Puppet History Quotes

History. Language. Passion. Custom. All these things determine what men say, think, and do. These are the hidden puppet-strings from which all men hang.

While waiting for her accomplice to gather his equipment, Hensley couldn’t help but think ahead to her next mission. She hadn’t told him. It wasn’t a mission for which she’d volunteered, nor a mission about which she knew any details.

Nothing you do in the White House matters. You know why not? Because as far as the mass of voting morons is concerned, while you're in office, you'll still be the worst single president they've ever had until you stop. Then it's some other poor bastard's turn. And even that doesn't matter, because ten, twenty years later, they'll look back on you, and wonder why they didn't appreciate you when they had you...You don't get to make a difference. You don't get to do jack shit. You know what you get?...You get an entry in the history book, and every 15 minutes, every day at Disneyworld, an animatronic puppet wearing your face will wave or nod when the spotlight hits it.

History will have its say one day. Not the history they teach in Brussels, Paris, Washington or the United Nations but the history taught in the country set free from colonialism and its puppet rulers. Africa will write her own history and it will be a history of glory and dignity.

Solitude, I reflected, is the one deep necessity of the human spirit to which adequate recognition is never given in our codes. It is looked upon as a discipline or a penance, but hardly ever as the indispensable, pleasant ingredient it is to ordinary life, and from this want of recognition come half our domestic troubles...Modern education ignores the need for solitude: hence a decline in religion, in poetry, in all the deeper affections of the spirit: a disease to be doing something always, as if one could never sit quietly and let the puppet show unroll itself before one: an inability to lose oneself in mystery and wonder while, like a wave lifting us into new seas, the history of the world develops around us.

What comes before determines what comes after,” Kellhus continued. “For the Dûnyain, there’s no higher principle.” “And just what comes before?” Cnaiür asked, trying to force a sneer. “For Men? History. Language. Passion. Custom. All these things determine what men say, think, and do. These are the hidden puppet-strings from which all men hang.” Shallow breath. A face freighted by unwanted insights. “And when the strings are seen . . .” “They may be seized.” In

Nothing Here is Enough” I need a parrot, identical days, a quantity of needles, and artificial ink to make history. I need veiled eyelids, black lines, and ruined puppets to make geography. I need a sky wider than longing, and water that is not H2O to make wings. The days are no longer enough to distinguish the missing. I no longer see you because I no longer dream. I offer a tear to the rain as if scattering you in the Dead Sea, and in order to sing you, I need glass to muffle the sound.

Automatonophobia is the name smug people who’ve never been chased by witch marionettes give to the irrational fear of inanimate objects that resemble human beings: puppets, robots, mannequins, dolls.

Nevertheless, the potential and actual importance of fantastic literature lies in such psychic links: what appears to be the result of an overweening imagination, boldly and arbitrarily defying the laws of time, space and ordered causality, is closely connected with, and structured by, the categories of the subconscious, the inner impulses of man's nature. At first glance the scope of fantastic literature, free as it is from the restrictions of natural law, appears to be unlimited. A closer look, however, will show that a few dominant themes and motifs constantly recur: deals with the Devil; returns from the grave for revenge or atonement; invisible creatures; vampires; werewolves; golems; animated puppets or automatons; witchcraft and sorcery; human organs operating as separate entities, and so on. Fantastic literature is a kind of fiction that always leads us back to ourselves, however exotic the presentation; and the objects and events, however bizarre they seem, are simply externalizations of inner psychic states. This may often be mere mummery, but on occasion it seems to touch the heart in its inmost depths and become great literature.

The great masses, who have never been, in the history of mankind, more subject to hypnotic suggestion than they are right now, have become the puppets of the "public opinion" that is engineered by the newspapers in the service, it need hardly be emphasized, of the reigning powers of finance. What is printed in the morning editions of the big city newspapers is the opinion of nine out of ten readers by nightfall. The United States of America, whose more rapid "progress" enables us to predict the future on a daily basis, has pulled far ahead of the pack when it comes to standardizing thought, work, entertainment, etc. Thus, the United States in 1917 went to war against Germany in sincere indignation because the newspapers had told them that Prussian "militarism" was rioting in devilish atrocities as it attempted to conquer the world. Of course, these transparent lies were published in the daily rags because the ruling lords of Mammon knew that American intervention in Europe would fatten their coffers. Thus, whereas the Americans thought that they were fighting for such high-minded slogans as "liberty" and "justice," they were actually fighting to stuff the money bags of the big bankers. These "free citizens" are, in fact, mere marionettes; their freedom is imaginary, and a brief glance at American work-methods and leisure-time entertainments is enough to prove conclusively that l’homme machine is not merely imminent: it is already the American reality.

I know of nothing in all drama more incomparable from the point of view of art, nothing more suggestive in its subtlety of observation, than Shakespeare's drawing of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They are Hamlet's college friends. They have been his companions. They bring with them memories of pleasant days together. At the moment when they come across him in the play he is staggering under the weight of a burden intolerable to one of his temperament. The dead have come armed out of the grave to impose on him a mission at once too great and too mean for him. He is a dreamer, and he is called upon to act. He has the nature of the poet, and he is asked to grapple with the common complexity of cause and effect, with life in its practical realisation, of which he knows nothing, not with life in its ideal essence, of which he knows so much. He has no conception of what to do, and his folly is to feign folly. Brutus used madness as a cloak to conceal the sword of his purpose, the dagger of his will, but the Hamlet madness is a mere mask for the hiding of weakness. In the making of fancies and jests he sees a chance of delay. He keeps playing with action as an artist plays with a theory. He makes himself the spy of his proper actions, and listening to his own words knows them to be but 'words, words, words.' Instead of trying to be the hero of his own history, he seeks to be the spectator of his own tragedy. He disbelieves in everything, including himself, and yet his doubt helps him not, as it comes not from scepticism but from a divided will. Of all this Guildenstern and Rosencrantz realise nothing. They bow and smirk and smile, and what the one says the other echoes with sickliest intonation. When, at last, by means of the play within the play, and the puppets in their dalliance, Hamlet 'catches the conscience' of the King, and drives the wretched man in terror from his throne, Guildenstern and Rosencrantz see no more in his conduct than a rather painful breach of Court etiquette. That is as far as they can attain to in 'the contemplation of the spectacle of life with appropriate emotions.' They are close to his very secret and know nothing of it. Nor would there be any use in telling them. They are the little cups that can hold so much and no more.

you desecrated the shrines of our fathers you pushed our tongue, stole our culture paraded your wickedness as my savior you refused the right to let me own my narrative you butchered our names you brought war on our land you call my people "savages" you stole our histories and wear them proudly in your museums you wash away our achievements you carry it as yours you "discovered" what was already mine you plant puppets, assassinating our leaders you desecrated the shrines of my mothers when we worshipped nature, you laughed at us now, you want to carry our ways, learn from us we refuse to write softness into our stories for you to feel comfortable we refuse to let anyone but us own our narrative we refuse to believe your lies again you will not spit in the face of our fathers and think his children will now sit quietly.

Apart from a few examples of exhaustive melancholy, and a few unequalled suicides, men are merely puppets stuffed with red globules in order to beget history and its grimaces.

History is naughty for it first creates chaos and then brings about order.

The good shall prevail in the end, the truth shall be the rule and the Cameroonian soul shall be free,” Hans said in an emotion-choked voice, “However, we should never lose our heads; we should always be prepared to forgive all the repentant souls.

You know, a carving, especially if it’s polychrome, is not meant to move. These faces, these half-bodies, when you animate them, they’re more live than the living. They can be dangerous for those who don’t really understand them. With contained energy, no one can predict what will happen when it’s released.

In 1593, soon after Marlowe’s murder, a troop of English actors brought a production of the Tragical History of Doctor Faustus to Germany. Through some metamorphosis, the tragedy became a comedy, and the comedy was then transformed into a puppet show. It was more than likely in this form that the young Goethe first came upon what would become his most famous work.

Collectivism is history’s utmost elusive criminal mind game, created by a syndicate of self-pitying parasitical narcissists who feel excessively entitled. They so much believe themselves to be right that they presume the authority to force their views upon others. It has resulted in an infinite evil circle of emotional terrorism. Those who foster manipulism are masters at creating puppeteers who in turn create more puppets. The puppeteer is the collectivist’s everyday occupation.

I look around and see that many — not all, but many — problems we've got could be solved if our culture simply fostered the habit of reading. Reading books of science, philosophy, history. Reading literature of quality, the sort that touches us because of a more profound reason, such as, for instance, because it's got something to say beyond all the futilities and trifles of life, even while depicting the ordinary in life, at the same time that it says it with style, in a unique, admirable manner. An original one. We are not a county of readers, notwithstanding. We are the country of football turned into a cult, of guile being ranked high as a cardinal virtue, of Carnival made for exportation. A country where there are more letters in political party acronyms than in all many of our politicians have written in a lifetime. A country where ethics has become a joke theme. Where democracy is but a ridiculous puppet theatre. Yes, I look around and see that many problems could be solved if we had the habit of reading. But I am not even sure whether there is someone reading these words.

It was especially taboo to talk about the Korean War and who started it. In the official histories (and there was nothing but official history in North Korea), it was the South Korean Army that invaded, acting on orders from the Americans, not the North Korean Army storming across the 38th parallel. “The U.S. imperialists gave the Syngman Rhee puppet clique an order to unleash a Korean War,” goes the account in Rodong Sinmun. Anybody who remembered what really happened on June 25, 1950 (and which Korean could forget?), knew it was wise to keep one’s mouth shut.

I laid out the charges against him of subversion, conspiracy, and murder, but emphasized that he was innocent until proven guilty, which made him laugh. Your American puppet masters like to say that, but it's stupid, he said. History, humanity, religion, this war tells us exactly the reverse. We are all guilty until proven innocent, as even the Americans have shown. Why else do they believe everyone is really Viet Cong? Why else do they shoot first and ask questions later? Because to them all yellow people are guilty until proven innocent. Americans are a confused people because they can't admit this contradiction. They believe in a universe of divine justice where the human race is guilty of sin, but they also believe in a secular justice where human beings are presumed innocent. You can't have both. You know how Americans deal with it? They pretend they are eternally innocent no matter how many times they lose their innocence.

But then something unexpected happened. Donald Trump, a real estate mogul and television celebrity who did not need the Koch donor network’s money to run, who seemed to have little grasp of the goals of this movement, entered the race. More than that, to get ahead, Trump was able to successfully mock the candidates they had already cowed as “puppets.” And he offered a different economic vision. He loved capitalism, to be sure, but he was not a libertarian by any stretch. Like Bill Clinton before him, he claimed to feel his audience’s pain. He promised to stanch it with curbs on the very agenda the party’s front-runners were promoting: no more free-trade deals that shuttered American factories, no cuts to Social Security or Medicare, and no more penny-pinching while the nation’s infrastructure crumbled. He went so far as to pledge to build a costly wall to stop immigrants from coming to take the jobs U.S. companies offered them because they could hire desperate, rightless workers for less. He said and did a lot more, too, much that was ugly and incendiary. And in November, he shocked the world by winning the Electoral College vote.

That's not how you eat hot pot! That's some new-age Taiwanese thing. In Beijing, you don't mis the sauces." "Son, I'll say this the nicest way I can. I'm Chinese and you're an idiot."(247) My entire life, the single most interesting thing to me is race in America. how something so stupid as skin or eyes or stinky Chinese lunch as such an impact on a person's identity, their mental state, and the possibility of their happiness. It was race. It was race. Apologies to Frank Sinatra, but I've been called a "ch!gg@r," a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a pawn, think the idea of America is cool, but at the end of the day wish the world had no lines. (249) You have tattoos and others have piercings, but for me, there's nothing that says more about me than the food I choose to carry every single day. As a kid trying to maintain my identity in America, my Chinese was passable, my history was shaky, but I could taste something one time and make it myself at home. When everything else fell apart and I didn't know who I was, food brought me back and here I was again. (250) ... Ironically enough, the one place that America allows Chinese people to do their thing is the kitchen. Just like Jewish people became bankers because that was the only thing Christians let them do, a lot of Chinese people ended up in laundries, delis, and kitchens because that's what was available...get in where you fit in, fool. (250)

his hands moved busily among the puppets, choosing, discarding, until they pounced finally on the moon with her crystal eyes and her hands shaped like stars. 'I will be the moon,' Kyel said. 'You must make a wish to me.' Lydea slid her fingers into the fox's head, with its sly smile and fiery velvet pelt. 'I wish,' she said, 'that you would take your nap.' 'No,' the prince said patiently, 'you must make a true wish. And I will grant it because I am the moon.' 'Then I must make a fox's wish. I wish for an open door to every hen house, and the ability to jump into trees.' The moon sank onto the blue hillock of Kyel's knee. 'Why?' 'So that I can escape the farmer's dogs when they run after me.' 'Then you should wish,' the prince said promptly, 'that you could jump as high as the moon.' 'A good wish. But there are no hens on the moon, and how would I get back to Ombria?' The moon rose again, lifted a golden hand. 'On a star.' The governess smiled. The fox stroked the prince's hair while he shook away the moon and replaced it with the sorceress, who had one amethyst eye and one emerald, and who wore a black cloak that shimmered with ribbons of faint, changing colors. 'I am the sorceress who lives underground,' the prince said. 'Is there really a sorceress who lives underground?' 'So they --' Lydea checked herself, let the fox speak. 'So they say, my lord.' 'How does she live? Does she have a house?' She paused again, glimpsing a barely remembered tale. 'I think she does. Maybe even her own city beneath Ombria. Some say that she has an ancient enemy, who appears during harsh and perilous times in Ombria's history. Then and only then does the sorceress make her way out of her underground world to fight the evil and restore hope to Ombria.' ... The sorceress descended, long nose down on the silk. Kyel picked another puppet up, looked at it silently a moment. The queen of pirates, whose black nails curved like scimitars, whose hair was a rigid knoll in which she kept her weapons, stared back at him out of glittering onyx eyes.

In all the seconds of life that beat solemnly from my heart, in all the hours of waiting for the release that binds us, in all the months of moons that guided our hopes, of all the years of yesterday that taught us the path of which we walk today: Today, I am true. Today I will write without release; without questions or care of the minds that do not understand the words that will lie before me in this letter. Licentia. The release of anything that covers my ears or blinds my eyes. Oh, licentia. The people shall call me insane because I have proven to remain unrelenting in the belief that freedom and justice and truth are all subject to change, but that the ideas are the spark which light the fire to continue my journey. These words have no value unless given an idea, and that is the only part that is bounded in this world: the idea. The idea to be free; no matter the cost of autonomy and decisions and conscious state of mind. The idea to have justice; without a governance to proclaim what it defines. The idea to seek truth; no matter how many lies claim to hold the reality. Licentia. The release of anything that covers my ears or blinds my eyes. Oh, licentia. It is the fear that controls the grip which lacerates our brains and chains our souls. It is the fear that without power or an entity that seeks it, that we will be dangerous. It is the fear of our ourselves that binds us. But once we are no longer afraid of the mirror that grants us our reflection, we begin to understand that the fear was simply an illusion. It is the pain that scares us into submission and breaks our vows to our hearts. It is the pain that makes an honest man beg on his knees to the wolves that seek to devour his ideas. It is the pain that creates the stage to which only fools applaud and puppets play. It is the pain that makes us see the ugliness of our soul. But once we are in pain, we realize that it was never the worst feeling to behold, but that the betrayal of our minds and the minds of others is. Licentia. The release of anything that covers my ears or blinds my eyes. Oh, licentia.

showed a group of two- and three-year-olds a new game. A puppet then appeared and performed the game incorrectly. Almost all the children protested the puppet’s actions and many explicitly objected, telling the puppet how the game should be played. “Social norms—even of this relatively trivial type—can only be created by creatures who engage in shared intentionality and collective beliefs,” Tomasello writes, “and they play an enormously important role in maintaining the shared values of human cultural groups.” 7

The adivasi people have a long and courageous history of resistance that predates the birth of Maoism. To look upon them as brainless puppets being manipulated by a few middle-class Maoist ideologues is to do them something of a disservice.

Even the most horrendous criminals in history, say one like Hitler, have their own philosophy to kill people. Man can justify all his actions. His cerebral capabilities are flexible. Try to rise above the events and you’ll see that, all of us are blind and helpless puppets in the hands of the puppeteer, called history.

But unlike other life forms (if a virus is considered a life form), a virus does not even do that itself. It invades cells that have energy and then, like some alien puppet master, it subverts them, takes them over, forces them to make thousands, and in some cases hundreds of thousands, of new viruses. The power to do this lies in their genes. •

It is impossible for a bank to issue money with no backing and not run into hyperinflation. History has shown this over and over again to be a FACT, and this is exactly what is going to happen. If you think Bill Gates is the richest man in the world, you are mistaken. There are personal fortunes controlled by the European Rothschild and American Rockefeller clans in the multi-TRILLIONS of dollars, divested into hundreds of tax-free foundations. They wield this wealth and power against us behind the scenes---pulling the puppet strings of our governments and guiding us towards completion of the Great Plan. Money is power, huge money is huge power, and unlimited money is unlimited and omnipotent power. This is what the PRIVATE OWNERS OF THE CENTRAL BANKS OF THE WORLD POSSESS RIGHT NOW---an unlimited money supply for their private owners to use as they wish……….and they are wishing to fulfill the Great Plan of world enslavement. "This present window of opportunity, during which a truly peaceful and interdependent world order might be built, will not be open for too long — We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order." -David Rockefeller, speaking at the United Nations, Sept. 23, 1994 The world’s wealthiest and most powerful banking families banded together in the late 1700’s to monopolize the wealth of the world, and thereby the power, and are attempting to bring all of humanity under a fascist-socialist based one world government that they intend to be masters of forever. This is the gist of the Great Plan today: Dominate the world by controlling all the money. When they crash the United States dollar, and they will, we will

They offered something that was genuinely good, and people’s lives were better because they offered it. It was not a noble cause that would get written up in the histories. But it was not nothing, either. A person could do worse than spend some large percentage of his life in a cause like that. Bean

his novel is set in the period of Roman history called the Decadence, which began about 160 AD, a distinction it richly deserved: social distinctions had become lax; the bureaucracy was increasingly corrupt, due in large part to the privatizing of most of the civil service; the nobility were competing in luxury and excess, and were rarely held accountable for their overindulgence, either legally or politically; the Emperors were more often than not puppets for powerful families and influential plutocrats; maintenance of Roman roads, the most successful communication routes in the ancient world, was reduced or abandoned even as the Romans strength, now filled their ranks with client-nation soldiers and gave high rank positions to mercenaries; the standards of education and language-use had declined and the quality of linguistic communication and literary expression were eroding; public entertainments, from the arena to the stage, were violent, sensationalistic, and debauched. The attempt to maintain a society of laws was giving way to one of political and commercial influence, and all the while the gulf between rich and poor was widening, and the legal rights of women and slaves were diminishing steadily.

Who has the Problem? Jewish media mogul Robert Maxwell, one of the most grotesque robber barons in recent British history, liked to say that someone who owed the bank a million pounds had a serious problem, but if the same person owed the bank a billion pounds then it was the bank that had the serious problem. This insane ideology was adapted by the banks themselves. A bank with a debt of a hundred billion dollars has a problem and could be declared insolvent by the markets and State. A bank with a debt of a trillion dollars could make the State insolvent, so it’s the State that now has the problem. Banks made themselves so big and made the State (and global) economy so dependent on them that, if they failed, the whole economy would fail. So, they were all tacitly underwritten by the State, and State bailouts were therefore inevitable in the financial meltdown of 2008. The question is why any State allowed any financial institution to become “too big to fail” and thus a direct threat to the stability of the State. No sane State would ever allow itself to be controlled and blackmailed by an entity over which it has no say and no control. The fact that States did allow this to happen proves that unelected, unaccountable “free markets” (i.e. corporations, banks and the super rich) are running nations, and not their democratically elected politicians. Governments are puppet institutions and the puppetmasters are never up for election. Any sane government would have a specific department of State whose specific purpose was to prevent any bank or corporation becoming too big to fail, or any organisation or individual becoming too rich and too powerful.

Sometimes you laughed, and then my glove puppet would weep piteously. When you took the glove puppet he alternated between flirtatious and suicidal, hell-bent on flinging himself from great heights and out of the windows. I noticed that you didn't make a voice or a history for the puppet, but you became its voice and history. I'd have liked to admire that but felt I was watching a distressing form of theft, since the puppet could do nothing but suffer being forced open like an oyster.

On Sunday evenings, there was a comparatively vast array of radio shows from which to choose. Frequently I would lie in my bed with my father, who would pull the covers over our heads and pretend that we were in a cave. This is how we would listen to shows such as Jack Benny, The Great Gildersleeve with Harold Peary, The Fred Allen Show, and The Edgar Bergen Show. As a ventriloquist, Edgar Bergen had Charlie McCarthy and the slow-witted Mortimer Snerd as puppets. For us the last show of the evening was always Your Hit Parade sponsored by Lucky Strike Cigarettes, starring Snooky Lanson, Gisele MacKenzie and a host of other well-known singers of that period. Although my father was a strict disciplinarian, on Sunday evenings he usually relaxed things and we would enjoy our time listening to the radio together.

Call them stories. When things happen, we invent stories about them. About why they happened. That’s all science is, and history—stories about why things happen or happened. They are never, never true—never complete and always at least a little bit wrong, and we know it. But they’re true enough to be useful. I doubt our minds could even grasp the whole truth about anything—the nets of causality spread too wide to be held within a single mind. But the stories, the useful lies—we share those and pass them on and when we learn more we improve on them, or when we need different stories for new circumstances, we change them and pretend we always told them that way.” Ender

Sir Grant Morgan looked up from his desk as Nick burst into his office before morning sessions. There was no trace of apology in his hard green eyes. “I see you’ve spoken to Sir Ross,” he said. Nick proceeded to give vent to his outrage in the coarsest words ever conceived in the history of the English language, leveling accusations that would have caused any other man either to cower in terror or to reach for the nearest pistol. Morgan, however, listened as calmly as if Nick were offering a description of the weather. After an extensive rant speculating on the likelihood that Morgan was nothing but a puppet while Sir Ross pulled the strings, the chief magistrate sighed and interrupted. “Enough,” he said shortly. “You’re beginning to repeat yourself. Unless you have anything new to add, you may as well spare yourself the breath. As to your last charge— that this situation is all of Sir Ross’s making— I can assure you that the decision to remove you from the force was fully as much mine as his.” -Morgan & Nick

Batista was a rebellious non-commissioned officer in the 1933 Cuban Army and became the indisputable leader of the revolutionary faction within the military. Fulgencio Batista took over power during the bloody “Sergeants’ Revolt” and forced a military coup with the help of students and labor leaders, thus taking control of the government. He promoted himself to the rank of Colonel and summarily discharged the entire cadre of commissioned officers. Many officers fearing for their lives, barricaded themselves into the National Hotel. The Hotel Nacional was the fanciest hotel in Cuba, but that didn’t stop Batista from shelling it, using the Cuban war ship, the SS Cuba. Those officers who were not killed outright were jailed and “pax Batistiana” began. Batista controlled the short-lived five man Presidency of Cuba, which was called “The Pentarchy of 1933.” This ruling body was followed by the Presidency of Ramón Grau San Martin, a professor of the University of Havana, who held the office for just over 100 days. Carlos Mendieta followed and stayed in power for 11 months, after which Batista set himself up as the strong man behind a continuing succession of puppet presidents. Although calling himself a “Progressive Socialist,” Batista was supported by the “Communist Party” which had been legalized in 1938. In time much of this changed!

By 1932, the Kwantung Army controlled all of Manchuria, setting up a puppet state called Manchukuo.

Today we are suffering because those who know better choose not to entertain politics and those who don’t know. The ones without integrity choose to sing the tune and praises of the one who gives them money, who feeds them or who promised to give them something. They see corruption as connections. Oppositions as spies, agencies, puppet masters, proxies, sellouts, stogies or clever blacks. Accountability to them means they are being targeted and hated. They choose to see themselves and those they support as victims when they must answer for their crimes or wrongdoings.

No true warrior, Rhaenys loved music, dancing, and poetry, and supported many a singer, mummer, and puppeteer. Yet it was said that Rhaenys spent more time on dragonback than her brother and sister combined, for above all she loved to fly. She was once heard to say that before she died she meant to fly Meraxes across the Sunset Sea to see what lay upon it's western shores

Their greatest folly is that they don't understand you or your kinfolk. They cannot imagine that you would refuse being their vassal on the throne. They have no inkling that there are races of man that value sovereignty above the air they breathe. Like a puppet they expect you to approve and sign whatever policy put before you, bulking as they presume and barbarian would confronted with the daily administrative minutiae of rulership- along with the flowery jargon they'll use to disguise their schemes. And soon, drowning in woman and wine, your senses dulled from that stuporous escape- they'll have you unwittingly dismantle the Varangian guard before burying a dagger in your back" - Almuric Agricola Excerpt from Varangian: Book One of the Byzantum Saga

Books, in their purest form, are vessels of knowledge, gateways to imagination, and catalysts for learning. They possess the incredible power to educate, inspire, and empower individuals, transcending boundaries of time, space, and culture. Books are not mere tools of manipulation or grooming; they are beacons of enlightenment, guiding us towards a deeper understanding of the world and ourselves. To claim that books groom or indoctrinate individuals is to undermine the inherent intelligence and discernment of humanity. Books are not puppet masters pulling the strings of our minds; they are companions on our journey, offering insights, perspectives, and narratives that expand our horizons and challenge our preconceived notions. In the realm of literature, we find the freedom to explore diverse ideas, to question authority, and to engage in critical thinking. It is through books that we encounter heroes who teach us about courage, compassion, and resilience. We discover worlds beyond our own, cultures we may never experience firsthand, and histories that shape our present. Books are a refuge for the marginalized, a voice for the silenced, and a catalyst for social change. They have the power to ignite revolutions, dismantle oppressive systems, and inspire generations to fight for justice. To accuse books of grooming is to ignore the countless individuals who have been transformed by the written word. From the abolitionist movements fueled by slave narratives to the civil rights movement propelled by the works of Martin Luther King Jr., books have consistently been at the forefront of societal transformation. They have the ability to challenge the status quo, dismantle stereotypes, and empower individuals to think critically and act conscientiously. In a world where disinformation and manipulation are rampant, books provide a sanctuary of truth, authenticity, and intellectual rigor. They encourage us to question, to seek evidence, and to seek multiple perspectives. Books cultivate empathy, broaden our understanding of diverse experiences, and foster a sense of connection that transcends borders. Therefore, let us not succumb to the fallacy that books groom or brainwash individuals. Instead, let us celebrate the power of literature to uplift, to enlighten, and to ignite the flames of curiosity. Let us embrace the freedom to read, to explore ideas that challenge us, and to engage in open dialogue that fosters understanding and unity. In the words of Frederick Douglass, 'Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.' Books are the keys that unlock the doors of knowledge, emancipation, and liberation. They are not tools of manipulation but instruments of empowerment. Let us cherish them, protect them, and ensure that their transformative power continues to shape our world for the better.

American intellectuals, when they appear in European accounts, are assumed to be mere representatives of some Western archetype of the ‘noble savage’ or sock-puppets, used as plausible alibis to an author who might otherwise get into trouble for presenting subversive ideas (deism, for example, or rational materialism, or unconventional views on marriage).

I do not care for this responsibility,” he said. “When I fought the Dead God he spoke of both gods and men as shadow-things, playing puppet parts before the true history of Earth began and men found their fate in their own hands. Then Sepiriz tells me I must turn against Chaos and help destroy the whole nature of the world I know or history might never begin again, and Fate’s great purpose would be thwarted. Therefore I am the one who must be split and tempered to fulfill my destiny—I must know no peace of mind, must fight men and gods and the stuff of Chaos without surcease, must bring about the death of this age so that, in some far dawn-age, men who know little of sorcery or the Lords of the Higher Worlds, may move about a world where the major forces of Chaos can no longer enter, where justice may actually exist as a reality, and not as a mere concept in the minds of all philosophers.” He rubbed his red eyes with his fingers. “So fate makes Elric a martyr that Law might rule the world. It gives him a sword of ugly evil that destroys friends and enemies alike and sucks their soul-stuff out to feed him the strength he needs. It binds me to evil and to Chaos, in order that I may destroy evil and Chaos—but it does not make me some senseless dolt easily convinced and a willing sacrifice. No, it makes me Elric of Melniboné and floods me with a mighty misery…

Non-violent resistance supposes that the almighty enemy, at the very least, considers you to be a human being, capable of logically arguing why you disagree. It supposes that this enemy is ready to hear your demands and find common ground. Yes, Bamileke maquisards took up arms! But did they have a choice? Colonial masters feigned departure, but their cruel puppets continue to safeguard their interests through murder. We were cheated. Our struggle has been used to different ends. And, you will see, they will chop off any head that stands out, and then falsify our history. In fact, they won't; they will not even bother to record our history." "Who is "they?" I asked. "This 'they' is 'we’,” replied Louis. "We are the ones killing ourselves. Our killers are encouraged, trained, and funded by the former colonial power. But, and this is what makes it worse, we ourselves are the ones doing the dirty work with senseless enthusiasm," he added. That was how Cameroon—not just myself as an individual, or my village, Ombessa, or Bafia and Yaounde, the places where I had lived, but also this multi-layered, nuanced, bruised entity called my country—took shape in my mind.

The other queens indeed fled from Briallyn weeks ago, as Eris said. She alone sits in the throne room of their shared palace. And what Eris revealed about Beron was true, too: the High Lord visited Briallyn on the continent, pledging his forces to her cause.” A muscle ticked in Azriel’s jaw. “But Briallyn’s gathering of armies, the alliance with Beron, is only the auxiliary force to what she has planned.” He shook his head, shadows slithering over his wings. “Briallyn wishes to find the Cauldron again. In order to retrieve her youth.” “She’ll never attain the Cauldron,” Amren said, waving a hand gleaming with rings. “No one but us, Miryam, and Drakon know where it’s hidden. Even if Briallyn did uncover its location, there are enough wards and spells on it that no one could ever break through.” “Briallyn knows this,” Azriel said gravely. Nesta’s stomach churned. Azriel nodded to Cassian. “What Vassa suspected is true. The death-lord Koschei has been whispering in Briallyn’s ear. He remains trapped at his lake, but his words carry on the wind to her. He is ancient, his depth of knowledge fathomless. He pointed Briallyn toward the Dread Trove—not for her sake, but for his own ends. He wishes to use it to free himself from his lake. And Briallyn is not the puppet we believed her to be—she and Koschei are allies.” He added to Cassian, “You need to ask Eris whether Beron knows about this. And the Trove.” Cassian nodded into the ensuing silence. Nesta found herself asking, “What’s the Dread Trove?” Amren’s eyes glowed with a remnant of her power. “The Cauldron Made many objects of power, long ago, forging weapons of unrivaled might. Most were lost to history and war, and when I went into the Prison, only three remained. At the time, some claimed there were four, or that the fourth had been Unmade, but today’s legends only tell of three.

The need for international engagement became all the more urgent in 1931, when the Japanese army, at its own initiative, invaded and occupied Manchuria and established an imperial colony, crowned by a puppet state, in this vast northern corner of China. Unable to have the occupation sanctioned by the League of Nations, Japan left the organization in 1933. Reporting back to the foreign office from the Los Angeles games, Japan’s consul, Satô Hayato, declared that, ‘This Olympic Games has been very beneficial in erasing anti-Japanese sentiment.’ Alternatively, for the more liberal and cosmopolitan wing of Japanese society, this kind of impact meant that the games could be ‘an opportunity for a national people’s diplomacy’, making peaceful inter-societal connections when the inter-state realm was so bellicose.3 However, Consul Satô spoke for many in the imperial bureaucracy, armed forces and ultra-nationalist circles, arguing that, ‘The best way to get the Americans to understand the real Japan is to defeat America and show them the true strength of the Japanese. Rational discourse is completely useless. Americans probably first understood the true strength of the Japanese when the Rising Sun flag was raised . . . during the Olympic Games.

What about Cuba? What was its vision of freedom in southern Africa? In Angola it supported the government of Agostinho Neto, who was authoritarian, eager to improve the lot of the people, and who lent courageous support to the liberation fighters of South Africa and Namibia. Neto died in 1979, and the government of President dos Santos grew increasingly corrupt and indifferent to the plight of the common people. It had, however, two important pluses: it continued to support the liberation movements in Namibia and South Africa and, for all its faults, it was far better than the alternative, Jonas Savimbi. The Cuban troops did not stay in Angola for more than a decade, however, to keep dos Santos in power. They stayed to defend Angola from South Africa. They stayed to help the ANC and SWAPO. They stayed because the Cuban leaders were convinced that their departure would provide an opportunity for South Africa to impose Savimbi on Angola and a puppet regime on Namibia. They stayed, in other words, to hold the line against apartheid.

The first thing the President had done when he came to power in 2000 was to seize control of television. It was television through which the Kremlin decided which politicians it would ‘allow’ as its puppet opposition, what the country’s history and fears and consciousness should be. And the new Kremlin won’t make the same mistake the old Soviet Union did: it will never let TV become dull. The task is to synthesise Soviet control with Western entertainment. Twenty-first-century Ostankino mixes show business and propaganda, ratings with authoritarianism. And at the centre of the great show is the President himself, created from a no one, a grey fuzz via the power of television, so that he morphs as rapidly as a performance artist among his roles of soldier, lover, bare-chested hunter, businessman, spy, tsar, superman. ‘The news is the incense by which we bless Putin’s actions, make him the President,’ TV producers and political technologists liked to

The United States hastens the delivery of arms to the puppet governments they see as being increasingly threatened; it makes them sign pacts of dependence to legally facilitate the shipment of instruments of repression and death and of troops to use them.

As I see it, in other words, God acts in history and in your and my brief histories not as the puppeteer who sets the scene and works the strings but rather as the great director who no matter what role fate casts us in conveys to us somehow from the wings, if we have our eyes, ears, hearts open and sometimes even if we don’t, how we can play those roles in a way to enrich and ennoble and hallow the whole vast drama of things including our own small but crucial parts in it.

it’s not unusual in history for the solution to one problem to become the root of the next one.

Only now are art critics, scholars of children’s literature, historians of book-cover design and commercial illustration, and chroniclers of the gay experience in postwar America waking up to the fact that Gorey is a critically neglected genius. His consummately original vision--expressed in virtuosic illustrations and poetic texts but articulated with equal verve in book-jacket design, verse plays, puppet shows, and costumes and sets for ballets and Broadway productions--has earned him a place in the history of American art and letters.

Hanoi professed to be unimpressed by what it called “puppetization.” “It is nothing but hackneyed juggling,” said the North Vietnamese premier, Pham Van Dong. “To use Vietnamese to fight Vietnamese is indeed an attractive policy for the United States. When one has money and guns, can there be a better way to reach one’s aims than simply to distribute money and guns? Unfortunately, in the present epoch, such a paradoxical move is flatly impossible….Certainly there is no means, no magic way, to ‘ize’ the war into something other than the most atrocious and most abominable war in history.

In response to the demand for more black culture and history, the national bourgeoisie of the U.S.A. has adopted a technique different from that of their neo-colonialist puppets in the West Indies. Having that security which comes from the possession of capital, they feel confident in making certain concessions to black culture in their educational institutions and media of public communications. As always, they concede the lesser demand to maintain the total structure of white capitalist domination, hoping to siphon off young blacks into a preoccupation with African history and culture divorced from the raw reality of the American system as it operates on both the domestic and international fronts. That gambit must not work. Imagine the juicy contradictions — Rockefeller finances chair on African history from the profits of exploiting South African blacks and upholding apartheid! Black revolutionaries study African culture alongside of researchers into germ warfare against the Vietnamese people! We blacks in the Americas have missed the opportunity when a more leisurely appraisal of our past might have been possible.

Indeed, they felt it their duty to disabuse me of my weaponized history. They had seen so many Malcolmites before and were ready. Their method was rough and direct. Did black skin really convey nobility? Always? Yes. What about the blacks who’d practiced slavery for millennia and sold slaves across the Sahara and then across the sea? Victims of a trick. Would those be the same black kings who birthed all of civilization? Were they then both deposed masters of the galaxy and gullible puppets all at once? And what did I mean by “black”? You know, black. Did I think this a timeless category stretching into the deep past? Yes? Could it be supposed that simply because color was important to me, it had always been so? I

You do know who I am, don’t you, Trip? You understand how serious I am about protecting my clients while paving their way into history. Can you really be that stupid to think I would take you at your word? I protect my investments…even from themselves.” “I have a wife, daughters.” “You should have thought of them before you hired two sex workers in less than twenty-four hours.” He was visibly shaking now. “I warned you what would happen if you crossed me,” I reminded him. “I didn’t cross you. This isn’t what it looks like,” he sputtered. “The girl you hired this morning? She turned eighteen last week. Your oldest daughter is what? Sixteen?” I asked. “I-It’s a sex addiction. I’ll get help,” Trip decided. “We’ll keep it quiet, I’ll get treatment, and everything will be fine.” I shook my head. “I see it’s not sinking in yet. You’re finished. There’s no way for you to throw yourself on the mercy of the court of public opinion, because they’ll eat you alive. Especially seeing as how you missed the vote on veterans benefits because you were paying to have your cock sucked.” Little beads of sweat dotted his forehead. “You threw it all away because you couldn’t keep your dick in your pants. Your career, your future. Your family. Your wife will leave you. Your daughters are old enough that they’ll hear every salacious detail of Daddy’s extracurricular sex life. They’ll never look at you the same again.” I nodded at the open folder in his lap. “I’ve already had a press release drafted about how my firm was forced to sever ties with you after learning about your sexual exploits.” He closed his eyes, and I had to turn away when his lip began to tremble. “Please. Don’t do this. I’ll do anything,” he begged. He was yet another weak, pathetic addition to the long list of men who risked everything just to get off. “I’ll give you a choice. You’ll resign from Congress immediately. You’ll go home and tell your wife and daughters that you had an epiphany and that your time together is precious. You don’t want to work a job that keeps you away from them so much anymore. You’ll go to fucking therapy. Or you won’t. You’ll save your marriage or you won’t. One thing you won’t do is ever cheat on your wife again. Because if you do, I’ll deliver copies of every photo and every video to your wife, your parents, your church, and every member of the media between here and fucking Atlanta.” Trip put his head in his hands and let out a broken moan. I almost wished he’d put up more of a fight, then smothered that feeling. “Get out. Go home, and don’t ever give me a reason to share the information I’ve collected.” “I can be better. I can do better,” he said, rising from the chair like a puppet on strings. “I don’t give a fuck,” I said, leading the way to the door. He was weak. No one could build a foundation on weakness.

Only the Golden Family of Genghis could rule as khan, so while he crowned himself amir of Transoxiana, making Samarkand his capital, Tamerlane set up a puppet khan and married a khan’s widow, Saray Mulk Khanum. She was around thirty years old, ‘surpassingly beautiful’ and directly descended from Genghis, allowing Tamerlane to adopt the title gürkan – imperial son-in-law. Constantly at war expanding his territories, he was an emperor in all but name. He had forty-three favoured concubines, but Saray alone was his adviser, serving as his regent in Samarkand when he was away fighting, the chief of his wives.