#imperial defence

[daegu-based-terrorist]

Diversity win! the pilot bombing Hamhung is a Native American

[bluespiritshonour]

Thinking about how popular Mai would've been if she were a boy. Like, can you imagine?people would've swooned over her like they swoon over, idk, Jet—it just occured to me that I like her because she's so unconventional for a female character.

Girls like Mai exist in real world—but women are rarely allowed to be complex and three dimensional and grey in fiction.

I would argue that Mai is a grey character; she did start out as Azula's lackey. And well, that's a fictional girl; I found her apathy stan-worthy.

I love that she constantly has a bitch face. She cracks dry/dark jokes. Wears black. Is mysterious and stoic. Does everything she can to disregard authority/even though she's not confrontational about it. (There's one difference. Bad boys are usually very confrontational).

All these characteristics exist in popular male characters. (Except for one thing that I've noticed: most of these “bad boy” characters are volatile and yet, are described as broody/stoic, like, dude. That ain't stoic, that's so emotional.)

So yeah. Coming back to Mai. Imagine if she were a boy.

A boy who's apathetic and has no passion for anything. A boy who's constantly bored/a thrill-seeker/has nothing he cares about. A boy who has a shutter for a face and rarely expresses himself, is amazing with knives and hand-to-hand combat and is gloomy.

There's nothing he cares about because caring gets people hurt and everyone wants something and is two-faced so it's safe to be a mask of indifference. Until—hold on—until he meets a passionate, hot-headed girl who's ✨ different ✨and if not anything, wears her heart on her sleeve/is an open book...

Yes, I'm talking about Zuko.

...and oh, oh, would you look at that? Now he has something to fight for!

I mean, for Mai, Zuko (after Ty Lee) is the only other person in front of whom she can be herself.

Reminds me of “he's only nice to her” trope. Sorry.

“You're so beautiful when you hate the world.”

“I don't hate you.”

Just imagine Mai as a boy. People would eat it up. They don't like her 'cause she's a girl.

[justacynicalromantic]

Russian oligarchs close to #Putin are involved in the production of #UAVs for the #Russian army.

Meanwhile, they are behind one of the largest investors in the U.S. defense industry and the social network X, while their kids enjoy a luxurious life abroad.

[mayoonrices]

My Rogue Trader, Frida Grathriana Aeos Venria de Vhal af Calaxis or Recently, Frida Von Valancius

A Noble Voidborn, And Officer of regiment. High Dogmatic and low Iconoclast decisions and totally dint indulge a little bit of heresy on her darkest hour.

She was my first and won't be my last rogue trader I'm gonna make portrait and do gameplay. Right now I'm doing high Dogmatic with plus narcissism and high coercion like good bred Noble.

Will be doing Pure Pysker Iconoclast and Crime Lord Heretical next since I'm almost done with act 4 and closer to the last act. Which means I have to painstakingly paint their portraits as well

[badzaba]

No, this not Price

[titanomancy]

The new Aegis Defence Line looks like a solid improvement on the old barricades and Wall of Martyrs, combining elements of both to improve on the concept.

The original Aegis kit had an extremely prefabricated, drop-in look to it that worked well as a post hoc Imperial fortification but didn't really read as the kind of long-term occupation you might find on a bastion world, while the a Wall of Martyrs was much more substantial and permanent in appearance, but limiting by the fixed configuration with an obvious "front" and "back" making it a challenge to do complex configurations like tenaille trenches.

The new kit appears to retain the ease of use of a precast jersey barrier while providing a more substantial, modular format to construct elaborate defensive networks and conveniently foregoing the extremely specific look of Cadian dead heaped, improbably, on the wrong side of the parapet. I'll be extremely curious to see if there are any other compatible kits in the offing, or if there'll just be the firing platform and barricades.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Casting Wary Eyes on Russia’s Air Strength Japan Is Planning a Mighty Sky Armada,” Brantford Expositor. February 7, 1933. Page 3. ---- Top image: Trim fighting planes like those pictured above represent Japan's bid for "a place in the sky” --- It was no futile gesture of defiance that Japan made through its war minister, General Sadao Araki, when it was announced that Nippon's military air forces would be strengthened to equal those of Soviet Russia. 

For Japan has the factories, the men, and the technical skill to build a mighty armada of the air. For additional money, it needs do only what has been done before: in 1931, 68 planes were purchased by public subscription within a few months after the launching of a patriotic appeal. 

Newly established in Manchukuo and hemmed In by China and the U.S.S.R., Japan has made no secret of the fact that she fears war with the Soviet Union. And Soviet airplanes, thousands of them, are ready to sweep into action, it is this air threat that Japan is especially anxious to meet— not only in Manchukuo and Korea, but especially In her desperately small and over-populated homeland across the Sea of Japan. 

Nippon had crude fighting planes and a plan of aerial combat before the beglnnlg of the World War. Her flyers saw service on the Italian front and later in Siberia. They used foreign-built planes and motors then but began to manufacture their own in 1918. 

Military and civilian schools were established, flying clubs organized, and scores of pilots turned out. French, English, and American aviators went to Japan to teach everything from transport flying to acrobatics. Commercial lines began regular operation. 

In 1931, airplanes in use by the army and navy numbered only about 500. To-day there are probably 1500. Only the Japanese war ministry knows how many more are being rushed to completion. The next Diet in April will receive enormous military budget to provide for pro-posed training camps fields and new airplanes. The only announced object is to match Russia pilot for pilot, plane for plane. 

LANDING HELDS SCARCE The greatest single hindrance to the development of Japanese aviators has been the scarcity of landing space. The country, being both mountainous and small, has had to sacrifice a large proportion of its valuable flat lands to make aerodromes. Since there are plenty of sheltered harbors for seaplane landings, however, naval aviation has prospered. In fact, the navy now is proposing to spend $50,000,000 for the construction of five new naval air bases. 

More than $2,500,000 being spent for anti-aircraft armament including artillery searchlights, sound detectors, and range-finding equipment. There defenses are concealed in strategic and carefully-guarded localities. 

One of the world's finest institutes of aeronautical research was opened recently near Tokyo. It is complete with huge wind tunnels for the testing of new types of planes, a large field for actual flying, and a $1,900,000 building, containing the most advanced scientific equipment in Japan as in the United States, children and college students compete in the building and flying or model planes. And when Japanese youths serve their compulsory term in the army, many more apply for aviation training than can be accommodated. 

There are about twelve busy airplane factories in Japan to-day and the largest the Mitsubishi company at Nagoya employs 3000 workmen At least a score of aviation schools including those conducted by the government are tinning out fledgling pilots.  ---- Bottom image: These new super-sensitive ears designed to detect the approach of enemy airplanes has been officially adopted as part of Japan's highly modern anti-aircraft equipment.

[tomorrowusa]

Are Russians moving to your block? It may be a good idea to stock up on Javelins and HIMARS.

Not sure of the origin of the cartoon or whether or not it was modified. But it captures the spirit of Russian imperialism well.

As for the actual war, UK Defence Intelligence reports that the Russian generals in charge of the invasion are more concerned with the troops’ shaving habits and hair styles. I suppose that Defense Minister Shoigu and Gen. Gerisamov want the Russian Army to look more presentable when Ukrainian drones spot them.

The abject stupidity of the Russian leadership puts them in a class with George Santos.

[nando161mando]

"Mask up for self defense" (EN: English)

[bushfulofbirds]

I have sooooooo many personal thoughts & feelings about Atlas lately!!!! So much is implied or open for interpretation about how it works that would make so much sense but drives me NUTS thinking about

[dougielombax]

Okay!

I need to point something out.

People who call for Ireland to join NATO are all too quick to overlook that a third of the country is already occupied by a NATO member. I blame THAT on partitionist brain rot, but that’s besides the point.

And the UK do fuck all to protect the north anyway. Plus they were using the British army to slaughter innocent civilians there (with help from the RUC, loyalist murder gangs and the UDR) as recently as thirty years ago.

I’d rather NOT see Irish troops (unlike their British counterparts, the Irish armed forces have never committed war crimes!) being commanded by British or Turkish generals fwiw (Turkey is also a NATO member and has tons of its own imperialist baggage, in addition to its ongoing fuckery in Syria overseeing the slaughter of innocent Kurds, Assyrians and Armenians, in addition to helping Russia evade sanctions and assisting Azerbaijan in its ongoing genocidal crusade against Armenia (yes that includes Artsakh! Shut up!). But that’s a different topic)

This isn’t an anti-NATO screed btw, I can understand perfectly why the other countries joined NATO in the first place. I’m not gonna go off on some rant about depleted uranium or end up shrieking about Kosovo like some deranged Serbian nationalist. I’m above that shit.

And you sure as shit won’t see me defending Putin’s stupid military vanity project in Ukraine either. Or any of his regime’s prior instances of fuckery.

I know some out there want me to do so.

But I shan’t. So there!

Ireland merely has reason enough NOT to join NATO on accounts of a current NATO-member rogue state having spent the last few centuries fucking around with us for its imperialist vanity project.

I do think Ireland should spend more on defence, drastically, in all aspects of said area. And I think reunification can provide the perfect opportunity for such an overhaul. Plus it can finally rid the Irish Defence Forces of that insidious partitionist mindset which has plagued it since fucking forever.

Plus I think the Irish Defence Forces need to undergo a MAJOR overhaul at all levels in every area such as operations, wages, contingency planning, defence doctrine, military equipment acquisitions and trading. Among others.

And no. Conscription alone will NOT solve the issues faced by the Defence Forces! Most Irish people would sell out their own country for a corn chip (trust me! I’d know!) or a few pretty little pennies anyway, so if there was a draft during a war you’d see more people ending up in jail rather than signing up I promise you that.

Plus it would fill the military with poorly skilled people who don’t want to be there.

I’d personally rather see the Defence Forces become a well armed well trained Republican-thinking (in the Irish sense!), all-Island defence force which helps out in international peacekeeping and conflict resolution.

As opposed to the weedy, pitiful little ill-equipped, short-staffed, barely existent token gendarmerie/potato militia the Irish government wants to reduce it to.

At the least!

For fuck’s sake!

[jayaorgana]

I am trying to read legacy of the force, and I'm loving the Han and Leia stuff I think their parts are a lot of fun, and I'm actually enjoying the book a lot but also like... I'm getting so sad. Why is it so sad :(

[justacynicalromantic]

Destruction of Russia's Toropets ammo depot by Ukraine reduces likelihood of hypothetical Russian invasion of Baltic States and Poland.

The facility is situated at the northwestern edge of the Moscow Military District. The depot covers an area of approximately 8 km² and is about 100 km from the Belarusian border and roughly 200 km from Latvia.

In a sense, the depot resembles the infamous Cobasna ammo depot in Moldova's occupied Transnistria, which served under the USSR as a primary storage facility for the southern Soviet armies, aimed at sustaining the Soviet invasion of southern Europe.

[transmutationisms]

the idea that 'science' is an unmitigated and inherent social good---a politically neutral and universally beneficial process of accumulating knowledge---is wildly ahistorical and dangerously, wilfully ignorant of the role that science and its purveyors / practitioners have played in imperial and colonial expansion. warwick anderson went so far as to say that colonial medicine was better understood as a discourse of settlement than one of health promotion, & we can see this quite easily in, for example, french doctors' use of the nostalgia diagnosis to guide colonial policy in algeria in the 1830s, attempting to securely settle a french population there; or in the development of a science of 'water cures', spa treatments considered to mitigate the insalubrious effects of foreign (particularly tropical) environments, for which the french army by the 1890s granted routine medical leave because the 'health' of its soldiers was not a matter of individual interest but a state resource.

but medicine is in many ways an easy case when it comes to the relationship between science and the state; all too often we still seem reluctant to acknowledge, for example, the pursuit of economic botany and animal / plant breeding in the early modern period as contributors to discourses of acclimatisation and proto-eugenics, sciences that were given state financial support on these utilitarian grounds & not for any high-minded general pursuit of 'knowledge'; or the development of navigational instruments and knowledge from the 14th century or so onward as a project explicitly funded and intended to permit faster, cheaper, more reliable colonial exploration and travel; or the sheer amount of research in physics and chemistry that has been and is devoted to weapons development or natural resource extraction; or the promise of space travel as a further possibility for obtaining raw materials as well as for settlement---often marketed in terms and visual rhetoric explicitly comparing the 'space colony' to its terrestrial precursor: 'the final frontier', depicted as both lush tropical paradise & as rugged american west, waiting to be conquered & brought to heel.

i am of course not hostile to 'science' in any totalising way; this would be as indefensible a position as the automatic 'defence' of all such practices; they're not monolithic or intrinsically doomed to serve state interests. but it is simply irresponsible to pretend that the scientific inquiry into something---describing it, measuring it, taxonomising it---is inherently a social good, or that the pursuit of 'knowledge' is ever an apolitical endeavour. knowing, seeing, & measuring the world grant immense power; states and empires know this. scientific inquiry is not tangentially related to imperial and colonial expansion; often it is a critical piece of the machinery by which these processes occur. wilful ignorance of this fact in favour of an optimistic conception of science as a universal social good is not just inaccurate but propagandistic & an advancement of state & imperial interests.

[warrioreowynofrohan]

Looking at the parts on Númenor in Unfinished Tales (and the LOTR appendix chronology) made me notice something Tolkien does with the history of Númenor that is very thoughtful, very important, and often neglected by other fantasy authors: he distinguishes between fighting on the right side and being the good guys, and he even delves into how those two things can work against each other.

Three times in particular, the Númenoreans help to defend Middle-Earth against Sauron. In Aldarion’s time, in the 800s, Aldarion spends much time establishing and rebuilding a port/haven on the coast of southern Eriador, to guard against invasion of the north through what will later be the Gap of Rohan. In 1700, Tar-Minastir sends a large force to drive back Sauron and rescue Gil-galad and Elrond and their people after the forging of the Rings and the destruction of Eregion. And, of course, near the end of the Second Age Ar-Pharazon sends the vast fleet and army that takes Sauron captive.

And each of these times are associated with successive stages in Númenor’s moral decline.

Aldarion is the first warning sign. His father, Tar-Meneldur, a wise man, discourages his voyaging, accurately fearing that it “sows the seeds of recklessness and the desire of other lands to hold”. Aldarion likewise marks the beginning of Númenoreans regarding nature as something to be valued for its use rather than for itself: trees as timber, not as forests. This is also when the Númenoreans begin to log Eriador - their logging will eventually be so extensive that, whereas virtually the whole area from the coast to the Misty Mountains to the Gap of Rohan was forested at the start of the Second Age, by the time of LOTR only the tiny fragment of the Old Forest remains. It’s not for nothing that the trees there are hostile to Men (and Hobbits). (This may not have been happening in the same way in Aldarion’s time - in Númenor he spends great efforts on replanting trees, nothwithstanding the ecological distinction between ‘tree plantations’ and ‘forests’, and he may have done the same in Middle-earth - but it’s still the starting point.)

And he does work extensively in Middle-earth to build defences against Sauron (or ‘the shadow in the east’; they don’t know it’s Sauron yet) and is described as “the friend and counsellor of Gil-Galad.” Yet the very growth in power, pragmatism, and expansionism that is involved in doing this is the start of Númenor’s downward path.

Next, we have Tar-Minastir, who drives back Sauron from Eregion during the War of the Elves and Sauron, following the forging of the Rings of Power, when Gil-galad, Elrond, and the Elves of Eregion are almost defeated. Unfinished Tales says “he loved the Eldar but envied them” and built a high tower to gaze westwards towards Valinor. And it is in the immediate aftermath of his rule that Númenor enters its phase of exploitative imperialism: his son Tar-Ciryatan is “a mighty king, but greedy of wealth; he built a great fleet of royal ships, amd his servants brought back great store of metal and gems, and oppressed the men of Middle-earth.” The next king, Tar-Atanamir, likewise “exacted heavy tribute from the men of the coasts of Middle-earth”, and was the first to be openly hostile to the Valar and the Eldar. The Silmarillion describes Ciryatan and Atanamir as “proud men, eager for wealth” who “laid the men of Middle-earth under tribute, taking now rather than giving”.

(As an aside: this is a period where I’m particularly curious about what Gil-galad and Elrond were thinking, and the decisions they had to make. The Númenoreans have just recently decisively rescued them, and it may not be going too far to say the Elves of Eregion and Lindon are military dependent on Númenor. And yet the Númenoreans are now mistreating and oppressing the men of Middle-earth. How to balance military/political pragmatism and ethics? Are the Númenoreans friends or not? Should they be trying to do anything to stop Númenorean empire? Can they do anything? Does benefitting from Númenorean military might while not doing anything make them complicit? Do they try to talk to the Númenoreans? And for Elrond in particular, on top of the moral vs pragmatic concerns, there’s the knowledge that it’s his brother’s descendents and successors who are doing this - in a sense, the only family he has left.)

And lastly, of course, we have Ar-Pharazon, who defeats Sauron but without being any better than Sauron, and who is corrupted by him, wreaks devastation on the men of Middle-earth and on his political opponents at home, and leads Númenor to its destruction.

It feels like this reinforces the themes of The Lord of the Rings, that victory over evil is not one by seeking to overpower it, but by renunciation of power. The downfall of Númenor highlights this by contrast by showing the corrupting force of accumulated imperial power, even when used against a foe that is genuinely evil.

[intersectionalpraxis]

FULL TEXT: 📰 Israeli minister Bezalel Smotrich has said letting two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip die of hunger might be “justified and moral”. Speaking at a conference hosted by the Israel Hayom outlet on Monday, he expressed support for blocking aid to the Gaza Strip but said Israel lacked international legitimacy to do so. “We are bringing in aid because there is no choice,” the far-right minister said, according to the Times of Israel. “We can't, in the current global reality, manage a war. Nobody will let us cause two million civilians to die of hunger even though it might be justified and moral until our hostages are returned,” he added. He said that Israel needed “international legitimacy for this war”. For nearly 10 months, the Israeli military has imposed a tight siege on the Gaza Strip, extremely limiting the flow of life-saving essential food and medical items. Aid delivery is scarce, unprotected and restricted. In June, independent UN investigators said Israel was using starvation on the Palestinian population as a weapon of war. The hunger crisis has led to the death of dozens of people due to malnutrition, mostly children. A high risk of famine persists across the Gaza Strip as almost the entire population faces high levels of acute food insecurity or worse, including half a million suffering starvation, the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said in June. Smotrich is one of many Israeli ministers and officials who have made statements described as genocidal against Gaza's Palestinians since 7 October. On 9 October, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel was fighting “human animals” as he announced a “complete siege” on Gaza “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” Gallant said. In March 2023, he said the Palestinian village of Huwwara near Nablus "needs to be wiped out".

The continued confessions of a WAR CRIMINAL. A forced and continued famine continues in Gaza and there have been and there will continue to be mass outbreaks of disease -one of the most recent one's is a highly contagious skin infection that is predominantly impacting children. Every single zionist is a genocidal murderer and their are fully backed, emboldened, and supported by American and European imperialism.