The Off Topic Topic

[Tamas]

I just saw the weirdest sight out of my window.  I just saw a series of red lights fly over the Hudson, pretty low, with some engine noise.  They were spaced out quite a bit, so it wasn't just a single plane that for whatever reason had 4-5 red lights as opposed to a red and a green.  Should I be cutting back on LSD, or did I see something real?  If so, what could it possibly be? 

Couple of nights ago I also saw something flying with strong red-only lights. Felt like it was going fairly low judging by the strength of the light. Maybe military helicopter? I didn't hear anything though.

[Duque de Bragança]

I really like the way the NYT is just picking fights with every European country on a one by one basis right now

Marlene Daut
@FictionsofHaiti
If Napoleon Bonaparte—a racist, genocidal, warmonger who restored slavery— is a symbol of modern France, then what does that say about France?

My latest @nytimes
https://t.co/RTeBzGNPAJ?amp=1

Not much? Macron and his clique do their best to avoid commemorating the 200th anniversary of his death.

Napoleon is obviously more complex than that. He also ended slavery during the Cent-Jours. As for genocidal, Valmy dealt with it.

[Legbiter]

Small and remote. Just perfect.

Like a pressure release valve, a good outcome 

Yeah, this is more of a bonsai eruption now that it's daylight. An absolutely massive magma intrusion pops up and in 3 weeks brutally grinds it's way across the peninsula triggering these quakes and it ends with the volcanic equivalent of a fart.



That's an eruption that's already given up on life.

[Legbiter]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ersOzJQOrUs

Just for reference

Jackson Crawford with solid Old Norse breaking news. His new Old Norse/Old English conversation between 2 speakers was fun as well.

[Josquius]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ersOzJQOrUs

Just for reference

Jackson Crawford with solid Old Norse breaking news. His new Old Norse/Old English conversation between 2 speakers was fun as well.

Yak. Huh. I was sure it'd be Fyell, kind of related to fell.

[Legbiter]

Yeah fjall in Old Norse/Icelandic means mountain and is cognate with fell in the Northern English dialects meaning hill I think.

[Oexmelin]

Ok you can't drop a bomb like that on me without some more information. That was the plan?

I bloody well will do that when I post at 1 AM.

I mean the plan, as I currently understand it, was completely insane and out of touch with reality, which is what happens when you get all your colonial information from the Grand Blancs, I thought the idea was to swoop in and arrest all the leaders and deport them and then quickly and easily reimpose slavery. And even that plan was secret, the expedition was designed to appear both overwhelming but friendly to trick Toussaint L'Ouverture and company into giving themselves up. Was there a secret secret plan?

Yes, that was the plan Napoleon was hoping for. Which, we should note, involved more gruesome violence than he was prepared to dish out against Europeans. So, yes - initial plan: befriend Black generals, arrest Toussaint, disarm the population, eliminate black soldiers, terrorize the population and reenslave them. In October 1802, Leclerc is already taking steps to actually kill his own troops, kept in ships and using sulphur. Rochambeau would then use the same method against the civilian population of Cap-Français.

It soon became obvious that Saint-Domingue would not be Guadeloupe. The Haitian war of Independance was astonishingly brutal, which certainly hints at what form of ordinary violence slavery was. Now, if you are looking for a letter from Napoleon that says "please conduct genocide on the black population", you will not find it. Heck, it's difficult to find even in so blatant a genocidal regime as Nazi Germany. What you do find are widespread episodes of massacre aimed at black soldiers and civilians. And, at the very least, a few officers - both French and foreign - mentionned that killing everyone and begining anew was what needed to be done, and what was being done.

Is this the same thing as the sort of revolutionary violence deployed against certain metropolitan populations during the Vendée Wars? To some extent, yes - it carries the same ideals of wiping the slate clear from population too intimately contaminated by royalism and starting anew. Race, however, plays a much more important role in informing that violence in Haiti. Is that enough to call it a genocide while the Vendée Wars remain a mere "civil war"? I think it's an important enough factor to take into account. In my own courses, I use "genocidal intentions" - enough to carry the force of the intent, but with just a hint of contextual reminder about the time period.

Was this a big Master Plan? No. But do we require a Big Master Plan when such a thing is unlikely to even exist on paper. After all, a lot of Napoleon's Master Plans are reconstructed after the fact, from actions - including by Napoleon himself. The problem with Napoleon, is that his supporters today want to attribute personally to him all the evidently collective stuff that they like (Civil Code), but suddenly want to parse every single coma whenever stuff like the Haitian War of Independence shows up. They are willing to spend insane amount of times defending Napoleon, but rarely any effort in understanding at least colonial matters. I understand people like Daut wanting to bring him down a peg or two.

[Sheilbh]

Lovely, wonderful piece by Fuchsia Dunlop () on the British-Chinese takeaway:
https://www.ft.com/content/d94c22f6-90e2-4bda-b5a0-5f89e565b1c3

[Josquius]

Pay walled 😔

[mongers]

Pay walled 😔

Where did you get you screen name Tyr?

It wasn't from the D & D city, as I've just noticed it in an old game I've started playing. 'The Wake of the Ravager' ?

[Syt]

Pay walled 😔

Where did you get you screen name Tyr?

It wasn't from the D & D city, as I've just noticed it in an old game I've started playing. 'The Wake of the Ravager' ?

I always thought from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BDr

[Josquius]

Yeah, pretty random dual origin of forgotten realms and norse gods.
Changed on a whim when the forum was new and we could change our display names at will. Stuck in place when that option was turned off.

[grumbler]

I really like the way the NYT is just picking fights with every European country on a one by one basis right now

Marlene Daut
@FictionsofHaiti
If Napoleon Bonaparte—a racist, genocidal, warmonger who restored slavery— is a symbol of modern France, then what does that say about France?

My latest @nytimes
https://t.co/RTeBzGNPAJ?amp=1

Some fights are worth having. 

Especially those, like this one, that is based on ignorance. 

Napoleon declared war once; against Russia in 1812.  All the other wars he fought started as defensive wars (Spain being defensive in the sense that the rebels attacked his forces rather than vice-versa, but he was effectively the author of the rebellion, so he can't really argue that he was just acting in defense).  The charge of racism seems unfounded given that the commander of his cavalry in his early campaigns was black (Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, father of the author Alexandre Dumas).  Genocidal is just absurd.

[Jacob]

Especially those, like this one, that is based on ignorance. 

Napoleon declared war once; against Russia in 1812.  All the other wars he fought started as defensive wars (Spain being defensive in the sense that the rebels attacked his forces rather than vice-versa, but he was effectively the author of the rebellion, so he can't really argue that he was just acting in defense).  The charge of racism seems unfounded given that the commander of his cavalry in his early campaigns was black (Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, father of the author Alexandre Dumas).  Genocidal is just absurd.

What would you say is a reasonable narrative re: Napoleon and Haiti, and especially his intentions towards the population there?

(Note - the sum of my knowledge on the topic is what's been posted in this thread so far)

[Josquius]

The census seems a lot shorter than usual this year 🤔