They are not friends. I am a black woman with black children and grandchildren. If they voted to take away our rights, not a friend.

The average black american thinks access to the public purse is a right btw

Yeah i don't think maga cult members realize that when they finally realize they've been conned and want to come back into our lives that were going to want nothing to do with them.

oh no I'm going to lose all my black female friends!

I believe that everyone deserves respect, no matter their political views. However,

Then he and does the 'First they came for the' thing like he's some kind of 1930s jew for being denied his WFH do-nothing job at the Federal Bureau of Basket Weaving

I would not be friends with them anymore.

remember when they all threatened this over the vaccine and nothing happened

I don't have friendships with treasonous ladygardens. Never have, never will.

or friendships at all?

I'm honestly so withdrawn at this point that I haven't been navigating any relationships at all.

Wow….these comments are sad. I'm conservative and my sibling is liberal. I have many liberal friends. I can't imagine not speaking because of politics. Civil discourse is good.

NAZI ALERT

Lol the time for that was prior to 2016 ideally, but definitely prior to the last election cycle.

Heh, the time for civility was before we lost two elections, should've let us win idiot

If it was just politics, that'd be one thing. This isn't politics. We keep hearing that we are part of the "parasite class" or we "don't deserve our paychecks" or our work is "low productivity". That is just straight vitriol and ignorant hate. I don't need that in my life.

nooo you're being too mean!

Here's the same user /u/TheHermeticLibrarian gleefully implying that CEOs/Trump should be violently killed:

Man…if the oligarchs think we celebrated too much when the United Health CEO was taken out, they aren't ready for the party that will happen after Cheesar kicks the bucket.

All of this titanic rage because he's mad at his mother

The neozis all voted for Trump. Meaning anyone who voted for Trump have values and beliefs that align with real life, bonafide, proud to be neonazis. And if your beliefs align with Nazis that makes you a Nazi.

how many nazis are at your table, again?

Anyway the rest of the post is just this forever

...was the Deep State real, bros?

Shortest possible summary:

Reed Richards grows up beaten with a belt by his dad, bullied by kids three grades below him at school, has Ben Grimm as his friend who saves him from bullies since childhood. Goes on exploration mission where Doom fricks up a formula and creates the fantastic four in an accident.

Normal fantastic four adventures. Reed gets into a free candy van ( travels to alternate universe ) with zombies inside but survives. Reed hooks up with Sue Storm, gets mind r*ped into becoming a workaholic, gets cucked by Sue Storm, gets unmindraped and apologizes to Sue, keeps getting cucked by Sue, more adventures, gets back with Sue, World destroying tragedy occurs and Sue's Dad dies, gets cucked by Sue again because he told Ben to watch over Sue while he saved the world instead of ignoring millions of deaths and focusing on only Sue instead, fricks up further by asking Sue to marry him at her dad's funeral. Fantastic 4 disbands. Reed returns to live with his dad who used to beat him with a belt when Reed was a kid.

Reed then gets contacted by Sue Storm from the future who informs him that cucking Reed destroyed the universe. Reed then does the next logical thing and fakes his death in an explosion in his house which kills his dad ( idk if anybody else was in the house I can't remember every single detail ) and then tries to take over his Earth to save it. He loses and is lost in another dimension. While lost in this dimension, Reed becomes immortal, does not need to eat or shit anymore ( I am not 100% sure if that was always the case but I missed it or if he gained those additional powers because of being lost in the other dimension ).

Reed comes back with a city called "City" which is a giant fully sealed city sized space where time moves far slower than outside. So a few weeks outside is a thousand years inside. Reed then takes his "children of tomorrow" who grew up over generations in the city and again tries to take over the Earth. Reed destroys Marvel Gods and the most powerful mutants. Gets defeated by Tony Stark's Brain Tumor. ( This is not tongue in cheek he actually gets defeated by Tony Stark's sentient brain tumor ). He is imprisoned.

Reed escapes prison with the help of future Sue/ Kang and takes over the world. Fixes world hunger, stops wars, collects infinity stones which have emerged because of all the instability he has caused resulted in them popping up thousands of years before they were supposed to which is what future Sue wanted to save the universe. Future Sue cucks Quicksilver and Tony Stark's brain tumor turns out to be an infinity stone which Reed removes from his brain while killing him, its okay though, Tony Starks brain waves hack the network so he is alive in electronic format and later gets his body back. Reed loses the fight to conquer the world and control all the infinity stones and gets locked up again meanwhile Future Sue/ Kang tries to go back further in time to save reality. Reed cries like a b-word ( Again not hyperbole he actually cries like a b-word cradling himself like a toddler having a breakdown ).

The 1610 universe gets invaded by universe 616 Galactus and Reed escapes prison again and goes to the main 616 Universe Reed Richards Baxter building to steal the data on how to defeat Galactus. Sees Valeria ( Reed's daughter from 616 universe ) there and gets sad like a b-word because he never got to marry his Sue and have kids. Returning to his Earth, he saves his planet by opening a portal to a dimension without worlds to devour while the heroes push galactus though the hole and Reed closes it.

Reed confesses in a destroyed baxter building to Sue that they should have gotten together while Sue says lol no. Cucked again. Sue goes on a few more adventures until she meets an alternate reality version of spider ham ( Miles Morhames ) Spiderman from a universe where all superheroes are different animals and spider ham is a pig with spiderman powers. ), and you won't believe this but, Spiderpig ( Miles Morhames) tells Sue that the realities that have the highest odds of surviving are the ones where Sue has a child with Reed Richards because their kid is always pure kino and improves the survival odds of any reality it is born into. The pig knows this because he has seen this in many realities and his own reality died because Sue did not have a kid with Reed. Sue wants to be in denial but ends up meeting Reed and Reed is like kino lets frick but Sue instead locks him into an energy field and it looks like she is going to snip snip his peepee and take the sperm directly from the source all science way instead of the s*x frick way.

Sue has a child, but turns out it is not Reeds and in flashback we find out Reed talked Sue out of having his kid and convinced her to have faith and have Ben's kid instead. Oh yeah I forgot to mention at some point in all the stuff that happened above, Reed got cucked by Ben his childhood protector who ended up having a child with Sue now. Reed acts like he is happy with the outcome as well and pretends to be a good guy with the good guys.

Around the same time or perhaps only a few weeks or months down the line Reed has built another city and has been exterminating alternate realities in what are known as incursions ( its a whole other huge storyline, the only point you need to understand is that two Earth's can see each other in the sky and one Earth needs to be destroyed for the other to survive ). Reed has been killing all the Earths that pop up in the sky without anyone else knowing about it. Now it is the showdown between the last two Earth's and Reed makes friends with the evil villains from the main Earth 616. Reed uses "City" 2 and his "Children of Tomorrow" V2 as a distraction in the final battle as he escapes in a ship meant to survive traveling in a vacuum without reality.

Reed awakens with the Villains in battleworld where 616 Doom is now God ( another whole other storyline all you need to know is that Reed is now an evil peepee ). Reed cooperates with 616 Reed to take down doom. Gets to the powersource of Doom in this reality and betrays 616 Reed and tries to convert him into a monkey through a reverse time bubble while calling 616 Reed sentimental and gay (bad). The living battery Molecule Man says but I like homosexual content and kills evil Reed instead. Reed has been cucked to death by life.

Reed is moved into a new continuity of universe 616 but his storyline here was shit so I skipped it all for the next few years until we get to the interesting part.

Reed is a prisoner but manages to escape using body horror science frickery shenanigans. He then goes on a collect resources adventure and builds himself a teleporter to another reality where he wants to take over and create a universe in his image or at least his memory of his previous universe. He even invites Miles Morales who was the only other survivor of his past universe but Miles says no fam am good so Reed goes to new reality alone.

In new reality Reed says,"I am the one who cucks", and cucks all the superheroes before they became superheroes by not letting their origin story happen by doing shit like fricking up the fantastic four by giving them the wrong formula that makes their ship crash without giving superpowers, or not letting the spider that gives peter parker spider man powers bite him.

Reed Richards builds his "City" with time slowdown powers for the fourth time and is ruling the Earth for the 2nd time. He gets cucked by Tony Starks Dad and gets locked inside his own city for 24 months while the world is free to try and escape his designs and superheroes make a comeback with Tony Stark ( teenager ) trying to save reality and prepare for Reed when he comes back when the city reopens.

That's the general gist of Reed "The Maker" Richards from Earth 1610.

My opinion of the man:

I like Reed "The Maker" Richards for the primary reason that he has an entire arc for why he ended up the way he did. He is pretty much Mr Fantastic if Mr. Fantastic had a shitty childhood, only found horrors more often than not when he explored all of reality, and never managed to successfully form a family of his own. He is the answer to the question," What if you raised the smartest person in the universe in a shitty environment butt who still believed in fixing the world?" and the answer is you get a goody well behaved boy whose path to heck is paved with disappointments and many many disillusioning moments until only the core intellect and the desire to dominate and succeed remains.

Just like 616 Mr Fantastic is not a normal Reed Richards in that he is the extreme positive representation of a Reed Richards across the multiverse, one who has been transformed into a family man as much as a genius scientist. In a similar vein Reed "The Maker" Richards is also an extreme outlier in the multiverse, a version of Reed who is the culmination of failures in his personal life filled with personal miseries. While the majority of Reeds in the multiverse represent genius intellect that in time abandons family to instead focus on saving everything and everyone, 616 Reed is the man who chose family, and 1610 Reed is the one who chose family but failed to get one. Which is what makes him such an interesting deconstruction of what the original Mr Fantastic is. For he isn't just a colder Reed Richards, or an abandoning his old life Reed Richards, he is our main Reed Richards if he was still as caring a man but without things working out with his loved ones. He is the one who embraced his ego instead of his humility. Who embraced himself because nobody else could embrace him in any way that mattered. Someone twisted into a monstrosity not with one bad traumatic experience, but all the little small ones where not a single one itself can be said to be the thing that turned him.

I also like Reed "The Maker" Richards because in his "The Maker" persona he does lots of crazy shit like create his own civilization, take over the world, save the planet, Destroy Asgard, manage to fight off a living singularity, survive the death of the multiverse, try to turn the main Mr Fantastic into an actual monkey by reverse evolving him. All the zany evil bullshit with rule of cool science fiction gizmos. Doing all the shit that he did he ended up being one of the greatest villains created by Marvel in the 2010s and is probably still one of the greatest villains in Marvel after Doom.

In the end the most disappointing thing to me about The Maker is that after secret wars for many years it felt like his potential as a villain was wasted, until the Ultimate invasion arc took off where he again became the superior evil scientist archetype. Coming back more powerful every time.

Another thing that annoys me is that the "City" goes through 1,000 years of time while a month passes outside, so why doesn't he just spam 6 months of outside time instead and get 6,000 years ahead with his "City" people and then take over the world. I know it is a plot contrivance but it is still annoying that he stays in the time bubble only long enough to still be barely defeated by the heroes.

It also feels very r-slurred that Reed Richards kept chasing after Sue Storm instead of just, idk, getting laid with as many foids as he wanted from whichever dimension he felt like going to. I know that love exists, but come on, getting cucked by the same foid multiple times and still not trying anybody else? Really?

Overall Score for Reed "The Maker" Richards: 8/10.

Strong points:

1) Genius nerd character.

2) Good plot

3) Has an actual arc in which he evolves and changes as a person.

4) Does dumb universe breaking shit during his good guy phase and does crazy evil sci-fi shit during his evil phase.

5) Can be defined as complex

6) Cool body horror designs at times with unique uses of his stretchy abilities.

Weak points:

1) Keeps getting cucked

2) Had a few years of shitty stories involving him after "secret wars".

3) Turned evil a little too fast for my liking, like going from 80 to 100 and somewhere the 90 point is missing in terms of losing his shit. ( I wasted hours looking for that missing 90 before realizing it just wasn't ever there in any comic. )

4) Hasn't really collected any meaningful wins other than surviving the death of all reality that one time.

What I am hoping for from the future of Reed "The Maker" Richards:

I want him to win. I want him to come out of the city unashamedly evil and just start winning all over the place. Then I want him to make peace with the heroes in a sort of stalemate because The Maker isn't pure evil, he is an butthole who has no problem with being morally bankrupt to get what he wants but doesn't actually have a "Be evil for the sake of being evil" setting and is willing to negotiate with the heroes of his universe for a longer peace where he rules his own kingdom. Then have The Maker become a second cooler no family version of Reed Richards from the main universe, with both of them going on adventures to explore the multiverse. I think that would be kino. One Reed Richards winning with his family and morality, and one Reed Richards winning without a family or morality.

Conclusion:

Good character. Great arc and evolution of the character. Some stories with him in them were trash. I want more of the Maker when he is done right. Like a cosmic horror alien intelligence entity in a human form where the human part randomly shines through.

What do you guys think? Let me know in the comments.

I was extremely fortunate growing up in my shithole backwater redneck rural farmtown, in the middle of the Free State province. Even by the time the mid-2000s arrived, the little mothball of a town was already crumbling in infrastructure. The township is currently known as THE most corrupt and shithole-esk municipality in the entire province, which is quite an achievement.

The trash lorries were never repaired or maintained, so that by 2010, all of them were brokenshit downtrodden, so that one of the local farmers had to donate a 2nd hand tractor with a wagon, just so that the town could ferry it's fricking ever growing heaps of black bags away from everybody's home.

And yet, the one exceptional privilege I had growing up, was that our Town Hall had a truly magnificent Public Library, which had collection of both fiction & non-fiction books well beyond what such a godforsaken shitheap town like ours ever deserved. All because the Head Librarian woman was an afrikaans ballbuster who beat up any whoreson who ever dared to abuse books in her sight.

It was here where I discovered a large collection of dilapidated Sven Hassel novels. During this time the Satanic Panic was in full swing, so conservacuck busybodies were prowling about the town to denounce any of the church's denomination, who's kids were reading such satanic shit such as Harry Potter or Digimon. Even doctor who books became anathema for god fearing folks.

So I knew I had to keep secret the Sven Hassel books I took out from the Library, because of their extremely gruesome front covers.

Or the massive amounts of Nazi imagery

So as a teenager, these types of books were very clearly the type of shit which would be WAY above the PG13 age-restriction, in which your parents would ban/forbid you from watching horror or gore movies like Aliens or Predator. It was clear for me and many who grew up in conservative/religious households, we would only ever be allowed to read adult material like this once we were outside of the thumb of influence of our parents.

So we read it in secret. For whatever reason, Sven Hassel appeared to have been popular for many Afrikaans young men, in many towns over in Safrica. I even managed to befriend some old stoner guy, who owned a metric shitload of WW2 novels written in the past century, like holy smokes this guy had every single WW2 fiction and non-fiction book about WW2 ever written, in ALL kinds of states! Some were in mint condition, and other books, like the Sven Hassel books he gave to me, were yellowed-out delipidated books from the 1970s!!

So many young men were falling in this History Buff (aka exclusively fricking WW2 shit ) and collecting WW2 stories from afar. And Sven Hassel had this weird underground mass popularity for young afrikaans men 16-24 young adult age group.

The reason? Because Sven Hassel novels were all incredibly brutal, as in brutality incarnate.

WHAT WERE SVEN HASSLE NOVELS ABOUT:

So what on earth hat were Sven Hassel books about?? They were all WW2 fiction novels revolving around penal battalions sent to their deaths, usually towards the Eastern Front against the Soviet Union, IN ww2. They depicted a cast of lowlifes, criminals, traitors and political dissidents who had fallen into the bad side of the Nazi regime, and were given one final chance of "redemption" from the eyes of the brutal regime, and subsequently always given the most suicidal front of the frontline position and jobs.

The protagonist penal Wehrmacht soldiers in Sven Hassel novels were quite unique in this time period of books, after WW2, and before the internet-era where facts could be checked from Smartphones. Being on the obvious "Bad Guy's" side of WW2, the protagonists were anything but heroic, they were the primeval anti-heroes.

And while anti-war novels with anti-hero archtypes existed from books like "All-Quiet-on-the-Western-Front" or Biggles the WW1 Biplane Bong antihero had existed in supreme abundance since the conclusion of the 1st World War, there were decisive differences between the characterization of books written from protagonists of WW1 & WW2.

WW1 anti-hero literature involved the dramatization of the futility and absurdity of war, and the cruelty of sending young men to die in Old men's conflicts. WW1 antihero and antiwar themes were more universal and "unpolitical" in terms of their timelessness.

The theming of WW2 was vastly different, considering the vast amounts of genocides taking places throughout the war, and NOT just from the Nazis. Croatians were busy slaughtering their Serbian Neighbours the moment the Wehrmacht gave them the opportunity. Belarussian partisans inflicted as much suffering upon their kin as Gestapo death squads, and Slavic families were culled based on whether they made the mistake of not supporting communists or nazis enough. There was a much greater sense of indefensible cruelty and warmongering, and was reflected as such in fiction.

Pretty much fricking zero perspectives made the day from the frontline kraut trooper's view in heroic or unheroic fiction in WW2 for pretty understandable reasons. The few exceptions like The-Forgotten-Soldier of Guy Sajer, a French Alsatian bastard whom was pressganged into the Wehrmacht due to his kraut ancestry, has a far more sympathetic theme in which unwilling participants found themselves swept into the maelstrom of the Nazi wars, and the subsequent horror and suffering they endured on the Eastern Front against their wills.

Sven Hassel was unique in the sense that the perspective was from the most base and barbaric men of the Wehrmacht.

Sven Hassel novels had a lot of dark themes, and would have been described as Grimdark if the moniker existed. Good men perish constantly for very little reason. A recurring meme is that the most noble and selfless of the Penal Battalion men, the best leaders and sergeants and men who try to look out for their fellow penal soldiers, tend to die like flies, whilst the lowest scum continue to survives the suicidal assaults like cockroaches. The maelstrom of the Eastern Front was legendary, but for those of us in Safrica, with finite resources, no internet and no access to European libraries, we had no capacity to gauge or experience it.

The Eastern Front housed some of the most ferocious battles fought in recorded human history, with death tolls and numbers ranging from the 100 000s to millions, a scope unthinkable for boers in a country, where our demographic barely numbered over 2 million, and yet twice than number of Russians were taught to have perished in Nazi POW camps alone, the amount of combat deaths on the Eastern Front alone numbered on a scale so depraved it defied imagination.

But because of the Cold War's censorship in South Africa, and censorship's momentum long after the fall of the Soviet Union, most of us took the word of Sven Hassel at face value, in terms of how he depicted events of the Eastern Front. We had absolutely no way of fact-checking his novels, or being capable of researching otherwise.

The sheer ferocity of the Eastern Front was captured in black-and-white pictures of mass-graves and the skeletons of cities reduced to rubble by Stukas and carpet bombing. Thus the sheer banality and brutality of description of warfare within Sven Hassel novels, gave him a lot of credence with people for like half a century, both in Safrican and Europe itself.

SVEN HASSEL BECAME FAMOUS:

Sven propelled himself to international fame, when he published "The Legion of the Darned" in 1953. The book provided an account of life as a German soldier on the Eastern Front, it opens with the author (book written in 1st person view) being tried and convicted as a deserter, and as a result being sent to a concentration camp.

The main character Sven as himself, spends a large amount of time suffering under the Nazi regime's prison system. He's recruited in bomb disposal for unexploded Bong aircraft-bombs,

before abruptly being "pardoned" and dispatched to a penal combat unit. Sven meets a bunch of degenerates who becomes his saviors throughout his misadventures and horrific ordeal on the Eastern Front, and the book climaxes as virtually everyone except the protagonist is gradually wiped out by the near end of the war in 1945, as Sven remains the lone survivor of the entire penal battalion of several hundred men, and is forced as the remaining veteran, to become company-commander, and train and equip the scrap of germany - old men and sickly teenagers.

Book got a bunch of accolades and positive criticism, and went on to be translated into a boatload of languages, including Dutch & English, which is found in Safrica. Legion of the Darned would become the first in a series of fourteen fiction novels detailing the misadventures and wartime experiences of Sven Hassel, as his own alter ego.

The books are pretty much interchangeable, with all of them occurring in different theaters of the Eastern Front, with a few exceptions, like when fictional Sven and the company of penal degenerates found themselves on an Italian troop transport bombed, and left afloat on open water, and endured much hardship stranded in the middle of the Mediterranean.

According to Sven, the books were fiction, but largely based upon real experiences which he had endured as an actual combat veteran captured by the Soviets in the final days of the Battle for Berlin in 1945, and then released amongst the few lucky fricks who survived Soviet detention.

The 1st book in particular has been reprinted for like 70 years.

BOOK MADE INTO FILM:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093546/

One of his bestsellers, the "Wheels of Terror", got made into the film "The Misfit Brigade".

Basically kraut version of Dirty Dozen. Not.....really.....good in my opinion.....

SVEN'S STYLE:

In spite of the drama to come, Sven Hassel was a spectacularly unique and engaging writer, he genuinely did have merits and talents as an author. He had the capacity to make exceedingly grim subjectmatter as enthralling, and many readers describe themselves as being bewitched by Sven, and continuing to read the continual atrocities depicted in his books, as if unable to look away from a car crash.

So the author is well liked and his books are often highly rated on websites like Amazon and Goodreads. And in a vacuum, as literary dark war fiction, they stand on their own as above average reviewed.

THE DRAMA: HISTORIC INACCURACY

So uhh, what's the problem? The issue is that pretty much every single one of Sven Hassel's 14 novels are all very VERY historically inaccurate. And while history is often coloured by bias, and Hollywood often takes liberties to tell stories and make movies, and holes can be punctured into pretty much all war fiction ever written, Sven is unfortunately in a league of his own, in terms of extremely levels of untruth and historic inaccuracy!

For those of us reading Sven Hassel novels in in the age before internet (2010 ) we genuinely took Sven's accounts at face value. Sven had eplicitly implied that while his books were fictional, they were based upon wartime experiences he personally endured, along with stories he had accumulated from his fellow soldiers.

But for those turbo neurodivergents whom studied WW2 and/or managed to acquire the fabled technology of Interwebs, you could come to conclusions about Sven Hassels's extreme levels of historic distortions pretty quickly. Additionally when I had the privilege to be have access to the University of Cape Town's library, I could also to my dismay determine that whilst I loved the Hassel novels, that Sven was pretty much full of shit.

Even worse for Sven Hassel fans is the truly depraved and massive rabbit hole of the many lies and untruths of Sven Hassel's life, and that since the beginning from as far back as 1953, Sven has had detractors whom documented his inaccuracies.

But because there was no internet, and because there were few ways to verify this shit one way or another, it pretty much didn't obtain momentum before 2000!

Like holy shit hold on to your pants!

https://www.svenhassel.com/biography/

According to Sven and his family estate (since even before the Internet-era and before he had a website), he claimed that at the age of 14 he joined the merchant navy as a cabin boy and worked on ships until his military service in 1936 he joined the Werhmacht because he was brokenshit poor at the time, and served until the end of the war in tanker units.

According to Sven it was in these panzer units where he met many batshit insane and colourful colleagues which inspired his equally batshit insane characters. He also claimed he had been sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in Danish prison for treason postwar, because he had served in Kraut forces which occupied Denmark.

Now according to Sven himself, as earlier stated, he had been apprehended by the Soviets in Berlin after unconditional surrender of werhmacht to the allies; and that he had spent multiple years hopping between POW camps postwar, from Soviet to French, and onwards.

BUT, local Danish newspapers had investigated postwar records, and determined that he had in fact been immediately arrested in Denmark in 1945 after the liberation and was held in prison there, first as a suspect and then as a convicted criminal, again because he had supposedly partook on occupying Denmark. And that he was released in 1949 after serving 4/10 years, as the Danish authorities gave amnesty to all Wehrmacht prisoners, as it cost more to house the frickers, than just let them be. According to the Danish papers, he had never been in either Soviet or french captivity

https://politiken.dk/navne/doedsfald/art5435426/Kul%C3%B8rt-dansk-krigsforfatter-er-d%C3%B8d

DANISH DOCUMENTARY CALLS SVEN A FRAUD:

https://www.dr.dk/presse/dr2-tager-seerne-bag-om-skandalen

Translated into English as best could with online Translator.

The basic story was that the reason Sven Hassel fricked off to Spain during the latter end of his life, was not because Hassel enjoyed Spanish countrysides so much, but because he had been culturally ostracized by his countrymen, and actual veterans of war - for both those who fought for the Wehrmaght and the Danish forces. They had called him out for his historic inaccuracy and apparent untruth about his non-service on the eastern front!

INACCURACIES

https://web.archive.org/web/20170925180602/http://www.litteratursiden.dk/blogs/ruben-palma/20121021

Again translated from Danish as best could. Upon his obituary some Danish historians went out of their way to highlight inaccuracies:

(1) Like many of the penal Battalion men in Hassel novels being furbished with Tiger tanks, which as absurd, as the Wehrmacht knew their extreme value, and Tigers were only ever furbished towards tanker Aces whom had proven themselves, NOT fricking random penal battalions whom would at best be furbished with Stugs or Panzer 4s when sent into teh suicical front engagements against enemy formations.

(2) Just like with Das Boot, pretty much everyone in the penal legions were anti-nazi and anti-Hitler, which is a perpetual clean Wehrmacght myth. Most soldiers were loyal or ambivalent, and only became bitter during the closing years

(3) There is great falsehood towards kraut POWs escaping very easily from Soviet detention centers and gulags. While kraut soldiers regularly escaped Soviet military detention, they were ruthlessly guarded, and were not these caricatures of dysfunction, in which all the menial labourers were happy-go-lucky fools whos just scraped to get by, and kraut prisoners could just walk out with timing.. Whilst other depictions of POW camps as slavedriving starving centers are more accurate.

(4) While combat is accurately depicted as ferocious chaotic hellzones accurately, often penal battalions are given equipment and weaponry not accurate to specific theaters on the Eastern Front - things easily picked out by actual veterans, as absurd glaring errors. Gewehr 43s were rare, and not doled out to penal fricks, only for elite SS or Werhmaght troops. Instead mausers or Karabiner 98k (regular chambered rifle) were the most common foot trooper weapon, whom were usually organized around the well-performing MG42. Kraut platoons (20-50 men) were usually organized to have their machine gun as the central keystone weapon around which the platoon was built, with their rifles and submachine guns as the supporting suppression weapons, because of how extraordinarily effective the MG42/41 machinegun was, not the other way around.

SVEN HASSEL STILL LARGELY POPULAR IN BONGLAND AND ANGLOSPHERE:

The thing is that in spite of all of this dramaram within Denmark, where Sven is largely seen as a fraud and hack, these detractors are largely localized, while in England he is still largely highly regraded, and fricking journos take his personal website at absolute face value!

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/sven-hassel-soldier-who-won-the-iron-cross-and-wrote-bestsellers-8317043.html

Here's guardian actually doing legwork for Sven's obituary in 2012

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/oct/02/sven-hassel

=====(from TheGuardian)

On the lurid covers of the later paperback British editions, the double s in Hassel's name was printed as the double lightning-flash symbol of Heinrich Himmler's SS. Billed as worm's-eye-views of warfare from the German standpoint, the books contain some crude humour and a great deal more cruelty and brutality – they are war comics without the pictures, devoured especially by teenage boys.

Mystery surrounds the events of Hassel's own life, not least because he appears as a character in his own books. By his own account he was born Sven Pedersen in Fredensborg, Denmark, and later adopted his mother's maiden name.

Historians dug holes in Hassel's novels, especially his accounts of German military units. The 27th Panzer regiment, for example, was not, as described, a punishment unit or German version of The Dirty Dozen. Hassel's account of his own life – and his war experience in particular – was also disputed by some, including the journ*list Erik Haaest.

There were allegations that Hassel had links to the Danish Nazi party and that he spent most of the war in Denmark, picking up his combat stories from veterans of the Danish Waffen-SS.

=====(end quote)

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/invisible-ink-no-109-sven-hassel-6378433.html

====(from Independant)

When I was a child, my father guiltily read Sven Hassel's paperbacks, keeping them in his bedside table where the children wouldn't find them. Gruesomely illustrated with photographs of concentration camp inmates and tanks rolling over corpses, they seemed to represent the populist voice of war experience, but a question mark remains over Hassel's real identity.

However, there's another side to the story. Hassel's critics have been disputing his claims for years, saying that his identity was falsified for another purpose; he never served in a Panzer Division at all but was in fact a Danish Nazi who patched together his books from stories told to him by Danish Waffen SS veterans after 1945, having spent most of the Second World War in occupied Denmark.

[This is where things get really weird

Unfortunately, his biggest critic, the writer Erik Haaest, was discredited after denying that there were ever concentration camps. Even worse, Haaest's version of Hassel's life, in which Hassel runs a porn empire and gets his wife to write his novels

====(end quote)

Yeah apparently some of Sven's detractors were holocaust deniers and wingnut weirdos themselves

have a good day dramatards!

!bookworms !historychads !deathtomicks !germs

!chuds

!blueanon

After making a post a little while ago about what to get at McDonalds, someone brought up Donald J Trumps standard McDonald's order

I thought to myself Trump doesn't look too bad for 78 (plus I was really fricking hungry, hadn't eaten since lunch the previous day) maybe I should give it a go?

The order is the following:

-2 filet of fish

-2 Big Macs

-1 large chocolate shake

I've never actually had any of these before so was excited to give it a go

This shit cost $34 kangaroo dollars and is 2225 calories total

EDIT: apparently it's actually 2758 calories, whatever it said on the machine was just straight up wrong

The Shake:

It's a shake, not too much to write about here. It tastes good cause it's all sugary crap. I decided to drink the shake in between sandwiches

Big Mac 1:

This shit was actually pretty good. Idk why they decided to put a piece of bread in between a burger but it tasted alright and the sauce was good

Filet o Fish 1:

I really didn't like this one, just tasted like gross nasty cheap fish on a shitty bun with shitty cheese, I guess the sauce was okay

This was when I realized I might have messed up, I already felt sick and light headed and I still had two more sandwiches to go

Filet o Fish 2:

Maybe the first one was just off, or maybe these things are addictive? This one just tasted better for some reason not sure why?

At this point I felt really fricking ill. But I'd come too far to back down now

Big Mac 2:

I'm sure this one was good, but by now I felt so gross I just wanted to get it down as fast as possible.

I tried to wash everything down with the rest of my shake. This was when I realized how sick I felt, thought I was going to pass out in the middle of a crowded McDonald's which would have been embarrassing. I was scared to stand up because I felt like I might collapse if I did. Even though I felt like death I wanted to truly complete this challenge so I made sure to suck every fricking drop (no homo) out of that chocolate shake

Conclusion:

I managed to complete this entire meal in about 35 minutes total. The most difficult part was finishing the shake at the end, which took me about 10 minutes

Holy shit I feel awful. Not to mention I'm sensitive to gluten and usually try and avoid it so I'm probably going to feel even worse tomorrow in my stomach. Donald J Trump is truly built different and I respect anyone who could eat this much goyslop in one sitting and genuinely enjoy it

I also feel like it's worth mentioning that McDonald's in Australia might be slightly less unhealthy than in the US. So while I did the best I could I might have not gotten the 100% full Trump McDonald's experience

Thanks for reading neighbors, remember to stay skinny and eat healthy, especially you ladies. btw I usually eat healthy so if you are a skinny lady reading this HMU

!superfriendsofcrosstalkpm !friendsofcrosstalkpm

Аnуоnе hаs ļínk tо fuļļ ?

Steve was leaving the football ground when he shouted back at some away fans. Moments later he was in handcuffs and under arrest.

He had shouted a homophobic slur, committing a hate crime that led to him being charged with a Section 5 Public Order offence. The case ended up in court, where he pleaded guilty, and he was banned from attending football matches in the UK for three years.

Now Steve - not his real name as he fears for the impact on his professional and personal life - is trying to make amends after coming through a fan education programme run by anti-discrimination charity Kick It Out.

A lifelong football fan, Steve had just watched his side play Chelsea and was leaving the stadium.

"I heard Chelsea fans shouting and I shouted back, 'Oi, you Chelsea rent boys', gave them a few gestures and thought nothing of it. I thought I was just having a bit of back and forth with the away fans," he said.

What followed is all a bit of a blur.

"I walked away and then all of a sudden I was surrounded by six security guards. And then from that point, a police officer arrested me and put the cuffs on."

"I'm in my 20s and I didn't really understand that [term]," Steve said. "I knew there was stuff around it, but I didn't really perceive why it was homophobic."

Steve was eventually referred to Kick It Out, which runs a fan education programme where offenders learn about the different types of discrimination and the impact their actions can have on victims.

"I accept that [what I did] was awful, and now it's about repaying that, turning that into something positive. I've had a look at myself... I'm willing to make amends," he said.

Sounds like not such a bad idea. Maybe we could organise to send some dramatards to these webinars to minimise homophobia on rdrama?

!football

!chuds !nooticers

The Washington Post's Opinion Section editor David Shipley resigned after owner Jeff Bezos mandated the section only cover two topics, personal liberties and free markets.

Why it matters: The changes will dramatically reshape The Post's opinion coverage, which has focused on a broad array of issues, especially politics and policy, for decades.

• "This is a significant shift, it won't be easy, and it will require 100% commitment --- I respect his decision," Bezos wrote in a note to staff Wednesday. "We'll be searching for a new Opinion Editor to own this new direction."

The big picture: The new announcement, following a controversial move by Bezos to kill presidential endorsements last year, shows how much Bezos is willing to assert his power to shape public opinion as the owner of one of the country's largest newspapers.

• The Post lost thousands of subscribers last year over Bezos' endorsement decision. Members of the Opinion Board resigned in protest.

Zoom in: Bezos said the Post will cover other topics "but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others."

• "There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader's doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job," Bezos wrote.

• "I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America's success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical --- it minimizes coercion --- and practical --- it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity," he added.

• "I'm confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I'm excited for us together to fill that void."

Between the lines: Bezos said he offered Shipley the opportunity to lead the section under the new guidelines, but "after careful consideration, David decided to step away," he wrote.

State of play: Bezos' announcement quickly drew backlash from journ*lists online, including at The Post.

• "Massive encroachment by Jeff Bezos into The Washington Post's opinion section today --- makes clear dissenting views will not be published or tolerated there," The Post's chief economics reporter Jeff Stein posted on X. "I still have not felt encroachment on my journ*lism on the news side of coverage, but if Bezos tries interfering with the news side I will be quitting immediately and letting you know."

Zoom out: The vast majority of America's largest newspapers by circulation didn't endorse a presidential candidate this year, marking a stark departure from previous election cycles and a turning point in the history of American opinion journ*lism.

• Opinion sections become a major source of contention within newsrooms during the first Trump Administration, with journ*lists at major newspapers urging their bosses to reevaluate their policies.

What to watch: Efforts by The Trump Administration to scrutinize media have forced media, entertainment and tech companies to make difficult decisions about how far they will go to defend their editorial values.

• Most notably, ABC in December settled a lawsuit filed against it by Donald Trump, even though some legal experts said ABC could've won the case.

• CBS News faces pressure to settle a $20 billion lawsuit with Trump, as its parent Paramount awaits regulatory approval to merge with Skydance Media.

minister is cute !coomers

!asians in shambles

SINGAPORE: Singapore will consider caning scammers in certain cases, in recognition of the serious harm they cause, Minister of State for Home Affairs and Social and Family Development Sun Xueling said on Tuesday (Mar 4).

She was responding to a suggestion from MP Tan Wu Meng (PAP-Jurong) in her speech laying out the Ministry of Home Affairs' (MHA) spending plans for the year ahead.

Dr Tan had earlier called for mandatory caning for scammers in egregious cases.

"We must send a clear message to scammers, the syndicates and those who abet them: If you mess with our people, make off with the life savings of Singaporeans, scam Singaporeans, we must do everything in our power to teach the scammers a lesson they won't forget," he said.

Ms Sun agreed with the need for stiff and deterrent sentences against those who facilitate scams.

After the recent introduction of new guidelines by a sentencing advisory panel, jail terms have generally been imposed for offences which facilitate scams, going as high as 19 months in one case, she noted.

GOING HARDER ON MONEY MULES

Ms Sun also announced that efforts to better detect money mule activity will be ramped up this year.

"We have been clamping down on them, because they are the main way overseas scammers launder their ill-gotten gains and transfer it out of Singapore," she said.

The Singapore Police Force (SPF) will share more information with banks on known mule accounts, to improve their fraud analytics and enable them to uncover other mule accounts, she said.

"We will also work with the industry to implement cooling-off measures for certain activities which are tell-tale signs of money mule activity," she said.

Ms Sun warned that anyone seeking an easy profit by passing on their SIM cards or bank accounts to strangers, while "turning a blind eye" to what they are used for, would be breaching the law.

"Let me be clear. This is a crime and there is an imprisonment term for passing on your SIM cards or bank accounts to facilitate scams. Claiming ignorance does not get you off the hook," said Ms Sun.

Over 8,000 money mules and scammers were investigated last year, from 25 islandwide anti-scam enforcement operations by the SPF, said Ms Sun.

Of them, over 660 have been charged in court and will be jailed if found guilty, she said.

In one concluded case, a money mule had received RM1,000 (US$224) for sharing access to his internet banking account, without taking "reasonable steps to ascertain the purpose of this arrangement", said Ms Sun.

The bank account was later used to launder more than S$160,000 (US$118,989) of criminal proceeds.

"The money mule was convicted and sentenced to six months' imprisonment," said Ms Sun.

In her speech, Ms Sun reiterated that scams were a huge concern globally, and a scourge Singapore has been fighting for several years.

Despite efforts such as making banking apps malware-resistant and blocking calls from known scam numbers, the total amount lost to scams still hit a new high of S$1.1 billion last year, she said.

This was a 70 per cent increase from the year before, noted Ms Sun.

"Many people are rightfully very concerned about this, and so is the government. We must and we will redouble our efforts in this fight against scams," she said.

No one at this retreat should be allowed to work on a Democratic campaign ever again. https://t.co/9gExI6jBtL

— Kat Abu (@abughazalehkat) March 2, 2025

Böögöö girl

— doodlelotl (@doodlelotl.bsky.social) 2025-03-03T22:01:21.494Z

https://old.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/1iyiyh5/islamophobia_claims_used_to_suppress_grooming/

https://old.reddit.com/r/reformuk/comments/1iyt73e/how_many_people_stay_in_silence_in_fear_of_losing/

https://old.reddit.com/r/glasgow/comments/1ies4sf/bizarre_poster_defending_child_abuse_grooming/

White people can be male feminists too

https://old.reddit.com/r/uknews/comments/1in8znn/bolton_grooming_gang_guilty_of_abuse_in_party/

@BrasilIguana !bikechads

Dying of food poisoning rn so I am firing on all cylinders as near death adrenaline floods my body.

The incorrect answer is the furry association. They do NOT think you want to be a dog, or to screw the pooch. This will be the first and last take that the average reader aware of…

— rDrama.net (@rdramanet) March 2, 2025

amazon execs r so mad LOLLL maybe stop asking dumb interview questions and people wouldn't build shit like thishttps://t.co/RMwouy3enr pic.twitter.com/sBdWTx2aFJ

— Roy (@im_roy_lee) February 28, 2025

Enter BetCDU/CSU/FDP (Merkel centrists) - 120,000 total betted - WINNER!

Enter BetAFD (Far-right free-speech-loving Nazis) - 12,600 total betted

Enter BetSPD/Greens (Commies/anti-nuclear environmentalists) - 1,200 total betted

Enter BetBSW (pro-russia meme party) / Other - 200 total betted

https://polymarket.com/event/germany-parliamentary-election?tid=1739759778867

!bets !goomble !goomblers !goombling !project2025

election takes place Feb 23

Closed

I understand video(s) may have been released via a media outlet tonight. I hope this “warrants” the state to “search” for certain devices and certain tapes at a certain location.

Thanks.

— Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) March 4, 2025

!britbongs

See also: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10454256/