once she got rid of Tanigaki, didn’t run to try save Sugimoto but remained with Retar, petting him. However for her it was probably the first time she got herself threatened by a soldier and, anyway, according to the plan she was meant to escape. It’s noteworthy though how things will change for Asirpa as well and worrying about Sugimoto trying to run to help him will become often the first thing she will do in the future.

- Probably, seeing Tanigaki on the ground, taken down by the wolf, subtly drove in Sugimoto’s mind  the point Asirpa had been in danger.

- In the past chapter Sugimoto warned the cub he couldn’t promise him Asirpa won’t turn him into Citatap. We see he meant it for real as first, he very clumsily tries to hide the cub in his coat, then, when he’ll get discovered IMMEDIATELY, he tries to childishly deny its presence as he think she’ll want to eat it. As it’ll be clear Asirpa saw the cub, he’ll claim he’ll take care of the cub and will be his mother, to which Asirpa points out he doesn’t know how to do. At this he won’t dare to oppose to her, handing it for her to eat it, although he’ll say he won’t manage to eat his brain. Honestly, if this was how hard he was going to fight for the cub’s survival he could have abandoned him there. Asirpa is right in saying he doesn’t know how to take care of it, but he could have said something along the lines of ‘I’ll learn’, instead he gives up. Also his approach to the whole thing is very childish, though probably this is due to Noda wanting the thing to be ‘funny’.

- Although Asirpa didn’t mean to be creepy looking not to eat the cub, Sugimoto saw her like that and was surprised when she told him Ainu don’t eat cubs but raise them, which is why she’ll bring him to her village.

- Asirpa is welcomed by the children of the village, showing she’s popular among them. Women also, seeing her, recognize her.

- In the anime the man near the Pu is Makanakkuru. In the manga, unless Makanakkuru’s character design underwent a drastic change, he seems to be another man who still get a close up and to give a long stare to Sugimoto and Asirpa.

- Sugimoto is confused because no one seems to be afraid of him. Asirpa explains him Ainu are curious and love new things but Sugimoto’s problem is another. As he thinks it was Asirpa’s village which was gathering money to fight the Japanese, he believes he’s unwelcomed there and therefore sees again the village as threatening looking through his ‘Sugimoto vision’ and therefore  wants to leave the cub there and then go away immediately. It’ll take him a while to realize, as Asirpa said, Ainu are really just curious and don’t aim to harm him.

- Asirpa’s grandmother is her grandmother on her mother’s side. She seems serious and Asirpa explains she can’t talk Japanese but she still wants Sugimoto to spend there the night as he’s the first guest Asirpa brought there. Asirpa also explains that Huci’s husband was the most important man in the village therefore nobody would say anything against her and add as a proof how Huci’s tattoo is very large because the more important the man, the larger is the tattoo the wife gets. From this we can speculate Asirpa’s grandfather was the head of the village. We don’t know though who the current head is.

- Greeting Asirpa’s grandmother is one of the few instances in which Sugimoto removes his hat. Meeting her he calls her ‘Obā-san’ (お婆さん “Grandmother).

- As soon as Tanigaki wakes up, he lights a fire and takes care of his wound. However he decides he won’t search for his companions or go back to report to Tsurumi what had happened but that he’ll hunt Retar and won’t stop until he had killed him, blaming his Matagi (hunter) blood in him. This act actually constitute desertion and more than his Matagi blood what’s to blame is the fact he is hiding in Tsurumi’s troops because he’s ashamed of himself, yet he doesn’t see the army as his place and longs to go back home.

Notable changes from the magazine version: None

Notable quotes:

- Asirpa: “You're the last Horkew Kamuy (wolf god), I couldn't bear it if you became a Wen Kamuy (Evil God) for my sake. Still, thank you for saving me.” (‘Omae wa saigo no horkew kamuy (ōkami no kami-sama) na ndakara, watashi no tame ni Wen Kamuy (warui kami-sama) nanka ni natcha dame. Demo tasuketekurete arigatō’ お前は最後のホロケウカムイ（狼の神様）なんだから、私のためにウェンカムイ （悪い神様）なんかになっちゃだめ。でも助けてくれてありがとう)

- Asirpa: “Here we go～who's a good wolf!? this is your favorite spot, right? I remember～” (‘Yooo~shi, yoshi yoshi yoshi koko ka? Kokoda na? Shitteru zo?’ よおぉーし、よしよしよしここか？ここだな？知ってるぞ？ Lit: “Gooood, good, good, right here? Is it here? I remember it.”)

Asirpa: “… Let’s go. He’s already dead.” (‘…Ikou mō shin deru’ …行こうもう死んでる)

Sugimoto: “I'll take good care of him! I'll be his new mother!” (‘Koitsu wa ore ga mendōmiru ~tsu! Hahaoya kawari ni naru nda a!!’ こいつは俺が面倒見るッ！母親代わりになるんだあ!! Lit: “I’ll takes care of this guy! I'll be his substitute mother!”)

Sugimoto: “Fine, I understand… but you’ll have to eat him alone! I can’t bear the thought of putting salt on his poor brain and eating it!” (‘Wakatta… koitsu wa Asirpa-san dake de kutte kure. Koitsu no nō miso ni shio kakete kuu toka oreniha murida’ わかった…こいつはアシㇼパさんだけで食ってくれ。

こいつの脳ミソに塩かけて食うとか俺には無理だ Lit: “Okay… Only Asirpa-san should eat this guy. It's impossible for me to sprinkle salt on his brain and eat it.”)

Asirpa: “Huh? I'm not going to eat him. when we find a bear cub during a hunt. it's our tradition to raise it in the village.” (‘Hā? Taben zo. Watashi-tachi ha ryō de koguma o tsukamaetara mura de taisetsu ni sodateru fūshū ga aru’ はあ？食べんぞ。私たちは猟で子熊を捕まえたら村で大切に育てる風習がある Lit: “What? I won't eat it. If we catch a cub when we’re hunting, we have a custom of carefully raising it in the village.”)

Asirpa: “We Ainu are more curious than anyone! deep down, we just love new things!” (‘Ainu wa kōkishin ōseida. “Atarashimonozuki”na nda’ アイヌは好奇心旺盛だ。『新し物好き』なんだ Lit: “The Ainu are brimming with curiosity. The ‘We love new things’ type”)

Asirpa: “Look at this tattoo! The more important the man, the larger the tattoo his wife can get.” (‘Miro. Kono irezumi. Erai hito no okusan hodo ōkina irezumi o suru nda’ 見ろ。この入れ墨。偉い人の奥さんほど大きな入れ墨をするんだ)

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12. KAMUY MOSIR (カムイモシリ KAMUI MOSHIRI)

First printed: 06/November/2014 Weekly Young Jump 49

Characters: Sugimoto Saichi (杉元 佐一), Asirpa (アシㇼパ), Huci (フチ), Makanakkuru (マカナックル),  Unarpe (ウナルペ)*, Ekasi (エカシ), Hapo (ハポ), Osoma (オソマ), Wilk (ウイルク), Ushiyama Tatsuma (牛山 辰馬), Hijikata Toshizō (土方 歳三), prostitute.

Location: Asirpa’s village near Otaru, Otaru.

Other Places mentioned: None

Time: 1907/1908 (?) Late February

Historical events mentioned: None

Includes flashbacks or info about the characters past: Yes, about Asirpa, her grandparents and her parents.

Info and the characters’ theories about the ���Noppera-bō incident’, the gold and the escape: None

Character deaths: Ekasi (illness), Hapo (illness)

Animal deaths: Bear cub (killed in a Iomante)

New Ainu words:

- Kamuy mosir: “Land of the gods”

- *Unarpe (ウナルペ): Aunt (to be honest this word isn’t used in this chapter but as Asirpa’s aunt is still unnamed and Asirpa names her relatives using Ainu words I listed her as such)

- Iteseni: Stand for weaving mats.

- Asirpa ekimne patek ki wa menoko monrayke eaykap: Asirpa spends all her time in the mountains, and can't do a woman's work.

- Kemeiki neya itese neya menoko monrayke eaykap menoko anak aynu hoku kor ka eaykap: A woman that cannot sew or knit is unable to get an Ainu husband.

- Tane sinuye kuni paha ne kor ka kopan: She's nearly of age to get tattooed, but she refuses.

- Sugimoto Nispa tan matkaci etun wa encore: Mr. Sugimoto, please take this girl as your wife.

- Tan kumippoho kuepotara wa mosir kuhoppa ka koyaykus: So long as I'm still worried about her future, I can't depart this world in peace.

- Nispa: Mister

- Sinna kisar: “Strange ears”

- Si taktak: “Clump of feces”

- Opkehur: “The farter”

- Huuratekki: “Raised stinky”

- Ekasiotonpuy: “Grandfather’s butthole”

- Kimun Kamuy: Bear

- Heperset: Cage for bear cubs

- Iomante: “To send something/someone off”. Ceremony in which the bear cubs are sent off.

Food and drinks: Mixture of meat broth and rice water

Useful info and points to ponder:

- Asirpa explains only her and her grandmother live in that house as her aunt and uncle live in a different one. Her mother died of illness soon after giving birth to her so that she never really knew her. We know though it wasn’t IMMEDIATELY after giving birth to her because in late chapters it will be shown that she was filmed while holding Asirpa on her back. Asirpa’s grandfather fell sick and died 6 years ago. This is relevant because, as he likely was the head of the village, it’s possible he was the Ainu who knew about the gold hideout. In chap 2 Asirpa said the ‘Noppera-bō incident’ took place 5 years ago, therefore AFTER her grandfather’s death. This might mean her grandfather passed the info to Wilk, his firstborn husband and, after his death, Wilk decided to act. On the other side later Noda said Wilk was in jail by 7 years, therefore BEFORE her grandfather’s death so the old man might have known something about it. It’s also worth to note that, if Asirpa considers Huci’s home her home, it’s possible Wilk never built a home for himself, his wife and daughter. Now… this would happen among Ainu if there was no male heir that could inherit, so the daughter’s husband would move in his wife’s home and become a family member. However we were lead to think Makanakkuru is Huci’s son which would make him the male heir. That is unless he’s actually not Huci’s son but was adopted into the family because he married the second daughter or because he was parentless. We’ll see.

- Huci calls Sugimoto ‘Sugimoto Nispa’ while, from now, on he’ll call her ‘Obā-chan’ (お婆ちゃん “Grandmother”) (in the previous chapter it was ‘Obā-san’ (お婆さん “Grandmother)).

- Huci complains that since Asirpa spends all her time on the mountains and can’t do woman works like sewing or knitting won’t get an Ainu husband. Plus, despite being nearly of the age to get tattooed she refuses doing so. Due to all this Huci asks Sugimoto to marry Asirpa because, as long as she’s worried for her future, she can’t depart this world in peace. Long story short very likely Huci invited Sugimoto to spend the night because she thought he could become Asirpa’s husband and that’s why she brought him home.

- Note that Huci didn’t mean they should marry right then but Ainu had no problems to promise children in marriage by arrangement between his or her parents and the parents of his or her betrothed, although the marriage would happen only when the involved kid/kids would be of a marriageable age, which, for women, was around 15 to 16 years of age (varied from village to village), the age in which they were regarded as adult and in which her tattoo is complete. Marring a Sisam was often encouraged among Ainu because it was believed it would lessen discrimination toward them.

- We’ve heard that the pimp speculated Asirpa is around 12/13, which would yes, make her close to marriageable age.

- Tattoo age varied from village to village, with some starting when the child was 6/7 and other doing it later, when the child was around 11 years old, and other even later, also due to the Japanese ban on tattooing (the ban were done in 1799 and 1871, with the  ban renewed in 1976) that didn’t stop the tattooing practice but required it was done in secrecy. The real important point though is that, according to Ainu women, marring without tattoos was a great sin and, if they did, the legend said, they would die and go to hell where the demons would take large knives and do the tattooing all at once. It’s worth to note the profession of tattooist was exclusive to Ainu females and being tattooed rather painful as they would do it by cutting he skin with a knife and then rubbing soot into the wound.

- After Huci asked Sugimoto to marry Asirpa we can see her face is slightly flushed and her ears are red but she refuses to translate her grandmother’s words and, lowering her gaze, say to Sugimoto instead Huci had said people shouldn’t eat poop.

- Sugimoto doesn’t seem to notice Asirpa’s embarrassment nor how Huci supposedly shouldn’t know he eat Miso/poop and cheerfully replies it’s not poop but Miso, though one of his brows is furrowed. Through the story is hard to say if he’s really completely oblivious to Asirpa’s crush on him or he’s just pretending to be, because not interested.

- Osoma is Asirpa’s cousin. Ainu children were raised almost naked until about the ages of four to five but at 6 they would be given a real name. From this is possible to speculate Osoma is around 4/5 years old as she’s dressed but also still retain her filthy name (when Tanigaki will be back after a year she’s still called Osoma… has Noda forgotten about this, has she kept her filthy name or is she still not 6 yet?).

- Asirpa’s filthy name was Ekasiotonpuy, which means “Grandfather’s butthole”.

- Sugimoto continues viewing bears as “monsters” (怪物 ‘Kaibutsu’), commenting it’s hard the bear cub will become one when he grows up. However he previously called the bears he met ‘bakemono’ (バケモノ “monster”). It seems the difference is that a ‘Kaibutsu’ is something that looks ugly or creepy or unidentifiable and therefore is defined as a “monster” while a ‘bakemono’ got some supernatural power and turn into a “monster”. So it’s possible while Sugimoto saw the other bears as nearly supernatural creatures he was afraid of, in regard to the cub he’s just telling he’ll become something as creepy as them. However there are actually debates over the implications of the two words so take this with a grain of salt.

- Asirpa discourage Sugimoto to keep on petting the bear cub, saying he’ll get attached to it so, when he’ll have to say goodbye to it, it would hurt. She knows that, when the bear will grow up, Ainu ‘will send him to the land of the Gods’. Therefore Asirpa doesn’t pet the cub because, if she keep her distance, she won’t get too attached and it won’t hurt parting from it. She explains when she was a child she doted on a bear cub like she would with a younger brother so, before it got ‘sent away’ she unsuccessfully tried to sneak him out and return him to the mountains. She got discovered and the adults were furious with her but she was so sad that she couldn’t take part to the sending away ceremony. In short, prior to her father’s death Asirpa was already thinking distancing herself from people would spare her from the pain of loss.

- Sugimoto’s idea they’ll return the bear in the wild is naïve. Asirpa has explained not much ago how Ainu use every part of the bear and they’re bear hunters. Of course, if they were to have a bear they wouldn’t release it to the wild to just hunt and kill it later.

- Sugimoto is overall negative about the idea of ‘sending back’ the bear cub. He calls it ‘killing’ and, even after Asirpa explains him their religious beliefs he questions her, saying if she really believed in this, killing the cub (Sugimoto says “killing the bear cub” [子熊を殺すことは ‘koguma o korosu’] not “sending it back”) wouldn’t be a sad thing and that therefore she’s avoiding the cub because she doesn’t believe it. Basically Sugimoto, who doesn’t believe in the Ainu beliefs, is trying to have her saying she doesn’t believe in them as well.

- Asirpa’s reply is very clever. She defends Ainu beliefs saying that within them there’s a lesson that help them to survive. Basically they wrap Ainu’s actions in a narrative that make easier to make things that are beneficial to Ainu like killing the bear cub LATER instead than IMMEDIATELY ensures them more meat and fur. This makes Asirpa thinks that the overall teaching is correct. In fact the bear cub has to be killed once is older as they need its meat and fur. You can strip the whole thing of the story the bear cub is sent back but you can’t say killing the bear cub is wrong, on this Asirpa is firm. On the other side she acknowledges that, even if killing the bear cub is right, this wouldn’t save her form the pain of saying goodbye so she keeps her distance so as not to get hurt.

- In a way the whole thing presents parallels with how Sugimoto will spin a narrative in which it’s okay to kill Russians and convicts because they’re soulless evil people. The problem here is that Asirpa doesn’t tell him killing the cub is right because it’ll go back to the world of gods but because they need meat and will confirm that saying goodbye to it is painful while Sugimoto will tell her she shouldn’t feel pain for bad guys’ death because they’re soulless and don’t feel pain when they died. Asirpa doesn’t hide herself between a nice narrative, she faces the truth and acknowledges it’s painful so she tries to protect herself from it by distancing herself. Sugimoto hides the truth (during the war he needed to kill to survive) behind a narrative that dehumanize his opponent. On the surface it can seem similar but, by being aware of the truth of her actions (she kills the cub because she needs to eat) Asirpa can control them (she doesn’t need to kill the cub if she were to have enough food). Sugimoto instead ends up on blurring the borders because if you embrace the fact that  people who oppose to him are bad and won’t feel pain when killed you can kill them regardless of your survival being involved (which is why he can consider involving himself in murdering the convicts for gold even if the convicts weren’t directly threatening him), won’t just distance from them but dehumanize them and overall have problems copying with his instinctive sense of guilt as he tries to suppress it as unneeded… though of course, Sugimoto’s problems stem from very traumatic experiences so it’s sadly normal he developed maladaptive coping mechanisms.

- On a sidenote Asirpa’s attachment for Sugimoto in a way parallel the attachment she felt for that bear cub as, if everything goes according to Sugimoto’s plan, he’s not going to stay in Hokkaido but go back to his village to marry Umeko. It doesn’t help Sugimoto gets paralleled to a bear.

- Sugimoto comments that Asirpa’s way of thinking is ‘genjitsuteki’ (現実的) which can mean “realistic”, “pragmatic” and “practical”. I’ve heard there’s some debate on which would be the better translation but I’ll let the decision to people more competent than me. What hits me is that Sugimoto then comments Asirpa is different from other Ainu. While I think he means it as a compliment toward Asirpa… well, he’s learning about Ainu and Ainu culture through her so from where his impression on how other Ainu are if not from stereotypes? In a way his statement mirrored the one of Asirpa. She thought him being a good warrior was impressive for a sisam, he thinks her being realistic/pragmatic is uncommon for an Ainu. To Asirpa’s credit though, she had to interact with Sisam more than he had to interact with Ainu (to sell what she hunted and buy things, in fact she had explained how she got used at them insulting her) so, at least, her opinion is based on a partial direct contact.

- Asirpa’s name was given to her by her father. As we had learnt in this chapter children get their real name at around 6, this means Wilk was still around when she was 6. She explains it means “new year” but also “future” declaring this means she’s a new kind of Ainu woman for a new age. It would be interesting to know exactly how she has gotten her name as we know Wilk had ambitions for her but Asirpa explained names are given according to the children’s personalities and what they’ve done in life not what their parents hope for them so I’d like to know what she did/say that made her have such name. Was it just the fact she preferred to hunt versus sewing and knitting? Or there’s a story behind it?

- Hijikata and Ushiyama’s meeting take place in one of the many brothels in Otaru that also doubles as a soba restaurant.

- Hijikata informs us that Ushiyama, whose nick is “Ushiyama, the undefeated” (‘Fuhai no Ushiyama’ 不敗の牛�� ) has a voracious sexual appetite, the consequence of which was the prostitute he was with tattled out his presence to Hijikata.

- Ushiyama’s reaction at having been betrayed is to toss the prostitute at Hijikata. There’s to say Ushiyama tends to toss things. When they’ll go to Shibukawa he tosses one of his men through the roof, when facing the 7th, he tosses Shiraishi at them and when they fight with the fake Ainu he tosses Ekurok at them. So, not only for him it’s normal to toss people, but as she has just betrayed him to a man who Ushiyama assumes is there to kill him, he likely wasn’t going to be considerate with her. On the other side I’ve had the feeling Noda has later shifted Ushiyama’s characterization a bit so it’s possible Ushiyama originally was meant to be a worse person than the one he ended up on being in the end.

- When Hijikata place his sword against Ushiyama’s forehead the sound effect implies a tapping, meaning Hijikata wasn’t trying to cut Ushiyama’s head but is holding his sword there merely to threaten him.

- Ushiyama also got a Type 26 revolver, likely by the soldiers they had killed when they escaped.

- Differently from what Asirpa thought it isn’t necessary to skin the convicts to get their tattoo, Hijikata, who was the leader of the escape plan, knows it’s enough to cover the body in oil paper and trace the tattoo so as to get a precise copy. When he says so he shows Ushiyama a copy of a tattoo. It should be supposedly his own as, at the time, he had no others, but as Ushiyama isn’t yet his ally and the manga pointed out more than once how copies might not be reliable (Ushiyama himself saying so to Shiraishi), I wonder if that copy is a fake.

- Hijikata as with himself a couple of underlings. It’s unknown where he got them but he asks Ushiyama to join as well. Through the story Hijikata will recruit more convicts and voice his concern over the mistreatment of the convicts so, although he’s completely capable to kill men without hesitation, it’s possible he meant to join hands with all the 24 convicts.

- In a way Hijikata is set up as the direct antagonist of Tsurumi as they’re both two bright and manipulative army men who dream to make a separate state out of Hokkaido.

- To Ushiyama who asks him if Hijikata plans to face the army with a sword, which is nothing else but a relic of the past, Hijikata replies age doesn’t matter, boys just love playing with swords… through it’s worth to note we’ll discover Hijikata uses a rifle well enough. So he’s likely aware of the sword being a relic but he still swing it because he evidently favours it.

Notable changes from the magazine version:

- This chapter in the magazine version had a color cover. In the volume version it has been turned into a black and white one. It’s also worth to mention this cover has the same image that will be used for the volume cover.

Notable quotes:

- Asirpa: “My aunt and uncle live in a different Cise (house)” (‘Betsu no Chise (ie) ni oji fūfu ga iru’ 別のチセ（家）におじ夫婦がいる Lit: “In a different cise (house) are my uncle and his wife.”)

- Asirpa: “Once children turn six years old and have formed their own personalities, we give them a real name based on what they've done in life.” (‘6-Sai kurai ni natte seikaku ga dete ki tari Sonoko ga okoshita dekigoto nado ni chinande chanto shita namaewotsukeru’ ６歳くらいになって性格が出てきたりその子が起こした出来事などにちなんでちゃんとした名前を付ける Lit: “When around 6 the child’s personality has appeared and we give him a decent name after the events that happened to him.”)

- Asirpa: ““Kill” isn't exactly the right word. We think of it as "sending him back. All the useful things around us, all the things with power beyond our control, we revere them all as Kamuy (Gods). We've maintained a good relationship with the Kamuy by expressing courtesy and gratitude.” (‘Korosu to iu yori “okurikaesu” to iu kangaekatada. Watashitachiha minomawari no yakudatsu mono-ryoku no oyobanai mo no, subete o Kamuy (kami) to shite atsukai, kansha no girei o tōshite yoi kankei o tamotte kita’ 殺すと言うより『送り返す』という考え方だ。私たちは身の回りの役立つもの力の及ばないもの、すべてをカムイ（神）として扱い、感謝の儀礼を通して良い関係を保ってきた Lit: “Rather than to kill it our thought is ‘to send it back’. We treat everything that is useful and that is beyond our power as Kamui (God), and we have maintained a good relationship through courtesy and gratitude.”)

- Sugimoto: “Do you really believe all that Asirpa? If you believed it, then sending that bear cub off wouldn't have been anything to get sad about, right?” (‘Asirpa-san wa sore shinji teru no? Shinji tetara koguma o korosu koto wa kanashī koto janai ndaro?’ アシㇼパさんはそれ信じてるの？信じてたら子熊を殺すことは悲しい事じゃないんだろ？Lit: “Does Miss Asirpa believe in that? If you believed in it, it wouldn’t be a sad thing to kill the bear cub, right?”)

- Sugimoto: “Could it be that some part of you didn't believe it, so you tried to let the bear escape?” (‘Doko ka de shinji tenaikara koguma o sake teru n janai no kai?’ どこかで信じてないから子熊を避けてるんじゃないのかい？ Lit: “Maybe you're avoiding the bear cub because you don't believe it somewhere?”)

- Asirpa: “Within every belief lies a useful lesson to help us survive. For example, If we raise the bear cub instead of killing it right away, that means we end up with more meat and fur. We've lived our lives following those lessons so I believe that they are correct. But that doesn't mean saying goodbye doesn't hurt. That's why I keep my distance, so I won't get too attached.” (‘Shinkō no nakaniha watashitachi ga ikiru jutsu ga haitteru. Tatoeba tsukamaeta koguma o sodateru no wa ōkiku nareba soredake kegawa ya niku ga torerukarada to watashi wa omou. Sō yatte watashitachi wa ikite kitakara tadashī kotoda to watashi wa shinji teru. Demo wakareru sabishisa wa dō shiyō mo nai. Dakara watashi wa kesshite jō ga utsuranai yō ni kyoriwooku nda’ 信仰の中には私たちが生きる術が入ってる。例えば捕まえた子熊を育てるのは大きくなればそれだけ毛皮や肉がとれるからだと私は思う。そうやって私たちは生きてきたから正しい事だと私は信じてる。でも別れるさびしさはどうしようもない。だから私は決して情が移らないように距離を置くんだ Lit: “Inside our faith there is the means for us to we live. For example, I think that the reason for raising a caught cub is that the larger it gets, the more fur and meat we can take. In this way we have survived so that’s why I believe it’s correct. But the loneliness of breaking up can't be avoided. That ’s why I keep my distance.”)

- Sugimoto: “That's a very pragmatic way of looking at it. You really seem like you're a bit different from the other Ainu.” (‘Kangaekata ga genjitsu-tekida na. Yappari Asirpa-san tte Ainu no naka demo chotto kawatteru n janai no?’ 考え方が現実的だな。やっぱりアシㇼパさんってアイヌの中でもちょっと変わってるんじゃないの？ Lit: “This way of thinking is realistic. After all isn't Asirpa-san a bit different among the Ainu?”)

Asirpa: “My father gave me the name Asirpa. It means "New year" but it can also means "Future." I'm a new kind of Ainu woman, for a new age!” (‘Asirpa to iu na wa chichi ga tsuketa. ‘Atarashī toshi’ to iu imidaga ‘mirai’ tomo kaishaku dekiru. Watashi wa atarashī jidai no Ainu no on'nana nda!’ アシㇼパという名は父がつけた。「新しい年」という意味だが「未来」とも解釈できる。わたしは新しい時代のアイヌの女なんだ！)

Hijikata: “Your voracious sexual appetite has cost you. wouldn't you agree, Ushiyama the undefeated?” (‘Ōseina seiyoku ga ada ni natta na. Fuhai no Ushiyama!’ 旺盛な性欲がアダになったな。不敗の牛山！ Lit: “Your voracious sexual appetite has cost you. Ushiyama the undefeated!”)

Hijikata: “It doesn't matter how old you are. Boys just love to play with swords, right?” (‘Ikutsu ni natte mo danshi wa katana o furimawasu no ga sukidarou?’ いくつになっても男子は刀を振り回すのが好きだろう？Lit: “No matter how old it may be, boys like to swing their swords around, don’t they?”)

  ——————————————————————————

13. GUARDIAN SPIRIT (憑き神 TSUKIGAMI) 

First printed: 13/November/2014 Weekly Young Jump 50

Characters: Sugimoto Saichi (杉元 佐一), Asirpa (アシㇼパ), Makanakkuru (マカナックル), Osoma (オソマ), Wilk (ウイルク), Huci (フチ), Tsurumi Tokushirō (鶴見 篤四郎), Tamai (玉井), Noma (野間), Okada (岡田), Tanigaki Genjirō (谷垣 源次郎), Wada (和田),  Tsukishima Hajime (月島 基).

Location: Near Otaru, Asirpa’s village near Otaru, Mukden (currently Shenyang) (China).

Other Places mentioned: 203 hill in Port Arthur (current Lüshunkou) (China), Mukden (currently Shenyang) (China).

Time: 1907/1908 (?) Late February

Historical events mentioned: Russo-Japanese war (8 February 1904  – 5 September 1905) Siege of Port Arthur (1 August 1904 – 2 January 1905), Battle of Mukden (20 February - 10 March 1905), the Treaty of Portsmouth (September 5, 1905)

Includes flashbacks or info about the characters past: Yes, about Asirpa and Retar and about Tamai, Noma, Okada and Tanigaki and about Tsurumi.

Info and the characters’ theories about the ‘Noppera-bō incident’, the gold and the escape:

The people in Asirpa’s village were hoarding gold to battle against the Sisam… which led to the gold being stolen and Asirpa’s father being killed along with all his comrades. Their ancestors gathered all that gold and for decades it lay untouched by anyone then some men decided to use it to buy weapons. Everyone in the village believes they were killed by the wrath of the Wakkaus Kamuy. Ainu do not use rivers to do laundry or wash away excrements but people decided to pan the water for gold, causing the water to grow cloudy and the fishes unable to breathe, risking to cause their disappearance and the disappearance of the animals that feed on them. Soiling the water to gather weapons for war should never have been done therefore the gold was possessed by some sort of evil spirit and cursed. (Source: Makanakkuru)

Character deaths: Makanakkuru’s cousin (got hit by an amappo), 7 Ainu (killed in the Noppera-bō incident), Wada (shoot in the head by Tsukishima as per Tsurumi’s orders)

Animal deaths: Sakhalin sculpins

New Ainu words:

- Heperesinotpe: A special toy for bear cubs

- Raomap: Trap for catching river fishes

- Amappo: Arrow trap used to catch animals

- Wakkaus Kamuy: God of the water

- Turenpe: Guardian spirit that comes in and out through the back of the neck

- Kinaohaw: Soup made with many vegetables.

- Sutu: Punishment road.

Food and drinks: Sakhalin sculpins, Kinaohaw with roasted sculpin, daikon, carrots, potato, spinach and kombu (Sugimoto also adds Miso to it)

Useful info and points to ponder:

- Sugimoto carries around the bear cub holding it in his coat.

- When Makanakkuru stops Sugimoto from turning on the Amappo, Sugimoto’s first though, as he hadn’t realized about the trap, was being ‘unfriendly’ with him. In fact Sugimoto’s reply ‘Nanka-yō ka?’ (なんか用か？“What do you want?”) sounds rude because apparently you use it when you suspect something and the background behind Sugimoto darkens. Sugimoto will later apologize for this, explaining why was his reason for his rudeness.

- Makanakkuru explains how aconite poisoning from the Amappo  would cause one to suffer for a long time instead than dying instantly, killing the person slowly.

- Makanakkuru mentions his cousin got hit by an Amappo but, although he manage d to get out the arrow, as there was still poison inside the wound he was in agony for several days, his body swelled up and he died.

- Asirpa’s arrows also have aconite poison but evidently in a much bigger amount as she states a bear would only manage to make 10 step while a human won’t manage to make one. After hearing all this, it’s impressive Ogata managed to survive being hit by one of Asirpa’s arrows.

- Makanakkuru uses ‘watashi’ (私) to say “I”.

- Makanakkuru, after telling Sugimoto his name, explains him Asirpa is his OLDER sister’s (‘ane’  姉) daughter and Osoma’s father. The fact that Makanakkuru calls Asirpa’s mother his ‘older sister’ doesn’t necessarily mean they’re related by blood as, although there’s a Japanese word for ‘sister-in-law’ you can also call her just ‘sister’. What we can see for now is he doesn’t resemble neither Huci nor Asirpa’s mother (though Huci might have gotten small eyes due to her old age), while Osoma’s mom seems to have Huci’s square face and a nose more similar to hers. However, unless it’ll be specifically said or we’ll get to see Asirpa’s grandfather we won’t be able to tell if Makanakkuru took from him or not.

- We learn from Makanakkuru that since Asirpa lost her father she’s been going into the mountains alone. In the past chapter we discovered she learnt to distance herself from others so as not to suffer when it would be time to say goodbye. As we’ll later learn she had tried forgetting Wilk, her going in the mountains was probably also a way to distance herself from others after undergoing the trauma of losing her father.

- Makanakkuru says he had been worried about her so now he can rest easier since there’s a strong guy like Sugimoto with her and that since Asirpa is smart (‘Asirpa wa atamagaī’ アシリパは頭がいい “Asirpa has a good head”), if she likes Sugimoto this means he’s not a bad guy. My general impression is Makanakkuru too, like Huci, thinks Sugimoto is there to marry Asirpa.

- Sugimoto’s reply can either be ‘it’s him who gets saved by Asirpa’ or ‘it’s him who gets helped by Asirpa’. At this point, Asirpa has only saved him from the bear but all her teaching and hospitality are helping Sugimoto to live in Hokkaido.

- I do wonder if Sugimoto’s apology, which comes kind of late, is because Makanakkuru said since Asirpa like him he’s shouldn’t be a “bad guy” (‘warui yatsu’ 悪い奴) and Sugimoto felt the need to confirm he isn’t by politely apologizing or if it’s an attempt to push Makanakkuru to talk.

- Makanakkuru asks Sugimoto if he heard about the story of the gold from Asirpa. Evidently he wasn’t told that Sugimoto learnt about it from Gotou and he’s assuming Asirpa told him that to explain her father’s death. In short Makanakkuru might not know Sugimoto and Asirpa are searching for the gold.

- In chap 2 I wondered about Asirpa’s words which only implied it was the people of her village which was involved in this. Makanakkuru instead says clearly it was the people from THEIR village which collected the gold dust to fight the Sisam… when we know at least two people weren’t from Asirpa’s village. Retcon or Makanakkuru is misleading Sugimoto? Asirpa was young so she might not have known not everyone was from her village but Makanakkuru should have done it.

- It might mean nothing but normally they were talk of ‘kinkai’ (金塊 “gold nuggets”). Makanakkuru here talks instead of ‘Sakin’ (砂金 “gold dust”). As of now I’ve managed to find the word ‘Sakin’ coming up only when Huci told the tale of the gold and when Hijikata said he knew the right amount of it. It might have been used other times and I might have missed it, of course but still it’s worth pondering.

- In the manga Sugimoto merely asks Makanakkuru “Who do you think was the criminal who stole the gold?” which scanlation preferred to translate it with “Do you have any idea who it was that killed them?” assuming the crime is to murder those Ainu. The anime instead modifies the sentence so it’s not vague anymore and becomes “Who do you think was the criminal who stole the gold?” (金塊を奪った犯人に心当たりは？ ‘Kinkai o ubatta han'nin ni kokoroatari wa?’). As the original sentence didn’t mention which was the crime, we can’t say if this addition was done in cooperation with Noda or it’s just an anime thing which however implies Sugimoto is more worried for the stolen gold than for the killed Ainu.

- Makanakkuru is rather vehement about how the river shouldn’t be polluted explaining how harmful it is gold panning for rivers. Long story short he believes they absolutely shouldn’t have done it, especially to support a war.

- When asked to say who could have killed the men Makanakkuru invoke the supernatural. It’s the wrath of Wakkaus Kamuy, the god of water. The gold dust was possessed by a ‘mamono’ (魔物 “evil spirit”) and cursed. In short he doesn’t pin the blame of those deaths on any human, be them Ainu or Sisam. They deserved it (because they dirtied the river) and the gods or the spirits punished them. Compared to how Asirpa searches always for a realistic explanation this seems pretty abstract… unless we’re meant to interpret it as ‘the men were killed to punish them for their actions’. This can also mean that Makanakkuru views the killer as someone who represents the gods and brought on those men their wrath… but as the Ainu think killing is wrong maybe Makanakkuru thinks who did the deed in order of doing it was possessed by something evil. It’s kind of like saying, they deserved it, but it wasn’t our place to punish them. It’s interesting how the visual at this point shows Wilk. At the time we didn’t know Wilk was innocent so we could think the visual did so to show who was to blame for the crime of murder… but, if anything, Wilk could have blamed for wanting to use the cursed gold to wage war.

- Huci can see the Turenpe (“guardian spirits”) residing on the back of people’s neck and offers food to her own. Much, much later (chap 231) we’ll discover she says her guardian spirit  can tell her the sex of a baby about to be delivered.

- According to Huci Sugimoto has a very powerful Turenpe. Sugimoto wonders if it’s him who makes him immortal and then offers him food, pleasing Huci.

- The scene implies Asirpa will hit Sugimoto with the Sutu. A box explains us a Sutu is normally used for crimes like theft or punishment and therefore is not to be used lightly but to have a girl hit a man is sadly a type of gag that’s considered ‘fun’. So, while Asirpa does it clearly to assert her own authority (Sugimoto doesn’t have to disobey her or there will be punishment) and role as some sort of teacher, ultimately this is taken away by the scene intended to be humorous and clearly done with Sugimoto’s ‘permission’ as we know he could easily rip it from her.

- Overall Huci, who views Sugimoto as Asirpa’s future husband, seems pleased with his behaviour. He offered food to the guardian spirit, embracing Ainu traditions and Asirpa could, at the same time, ‘discipline’ him. It’s also worth to mention how Huci accepted Miso, that all the Ainu exchange for poop, without hesitations, proving either she trusts him or that she wouldn’t refuse an offering from him whatever it is (or that she knows Miso). I guess she thinks Sugimoto brings in the benefits of Asirpa marrying a Sisam (who, she believes, would accept her even if she didn’t know how to sew or knit as well as Sisam’s privileges) while embracing Ainu culture and obeying to her granddaughter. Honestly she feels naïve. She hadn’t realized Sugimoto isn’t interested in Asirpa like that but has another woman in mind and that he acts like that out of politeness not out of belief. This is made even more dangerous by the fact that at the time there were many Wajin who would come in Hokkaido, take an Ainu bride and then dump her when they would return back home.

- As he did for Ogata, Tsurumi is out with his men to search for Tamai and Co. With no luck this time.

- Tsurumi tells us that Tamai, Noma, Okada and Tanigaki are all experienced mountaineers, and Tanigaki is even from a Matagi family so it’s unlikely to believe they would get lost or stranded.

- Wada calls Tsurumi ‘kisama’ (貴様 “you”). As said in chap 5 ‘kisama’ is nowadays an insulting way to say “you”, normally translated as “you bastard” but back then it was the normal way to say “you” in the army. We don’t know though, if Noda is keeping this into consideration. So, while Wada is clearly angry at Tsurumi it’s hard to say if he’s being insulting or not in Noda’s intentions.

- Wada might sound rude to Tsurumi but his complains are all legitimate. Tsurumi shouldn’t have moved his men till Otaru (they were meant to stay in Asahikawa), among the men Tsurumi moved one ended up in critical conditions and four are missing. In addition Tsurumi also took weapons and ammunitions from Asahikawa (in fact we’ll notice later that even first class privates have, occasionally guns they weren’t supposed to have).

- Wada uses ‘watashi’ (私) to say “I”. His ranking is “Captain” (大尉 ‘Taii’) which makes him higher in rank than Tsurumi, who’s a First Lieutenant.

- Wada is drawn there by Tsukishima, who’s the one who’ll shoot him in the head. Very likely it was a trap to get rid of him. As we’ll learn Tsurumi prefers to deal with superior officers by blackmailing them or indebting them to him I guess this means Wada had no dark spots in his past as Tsurumi couldn’t blackmail him into obedience. On the other side, as Tsurumi could manipulate Yodogawa, he could have asked him to just remove Wada from duty or something instead than killing him so I wonder if there’s more than what it looks why on Wada’s death that made important for Tsurumi to kill him. It’s possible Wada too was connected to Ogata and Tamai’s rebellion, hence that’s why he worries about them so, by killing him in secrecy, he wanted the rebels to lose his support and, at the same time, it would work as a warning to them.

- For the first time we see Tsurumi’s brain leaking. Tsurumi explains that during the battle of Mukden a piece of shrapnel from an exploding shell lodged itself into the front of his scull which causes a bit of odd fluid to leak out. I wonder if the mention of that happening is painful for Tsukishima who has to steady himself to be ready to kill a superior officer.

- Tsurumi bites off Wada’s finger. I wonder if Wada pointing his finger awoke unpleasant memories (Tsurumi’s family lost its prestige, due to Tomoharu’s death he wasn’t allowed to advance) or if he did it just because he could. He claims it’s just because his frontal lobe took a bit of damage so he has troubles controlling his temper but that aside he’s the picture of good health and takes pride in his scars who, according to him, make him look dashing. I wonder if it’s more in them he sees Olga’s face disfigured by a bullet.

- Remember when I said Sugimoto almost killing a superior officer was a big deal? Wada wanted to have Tsurumi killed for biting his finger off… and it was completely okay at the time.

- Tsurumi has Wada be stripped off his uniform and buried. In short he plans to keep his death as a secret and have him ‘disappear’.

- Tsurumi paints the whole thing as a battle between lower ranks and higher ranks, claiming the graves their companions got in Manchuria were beneath the cold barren stone, that they hadn’t received reparation from Russia and therefore were left with nothing despite fighting to defend Japan’s borders and therefore their war is not over. Tsurumi conveniently skips on how, between him and Wada, there’s only a rank of difference.

- To clear up a little Tsurumi’s words in an historical contest:

The “graves our comrades in Manchuria got” likely refer to the many graves they left in Port Arthur, where, according to Tanigaki, more than a half of the 7th division died. I guess they can include the ones of the battle of Mukden as well, although they’re probably a reference to the scene of Tsurumi in front of the graves at Port Arthur.

The “reparations they still hadn’t received from Russia” refers to the Treaty of Portsmouth and to how from it Japan didn’t receive any Russian reparation. It’s not so much Japan’s fault on that, as Russia agreed to many things but would have preferred resuming the war than agreeing to give reparations to Japan for a war Japan started and here there’s the problem. Japan, despite doing well during the war, couldn’t sustain the continuation of it. So while Tsurumi’s talk might seem an attack to the state that gave up on fighting without pretending reparation, not considering that war over would have lead to Japan’s defeat. Therefore Japan did as well as it could and Tsurumi is merely feeding up the discontentment.

The soldiers left with nothing refers to something that Tanigaki will explain later, that when Hanazawa ‘committed suicide’ the government blamed the 7th division so they received no metal or monetary reward and were treated as outcasts. To be honest this is not an historical point as this didn’t happen in real life but just in “Golden Kamuy”.

Notable changes from the magazine version: None

Notable quotes:

- Asirpa: “f you don't clean and gut sculpins right away, the flavor suffers! Hurry up and get them, you dolt!” (‘Kajika wa hayaku sabakanaito aji ga ochiru hayaku tori ni ike baka!’ カジカは早く捌かないと味が落ちる早く取りに行けバカ Lit: “Sculpins will lose their taste if they are not handled quickly! Go get it soon! Stupid!”)

- Sugimoto: “She's so cruel!” (‘Hidōī’ ヒドーイ Lit: “Mean!”)

- Sugimoto: “What do you want?” (‘Nanka-yō ka?’ なんか用か？)

- Makanakkuru: “My name is Makanakkuru! Asirpa is my sister’s daughter. And I’m Osoma’s father.” (‘Watashi no na wa makanakkuru. Asirpa wa watashi no ane no musume da. Soshite Osoma-chan no chichioya’ 私の名はマカナックル。アシㇼパは私の姉の娘だ。そしてオソマちゃんの父親)

- Makanakkuru: “Ever since Asirpa lost her father, she's been going into the mountains alone. I've been worried about her. I can rest easier knowing a strong guy like you is with her.” (‘Asirpa wa chichioya o nakushite karamo hitori de yama e itte shimaukara shinpaidatta. Omae mitaina tsuyo-sōna otoko ga isshonara anshinda’ アシㇼパは父親を亡くしてからもひとりで山へ行ってしまうから心配だった。お前みたいな強そうな男が一緒なら安心だ Lit: “Asirpa, after losing her father, had been going on the mountains alone, so I was worried. It’s safer if she’s together with a strong looking man like you.”)

Sugimoto: “No, I 'd say she spends most of the time saving me.” (‘Iyaiya kotchi ga tasuke rare-ppanashi de’ いやいやこっちが助けられっぱなしで Lit: “No, No, I’m the one who’s being helped by her.”)

- Makanakkuru: “Asirpa is a smart girl…If she likes you, it's safe to say that you're not such a bad guy.” (‘Asirpa wa atamagaī. Aitsu ga natsuku ndakara omae wa warui yatsu ja nai nodarou’ アシㇼパは頭がいい。あいつがなつくんだからお前は悪い奴じゃ無いのだろうLit: “Asirpa is smart. As a guy she’s emotionally attached at you are probably not a bad guy.”)

- Makanakkuru: “You heard the story from Asirpa, right? About how the people in our village were hoarding gold to battle against the Sisam… which led to the gold being stolen and Asirpa’s father being killed along with all his comrades.” (‘Asirpa kara kiita nodarou? Watashitachi no mura no ningen ga shisamu to tatakau tame ni sakin o atsumete ita ni to ya. Sore o ubawa rete Asirpa no chichi-tachi ga korosa reta koto’ アシㇼパから聞いたのだろう？私たちの村の人間がシサムと戦うために砂金を集めていたにとや… それを奪われてアシㇼパの父たちが殺されたこと Lit: “Did you hear it from Asia? How the people of our village were collecting gold dust to fight the Sisam… and that Asirpa’s father and the others were killed after being robbed of it”)

- Makanakkuru: “Our ancestors gathered all that Gold. and for decades, it lay untouched by anyone. then some men decided to use it to buy weapons.” (‘Ano sakin wa wareware no senzo ga totta mono de, nanjūnen mo zutto fure rarezu ni ita monodatta. Sore o ichibu no otoko-tachi ga buki o kaou to te o tsuketa’ あの砂金は我々の先祖が取ったもので、何十年もずっと触れられずにいたものだった。それを一部の男たちが武器を買おうと手を付けた)

- Sugimoto: “Do you have an idea who it was who killed them?” (‘Kinkai o ubatta han'nin ni kokoroatari wa?’金塊を奪った犯人に心当たりは？ “Who do you think was the criminal who stole the gold?”)

- Makanakkuru: “Everyone here believes it was the wrath of the Wakkaus Kamuy (God of the water). We Ainu don't do our laundry in the river, nor do we use it to wash away excrement. That’s how much we care about keeping the river clean. But the people decided to pan the waters for gold…” (‘Wakkaus kamui (mizu no kami) no ikarida to min'na itte iru. Ainu wa kawade wa sentaku o sezu haisetsu-mono mo nagasanai. Soko made shite wareware ga yogosanai yō ni ki o tsukete iru kawa de sakin nante torukara…’ ワッカウシカムイ（水の神）の怒りだとみんな言っている。アイヌは川では洗濯をせず排泄物も流さない。そこまでして我々が汚さないように気をつけている川で砂金なんて採るから… Lit: “Everyone says it's the wrath of Wakkaus Kamui (water god). Ainu in the river don't do laundry, nor do we wash away excrements. We go so far to take care of not getting the river dirty so taking gold dust...”)

- Makanakkuru: “Soiling these pristine waters just to gather weapons for war…It should never have been done. That Gold was possessed by some sort of evil spirit. it was cursed.” (‘Ainu ga arasoi no tame ni kawa o yogosu nante zettai ni atte wa naranai. Ano sakin wa mamono ga tsuite iru norowa reta monodatta noda’ アイヌが争いのために川を汚すなんて絶対にあってはならない。あの砂金は魔物が憑いている呪われたものだったのだ Lit: “The Ainu should have never pollute the river for a war. That gold dust was possessed by a demon and cursed.”)

- Wada: “How dare you take my men all the way out here to Otaru without my permission! What the hell do you think you're doing?” (‘Kisama watashi no buka-tachi o katte ni Otaru made hikitsurete. Dōiu tsumorida’ 貴様私の部下たちを勝手に小樽まで引き連れて。どういうつもりだ Lit: “How dare you take my subordinates and drag them to Otaru without permission. What did you mean to do?!”)

Wada: “In the first place, how the hell have you managed to keep the rank of first lieutenant with an injury like that!? I can't cover for you anymore! There's no longer any place for you in the imperial Japanese army!!” (‘Somosomo son'na kega no arisama de kongo mo chūi ga tsutomaru ka! Mō kabai kiren! Tsurumi! Kisama ga rikugun ni modoru basho wa mohaya nai to omoe! !’ そもそもそんな怪我のありさまで今後も中尉が務まるか！もう庇いきれん！鶴見！貴様が陸軍に戻る場所は最早無いと思え！！ Lit: “In the first place, how can you continue working as a lieutenant with such injuries? I'm not covering for you anymore! Tsurumi! There is no longer a place for you to return in the Army! !”)

Wada: “You're a goddamn lunatic. Fire at will.” (‘Shōkide wa nai na… ute’ 正気ではないな…撃て)

Tsurumi: “The only graves our comrades in manchuria got were beneath the cold, barren stones. We still haven't received any reparations from Russia. The soldiers that defended the frontier were left with nothing but barren, worthless land. Our war is not over.” (‘Sen'yū wa ima demo Manshū no areta tsumetai ishi no motoda. Roshia kara baishō-kin mo torezu, moto tondenhei no temoto ni nokotta mono wa yaseta tochi dake. Wareware no sensō wa mada owatte inai’ 戦友は今でも満州の荒れた冷たい石の下だ。ロシアから賠償金も取れず、元屯田兵の手元に残ったものはやせた土地だけ。我々の戦争はまだ終わっていない)

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14. HOWLING (遠吠え TŌBOE)

First printed: 20/November/2014 Weekly Young Jump 51

Characters: Asirpa (アシㇼパ), Sugimoto Saichi (杉元 佐一), Osoma (オソマ), Huci (フチ), Makanakkuru (マカナックル), Retar (レタㇻ), Wilk (ウイルク), Ainu kids.

Location: Asirpa’s village near Otaru, near Otaru.

Other Places mentioned: None

Time: 1907/1908 (?) Late February

Historical events mentioned: None

Includes flashbacks or info about the characters past: Yes, about Asirpa, Wilk and Retar.

Info and the characters’ theories about the ‘Noppera-bō incident’, the gold and the escape: None.

Character deaths: None.

Animal deaths: River otter

New Ainu words:

- Esaman: River otter

- Kisarri: “Long-eared monster”. A toy of some sort you wave standing outside a window making terrifying noise to scare the children inside.

- Uko Karip Ciwe: “Ring catch”. An Ainu children’s game in which everyone competes to catch a ring made from vines and tossed into the air.

- Ratcako: A light stand that holds a scallop shell that contains whale or fish oil.

- Aca: “Father”.

- Sugimoto Nispa. Asirpa anakne kueyam pe ne. Neita pakno turano an wa unkoraye yan.: “Mr. Sugimoto. Asirpa means more to me than anything in the world. Please always be there for her.”

Food and drinks: River otter cut into bite sized chunks cooked into a ohaw with pukusa (alpine leeks), windflower, daikon and burdock root. Also boiled river otter head.

Useful info and points to ponder:

- According to Ainu, River Otter/Esaman are incredibly forgetful Kamuy, so eating them or mentioning them would cause people to forget things.

- Sugimoto is a complete fail at making scary sounds. Asirpa instead excels at them.

- Makanakkuru tells Sugimoto that while Asirpa and her father were out hunting one day they saved a tiny wolf cub from a bear. Since it looked like a tiny snowman they named it Retar, “White”. Asirpa and Retar were inseparable but after Asirpa’s father died they went up into the mountains however on a night they heard a howling and despite Asirpa’s pleading Retar to come back and not leave her, retar left, leaving her behind to cry for him and her father.

- Makanakkuru comments that Asirpa may act mature for her age but in the end she’s a lonely, fragile little girl who had smiled rarely since that day but recently seemed much happier because she enjoyed her time in the mountains with Sugimoto.

- Makanakkuru too, like Huci points out, how Asirpa, up till then, after her father’s death had lived for most of the time alone on the mountains, especially after Retar too left her. Likely this wasn’t just because she liked to be there but also because, due to the pain of her father’s loss, she has tried reducing her chances to form attachment to others in fear of losing them as she’s afraid to be abandoned again, something that Inkarmat will remark as well and that’s a fear she carried within herself from when the bear cub she loved like a brother died. Her isolation protected her from pain but, at the same time, bereft her of happiness. Humans are social animals though and, as she got closer to Sugimoto, as Makanakkuru noticed, she became much happier.

- Makanakkuru calls Sugimoto ‘Sugimoto-san’.

- Noda has Huci talk to Sugimoto but as no one translates what she says, he doesn’t know what she’s peaking about yet he still says he understands and that she means that she and everyone in the village love Asirpa very much. This is because Noda is subtly telling us Sugimoto is an “unreliable narrator” of some sort. In fact in many manga the main character’s interpretation of an event is THE RIGHT INTERPRETATION. However we’ve already seen more than once how ‘Sugimoto’s vision’ doesn’t match with the truth. He thinks Gotou is harmless and a guy who tells tall tales… he’s not. He thinks the men of the 7th trying to get the gold are the dregs of the unit… they’re not. He thinks Asirpa doesn’t care about him… she does. He thinks the soldiers won’t follow Asirpa… they do. He thinks the Ainu are unfriendly… they aren’t. He thinks Makkanakkuru has bad intentions… he saves his life. He thinks Huci is telling him she loves Asirpa very much which pushes him to leave her behind… when at the end of the volume in an extra page we see Huci is also telling him not to leave him. And in future chapters he will interpret things in the wrong way again and again. Sugimoto is not stupid, he’s simply not perceptive. He presents things as he sees them through his experiences but his role as main character doesn’t insure his interpretation is right so we can’t take Sugimoto’s opinions/interpretations as the one of a reliable narrator and therefore as facts just because he’s the main character, as he’s often wrong.

- I wonder if, while watching Asirpa playing with the other children, Sugimoto in a way felt cut out. Not that he was jealous of them but he probably realized those children were Asirpa’s words, she was meant to play with them and have fun. On the opposite Sugimoto has no one he was meant to be with, he’s with Asirpa, in her village, but he doesn’t belong to that place. While Asirpa has people who care for her he has no one. Yet he has grown attached to her as well, we see he thinks at her with fondness but then he thinks at her when he escaped from the 7th and frowns, realizing he has put her in danger. So he does to her the same thing he has done to Umeko. He leaves her behind because he doesn’t want to put people HE CARES FOR in danger (he knew when they were escaping she too was in danger but back then he didn’t care about her as much as he cared about her now so he wasn’t overly concerned… now he is). However this time the thing is even worse because not only he doesn’t discuss the thing with her or at least say her goodbye or talks with an adult, let’s say Makanakkuru, but just leaves in the night. It’s clearly painful for him but, despite hearing more than once that Asirpa has issues with abandonment, he’s abandoning her and the people who have welcomed him. Asirpa wants to have faith in him but Shiraishi interpreted his behavior as him double crossing her, stealing the skins and running away. Overall this would deserve a long discussion but that’s not the place for it.

- Before leaving Sugimoto would like to caress the sleeping bear cub yet hesitates. This is not so much for the bear cub but for himself. In this moment he’s leaving he’s keeping it at distance to make the separation less painful… which is partly probably why he doesn’t say goodbye to Asirpa either.

Notable changes from the magazine version: In the magazine the translation of what Huci said was placed in a note in the page in which she’s speaking. In the volume the translation is placed at the end of the volume.

Notable quotes:

- Makanakkuru: “Asirpa may act mature for her age, but in the end she's still a lonely, fragile little girl… Asirpa has rarely smiled since that day, but recently, it seems like she's been much happier. She must be enjoying her time in the mountains with you, Sugimoto.” (‘Otonabite wa iruga Asirpa wa samishigariya no itaikena kodomona noda. Son'na koto ga atte kara Asirpa wa egao o misenaku nattaga, saikin wa zuibun to akaruku natta. Sugimoto-san to yama ni iru no ga tanoshī ndarou’ 大人びてはいるがアシㇼパは寂しがり屋のいたいけな子供なのだ。そんなことがあってからアシㇼパは笑顔を見せなくなったが、最近はずいぶんと明るくなった。杉元さんと山にいるのが楽しいんだろう)

- Sugimoto: “…I understand, Grandma. I know you love Asirpa very much. You and everyone in this village.” (‘… Wakatta yo obāchan. Asirpa-san wa obachan ni aisa re teru nda na. Mura no min'na ni mo’ …わかったよお婆ちゃん。アシㇼパさんはお婆ちゃんに愛されてるんだな。村のみんなにも)

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15. SCENT (におい NIOI)

First printed: 04/December/2014 Weekly Young Jump 1

Characters: Asirpa (アシㇼパ), Sugimoto Saichi (杉元 佐一), Retar (レタㇻ), prostitute, Umeko (梅子), Toraji and Umeko’s child, Umeko’s mother, pimp (妓夫太郎 ‘Gifutarō’), owner of the Soba restaurant, Nikaidō Kōhei (二階堂 浩平), Nikaidō Yōhei (二階堂 洋平),

Location: Near Otaru, Otaru.

Other Places mentioned: Umeko’s house in her village in the Kanto area

Time: 1907/1908 (?) March

Historical events mentioned: Russo-Japanese war (8 February 1904  – 5 September 1905)

Includes flashbacks or info about the characters past: Yes, about Sugimoto, Umeko, Toraji and Toraji and Umeko’s child and about the pimp.

Info and the characters’ theories about the ‘Noppera-bō incident’, the gold and the escape: None.

Character deaths: Toraji (killed during the war)

Animal deaths: None.

New Ainu words:

- Ipapkeni: Deer whistle

Food and drinks: Nishin Soba

Useful info and points to ponder:

- The chapter starts with Asirpa immediately pointing out how Sugimoto’s escape in the night wasn’t selfless but “too selfish” (勝手すぎる ‘Katte sugiru’). They were working together for a reason, because it helped both of them. Him leaving only means Asirpa will have to work alone, not that she’ll give up.

- Again, although Noda remarks Sutu aren’t to be used lightly, he presents Asirpa planning to whack Sugimoto with it in punishment, in an humorous light.

- It should have been complicate for Asirpa to explain Huci, who believed Sugimoto to be her future husband, why he was missing.

- Asirpa’s behaviour though, contrast with Umeko’s, at least as far as we know. Even though both were worried for him, Umeko let Sugimoto go, Asirpa chased him.

- Presented with the problem of a missing Sugimoto, Asirpa first checks all the hunting huts then decides that trying to find him in Otaru would be too difficult for her and therefore she needs Retar’s help. In order to get it he tries to lure him using a deer whistle, hoping if he hears the sound of a prey he would run to her. Actually though it seems Retar came because from Asirpa’s scent he could tell she needed help. This gives us an idea of how distressed Asirpa was if Retar thought he needed to go help her.

- Sugimoto, seeing a prostitute, thinks she’s Umeko. Although there’s a vague resemblance this is also likely because he desperately wants to see her.

- Seeing a woman that looks like Umeko triggers in Sugimoto a flashback. Toraji’s child has grown enough he can stand and talk. He brings flowers to his mother and, due to her sight deteriorating, Umeko recognizes them thanks to her sense of smell. In chap 100 we’ll learn it’s springtime. In that moment a soldier (Sugimoto) arrives. He’s dirty and unshaved. He hands to a woman who might be a servant or a relative what he says to be all that’s left of Toraji, his finger. The woman bows, telling him they had given up on recovering his remains and thanking him… before realizing he looks familiar and asking him if he’s Sugimoto Saichi-san. At this Umeko comes closer, her child clinging to her and asks him if he’s really ‘Saichi-chan’. He turns away from her but Umeko seems happy as she admits she can only see a blur and asks him if he has come back home. However she catches a scent that makes her shudder and asks him who he is. Sugimoto sees himself in his army uniform covered I blood, wondering what did he smell like to her and saying the person he was is dead, wondering if, should she regain her sight, would she recognize him.

- It’s worth to point out it’s implied Toraji lost both arms and legs so… where did Sugimoto got that finger? Is it really Toraji or is he bringing her some bones to ease her heart?

- When Sugimoto stops the prostitute and realizes it��s not Umeko he tells himself that of course it’s not her as Umeko wouldn’t be selling her body at some port town in the frozen north but he also tells himself he has to do something and fast. Although Sugimoto says so, it’s likely just to reassure himself. He doesn’t know how Umeko’s situation is. Even though it’s unlikely she would sell her body in Otaru, she might be selling her body at home. Meanwhile, as he tries to find the gold her sight deteriorates… and the irony of him telling himself he has to hurry up when we know that more than a year will be gone with him still not having found the gold is rather cruel but at the same time this is a call back at the story of the hare of chap 8. For the greed of getting all the gold Sugimoto had been running after it through all the story getting also horribly wounded and killing more people when he could have tried to just get a job and remain near Umeko. Maybe he would have never managed to collect enough money to heal her eyes but he could have supported her.

- Sugimoto goes asking for info to the pimp who wanted to sell Asirpa to a brothel. The guy, despite wanting to sell Asirpa, tells Sugimoto that if he finds the guy, with a really strange tattoo, who hurt a prostitute in a friend’s brothel will make it worth his while because he was born and raised in a brothel and won’t forgive assholes who go around hurting prostitutes. Now… while it’s nice he cares and even the past time he worried that Asirpa was there to taunt his girls… well, he wanted to sell Asirpa. Is this guy who claims to care for prostitutes’ well being, unable to understand that forcing someone into the profession is a quite horrible thing to do? Or is it a mere racist matter, because Asirpa was an Ainu he was sure there was nothing wrong in selling her as if she were a thing? Still he doesn’t send Sugimoto there to sell him to the 7th because the pimp will cooperate with Shiraishi too and won’t try to sell Shiraishi to the 7th.

- The guy who hurt the prostitute the pimp was talking about was clearly Ushiyama by the way.

- We’ve another example of Sugimoto’s poor perception sense. The woman at the Soba restaurant that also works as a brothel tells him she’ll bring the girl immediately and, in the meanwhile, he should have a bowl of soba. As Sugimoto eats she goes to call the men of the 7th instead with Sugimoto not suspecting a single thing and not even realizing she’s taking too long.

- Sugimoto says he’s a Kanto guy… which is something we could have guessed as he was in the 1st division that’s the Tokyo division but it’s nice to have confirmation he’s from that area as Aoyama Kenkichi for example, despite not being from the Kanto area, will join the 1st division.

- When the Nikaidō brother comes in the soba shop searching for the guy looking for tattoo, Sugimoto kicks them both, sending them flying. This prompt another soldier to try to attack him. Sugimoto sends him on the ground and steps on his face, likely breaking his nose (well, at least he didn’t step on his throat). However there are three more soldiers who aim at him their weapons. Sugimoto acted out of instinct and fought well however not only his attack made him really suspicious, but the people he attacked are other veterans who were merely doing their job and who, due to the war, possess the same instinct of him to kill who attacks them so it’s no surprise if the Nikaidō brothers will inscribe him in the list of the people they want dead.

- As Yōhei and Kōhei look almost the same, it’s hard to understand who is who. If you want some help recognizing them Yōhei is the one with the puttees, who’ll hit Sugimoto’s legs and then give Sugimoto’s face a real beating with the butt of his rifle. Kōhei is the one who pointed his rifle at him and told him to get down so that when he were to shoot at him the bullet won’t hit anyone and who told Yōhei to stand back because he wanted to kill him right now. After Yōhei’s death Kōhei will start wearing puttees.

- Both brothers are bleeding profusely through their nose and, possibly their mouths, bruises on their faces due to Sugimoto’s kick, but while Yōhei is just being violent, Kōhei would just kill Sugimoto and get done with it. After Yōhei’s death Kōhei had probably blamed himself a lot for not killing Sugimoto that day, when he had the chance.

Notable changes from the magazine version: None

Notable quotes:

- Umeko: “Who… are you?” (‘Anata… donate?’ あなた…どなた?)

- Sugimoto: “Ume... just what did I smell like to you? The Saichi you knew... is probably long gone. Even if your eyes are healed, will you really know that it's me...?” (‘Ume-chan… ore wa don'na nioi ga shita? Ume-chan no shitteru ore wa mō konoyo ni inai nodarou ka. Me ga naotte mo sugu ni oreda to wakatte kureru ka na’ 梅ちゃん… 俺はどんな臭いがした？梅ちゃんの知ってる俺はもうこの世にいないのだろうか。眼が治ってもすぐに俺だと分かってくれるかな Lit: “Ume-chan ... What did I smell like? The me known by Ume-chan probably isn’t in this world anymore. Even if your eyes heal… will you immediately understand that it’s me?”)

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16. SHINIGAMI (死神 SHINIGAMI)

First printed: 11/December/2014 Weekly Young Jump 2

Characters: Tsurumi Tokushirō (鶴見 篤四郎), Sugimoto Saichi (杉元 佐一), Tamai (玉井), Ogata Hyakunosuke (尾形 百之助), Nikaidō Kōhei (二階堂 浩平), Nikaidō Yōhei (二階堂 洋平), Asirpa (アシㇼパ), Retar (レタㇻ)

Location: Otaru, near Otaru.

Other Places mentioned: Hanazono park in Otaru, 203 hill in Port Arthur (current Lüshunkou) (China).

Time: 1907/1908 (?) March

Historical events mentioned: Russo-Japanese war (8 February 1904  – 5 September 1905) Siege of Port Arthur (1 August 1904 – 2 January 1905),

Includes flashbacks or info about the characters past: Yes, about Sugimoto and Tsurumi.

Info and the characters’ theories about the ‘Noppera-bō incident’, the gold and the escape: None

Character deaths: Russian soldiers.

Animal deaths: None.

New Ainu words: None.

Food and drinks: Dango skewers.

Useful info and points to ponder:

- It’s Tsurumi who saves Sugimoto’s life from the Nikaidō’s brothers who wanted to kill him, claiming he didn’t want him dead yet. However, as he saw him fighting, it means he also saw the brothers hitting him over and over and didn’t stop them.

- Tsurumi too uses ‘Watashi’ (私). However he doesn’t use ‘kisama’ (貴様 “You”) for Sugimoto but ‘omae’ (お前 “You”). Is he trying to sound more friendly or less?

- Tsurumi introduces himself saying he’s Sugimoto’s ‘Shinigami’ (死神 “God of death”) and that he can blow Sugimoto’s candle anytime. This is a reference to a Japanese myth of human lives being represented by candles and the Shinigami snuffing the out to kill a person.  In early Meiji era there was a famous Rakugo program titled “Shinigami” which referenced this idea.

- Sugimoto, with a good poker face, says he’s working for a guy whose favourite prostitute got hurt by a guy with a tattoo and that wants Sugimoto to beat said guy. Sugimoto says he asked the old lady to bring out the girl but when he saw people with guns he tried to escape. While this time his story is closer to the truth (he was actually sent there by a pimp, not by a customer) this doesn’t change the fact he has overreacted. The ones with the guns were soldiers and if he really meant no harm and is no criminal he shouldn’t have attacked them to try to escape. Tsurumi doesn’t buy it at all and doesn’t even bother to hide it, though, to Sugimoto’s credits, what really damns him is that Tsurumi saw his way of fighting and recognized him.

- There are 3 soldiers in the room in addition to Tsurumi and Sugimoto, though we can only see the Nikaidō brothers. The anime is of no help as, apart from increasing the number to 4, it doesn’t show them.

- Tsurumi’s interrogation method is clever. He figured Sugimoto was a tough nut to crack so he let Sugimoto talk without countering anything, so Sugimoto doesn’t know his cards he only knows Tsurumi isn’t buying it. Then he distracts him with sweets, which, as Sugimoto admits, is something he doesn’t commonly have, causing him to relax and lower his guard, to casually mention the word immortal, saying one of his men, who barely survive, wrote it with his finger. It works to send Sugimoto, who has not even finished his dango, into a hurry to escape, which is nothing else but a confession. As to deliver the final blow comes the accusation, he’s the one who sent Ogata to hospital, complete with Sugimoto’s name and nickname.

- Sugimoto, who knows he’s screwed, find nothing else to do but annoy the Nikaidō brothers, increasing the grudge they feel toward him. It’s not because Sugimoto gets off on this but because this gives him some measure of control and, therefore of confidence. In fact he manages to sit down calmly and insist he’s not Sugimoto.

- Tsurumi tells Sugimoto he has seen him fighting at Port Arthur once, although Sugimoto was a little away he was fighting like a ‘Kishin’ and Tsurumi couldn’t tear his eyes away from him.

- In hindsight the fact Tsurumi couldn’t tear his eyes away from Sugimoto should have told us that a man who’s fascinated by such brutal murdering method is up to no good.

- Tsurumi concludes he recognized Sugimoto by the way Sugimoto fought in the soba shop. Meaning if Sugimoto had let himself be arrested pacifically Tsurumi might not have recognized him.

- Sugimoto keeps calm and denies it. His poker face is back in place but this time he doesn’t have a lie ready.

- When Tsurumi hits right on the spot again, surprising him by realizing Sugimoto has the tattooed skins Sugimoto feels the need to regain confidence again by acting confident and vaguely insulting (he asks if Tsurumi is insane).

- Tsurumi plays along, allowing the tension to drop then… stabs Sugimoto with the skewer and Sugimoto failed to realize if he wanted to insist denying of being Sugimoto he had to react. He just remained there, without even blinking, which proves he’s Sugimoto the immortal.

- Tsurumi subtly hints at how he’s a man who can adapt himself. If the fire of Sugimoto’s candle is an immortal flame he’ll just destroy the candle. We’ll see through the story he’s not one who can’t adapt to the situation but stubbornly insist on the same way.

- Asirpa’s plan is to track Sugimoto by having Retar smell a sock he left behind and search for him by nightfall as Retar stands out too much.

- Tsurumi continues delineating his modus operandi. He tells Sugimoto if he wants to survive he has to join him. This parallels how he’ll tell Ariko that if he wants his family to survive he’ll have to side with him. It also tells us something about Tsurumi. He understood that Sugimoto has a strong wish to live, that he’s alone and that he’s angry and proud of his ability as a fighter, in fact, after the stick, ‘I’ll kill you if you don’t join me’, he presents him with the carrot, the carrot being his great plan to conquer Hokkaido in which Sugimoto can avenge himself from how he didn’t gain anything from the army and hope to have a place, with an extra spoon of sugar when he says that Sugimoto is the courageous soldier he needs. People are always who Tsurumi needs, he says the same to Tanigaki too. It’s also worth to compare this speech with the one Tsurumi had with Asirpa in vol 21. Tsurumi is in control here, after scaring Sugi he explains him something trying to make him feel involved on an emotional level and appreciated. It’s probably a variation of his usual speech for soldiers. With Asirpa he never had such plan to win her over in fact he doesn’t even try to talk with her but just orders to take her away. It’s Asirpa who engages him in a discussion but he hardly attempt to win her over with his speech which was more likely a pretence for his men and Sugimoto than for her.

- Tsurumi claims he has lost many men due to the war claiming he has less than a hundred scattered all over Hokkaido. I do wonder if he says so to get Sugimoto’s sympathy by mentioning the ones who died in the war. Men are, after all, conscripted each year so Tsurumi should have already got a replenishment unless they decided to simply give him less men because there’s not a war at the moment… though of course Tsurumi might wish more he has.

- Sugimoto’s question reveals his feelings on the idea of the men of the 7th wanting the gold. He thinks they only want it in order to get rich. He doesn’t imagine they might want it to do something.

- Tsurumi makes clear the gold isn’t to share among them but to use for military expenditures, informing Sugimoto as well of how they took army from Asahikawa but those aren’t enough and then presenting him with what looks superficially like a grandiose plan but making it really simple and easy. Basically Tsurumi’s plan, even explained in such a simple manner, is extremely disadvantageous for his men who would see no gold and take a huge risk above them becoming rebels. However as he seems so confident and try to play on emotions his plan doesn’t seem so bad.

- When Tsurumi talks of heroes on the battlefield destined to the life of vagrants he’s very likely referring to Sugimoto only, as his men aren’t vagrants but still in service, while Sugimoto seems to be one. In fact Japanese is vague enough we can’t tell if he’s referring to more people or just to Sugimoto.

- Sugimoto refuses, removing the stick that’s through his cheeks. As he’ll state later it’s not like he’s against Tsurumi’s plan, it he has another priority (he needs money fast for Umeko and he thinks he can get it by finding the gold) and he’s afraid of consequences because he hid the skins with the weapons of the other soldiers he killed.

- Since the carrot didn’t work Tsurumi returns to the stick by going back on threatening him in hope to force him to comply. Sugimoto should have remembered this experience in which, even though he had 2 skins, Tsurumi didn’t try to come to compromises with him and tortured him to get what he wanted instead than thinking Asirpa would have some leverage with Tsurumi just because she knew the code.

Notable changes from the magazine version: None

Notable quotes:

- Tsurumi: “I'm your Shinigami. Your life is a candle, and I can blow it out any time I choose.” (‘Watashi wa omae no shinigamida. Omae no jumyō no rōsoku wa watashi ga itsu demo fuki keseru zo.’ 私はお前の死神だ。お前の寿命のロウソクは私がいつでも吹き消せるぞLit: “I'm your death god. I can blow out the candle of your life anytime.”)

- Tsurumi: “We were heroes on the battlefield. but once we got home, all that awaited us was the pathetic life of a vagrant. Did we gain anything for our service? I'd say we lost far more than we gained wouldn't you? A courageous soldier like you is exactly who I want in my army. Let us fight together, Sugimoto!” (‘Senjōde wa eiyūdattanoni furusato e kaereba hōrō seikatsu. Nani ka mukuwa reta ka? Ushinatta mono no kata ga ōku wanai ka? Watashi wa omae no yō ni yūmōna heishi ga hoshī. Wareware to tomoni tatakatte kure’ 戦場では英雄だったのに故郷へ帰れば放浪生活。何か報われたか？失ったものの方が多くはないか？私はお前のように勇猛な兵士が欲しい。我々と共に戦ってくれ Lit: “Although you were a hero on the battlefield, you returned home to a wandering life. Did you gain something? Wasn’t it more what you lost? I want a brave soldier like you. Fight with us.”)

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17. TRACKERS (追跡者 TSUISEKI-SHA)

First printed: 18/December/2014 Weekly Young Jump 3

Characters: Asirpa (アシㇼパ), Retar (レタㇻ), Shiraishi Yoshitake (白石 由竹), Sugimoto Saichi (杉元 佐一), Tsurumi Tokushirō (鶴見 篤四郎), Noma (野間), Okada (岡田), Tamai (玉井), Nikaidō Kōhei (二階堂 浩平), Nikaidō Yōhei (二階堂 洋平)

Location: Otaru.

Other Places mentioned: None

Time: 1907/1908 (?) March

Historical events mentioned: Russo-Japanese war (8 February 1904  – 5 September 1905)

Includes flashbacks or info about the characters past: Yes, about Sugimoto and Nikaidō Yōhei

Info and the characters’ theories about the ‘Noppera-bō incident’, the gold and the escape: None

Character deaths: None

Animal deaths: None

New Ainu words:

- Cinoyetat: rolled birch bark used as a torch

Food and drinks: Dango skewers

Useful info and points to ponder:

- Asirpa can ride Retar.

- Asirpa, believing she has found Sugimoto, does what was implied in chap 15, hits him by surprise on the head with her Sutu without checking it’s him first.

- Asirpa calls Shiraishi ‘Dappun-ō’ (脱糞王 “Defecation king”), instead than ‘Datsugoku-ō’ (脱獄王 “Escape king”). Scanlations go with “Excrement king” because similarly sounding to “Escape King” and close enough to “Defecation king”. It’s worth to note Asirpa likely remembers how he’s called but she hadn’t forgotten he made the Ainu=dog ‘joke’ in chap 6, and will keep on calling Shiraishi the wrong way until he volunteers to bring her in Abashiri chap 49.

- Shiraishi won’t use the Ainu=dog joke again but just call her ‘Ainu no Gaki’ (アイヌのガキ “Ainu brat”). ‘Gaki’ is not very polite but it’s pretty common to use to refer to a kid. Problem is Asirpa doesn’t like to be viewed as a kid.

- This chapter starts the beginning of the recurring gag of animals biting Shiraishi’s head wih Retar doing so trice, each time Shiraishi annoys Asirpa.

- Shiraishi might have noticed Sugimoto took the wrong sock… yet Sugimoto didn’t.

- Shiraishi summarizes Asirpa’s situation as ‘Sugimoto double-crossing her, stealing the skins and running away’ which is likely what Asirpa fears he did but she’s trying to hope that’s not the case.

- The model for Shiraishi Yoshitake ended up in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. There’s to wonder if the Shiraishi too was betrayed as he ended in jail for stealing but we never saw him stealing anything.

- We learn Shiraishi is always up with local info, and therefore knows Sugimoto got involved in a fight and was arrested by the 7th.

- Hearing Sugimoto is in danger Asirpa points one of her poisoned arrows at him, demanding he’ll take her there. It’s unlikely she had the time to remove the poison so if she were to shoot by mistake, as she herself explain, Shiraishi would die quickly. She said she didn’t want to kill anyone so I think she only wants to threaten Shiraishi but if she were to let go of the arrow by mistake she would kill him. This works as a huge hint that Asirpa might end up changing her stance of ‘I won’t kill anyone’ to ‘I’ll kill for Sugimoto’.

- Shiraishi shows again he’s clever. He didn’t fight Asirpa, he takes time and escape. His only problem is he doesn’t how good Retar is as a tracker.

- Asirpa informs Shiraishi no one can escape Retar’s tracking ability, not even if one were to hide in a toilet. Shiraishi will remember this.

- Tsurumi clearly had Sugimoto tortured in attempt to get him to tell him where the skins were. Sugimoto’s face is blending much more than before, and he has two skewers pulled through his cheeks (remember he removed the previous one Tsurumi stuck through him). Sugimoto is a tough guy who wouldn’t have talked easily yet Tsurumi tortured him to get him to talk. What in the world gave Sugimoto the idea Tsurumi wouldn’t have tortured Asirpa to get what he wanted from her without having to give her anything in exchange? Also note that sadly, back then, torturing people to get them to talk, was a pretty common practice so it’s not even surprising or considered particularly evil.

- Sugimoto’s reasoning is flawed. He thinks he couldn’t have pretended to join them because he wouldn’t have fooled Tsurumi as Tsurumi knew he had tattooed skins and would want them in exchange but Sugimoto hit them along with the equipment he looted off the soldiers the bear killed. Basically he’s afraid they would believe he killed those soldiers and kill him in retaliation Honestly I don’t think Tsurumi wouldn’t care but this isn’t the real problem. The real problem is he thinks everything went down the drain because he tried to do it by himself. In truth everything went wrong merely because he did it poorly. If he’d done everything in the same way but Asirpa had been with him when he was arrested, the only result he would have bought home is that Tsurumi would have had the both of them. However it’s clear he feels alone so the idea this is the reason why he’s in trouble probably stems from this.

- What’s also worrisome is… ‘when did he hid the weapons?’ Did he do so after they died, before reaching Asirpa, losing even more time before going to check on her? Or did he do so afterward? But if that’s the case why didn’t he try to retrieve Tanigaki’s weapon also? Because if he had, he would have realized Tanigaki was very much alive and walked away on his own.

- Nikaidō Kōhei calls Sugimoto ‘Kushi dango yarō’ (串団子野郎 “Skewer dumpling bastard”), mocking him because Tsurumi put through him skewers.

- The Nikaidō brothers are clearly people to hold grudges. Being first kicked by Sugimoto and after having him make fun of them set them on their hardest in paying him back and it only will get worse from here. We know nothing about their past so it’s hard to say if the war turned them like that (it sadly happened to way too many soldiers) or something else triggered it or they were like that right from the start. We’ll see if we’ll ever get more backstory.

- As Yōhei and Kōhei look almost the same it’s hard to understand who is who. Kōhei is the one who doesn’t believe the guy they caught is Sugimoto while Yōhei, noticing the swelling on Sugimoto’s face has gone down, thinks he might be Sugimoto and considers cutting out his guts (something that will inspire Sugimoto later on). Kōhei points out they can’t kill him if they want info from him so Yōhei would like to force Sugimoto to talk by cutting off his finger. He makes the mistake of getting to close to Sugimoto who hits his face with his head, causing him to lose a tooth. Yōhei is also the one who manages to partially stab Sugimoto, while Kōhei’s head gets trapped by Sugimoto’s legs.

- I’m starting to think everyone and their mom knew Sugimoto during the war. Even Yōhei says he heard rumors about him regarding how he recovered overnight from wounds the doctors thought were fatal.

- Yōhei remains the more violent prone while Yōhei remains the most rational. Where Yōhei just wants to cut Sugimoto’s guts out K ō ehi reasons they need him alive.

- While Yōhei seems to be there just to kill/hurt Sugimoto, there’s to wonder if the twins were actually there to get him to tell them where the skins were without Tsurumi hearing, as it’ll turn out they actually were in a rebellion with Ogata, Tamai and the others.

- Assorted translations more or less agree that when Sugimoto speaks up the first time, he mumbles something unintelligible. In the anime they actually have him asks Yōhei if he was the one who hit him in the soba shop. In the volume version though Sugimoto didn’t talk enough to voice that whole sentence as he only says ‘bonbon’ (ボンボン). While yes, it’s likely meant to be an unintelligible sound, ironically enough it’s Koito’s nick which  means “pampered rich boy”… but it’s unlikely that’s what Sugimoto is saying as I don’t think Yōhei fits the description.

- Sugimoto shows his best skill is dealing with close contact enemies. He fakes being weak, whispers to get Yōhei close and then takes advantage of it to strike him, manages to break the chair so as to manage to bring in front of himself his tie hand, to stop Yōhei from further stabbing him and to restrain Yōhei. This is impressive (and also a bit unbelievable as it seems adults with normal bodies can’t just manage to bring forwards their hands if they were tied behind themselves.)

- As he’s stabbed Sugimoto yells his catchphrase, “I’m Sugimoto the immortal”.

Notable changes from the magazine version: None

Notable quotes:

- Asirpa: “Huh? You're not Sugimoto.You're  the "Excrement King"…what was your name again?” (‘Are? Sugi moto janai. Omae wa tashika…“dappun-ō” no…’ あれ？杉元じゃない。お前は確か…『脱糞王』の… Lit: “Huh? You’re not Sugimoto. You are...  the “Defecating King” ...”)

- Shiraishi: “That's "Escape King!" and the name's Shiraishi Yoshitake!” (‘“Ore wa “Datsugoku-ō” no Shiraishi Yoshitake da!’ 俺は『脱獄王』の白石由竹だ！ Lit: “I’m the “Escape King” Shiraishi Yoshitake!”)

- Shiraishi: “So, let me guess…Sugimoto double crossed you didn't he? I bet he just stole the skins and ran away! It all makes sense now. that means the rumour I heard really was about Sugimoto.” (‘Nanda omae… sateha sugi moto ni uragira reta na? Irezumi no kawa o mochinige sa reta ndaro. Naruhodo gatten ga itta ze. Yahari ano uwasa wa sugi motodatta ka’ 何だおまえ…さては杉元に裏切られたな？入れ墨の皮を持ち逃げされたんだろ。なるほど合点がいったぜ。やはりあの噂は杉元だったか)

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VOLUME COLOR GALLERY

#Golden Kamuy #Wilk #Retar #Hijikata Toshizou #Ogata Hyakunosuke #Tsurumi Tokushirou #Shiraishi Yoshitake #Makanakkuru #Nikaidou Kouhei #Nikaidou Youhei #Osoma #Tanigaki Genjirou #Tsukishima Hajime #Golden Kamuy Data Hunting #Sugimoto Saichi #Asirpa #Kenmochi Umeko #Kenmochi Toraji #Noma Naoaki #Okada Fumio #Tamai Houzou #Susupo #Wada Kouji #Gotou Takechiyo #Kasahara Kanjirou

[reaper-royalty]

Vatican Museums (Musei Vaticani)

The entrance is in Viale Vaticano near Piazza Risorgimento. There is also a regular free bus service from Piazza S.Pietro (on the left of Bernini's Colonnades as you face the Basilica). 

The Vatican houses one of the world's great art collections. Its 7km of exhibits will daunt even the most energetic tourist. So if you only have limited time plan to take in what interests you most - and hurry past the rest. 

A oneway system operates for security reasons, so work out in advance what you wish to miss - you cannot go back for example to the Stanze di Rafaello after visiting the Capella Sistina (Sistine Chapel). Remember also that the Sistine chapel is a long walk - about 400m from the entrance along many corridors and staircases.

Popes have been collecting antique art for at least 500 years and today the Vatican contains the largest number of Greek and Roman statues, reliefs, mosaics and inscriptions of any museum in the world. 

The Museo Pio Clementino takes its name from two 18th-century Popes who tried to put some order among the large number of pieces of classical statuary littering the Vatican gardens and palaces.

Note the splendid 4th-century porphyry sarcophagi in the Sala a Croce Greca (hall in the shape of a Greek cross), also a sculpted head (no. 567) that is most likely a portrait of Cleopatra.

In the octagonal courtyard of the Belvedere Palace, which was the creation of one of the main founders of the Vatican collection, Pope Julius II, you can see one of the most famous sculptures of ancient Greece, the Laocoon, a marble group of the 2nd century bc dug up on the Esquiline hill in 1506 (from Domus Aurea). Laocoon, a priest of Apollo, and his sons were suffocated by serpents as a punishment by the gods. Opposite is the Apollo del Belvedere a fine Roman copy of a famous 4th-century bc Greek bronze.

Nearby in the Atrio del Torso is the famous Torso del Belvedere a fragment of a naked figure seated on the skin of a wild animal. The hidden power in this much damaged piece of marble is reputed to have impressed even Michelangelo.

The Braccio Nuovo (New Wing) a 19th-century addition, contains a telling portrait of Augustus (No. 14) at about the age of 40, and a colossal statue of the Nile river god surrounded by sphinxes and crocodiles.

You now penetrate into part of the Vatican Library. In the Sala Sistina is a strange wooden device which was used to fix the Papal seal or 'bollo' on important Papal documents or 'Bulls' as they were called in English. The central reading room is laid out with various valuable codices, or handwritten versions of the Bible, some written on papyrus. 

The Library contains over 70,000 codices, manuscripts and early printed books. On display are a set of love letters from King Henry VIII to Ann Boleyn (evidence used against the sovereign in excommunication proceedings), an illustrated book on falconry by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, and autograph letters of Michelangelo and Raphael.

The Capella Sistina (now undergoing its first major cleaning and restoration) is perhaps the most famous and overwhelming of all Rome's art treasures. The chapel, built by Pope Sixtus IV at the end of the 15th century, was decorated by some of the greatest artists of the day, including Botticelli, Signorelli, and Pinturicchio. But it was Michelangelo's painting of the huge ceiling between 1508 and 1512 and his masterpiece, the LastJudgement painted on the main altar wall 23 years later that set the seal of greatness on the building. 

Michelangelo was at first reluctant to carry out Pope Julius I’s commission to paint the events of the Creation, and had great difficulty in getting paid for his tour deforce. Refusing all assistance, he locked himself away for years, lying on his back suspended from scaffolding in order to paint over 3000sq m 10,000sq ft of ceiling. It is a feat that still takes away the breath of the visitors who pass through the chapel every day.

If the Creation breathes the very spirit of the Renaissance at its height, the Last Judgement is in very different mood. Terribilitd (terribleness) was the quality in Michelangelo's art that most impressed his contemporaries, and here with Christ standing in final judgement over humanity (including many actual portrait's of the artist's friends and enemies), you feel Michelangelo is making his final statement on life and death, honour and ambition, love and hate. 

The Last Judgement did not meet with universal approval. Prudish Popes ordered trousers or loin cloths to be painted on some of the nudes. (They were later removed.) The Sistine Chapel is today used for the election of a new Pope on the death of the Roman Pontiff, and for solemn assemblies of the College of Cardinals.

While Michelangelo was labouring alone on his great ceiling, his rival and fellow artist Raphael was working (with plenty of assistants) on the decoration of the nearby Stanze di Rafaello. (Raphael Rooms). This was the private apartment of Pope Julius II who did not want to live in the Borgia Apartment below, because of its unpleasant historical associations. Two of the rooms, the Stanza della Segnatura, the Pope's study and library, and the Stanza di Eliodoro, his bedroom, are mostly by Raphael's own hand. 

Truth, beauty and goodness are the subjects of the frescoes in the first room. The Disputation of the Sacrament and the School of Athens represent respectively religious and philosophical truth, while Apollo and the Muses on Mount Parnassus represent beauty. Goodness is portrayed by the cardinal virtues, prudence, temperance and strength. The second room contains three superb frescoes; the Expulsion of Heliodorusfrom the Temple in Jerusalem, Pope Leo Stopping the Invasion of Attila the Hun, and the Miracle of Bolsena.

The Museo Gregoriano Etrusco should not be missed as it -contains the Etruscan treasure discovered in 1837 in a tomb at Cerveteri (then part of the Pope's earthly domain).

 The three occupants of the tomb were buried with gold, silver, jewels, and richly decorated table ware. The Museo Profano and the Museo Cristiano (Profane and Christian Museums) used to be housed in the Lateran Palace and were transferred here into a new building in 1970. 

They contain Roman sculpture, inscriptions and sarcophagi dating from the lst-4th centuries ad. The 4th-century statue of the Good Shepherd is an excellent example of the continuity of Mediterranean art forms - the inspiration is clearly pagan and ancient Greek.

If you are not too exhausted, the Pinacoteca or Vatican Picture Gallery contains further riches. It is particularly well endowed with Primitives and 15th century Italian artists.

 The Giotto polyptych in Room II and the Melozzo da Forli Angels in Room IV are worth more than a passing glance. In Room VIII there is a Raphael feast. The Transfiguration, Raphael's last work (it was hung above his bier as he lay in state) has been cleaned recently, revealing unexpected new details. Also on view is a set of tapestries woven from Raphael's cartoons for the Capella Sistina, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The Coronation of the Virgin was the first work of Raphael's maturity - he was 20 years old when he painted it.

#vatican museums #vatican #italy #rome #roma #travel #vatican city #popes #sistine chapel #pinacoteca #vatican picture gallery #capella sistina

[fryemcneill3-blog]

Steinberg Cubase 5 Review

Introduction One of the oldest sequencers, along having Logic (old-timers may bear in mind often the glowing era involving Pro per day and Notator), Cubase possesses over the years, imposed numerous ergonomic desk, technological, and conceptual specifications on the competition. Releasing a fresh version of Steinberg's flagship software is even now a great event in alone, although it must end up being confessed that today, this pretenders to the tub of the master associated with sequencers are quite several. As a result, creativity and superiority are not any longer unique to Cubase and, without even referfing to some other sequencer heavy-weights (Logic, Fantasear, Pro Tools, Samplitude, A digital Performer and Ableton Live), the last few years has noticed many innovative competitors, with running selling price tags and popularity, but filled with great features: Fruity Loops, Melodyne, Tracktion, Electricity XT, Reaper... In a new market mainly because competitive because this, it's obviously progressively more difficult to stand out there. Cubase 4 had the pros even though that launched the particular VST3 common, brought it has the effects and even virtual tools up to date, inaugurated a innovative media management system and even you could lastly proceed effects from one keep tabs on to another by pull and drop. But it appeared more like these people were trying to catch up to the competitors somewhat than definitely developing... Even the more initial innovations, like management involving additional hardware (particularly Yamaha's, since the Japanese producer experienced recently bought Steinberg) and the emergence of control space targeted features were fascinating, but performed not effect all people and for that reason decided not to necessarily justify the particular increased application price: close to $879! Luckily, when typically the impressive Judgement 8 emerged out for around 250 usd it forced Steinberg to help rethink it is rates in addition to marketing technique: you may now find Cubase 5 various for all-around $500! Along with relatively fascinating updates: some. 1 plus 4. 5 (side sequence management intended for their effects, better course-plotting management, more tone banking institutions for HALionOne, etc .. ), and this 5th version, Steinberg is doing it is good for seduce us. Let's go into details... When Now i am sixty four The box is definitely heavy that is certainly a good very good sign. In improvement for you to the USB kopierschutzstecker and even serial number of which let you register, this actually contains 2 manuals: an instant start guide, and a quite large comprehensive guide that does not, however, cover often the effects not virtual equipment included with often the program, but which are coated in PDF files. You can find 4 DVDs: the DVD to install the system, a MOVIE with noises and examples, and a couple of DVDs with the 90-day demo version of HALion Symphonic Orchestra. Observe that inside addition to the manuals, the setup DVD contains a large number of tutorial video clips that are very well performed plus address all the crucial aspects of the sequencer. The fact that that there was initially a time the fact that Steinberg was putting out guides only in PDF formatting, we can only thank the German company intended for having changed its methods. The assembly went smoothly, and after double hitting on the red image, I was in recognizable place: the project windowpane. The primary novelty of this specific version will not jump out and about at you, because it's invisible: Cubase right now fully supports 64 little bit engineering. Wasn't this presently this case? Yes and certainly no, because possibly nevertheless Cubase 4 seemed to be agreeable having 64-bit working systems, the code we hadn't really been recently rewritten with this. It for that reason remained essentially a good 32-bit application, yet efficient at running on a 64-bit program, whereas Cubase 5 is already available in full sixty four bits. What's the major deal regarding 64 pieces? It's basic: it increases the addressable storage. 32-bit operating systems take care of at best 3. 2 GB connected with memory, while a 64-bit OS can theoretically climb to 128 GB (I say theoretically, because presently there at the moment exists no machine, available to the standard public, that has much RAM). A very critical aspect at a time period when virtual ROMplers come with banks of many Gigas for rendering a single instrument (BFD, superiorDRUMMER 3, Vienna, EastWest Symphonic Band, Ivory Piano, etc. ) and streamlining the life of those who implement audio/video and need in order to manage big videos within just their sequencer. Small Technical Propellerhead! Although not everything will be rosy in the territory of 64 bits. Perhaps even though Steinberg is dedicated to supporting Mac OS Times, Vista 64, and the future Windows 7, zero assistance for Windows XP OR 7 64 is definitely officially expected (it doesn't necessarily mean that will it won't work). Make sure you check your plug-ins: several programmers already feature 64-bit functionality and Steinberg proposes, by using VST Bridge technologies, the way to make use of thirty two touch plugins in the 64-bit edition of the sequencer, but it's still highly likely that a person or two of your old effects that you have had for ages in the VSTplugins directory will lock up or refuse to start off. Using the VST Bridge in addition eats assets in percentage to the make use of a true 64-bit plug-in... Around improvement to these tiny inconveniences, the major disadvantage of 64-bit could be the incompatibility with Propellerheads solutions: when you use Cubase your five 64-bit in a 64-bit OS, you'll not be able to use REX file formats, nor the ReWire platform: so goodbye making use of Cubase with Reason, Ableton Live and Melodyne, and others... Of course, the Swedish designer will probably certainly not leave the case as the idea stands, but currently, simply no story has been made with this issue... What do we fag that case? Install the 32-bit variation of Cubase 5, which usually runs effortlessly on the 64-bit OS, till Propellerhead makes a move. This really is annoying of course, nonetheless it cannot be blamed in Steinberg. Let's take a take some sort of look now at capabilities that will change the way you employ Cubase. Cognito, Ergonomic Value There's no revolution in terms of software, the German developer seems to have opted for, having this launching, making often the interface simpler in addition to growing work flow. Take for example the new Automation panel that brings together in the solitary window the main automation orders. steinberg cubase click now suffices to arm all the paths inside Read or Produce settings, while you can decide on to display or disguise automating data, and engage/disengage playback or recording features by Type: Volume, Baking pan, FREQUENCY, Sends, Inserts. This time stored is extensive! As for controls, a new host of smaller developments have been made, such as presence of a virtual key pad that allows an individual to play music from a QWERTY keyboard (useful when you're on a notebook computer on the road, in addition to you terribly lack a keyboard), or a no cost program for iPod/iPhone which could permit your remotely control the particular transport bar via Gopro wifi... nice, you may declare, but not enough in order to rationalise an upgrade. Besides that Steinberg has as well taken this occasion to be able to fulfill the wishes indicated by many end users, by way of developing, firstly, a good export regarding multiple music data. Total Export, Hallelujah! Requested age range ago, the Complete Export have now helps make it possible to export various tracks in one shot. Up to now in Cubase, when you wished, intended for example, to make a good CD associated with 16 music tracks to give to the pal or a facility doing the job under another sequencer with no OMF format, a person had to carry out track by track, while using the One and Mute links: a new waste of time! Now, inside the Mixdown window, only check the little boxes with regard to your outputs, audio tracks as well as instruments together with results tracks. The only issue lacking in this home window is the chance to enable/disable the effects inserted throughout tracks, so you are able to easily produce dry track, although it can easily still end up being done in the mixing machine as well as project view. This would are already nice in case Cubase handled lossless music formats (Monkey Audio amidst others). Anyhow, even in the event Steinberg is catching upwards with the competition more than improvising on this point, this very simple characteristic alone is worth typically the upgrade from any edition of Cubase to this different version... Up in order to Pace Not as important nowadays for a few, but essential for other people, it must be pointed out that there are a couple of new types of monitors: Speed track and Trademark monitor which let anyone program changes in tempo and even time personal in your projects. Indeed, Cubase currently had the " cadence " editing tool in the past, but it was just a good editor, which was not very ergonomically designed. Now, without possibly causing the project home window, you may vary time autographs together with tempo with a new mouse click. Unfortunately, however, anyone can have only a single tempo and unique keep track of per project: you can't find a 3/4 track along with a 4/4 track playing together, or the track as their tempo would increase as the other folks remained at some sort of preset tempo, even when such illustrations are somewhat exceptional... The addition of these 2 tracks should, the point is, significantly make simpler work for composers, who also will also end up being delighted to have the new selection of MIDI computer software. MIDI Plug-Ins Let's start with MIDDLE SIZED plug-ins: they've been totally overhauled, and two brand-new ones have been additional: MIDDLE SIZED Monitor, and Do better than Custom made (which will get talked about later) The MIDI Monitor connect to enables you, as its name suggests, keep an attention on all messages getting through the MIDI sequencer, producing it an extremely beneficial tool when it happens to diagnosing a inability or connection problem, considering that that allows you to help export the firelogs into a good TXT record. Very valuable for robotizing complicated programming. Less esoteric nevertheless both equally powerful, the other MIDI plugins have had considerable improvements made to these people, possibly on the graphical or practical level: much like Chorder, which usually now offers a MIDI Understand function. Only regret: certainly not having tools designed to make ease of the MIDI programming with regard to acoustic instruments to make realistic strumming or different techniques. Nevertheless, in the particular field of reasonable MI-JOURNÉE programming, Steinberg has certainly not been idle, like proven by VST Appearance, one other major innovation associated with type 5... VST Reflection: Express Yourself! So what will be it? It's an interface that lets you intuitively manage and control (from the Piano Roll, the Drum Edit or credit score edit) the many jointures which can be found in good sized symphonic audio banks (Vienna, Garritan, Far east West Symphonic Orchestra, etc . ).. Related to the way another container Map streamlines editing batterie, you can now develop Expression Maps that is going to manage continual controllers (especially key switches) committed to some sort of particular playing technique (staccato, glissando, tremolo, etc. ).. After an Expression Map is made, all you want to do is plan in the changes within articulation at the bottom of the Cello Rotate (in the same room used for continuous controllers), or even use the right symbols inside the score manager. That's almost all this will be, but it really streamlines things, as you'll shortly realize with the HALion Symphonic Orchestra demo type (limited to 90 days), or perhaps with the brass, guitars, plus bass samples of HALion A SINGLE Appearance Set 01. Such as all of good ideas, you think about why nobody thought associated with this before. In addition to simplifying development, VST Expression also lets you shift your sequences from traditional bank to another, as very long as you hold the related expression maps. It can on this very issue the particular one might have cause for you to protest, because even although Cubase provides Manifestation Routes for HALion One in addition to HALion Orchestral Orchestra, that offers none for any weighty hitters of Orchestral trials. So you'll have for you to for you to roll up your own personal sleeves is to do it oneself, through a easy editing tool, or wait until typically the brands themselves or lovers do the job for you, which will probably occur sooner or after. Nevertheless regardless of whether VST Manifestation gets an ordinary adopted by simply other sequencers is yet to be seen... Vari Nice! The Total Move together with VST Expression features can be important add ons to be able to Cubase, but the offer that has received typically the most attention in Cubase 5 is undoubtedly VariAudio, which is fundamentally a good Melodyne-like application integrated instantly into Cubase. In the audio editor (accessible by means of double-clicking any file or maybe audio segment) you will find a new tab called VariAudio. When you initialize it, the technology starts a process regarding reputation for all typically the notes in the music clip that you can certainly then edit like a good simple MIDI collection. A person can change the message and also the place and length of segments, while some sort of curve indicates formants. Ergonomically speaking, the integration is great: rolling the sensitive mouse over some sort of note indicates the pitch and the change in pitch compared to the nearest half-step, while some sort of guitar roll will be superimposed in order to simplify transposition. In comparison to the particular Melodyne Plug-in, its incorporation is seamless: it will work in full display and even not in a decreased home window, there are not any more issues about contradictory shortcuts between Melodyne together with Cubase, plus above just about all, no more headaches using bouncing the audio only to be able to hear the result. There is certainly merely one thing that they have absent compared to Melodyne: VariAudio isn't going to handle this amplitude of segments, which in turn means you can't change the volume of each be aware it finds. Steinberg makes up for this, having said that, by incorporating a good Music to MIDI change feature. You can convert any mono audio snap into a good sequence the fact that can then be performed by any virtual device. Of course, depending with the quality in the sound clip and prognosis restrictions (with or with no getting into account pitch bend), the actual result will be a lot more or less dedicated in order to the original, but by means of editing a little to be able to clean up the sequence a person get results which have been usable... How does it audio? Even if the quality of the methods employed by VariAudio hold their own own when compared to the competitors, these people not up to par with Melodyne when coping with extreme échange (plus as well as minus one octave, to get example). That all depends obviously in what you're trying for you to transfer, some timbres work better in comparison with other people, like electric striper, whilst other individuals that are more intricate, like vocals, produce artifacts (glitches, flange, etc.. ) when you transpose more as compared to a few half-steps. It almost all depends on whatever you work with that for: hidden in the particular mix, some transpositions are usually undetectable, while if it can out in front of some sort of mix or perhaps all on your own it will more than likely not be usable. Nonetheless, it's excellent to currently have a tool like this specific since it come in handy in many scenarios and this works very well. In the wake associated with VariAudio, which is a great editing software, Steinberg has got also delivered pitch correction plug-in which, as the name suggests, automatically modifies the pitch in the observe you put it in (like Auto Tune), with the possibility of restricting the sound to a new a number of scale or changing its ceiling, alter formants, and so on.. The big change with VariAudio is plug-in works throughout real time and does the job well as long as you work with the appropriate settings (shape, speed, tolerance, etc.. ). Pitch correction can in addition create some special outcomes: Mickey mouse Mouse (+ 2 octaves), Barry White (-2 octaves), or by piloting the plug-in via MIDDLE SIZED similar to a virtual instrument, as well as receiving that 'Cher effect'. To put it briefly, in between Pitch Appropriate, VariAudio and AudioWarp, an individual can really sculpt your current tracks almost like they were being made of sonic clay surfaces. This is a quite good point for Cubase 5, which right now retains it is own with regards to sound editing. Let's look into often the effects and virtual instruments that come with Cubase 5... FOREIGN EXCHANGE Machine In Cubase 5, Steinberg kept up to date the bundled effects, plus now there's no lower than 58 audio plug-ins that come with Cubase 5. The assortment of effects is total and covers just with regards to all needs: spectral processing (EQ, filters, wah, enhancer), dynamic (compressors, gates, penile expander, de-esser, transient designer), space (autopan, stereo Widener), toss ( octaver), modulation side effects (chorus, phaser, flanger, diamond ring modulator), distortions, amp simulator, electric guitar tuner, signal electrical generator, etc.. etc.. It will need to be noted that there are a new slight redundancy: the exact same effects are sometimes readily available both in a mono version and a stereo version like the particularly annoying Wave Influences lots. Rather than acquiring 4 distinct delays, the idea would have been nice to get a single plugin that has been a small more sophisticated... The enchanting effect of Impulse Nevertheless, Steinberg should be congratulated for having last but not least incorporated a real high-quality reverb: Reverence convolution processor, which usually takes over for often the very sub-par RoomWorks (which is still available). There is not much to point out about Respect, whose features are similar to other convolution processors (setting various reverb parameters, 3 music group parametric equalizer, reverse method, preview... ). It have to be stated that often the plugin works inside stereo system or surround in addition to that comes with a selection regarding impulse responses: reverbs simply, no speaker simulators regarding guitarists, but given that you can find several impulses on the internet and significance files inside WAV or maybe AIFF structure, this is not a good problem. So, the only critique that can end up being made about this different reverb is the similar a person for all convolution processors: Respect is a new real hog in terminology of CPU consumption. To function in stereo, it's not really really bad, but to make use of it within surround method, it would be far better to have an extremely highly effective machine... However, Steinberg genuinely needed its very own convolution reverb. If you already have one main, then you won't proper care, but if you don't, you'll be saving some money... Common for all the supplied effect plug-ins which : and this is their primary strength - let you execute a new venture from A for you to Unces: nothing is missing and you may easily just work with cubase 5 as is. As for the top quality of the effects and processing, let's just say that nothing seems amiss nevertheless they normally are not up to be able to par with other 3rd party plugins, especially inside the EQ and vibrant processor department (you'll find better plugins by Inside Flux, Sonnox, Wave, URS, PSP... but for a cost that often is much greater than that of the sequencer! ), or the results found in a Samplitude by way of example... Groove Baby Groove! Found in Cubase 5, Steinberg features two new online devices and some sort of MIDI plug dedicated to electronic digital rhythms: Groove Real estate agent One, LoopMash, plus Beat Custom. Contrary to well-known belief, Groove Agent A person is not similar to the old Grooved Agent, nonetheless will be rather such as LM4... with a look of which mirrors an Akai MPC. Really a Drum Sampler which includes 16 exclusive pads which may be assigned to an AIFF, WAV, MPC, or diverse slices of a hook. Note that GA1 manages up to 8 sheets per pad, and you can have got 8 banks of 10 pads. Sleeping pad assignment is done by means of simple drag plus drop from MediaBay, the particular stereo editor tool, or job home window but unfortunately not from desktop computer of Home windows or Macintosh OS. Although after you set more than one document on the same pad, the software program automatically generates the matching layers dynamically disseminating speed ranges. As for modifying, GA1 offers a large amount of controls: tuning/transpose sample, amplitude curve, multimode filter (but not resonant, alas), invert mode... In short, there's ample to keep a person busy whether or not it would likely have been nice if your edit section had already been a little more created (I wasn't able to be able to change the playback start off and stop points connected with a sample) and right now there are no effects (distortion, delay, etc. ). Though, you can apply these kinds of influences in the appliance using diverse audio outputs, it's less intuitive. Indeed, despite their own resemblance, accomplish not expect to can, with Groove Agent A person, a quarter of this things you can carry out with FXpansion's Guru, yet this can be normal after just about all for a method provided with a sequencer... Concerning sequencing, you'll have enjoyable using the new MIDI plug-in known as Beat Designer. Adding typically the ergonomics and reasoning of the classic step sequencer (up to 64 measures for each pattern with diverse time signatures possible), Combat Designer will allow an individual to quickly pilot Groove Agent One or just about any other synth or drum sampler. It is use is definitely very simple: one press to add an event, a person click to eliminate, together with click and drag to switch velocity, although often the slider effect the "swing" sense. It's a new wonderful small sequencer although, yet again, it has the combination with Groove Agent You are very a long way from offering the strength and even the ergonomics of a new Master... And lastly, the most original with the cope: LoopMash. No sequences not one shot samples, this time around we're dealing with streets, along with a strategy that's not far from PowerFX's Magic or Master (again). Typically the idea is to combine typically the groove of a master hook with often the sound of 7 different loops, and matches similar elements over loops and bests, creating new "mash-ups" through any rhythmic audio substance. The software is centered on a sound acknowledgement modus operandi, so you are able to dose the degree of each picture and you can document up to 8 clips with one click. Presently there not necessarily many controls, although gowns OK because this specific fact makes it possible for LoopMash in order to remain a simple and even effective tool for obtaining unique ideas, especially when you try out mixing melodic loops plus drum loops. If electro is your cup of teas, you will still really like the plan. If however, you tend in the direction of Blues or perhaps Rock, anyone probably will not see much interest in this device, not Groove Agent One or Do better than Designer. I want in order to point out what is today one of the only real weak points that Cubase features as opposed to some of it is competitors: the particular number of virtual instruments. Though Embracer, Monologue, Spector, or Halion One can be very nice in and even of by themselves, they're a good very far be sad via the power and usefulness of the Z3TA plus, Dimension Pro, and Rapture THE trio in Pronunciarse, or the instruments offered in Common sense Pro 8 (no rhodes, no organ, etc. ).. It would certainly likely be fewer embarrassing if Cubase transported using a new real software sampler (why isn't HALion involved simply by default). Almost all many of us get by default is definitely the Halion One ROMpler with acoustics banks starting from fair to very average. In this consider, this would be fine if Steinberg had a good more attractive offer, either through marketing or by licensing (including versions of third party plug-ins) or precisely why certainly not buying, technology or products of small specialized programmers. Conclusion Cubase 5 is definitely a success and shows development in several areas. Whole lot more user-friendly, more powerful and better equipped, Steinberg's child is alive in addition to properly! Sure, we'd always want to have more (especially exclusive instruments), but characteristics want VariAudio, VST Reflection, Tempo/Signature tracks, or typically the multitrack export feature help make this an essential update. To the question "Should you upgrade from type 4 or lower", the answer is a good one thousand times yes, but retain in mind that the Facilities variant of this computer software doesn't include things like (and it's an important point) VariAudio, amongst other issues. If however, you don't have a sequencer or you plan to change, the issue is additional challenging for the reason that after a fast website surf, it was rather surprising to find out that no brands other than Magix, Cakewalk and Ableton, have demonstration types associated with their sequencers! And it's really a good shame that you aren't try ahead of you acquire on some sort of time any time the variations between sequencers is typically summed upwards by the few features and diverse work-flows. But, speaking being an unconditional Cubase user these past 20 several years, I can't recommend Cubase 5 adequate...

[aviation1965]

The Retrospective

(From  Le Monde diplomatique, October, 1999).

It is not easy to write with feigned calm and dispassion about the events that have been unfolding in East Timor. Horror and shame are compounded by the fact that the crimes are so familiar and could so easily have been terminated by the international community a long time ago.

Indonesia invaded the territory in December 1975, relying on US diplomatic support and arms, used illegally, but with secret authorisation from Washington; there were even new arms shipments sent under the cover of an official “embargo”. There was no need to threaten bombing or even sanctions. It would have sufficed for the US and its allies to withdraw their active participation, and inform their close associates in the Indonesian military command that the atrocities must be terminated and the territory granted the right of self-determination that has been upheld by the United Nations and the International Court of Justice. We cannot undo the past, but we should at least be willing to recognise what we have done, and face the moral responsibility of saving the remnants and providing ample reparations – a small gesture of compensation for terrible crimes.

The latest chapter in this painful story of betrayal and complicity opened right after the referendum of 30 August 1999 when the population voted overwhelmingly for independence. At once, atrocities mounted sharply, organised and directed by the Indonesian army. The UN mission (Unamet) gave its appraisal on 11 September: “The evidence for a direct link between the militia and the military is beyond dispute and has been overwhelmingly documented by Unamet over the last four months. But the scale and thoroughness of the destruction of East Timor in the past week has demonstrated a new level of open participation of the military in the implementation of what was previously a more veiled operation.”

The mission warned that “the worst may be yet to come… It cannot be ruled out that these are the first stages of a genocidal campaign to stamp out the East Timorese problem by force” (1).

John Roosa, historian on Indonesia and official observer of the vote, described the situation starkly: “Given that the pogrom was so predictable, it was easily preventable… But in the weeks before the ballot, the Clinton Administration refused to discuss with Australia and other countries the formation (of an international force). Even after the violence erupted, the administration dithered for days” (2). Finally it was compelled by international (primarily Australian) and domestic pressure to make some timid gestures. Even these ambiguous messages sufficed to induce the Indonesian generals to reverse course and accept an international presence.

While President Clinton “dithered,” almost half the population were expelled from their homes, according to UN estimates, and thousands murdered (3). The air force that was able to carry out pin-point destruction of civilian targets in Novi Sad, Belgrade and Ponceva lacked the capacity to drop food to people facing starvation in the mountains to which they had been driven by the terror of the Indonesian forces, armed and trained by the US and its no less cynical allies.

The recent events will evoke bitter memories among those who do not take refuge, like the so-called international community, in “intentional ignorance”. We are witnessing a shameful replay of events of 20 years ago. After carrying out a huge slaughter in 1977-78 with the decisive support of the Carter Administration, Indonesia felt confident enough to permit a brief visit by members of the Jakarta diplomatic corps, among them the US ambassador, Edward Masters. They recognised that an enormous humanitarian catastrophe had been created. The aftermath was described by Benedict Anderson, one of the most distinguished scholars on Indonesia. Anderson testified before the UN that “For nine long months” of starvation and terror, “Ambassador Masters deliberately refrained, even within the walls of the State Department, from proposing humanitarian aid to East Timor.” He was waiting “until the generals in Jakarta gave him the green light” – until, as an internal State Department document recorded, they felt “secure enough to permit foreign visitors” (4).

One gruesome illustration of US complicity was the coup that brought General Suharto to power in 1965. Army-led massacres slaughtered hundreds of thousands in a few months, mostly landless peasants. The powerful communist party was destroyed. The achievement elicited unrestrained euphoria in the West and fulsome praise for the Indonesian “moderates”, Suharto and his military accomplices, who had cleansed society and opened it to foreign plunder. Robert McNamara, then Secretary of Defence, informed Congress that US military aid and training had “paid dividends” – including half a million corpses. A congressional report concluded they were “enormous dividends”. McNamara informed President Johnson that that US military assistance “encouraged (the army) to move against the communist party when the opportunity was presented.” Contacts with Indonesian military officers, including university programmes, were “very significant factors in determining the favourable orientation of the new Indonesian political elite” – the army (5).

So matters continued during 35 years of intensive military aid, training, and communication. As Indonesian troops and their back-ups were burning Dili, and the killings and destruction had reached new heights, the Pentagon announced that a US-Indonesian “training exercise” on rescue and humanitarian actions in disaster situations had ended on 25 August (6), five days before the referendum. The lessons of this cooperation were rapidly put into practice.

A few months earlier, shortly after the massacre of dozens of refugees who had taken shelter in a church in Liquica, Admiral Dennis Blair, the US Pacific Commander, had assured General Wiranto, head of the Indonesian armed forces and defence minister, of US support and assistance, proposing a new US training mission (7).

The degree of cooperation between Washington and Jakarta is impressive. US weapons sales to Indonesia amount to over $1 billion since the 1975 invasion. Military aid during the Clinton years is about $150 million, and in 1997 the Pentagon was still training Kopassus units (see article by Romain Bertrand), in violation of the intent of congressional legislation. In the face of this record, the US government lauded “the value of the years of training given to Indonesia’s future military leaders in the US and the millions of dollars in military aid for Indonesia” (8).

The reasons for the disgraceful record have sometimes been honestly recognised. During the latest phase of atrocities, a senior diplomat in Jakarta described “the dilemma” faced by the great powers: “Indonesia matters and East Timor doesn’t” (9). It was therefore understandable that Washington should keep to ineffectual gestures of disapproval while insisting that internal security in East Timor was “the responsibility of the government of Indonesia, and we don’t want to take that responsibility away from them”. This official stance, reaffirmed a few days before the August referendum, was repeated and maintained in full knowledge of how that “responsibility” had been carried out (10).

The reasoning of the senior diplomat was spelled out more fully by two Asia specialists from the New York Times. The Clinton Administration, they wrote, “has made the calculation that the United States must put its relationship with Indonesia, a mineral-rich nation of more than 200 million people, ahead of its concern over the political fate of East Timor, a tiny impoverished territory of 800,000 people that is seeking independence.” The Washington Post quoted Douglas Paal, president of the Asia Pacific Policy Centre, describing the facts of life: “Timor is a speed bump on the road to dealing with Jakarta, and we’ve got to get over it safely. Indonesia is such a big place and so central to the stability of the region” (11).

In the rhetoric of official Washington, “We don’t have a dog running in the East Timor race”. Accordingly, what happens there is not US business. But after intensive Australian pressure, the calculations shifted. A senior government official concluded: “We have a very big dog running down there called Australia and we have to support it” (12). The survivors of US-backed crimes in a “tiny impoverished territory” are not even a “small dog”.

The guiding principles were articulated in 1978, three years after Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor, by Washington’s ambassador to the UN, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. His words should be committed to memory by anyone with a serious interest in international affairs, human rights, and the rule of law. In his memoirs, Moynihan wrote: “The United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success” (13).

Success was indeed considerable. Moynihan cited reports that within two months some 60,000 people had been killed: “10 percent of the population, almost the proportion of casualties experienced by the Soviet Union during the second world war”. A sign of the success, he added, was that within a year “the subject disappeared from the press.” So it did, as the invaders intensified their assault. Atrocities peaked in 1977-78. Relying on a new flow of advanced military equipment from the Carter Administration – with its emphasis on human rights – the Indonesian military carried out a devastating attack against the hundreds of thousands who had fled to the mountains, driving the survivors to Indonesian control. It was then that highly credible Church sources in East Timor sought to make public the estimates of 200,000 deaths – long denied, but now at last accepted. As the slaughter reached near-genocidal levels, Britain and France joined in, along with other powers, providing diplomatic support and even arms.

This year opened with a moment of hope. Indonesia’s interim president, B J Habibie, had called for a referendum with a choice between incorporation within Indonesia (“autonomy”) or independence. The army moved at once to prevent this outcome by terror and intimidation. In the months leading to the August referendum, 3,000 to 5,000 were killed (14) – a far larger order of magnitude of deaths than that cited by Nato (2,000) in the year leading up to the bombing in Kosovo.

Braving violence and threats, almost the entire population voted, many emerging from hiding to do so. Close to 80% chose independence. Then followed the latest phase of atrocities by the Indonesian army in an effort to reverse the outcome by slaughter and expulsion. Much of the country was reduced to ashes. Within two weeks more than 10,000 people may have been killed, according to Bishop Carlos Filipe Belo, the Nobel Peace laureate (see article by Sylvain Desmille). The bishop was driven from his country under a hail of bullets, his house burned down, and the refugees sheltering there dispatched to an uncertain fate (15).

Even before Habibie’s surprise call for a referendum, the army anticipated threats to its rule, including its control over East Timor’s resources, and undertook careful planning with “the aim, quite simply, … to destroy a nation”. The plans were known to Western intelligence. The army recruited thousands of West Timorese and brought in forces from Java. More ominously, the military command sent units of its dreaded US-trained Kopassus special forces, and, as senior military adviser, General Makarim, a US-trained intelligence specialist with experience in East Timor and “a reputation for callous violence” (16).

Terror and destruction began early in the year. The army forces responsible have been described as “rogue elements” in the West. There is good reason, however, to accept Bishop Belo’s assignment of direct responsibility to General Wiranto (17). It appears that the militias have been managed by elite units of Kopassus, the “crack special forces unit” that had, according to veteran Asia correspondent David Jenkins, “been training regularly with US and Australian forces until their behaviour became too much of an embarrassment for their foreign friends” (18).

These forces adopted the tactics of the US Phoenix programme in the Vietnam war, that killed tens of thousands of peasants and much of the indigenous South Vietnamese leadership, Jenkins writes, as well as “the tactics employed by the Contras” in Nicaragua. The state terrorists were “not simply going after the most radical pro-independence people, but going after the moderates, the people who have influence in their community.”

Well before the referendum, the commander of the Indonesian military in Dili, Colonel Tono Suratman, warned of what was to come: “If the pro-independents do win … all will be destroyed… It will be worse than 23 years ago” (19). An army document of early May, when international agreement on the referendum was reached, ordered that “Massacres should be carried out from village to village after the announcement of the ballot if the pro-independence supporters win.” The independence movement “should be eliminated from its leadership down to its roots” (20). Citing diplomatic, church and militia sources, the Australian press reported “that hundreds of modern assault rifles, grenades and mortars are being stockpiled, ready for use if the autonomy option is rejected at the ballot box” (21).

All of this was understood by Indonesia’s “foreign friends”, who also knew how to bring the terror to an end, but preferred evasive and ambiguous reactions that the Indonesian generals could easily interpret as a “green light” to carry out their work.

The sordid history must be viewed against the background of US-Indonesia relations in the post-war era (22). The rich resources of the archipelago, and its critical strategic location, guaranteed it a central role in US global planning. These factors lie behind US efforts 40 years ago to dismantle Indonesia, perceived as too independent and too democratic – even permitting participation of the poor peasants. These factors account for Western support for the regime of killers and torturers who emerged from the 1965 coup. Their achievements were seen as a vindication of Washington’s wars in Indochina, motivated in large part by concerns that the “virus” of independent nationalism might “infect” Indonesia, to use Kissinger-like rhetoric.

Surely we should by now be willing to cast aside mythology and face the causes and consequences of our actions, and not only in East Timor. In that tortured corner of the world there is still time, though precious little time, to prevent a hideous conclusion to one of the most appalling tragedies of the terrible century that is winding to a horrifying, wrenching close.

(1) Report of the Security Council Mission to Jakarta and Dili, 8 to 12 September 1999.

(2) New York Times, 15 September 1999.

(3) Boston Globe, 15 September 1999.

(4) Benedict Anderson, Statement before the Fourth Committee of the UN General Assembly, 20 October 1980. See also Noam Chomsky, Towards a New Cold War, Pantheon, New York, 1982.

(5) For review and sources, see Noam Chomsky, Year 501, South End, Boston, 1993.

(6) AP on line, 8 September 1999.

(7) The Nation, New York, 27 September 1999.

(8) New York Times, 14 September 1999.

(9) Financial Times, London, 8 September 1999; Christian Science Monitor, Boston, 14 September 1999.

(10) Sydney Morning Herald, 25 August 1999, citing State Department spokesman James Foley. Defence Secretary William Cohen, press briefing, 8 September 1999.

(11) Elizabeth Becker and Philip Shenon, New York Times, 9 September 1999. Steven Mufson, Washington Post, 9 September 1999.

(12) Australian Financial Review, Sydney, 13 September 1999.

(13)Daniel Patrick Moynihan, A Dangerous Place, Little Brown, Boston, 1978.

(14) Washington Post, 5 September 1999.

(15) New York Times, 13 September 1999.

(16) The Observer, London, 13 September 1999.

(17) Shenon, op. cit.

(18) Sydney Morning Herald, 8 July 1999.

(19) Australian Financial Review, 14 August 1999.

(20) The Observer, op. cit.

(21) Sydney Morning Herald, 26 July 1999.

(22) See Noam Chomsky, “Indonesia, master card in Washington’s hand”, Le Monde diplomatique, English Internet edition, June 1998, English print edition, September 1998.

[wyrmrest-poet]

Love Beyond the Grave

Below is a performance offered up a few months ago at an event hosted by Implicit Collective and Tattered Banners in Uldum. Sophos D’Cathra, my Hunter and Mercenary performed this much to the adulation of the adoring crowd. Enjoy!

Sophos offers a curt bow, his blazing green eyes studying the audience attentively before he finally speaks firmly and with purpose.

“I offer a cautionary tale describing the true depths of love and the lengths one is willing to go to satisfy their desires. Decades ago I happened across an aging Gnome in Booty Bay whose greying moustache was as eccentric as his personality. ‘Mortimer J. Cheminstein,’ he exclaimed, animated hands illustrating his emotions and thoughts far more accurately than any word escaping his lips. At the time I had recently been discharged from the military and was keen on finding employment. When the small tinkerer extended the opportunity to act his bodyguard in Stranglethorn, I eagerly accepted.”

Sophos‘ lips curl in to a smirk and he shakes his head wearily, pacing from one side of the stage to the other before finding the audience again and continuing his tale.

“Needless to say, I was not thrilled about stalking through the jungles in mail and leathers, but considering the gold that Mortimer had thrust into my hand as a ‘down payment,’ I endured the blistering heat and resulting sweat. The Gnome had made mention of returning north to his laboratory not far from the ruins of Zul’gurub. I had been tempted to question the sanity of such a journey if for no other reason than the lurking, predatory dangers waiting for us behind every tree or bush. ‘Nonsense Hunter. This is what I’m paying you for after all!” Mortimer retorted and all I could do was resign myself to the even larger reward promised once we had reached our destination.

Sophos held up a clenched fist, unfurling one finger after another until they all outstretched.

“Five thousand gold pieces. An incredible amount to a veteran down on his luck. Surely it was too good to be true, but greed is a powerful motivator and as the Gnome cheerfully ducked under hissing vipers, dodged snapping crocs and leapt over poisonous frogs, I faithfully followed. And killed all of the above. Can you blame me? The mosquitos alone warranted the harshest retaliation. But after a few days of arduous travel, I began to question my employer’s jubilant mood and fatefully asked why he was so enthusiastic to leave civilization.”

Sophos’ brows narrowed, his gaze dipping to the ground below as if lost in thought; a trance of conflicting emotions and beliefs. Inevitably his sight returns to the audience and he speaks sternly.

‘Hunter, I walk with a skip in my step because my wife awaits me and I have not felt her tender embrace in years. The sooner we return, the quicker we will be reunited after all this time,’ Mortimer exclaimed as he adjusted his monocle and smiled brightly. I could not refute such passion and admired from afar the Gnome’s undying devotion to his lover. While my equipment and weaponry began to deteriorate under the jungle’s unforgiving conditions, Mortimer’s finely sewn robe and belt full of potions and quandaries went unsullied. Surely some thaumaturgy or prestidigitation that I had become envious of.

Sophos chuckles and steps to the middle of the stage, fingers extending from either hand to trace the outline of his employer who could not have been an inch over four feet.

“After a week of exhausting travel, we came across a large cave entrance carved out of the eastern Stranglethorn hills. The opening was likened to a maw of a great beast; yawning and drawing you into darkness. And so I tentatively accompanied Mortimer, paranoia manifesting in my heart as it beat so quickly I thought the Gnome might hear it. Worse yet, after we disappeared from view I practically leapt from my boots when flaring red light strobed all around us and it took all my discipline to resist shouting in despair. Alarm-O-Bots were not to be trifled with; although in this case Mortimer revealed it was how he liked to be greeted when he returned from adventures.”

Sophos sighs and contorts his face wryly, waving his hand in refusal to the audience as the story goes on.

"That was my response when he asked if I was alright. ‘Of course. Just a bit startled. You should have told me what to expect,’ I replied, being led down a narrow corridor that eventually opened up into an expansive room of natural formation. Within lay a cacophony of gadgets, tools and broken down mechs. Never before I had seen such a sight and my eyes could not help but survey the vast trove of knowledge and genus hidden away in this tiny hole of Azeroth. I grew confounded though when I could not spy Mortimer’s wife. Try as I might, it was only the two of us in that gloomy chamber and that revelation made my hands tense and eyes squint.”

Sophos reached back and unhooked his bow, turning its impressive frame before the audience and pulling errantly on the string.

“I had been tempted to draw it when Mortimer whirled about, hands raised like he was about to flay the skin from my bones with some terrible invocation. Instead the Gnome laughed as if he knew that I was confused and motioned for me to follow him to a large, slab of a table. When I joined him, my eyes widened and I became speechless. On that smooth, metal surface was his wife; a horrible amalgamation of sinew, bone, steel and mechanical apparatuses. She had long since passed from this world and instead represented something much worse: a golem of crude and harrowing design.”

Sophos’ head tilted, a forlorn look cast upon his face as the story was drawing to a close; the climax apparently quite fresh in his mind.

‘This is Maudlin. The love of my life since adolescence. She was killed by a Necromancer and I…could not accept it. There was a better way than laying her to rest,’ Mortimer explained manically, continuing on for some time and describing his singular drive to master Necromancy. Soon after, his tinkering genius coalesced with arcane mastery and the desire to revive Maudlin as a golem was birthed. I was appalled and shaken to the core that her remains would be desecrated; her soul tormented as it lay trapped in the ruination of her form. That Mortimer had spent decades of his own life attempting to recreate her in some twisted shadow of her former self was irreconcilable.”

Sophos would sheath his bow and withdrew a single, serrated arrow from his quiver; holding it firmly in his grasp and pressing the tip against a willing finger until a few sanguine drops of red splattered below.

“That is why he had brought me to his laboratory in Stranglethorn. Apparently the blood of Sin’dorei was strong enough to interact with a magical formula he had crafted and that it would finally bring consciousness to Maudlin’s inert body. In the end, it was a matter of who could act quicker. As you can all guess, I walked out of that cave with fewer arrows than I had entered. But life was worth that expenditure.  Mortimer had thought it worth much more. Enough to kill in cold blood so that he could have the warmth of mine. Before I left I stepped over Mortimer’s corpse; its lifeless form stricken with grief in his last moments. I desperately sought to contrast that horrific visage with whatever beauty Maudlin still had and I was not left wanting.”

Sophos drops the arrow to the ground unceremoniously; staring intently at it before finally looking at the audience with resolute determination.

“Portrayed as a haphazard abomination, I could see the faintest hint of life in Maudlin’s darkened eyes. There was no movement to console me, rather a blank and helpless suit of flesh that had trapped a soul far more deserving of sweet release than her late husband. It was when I finally ended what little life that sustained her that I realized her splendour. Perhaps now husband and wife could finally be together in peace even as they were denied such happiness in life. I left that laboratory with no gold, nor any valuables to sell. What I did escape with was a lesson learned of the most powerful emotion that any being can express: love. Do not forsake it, nor cling to it so tightly it blinds you to reason. Measure it evenly and love may then bring you happiness.

#wyrmrest accord #wyrmrest rp #wyrmrest roleplay #world of warcraft #gnome #blood elf #sophos

[theonyxpath]

Greetings, fellow Cainites!

The title of this blog is the kind of question to make fellow writer and developer Neall Raemonn Price disturbingly euphoric. He has an odd fetish for those three-eyed soul-sucking demonspawn learned vampires know as “Salubri.”

Well, V20 Dark Ages Companion is coming soon, so I thought I’d post to the blog about it.

Illustration by Pat McEvoy for V20 Dark Ages Companion

As covered in previous posts, V20 Dark Ages Companion profiles several domains around the known world, including a couple largely unaffected by the War of Princes, rise of the Inquisition, or fall of the Salubri. In Mangaluru, on the west coast of the country we now call India, the War of Princes’ tendrils fall short of plunging a domain into war. The Long Night persists, and the Salubri rule in concert with the Danava and Ravnos, each of them preying on different castes of kine.

V20 Dark Ages Companion allows us as writers, and you as Storytellers and players, to explore new realms and play chronicles of Vampire: The Dark Ages in different styles to the typical feudal, mediaeval setup of Europe. While we represent domains including Bath (in the British Isles), Bjarkarey (in Scandinavia), and Rome (location fairly obvious), we also go farther afield with the domains of Constantinople, and Mogadishu (in Somalia). And then we have Mangaluru, which is the greatest distance travelled in a Dark Ages book to date. The distance between Mangaluru and the European continent made us ask questions, such as “how would the hierarchy of such a domain be set up?” “how would they treat the kine differently?” “what would be their perspective of the vampire arrivals from their west?” and importantly, “how have recent insurrections and wars affected this relatively remote domain?”

What if the Salubri never fell? We ask this question in the Apocrypha of V20 Dark Ages. We demonstrate a scenario where this is indeed the case with Mangaluru. I explore a similar theme with a sidebar in V20 Dark Ages Tome of Secrets, regarding the Tzimisce. What if the Tzimisce Koldün put ancestral rivalries and blood-borne jealousies aside and banded together against the nascent Tremere? Would we see a different Vienna come the Final Nights? Would we see a different Sabbat and Camarilla?

Dark Ages is a ripe setting for playing out these “What If?” scenarios. Allow your players to set off a series of events not in keeping with the established canon, and alter your own game to fit. Upcoming V20 books such as the Dark Ages Companion and Beckett’s Jyhad Diary are perfect for making subtle or major tweaks to the rich lore of Vampire: The Masquerade. Doing so in the course of a chronicle empowers the players, and makes them feel like they have a genuine impact on the setting.

As per demand from my last blog on V20 Dark Ages Companion, I include below an extract from the Domain of Mangaluru chapter (by Neall Raemonn Price), and extracts from the Apocrypha of Clan Malkavian (by Susann Hessen) and the rituals of Clan Tremere (by Malcolm Sheppard):

—

A Land of Legend

As told by Malsang of the Nagaraja

The people’s flesh is hot. The spices, you see? Can you not taste the pepper amidst the copper, so like sun-warmed blood even on the most rain-soaked evening? Ahh, those are the only delights left to me. The night is still beautiful, but how I wish I could see the green of the trees once more, how the rain must cause the light of the sun to shatter into a thousand colors. What some call our curse abates in this place, for the land’s blessings are manifold. The sage Parshurama himself reclaimed this land from the sea and built the temple where the Danava now dwell. The sea has blessed us further. Spice has been the blood of Mangaluru, literally and metaphorically. It pools in their livelihood and in their meat. The people pole down the rivers Gurupuru and Netravati, walk through the rolling hills to come here and ply their wares. When the Empire of Rome was late a Republic, that elder of theirs, Pliny, spoke of fearing our pirates. Even then proud Roma refused to face our sailors on equal seas. Lasombra, Ventrue, and Malkavian from Rome, Brujah from Carthage, each sent their childer to our shores, foreign leather planting into the sands over red clay. The Greeks recognized us as one of the greatest fonts of pepper in the entire world, and what their swords could not take their coins bought instead. The Byzars of New Rome come here now, Greek as ever, as do Persians, Muslims, Jews, and Christians.

The triumvirs have been here as long as Mangaluru, and Mangaluru has always been here. How not? The Salubri and the Danava have been close since Saulot received his revelations within the city of Golconda. They and the Ravnos are all enemies of the hated asuratizzaya to the east, driving deep the alliance between the three lines of the Blood. Danava and Salubri have always ruled this land, and the jati of the Ravnos have been their strong sword arms. They rule with sorcery and legend, demanding blood as payment and giving health as the best of kings. The Children of Danu are not like the Ventrue, lurking under the grand castle of the Premysls, or the Toreador in their fine courts. They garb themselves as holy men, calling themselves Brahmins when they deem to do so at all, and slumber amidst the temple of Mangaladevi, greatest of the Kerala temples. The Kshatriya Unicorns rise in the palaces of kings, existing among the people, hiding in plain sight but watching over them in secret, waiting, protecting.

The Seat of Kings

The Salubri have named themselves rulers since Kulashekara Alupendra, king of the Alupas, made the city his capital. The Alupas were always second to the Chalukyas of Badami, the Rashrakutas, the Calukyas of Kalyani, and the Hoysalas — whichever dynasty held the imperial throne, the Alupas were quick to bend the knee, and so remained favored signatories. The Shepherds attached themselves to Alupendra’s court, ensuring their pawns and angers-on remained strong and in good health. They made sure the king’s political enemies and those traders who faltered in their profits made their way to Mangaladevi, to pray for holy deliverance. They found it: sacrificed and consumed to fuel the Sadhana of the deva Danava. Those blood sorcerers, in turn, protected the prophets from all enemies. Both hold the Ravnos, commoners in status if not in caste, under their taloned thumbs, much to their chagrin. We came much later, and only the insistence of the Salubri that the city was welcome to all was our salvation. Common vampires coming to Mangaluru must bring a mortal with them as tribute, one whom they will not miss. If they fail in this, they must procure one from outside the city, for many of the lesser mortal traders who come to Mangaluru fall under scrutiny as soon as they step off their ships. The Salubri judge their impact on the city, the Danava scry their karma, and if the trader suffers under the weight of his sins, Ravnos take him in the night. The majority of these sacrifices go to the Danava, the smallest remainder to we, and by our combined patronage Mangaluru remains safe by blood sorcery. We make more of it than the Danava, clearly — not blood, nor meat, nor soul is wasted by we — but their magics are empowered by their gods, so clearly the sacrifices seem worthwhile. They are the only mortals who perish at the fangs of vampires within the city, though — an unholy murder, performed without sanction, will only result in the swiftest and most terrible vengeance. The travelers and traders taken are relatively few in number, while the residential people of the city and dedicated herds keep safe Mangaluru’s Cainites.

Peace and prosperity guide the night’s activities. Divinatory magics allow the Salubri to guide foreign vampires to auspicious victims, enriching the capability of the city to support a Cainite population. Even a Trembling One visiting the city (and there are many) can expect an ironic smile and warm welcome from a Salubri. And why not smile, for are they not victorious? What the Hellenic Cainites deemed Elysium rules over the city entire. The combined power of Sadhana and Valeren find any who seek to break the peace before the thought even occurs to them. The Shepherds are open about their challenge, telling every Tremere neonate who comes to take a message back to their chantries: Mangaluru is a refuge, one the Tremere may assault if they dare. The Children of Saulot are there, and they are waiting.

—

The Coronati

For each deadly sin, there is a Malkavian who represents it. The very sin of sloth is called dejection in some Orthodox writings, and one who suffers from depression will certainly be judged slothful rather than ill. When a neonate emerges and finds his new mind inextricably tied to one of these sins, he will regard himself as wicked or cursed. While other vampires will see in him the mark of Malkav, they too will consider him stained with wickedness, not illness. Kine are less merciful yet — knowing nothing of the curses of Caine, they will see sin without reason.

This state is a mixed blessing. Most Cassandras of any notable station come from these ranks — they are the ones who most readily accept the premises of their surroundings, and they are the ones who seem most rational. Some believe such Seers only descend from those Malkavians among the Coronati — Malkav’s childer who sucked vitae from the earth surrounding where Malkav was once struck down by Set — in order to preserve him and spread his madness. But these Coronati childer are the sinful, and theirs is scorn to reap. Among Cainites, the Coronati childer are often compared with the Nosferatu. Their minds are not sick, but twisted and warped into unholy patterns. Their souls carry the ugliness inside that the Nosferatu carry openly. Sin and pain stain their souls, whether they suffer uncontrollable bouts of rage or megalomania, or obsessively arrange their possessions just so. They manipulate the madness in others, spreading insanity like a plague.

Even those whose predilections do not run towards true sin will face the same stigma among vampires — if a Childe of Malkav does not display the touch of true madness, then her peers consider her one of the sinful.

—

Wield the Spear of Damnation (Level Three Ritual)

This ritual recalls the legend of Caine itself, dedicating a weapon to satisfy a vampire’s nature just as the Dark Father cursed himself, when he raised a sharp stone against his brother. The Tremere writes Genesis 4:10 (“And he said, ‘What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.’”) upon an edged weapon in purported angelic script, during a meditative trance. This requires one hour. From that moment forward, half the lethal damage inflicted by the weapon (rounded up) converts to blood points, filling the wielder’s pool. This persists until the weapon has harvested the caster’s Thaumaturgy + ritual successes in blood points. Blood so harvested doesn’t inflict extra damage (it comes straight from blood shed by the wound), but is of the target’s type. Lupine blood remains doubly potent, and other blood types have their signature effects.

#Onyx Path Publishing #White Wolf Publishing #Vampire: The Masquerade #Vampire The Masquerade #Classic World of Darkness #Vampire: The Dark Ages #Vampire The Dark Ages #Dark Ages: Vampire #Dark Ages Vampire

[courtneytincher]

Trump Shares Fringe Theory About Epstein and Clintons

BERKELEY HEIGHTS, N.J. -- President Donald Trump used Twitter on Saturday to promote unfounded conspiracy theories about how Jeffrey Epstein, the financier accused of sex trafficking, died in a federal jail, even as the administration faced questions about why Epstein had not been more closely monitored.For years Trump has brashly -- and baselessly -- promoted suspicion as fact and peddled secret plots by powerful interests as a way to broadcast his own version of reality. Those include the lie that former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States and that millions of votes were illegally cast for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.Hours after Epstein was found to have hanged himself in his Manhattan jail cell, Trump retweeted a post from comedian Terrence Williams linking the Clintons to the death. Epstein "had information on Bill Clinton & now he's dead," wrote Williams, a Trump supporter. In an accompanying two-minute video, Williams noted that "for some odd reason, people that have information on the Clintons end up dead."There is no evidence to substantiate the claim, which derives from groundless speculation on the far right, dating to Bill Clinton's early days as president, that multiple deaths can be traced to the Clintons and explained by their supposed efforts to cover up wrongdoing.Responding to Trump's retweets, a spokesman for Bill Clinton mockingly wrote, "Ridiculous, and of course not true -- and Donald Trump knows it." The spokesman, Angel Ureña, added, "Has he triggered the 25th Amendment yet?" The 25th Amendment contains a provision allowing for the removal of a president if he is unable to perform his duties, potentially in the event of mental instability.Posting from his luxury golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump also shared a tweet, from an unverified account, which claimed that recently unsealed documents involving accusations of Epstein's abuse had revealed that Clinton "took private trips to Jeffrey Epstein's 'pedophilia island.'"A spokesman for Clinton has denied that Clinton traveled to Epstein's private island in the Virgin Islands. The documents unsealed Friday also include an acknowledgment from one of Epstein's accusers, Virginia Giuffre, that an earlier claim she made about Clinton visiting Epstein in the Caribbean was untrue.Epstein's death, 12 days after being taken off suicide watch, prompted questions about the safeguards jail officials took to keep him alive and ensure he answered for yearslong allegations of sexual abuse. The Justice Department faced criticism, drawing outrage from accusers seeking justice and from legal experts questioning why officials deemed Epstein was no longer at risk of taking his own life.Attorney General William Barr said on Saturday that the Justice Department's independent watchdog would conduct an inquiry into the circumstances of Epstein's death. The FBI also said it would investigate.The pair of retweets came on a day when Trump expressed outrage on Twitter over what he called "dishonest" and "inaccurate" coverage of his presidency by the news media, including The New York Times. Trump insisted that reports that several survivors of the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, last weekend had refused to see him when he visited their hospital Wednesday were false, but he provided no evidence.Like Trump, Bill Clinton had been friendly with Epstein but broke ties with him many years ago. In a July statement, Ureña, Clinton's spokesman, said that the former president had taken several trips with Epstein on his private plane in 2002 and 2003 but that the men had not spoken in more than a decade. Clinton "knows nothing about the terrible crimes" of which Epstein was accused, the statement said.Even before Trump weighed in on the subject, Sen. Marco Rubio, R Fla., said on Twitter that while scrutiny of Epstein's death was warranted, "the immediate rush to spread conspiracy theories about someone on the 'other side' of partisan divide having him killed illustrates why our society is so vulnerable to foreign disinformation & influence efforts."Earlier Saturday, one of the president's senior appointees at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Lynne Patton, posted a headline about Epstein's death on Instagram, perpetuating a debunked right-wing narrative. Including the comment, "Hillary'd!!" she also referred to Vincent Foster, the Clinton White House counsel who died by suicide in 1994 -- a crucial episode in the unfounded theory tying the Clintons to allegedly suspicious deaths.Adding to the extraordinary nature of Trump's retweets was the fact that Clinton is a former president. U.S. presidents have traditionally treated their predecessors and successors with pronounced respect, even when they are from different parties or ran bitter campaigns against one another. But after defeating Hillary Clinton in a 2016 campaign during which he suggested he might imprison her, Trump has repeatedly ridiculed and taunted both Clintons.Tweeting on another subject earlier in the day, Trump seemed to criticize joint U.S. military exercises with South Korea that have enraged North Korea, calling them "ridiculous and expensive." The president said that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had offered him "a small apology" for that country's recent short-range missile tests, which violate United Nations resolutions but which Trump has brushed off. "I look forward to seeing Kim Jong Un in the not too distant future!" he wrote.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

BERKELEY HEIGHTS, N.J. -- President Donald Trump used Twitter on Saturday to promote unfounded conspiracy theories about how Jeffrey Epstein, the financier accused of sex trafficking, died in a federal jail, even as the administration faced questions about why Epstein had not been more closely monitored.For years Trump has brashly -- and baselessly -- promoted suspicion as fact and peddled secret plots by powerful interests as a way to broadcast his own version of reality. Those include the lie that former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States and that millions of votes were illegally cast for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.Hours after Epstein was found to have hanged himself in his Manhattan jail cell, Trump retweeted a post from comedian Terrence Williams linking the Clintons to the death. Epstein "had information on Bill Clinton & now he's dead," wrote Williams, a Trump supporter. In an accompanying two-minute video, Williams noted that "for some odd reason, people that have information on the Clintons end up dead."There is no evidence to substantiate the claim, which derives from groundless speculation on the far right, dating to Bill Clinton's early days as president, that multiple deaths can be traced to the Clintons and explained by their supposed efforts to cover up wrongdoing.Responding to Trump's retweets, a spokesman for Bill Clinton mockingly wrote, "Ridiculous, and of course not true -- and Donald Trump knows it." The spokesman, Angel Ureña, added, "Has he triggered the 25th Amendment yet?" The 25th Amendment contains a provision allowing for the removal of a president if he is unable to perform his duties, potentially in the event of mental instability.Posting from his luxury golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump also shared a tweet, from an unverified account, which claimed that recently unsealed documents involving accusations of Epstein's abuse had revealed that Clinton "took private trips to Jeffrey Epstein's 'pedophilia island.'"A spokesman for Clinton has denied that Clinton traveled to Epstein's private island in the Virgin Islands. The documents unsealed Friday also include an acknowledgment from one of Epstein's accusers, Virginia Giuffre, that an earlier claim she made about Clinton visiting Epstein in the Caribbean was untrue.Epstein's death, 12 days after being taken off suicide watch, prompted questions about the safeguards jail officials took to keep him alive and ensure he answered for yearslong allegations of sexual abuse. The Justice Department faced criticism, drawing outrage from accusers seeking justice and from legal experts questioning why officials deemed Epstein was no longer at risk of taking his own life.Attorney General William Barr said on Saturday that the Justice Department's independent watchdog would conduct an inquiry into the circumstances of Epstein's death. The FBI also said it would investigate.The pair of retweets came on a day when Trump expressed outrage on Twitter over what he called "dishonest" and "inaccurate" coverage of his presidency by the news media, including The New York Times. Trump insisted that reports that several survivors of the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, last weekend had refused to see him when he visited their hospital Wednesday were false, but he provided no evidence.Like Trump, Bill Clinton had been friendly with Epstein but broke ties with him many years ago. In a July statement, Ureña, Clinton's spokesman, said that the former president had taken several trips with Epstein on his private plane in 2002 and 2003 but that the men had not spoken in more than a decade. Clinton "knows nothing about the terrible crimes" of which Epstein was accused, the statement said.Even before Trump weighed in on the subject, Sen. Marco Rubio, R Fla., said on Twitter that while scrutiny of Epstein's death was warranted, "the immediate rush to spread conspiracy theories about someone on the 'other side' of partisan divide having him killed illustrates why our society is so vulnerable to foreign disinformation & influence efforts."Earlier Saturday, one of the president's senior appointees at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Lynne Patton, posted a headline about Epstein's death on Instagram, perpetuating a debunked right-wing narrative. Including the comment, "Hillary'd!!" she also referred to Vincent Foster, the Clinton White House counsel who died by suicide in 1994 -- a crucial episode in the unfounded theory tying the Clintons to allegedly suspicious deaths.Adding to the extraordinary nature of Trump's retweets was the fact that Clinton is a former president. U.S. presidents have traditionally treated their predecessors and successors with pronounced respect, even when they are from different parties or ran bitter campaigns against one another. But after defeating Hillary Clinton in a 2016 campaign during which he suggested he might imprison her, Trump has repeatedly ridiculed and taunted both Clintons.Tweeting on another subject earlier in the day, Trump seemed to criticize joint U.S. military exercises with South Korea that have enraged North Korea, calling them "ridiculous and expensive." The president said that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had offered him "a small apology" for that country's recent short-range missile tests, which violate United Nations resolutions but which Trump has brushed off. "I look forward to seeing Kim Jong Un in the not too distant future!" he wrote.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

August 13, 2019 at 03:57PM via IFTTT

#Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

[shontaviajesq]

What to do when an American president (or anyone else) is vindictive, racist, and out to get you - Lessons from Ona Judge

When I was in middle school, I went on a field trip from my small town in South Carolina to Washington D.C. I was part of something called Kennedy on Stage, which was kind of like “Glee” for middle school students. I wasn’t particularly musically or artistically inclined, but I knew KoS had great field/performance trips and I wanted desperately to visit anywhere outside of my small town, so there I was.

I remember two things distinctly from the D.C. trip. #1 was the fact that it was SO STRANGE for me to see my teachers outside of school. Who knew that middle school teachers had lives outside the classroom? Even though I had a number of teachers in my family (including my own mother), it was strange to see my teachers in shorts and sneakers, bopping to whatever was playing on their Walkmans (Google it, Generation Z-ers).

#2 was our opportunity to tour Mount Vernon, the plantation of George and Martha Washington. This was the earliest of the 90s, and what I most recall from the tour was not hearing much at all about the enslaved people who lived and toiled there. There was some brief mention of them, mostly of the happy slave variety, and I was pissed. At that age, my parents had taught me a lot and I knew the dangerous nature of this kind of revisionist narrative, as terribly illustrated by this TRAGEDY of a children’s book:

I had a right to be pissed. One of the stories missing from that tour was that of Ona “Oney” Judge, who I learned about much later in life. Ona’s life and story is remarkable, and there’s a lot we can learn from her even today. There are [at minimum] three things I think we can learn from Ona, who was targeted and hunted by America’s first president, who was vindictive, racist, and out to get her.

#1. Run away from, and stay away from, the President’s (or other aggressor’s) house.

Ona had been enslaved by George and Martha Washington at Mount Vernon from the age of ten years old (Washington himself had, quite literally, been a slave owner for most of his life—he received his first ten slaves at eleven years old). Ona’s mother was an enslaved woman owned by Martha Washington’s first husband. When he died, Martha received a lifetime interest in a group of enslaved people, including Ona. Essentially, these people had to work for Martha, but then once Martha died any ownership interest would go back to her first husband’s family (this all may sound familiar to those of us who suffered through 1L property law). Le sigh.

Ona became a skilled seamstress and worked mostly for Martha. When George became America’s first president in 1789, he took seven enslaved people with him to the nation’s capital (then New York City). Ona was one of those seven. When the capital moved to Philadelphia in 1790, Ona was one of nine enslaved people who was taken there too.

Interestingly, Pennsylvania had a law called “An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery,” which authorized a-slow-but-deliberate end to slavery in 1780 in Pennsylvania. It also prohibited people from importing slaves into Pennsylvania, while providing some flexibility to slave owners who came to visit the state. While the law was somewhat complicated, it basically allowed slaveholders visiting Pennsylvania to keep slaves in the state for up to 6 months. A term longer than this meant that slaveholders had to free their slaves.

George Washington, who had moved to Pennsylvania to serve as president, exploited a loophole in the law. He would rotate his slaves out before the 6 month deadline, thus keeping them in bondage so that they didn’t have to be freed under the Pennsylvania law.

Ona was one of the people rotated in and out of Pennsylvania this way by George Washington. She hated being enslaved, particularly after having seen free blacks during her rotations in Pennsylvania. She decided to escape after being told that she was going to be given to the Washington’s granddaughter as a wedding gift. The next time she was scheduled to go back to Virginia, she secretly boarded a ship to New Hampshire and successfully escaped. This was in 1796. She had made friends with free blacks in Pennsylvania and they helped her get out undetected (at least for a long enough period of time to make it out).

Ona began to make a new, life in New Hampshire—getting married, having children, and finding work where she could. While it was difficult, and she experienced significant familial and other hardships, she was quoted later as saying that her freedom had been worth it all. Leaving the president’s home was a good move for her.

On to the next lesson…

#2. Do not negotiate with someone who does not or cannot honor an agreement.

George was furious upon learning that Ona had escaped, and he used the full force of the federal government to pursue her. Here’s the ad he placed in the newspaper to solicit others to catch her and return her to him:

George solicited the help of the most powerful people in government to hunt down Ona, including the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Oliver Wolcott Jr. In his letter to Oliver, George notes “the ingratitude of the girl, who was brought up & treated more like a child than a servant (& Mrs Washington's desire to recover her) ought not to escape with impu[nity] if it can be avoided.”

Oliver enlisted the help of other government officials in New Hampshire to capture Ona, but she thwarted all attempts. Joseph Whipple, Portsmouth, New Hampshire’s collector of customs, was one of those local officials. Joseph tricked Ona into coming to his office and tried to negotiate with her. He suggested that she return in exchange for freedom at some point in the future, and she played along once she realized the ploy (seemingly so that she could get out of there unscathed). Ona told Joseph she’d return if George and Martha freed her upon their deaths. When Joseph shared that with George, he was incensed. He wrote to Joseph:

I regret that the attempt you made to restore the girl (Oney Judge as she called herself while with us, and who, without the least provocation absconded from her Mistress) should have been attended with so little success. To enter into such a compromise, as she has suggested to you, is totally inadmissible, for reasons that must strike at first view: for however well disposed I might be to a gradual abolition, or even to an entire emancipation of that description of People (if the latter was in itself practicable at this Moment) it would neither be politic or just, to reward unfaithfulness with a premature preference; and thereby discontent, beforehand, the minds of all her fellow Servants; who by their steady adherence, are far more deserving than herself, of favor.

His letter also makes veiled threats to Ona’s family and friends, who are still enslaved by the Washingtons. He also references the fact that he knows she may be pregnant, alluding to the potential peril her children could be in by her actions.

Even after George left the presidency, he continued to send people to try to capture Ona. In one particularly harrowing event, George‘s nephew, Burwell Bassett Jr., came to New Hampshire to kidnap Ona and her recently-born infant child. Burwell went to Ona’s home, knocked on her door, and told her he was there to take her back to the Washingtons. Ona refused to go and instead escaped and hid in a small town several miles away. This kind of thing was part of Ona’s life as long as George was alive.

Ona did not even find reprieve once George Washington died. While George and Martha both freed many of their slaves either by will or manumission, Ona was not one of those because of her status as a dower slave.

This lesson from Ona is an important one. She did not attempt to negotiate with George to her peril. Had she actually returned to the Washingtons, she never would have been freed because of her status as a dower slave, no matter what the Washingtons did or did not do. Her first husband’s family held a property interest in both her and her children. Ona knew this and was not intimidated into second-guessing herself.

On to the final lesson:

#3 Speak out and share your truth.

Ona valued her freedom more than nearly anything in her life. She actually did not go quietly into the night—she gave several interviews to anti-slavery newspapers in the 1840s. In fact, more is known about her than any other enslaved person from Mount Vernon because of these interviews. She was unapologetic about escaping—when asked if she ever regretted it or felt sorry for leaving the Washingtons, she replied "No, I am free, and have, I trust been made a child of God by the means.”

Here’s an excerpt from one of the articles, though you can read the full text of both at this link:

Ona’s interviews marked her place in history and allowed others of the day to hear about and frame opposition to slavery. Her story is now the most robust of nearly all of the other people enslaved at Mount Vernon. What is also remarkable is that roughly 90% of the fugitive slave narratives exist are from men, which makes Ona’s story even more important.

Experiences like Ona’s have led Mount Vernon to more fully share the experiences of those enslaved there. Remaining silent was not an option for her, and American history is better for it.

Ona Judge left us with not only an important recounting of the American slavery, but also with lessons for how to survive in a world driven by hate, greed and grudges. I, for one, am taking those notes. Shoot me a comment if you have other lessons to share from Ona and her experiences.

If you’d like to hear a fuller accounting of Ona Judge and her life, check out Uncivil’s episode on her life, titled “The Fugitive.” It is brilliant.

#Page 2

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[republicstandard]

Spineless Anglicans Appease the Progressive Reich. Cowards!

Amazing Appeasement, how sweet the sound, that saved an evangelical wretch like me!

Let me say this without an iota of irony. The Church of England’s evangelical bishops and clergy are decent, gracious and godly. They are refined and respectable—gentle, genteel, and gentlemen. They are steeped in the English tradition of courtesy and fair play. “It’s not cricket,” they’ll tell you if you put a foot wrong. They can spot a split infinitive a mile away.

Most have been to public school and Oxbridge; those of less noble upbringing managed to make it to the London School of Economics. One of my former parishioners, who attended Emmanuel Church, Wimbledon, would joke about how no one there ever enquired which university you went to, but what college you were at. “They presumed we all went to Oxbridge; I never quite felt at home because I went to Uxbridge,” he would say with a grimace and a chuckle.

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These honorable men (they are all biological men) also have a zeal for biblical doctrine and liturgy unadulterated by Popery. They’d suffer a fit of asthmatic wheezing if they inhaled a whiff of incense; candles on the altar would prompt an iconoclastic purge, and a priest wearing a chasuble would be seen as embracing the Whore of Babylon. Some of these courageous men refused to don even a stole at their ordination.

Not surprisingly, conservative laypeople in the CofE have looked to these leaders to remain as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar and as brave as the English reformers who chose to be barbecued rather than bought for a price. Recent events, however, have left us a tad disappointed.

The juggernaut of Archbishop Welby’s progressive Panzers has stampeded like rogue elephants into the heart of the evangelical Sudetenland. How have these our evangelical bravehearts responded? Surely they haven’t been frozen into ice sculptures by the vulturine glint from Sarah Mullally, Bishop of London, as in Tennyson’s Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner?

Bishop Mullally holds him with her glittering eye—

The conservative evangelicals stood still,

And listened like a three years’ child:

Bishop Mullally hath her will (adapted).

I had waited with great expectations for these gospel champions to hunt down heresy with horses and hounds and blaring horn in a full-blooded foxhunt (ignore Oscar Wilde who called it “the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable”).

Surely they would rise in pulpit and media and with full-throated Churchillian fortissimo goad their troops: “we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight in the pulpits, we shall fight in the parish church and in the cathedrals.” No? Perhaps not like Churchill, who was vain as a peacock, volcanic with his insults and an indefatigable consumer of tobacco and alcohol—All Souls Langham Place would give him the bum’s rush.

So who might be a more fitting exemplar of our conservative evangelical leaders? How about Churchill’s predecessor Neville Chamberlain, who was hailed as semi-divine? His Munich deal with Hitler led journalist Godfrey Winn to exclaim:

“Praise be to God and to Mr. Chamberlain. I find no sacrilege, no bathos, in coupling those two names.”

Opening and closing to the strains of the song “A fine old English Gentleman” Harry Roy and his Orchestra recorded this song in praise of Neville in 1939.

God bless you, Mr. Chamberlain

We’re all mighty proud of you,

You look so swell holding your umbrella,

All the world loves a wonderful fella.

Historian John Charmley, Chamberlain’s greatest defender, presents him as most people in the 1930s saw him—a “far-sighted” and decent man doing his best for his people, while Churchill is a war-mongering opportunist with terrible judgment.

“My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time … Go home and get a nice quiet sleep,” Chamberlain says, waving his umbrella, on his return from his Munich meeting with the Führer. Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang, chimes in: “We sincerely hope that this measure of appeasement may lead to others in its train.”

Historian Telford Taylor defines appeasement as “a conciliatory, yielding approach” to conflict resolution … reflecting a “foolish faith in the pacifying effect of concessions to a foe bent on aggression, or a gullible reliance on promises from a source already established as untrustworthy”. Churchill puts it more pithily:

“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”

Evangelicals who until very recently were troubled by Justin Welby’s mantra of “good disagreement” suddenly find themselves making “good appeasement”, treating their sworn enemies with the same degree of distrust Bertie Wooster would have for Steggles the bookmaker. Are these examples of appeasement?

The President of the Church of England Evangelical Council Bishop Julian Henderson appeases the transgender lobby by overseeing and blessing the baptism-based liturgy for transgender initiation.

Bishop Rod Thomas, the only evangelical bishop who rejects women’s ordination, tacitly endorses a woman bishop by his presence at Vivienne Faull, Bishop of Bristol’s enthronement (and trumpets it on his website).

William Taylor, Rector of St Helen’s Bishopsgate, who refused to cede authority to Bishop Mullally until she had affirmed an orthodox position on sexuality, steps forward to rake in armfuls of dosh and offers his church as a ‘national resource church’ (along with a merry band of evangelicals from All Souls Langham Place, et al).

I asked Bishop Rod for clarification. He says he attended Faull’s enthronement because he’s an assistant bishop in the diocese. He writes: “I am intending to clarify with Bishop Viv what her standpoint is on same-sex relationships.” Hasn’t Rod heard of Google?

“The blessing of a gay relationship is not theologically a problem for me personally, but I’m under the discipline of the Church, and I keep the rules,” says Faull. In an interview, she reveals that though she follows the rules banning official wedding-like services for gay couples, she has previously “found ways” of celebrating gay and lesbian couples’ civil partnerships. What more does Rod need to know?

You see the problem? The Achilles Heel of the entire evangelical leadership is their “foolish faith in the pacifying effect of concessions”, a “gullible reliance on promises” and their Chamberlain-like naïveté in the face of totalitarian progressive forces “already established as untrustworthy”. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator said:

“Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.”

Evangelicals are responding to the crossing of the Maginot Line by the baptism-based transgender liturgy. The godly Lee Gatiss conducts a skillful autopsy of this liturgical cadaver and gravely states that “we continue to have extremely serious concerns”. He regrets that people will “find themselves more estranged from the Church of England”. So, Lee, what do we do now? Because this middle-class English circumlocution leaves us neither here nor there! Like Lee, evangelicals issue statements; so far not a single evangelical leader has issued a call for action.

How do they think the progressives in power will respond to evangelical huffing and puffing? In India, when an elephant walks the streets, dozens of stray dogs begin to bark and howl. But the elephant knows one thing. The infernal racket will only last a few minutes. The pachyderm doesn’t pay the slightest attention to the diminutive canines. He walks on unruffled.

Anglican social media sites are abuzz with the usual mix of debate, whining, and fake bravado. But none of those shielded by their computer screens are willing to go public. Some parishes stopped funding the diocese a long time ago, few say they are making exit plans, but there is no notice of D-Day yet. Do they think the powers-that-be will take the slightest note and change their course of action? No! Nein! Nada!

Why? Because conservative evangelical Chamberlains are plentiful, but there isn’t a single Churchill calling for “blood, toil, tears and sweat” and offering “hunger, thirst, forced marches, battle, and death” and loss of stipends, buildings, pensions and privilege in return.

I am not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet, but I’m going to hazard a prediction. Not a single conservative evangelical cleric or parish will begin its Exodus from the CofE in days or months or even years to come. The progressives will continue their rampage through the Church of England destroying everything holy, true, righteous, orthodox and biblical. This is what cultural Marxists do—they destroy what others have built.

Conservatives, on the other hand, conserve; they also build and create. But because conservatives are too cowardly to oppose the new Anglican realpolitik, they will appease and ultimately acquiesce. I so desperately want my prediction to be proven wrong, so Lord hear my prayer!

We already have a striking illustration of this capitulation. Last year when the Scottish Episcopal Church (SEC) amended its canon law to allow same-sex weddings, a smaller congregation left but St Paul’s and St George’s one of its largest and wealthiest evangelical congregations remained even though the denomination had crossed the “red line”.

Its 2018 financial statement reveals that the congregational giving increased by 4% to £1,020,170. Ps and Gs Church gives £78,197 to the Edinburgh Diocese and the SEC. “We will continue to encourage the Diocese (together with the leaders of other churches) to establish mixed-mode training for ordained ministers. We want to train and equip younger ordinands, mission-minded leaders and worship leaders,” it proudly announces.

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Bruce Thornton, in his book The Wages of Appeasement, offers three reasons why we appease powerful and tyrannical forces: fear, self-interest and ideals/ideas. The first two are self-explanatory in the case of Anglican evangelicals. The third is a delusional ideal that remaining within an apostate church is to be preferred for the cause of the gospel.

There was once an evangelical Churchill—Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones. On 18th October 1966, he addressed a packed meeting in London and pleaded with evangelicals to leave denominations corrupted by false doctrine. Chairing the meeting was John Stott, Rector of All Souls. Stott had already spoken at the meeting. But just as Lloyd-Jones finished his address, Stott arose not to close the meeting, but to contradict what Lloyd-Jones had just said. Stott was afraid that many evangelical leaders would respond to Lloyd-Jones and would leave their denominations—particularly the Church of England.

I hold both John Stott and Martyn Lloyd-Jones in the highest esteem. Both had a profound impact on my life and ministry. It was difficult for me to takes sides in an issue that divided two of my Christian heroes. For years I believed Stott was right. But as false teaching began to poison the Church of England, I was forced to admit that Martyn Lloyd-Jones was right. If clergy had heeded his call and left the Church of England, we wouldn’t have evangelicals appeasing the bishops like a chorus of Chamberlains.

“Appeasement, then, did not happen just once, in the England of the Thirties. It is an eternal temptation for all peoples who for various reasons lose their nerve in the face of an enemy who wants to destroy them,” warns Thornton. The wages of appeasement is death.

Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep.

from Republic Standard | Conservative Thought & Culture Magazine https://ift.tt/2LlFfw8 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Republic Standard | Conservative Thought & Culture Magazine

[latestnews2018-blog]

Sources: Colin Kaepernick's Legal Team Expected To Subpoena President Trump In Case Against NFL

New Post has been published on https://latestnews2018.com/sources-colin-kaepernicks-legal-team-expected-to-subpoena-president-trump-in-case-against-nfl/

Sources: Colin Kaepernick's Legal Team Expected To Subpoena President Trump In Case Against NFL

After months of circling President Donald Trump during NFL depositions and discovery, Colin Kaepernick’s lawyers are expected to force Trump directly into the ongoing legal battle between the quarterback and league.

Kaepernick’s legal team is expected to seek federal subpoenas in the coming weeks to compel testimony from Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and other officials familiar with the president’s agenda on protesting NFL players, sources with knowledge of the quarterback’s collusion case against the NFL told Yahoo Sports.

The aim will be a dive into the administration’s political involvement with the NFL during Kaepernick’s free agency and the league’s handling of player protests, sources said. This after recent disclosures that multiple owners had direct talks with Trump about players kneeling during the national anthem. The content of those conversations between Trump and owners – as well as any forms of pressure directed at the league by the administration – are expected to shape the requests to force the testimony of Trump, Pence and other affiliated officials, sources said.

What has to happen for Trump to be subpoenaed?

Due to the nature of the rules in collective bargaining grievances, reeling in sworn testimony from the political sector will create at least one additional hurdle for Kaepernick’s camp. The quarterback’s legal team first must notify the system arbitrator of the need for targeted depositions beyond the boundaries of the agreement between the NFL and the player’s union. That would entail presenting a detailed argument to the system arbitrator overseeing the grievance, spelling out the relevance and impact that testimony from Trump or others could have on the grievance. If the arbitrator rules the testimony would be justifiable, that would open the door for Kaepernick’s attorneys to seek the subpoenas in a district court under the Federal Arbitration Act.

That’s also where the process would get more complicated and contentious.

AP

This Jan. 1, 2017, file photo shows former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick speaking at a news conference. 

Should the system arbitrator and a federal judge find there is a basis to force Trump or others to sit for depositions, it would raise an argument over whether the president can actually be compelled by the courts to sit for a deposition. Trump could choose to ignore the order or simply decline, leaving it up to the justice system to enforce the subpoena.

Whether that would ever happen is a significant matter of debate.

Trump’s lawyers already fighting subpoenas in Mueller case

Multiple media outlets have reported Trump’s lawyers have already argued to special counsel Robert Mueller that the president couldn’t be compelled to comply with a criminal subpoena in the Russian collusion probe. It stands to reason if Trump would refuse to sit for a deposition in an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, he’s also likely to refuse to comply with a subpoena from a district court stemming from Kaepernick’s arbitration case.

Complicating matters further? Even if Trump was attracted to lock horns more directly with Kaepernick, doing so in a deposition could potentially expose the president legally if it is found he somehow bore responsibility for NFL owners refusing to offer Kaepernick a job.

Still, there is also a flip side for Trump, whose head-on verbal barrage against the NFL over protesting players has been a red-meat issue politically, stoking his base and creating a staple talking point he has continually revisited. In theory, taking part in the Kaepernick case would give him the opportunity to air his thoughts about the quarterback face-to-face in a deposition – much the same way multiple NFL owners have done in the process. It would also offer Trump fertile material for his steady diet of social media and “Fox & Friends” appearances, which can’t be discounted.

How will Kaepernick’s team build an argument to subpoena Trump?

But long before that quandary comes to fruition, Kaepernick’s attorneys will be tasked with illustrating a connection between the quarterback’s unemployment and Trump’s pressure on the NFL regarding protests during the national anthem.

With that in mind, multiple incidents could factor prominently into the request for subpoenas. Among a few (but not all) that could ultimately be referenced by Kaepernick’s attorneys:

• In August 2016, as a Republican presidential candidate, Trump went on Seattle radio station KIRO and remarked of Kaepernick protesting during the national anthem: “I think it’s personally not a good thing, I think it’s a terrible thing. And, you know, maybe he should find a country that works better for him.”

That could prove to be significant, because it can be framed as the “clock-starting” moment when Trump’s interference in Kaepernick’s livelihood first began, then extended and became amplified into the presidency.

• In March 2017, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft joined Trump on a flight aboard Air Force One in which the two men engaged in conversation. The next day, at a speaking event in Kentucky, Trump bragged that NFL owners weren’t signing Kaepernick because they were afraid of him.

“Your San Francisco quarterback, I’m sure nobody ever heard of him,” the president said. “… There was an article today that was reported that NFL owners don’t want to pick him up because they don’t want to get a nasty tweet from Donald Trump. Do you believe that? I just saw that. I just saw that.”

In a later deposition in the Kaepernick case, Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross testified Kraft told NFL owners he had spoken to Trump about players kneeling during the anthem. It wasn’t clear if that conversation occurred on the Air Force One flight or a different date.

AP

President Donald Trump has continued to criticize the NFL and its players over past protests. 

• In September 2017, Trump spoke directly to Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who later revealed during his deposition in the Kaepernick collusion case that the president told him, “Tell everybody [in the NFL], you can’t win this one. This one lifts me,” and that the player-kneeling issue was a “very winning, strong issue for me [politically].”

• Also in September 2017, Trump blasted NFL players during a speech in Alabama, taking direct aim at the jobs of kneeling players.

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired!’ ” Trump said.

• In October 2017, Trump again spoke directly about Kaepernick, and again suggested NFL retribution against the quarterback for his kneeling during the anthem.

“I watched Colin Kaepernick [in 2016], and I thought it was terrible, and then it got bigger and bigger and started mushrooming, and frankly the NFL should have suspended him for one game, and he would have never done it again,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “They could have then suspended him for two games, and they could have suspended him if he did it a third time, for the season, and you would never have had a problem. But I will tell you, you cannot disrespect our country, our flag, our anthem. You cannot do that.”

• Also in October 2017, Trump admitted to orchestrating a walkout of an NFL game between the San Francisco 49ers and Indianapolis Colts, in which Pence attended the game briefly and then left when players knelt during the national anthem.

• In late October 2017, a handful of NFL owners met with a select group of players during the league’s New York meetings. In a confidential meeting that was secretly taped and then leaked to the New York Times, Kraft can be heard referring to kneeling as the elephant in the room.

“The problem we have is, we have a president who will use that as fodder to do his mission that I don’t feel is in the best interests of America,” Kraft said, according to the Times. “It’s divisive and it’s horrible.”

The Times also quoted other owners at the meeting talking specifically about Trump’s impact. They included Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeff Lurie, who reportedly said, “We’ve got to be careful not to be baited by Trump or whomever else,” and Buffalo Bills owner Terry Pegula, who reportedly worried that, “All Donald needs to do is to start to do this again. We need some kind of immediate plan because of what’s going on in society. All of us now, we need to put a Band-Aid on what’s going on in the country.”

• In March 2018, Ross told the New York Daily News that Trump had influenced him to reverse his support of players who chose to kneel during the anthem. It was the first time that an owner said publicly that Trump had influenced their stance on the issue.

“I think initially I totally supported the players in what they were doing, because it’s America – people should be able to really speak about their choices and show them [in] doing that,” Ross said. “But I think when you change the message, about, is it support of our country or the military, it’s a different message. When that message changed, and everybody was interpreting it as that was the reason, then I was against the kneeling. …[Trump’s] message became what kneeling was all about. From that standpoint, that’s the way the public is interpreting it. So I think that’s really incumbent upon us to adopt that, because that’s how I think the country is now interpreting the kneeling issue.”

• In May 2018, after the NFL passed a rule prohibiting kneeling during the national anthem – but allowing players to remain in the locker room during the ceremony if they wish – some owners admitted that Trump had impacted the league’s motivation for creating a rule. The day after the NFL passed the rule, Trump once again revisited his remarks about players’ job statuses or whether they should be in the country if they didn’t stand for the anthem.

“You have to stand proudly for the national anthem or you shouldn’t be playing – you shouldn’t be there,” Trump told “Fox & Friends.” “Maybe you shouldn’t be in the country.”

That is only a handful of some of the incidents reflecting Trump potentially influencing NFL owners on either Kaepernick or kneeling players. It doesn’t account for all of his statements or address the multitude of tweets he has sent about the issue – nor other private conversations that have reportedly occurred inside the NFL about his impact.

It remains to be seen whether the totality of those incidents will be enough to convince the system arbitrator in Kaepernick’s case or a federal judge to conclude that forcing depositions of Trump, Pence or others is necessary. But that appears to be the next avenue of pursuit for Kaepernick’s legal team, in a case that has only seemed to gain more traction with each passing month.

This post was originally published on Yahoo Sports.

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[nofomoartworld]

Art F City: We Went to Frieze, Part One: Seagull Poop, People Poop, and Demon Poop

The Frieze entrance. Photo: Paddy Johnson

Every year Frieze installs a massive tent on Randall’s Island and lures jetsetters from across the globe to its contemporary art fair. This year, the fair expanded its usual roster of contemporary art galleries to include a few secondary market stalwarts as well. Newcomers to the fair included Bernard Jacobson Gallery, Castelli Gallery, and Axel Vervoordt and Eykyn Maclean.

That’s not a huge change in the landscape of the fair, but notably the fair’s director, Victoria Siddall, told the Art Newspaper recently that there was a significant uptick in applications from galleries in this market. Is Frieze grooming the New York market for an edition of their London-based Frieze Masters (a fair focused on secondary market art works)? Only time will tell.  

Meanwhile, Frieze New York is much better than usual. Art fair standards that drag these events down—geometric abstraction, process based abstraction, and assembly line art works by A-list artists—were few and far between. Overall, the work on view seemed unusually fresh and thoughtful. Neither are words we normally use to describe art fair art, let alone that at Frieze.

Jon Rafman, Dream Journal, 2017, single-channel video

Michael: The first artwork we saw entering Frieze this year was a painting by Tala Madani of a man crawling away from the viewer, scrotum in tow. The last piece we saw was a Jon Rafman animation that involved voluptuous young women wearing a xanax cap, popping demons’ pimples, navigating holes in space time, and pooping balls of demon blood.

Paddy: Well, technically speaking the first work we saw was an Elmgreen & Dragset piece at Massimo De Carlo that placed a plaster vulture on top of a wire fence and gate with a sign that read “Miracle”. It seemed like an appropriate way to start the fair. I interpreted this message to mean that as fair visitors, we’re all scavengers seeking the false hope that art provides.  

Michael: Ha! I literally had to convince myself it wasn’t a reference to the gated-off holy town (with meta-promotion) in HBO’s The Leftovers. But I’m pleasantly surprised by how much we enjoyed Frieze this year. In a strange way, some of the booths reminded me of NADA a few years ago, back when we actually liked NADA. By that I mean the boring, fussy, predictable stuff we expect from “mature” fairs seems to have retreated significantly at Frieze. So many booths this year felt fun, for lack of a better word.

A few quickly-identifiable trends:

Political work that didn’t take itself too seriously (and some that did).

Less video and installation.

Artists referencing classical architecture in new ways (works that wouldn’t look out of place in an old townhouse with a very modern renovation, perhaps?)

Afro-centric photography

Playful paintings (Plenty of figuration including strange nudes or more-fun-looking abstraction).

More people wearing Comme des Garçons than I had ever seen in one room in real life. (Thanks Met Gala).

Text based neon

Mirrors on furniture

Seagull paintings with poop

Here are some of the highlights (and a few lowlights) from Frieze, with more to come tomorrow:

Elmgreen & Dragset at Massimo De Carlo

Tala Madani at David Kordansky Gallery

R.H. Quaytman, “D. Kasper”, 2017, Silkscreen ink, diamond dust, gesso on two wood panels with self. Miguel Abreu Gallery.

Paddy: Miguel Abreu Gallery’s stock and trade might best be described as careful formalism paired with academic intelligence, and the booth showcased some of the best versions of this ranging from a Liz Deschenes striped chromogenic print to a Hans Bellmer photograph of a doll dismembered and bound. None of these works photograph well, including the R.H. Quaytman above made with diamond dust. I’m assuming the work above refers to artist Dawn Kasper, who perhaps most famously transplanted her studio to the Whitney Biennial in 2015. Normally, Quaytman has a tome of background that goes into her paintings. None of that is visible here, though. It’s just a foot ornamented with lines diamond dust—a rather pristine representation of a performance artist whose studio looks like a hoarders depot.

Michael: That’s funny: this is the kind of work I was excited to see less of this year. I was bored almost immediately upon walking into the booth.

Paddy: Why?

Michael: I suppose it all felt familiar? I think I was in a headspace of wanting to be surprised all day and this just looked like such an art fair booth. Even when I found kinda average works from artists I really love (Marilyn Minter at Salon 94, for example) I just wanted to move on to something new.

Paddy: I’d agree that the Bellmer’s were lesser works from his overall oeuvre, but the quality of the Liz Deschenes wowed and surprised me. (It is made up of white glossy stripes and impossible to photograph, so sorry—no reproduction here.) It’s exactly the kind of work I’d dismiss as easy minimalist abstraction, except that in the same way that a Daniel Buren stripe painting can kind of vibrate from the wall, so too did the subtle undulations of the fading black and white stripes in her print. If there was any way to photograph it I would have made it a highlight.

Adriano Costa at Mendes Wood DM

Michael: I can’t tell if Adriano Costa’s work is terrible or brilliant… and for that I have a total art crush. We first spotted a painting comprising spray paint on ugly HGTV-makeover-show-looking tiling, which read “My Boyfriend is Vegan”. I literally LOLed. Another piece features real tools sewn to the canvas and another is covered in knee-length socks the artist has ironed-on phrases to. The majority of these socks just ask “FANCY A FUCK?”

Paddy: I suppose if you’re going to put text on socks affixed to a painting that’s a reasonable message?

John Currin at Gagosian, Installation view

I’m not sure I can forgive John Currin for being a Republican, but I have to acknowledge the skill of these drawings. The left half of the booth is weaker than the right, which tends to have a few more fully rendered images that have been more thought out. As per usual with Currin, the weirder, the better.

John Currin at Gagosian

Andres Serrano, “America” at Galerie Nathalie Obadia

Michael: Boy, French/Belgian Galerie Nathalie Obadia probably thought they had hit the mother-of-all-timely/conceptual-bombs when someone remembered “Oh yeah, didn’t Andres Serrano do a photo series after 9/11 where he took pictures of Muslim girls and Mexican workers and Donald Trump for some reason and American flags with blood on them and called it ‘America’? Like back when Donald Trump was just a weird C-List celebrity? So deep and prescient!”

The problem with this improbably hot-button-relevant series from over a dozen years ago is that the work is just terrible. The fact that Serrano’s response to 9/11 was to photograph “BLACK PEOPLE! WHITE PEOPLE! INDIAN PEOPLE! FAMOUS PEOPLE!” like a buy-the-world-a-coke commercial (that’s selling me what, exactly?) is so cheesy. That this series now looks important because it features Donald Trump as a sitter and he’s an asshole to the demographics of the other sitters just makes this more cringe-worthy.

Paddy: These aren’t even good commercial portraits. The backgrounds looks like they’re made from cheap colored gels and the only visual trick to the work is that he’s managed to infuse the skin tones with some of the same lighting tones. Someone needs to show his bunny rabbit series. There’s no intellectual heft to them either, but there, the cheeseball backgrounds seem funny—like intentional faux-preciousness for an already ridiculous concept—rabbit portraits. 

Roman Ondak, “Swap”, 2011, Performance, edition 3 of 5 at Esther Schipper.

Paddy: Okay, I know this looks like a terrible photo of this poor lad, but it’s actually incredibly illustrative of the annoying qualities in this performance, which is why we’re using it. (Also, it’s the only photo we have.) The performance title, “Swap”, tells a viewer everything they need to know—the guy pictured above sits at a table for four days, swapping one item for another, in the hopes of swapping upwards. It’s an art fair, though, so when we saw him all he’d been able to do was swap business cards.

Michael, you refused his business card swap offer when you were approached, explaining that that’s the last thing you want more of at a fair. When he tried to tell you this card would be art, I lost my manners. “OoooOOOOooooh, Art!” I told him, laughing hysterically. After that he refused to talk to me.

Anyway, apologies to the man in the chair, but this Roman Ondak performance deserves a special place in hell. What in God’s name is the purpose of this piece? To unpack and aggrandize the concept of swapping? Sell someone else.  

Michael: I kept thinking this performance was never meant for an art fair. At a gallery in a warehouse district in Berlin (the gallery’s hometown) I am sure the exchanges would be much more interesting. Here, of course the only thing people would have with them are business cards or maybe an overpriced bottle of juice. Don’t they make you check all your personal effects at the door of the tent?

Paddy: I still think he should have took the elastic a nearby photographer offered him. He could have done better with that.

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[aion-rsa]

Forget Secret Empire – Did Captain America #15 Just Set Up Generations?

SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for “Captain America: Steve Rogers” #15 and “Uncanny Avengers” #22, in stores now.

It’s been a long, long road for Steve Rogers leading up to Marvel’s incoming “Secret Empire” event. Since he revealed the hero to be an agent of Hydra on the last page of “Captain America: Steve Rogers” #1, writer Nick Spencer has been setting up the World War II super-soldier to betray everyone and everything he has ever known. While the latest issue of the series (#15, illustrated by Javier Pina) continues to set up the takeover of the United States by Hydra, its final reveal may have repercussions beyond Marvel’s big summer event.

First, some additional background; “Captain America: Steve Rogers” #15 builds on the events of “Uncanny Avengers” #22. The Unity Squad (comprising X-men, Avengers and Inhumans, and formerly commanded by Rogers) captures the Red Skull and surgically removes the portion of Professor X’s brain he’d grafted onto his own, thus eliminating the telepathic powers that had allowed him to manipulate the team into doing his bidding.

RELATED: Odinson, Scarlet Witch & Vision Stand Tall on Secret Empire #6 Cover

After the successful completion of the surgery, Rogers arrives to take the Skull into S.H.I.E.L.D. custody. He also demands, under threat of force, that Rogue remit to him the portion of Xavier’s brain that Beast had extracted, labeling it a weapon of mass destruction, but the former X-man refuses to comply. Shattering a wall, and flying free, Rogue calls for the Human Torch to follow her into the sky where, with a bolt of fire from Johnny Storm, Rogue “sends her mentor home,” cremating the last of his remains.

Rogers’ threat of force suggests that the remaining tissue from Xavier’s brain may have still be viable and therefore of use to him. Has Rogue foiled his plans? Also, as Charles’ ashes are scattered in the sky over Manhattan, the particles drift past her face. Is the tissue completely charred at this point, or did any living fragments survive, thus imbuing Rogue with Xavier’s powers?

The “Final” Fate of…

Despite his failure to procure the remains of Xavier’s brain, Steve retrieves the Red Skull and remands him into S.H.I.E.L.D. custody, but as we see at the beginning of “Captain America: Steve Rogers” #15, he never intended for Schmidt to remain in prison. Rather, he arranged for the villain’s daughter, Sin, to free him and take him back to his German estate for a final encounter.

There, Spencer and Pina mix a flashback with current events, as we see the Rogers of the past chided by the Skull, while the Rogers of the present essentially snaps, grabbing the Hydra leader by the collar and sending him hurtling through a window to his death. “I am loyal to nothing, Skull—except the dream.”

As this is happening, Sharon Carter — unaware of the Skull’s predicament, and not knowing Rogers’ wheareabouts — disobeys the orders of the World Security Council, and prepares to take on Hydra in Sokovia.

In a final flashback, Elisa Sinclair reveals that she made a deal with the Skull to save Hydra. As a betrayed Steve prepares to walk away from her and the organization, she keeps him from leaving by revealing that the Allies are developing a most terrible weapon – the first Cosmic Cube.

So – What Does This All Mean?

In killing the Skull, Steve Rogers may have taken on an enemy even greater than S.H.I.E.L.D., and opened up the possibility of further alterations to the fabric of the entire Marvel universe. It was Schmidt’s vision of Hydra that seduced Kobik into altering Captain America’s past, after all, making him an ally of his greatest enemy. But as we have seen in the build-up to “Secret Empire,” most notably in the latest issue of “Thunderbolts,” elements of Rogers’ altered reality have begun to seep into everyone else’s. This begs the question: How will these alterations to the current timeline play out once the sentient Cosmic Cube discovers that Rogers has murdered the person who provided her raison d’être? Will she turn on the Captain and Hydra, or will she turn on all of humanity?

The final delicious splash page in “Captain America: Steve Rogers” #15 not only reveals the Allies’ secret weapon, it alters a crucial event in Marvel history: Now, the first Cosmic Cube was not invented by A.I.M in the 1960s, but 20-some years earlier at the conclusion of World War II.

Is this one of Steve’s altered memories? Or is Kobik re-writing her own origin in the “real” world? And what are the repercussions if the latter is true? How does that alter the stakes of the confrontation that’s about to erupt as Sharon Carter takes S.H.I.E.L.D. into battle against Hydra, not knowing that her beau is about to betray her and his every ally?

More importantly, what happens now that of one of the pillars of Marvel continuity seems to have been rewritten?

Originally introduced in the pages pages of “Tales of Suspense” in 1966, the Cosmic Cube was a MacGuffin created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee to introduce the Super-Adaptoid, an android capable of absorbing and mimicking the powers of its adversaries. A product of the renegade scientists of A.I.M. the Cosmic Cube was capable of transforming wishes into reality, despite the consequences. As it turned out, the folks at A.I.M. hadn’t created something so much as they’d harnessed a cosmic energy as dozens of alien species had done before. It wasn’t the last cone, either; since then, various Cosmic Cubes have been used to trigger some of Marvel’s most fondly remembered storylines.

One of the most entertaining elements of Spencer’s Hydra Cap story has been his last page reversals. In the tradition of the best serial story telling, Spencer has been keeping readers guessing since that initial “Hail Hydra” in “Captain America: Steve Rogers” #1. Which leads us to wonder, while this latest twist obviously lays the ground work for “Secret Empire,” does it also set up the world beyond Marvel’s next event? Is it a setup for the return of long-dead heroes in the “Generations” event that will follow “Secret Empire?”

Marvel editor-in-chief, Axel Alonso, recently explained that “Generations” does not take place in an alternate reality, and is not a time-travel rewrite. “These stories do happen,” he said, “they really count.” If Kobik has in fact altered reality thus rewriting Marvel continuity, this may well play out in this series of one-shots that follows “Secret Empire.”

With the current clone Skull dead, and a retooled origin for the first human-created Cosmic Cube, will we see the return of the original World War II Red Skull, alongside a redeemed Steve Rogers (who is shown in his classic garb in Alex Ross’s “Generations” teaser image)? Will Kobik’s intervention result in some kind of “rebirth” within the Marvel Universe? It’s a lot to imagine, and we may well be looking down the wrong storytelling path, but that’s all right. After all, the best thing about Nick Spencer’s Captain America runs has been guessing how far he’ll take things — and then being pleasantly surprised when we’ve gotten it wrong.

The post Forget Secret Empire – Did Captain America #15 Just Set Up Generations? appeared first on CBR.

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[racingtoaredlight]

On This Day...

On this day in 1757, British Admiral John Byng was executed by firing squad on the quarter deck of the ship-of-the-line HMS Monarch. Byng was executed after a court martial in which he was convicted of “failing to do his utmost” in the attempt to relieve the British-held island of Minorca in the face of a French siege. Byng was the last senior British military officer of any branch to face capital punishment for failure in battle. 

Minorca, which today is a Spanish possession, was seized by British troops in 1708, during the War of Spanish Succession. Ever since then, France coveted the island as a forward anchorage for its Mediterranean Fleet, based in the port city of Toulon. An opportunity for the French to capture Minorca arose in 1756 after the hostilities between French and British colonists in North America* in 1754 bloomed into the Seven Years War, which eventually engulfed most of Europe.

In early 1756, as the war spread to Europe, the British Admiralty in London learned that the expected French attack on Minorca was coming together in Toulon. Byng, then a senior officer in the British Channel Fleet, was hurriedly dispatched to Gibraltar in southern Spain with 10 ships-of-the-line. While a decently strong force in most regards, Byng was delayed for several days in Portsmouth while the crews were brought up to full strength with new. Each ship’s complement of Royal Marines--whose job it was to provide sharpshooters and board enemy ships in battle--was replaced by regular British Army soldiers who would be used to land on Minorca and reinforce the garrison. Such an arrangement was reasonable, so long as Byng’s fleet did not encounter a French squadron along the way; the army soldiers had no training in or experience of fighting as infantry at sea. If such an encounter did occur, Byng worried that he would be at a disadvantage and could lose multiple ships. Byng registered these complaints with the Admiralty, but his concerns were ignored and he was told to make sail for Gibraltar.

Upon arriving in Gibraltar, he attempted to add soldiers from the territory’s garrison to augment his landing force, but the colonial governor refused. Byng was already strongly of the impression that the small garrison on Minorca would struggle to withstand the 15,000 French soldiers with reinforcements, let alone on its own. He therefore prepared for the failure of his expedition personally while he carried out his orders.

Byng arrived off Minorca with his 10 ships from Portsmouth plus 3 ships from the Minorca squadron on May 19. By this time, the French had overrun most of the island and only the fortress of St. Philip’s Castle held out. Byng attempted to sail within visual range of the castle in order to establish communication with the garrison through flag signals. Before he could do so, a larger French squadron appeared on the horizon and Byng instead began to ready his ships for action.

Though Byng had the advantage--usually referred to in sailing warfare as the ‘weather gage’--he nonetheless ordered a conservative plan of battle. His 12 largest ships were formed into one column with Byng’s flagship, the ancient Ramillies, towards the rear of the column. Poor signalling between the ships and the inexperienced of their crews led to their becoming widely spaced. As they bore down on the better armed and handled French fleet, each of Byng’s ships was subjected to withering, concentrated fire while being unable to return it in anything like the same volume. Moreover, without any Royal Marines on board, Byng was reticent to close in on the French ships and attack them individually because he lacked boarding parties and sharpshooters. In addition, Byng did not see that his orders involved taking French ships by boarding in a prolonged naval battle, but rather to deflect them long enough so that he could land his own soldiers on the island to reinforce the garrison at the castle.

Though the number of wounded and killed was comparable at the end of the battle, the French had inflicted much heavier damage on Byng’s ships, roughly half of which needed major repairs. That night, at a conference with his second in command and all of his captains, Byng and his officers decided that attacking the French again in the morning was unlikely to bring success and that the fleet should instead turn back to Gibraltar to repair and refit. Byng gave the order in the morning and the fleet returned to Gibraltar, leaving the British garrison in St. Philip’s Castle unsupported. The surviving members of the garrison surrendered at the end of June and were permitted to leave the island by ship to Britain.

The news of Byng’s retreat and the fall of Minorca outraged the British public and senior navy officers. Accordingly, Byng was brought before a court martial in December 1756 where he was accused of cowardice before the enemy and failure to do his utmost. The charges were based on the British Articles of War, which were updated a decade earlier after the War of Austrian Succession to provide for death by firing squad for any officer, regardless of rank, who “failed to do his utmost” in the face of the enemy. Byng’s greatest crime was his conservatism in the face of terrible odds, the creation of which were no fault of his own. As a full admiral, he likely expected to simply be dismissed from the navy as a similarly conservative admiral, Thomas Mathews, was a decade earlier.

The updated Articles of War, however, took away this possibility after he was convicted January 27, 1757; the Articles provided for no discretion in punishment by the court once such a conviction occurred. The court declared clemency was appropriate in Byng’s case, and the Admiralty requested that King George II exercise his royal prerogative and grant it. But due to bitter personal political disagreement between the king and Prime Minister William Pitt, who favored clemency, George II withheld clemency and Byng was executed by a squad of Royal Marines who shot him in the head after Byng signified his readiness by dropping a handkerchief to the deck.

The brutality of such a sentence seemed then, as it does now, out of place in the mid-eighteenth century. An illustration of this is provided by famed French satirist Voltaire in his novel Candide, published in 1759. In the novel, Candide and his companions arrive in Portsmouth Harbor just as an unnamed senior naval officer is executed on the deck of his own flagship. Upon expressing dismay that such a punishment was still in use in a presumably civilized and sophisticated nation, Candide is told by an Englishman "in this country, it is good to kill an admiral from time to time, in order to encourage the others.”

Byng’s descendants continue to lobby for his exoneration, but, as recently as 2007, the Ministry of Defence continues to refuse. Some historians have called the execution of John Byng one of the most criminal judicial murders of all time.

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*George Washington, at the time a young officer in the Virginia Colonial Militia, figured prominently in many of these events, including the Battle of Jumonville Glen, the subsequent Battle of Fort Necessity, and the disastrous Braddock Expedition of 1755.

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