Latest news with #empire
Daily Mail
19-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Shocking downfall of glamorous QVC shampoo tycoon who's now a 'crazy cat lady'
She was once at the helm of a haircare empire so successful it featured on QVC and counted comedy icon Joan Rivers among her friends. But former California tycoon Jeannie Maxon, 69, suffered a stunning fall from grace after allegedly leaving 106 Persian cats inside a roasting U-Haul truck.
The National
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
Best photos of July 11: From drought in Afghanistan to Oasis returning to Manchester
Each player begins with one of the great empires of history, from Julius Caesar's Rome to Ramses of Egypt, spread over Europe and the Middle East. Round by round, the player expands their empire. The more land they have, the more money they can take from their coffers for each go. As unruled land and soldiers are acquired, players must feed them. When a player comes up against land held by another army, they can choose to battle for supremacy. A dice-based battle system is used and players can get the edge on their enemy with by deploying a renowned hero on the battlefield. Players that lose battles and land will find their coffers dwindle and troops go hungry. The end goal? Global domination of course.
Telegraph
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Apple's mega-bucks sci-fi series remains one of the most bonkers shows on TV
As a technology company, Apple is renowned for its super-minimalist designs. But its rip-roaringly over-the-top sci-fi romp, Foundation (Apple TV +), has the very opposite philosophy as it returns for a thrillingly calorific third season. Ludicrous, lavish and larkingly largely than life, it is one of the most bonkers TV shows ever made and all the richer for that lack of inhibition. Foundation is science fiction with rocket jets cranked to the maximum – and benefits from gorgeously evocative special effects which have the camp charm of a 1970s prog rock album cover. It is loosely adapted from the cult Isaac Asimov novels about the slow decline of a vast intergalactic empire that Asimov envisioned as a sort of Rome among the stars (the books were a huge influence on George Lucas's Star Wars). The latest series picks up the story after a 152-year time jump – and following significant behind-the-scenes upheaval that saw production temporarily suspended in early 2024, resulting in the departure of showrunner David Goyer. That delay came amid rumours that Foundation's $45 million-per-year budget was too hefty even for a company with Apple's bottomless pockets. However, such problems have seemingly been ironed over. With little evidence of penny-pinching, the series reunites viewers with Lee Pace as hysterically camp galactic emperor Cleon and Jared Harris as immortal mathematician Hari Seldon. He is the architect of the 'Foundation' – a sort of shadow imperium designed to keep human civilisation alive after he predicts the Empire's inevitable collapse. Foundation has the scale and sweep of Star Wars or Star Trek. But its intricate plot and vast cast place it closer in spirit to Game of Thrones. The Thrones parallels are made more explicit with the arrival of Westeros actor Pilou Asbæk, playing an apparently psychic war-lord referred to as 'The Mule'. He is a literal disturbance in the force, who blazes a trail of chaos across the galaxy and jeopardises the future of both the Foundation and the Empire – and eventually comes into contact with vapid intergalactic influencers Toran (Cody Fern) and Bayta (Synnøve Karlsen) Seldon, who lives on as a hologram, predicted the Mule's emergence. And so he and his protege Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell) are woken from cryosleep to deal with this new threat. But though they are ready for action, their old nemesis Cleon (Pace) has lost his interest in life as supreme overlord. He has instead morphed into Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski – spending his days flapping around in a dressing gown and puffing on spliffs. Luckily for the Empire, the weight of the galaxy does not sit on his shoulders alone. Cloned from the original Cleon, at any one time, the Emperor exists in three forms: as a young man (Dawn, played by Cassian Bilton), an older one (Day, aka Pace) and the elderly (Dusk – Terrence Mann). With Day busy toking his way to oblivion, the task of keeping manners on the Mule and Foundation rests with Dawn and Dusk. They are assisted by creepy robot adviser Demerzel (Laura Birn), while the series also introduces Tómas Lemarquis as Magnifico Giganticus, The Mule's shy and seemingly harmless jester and court musician. Newcomers will want to catch up with the previous two seasons. Whatever else it is, Foundation is not a binge-watch to dive into head-first. Meanwhile, fans of the books will be interested to see whether it can pull off the huge surprise that Asimov carried off with his Mule storyline. Do so, and Foundation will have achieved a shock up there with the Red Wedding on Game of Thrones. But even if it mucks up the Mule twist, this is a sci-fi show like no other – gorgeous, cerebral and unapologetically out to lunch.
Yahoo
07-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion - Putin's talk of soldiers' feet puts the lie to Russian nationalist myths
Vladimir Putin recently admitted that Russia is an artificial construct created by violence. This is a bombshell, putting to the lie Russian propaganda's longstanding claim that some spiritual entity called Russia has existed since time immemorial. In fact, Putin reduced Russia to its soldiers' feet — hardly an elevated comparison. In his address to the plenary session of the Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 20, Putin made the following astounding, and deeply subversive, claim: 'wherever the foot of a Russian soldier steps is ours.' Whereas we apply the word 'Russian' to both the ethnic designation (russkii) and the political designation (rossiiskii), Russians distinguish between the two. Significantly, Putin specifically referred to the ethnically Russian russkii soldier. In effect if not in intent, Putin reduced Russia (the political entity) to the lands conquered by ethnically russkii soldiers, thereby giving the lie to the claim that Russia is a 'federation' of happily coexisting nations, the largest of which happens to be russkii. This is an admission both of Russia's being (and always having been) an empire, and of the subordinate status of its non-Russian nations, brought into the imperial fold by soldiers — that is, by violence. Ukrainians, Poles, Finns and scores of other nations know this quite well, and it shouldn't surprise us that they are allergic to the presence of the feet of Mother Russia's children on their lands. Who can blame them for wanting to put as many yards as possible between them and those imperialist Russian feet? None of this is new or surprising to such leading Sovietologists as Paul Goble, who have spent decades reminding policymakers that the non-Russians of the former Soviet Union are strategically important to the West, because they are the only thing standing between Russia as an expanding empire and the rest of the world. These states possess the wherewithal to maintain Russia as a more or less stable object of containment. But such ruminations presuppose that Russia exists, whereas Putin, its putative head, unwittingly subverted and reduced it to an artifice of history. The logic is simple. If Russia is a function of soldiers' feet and where they happen to land, then it's neither imagined by lofty-minded intellectuals determined to reach out to the oppressed masses nor primordially present as a self-identifying agent of history since the dawn of time. And Russia is certainly not the Third Rome or God's gift to humanity. Rather, it's just a bunch of real estate cobbled together by its soldiers' feet. But if so, then the Russia that exists today or that existed in the past is an arbitrary collection of dirt. Because Muscovite rulers sent the feet in one direction and not another, the resultant 'our' territory is merely the product of the serendipitous whims of autocrats. Had its rulers not embarked on expansion and let the feet stay at home, Russia might have been as tiny as the Kremlin. This matters because Russian political culture insists, and has insisted, that Russia is a quasi-mystical entity enjoined by the divine to save the world. That culture also insists that Russia was already present in the guise of the state known as Kyivan Rus some 1,000 years ago. Regardless of whether that state was or was not Ukrainian or proto-Ukrainian, it obviously follows from Putin's own claims that it definitely wasn't Russian. How could it be, since russkii soldiers and their land-grabbing feet did not exist in the city called Kyiv a millennium ago? They may have existed in the town called Moskva in the marshy wooded areas north of Kyiv, but that's hardly a grand and glorious way to initiate a divinely ordained state. So where does Putin's demolition of Russia leave Russians and their feet? Pretty much nowhere. Russia is just a bunch of stuff randomly acquired over the years, Russians are reduced to an accidental agglomeration of folks — akin to the commuters at Grand Central Station during rush hour. Their soldiers' feet are transformed into mere physical appendages without any rooting in a nation or state. This bodes ill for Putin. If Russia doesn't really exist as a nation, then he becomes little more than a puppet at the mercy of historical forces — and his imperial ambitions are doomed to fail. After all, if he can only ultimately rely on feet, he won't get very far. Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as 'Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires' and 'Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Arab News
26-06-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
US is at war with Iran — and with itself
Forget about the war with Iran for a moment. The conflict inside the US, with universities, foreign students, immigrants, and the polarization between interventionists and isolationists, may have far more impact on the country's future as a world power or on the empire it has built itself up to be in the 20th century. In this conflict, the US is at war with itself and has much to lose. When the dust settles, what will matter is whether what the US achieved through war can be preserved in times of peace. We have seen how that failed in Iraq and Afghanistan, when after a military victory and occupation, the US did not succeed in creating a local government that could control the country as its ally. For an empire, military power is important for expansion, but empires consolidate their control by recruitment. Former empires controlled vast territories with very few people because they could co-opt the locals who then ruled on their behalf. Romans ruled most of the known world for almost a millennium because the conquered could become Romans, absorbing the culture and language and serving the empire. Some emperors, such as Septimius Severus and Philip the Arab, were from Carthage or the town of Shahba in the Roman province of Arabia, now in Syria. The British in India ruled over tens of millions with tens of thousands, incorporating officials, administrators and the military. Several early Ottoman grand viziers were also originally recruited as slave boys in the Balkan provinces, such as Serbia and Croatia, and rose through the ranks both through meritocracy and by joining Sufi religious orders. The empire that America built is ruled by global corporations and cultural influence through technology, education, innovation and lifestyle. You know you have landed in one of its provinces from the signs in the streets, the way people dress and, to a certain extent, what can loosely be described as American values. It is a system that anyone can join and become part of. Immigrants become Americans in ways that they can never become Chinese or Russian. When the dust settles, what will matter is whether what the US achieved through war can be preserved in times of peace Nadim Shehadi America spread its influence through education, immigration and its belief in a universal mission to uphold and preserve American values of freedom, democracy and human rights. This universalism is deeply rooted in puritan beliefs and emphasizes education and equality among people as a model — the city upon a hill that was meant to be a model for all nations. These are the three pillars of American soft power. America was always a reluctant empire. After all, it revolted against the British Empire and is composed of a population that left Europe to create a free and egalitarian society. So, the pendulum swings between interventionism and isolationism, with one administration dismantling what the previous one achieved. I lived in the US for seven years and barely began to understand the complexity of its society. But then again, I am also Lebanese and, believe me, I can recognize acute and toxic polarization when I see it. I am not sure if the Trump phenomenon is behind the polarization of the country, whether it is a symptom of it or if it is a kind of backlash against a system that has become so rigid that half the country feels alienated by it. The result is what we have now — a feeling that the country is imploding under the tension of extreme polarization, which future historians will probably describe far better than I can. Symptoms of the American malaise are obvious: complicated phenomena like the conflict between the Trump administration and universities such as Harvard, together with the protests in California about immigration policies. America has also proved to be an unreliable ally when each administration reverses the policies of its predecessors. When foreign students are seen as a threat to the US, it means that the country is losing confidence in itself, its cultural values and recruiting power. An experience of living and studying in the US should be seen as producing assets to America and a threat to students' own strict societies if, say, they come from China, Russia or Iran. Even when they protest against the US itself, these foreign students are learning that protests are possible and realize that they are not possible at home. They are becoming American. US power is challenged by China and its BRICS allies, but America has the upper hand as long as students choose it for education Nadim Shehadi It is also absurd to think that the protests in California are directed against the application of immigration laws. It is precisely because the US is a country that is governed by the rule of law that it attracts immigrants, especially those escaping the rule of drug cartels and failed states in Latin America. If faith in the rule of law is no longer there, and immigrants are no longer welcome, then this is far more dangerous to what America stands for. Silicon Valley, which produced many of the leaders of the tech industry, was also part of that recruitment ability. The brightest and most creative, whether products of Syrian, Indian or South African immigration, all became part of America's empire, together with countless executives of American companies and banks. In occupied Iraq, the US lost its alliances among both Shiite and Sunni because it proved to be an unreliable ally when President Barack Obama fixed a date for withdrawal as an election campaign promise. The Iraqi Shiites were eventually recruited by Iran, which gained more control in the country. The Sunnis also felt abandoned after Sunni tribes had worked with the Bush administration to fight Al-Qaeda in the north. Afghanistan is another story. American power is challenged by China and its BRICS allies, but America has the upper hand as long as students choose it for education. Every emigrant wants to become American and its allies will not worry that the next administration will reverse policies and abandon them. In the war with Iran, these are battles that cannot be lost and that will affect the outcome as much as, if not more than, the military operations.
