#militarisering

[evavertun]

could write an essay on the tragic irony of that scene (where mel is talking to jayce over Viktor who is dismantling jinx’s bomb) but like… in brief??

people are saying she’s being classist or ableist in leaving viktor out of the conversation and while that dimension to the power differential between them is definitely there (and I could write whole lot on that too) i just don’t think it’s the main reason why that conversation goes the way it does.

mel doesn’t speak to viktor because she is suggesting the goddamn militarisation of hextech. viktor is a principled scientist.

rewatch the scene closely. mel watches both jayce and viktor at first. while explaining the situation. while Viktor is dismantling the bomb, while giving the council’s opinion. but she stops engaging with viktor as soon as he asks her:

- V : “wait what are you suggesting?”

this is where she stops talking to him. because what she wants is the goddamn militarisation of hextech. to use on the undercity where viktor is from, no less. mel says straight up:

- M: “we should prepare our own countermeasures.”

it is right there. i don’t understand where the ‘manipulation’ conversation is coming in with this scene when she isn’t even attempting to speak around the violent measures she is willing to support. mel is being quite upfront about it. to me this was mel’s most ‘ambessa’ moment. it makes perfect narrative sense that in the episode following this one we meet ambessa and get to see mel’s relationship to martial law and Noxus’ kinds of state sanctioned violence that far exceed the brutality we have seen even piltover direct at zaun.

mel knows she cannot speak to viktor about this because… and i don’t know how many times I can say this… it’s a proposal for the godamn militarisation of hextech.

of course she anticipates viktor’s reaction because she’s intelligent enough to know that his reaction is that of any principled scientist. before anyone can get a word in edgewise we see viktor immediately, vehemently trying to shut the idea down:

- V: “absolutely not. That is not what we created hextech for.”

jayce brings up heimerdinger here too and says he would never do it which is so telling. heimerdinger was a council member, yes, but he is first and foremost a scientist who adheres to science’s ethics and academic rigour (albeit to a pedantic degree because he has no real concept of human life spans).

in this scene viktor is rightfully much more pissed off at jayce. that he even considers the proposal is a testament to just how much more absorbed in mel’s world of state politics he has become as opposed to viktor’s one of science. after mel has left viktor scoffs and says:

- “Ridiculous. You cannot be considering this.[…] We’re scientists. Not soldiers. We agreed hextech is to improve lives not take them.”

a large part of what is so tragic about the machine herald storyline is that these tables have entirely turned. of the many, many mel and viktor parallels i think it’s often overlooked that it’s mel who becomes increasingly opposed to endorsing war and militarisation, ultimately killing her own mother, the symbolic figurehead of both, while it’s viktor who ends up creating the very thing he was insulted to even think of with hextech. an army that can’t die… used by ambessa no less.

[oilith]

My Head cannon for the Clawthorne sisters: They're both talented even in their teens and both think the other is the genius teen prodigy. Hear me out:

Lilith is actually a prodigy in terms of academic level. She learned to do spells in the first few tries. We can see this talent when Luz teaches them glyphs. She impressed Luz with multiple ice sculptures while Eda could only make small ice balls. She thinks Eda is the genius teen prodigy because Eda has more raw power than her in magic as seen in their fight. Thus, Lilith focused on being "sharp and crafty" as she puts it.

Eda is the prodigy in the practical sense. We saw her raw power during her fight against Lilith. We saw her survive Terra's challenge when she was young. She taught herself wild magic too. Now here's the fun part: Deep down, She thinks that Lilith is the genius teen prodigy because she saw Lilith perform spells after learning once or twice which motivates Eda to learn more spells especially wild magic (Let's be honest: I'm sure the emperor's coven sigil still seals some form of magic to avoid them getting too powerful for Belos) until Eda believes that she's "better than Lilith". These needs of trying to be better than Lilith resurfaced again on the day Luz teaches them glyphs.

Sorry for the long head cannon. Have fun with this information

This is interesting. I've always thought that they're sort of "opposites" in a way. Like you said too, Eda has raw power, but lacks in the techical area. Meanwhile Lilith, while she isn't as strong as Eda, she has the technical skills. Also, Lilith has the EC military training so it makes sense for her to be like that. It's basically something like an experienced street fighter against a military trained fighter. I really like the idea that both of them think the other is a prodigy, when in reality it's both lmao

[oifaaa]

The white knight universe really is something bc it has so many things I love like Robin Duke, red hood Jason with his own Robin, terry mcginnis, a cool as fuck art style and Bruce being questioned about if what he is doing is right plus holding himself accountable and then it's got things I absolutely hate like joker having children, cop dick grayson, the whole cops with batmobiles thing and Bruce and Harley quinn being a thing

[communistkenobi]

I don’t know why but the uniforms in tng make their necks look very exposed

[beeseverywhen]

"All political parties face a trade-off under a first-past-the-post electoral system. Governing depends on attracting a broad coalition of voters, inevitably involving compromises that leave a party’s base disgruntled.

So it is perhaps unsurprising that as we move closer to a general election, the discontent from the anti-Labour left who claim there is little to distinguish Keir Starmer from Rishi Sunak in the battle for the premiership is only getting noisier."

"The argument is threefold: there’s no meaningful difference between the Conservatives and Labour; Starmer supposedly can’t be trusted because he has dropped pledges he made in the 2020 leadership election to shift his party towards the centre; finally, the “Tories are toast” and Labour can’t lose, so disgruntled left voters can safely vote for other parties, such as the Greens.

With Labour so far ahead in the polls, the urge to debunk these sentiments may seem like an expression of paranoia. But all three aspects of this narrative are comprehensively wrong, including the reassurance that it is safe for anyone who would prefer a Labour government to vote for another party in Labour-Tory contests."

"But what this underplays is the number of Labour-Tory marginals where a relatively small vote for other left candidates could cost Labour a win. James Kanagasooriam, of the polling company Focaldata, has written about the “sandcastle” nature of Labour’s likely majority; his forecast is that there will be many more marginal seats in the 2024 parliament compared with 2019. If more than predicted numbers of those who voted Green in the locals decide they can afford to do so in the general election because Labour is so far ahead in national polls, that will boost the Conservatives.

Next up is the idea that Starmer’s dropping of some of his leadership pledges makes him dangerously untrustworthy. But this is the product of a system in which the tiny unrepresentative slice of the electorate that is a party membership pick their leader before voters choose their prime minister. Anyone hoping to be PM would have to shift position between a leadership selection and a general election: a Labour leader’s most important job is to connect with potential voters, not to coddle members with the comfort blanket of a policy platform such as the “free broadband for all” 2019 pledge that was roundly rejected.

Liz Truss provides a cautionary tale of what happens when a party leader seeks to impose a membership-endorsed platform on the country without a general election. For Starmer to have stuck to his 2020 leadership election pledges, instead of spending the past four years understanding voters, would have been fundamentally anti-democratic.

The most egregious aspect of the anti-Labour left argument is there isn’t much to choose between Starmer and Sunak. Yes, Labour’s “Ming vase” election strategy has seen it take a much more cautious fiscal approach than many of us would like: it has effectively adopted the Tory macroeconomic worldview and with it a set of spending constraints that no one sensible thinks either party could stick to in the wake of the election.

That is frustrating for anyone hoping this election campaign may illuminate some of the tough trade-offs facing Britain; but it would have been incredibly risky for one side to go it alone on this. The alternative is Labour walking into the trap and handing the Conservatives a “Labour tax bombshell” election campaign.

From a commitment to scrap the Rwanda plan to making clear that in an ideal world Labour would discard the two-child benefit cap, there are plenty of reasons that it is preposterous to think that a Starmer government would make the same trade-offs as successive Conservative governments that have financed billions of pounds worth of tax cuts for more affluent families by cutting tax credits and benefits for low-income parents. The six pledges Starmer launched two weeks ago may be incremental, but Labour needs voters to believe they are deliverable, and they are indicative of a very different set of priorities than those that animate Sunak."

"Starmer is not without weaknesses, as shown by the days he took to clarify an interview last October in which he gave the impression he thought Israel had the right to withhold power and food from Gaza. But there is no doubt whatsoever he would make a vastly more compassionate and competent prime minister than Sunak. To encourage people to put that outcome at risk by casting a protest vote against a Labour government that does not yet exist is perhaps the ultimate form of luxury belief campaigning."

[ranger-kellyn]

looked at the global peace index to better read through the whole document, and honestly just laughing my ass off at the usa being 132/163

[mosswolf]

Shell is by far the largest foreign stakeholder in the Nigerian economy, owning 47 percent of the oil industry. Its joint venture partner in the petroleum business during Nigeria's most draconian years was the Abacha regime. Yet Shell representatives have repeatedly declared that they exercise no influence over Nigeria's rulers; Europe's largest oil corporation has thereby ducked behind the brutalities of its militaristic financial partners. Such an arrangement means that Shell and other foreign oil corporations can maintain their desired technological presence while, under cover of deference for national sovereignty, they continue to act as ethical absentees.

This arrangement has also enabled Shell to ignore appeals by the Ogoni, the Ijaw, the Ikwerre and other neighboring micro-minorities for a share of oil revenues, a measure of environmental self-determination, and economic redress for their devastated environment. For Shell, Chevron, and the other oil majors operating in the delta, these are internal, Nigerian matters that belong to a sovereign realm inaccessible to corporate influence. But the record suggests otherwise: Chevron, for example, has acknowledged transporting Nigerian forces to quell uprisings in the oil camps of Rivers State. Shell has imported arms for the Nigerian police, paid retainers to Nigerian military personnel, and made boats and helicopters available to them in assaults against protestors. This is all integral to what one former Shell scientist has dubbed "the militarization of commerce" - an apt designation, if ever there was one, of resource extraction procedures under neoliberalism across the global South.

slow violence and the environmentalism of the poor, rob nixon

[carbone14]

Recrue militaire allemande au rapport devant un sergent – Berlin – Allemagne – 19 octobre 1936

©Bundesarchiv - Bild 183-S21437

[se-coaching]

Hoe mensen in Rusland denken, waarom Poetin daar populair is en waar het allemaal om draait 

Historicus Serhiy Medvedev analyseert wat er in de hoofden van de Russen en Rusland gebeurt. De rationaliteit van Vladimir Poetin en de Russische invasie van Oekraïne De wereld is sinds de Russische invasie van Oekraïne op 24 februari 2022 ingrijpend veranderd. Wat aanvankelijk leek op een kortdurende militaire operatie, is inmiddels uitgegroeid tot een langdurig en verwoestend conflict. Veel…

[touchlikethesun]

why is the mobile game team giving them guns? i don’t think they should have guns i don’t trust them with guns- okay maybe i trust iwa with a gun w/e that says about me sue me if you wanna — but i really don’t trust suna with a sniper rifle (his aim is too good) and i EXTRA don’t trust hoshiumi with anyyyy kind of weapon wtf were they thinking?????

[apothekaries]

germany is turning into an autoritarian state as we're watching and the media are completely ignoring the police's power and violence. they are actively ignoring democratic rights and criminalizing activism goddamn even the UN issued a warning about that

[unhonestlymirror]

If real Latvia got isekaied to hetalia, I feel like, first of all, he would scare Belarus. a lot. Maybe promise to break russia's fingers before her eyes if she dares to touch Lithuania ever again.

Hetalia world would be a terrible blow for him - a world in which Lithuania says, "Mr. Russia" with fear, in which Belarus wants to marry russia, and Ukraine is blonde and stupid russia's sister (who also loves russia), in which Poland is stupid and capricious and doesn't care about his government and his people, in which Estonia is indifferent to all of that, and everyone behave like USSR never happened. But it did. A world in which russia is praised, in which russia is an axis power. A world in which Latvia is a "young nation." A world without history. A world in which Latvia can't rely on anyone.

[thisisabernieblog]

There's always money for war (on you!)

Corporate media is nurturing a fake crime wave.

This imaginary crime wave has been used not only to extinguish the growing defund the police movement but to increase police budgets all across the US.

#Copaganda

[wickershells]

condoning and supporting a nation committing genocide naturally makes you complicit in genocide. by all means vote for her and get it over with but don't ever put harris apologist bullshit on my dash

[peacemore-springs]

Vulnerable Networks

If you are knowingly connected to a militarised network whose employment involves biological and mental stresses and anxieties, why knowingly cause those of such a network further stresses and anxieties without reason? What motive do you have for compounding further stresses and anxieties into lives that are only ever in need of the opposite?

We are a species of vulnerable and susceptible networks that are easily affected by personal harm and grief. We are fragile and we are not made of the stone we stand upon.

WHY FEEL A NEED TO REPEATEDLY BEHAVE IN A PRESSURING WAY? WHY DO YOU DEMAND CONFLICT?