#demilitarise

[atanx]

Forever thinking of that one post or sth where someone went like "Sasuke is such a bad character he wanted to destroy Konoha even tho that's the opposite of what Itachi wanted" like??? Whyyyy would Sasuke do what Itachi wants?

Like yeah Sasuke loves him, but you can love someone and utterly disagree with their motives. You can love and hate someone at the same time. You can love someone and still want to destroy everything they fought for.

Sasuke might love Itachi, and Itachi might have loved him in his own twisted way, but in the end Itachi still killed hundreds of people. He still took away Sasuke's entire world. He massacred his family for wanting something more out of life other than being constantly discriminated against. Itachi still chose to psychologically torture Sasuke, forcing him to watch Itachi slaughter the Uchiha for three days straight. Itachi still manipulated Sasuke into killing him.

And Itachi did it all in the name of a village. He was a thirteen year old boy. Think about it. Itachi was a seventh or eighth grader. He was indoctrinated, made into nothing but a tool by the village. And the village took his sacrifice and gave him nothing in return. The village moved on from the Uchiha massacre like nothing ever happened.

None of the hidden villages are good. They're literally all mercenaries, killers for hire who don't care who they kill. But Konoha is extra disgusting in how duplicitous it is. How it pretends that it's the nice village. How it pretends to be good, with all that 'Will of Fire' bullshit.

The scene where the Sandaime propaganda'd to a bunch of academy students before the third round of the chunin exams comes to mind. He claimed that every single person in the village was his precious person.

I couldn't help but feel outraged at that, disbelieving that he would actually say such an obvious lie. I guess the entirety of the Uchiha were just an exception! I guess the people he lets Danzo kidnap and indoctrinate, the shinobi he sends on suicide missions, the shinobi that are traumatised by their service, the entirety of thr Hyuuga side branch, they're all just exceptions! Those don't count!

If I can feel that much disdain and disgust, I can't imagine how much Sasuke feels.

Like, I want to destroy Konoha and I'm just reading a fictional work.

Konoha is the village that twisted Sasuke's brother. That took his childhood, his innocence and his happiness. That made him kill Sasuke's entire clan. That still kept its claws in him even years after the fact. Why wouldn't Sasuke want to destroy it?

[clove-pinks]

The 1812 poll continues to educate me on more historical events and developments happening in that year; although I think that most of them (including the Anglo-American War of 1812) ultimately tie into the global conflict of the Napoleonic Wars.

The Anglo-American War of 1812 is sometimes regarded as part of the Napoleonic Wars, although some events (Britain and France harassing USAmerican shipping) are more directly tied to the conflict than others... sort of? The USA trying to invade Canada dates back to our war of independence, tbh, although in 1812 the hope was that the British would be distracted by Napoleon.

The Dey of Algiers in 1812, Haji Ali, also opportunistically jumped into the Anglo-American War of 1812 on the side of the British, creating an Algierian theatre of war in 1814-1815. Clearly this was related to earlier conflicts between the USA and the Barbary States, but like... entering the War of 1812, really???

The North American theatre of war is something that I increasingly see as a conflict not so much between British and American interests—or other European colonial powers, like Spain—but a settlers vs. Indigenous nations conflict that dates back to the Seven Years' War. What would become the northwest theatre of the War of 1812 involved US States and territories that were already militarised against Indigenous people.

[thedandeliongarden]

I’m raising my eyebrows at the omission of how the crowd started chanting “fire” and a less experienced soldier mistook this as an order after a while.. or don’t american history books include that part?

In any case they didn’t deserve to be shot, the military should not be part of law enforcement, and framing George III as a tyrant strips a metric arsefull of nuance away from the problems that lead to the war of independence - including how the colonists couldn’t stop starting wars then baulked at the idea of taxes to pay for their stupid wars.

TL:DR

Yes, the police need demilitarising, the Boston massacre was bad, and the world is a bit shit right now

However, your history books are pretty jingoistic and you should be acutely aware of that

Did you hear what happened in Boston?

In Boston, during a verbal dispute, an unarmed teenage boy was forcefully hit in the head with the butt of a weapon by local law enforcement.

Word of the incident spread quickly, and a large number of locals gathered in the street where the incident had happened to protest almost immediately.

As the crowd grew, angry protesters shouted slogans; some business owners, fearing property damage, shut their doors. The local authorities called for uniformed backup; backup came, well armed.

The assembly was deemed "unlawful," and the crowd was ordered to disperse. The protesters began to throw dirt clods in response.

In response, multiple uniformed law enforcers fired on the crowd. The first protester to die was a black man and the authorities justified the shooting by claiming that they "feared for their lives".

The year was 1770, the authorities were British soldiers, the protest would later be called the Boston Massacre, and the first protester killed in that conflict was Crispus Attucks, a black man considered by many to be a heroic American patriot and the first casualty of the American Revolution.

If, while reading this story, you found yourself siding with the authorities and thinking that the protesters should have dispersed when ordered, and/or that the protesters armed with dirt and sticks deserved to be met with deadly force by armed law enforcement, be aware that you chose the side of the tyrant King George III, not the American patriots.

Ponder that.

——————-

American History. Literally in your textbooks, no matter your generation.

[cometchasr]

and so the game ends

[possessed-nia]

love hearing an opinion from a german person on how and what i have think about what should be done to the mined npp in MY country

[lucabyte]

thinking about the very specific reading of isat i had during act 3 for the most part

anyway yeah ill ramble here about this. since it actually explains my headcanons for what the disappearing island wish was

disclaimer: taken as a whole this is way too allegorical for what i'd consider a holistic reading of isat, but it was part of my running theories at the time.

anyway my guess for the real-world equivalent of the island ended up being French Polynesia by the end of the game. I had initially thrown a dart at siffrin being greek wrt europe, sisyphus allusion, enjoyment of plays and seafairing-- but the moment that little guy started getting real weird about stars and specified they were from an island i switched my guess to him being polynesian. And then that reading only really strengthened from there (and i was pretty close, tbf!)

but yeah during act 3, especially the king plotline, i started thinking about the themes of cultural erasure + lack of identity that the game has and how that plays wrt vaugarde's extremely welcoming and diverse nature.

reading far too much into it but it made me wonder if they are the results of a fallen empire of some kind. somewhere that gathered people from across the globe (as empires are known to do) before dissolving into what seems to be a localised theocracy of some kind?

like. vaugarde is basically the Good End for an empire. Fully demilitarised (they barely have use for police to the point where the defenders are surprised by burglaries, and almost CERTAINLY have zero army), extremely diverse, not caring where one comes from.

(either that or they've been a socialist utopia like, forever? and thus just aquired migrants perpetually... but ka bue is characterised as harsher by odile in a lot of respects so one can assume its not that the whole planet is Niceys All The Time.)

this lines up pretty well with the um. Whole France Thing. Boy do they own a lot of islands still that they maybe shouldn't. Also lines up with bonnie's word-of-god french creole dialect. So Vaugarde as the welcoming, ideal form of former-colonialiser-nation is like. one i vibe with if we're gonna read too hard into the worldbuilding as presented.

Anyway all this to say I did for a time wonder if the Northern Island wish was 'For The Island To Be Safe'. Assuming this world to have any level of inter-country conflict-- Wish craft is powerful stuff, and a singular island might not be able to defend itself against those seeking to take it by force. Hiding the island from the world would protect it.

... though that felt like an unusually cruel read. The implication that cloistering away like that is a 'valid' strategy for a culture to be safe (albeit with the splash damage of hurting any diaspora).

Plus, wish craft is superbly powerful, with evidently its use on the island only becoming more widespread after it was discovered how to make it work Consistently.

(i work here under the assumption that Siffrin's growing cloak is imbued with wish craft, assumedly the same as the king's armour? Since there's no way that was created at that scale...)

So it almost makes more sense, to me, for the wish to be to 'Protect The World (universe) From Us' or to 'Keep The Universe Safe'.

Wish craft being so second nature to the Islanders (See: Siffrin, favour tree), that a wish that breaks the universe is almost inevitable were the knowledge to become widespread and ingrained.

This too is an oddly cruel read, that a culture's rituals can be dangerous to that degree, but ... ? Dunno. Like I said, reading it as hard allegory makes it fall apart somewhat. Symbols can mean many different things at once until you flatten them for direct analysis like this. I don't think it's quite so 1-to-1, and it's honestly slightly too 'no story only lore' for my tastes, so I did push a lot of this stuff out of my analytical mind once I started getting to the back and of act 3 and into act 4.

Anyway. Not the most coherent explanation in the world, but still some thoughts I had mid-game that i figure i should put somewhere at least, even if I don't think they are really what the game is going for.

As a bonus, the discussions on what the island wish were in this context also lead my friend @samhainian to speculation on the colour wish that i really enjoy. Which is....

The wish that removed colour from humans perception of the world being something along the lines of:

"I wish the world was simpler"

ergo, removing colour as an invocation of Nuiance VS Black and White Morality. The world is simpler, easier to understand.

I think it's a fun headcanon! I like it.

Well anyway. A work is more than the sum of its parts and dissecting something so sloppily as this often does it a disservice. So don't take my theorising as anything more than a general rundown of where my head was at mid-game before i had all the pieces. The emotional core of the story is far more where it's at for ISAT sooooo. [Shrugs and scampers away]

[aliteralchicken]

Jordanna Spence could’ve been a great batgirl even though batgirl 2009 tried everything they could to try and make me hate her (it couldn’t)

She’s able to answer a question about criminals putting themselves in danger in order to have freedom, on the spot, correctly, while texting (Stephanie quite literally copies her answer, just without the reasoning)

to do this she would’ve needed to already have the context that devils square was a demilitarised zone and understood the perspective of the criminals discussed, which would both be very important for a Gotham vigilante, she’s knowledgable about Gotham, smart and can multitask

When she realizes the punch has been spiked, “toofast…toomuch” while actively battling consciousness she makes a scene, alerting everyone of what’s happening and destroys the punch bowl before anyone else gets drugged, saving the other students

She’s able to identity when things aren’t as they seem, connect them to shady business’s dealings that could put people in danger and encourages her friends to get out while they still can

she’s also able to sneak up on a member of the batfamily, which is impressive itself

she shows no fear in two vigilantes doing their best to be intimidating breaking and entering her accommodation, she has guts

she manages to get valuable information up on her computer which oracle would’ve had to explain verbally otherwise

Despite the fact her friend is a dick to her she’s still overjoyed when he’s safe and gives him space when needed, she’s very caring, she just doesn’t smile much

She actually knows her and her friends worth, she calls Steph out multiple times for not pulling her weight when they’re working together, she wants to pass this class and she’s not going to let someone who doesn’t care stop her and her friends from doing that

Was this to help herself and other pass classes? Yeah absolutely, but given she’s the only one with a megaphone it’s safe to assume that she had organised this entire protest, she has rallied all of these people together and they have followed

The protest itself has put a light on the death of a student and his possible killer (keep in mind, batgirl threatened to have her stabbed so her being his killer is actually plausible) and even though her intentions aren’t pure highlighting the grief and safety of her fellow students is something that needed to be taken seriously and it is now, thanks to her

TDLR: she’s smart, compassionate, brave and can lead, she’s the batgirl devils square deserves

[mapsontheweb]

Two years of Russian invasion of Ukraine

by theflagmapguy_2.0

On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014. The invasion has caused tens of thousands of deaths on both sides and instigated Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. About 8 million Ukrainians were displaced within their country by June, and more than 8 million fled the country by February 2023. After the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, Russia annexed Crimea and Russian-backed paramilitaries seized the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts of Ukraine's Donbas region, sparking a regional war. In March 2021, Russia began a military build-up, amassing up to 190,000 soldiers at Ukraine's borders. Russian government officials denied plans to attack Ukraine until the day before the invasion. On 21 February 2022, Russia recognised the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic, two self-proclaimed breakaway quasi-states in the Donbas. The next day, the Federation Council of Russia authorised the use of military force and Russian soldiers entered both territories. The invasion began the morning of 24 February 2022 upon Russian president Vladimir Putin's announcement of a "special military operation" seeking the "demilitarisation" and "denazification" of Ukraine. In his address, Putin espoused irredentist views, challenged Ukraine's right to statehood, and falsely claimed that Ukraine was governed by neo-Nazis who persecuted the ethnic Russian minority. Minutes later, Russian air strikes and a ground invasion were launched along a northern front from Belarus towards Kyiv, a north-eastern front towards Kharkiv, a southern front from Crimea, and a south-eastern front from Donetsk and Luhansk. In response, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy enacted martial law and a general mobilisation.

[loving-n0t-heyting]

internal to palestine: fatah has for the last decade pursued a policy of demilitarisation and conciliatoriness, often to the point of outright collaboration; hamas has contemporaneously pursued a policy of unabashed militancy and rebellion. netanyahu has politically promoted hamas over fatah

internal to hamas: haniyeh has (well, had) conducted himself for the last year with a level of diplomatic flexibility that, under the circumstances, can nearly be called saintly; sinwar has deliberately conducted himself over the same period so as to heighten the contradictions and keep the flame of revolution alive at all costs. netanyahu has killed haniyeh and allowed sinwar to take his place

theres two points. draw the line.

[ratbastarddotfuck]

I've never been truly able to get on board with "if you go far enough left, you get your guns back" because I genuinely just don't think we should be mass producing weapons that can facilitate mass murder at the scale we do. like, sure, I'm not against the principle of "marginalised people and activists should have the same access to weaponry that others do, especially for protection in a state of fascism" but I just. we only have these things as a result of the military industry, finding the most efficient ways to kill. these things should never have been made. we shouldn't be producing assault rifles for mass consumption, we shouldn't be producing them at all.

so like. sure. if you go far enough left you get your guns back, I guess. but I think that's a short-sighted and disingenuous way to phrase it, when I would assume that the more "radical" leftist stance is something more akin to global demilitarisation and the cessation of mass-production of weapons (alongside a lot of other garbage made for mass consumption under capitalism - we need to de-industrialise production on a major global scale).

(I don't necessarily mean getting rid of guns "completely" because people will always find ways to engineer them, but I think there is a massive difference between a gun designed for responsible hunting or sport vs a gun designed to kill people as fast as possible, or to be wielded as a threat the way cops do.)

idk. obviously this is a very future-focused perspective and I guess the "far enough left etc." crowd are usually talking more in the present. I just have concerns that this particular piece of rhetoric encourages some leftists to be less critical of the weaponry industry than perhaps we should be.

[eldewinddolly]

🦎 Half-goblin Holly backstory headcanons 🦎 (including some more general goblins headcanons because actual canon is *not it*) (very long post ahead, but I felt it was due time to expand the lore of my beloved half-goblin Holly) - Her dad's name is Lezzare. Holly was very close to him as a youngling ; he used to affectionately call her "B'wa-biba" (darling sparkle) - He made all her childhood clothes himself, as per the goblin tradition of mending : goblins love to patchwork their clothes with visible stitches, and fabrics passed down in the family from generation to generation - to allude to how their skin shed naturally and symbolise the love and protection of the family allowing them to grow. This tradition is mostly seen as an excuse for poor craftsfaeship compared to the more sophisticated, gold-thread embedded clothing of the elves and centaurs, but many goblins are actually very skilled at sewing. - He and Coral met at the university, at a marine biology class - Coral attended as a student and Lezzare as an auditor (goblins basically aren't allowed to pursue higher education in Haven because they are deemed too stupid) - Lezzare was an activist fighting for goblins' rights, and advocating for a demilitarised Haven (arguing that the People should only defend themselves against mud people as a united front, and not further the divides between the fairy families according to the "nobler" elven values and morals). - Even though he was a pacifist, he was sent to Howler's Peak after a mass arrestation following a deadly terrorist attack, when Holly was still quite young. Coral joined LEPMarine and moved to Atlantis with baby Holly so they could go visit Lezzare more easily. - Holly still loved her dad, but the stigma of being a goblin hybrid and her dad being in prison slowly started to take a toll on her ; especially since Coral was gone working most of the time, and Holly spent a lot of days with various LEP officers both being very dismissive of her and her father, and encouraging her to join the LEP like her mom. - When Coral died, Lezzare was allowed to attend the funeral, which absolutely didn't sit well with Coral's family who hated him and disapproved heavily of their daughter's relationship with a goblin. At the funeral, Lezzare started performing a goblin fire grieving ritual which was interpreted as an aggression attempt, causing an absolute riot between him and Coral's family and LEP coworkers, with Holly torn in the middle. - Holly was extremely mad for a very long time at her father for ruining her mother's funeral. Lezzare was also really upset that she chose to join the LEPrecon after everything they did to their kind. - I believe they were strictly no contact since, and for at least the first three books. But after meeting Artemis, and the B'wa Kell rebellion, Holly starts to see things a bit more differently, and a bit less black and white. Julius' death, then the events of The Opal Deception leaving her out of the LEP and more isolated than ever, as "the goblin LEP experiment that ended up being a murdering failure like every other goblin ever is", really changed her entire perspective. - Now she sees her dad more often ; mending their relationship takes time but they find things to bond over, and it gets better 🧡 ... That's it for now ! Please tell me what you think about all this ! Also, I've started working on a feature film two weeks ago that's why this piece took forever to finish ; even though I'm really done with it, and I think I could have done better with the color palette (too same toney imo), I'm pretty happy with how vibrant it globally turned out. And I'm also quite happy with Lezzare's face 💚

[whencyclopedia]

Munich Agreement

The Munich Agreement, signed on 30 September 1938 at the Munich Conference attended by the leaders of Britain, France, Italy, and Germany, handed over the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia to Germany in the hope that this act of appeasement would prevent a world war and end the territorial expansion pursued by the leader of Nazi Germany Adolf Hitler (1889-1945).

Greater Germany

To understand why world leaders acted as they did at Munich, it is necessary to go back to 1935 and follow the trail of Hitler's land grabs. Hitler, ever since gaining power in 1933, had promised the German people that he would retake those territories the country had lost after the First World War (1914-18) and the humiliating Treaty of Versailles (1919). Further, Hitler wanted Lebensraum ('living space') for the German people, that is, new lands where they could prosper. Hitler's aggressive foreign policy saw a run of territorial 'recoveries'. First, Germany took back the coal-rich Saar region on Germany's western border, an area that had been governed by the League of Nations (the forerunner of today's United Nations) since the end of WWI. In March 1935, voters in the Saar decided overwhelmingly to rejoin Germany. Hitler, encouraged by the lack of an effective international response to Japan's invasion of Chinese Manchuria in 1931 and Italy's invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1935, next occupied the Rhineland, an area between Germany and France which the Versailles Treaty had stipulated must remain demilitarised. German troops entered the Rhineland in March 1936.

Hitler formally repudiated the Treaty of Versailles and embarked on a programme of rearmament. In 1936, he made alliances with Italy: the Rome-Berlin Axis and the Anti-Comintern Pact. In 1938, Hitler turned to neighbouring Austria, the country of his birth. Anschluss ('fusion') with Austria would tie in another 6.7 million German speakers into what Hitler called his 'Greater Germany'. Austria had significant natural resources and foreign currency reserves. Possession of Austria would also give Hitler an excellent strategic platform for further expansion. Hitler mobilised his army, which crossed the border on 12 March. Crucially, Hitler had three factors in his favour: the support of half of the Austrian population, the Austrian army was incapable of effective resistance, and the fascist dictator of Italy Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) had promised he would not interfere. The Austrian government capitulated, radio messages urged people not to resist, and Austria became a province of the Third Reich.

Britain and France, now whole-heartedly pursuing a policy of appeasement towards Hitler in the hope he would settle for the gains he had made already, did not feel this expansion could justify a world war. After all, the lands taken so far contained primarily German speakers, and the majority (as a plebiscite in Austria showed) were happy enough with the move. The problem was Hitler was not satisfied. Now the dictator turned to Czechoslovakia, in particular the Sudetenland region, although in May 1938, Hitler told his generals he intended to occupy the whole of Czechoslovakia.

Europe on the Eve of WWII, 1939

Simeon Netchev (CC BY-NC-ND)

Continue reading...

[hidansbabygirl]

Hot take but Hidan and Naruto are seriously the same person to me.

Like, take 12 year old Naruto and have Konoha demilitarise. His whole life was dependent on becoming Hokage, that kid would not survive. He already shows an absolute disregard for personal safety and isn't the sharpest tool in the shed. And we already know enough about the Naruto loneliness epidemic, if the Jashin cult (you know, something that specialises in preying on lonely and vulnerable people) found him before team 7, it'd be so joever.

And despite what Hidan says, his actions say enough about how deeply he cares about Kakuzu, who's like the only stable and somewhat positive connection in his life Hidan has ever had. These two morons have everything in common, loud, obnoxious, annoying, hot tempered, obsessive and just... desperate for love, really. (Yes Hidan is absolutely desperate for affection, I can scientifically prove it, I have an actual notebook on it). Also, they're both the type who "when cornered, keep fighting till the end." - as said by Kishimoto.

Plus, Kishimoto already said Hidan was his favourite villain + he wanted to do more things with Hidan but he wasn't allowed to. I just feel like the whole Naruto-Hidan parallel has got something in it, you know?

[soup-mother]

making world maps but just outright censoring "tricky" regions instead of trying to accurately map things, except it's really obvious I have an incredibly weird idea of what regions are "controversial borders".

entire south china sea completely pixelated, india-china border covered in black bars, for some reason the border between new South wales and Queensland is marked like a demilitarised zone