text:
Barret Wallace

Barret Wallace (バレット・ウォーレス) is a character in Square Enix's role-playing video game Final Fantasy VII. He was created by character designer Tetsuya Nomura, and has since appeared in the CGI film sequel, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children as well as other games and media in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII series. As of Advent Children, Barret is voiced by Masahiro Kobayashi and Masato Funaki in Japanese, while Beau Billingslea and John Eric Bentley voice him in English.

Barret is first introduced in Final Fantasy VII as an eco-terrorist, leading the group AVALANCHE to bomb Mako reactors in Midgar as to avenge the losses dealt him by the megacorporation Shinra Electric Power Company, the Planet's de facto world government, who operate under the pretense of saving the Planet. Over the course of the story, Barret re-examines his efforts and focuses on pursuing the villain Sephiroth in an effort to protect the planet and the future of his adopted daughter, Marlene. Elements of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII would later expand upon his character, detailing the character's history before and after the events of the original game.

The first black playable character in the Final Fantasy series, Barret's appearance and sometimes profane speech has been compared to that of Mr. T. He is also considered to be the first true father figure in the series, for his relationship with his adoptive daughter Marlene. His character arc is also considered a deconstruction of a revenge story, as a former coal miner seeking vengeance through eco-terrorism before eventually realizing revenge is not the right motivation. The character has earned praise, but also criticism and accusations of racism by some.

Conception and design
Barret was designed by Tetsuya Nomura, and was present in Final Fantasy VII from its early development. Initially the game was to only have three characters: Barret, the protagonist Cloud Strife, and the heroine Aerith Gainsborough. During a phone call to project director Yoshinori Kitase, it was suggested that at some point in the game, one of the main characters should die. After much discussion as to whether it should be Barret or Aerith, the producers chose Aerith, as they felt Barret's death would be "too obvious".

Originally called Blow in the early planning stages of the game, Barret's name is based on the Japanese transliteration of the English word "bullet", and he was developed with the "Gunner" character class in mind. During an early demonstration of the game, Nomura felt his original design made Barret appear too short, and revised it. He stands at 6 ft tall, and is the first black playable character in the series. He has a high and tight haircut and full beard, and wears an earring in his left ear. His attire consists of a jacket with torn sleeves, dark green pants, boots, a fingerless glove on his left hand, and metal bands surrounding his abdomen and left wrist. Nomura wanted to give each character in the game a striking feature on their character design, and in Barret's case it was the scars on his cheek.

Barret was a concept Nomura had wanted to introduce since the beginning of the game's development, a character with an arm replaced with a weapon. His right hand is replaced with a prosthetic gatling gun called a "Gimmick Arm", which he refers to as his "partner" in-game. When they were still planning out the technological aspects of the game's world however, early designs of his character had a bowgun on his arm instead. He was originally planned to have a medallion around his neck, described as a gift from his deceased wife, but this was later changed to a set of dog tags.

Post-Final Fantasy VII
When developing Advent Children, Nomura stated that because of the comparisons between Barret's original design and Mr. T, they decided to take it in a different direction for the film, implementing co-director Takeshi Nozue's suggestion to give him cornrows for his hair, while Nomura designed his face. Artist Yusuke Naora also influenced the design, developing his attire, which originally consisted of white overalls, before instead having him wear him a down vest. Other aspects of his design included the removal of the metal bands around his body, a white sleeve extending from the middle of his right forearm to his elbow which is fastened by straps, a black band on his left forearm surrounded by a pink string and bow, and a fishnet shirt that ends in torn fibers below his waist. The dog tags were altered to a bullet and medallion supported by a chain around his neck, and three rings covered his left hand. His Gimmick Arm was modified into a robotic prosthetic hand, developed by Nomura, with the only guideline being "a huge, over-the-top gun that transforms in a huge, over-the-top way". Nozue stated that these specifics made it difficult to work with, and decided to conceal the hand's transformation sequence into the gun as much as possible. Barret's arm tattoo was changed as well, but retained the "skull and fire" motif of the original. It was redesigned by Brazilian tattoo artist and fashion designer Jun Matsui, featuring a stylized black skull surrounded by flames, meant to give a strong impression of "masculinity and power". While the skull was done in black, the flames were in red to represent his "hot-headed personality", and utilized a tribal pattern as they had become popular in Japan at the time to represent vitality.

For Final Fantasy VII Remake, Square wanted to show Barret as a mature person, contrasting him with the younger Cloud when interacting with others. While they originally planned to use his Advent Children design, the staff later decided to give every party member a new look. The team noted that his design was the one most significantly changed from the original game, but tried to keep aspects of his original design in mind to give him a strong and stalwart appearance. Main character modeler Dan Suzuki commented that they went through several drafts on Barret's face before modeling him. Barret's shoulders and the back of his neck were also changed halfway through development to help "bring out his dependable, fatherly nature". His gun arm also went through significant changes, adding a motor and mapping out the internals to invoke a sense of realism, but also the mental image of Barret being able to disassemble and maintenance the weapon after missions. His melee weapons were designed to reflect his "blunt, no-nonsense personality". In the English dub of Final Fantasy VII Remake, John Eric Bentley voiced Barret. During localization, Bentley did not know the exact media in which he would portray Barret, but figured it had to do with the remake. Bentley researched in order to portray Barret properly, and was aided by the translators for the Japanese version, who gave him the context of the scenes he had to record. For him, one of the biggest challenges in his work was "representation", and claimed that Barret was more than a one-dimensional character. In regards to the story's mission to destroy the Mako Reactor 5, Square aimed to show Barret as a fitting leader for AVALANCHE and show how his relationship with Cloud is improved.

Final Fantasy VII
In Final Fantasy VII, Barret is introduced as the leader of the eco-terrorist organization AVALANCHE, which is situated in the city of Midgar and opposes the ruling company, Shinra, and their use of "Mako" energy as a power source, believing it to be killing the Planet. To this end, AVALANCHE bombs their Mako reactors, with the specific goal of saving the Planet. At the game's beginning, they have hired the mercenary Cloud Strife at the behest of his childhood friend and AVALANCHE member Tifa Lockhart, nicknaming him "Spiky" in reference to his hairstyle. After the deaths of several AVALANCHE members, Barret follows Cloud out of Midgar in pursuit of the game's villain, Sephiroth.

Along the way, he encounters a former friend of his, Dyne, who is armed similarly to him and forces Barret to fight him. After Barret defeats Dyne, Dyne kills himself. Later flashbacks reveal that Shinra wanted to build a Mako reactor in his hometown of Corel, an idea Barret advocated for. However, due to an accident at the plant, Shinra razed the town, killing Barret's wife in the process and causing Barret and Dyne to flee with Dyne's daughter, Marlene. Cornered, Dyne slipped off a cliff; Barret grabbed his hand, but Shinra soldiers opened fire and destroyed Barret's and Dyne's right and left hands respectively, causing the latter to fall to his presumed death. Barret adopted Marlene as his own daughter, had an "adapter" graft to his arm to interface with prosthetic weapons to aid in his combat against Shinra, and founded AVALANCHE. Dyne's death causes him to admit his grudge with Shinra is solely for revenge, with his earlier claims of "saving the world" meant to convince himself he was fighting for the greater good. Barret eventually shifts his goal to wanting to save the Planet for Marlene's sake, and he helps Cloud and his allies defeat Sephiroth to prevent the Planet's destruction.

Early drafts of Barret's background featured subtle differences, such as Marlene being as Barret's biological daughter and his wife being executed in front of him by a then-undecided Shinra executive. The attack on Corel was initially written to be due to the discovery of Mako energy and Shinra's desire to keep its existence a secret. His reunion with Dyne was also different, being written to culminate in a duel between the two in Corel's ruins, while Cloud and the others fought to investigate Shinra soldiers.

Other appearances
Barret appears in Before Crisis, a 2005 mobile phone-based prequel which shows the events prior to Corel's destruction. He helps the game's protagonists, the Turks, defend the Mako reactor, believing it to be the town's future. It is revealed that the reactor is under attack by the original AVALANCHE group, who are the cause of Shinra's attack upon the town. Unaware of their involvement, Barret uses their ideals to form his own branch of the group. He was also one of the characters included in Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call, utilizing his classic appearance.

In 2005, Barret appeared in the CGI film Advent Children, which is set two years after the events of the game. Barret places Marlene in Tifa's care and travels the world to rebuild the planet's infrastructure and find alternate power sources to replace Mako. He returns later to assist in combating the film's villains, the Remnants, and fight the summon creature Bahamut SIN. He later appears in a minor role in the 2006 video game Dirge of Cerberus, which is set one year after Advent Children, where he helps the protagonist Vincent Valentine prevent Omega WEAPON from destroying the planet. When choosing a voice actor for the film, Nomura was initially unsure of whether to have Masahiro Kobayashi do the role of Barret or another character, Loz. Kobayashi described his performance as treating Barret as "unrefined [...] but also dependable and unique", trying to keep his "upbeat character and good outlook in mind". He tried to give him a booming, confident-sounding voice, though at times was instructed to "take it up a notch". For Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Mahito Funaki took over the role after Kobayashi retired from voice acting.

A novella entitled "Case of Barret" was released in 2007 exclusively for the "Limited Edition Collector's Set" DVD edition of Advent Children. Written by Kazushige Nojima as part of the On the Way to a Smile series, it details the events between Final Fantasy VII and Advent Children, examining Barret's reaction to his weapon and his belief that it made him a monster. At the conclusion of the story, Barret visits the creator of the adapter on his wrist and receives the prosthetic hand/gun combination seen in the film, reasoning that although he needs a hand, he also still needs a weapon to prevent others from having to fight. He then decides to return to Marlene. Barret was also added as a costume for the Mii "gunner"-class character and optional opponent in an update for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Critical reception
Prior to the game's North American release, initial reactions to the character were positive, for representing African-Americans in a role-playing game, a genre where they were rarely represented. Following its North American release, Barret's comparisons to Mr. T in the media has resulted in both praise and criticism, with most of the criticism accusing the character of serving as a negative racial stereotype of African Americans. IGN argued in favor of this point, citing his use of "stilted slang" and stating that the character stands out amongst the cast because "his dialog is written as if it was run through a broken ebonic translator", further noting a trend in Japanese games to apply such dialogue to characters based on their skin color. Journalist Jeremy Parish and Next Generation reader Russell Merritt viewed the character as a racist representation, although both also argued that cultural gaps between Japan and the United States, plus the lack of American translators for Final Fantasy VII may have been contributing factors, highlighting that the localization of Barret's character presents him in a more stereotypical manner, drawing parallels to Mr. T. He felt this likeness could be seen as an effort to create a character that resonated with American audiences, given the popularity of the actor among Americans. Kotaku's Gita Jackson expressed concern over his portrayal in Final Fantasy VII Remake, expressing a desire to see the character's dialogue and voice modernized from what she saw as a negative stereotype, and cited fan and even fellow Kotaku contributor interest in the same.

However in contrast on 1UP, Parish argued in favor of Barret, noting that while on the surface he appeared to be the "worst kind of stereotype", he was a great character with complexity, having made "difficult decisions in his life, and agonized over his losses". Parish went further to describe Barret as the "first true father figure the [Final Fantasy] series had ever seen", through his relationship with his adopted daughter and how much he doted on her. RPGamer's content manager Shawn Bruckner took the discussion further, arguing that claims of Barret's presentation being racist was oversimplification of the character's portrayal, and stated that while he was in some aspects a stereotype, in others, such as his compassion towards his daughter or guilt regarding his past actions, he was not. He added that Barret "shows us that a black man speaking in 'ebonics' is not something to fear" and that his portrayal was not racist, but instead the opposite. Andron Smith in the same publication meanwhile praised his paternal role for not only his daughter but the other characters, with his advice often reaching "the realm of philosophy" with concepts such as "A good man who serves a great evil is not without sin".

His characterization in the remakes also received positive reception. Siliconera's Jenni Lada stated that while early on in Remake he came across having "only has one volume and he only sees one side of things", the agony over losing his friends and concern over his daughter, namely trying to cling to any hope of her survival, showed Barret's actual heart and made her excited to see more of his portrayal in the future. Ash Parrish for Kotaku also commented on him, stating that while she had conflicted feelings about his portrayal and citing Jackson's earlier article for the site, she praised the fact Barret went against the archetype of a father with a violent past, noting that similar characters routinely seemed incapable or unwilling to be gentle with their children. By comparison Parrish praised Barret's affection towards his daughter and his refusal to let his past or who he was affect his relationship with her, adding that "Barret did the reading from day one and said the inherited trauma stops with me". She further noted that Barret went against the myth of Black absentee fathers, being "utterly devoted to a child that wasn't even his own blood way back in 1997" and expressed disdain that his role as a father was commonly overlooked by other publications. Gen Gumachi of Inside Games praised Rebirth for expanding on his character, portraying him as considering the views of the other party members while still retaining his "manly" personality as someone they could depend on. He also noted Barret's reflection his shortcomings of a father, and it presented an interesting duality to Barret's character: someone that had the wisdom of age, while also being a novice when it came to parenthood.

Pat Holleman, in his book Reverse Design: Final Fantasy VII (2018), considers Barrett's story to be the clearest illustration of the game's central "theme of tragic survivorship" and "a deconstruction of a revenge story" in the sense that it "dismantles the idea of revenge in an insightful way". This is presented through Shinra's destruction of his coal mining hometown, Barrett seeking vengeance through militant environmentalism before eventually realizing revenge isn't the right motivation, and safeguarding a future for his adoptive daughter Marlene who is the only surviving connection to his past. William Hughes of The A.V. Club notes that Barret and his terrorist cell AVALANCHE are one of the few examples of "heroic pop culture terrorists" in video games, keeping the game politically relevant in a post-9/11 world.

On the other hand, Jervon Perkins of DualShockers expressed that while he liked Barret as a character and as a person of color enjoyed representation within the franchise, he felt far too often the Final Fantasy franchise treated black characters as a comedic relief archetype. He stated that in the context of the game, Barret's behavior was often a good contrast to Cloud's stoicism, and acted as a driving force to help push the game's plot of saving the world. Additionally he was glad to see these elements retained in the Final Fantasy VII remake titles, quickly becoming Perkins' favorite character in the cast, and enjoyed how they also built upon his relationship with Marlene and Dyne, particularly the tragedy of the latter. However, he was often also the butt of the game's jokes, "reacting to situations in loud and overreactive ways" much to the rest of the cast's humor. In light of the other black male character in the franchise at the time, Sazh from Final Fantasy XIII, he felt both men in part represented a stereotype of black individuals as "loud and aggressive", and while strong characters were essentially cut from the same cloth. Perkins instead wished to see a character in the series that was by contrast "introverted and quiet" and exemplified the "quiet strength exhibited by many characters in the series" such as Final Fantasy X's Auron, and felt such would bring more diversity to the franchise while also respecting the legacy of characters such as Barret and Sazh.

title: Barret Wallace


text:
Spahi

Spahis were light-cavalry regiments of the French army recruited primarily from the Arab and Berber populations of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. The modern French Army retains one regiment of Spahis as an armoured unit, with personnel now recruited in mainland France. Senegal also maintains a mounted unit with spahi origins as a presidential escort: the Red Guard.

Etymology
The name is the French form of the Ottoman Turkish word sipahi, a word derived from New Persian sepâh, سپاه meaning "army", or "horsemen"; or from sipari, meaning "warriors".

Early history
Following the French occupation of Algiers in 1830, detachments of locally recruited irregular horsemen were attached to the regiments of light cavalry assigned to North African service. These auxiliaries were designated as chasseurs spahis. Between 1834 and 1836 they were organised into four squadrons of regular spahis. In 1841 the 14 squadrons by then in existence were brought together in a single corps of spahis. Finally, in 1845 three separate Spahi regiments were created: the 1st of Algiers; the 2nd of Oran and the 3rd of Constantine.

The spahi regiments saw extensive service in the French conquest of Algeria, in the Franco-Prussian War, in Tonkin towards the end of the Sino-French War (1885), in the occupation of Morocco and Syria, and in both World Wars. A detachment of Spahis served as the personal escort of Marshal Jacques Leroy de Saint Arnaud in the Crimean War and were photographed there by Roger Fenton. A contingent of Spahis also participated in the North China campaign of 1860. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 one detached squadrons of Spahis formed part of the forces defending Paris, while a provisional regiment comprising three squadrons was attached to the Army of the Loire. A serious uprising against French rule in Algeria during 1871–72 was sparked off by a mutiny of the 5th squadron of the 3rd Spahis, who had been ordered to France to reinforce those units already there.

Under the Third Republic, between 1871 and 1914 Spahi units saw active service in Indochina, Tunisia, Morocco, Senegal and Madagascar.

While a visually conspicuous presence in any French military force, the Spahis usually served in small detachments as scouts, skirmishers and escorts. An exception was the Battle of Isly (Morocco) in 1844 when the 1st and 2nd Spahis fought successfully as full regiments.

Recruitment basis
Prior to 1914 there were four regiments of Spahis in the French Army, three based in Algeria and one in Tunisia. During their period as mounted cavalry the Spahis comprised for the most part Arab and Berber troopers commanded by French officers. This division was not absolute however and there were always a certain number of French volunteers in the ranks (for example, the later well known lyricist Raymond Asso was a Spahi between 1916 and 1919). About 20% of the rank and file were French and the remainder Arab or Berber. In addition, a fixed number of commissioned positions up to the level of captain were reserved for Muslim officers. NCOs were both French and Muslim.

In contrast to the North African tirailleur (infantry) units the mounted spahis were drawn from "the big tents": i.e. the higher social classes of the Arab and Berber communities. This dated back to the establishment of the corps when Colonel Marey-Monge required that each recruit provide his own horse.

As Spahi units were mechanized during World War II, the proportion of Frenchmen in the ranks increased.

World War I
Spahis were sent to France at the outbreak of war in August 1914. They saw service during the opening period of mobile warfare but inevitably their role diminished with the advent of trench warfare. During World War I the number of units increased with the creation of Moroccan Spahi regiments and the expansion of the Algerian arm. By 1918 there were seven Spahi regiments then in existence, all having seen service on the Western Front. In addition a detached squadron accompanied two squadrons of Chasseurs d'Afrique and served as part of the 5th Light Horse Brigade during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign against the Ottoman Empire. This composite force of French cavalry was known as the 1er Régiment Mixte de Marche de Cavalerie de Levant. In 1918 a "marching regiment" of Moroccan spahis (Régiment de Marche des Spahis Marocains) saw active service in the Balkans, winning the collective distinction of the Médaille militaire.

Between the World Wars
By 1921 the Spahi regiments had been increased to twelve (from four in 1914) and this became the permanent establishment. During the 1920s mounted Spahi regiments saw extensive active service in the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon, as well as in Morocco. They continued to perform policing and garrison duties in Algeria and Tunisia, as well as providing detachments based in Metropolitan France. Although mechanisation began in the 1930s of the Chasseurs d'Afrique and Foreign Legion cavalry, the Spahis remained an entirely mounted force until after 1942.

World War II
In 1939 the Spahis comprised three independent brigades, each of two regiments and still horse mounted. Each regiment was made up of four sabre squadrons with five officers and 172 troopers in each. Three regiments saw active service in France in 1940. Hermann Balck was of the opinion that they were the best troops that he met in both world wars. One Spahi regiment (1er Régiment de Marche de Spahis Marocains) distinguished itself in service with the Free French during World War II. Garrisoned in Vichy-controlled Syria as part of a mounted cavalry unit some of the regiment crossed the frontier into the Transjordan in June 1940. After mounted service in Eritrea, this detachment was subsequently reorganised and equipped with armoured cars by the British in Egypt. The expanded and mechanised regiment served in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, and was part of the French forces that liberated Paris in August 1944.

Post war
In the course of World War II most Spahi regiments were mechanised, but several squadrons remained mounted for patrol work in North Africa plus escort and other ceremonial duties in France itself. Until 1961 the annual Bastille Day parade in Paris always featured Spahi cavalry in their traditional dress uniforms, on white Arabian horses. While Arab and Berber troopers continued to make up the bulk of numbers in the mounted units retained, mechanisation led to French personnel becoming a majority in the armoured regiments.

Armoured Spahi units saw service in both the Indochina War of 1947-54 and the Algerian War of 1954-62. The 9th Algerian Spahis remained a mounted regiment throughout the Algerian War, suffering 24 deaths in the course of active service. Except for one mounted platoon per squadron and the regimental fanfare (trumpeters) the unit was finally mechanized in 1961 and its several hundred horses either sold in Algeria or shipped back to France.

The 6th Spahis had been disbanded in 1956, followed by the 9th in 1961. Following the end of the Algerian War in 1962, the 2nd, 3rd 4th and 8th Spahis were also disbanded leaving only one, formerly Moroccan, regiment in existence as the 1st Spahis.

Today
Today, the French Army retains one Spahi regiment, the 1er Régiment de Spahis Marocains; an armoured unit which saw service in the Gulf War. The regiment also maintains the traditions of the entire Spahi corps as it previously existed.

Until 1984, the Regiment was located in Speyer, West Germany. Their former base there is now the Technikmuseum Speyer. The 1er Spahis are currently based in Valence, the French department of Drôme, 100 km south of Lyon, in the Rhone Valley, or what is commonly referred to in France as The Doors of Provence.

Uniforms
Throughout most of their history the Algerian and Tunisian Spahis wore a very striking Zouave style uniform. It comprised a high Arab headdress, a short red jacket embroidered in black, sky blue waist coat a wide red sash and voluminous light blue trousers (white in hot weather). The four regiments were distinguished by the differing colours of their tombeaus (circular false pockets on the front of the jacket). A white burnous was worn together with a red cloak (blue cloak for the Moroccan Spahis). French officers wore light blue kepis, red tunics with gold rank braiding and light blue breeches with double red stripes. Muslim officers wore a more elaborate version of the tenue orientale of the Arab and Berber troopers. French Spahis were distinguished by wearing a fez instead of a white Arab turban with its brown camel-hair cord. A less obvious distinction was the footwear—short sabattes or traditional North African boots in red Morocco leather for Arab/Berber troopers, conventional black leather for French troopers.

From 1915, in common with other units of the Armée d'Afrique, a more practical khaki uniform was adopted for service, but the classic red and blue tenue orientale with white burnous reappeared for parade and off-duty wear in 1927. The mounted squadrons retained for ceremonial duties wore a slightly modified version of this parade uniform, with a plain white turban, until they were disbanded in 1962. The modern 1er Spahis still wear the traditional white burnous and red sash, together with the blue cloaks of the former Moroccan regiments, for full dress. The long-skirted sand-khaki gandourah coat adopted in 1915, appears on occasion as part of the modern ceremonial uniform. Headdress is either a scarlet forage cap or the standard light blue and red kepi of the French cavalry.

Exceptionally for a French armoured cavalry regiment, it uses gold (and not the usual silver) insignia. The "Ordonnance du Roi portant organisation de la cavalerie indigène en Algerie" of 7 December 1841 establishing the Spahis as a regular corps of the French Army specifies this distinction for sous-officers, brigadiers and officers both French and indigenous.

Equipment
In 1914 spahi armament was the M1822/82 sabre of the French light cavalry together with the 1892 carbine. All harness was of dark-red red leather, of indigenous North African pattern and manufacture.

Indochinese Spahis
Short-lived cavalry units designated as "spahis" were raised by the French Colonial Army in Indochina. The first of these was a squadron of spahis recruited from Cochinchina in 1861 and disbanded in 1871. The second was a small detachment of "Spahis Tonkinese" raised in Tonkin in 1883 and disestablished in 1889 for budgetary reasons.

Senegalese Spahis

Senegal maintains a mounted cavalry detachment of spahi origin as its modern presidential security unit and ceremonial guard.

In addition to the North African cavalry, two squadrons of spahis were raised in French West Africa. The first spahis in Senegal were an Algerian detachment sent to West Africa in 1843 to deal with an outbreak of tribal conflict. This platoon-sized unit of 25 French and Algerian spahis stayed and began recruiting locally. The new indigenous troopers came from the inhabitants of Senegal and the French Sudan while their French officers were seconded from Algerian Spahi regiments. The Senegalese Spahis saw extensive active service in the French West African territories of Tchad, the Sudan and the Congo between 1853 and 1898, as well as serving in Morocco between 1908 and 1919.

The Senegalese Spahis were disbanded in 1928 as an economy measure but provided the cadre around which a newly-raised mounted gendarmerie was formed. The modern Gendarmerie Nationale of the Republic of Senegal therefore traces its origins to the spahis, and the Red Guard still wears the burnous, fez and red tunic of the French period.

Algerian Republican Guard and Tunisian President's Bodyguard
The modern Republican Guard of Algeria includes a mounted detachment for ceremonial purposes. This unit is mounted on the same breed of white barbs as those utilised by the French spahis prior to 1962 and wear red and green uniforms with white burnouses, which broadly resemble those of their predecessors.

A similar ceremonial mounted unit is maintained as part of the Tunisian President's Bodyguard. Descended from the 4th Tunisian Spahis Regiment the modern unit retains the uniform of the French period but in the red and white of the Tunisian national colours. `

Italian Spahis
The Italian colonial administration of Libya raised squadrons of locally-recruited Spahi cavalry between 1912 and 1942. The Italian Spahis differed from their French namesakes in that their prime role was that of mounted police, tasked with patrolling rural and desert areas. Although they had Italian officers, they were more loosely organised than the regular Libyan cavalry regiments (Savari). They wore a picturesque dress modelled on that of the desert tribesmen from whom they were recruited.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Spahi


text:
Talk:Hernando de Soto (economist)/interview

"The poor are not the problem but the solution" Interview with Hernando de Soto by Dirk Verhofstadt

The Peruvian economist, Hernando de Soto, is founder and President of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD) headquartered in Lima, Peru. He is considered one of the most important development theoreticians in the world. He has published two books about economic and political development: The Other Path and The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. His main conclusion is that much of the marginality of the poor in developing and former communist nations comes from their inability to benefit from the positive effects that formal property provides. Without legal titles and the necessary property-related institutions, these poor cannot fully exploit their assets. The challenge these countries face is not whether they should produce or receive more money but whether they can identify which legal institutions are required and summon the political will necessary to build a property system that is easy for the poor to access. Over the last few years, Hernando de Soto has been granted several honours: The Fisher Prize in the United Kingdom, The Adam Smith Award in the United States and The CARE Award for Outstanding Development Thinking in Canada. “De Soto’s ideas about how to empower the world’s poor represent one of the most significant economic insights of our time”, says former President of the United States, Bill Clinton.

Together with the ILD, Hernando de Soto is designing and implementing capital formation programs to empower the poor in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East. Liberales staff member Dirk Verhofstadt had an exclusive interview with Hernando de Soto in his residence in Lima.

The Economist calls the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD) one of the most important think tanks in the world. How did it start?

Hernando de Soto: At the end of the left wing dictatorship in Peru in 1979, we wanted to bring in new ideas. All we had here were traditional leftist messages, some of which I found very interesting. However, it was also very important to realize that we had nothing that related to a market economy and the more liberal view of democracy. So, the beginning was simply bringing in ideas from Friedrich Hayek, Jean-François Revel, Milton Friedman, and original Marxian thinking as well. We wanted to clear the air and explain that there was more substance to the kind of thinking which supports freedom and the efficient economies of the world than they suspected. One of these ideas was the relationship between marginality - where people are forced to live and work outside the system - and the law. At that time, I saw the law as the main factor of exclusion.

Take for example the history of Latin America where liberal ideas have come to government many times, but haven’t succeeded. The main reason for that failure was that they never included the excluded. [This was a harder task than it seemed.] We found that most ideas that related to freedom and productivity were well known by think tanks but had not penetrated to the political decision makers and the average person. So, the focus of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy very much became this extralegal sector - particularly on the areas of property rights and free enterprise because they are the trusses to everything else.

Do politicians understand the importance of property rights?

Hernando de Soto: If you are poor, like the majority of the people in the Third World or the former Soviet Union, you have only two things that allow you to survive - where you are living and whatever you are working with to provide you with an income. Poor people, for instance, put their simple belongings on a piece of unoccupied ground in the countryside or in the so-called pueblos jóvenes, favelas, ranchos, barrios marginales, bidonvilles or shantytowns around big cities in the developing world. If no one disputes his or her claim, a bit of a roof follows. As time goes by, and as the neighbours come to recognize the newcomer’s property, a regular structure will be added. Over time, not only do the neighbours recognize the squatter’s property, but also informal organizations may ‘register’ the ownership — unofficially, of course. The occupants have to dedicate all their time to protecting their possessions against such enemies as poachers, intruders, and, of course, the government.

If you want to understand the importance of property rights, a good place to start is the genesis of property, something that is not controversial for the entire political spectrum. Half of the governments we work for, for instance, are definitely on the left and understand that the poor do not have property and believe that they should. So the law gives a point of penetration were everybody is in an agreement. Property rights are even recognized on a global level in points nine and ten of the Washington-consensus. However, these are the only points that have never been implemented. The objective of these points is to establish free enterprise and property. This big gap needs to be filled in. That is the objective of the ILD.

In your book ‘The Mystery of Capital’, you write that capitalism is like a private club, only open to a privileged few, enraging the billions standing outside looking in. Can you explain this?

Hernando de Soto: Almost 5 billion people out of the 6 billion in the world live in either developing or formerly communist countries, where much of the economy is extralegal. Capitalism doesn’t thrive in these countries because of their inability to produce capital. However, capital is the force that raises the productivity of labour and creates the wealth of nations. It seems that poor countries cannot produce capital for themselves no matter how eagerly their people engage in all the activities that characterize a capitalist economy. In fact, the poor inhabitants of less developed countries do have things, but they lack the process to represent their property in such a way that it can create and transfer capital. They have houses but no titles; crops but no deeds; businesses but no statutes of incorporation. In other words: their property is not registered, not formally legalised. This last fact is crucial, for only through property rights is it possible to obtain credit. Property converted into capital provides the potential to create, to produce, and to grow. Landownership can only be exchanged for a loan if it is registered. The main objective of the ILD is to establish and incorporate the invisible network of laws that turns assets from ‘dead’ into ‘liquid’ capital.

One of the conclusions in your book ‘The Mystery of Capital’ is that poor people are not the problem, but the solution.

Hernando de Soto: They certainly are, and there are very simple reasons for this. First of all, wherever we go, we see that the poor have the majority of a country’s savings, which means that they have done the majority of the work. Look at the situation in Egypt. There, extralegals have accumulated up to $ 248 billion in their enterprises and homes. This is 37 times more than all the loans received from the World Bank. It is 55 times greater than all the direct investments in Egypt and 35 times more than the value of the companies listed in the Cairo Stock Exchange.

In fact, the total value of the assets held but not legally owned by the poor in the Third World and former communist nations is at least $ 9.300 billion. So, the poor are obviously the solution.

The history of many countries shows that very poor people have built today’s wealth. The poor today form a large entrepreneurial force, but it is a force that cannot leverage its assets. And that is the situation in all of the developing countries and in the former communist nations we have been in. There is no lack of entrepreneurship. There is no lack of a will to build assets. There just isn’t the legal system to allow these assets to be leveraged the way you can do so in the West. International financial institutions have traditionally not counted these assets. Poor people have always been seen as recipients of benefits. We are changing this around by saying that whatever you are giving to them is peanuts compared to what they themselves can do. So, the direction should be to enable them, to empower the poor.

So, to solve the real problem we have to make the informal world formal?

Hernando de Soto: Well, that’s it, but it’s not the old formality. You’ve got to think of a new formality. The old one has been offered to the poor, but they have obviously rejected it. There is the law. Don’t forget that informal and customary systems of property rights exist, but mostly outside the legal framework of the country.

I am now a member of a newly created agency for foreign assistance. The Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan and the Administrator of the UNDP, Mark Malloch Brown, have set up a commission targeting private sector development. These kinds of agencies had never focused on the private sector, in spite of the fact that they are a big part of the world economy. So, the agenda seems to be moving in the right direction now.

But isn’t the main problem legislation? Don’t lawyers stick on to the existing laws?

Hernando de Soto: That’s right. The legal and administrative mechanisms for creating live capital either do not exist or are complicated, these take ages to navigate and cost far too much for the ordinary person. Rich people, on the other hand, have easy entry to business; that is, they have easy access to the tools that facilitate their entry, such as lawyers, accountants, and legal advisors who are able to safeguard their interests in the labyrinth of bureaucracy.

If a squatter wanted to acquire a legal title to his or her property, it would take at least 13 years in the Philippines, over 11 years in Haiti, and 6 years or more in Egypt.

Moreover, in business, it takes you 549 days to get a license to operate a bakery in Egypt and that is with a lawyer. Without a lawyer, it takes about 650 days. In Honduras, it costs an individual entrepreneur 3.765 dollar and 270 days to legally declare, register, and start up a business.

To create a mortgage in Mexico it takes 2 years. It takes 17 years to get a title on a house in Egypt; in Peru it used to be 21 years before we corrected that, and in the Philippines it’s 24 years. These are but a few examples of complicated ownership legislation. The procedures for getting official authorization to build are so formidable that people chose to build without authorization. The entire phenomenon forces poor people into illegitimate and informal negotiations. It forces them to create extralegal means to gain access to a home or a business.

So, what the people in these countries need are transparent laws and efficient administration. One of the main reasons that laws are so complicated, and procedures are so costly and inefficient, is that legislators in developing countries only want to adopt western rules. They remain blind to the extralegal reality. In fact, they should leave their studies and offices and investigate the extralegal sector because that is where they would find all the information they need to create a legitimate legal system that everyone would understand and accept. By investigating and penetrating the ‘law of the people’, legislators and regulators can set up a better legal system. Most of the lawyers in developing countries are educated to protect the interests of their wealthier clients and write the law to assist them. However, they have an instinctive tendency to protect the legal status quo instead of to extend it or adapt it to suit the needs of an evolving reality.

You have been working in several developing countries by giving advice to their heads of state. What is your method of working?

Hernando de Soto: To us the most important part of our work is that part that we call the diagnosis. When we are hired by heads of state, we form a team of maybe seven people from our side and a hundred from theirs. Then we draw a line and find out what’s inside the law and what’s outside the law. In the case of Egypt, we found that 92% of all the constructions and the land and 88% of all enterprises are outside the legal system. This means that the large majority of owners are not registered as such and are therefore not visible to councils, town planners, investors, banks, post offices, water companies, electricity providers, and other firms. The results of our diagnosis show politicians that something is very wrong. It even has a Marxists element of class, an element that has always been missing, even in liberalism. Because people do have specific positions. People in the so-called informal economy are the biggest entrepreneurial class in the world. There are more entrepreneurs in any Third World country than there are in the rich countries.

Over the past fifteen years or so, your Institute has worked in Peru, Egypt, El Salvador, the Philippines, Honduras and Haiti. In which country are you working now?

Hernando de Soto: We are currently working with the Mexican government. We have finished the diagnosis. Seventy-eight million Mexicans - this is almost 80 percent of the total population - is either living or working in the extralegal economy. They produce approximately 35% of the GNP. In total there are about 137 million hectares of rural real estate, 11 million houses, and 6 million businesses that are not registered. Those are assets that can only be used as a shelter or as business tools, but not as a means to obtain collateral for a loan, to generate investment or to create additional functions to obtain surplus value. The whole value of this ‘dead capital’ amounts to $ 315 billion. That is equivalent to seven times the value of all known oil reserves in the country and 31 times the value of foreign direct investment. So, we are advising President Fox on the ways to reform all of this in order to integrate the excluded citizens. An efficient means is designing a legal framework to transform property and businesses into liquid assets. And by reducing the costs and increasing the benefits of operating legally, they can increase public tax revenues.

Is there a relation between corruption and the lack of property rights?

Hernando de Soto: Yes, of course. Because a great part of corruption is essentially the purchase of the law; that is, you pay somebody to stop looking your way or to draft the law in a certain direction. When I was working in the Middle East, there was an entrepreneur that I got to known so well that I could ask him about corruption and pay-offs - ‘baksheesh’ is the local word. He explained: “I love baksheesh because it gives me certainty and predictability.” They change the law continually. We have calculated that the government brings out about 30.000 new rules every year. None of these is enacted in a transparent manner, with public participation. The result is that the law is totally unpredictable and only serves the powerful and those who have the means to remain informed. So, from this point of view, ‘baksheesh’ gives a kind of predictability. All the entrepreneur had to do was pay-off five key policemen either near his workplace, or where he made his transactions. And he knew what his outcome would be.

Now, traditionally that is what the law is supposed to do - give you predictability. However, if the law is inadequate, then your way of getting predictability is corruption. Therefore, when you have property rights - understanding ‘property rights’ as your right to do business, hold shares and carry out business transactions - it is clear that people will not look to corruption for security and predictability, wherever you go in the world.

Some people say that culture is separating the Third from the First World. Do you agree?

Hernando de Soto: That is a myth. I really don’t think culture has very much to do with the fact that some people are desperately poor and others are wealthy. It’s an unfair proposition. It predisposes people to do the wrong things. It may even have racist implications. Instead of focusing on culture, let’s take away all of these enormous legal obstacles that poor people have to face. We’re absolutely convinced it does work because people are actively in enterprise all over the world. Countries that are less occidental than Latin American nations were poorer than us barely 50 years ago - like Japan, Taiwan and South Korea - changed their laws and are now in average 10 times wealthier than we are. Most of the people who say that ‘cultural’ handicaps do exist don’t have much solid facts to prove it. Development will not be achieved by throwing money at the problem but rather by radically changing the legal systems. And I don’t think it is primarily an IMF or World Bank responsibility. I think it’s a local responsibility.

Despite privatisations and deregulations, the Russian economy is not doing well. Do you attribute this situation to a property rights problem as well?

Hernando de Soto: There is only one way of knowing that and it is by getting the numbers on the shadow economy, which is precisely what we at the ILD do. It’s like in medicine: the doctor has to see the patient. You can have the best written law in the world, but if it doesn’t work on the ground it is only ink on paper. I wouldn’t be surprised if in Russia the law looks good on paper, but, on the ground, it doesn’t work. This is why a very important ingredient of any reform towards the market is feedback from the people so that you can create law based on general consensuses and on people’s beliefs. There is no way of designing it in the air as bureaucrats of the old class often do. If you want to get law that is enforceable you’ve got to go get to the street!

How is it possible that those liberal ideas were never popular in Latin America?

Hernando de Soto: Since liberation from Spain in the 1820’s, many governments have tried to bring in a liberal revolution in Latin America several times. We have tried to follow the US model or the Western European models. Latin Americans have privatized railways, lowered tariffs to zero, and opened our economies to foreign investment. And we have failed nearly every time. The reforms made sense for a very small group of people at the top, but for the majority, it didn’t fit their interests. The big mistake each time has been that although people were inspired by liberal ideas, in fact, they never had much interest for the poor. I would say that these people who pretended to be liberal, were not liberals but conservatives. By not caring for the poor, they gave the opportunity to the populist and communists to gain much ground.

Can we say that capitalism is in trouble?

Hernando de Soto: Of course capitalism is in trouble, because, as usual, it is only catching among the top 20 or 10 percent of the population in Latin American countries that have got their property rights paperized in a way that they can enter the market. Capitalism is in trouble in the sense that it isn’t working for the majority. I insist that capitalism doesn’t work without universally accessible property rights. Capitalism definitely did not win the battle against communism: what happened is that communism collapsed. The main ideas or concerns held by the early communists and socialists are still around.

Do you agree with libertarians that plead for a minimal state? What is your position with regard to libertarianism and liberalism?

Hernando de Soto: I think that some of the most resourceful sophisticated thinking comes from libertarians. To me, they are the ‘avant garde’ because, among other things, they point out the dangers of concentrated power. They are a continual source of inspiration to me but it is the gap between their proposals to do a way with government and reality. I am not too sure they understand that government is important to enforcing freedom and democracy - maybe this is because they do not know what it is like to live without any government like some of us in the Third World. The rule of law has to be managed and enforced by strong government if it is to prevail.

In my case, I would say that I am a classical liberal, corresponding to the liberal ideas of the 18th and 19th centuries, which were characterized by being radically opposed to the concentration of power and the causes of the poor.

The reason I study the 18th and 19th centuries of Europe and North Ame3rica is not because I like the past, but because they provide me with lead to understand the present with regards to developing countries. There is a sense that individualism becomes clearer with the Renaissance. Before, people could not envisage themselves as being anything other than part of a whole. That phenomenon of individualism is now starting to take shape in Latin America. In Mexico, for example, where we are currently doing our biggest project, one of the areas we have to focus on is the ejido, which is an indigenous collective property system. We found out that the average age of the Mexican farmer is 65, which means that most of the young people have already left to the city and are becoming individuals. In other words, we are at that stage of individualization that you in Europe were at a couple of centuries ago. Europe’s 18th and 19th centuries intellectual debate are very relevant to developing countries and former Soviet Union nations in the 21st century.

Interview by Dirk Verhofstadt. Contact: verhofstadt.dirk@pandora.be. More interviews on www.liberales.be


text:
Tifa Lockhart

Tifa Lockhart (ティファ・ロックハート) is a character who debuted in Square's (now Square Enix) 1997 role-playing video game Final Fantasy VII. She was created as a foil to her teammate Aerith Gainsborough by members of the development team, including director Yoshinori Kitase and writers Kazushige Nojima and Tetsuya Nomura, who also contributed to her visual design. She has since appeared as a playable fighter in Ehrgeiz and the Dissidia Final Fantasy series and made cameo appearances in several other titles, such as Kingdom Hearts II and Itadaki Street. Beginning in 2005, she has been featured in sequels and spin-offs as part of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII series, including the animated film Advent Children and Final Fantasy VII Remake.

Tifa is the childhood friend of Cloud Strife, the protagonist of Final Fantasy VII. She is the owner of the 7th Heaven bar in the slums of Midgar and a member of the eco-terrorist group AVALANCHE. She convinces Cloud to join the group to keep him close and safe, and later assists him in saving the Planet from the game's villain, Sephiroth. Titles in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII later expanded upon her character, such as in Advent Children, where she attempts to convince Cloud to let go of his self-imposed guilt and move on with his life after Sephiroth's defeat.

Tifa has been named the pin-up girl of the "cyber generation" by The New York Times, and has been compared to Lara Croft as an example of a strong, independent and attractive female character in video games. Media have repeatedly praised her strength and appearance and described her as one of the best female characters in gaming. The heavy emphasis on sex appeal in her reception has also seen frequent discussion, though has also received some criticism for overshadowing other aspects of her character.

Conception and design

Tifa was designed by Tetsuya Nomura, and was not present in early versions of Final Fantasy VII, as initially, the game was to have only three playable characters; the protagonist Cloud Strife, Aerith Gainsborough and Barret Wallace. However, during a phone call to project director Yoshinori Kitase, it was suggested that at some point in the game, one of the main characters should die and after much discussion as to whether it should be Barret or Aerith, the producers chose Aerith. Nomura later joked that this was his idea, so as to enable him to introduce Tifa into the game. The notion of having two concurrent heroines and having the hero waver between them was something Kitase liked, describing it as something new in the Final Fantasy series. Tifa was designed to use the "monk" character class that appeared in previous games in the series.

In a change from previous entries in the Final Fantasy series, the development team worked off of Nomura's character designs, while series Yoshitaka Amano contributed his own artwork, wanting to depict the characters in futuristic clothing. Tifa has long, black hair in a style resembling a dolphin's tail at the tip, and wears a white crop top and a black miniskirt held up by a pair of narrow black suspenders. She also wears red boots and gloves, with black sleeves extending from wrist to elbow; a metal guard covers her left elbow. She stands about 5 feet 6 inches (167 cm) tall.

Unlike most other characters for Final Fantasy VII, Nomura wrote down her bust/waist/hip measurements in his concept art for her, defined as 36-24-35" (92-60-88 cm). Nomura wanted each character to have one striking feature, and in Tifa's case it was her large breasts. Internally in the game, the development team jokingly referred to her as "Boing-chan", an allusion to her bust. In an interview with Japanese magazine Jugemu they discussed her character design, with composer Nobuo Uematsu commenting that her breasts were "a bit...overly ample." Cutscene director Motonari Sakakibara countered that the rest of the team insisted he not reduce their size. Nomura himself added "at the end of the day we all like them. [...] If I made them smaller, everyone would get angry at me."

Initially, Nomura had difficulty deciding whether to go with a miniskirt or long pants. Seeking input, he passed his sketches around Square's offices and the majority of the staff members approved of the miniskirt design. This additionally served as a contrast to Aerith, whose "long skirt" was her trademark. The attire was explained as giving her freedom of movement, due to her hand-to-hand combat specialty and the skirt, referred to as "quite short [...] giving a considerable degree of exposure", was kept as a staple of her alternate costumes. The developers noted that due to her figure, her otherwise plain garments took on a pleasant appearance. The development team later clarified in an issue of V-Jump that the miniskirt was more akin to a skort instead of bare underwear, to keep her from being exposed during combat.

Post-Final Fantasy VII
When producing Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, co-director Takeshi Nozue had difficulty developing a framework for Tifa's body that was "balanced, yet showed off her feminine qualities". Her outfit was redesigned with emphasis on expressing those qualities, while still being pleasing to the eye. Nomura describes Tifa's character in Advent Children as having several dimensions, calling her "like a mother, a sweetheart and a close ally in battle" and "remarkably strong, not only emotionally, but physically as well". In the film, she wears a white tank top with a black zipped up vest, a pink ribbon around her left bicep, and boots. She also wears a black buttoned-up skirt that covers her thighs and wears shorts beneath it, with a piece of cloth similar to a coattail extending from the back of the skirt's waistband and ending at her ankles. She no longer uses suspenders to hold up her skirt and she wears her gloves during the film's fight scenes. Her hairstyle was changed to end at the middle of her back, with the removal of the dolphin tail from her original design. This alteration was because of the difficulty of animating her original length of hair, as well as problems that arose due to its black color and lighting.

For the Final Fantasy VII Remake series, the development team worked heavily with Nomura to refine her design, adding details like charms around her wrists and going through twenty different hair colors before settling on ashen brown. The development team wanted to avoid favoring either Tifa or Aerith so they deliberately tried to give them equal screen time, as they wanted both to be positioned as heroines, and emphasized Eastern aesthetics and the cuteness of her face to contrast with Aerith's Western aesthetics. They additionally wanted to emphasize her athletic physique, so they gave her visibly defined abdominal muscles. In an interview with Weekly Famitsu Square revealed they modified Tifa's outfit at the request of their Ethics Department, giving her a black sports bra and longer shorts, mainly "tightening" her chest so "as not to get unnatural during all the intense action", with main character modeler Dan Suzuki considering the shorts an improvement to her design. This information led to North American fans voicing concern that her breast size had been reduced, but sources such as gameindustry.biz confirmed through multiple translators this was not the case. The development team later illustrated that when creating her character model, a padded Japanese G70 cup size (95 cm) bra was used on a real-life model to portray her bust accurately.

Artist Roberto Ferrari meanwhile created the multiple outfit options included in Remake for Tifa, aiming for designs that would be easier on the animation team but would also homage outfits she had in the original game. Various ideas were thrown around during development for clothing options, including a maid outfit and a bikini modelled after a chocobo, one of the Final Fantasy series' mascosts. They ultimately settled on a black cheongsam with her hair worn in pigtail buns, as well as a black kimono, both of which are worn with stockings. Ferrari commented that the latter was particularly difficult to create, as several of his design submissions were rejected during the process. In Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, the followup game to Remake, two swimsuit options were added for the character, consisting of a blue tied up shirt and short shorts with her hair in a bun adorned with a flower, and a white and blue frilled bikini with a similar hairstyle and the frills on the lower half forming a makeshift miniskirt.

Casting
Nomura noted that he liked Ayumi Ito as an actress and wished to work with her on Advent Children. With Aerith's voice actor already decided, Nomura asked Ito to voice Tifa, feeling her "husky voice" would offer a good contrast to Maaya Sakamoto's soft-spoken Aerith. Although Tifa's updated design had already been finalized, Ito's casting motivated them to blend many traits from the voice actress into the character's appearance. Cloud's voice actor Takahiro Sakurai said that while he recorded most of his work individually, he performed alongside Ito for a few scenes. These recordings left him feeling "deflated", as the "exchanges he has with Tifa [could] be pretty painful". Ayaka Mitsumoto voiced Tifa in the flashback from the remake where a teenage Tifa interacts with Cloud. Finding a voice suitable for the young Tifa made Nomura and the staff worried in the recording of the title.

English voice actress Rachael Leigh Cook stated in an interview for Kingdom Hearts II that she enjoys playing Tifa and described her as "very strong physical and emotionally, but also very sensitive" and "very multi-dimensional". In voicing the character, Cook listened to Ito's recording as a guide to how the character sounds. Following Advent Children, Cook thanked Nomura for the film he created as she enjoyed it. Britt Baron voiced Tifa in Final Fantasy VII Remake and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Tifa as a child is voiced by Glory Curda.

Final Fantasy VII
Tifa is introduced in Final Fantasy VII as the childhood friend of Cloud Strife and owner of the 7th Heaven bar in the slums of Midgar, a technologically advanced metropolis owned by the Shinra Electric Power Company. She is also a member of the eco-terrorist organization AVALANCHE, who opposes Shinra's extraction and use of Mako, the planet's spiritual energy, as a power source. She convinces Cloud to join the group to keep a closer eye on him after noticing his personality has changed, and follows him in pursuit of the game's antagonist, Sephiroth. While she is unable to keep him from being manipulated by Sephiroth, she helps him recover after his mind becomes fractured and they realize their mutual feelings for one another, working together to defeat Sephiroth.

When they were children, Tifa and Cloud followed a path to a mountain near their hometown of Nibelheim. However, they were both injured and Tifa was in a coma for a week, with her father holding Cloud responsible for the incident. Cloud eventually left to join Shinra's SOLDIER program to become stronger, but it is later revealed that he did it primarily to attract her attention. In response, she requested if she were ever in danger, he would return to save her. Years later, during Sephiroth's rampage in Nibelheim, Cloud rescued Tifa after she was wounded by Sephiroth. Tifa was taken to safety by her martial arts instructor and eventually arrived in Midgar, meeting AVALANCHE's leader, Barret Wallace. She joined AVALANCHE to get revenge for the destruction of her home. Shortly before the beginning of Final Fantasy VII, she encountered an incoherent Cloud at the city's train station and convinced him to work for Barret, to keep him close and watch over him.

Her character changed significantly during development, with an early relationship chart during the planning phase intending her to be Sephiroth's sibling. In early drafts of Final Fantasy VII, Tifa was a background character, with role in AVALANCHE was to add support behind the scenes and to cheer everyone up after missions, as well as having a particular fondness for Cloud. She was supposed to have a large scar on her back caused by Cloud, and partial amnesia from the incident when she had received it. A scene intended to imply she and Cloud had sex was proposed by Masato Kato, one of the event planners, but it was replaced with a toned-down version by Kitase in which a risqué line is followed by a fade to black. In an interview, Nojima stated that none of the staff thought the scene would become an issue at the time. When developing the International edition of Final Fantasy VII, an additional cutscene was added to showcase an enemy in the game, Ultima Weapon, and featured Tifa in it due to how popular her character had become.

Compilation of Final Fantasy VII

Tifa appears in the 2005 film Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, which is set two years after the events of the game. She tries to give emotional support to Cloud, urging him to come to terms with the unwarranted guilt he places upon himself. She also takes care of Barret's adopted daughter Marlene and an orphan, Denzel. During the film, she duels against Loz and she battles the summoned creature Bahamut SIN alongside the team. Script writer Kazushige Nojima described her role in the film as "very much like any woman who's been left behind by a man", stating that while they did not want her to appear clingy, they wanted to portray that she was emotionally hurt by Cloud's departure. In the film's initial draft, she was intended to have a more central role in the then-short film, which only featured herself, Cloud and several children, with the story revolving around a note being delivered to him.

Tifa is also featured in the prequel games Before Crisis and Crisis Core, as well as the OVA Last Order, which each show different perspectives on the destruction of Nibelheim. The novella "Case of Tifa", written as part of the On the Way to a Smile series, is a story set between the original game and Advent Children that is told from her point of view. The story details how she creates a new 7th Heaven bar in the city of Edge and attempts to hold onto the concept of a normal family with herself and Cloud, despite him beginning to isolate himself from others. Tifa also appears in the game Dirge of Cerberus, which is set one year after the events of Advent Children, in which she helps the protagonist Vincent Valentine defend the planet against the monster Omega WEAPON; in the game's epilogue, she discuss Vincent's disappearance.

Tifa is featured prominently as a playable character in Final Fantasy VII Remake, which covers the Midgar portion of the original game. By focusing solely on Midgar, the development team was able to include additional scenes that developed the relationship between Tifa and Aerith. Trace of Two Pasts, a tie-in novel to the remake, depicts the childhoods of Tifa and Aerith. Tifa's section details her upbringing in Nibelheim, her meeting and tutelage under her martial arts master, and her life in the slums of Midgar following her near-death experience during the Nibelheim incident.

Other appearances
Outside of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Tifa is featured in the fighting game Ehrgeiz as an unlockable character and an optional boss. She is a playable character in the electronic board games Itadaki Street Special and Itadaki Street Portable. In Kingdom Hearts II, she appears in her Advent Children attire, searching for Cloud and later fighting various Heartless. She was originally planned to appear in the Final Mix version of the original Kingdom Hearts, but due to time constraints the staff members chose to incorporate Sephiroth instead. Whereas in the game Cloud goes missing after a battle with Sephiroth, in the manga adaptation, Tifa finds him in Hollow Bastion. In 2015, she was added to the mobile game Final Fantasy: Record Keeper as a playable character.

Tifa is one of the playable characters in the fighting game Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy, which features characters from various Final Fantasy games. She is featured in her Final Fantasy VII outfit, but the player has access to her Advent Children form and a third costume that is shown during her appearances in Nibelheim. The first print run of the game features another form based on artwork by Yoshitaka Amano. In LittleBigPlanet 2, Tifa is featured as a downloadable character model, and as a Mii costume and Spirit in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Critical reception
Since her introduction critics and fans reacted positively to Tifa, often appearing near the top of fan polls. The New York Times featured her as the pin-up girl of for the "cyber generation", while The Beaumont Enterprise cited Tifa as an example of a strong female character in video games in the wake of Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider series. Holly Bonson of Polygon described Tifa as defined by her "brittle confidence and supportiveness", further stating her belief that in the context of Final Fantasy VII she represents forcefulness and sexuality. Den of Geeks Matthew Byrd cited her popularity a result of her character's warmth, strength, and the ability to act both supportive and as a leader depending on when the situation called for it in VIIs storyline, but also noted her vulnerability and how it made her a well-rounded character "who is more than worthy of her fan-favorite status". Jenni Lada of Siliconera called her an iconic heroine, echoing the sentiments of the other critiques, while praising how future installments such as Remake built upon her character.

Tifa has often been compared and contrasted with the other female protagonist of Final Fantasy VII, Aerith. Gus Turner of Complex described her as standing out as "one of gaming's most independent and empowered females ever", and further described her as a feminine foil to the more "girlish" Aerith, further praising her appearance. In a retrospective, journalist Leigh Alexander argued that Tifa is the heroine of VII's story, there since the beginning and being indispensable during the course of events, calling her "a partner for a grown-up player" and questioned how many of them didn't properly appreciate her on their first playthrough of the game may do so now. Fans of the series meanwhile have heavily debated which character was a better relationship for Cloud since the initial game's release, comparing the pros and cons of each.

RPGamer editor Marie Freed found that when examining Tifa as a character, she came to appreciate her more than fellow character Aerith in the years since VII's release. Emphasizing that Aerith represented more of an ideal of a character, Tifa being portrayed as someone who was "insecure, lonely, and hides her true emotions" may have led to her being perceived negatively by fans, but in Freed's eyes made her the most human of the pair. Freed further expressed that as a symbol of the series, critics often perceived her as a "slut" due to her attire and breasts, and felt it was reasonable for her to be portrayed as insecure in light of such hostility. But further though as a character she saw Tifa's loyalty and love for Cloud even in the light of having to relive her own traumas as admirable, and a welcome contrast to the "destined" romance seen in previous title Final Fantasy IV. She closed by stating that while people had aspects of both characters in them, Tifa ultimately represented "reality" over the "ideal".

On the other hand Patrick Holleman in his book Reverse Design: Final Fantasy VII described Tifa as having "the most typical story of a near-death experience and the loss of a world she belonged to" of the game's cast, despite how atypical Cloud was by comparison. Cloud in turn represented her only living connection to her past, and to this end Holleman felt she ignores the discrepancies in how he remembers events bordering on psychosis not as a matter of romance but as a means to hold onto what she lost. He added that while Tifa does care about Cloud, her desire was more of a selfish one in turn, one that does her more harm than good in Holleman's eyes. However, he also praised a particular moment for her character later in the game where when confronting the character Scarlet. Despite the scene appearing to lead into a boss battle against Scarlet, Tifa instead engages in a slap fight with her, something he felt subverted player's expectations well.

As a sex symbol
A significant part of Tifa's reception has focused on her sex appeal, with some third-party merchandise leaning heavily into this aspect. Electronic Gaming Monthly awarded her the "Hottest Game Babe" of 1997, calling her "as well-proportioned as they come" and heavily praising her sexual attributes, but also noting her physical and emotional strength as a character. UGO.com shared similar sentiments, complimenting her outfit as well and describing her as a "bona-fide sex symbol", while further noting that she was a rarity among female characters in video games at the time of VII' release. IGN's Phil Pirrello attributed a significant part of her popularity to her large breasts, nothing that she was an example of how series tried to add real sex appeal with Final Fantasy VII, and while her model in the original game was primitive by today's standards, he suggested it had a significant impact on the teenage demographic at its time. Fellow contributor Dave Smith suggested similar, stating it was hard to sing her praises "without sounding just a little teeny-weeny bit sexist", but further added that she helped define "tough, independent" roleplaying game heroines that came after her too due to her character.

The character has also been a frequent subject of fan-made pornography, cited in particular as a frequent search topic on Pornhub. Meanwhile, a study of such content on Rule 34 websites such as Rule 34.xxx and Sankaku Channel additionally cited her as the most frequent subject of such content by a wide margin across multiple franchises. In January 2022, a Zoom videoconference meeting done in the Italian Senate was interrupted by a user displaying 3D rendered pornography featuring Tifa engaging in sexual intercourse. The user was quickly removed, but due to the conference being televised, knowledge of the event quickly went viral. While Tifa's use in it was coincidental, it led to a surge in the character's popularity. Jade King of TheGamer noted however that while much reaction to it revolved around fan art of a sexual nature, it also resulted in a large amount of what they saw as "wholesome" art celebrating the character and the humor of the situation, usually portraying her in an awkward or comedic manner in association with the event or the country itself. King attributed it in part to Remake's recent release, but also the enduring nature of the character, calling it wholesome and an "aspect of Tifa's character that will now be ingrained into her history, and there's something brilliant about that".

Other articles however examined that the emphasis on her sex appeal sometimes overshadowed her other aspects. In another article for IGN the staff noted that while her design was meant to emphasize physical beauty, er "awe-inspiring strength, complex background, strong will and her attachment to Cloud" defined her as more than "just an eye-catching woman", further calling her a legendary heroine in the series. The book The Legend of Final Fantasy VII noted that while Tifa has many attributes of a seductive woman, specifically emphasizing her large breasts, she "thwarts the stereotypes associated with her appearance", due to being an independent and strong character, further calling her often the most "leveled headed" and pragmatic character in the game's cast. Philip Bloom of RPGamer felt that fans and critics alike both overemphasized the size of her breasts, to the point she set a perceived standard for other attractive roleplaying game female protagonists to be compared to, she "isn't that absurd of figure" and was instead "quite strong as far as female heroes go, often saving the day. But you wouldn't know it to listen to talks about her."

title: Tifa Lockhart


text:
User talk:Paulroyaux

Hello and welcome to Wikipedia! Hope you like it here, and stick around.

Here are some tips to help you get started:

 * To sign your posts (on talk pages, for example) use the '~' symbol. To insert just your name, type ~~~ (3 tildes), or, to insert your name and timestamp, use ~~~~ (4 tildes).
 * Try the Tutorial, and feel free to experiment in the test area.
 * If you need help, post a question at the Help Desk
 * Follow the Simplified Ruleset
 * Eventually, you might want to read the Manual of Style and Policies and Guidelines.
 * Remember Neutral point of view
 * Explore, be bold in editing pages, and, most importantly, have fun!

Good luck!

title: User talk:Paulroyaux


text:
Air Force Base Hoedspruit

Air Force Base Hoedspruit is an airbase of the South African Air Force. It is located adjacent to the Kruger National Park. In the late 1990s an unused portion of the base was converted into a civilian airport known as Eastgate Airport. It was also an emergency landing site for the Space Shuttle.

Units hosted

 * 19 Squadron - Helicopter squadron
 * 101 Squadron - Light transport (reserve)
 * 514 Squadron - Security services
 * 7 Aircraft Servicing Unit - Maintenance support
 * Lowveld Airspace Control Sector - Airspace control
 * Air Force Command and Control School - Training

History
The base was officially opened on 1 July 1978. It was designed from the start to be a highly protected wartime base. As such, it has armoured and Hardened Aircraft Shelters, with revetments placed close to the runways for aircraft on immediate take-off standby duty.

The base is teeming with wildlife, being surrounded by the 25 km² AFB Hoedspruit Game Reserve. Keeping the runway clear of animals was a massive problem. This led the base to introduce three cheetahs on the airfield, with the end result that animal incursions onto the runway have decreased by 90%. Another SAAF base, AFB Makhado, has since also adopted this concept.

The base gained international media attention in 2000, when it hosted the United States Air Force's rescue contingent as part of Operation Atlas Response, the mission to provide rescue and humanitarian support to areas of Mozambique devastated by the severe flooding caused by Cyclone Eline.

The base motto is Pro Nostrorum Pace (Peace for our People).

Eastgate Airport
A civil airport terminal, known as the Eastgate Airport, was established at the southern end of the airfield in the early 1990s. The terminal's main business is serving tourists visiting private game reserves in the area as well as access to the Kruger National Park via the nearby Orpen Gate. Facilities at the terminal include car hire and foreign exchange.

Charter flights are offered by Federal Air, Genair, Cesszani, Execujet, SA Historical Flight and Bataleur.

title: Air Force Base Hoedspruit


text:
Eldorado Gold

Eldorado Gold Corporation is a Canadian company that owns and operates gold mines in Turkey, Greece and Canada. Since its merger with European Goldfields in 2011 the company has been pursuing the development of the Skouries mine, Olympias mine and Stratoni mine in Greece. The company previously developed and operated gold mines in China, Brazil and Mexico. Headquartered in Vancouver and listed on the Toronto and New York Stock Exchanges, Eldorado Gold has developed and operated assets from several merged companies HRC Developments Corporation, Afcan Mining Corporation, Sino Gold Mining, Brazauro Resources, Integra Gold, as well as European Goldfields.

Corporate history
The Eldorado Corporation was incorporated in Bermuda on April 2, 1992, by several entrepreneurs who worked together at Bema Gold. The group had agreed to a contract that would give them a 70% interest in the Mexican La Colorada mining project if they were able to bring the mine into commercial production. In early 1994, La Colorada became Eldorado's first productive mine and by the end of the year they had purchased its remaining interest. Meanwhile, they also fulfilled a similar contract, conducting development-related work in exchange for ownership interest, in the La Trinidad project, also in Mexico. While the mine began production in 1996, and Eldorado gained 100% ownership in 1997, it was shut down and then sold off in 1998 as the price of gold collapsed; La Colorada was sold in 2000 for the same reason.

In April 1996, after fending off a hostile takeover bid by Glamis Gold the previous year, the company was renamed to Eldorado Gold Corporation and had its domicile moved to Vancouver, British Columbia. That year, they acquired the Brazilian São Bento, as well as exploration properties in Brazil and Turkey, from Gencor in exchange for a 43% stake in the company. Gencor made a similar deal with Vancouver Stock Exchange-listed HRC Developments Corporation, 43% of the company for several exploration properties, and then Eldorado and HRC merged to form one company. São Bento would be the company's sole operating mine from 2000 to 2006 as it focused on developing the Kişladağ project in Turkey.

Eldorado Gold increased the gold production from 64,298 ounces in 2005 to 632,539 ounces in 2010, despite the closure of the São Bento in 2007, by bringing Kişladağ into production in 2006, acquiring the Toronto Stock Exchange-listed Afcan Mining Corporation for its Tanjianshan Mine which it had acquired two years previous from Sino Gold Mining, and then acquiring Australian Securities Exchange-listed Sino Gold Mining, in a 2009 $1.6 billion all-stock deal, for their new Jinfeg and White Mountain mines. During this period of growth, Eldorado and Centerra Gold considered merging their operations but were unable to find sufficient advantages. Eldorado went on to be added to the S&P/TSX 60 in 2009 as one of the largest companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

In 2010 Eldorado acquired, in an all-stock deal worth $122 million, TSX Venture Exchange-listed Brazauro Resources for their share of the Brazilian Tocantinzinho exploration project. Later that year, Eldorado offered a $3.4-billion all-stock deal to acquire ASX-listed Andean Resources for their Cerro Negro project but were out-bid by Goldcorp who offered $3.6-billion in cash and stocks. Instead, Eldorado went on to acquire TSX-listed European Goldfields for $2.5-billion in stocks for its projects in Greece, as well as exploration properties in Romania. Eldorado's gold production peaked at 789,224 ounces in 2014 from its three mines in China, the Kişladağ mine in Turkey, supplemented by its second Turkish mine (Efemcukuru) which came online in 2012 and the old Olympias mine in Greece which the company was able to begin retreatment of leftover tailings.

Eldorado Gold began a years long decline as it committed to selling its mines in China in favour of developing its properties in Greece. At the time, during its economic crisis, Greece was actively seeking foreign investment and its Skouries project had the potential to be a high producing, long-lived (over 20 years) gold and copper mine. Other companies had previously attempted to develop the Skouries mine but the government had deemed it as not being in the national interest but the need for foreign investment reversed that decision. However, Eldorado's projects in the Chalkidiki region had long been controversial as other mining projects left locals with little confidence in the government's ability to effectively regulate mining and manage economic development. The company spent US$1 billion by 2017, mostly on the Skouries project, without completing a mine and experiencing protests against the project, due to land clearing in a popular forest and anticipated impacts to environmental values, tourism and agriculture, as well as protests in favour citing the number of jobs the mining project represented. Eldorado Gold's assets in China were sold to China National Gold Group Corporation and the Shenzhen-listed Yintai Resources Company for a cumulative US$900-million in 2016 resulting in its gold production falling to 292,971 ounces in 2017. Despite having gained the Lamaque mine in Quebec with the company's $590 million cash and stock acquisition of TSX Venture-listed Integra Gold, the company suspended dividend payments in 2018 and their stock briefly fell under CDA$1, all while company was accused of using Dutch subsidiaries for tax avoidance purposes and excessively compensating executive management for poor performance.

Operations
As of 2020, Eldorado Gold operates 5 mines:
 * Kişladağ gold mine, located in Uşak, Turkey, has been the company's highest producing mine since its opening in 2006. The property was acquired by Eldorado with its 1996 merger with HRC Development and developed as a low-grade open pit mine with heap leaching to produce gold dore.
 * Efemçukuru mine, located in İzmir, Turkey, near the village of Efemçukuru, reached commercial production in 2012. It is an underground mine targeting a high-grade deposit whose ore is sold to third parties for processing elsewhere.
 * Lamaque mine, located in Val-d’Or, Quebec, Canada, is an underground gold mine that reached commercial production on March 31, 2019.
 * Olympias mine, located in the Chalkidiki region of Greece, is an underground gold-silver-lead-zinc mine that ships ore concentrates from port facilities in Thessaloniki and Stratoni for processing elsewhere. It was acquired in Eldorado's business combination with European Goldfields in 2012 and reached commercial production in 2017.
 * Stratoni mine, located in the Chalkidiki region of Greece, near Stratoni, is an underground silver-lead-zinc mine that ships ore concentrates from port facilities in Stratoni for processing elsewhere.

Past operations

 * La Colorada, located in Sonora, Mexico, was Eldorado Gold's original mine. It began production in 1994 but was sold in 2000 to a private Mexican company.
 * La Trinidad, located in Sinaloa, Mexico, was brought into production by Eldorado in 1996 but was sold in 1998.
 * São Bento, located in Minas Gerais, Brazil, was purchased from Gencor in 1996 and operated through to 2006.
 * Tanjianshan, located in a mountainous desert in Qinghai, China, the open gold pit mine was brought into production in 2007, following Eldorado's acquisition of the Afcan Mining Corporation. The high-altitude mine produced approximately 110,000 ounces annually of gold dore until 2016 when it was sold.
 * Jinfeg, located in Guizhou, China, the mine was a combined open pit and underground operation targeting a deep deposit. It was acquired by Eldorado with its 2009 acquisition of Sino Gold. The mine produced between 110,000 and 180,000 ounces of gold dore each year until 2016 when it was sold.
 * White Mountain, located in Jilin, China, near the city of Baishan. The underground mine was acquired by Eldorado in 2009 shortly after its opening. The mine produced between 60,000 and 85,000 ounces of gold dore each year until 2016 when it was sold.
 * Vila Nova iron ore mine, located in Amapá, Brazil, operated from 2011 to 2014 and has since been on care and maintenance.

Greece
The mining operation at Olympiada has been found to be in violation of Greek environmental protection laws by an inspection committee of the Greek Ministry of the Environment and Energy. The inspectors discovered, among other violations, concentrations over the allowed limits of cadmium, lead and arsenic in a water stream used by the mining operation.

Documentaries

 * ELDORADO - The Struggle for Skouries

title: Eldorado Gold


text: User talk:68.68.131.18

title: User talk:68.68.131.18


text:
User talk:CynthiaG.

Hello and welcome to Wikipedia! Hope you like it here, and stick around.

Here are some tips to help you get started:

 * To sign your posts (on talk pages, for example) use the '~' symbol. To insert just your name, type ~~~ (3 tildes), or, to insert your name and timestamp, use ~~~~ (4 tildes).
 * Try the Tutorial, and feel free to experiment in the test area.
 * If you need help, post a question at the Help Desk
 * Follow the Simplified Ruleset
 * Eventually, you might want to read the Manual of Style and Policies and Guidelines.
 * Remember Neutral point of view
 * Explore, be bold in editing pages, and, most importantly, have fun!

Good luck!

title: User talk:CynthiaG.


text:
Cait Sith

Cait Sith may refer to

 * An alternate name for Cat-sìth, a type of fairy in Scottish mythology
 * Cait Sith, a cat robot protagonist introduced in Final Fantasy VII
 * Regal Feline Cait Sith, a character introduced in Final Fantasy XI

title: Cait Sith