#nuclear missile base

[hussyknee]

Not so friendly reminder that Tankies are people who deny not only the genocides of Russia but also Vietnam and China (including the Uyghurs), and are apologists for the North Korean regime. They push Russian propaganda of "colour revolutions" every time a Global South country rises up against a totalitarian government because they believe totalitarianism is merely anti-communist agenda; deriding, dismissing and dehumanizing the liberation movements of our countries that come at great human cost. They're not anti-imperialists or anti-colonial; their chief issue with the imperial core is that it's not their ideology seated at the heart of it. They only care about Global South lives when it serves their ideology, and have no genuine concern or curiosity about the ground realities or agency of the communities impacted by imperialism and colonialism.

I also want you to understand that every major power player involved in this conflict is a genocidal fascist. Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis that are fighting Israel are funded by the theocratic Iranian regime headed by Ebrahim Raisi (begging you to remember the hundreds of Iranian girls and women killed for protesting it). Iran is also an ally of the notorious Bashar Al-Assad's regime in Syria, responsible for the genocide and displacement of millions of his own people while actively funding the Islamic State he wages war against. Both Assad and Raisi are allies of Putin, who is currently trying to colonize and genocide Ukraine and is terrorising Poland, Hungary, Georgia, Estonia, Latvia etc. However, Iran and Putin (half-heartedly) are also allies of the Armenians who are being genocided by Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is supported by the US, but also Erdogan in Turkey, infamous dictator that hates the European Union and is a close pal of Putin. Meanwhile the US's best friends in the Middle East is Israel, which hates Arabs, and Saudi Arabia, who doesn't recognise Israel as a country but is hated by most of the MENA and is currently in a Cold War with Iran.

*yanks y'all by the shirt and shouts in your face* THERE ARE NO GOOD GUYS HERE, DO YOU UNDERSTAND?? ONLY INNOCENT CIVILIANS CAUGHT IN A SPIDER WEB OF GREEDY, DESPOTIC, GENOCIDAL, FASCIST CUNTS. THERE IS NO POINT TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHICH ONE IS THE BIGGEST THREAT TO GLOBAL DEMOCRACY BECAUSE ALL THE FALL OF ONE DOES IS CREATE A POWER VACCUUM THAT WILL IMMEDIATELY BE FILLED BY THE NEXT BULLY.

These governments can only be toppled from within by their own people once external threats like war with their neighbours are eased, because militaries with nothing to fight are economic black holes that try to eat itself, and it's this economic stress that act as catalysts for coalition building and civilian revolt. Military losses weaken imperialists' coercive power and legitimacy over their own people, so the best thing you can do to help them agitate for change is preventing imperialist expansions from claiming any more victims.

[william-r-melich]

Stupid War - 04/18/2024

In a delayed (from lack of US support) response to Iran's direct missile and drone strikes to Israel on April 13th, Israel launched missiles and drones in a surprise attack on Iran's military airbase in Isfahan today. That is where Iran's command and control center is located and is their headquarters of nuclear research. It appears they didn't hit any of their nuclear facilities. It was probably more than just a show of force and to put them off balance. There's a good chance they'll launch more attacks. I fear that Iran's evil regime might instigate violent assaults through some of their terrorists that were let into the US through the southern border by this administration and the UN. I hope Israel can destroy a lot of their nuke sites, obviously they won't be able to take out the ones that are underground. Joe Biden or anyone from the White House is yet to publicly announce a response or make any kind of statement. The attack occurred at about 11 pm Eastern time, so I suppose they didn't want to wake him; after all, sleepy, creepy, compromised Joey needs his sleep. Not many details have been reported yet, I suppose they'll find out more tomorrow morning. I hate writing about war, and since it's late I'll end it here. Stupid war.

[heritageposts]

Harris has been a staunch supporter of Israel for years. In 2017 she addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) annual conference and reminded attendees that the first resolution she co-sponsored as a senator was aimed at combating “anti-Israel bias” at the United Nations. “Let me be clear about what I believe. I stand with Israel because of our shared values, which are so fundamental to the founding of both our nations,” she told the crowd. In 2018 she gave an off-the-record speech to the organization, but eventually released her comments. In that speech she claimed that she raised money for the Jewish National Fund as a Girl Scout. “Having grown up in the Bay area, I fondly remember those Jewish National Fund boxes that we would use to collect donations to plant trees for Israel,” she told the audience. “Years later, when I visited Israel for the first time, I saw the fruits of that effort and the Israeli ingenuity that has truly made a desert bloom.”

For those unfamiliar with the Jewish National Fund (JNF), they're a Zionist organization that has been instrumental in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

See Stop the JNF for more information on their history, the way they operate, and their decades-long campaign of greenwashing (i.e. destroying native plants, crops, and agriculture under the banner of 'making the desert bloom').

Continuing, the Mondoweiss article goes:

“The vast majority of people understand the importance of the State of Israel,” she added later. “Both in terms of its history and its present in terms of being a source of inspiration on so many issues, which I hope we will talk about, and also what it means in terms of the values of the United States and those values that are shared values with Israel, and the importance of fighting to make sure that we protect and respect a friend, one of the best friends we could possibly have.” While running for President in 2019, Harris was praised by the lobbying group Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) for running to the right of Obama on the Iran deal. On the campaign trail Harris told Kat Wellman, a voter affiliated with DMFI, that she would reenter the agreement but “strengthen it” by “extending the sunset provisions, including ballistic missile testing, and also increasing oversight.” “I was very impressed with her. I thought she gave an excellent speech, she gave a very detailed, responsive answer to my question,” Wellman told a local paper after the exchange. “I’m pro-Israel, so I was I was very concerned and all about making sure we limit nuclear missiles in any country that could possibly destroy us all. I thought her answer was very good.” Harris has condemned the BDS movement and claimed that is “based on the mistaken assumption that Israel is solely to blame for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” However, she voted against an anti-BDS bill in 2019 citing First Amendment concerns.

For the full article, which includes Kamala's response to Israel post Al-Aqsa Flood, see Mondoweiss (July 22, 2024)

[architectureofdoom]

Tunnels at the Plokštinė Soviet nuclear missile base

[asha-mage]

Because I am coping with current world events in a completely normal manner I've been thinking a lot about how one of the tensions that underpins the whole of Wheel of Time is Robert Jordan as 'person who likes history' vs Robert Jordan as 'person who had to live through the Cold War.'

Something that can be really hard for people born after the Cold War (like myself) to grasp is that for a long time history was the ultimate reassurance against existential dread. Civilizations could rise and fall, empires could crumble, disasters could wipe out a hell of a lot of people, but human beings as a species, where never in any real danger of dying out. New countries would eventually rise out of the ashes of old ones, societies would change to be unrecognizable but they would still be there, religions, cultures ideologies etc might all die out but the people would still be around. History provided the ultimate comfort: whatever happened in our brief finite lives human beings as an group would eventually be fine.

But that changed after World War 2 and the invention of a little something called the atomic bomb. Suddenly human beings had the potential to destroy not just ourselves but all life on earth if things went wrong enough. For the first time in history their was no real guarantee that human beings as a species would make it, and in fact their was a whole lot of reason to believe based on the patterns of history that eventually that power would get used and human kind would destroy itself. That was the Cold War- two nuclear states who really really wanted to start blasting each other to pieces but couldn't without risking the end of life as we know it.

The tension between these two realities- the assurance of history that life will go on and the reality that human beings could in theory actually end the fucking world, is built into the core of Wheel of Time. The first lines assure us: time is cyclical. It's all happened before. It's all going to happen again. Human being will live out the same stories in endless variation, the same patterns will always reemerge. And the world has already survived one apocalyptic event: the Breaking, and come out the other side not doing fantastically, but still around. The world has been reshaped forever and whole eras of progress have been undone, but humanity remains.

But at the same time doomsday weapons with the potential to wipe out the species are everywhere. The Choden Kal can crack the planet open like an egg. Balefire burns apart time itself. A plague of madness is waiting for any old schmo to wander into it's den and carry it back outside so it can infect and destroy everyone. Their are all kinds of different big glowing red 'destroy humanity' buttons laying around in WoT just begging to get pressed. And in a way the Dark One is the ultimate version of that because that button has already been pressed. The Bore has been opened. Left alone humanity is fucked and everyone knows it. It can be delayed and pushed back, but never truly stopped, except by the intervention of destiny- the intervention of the Dragon. That's the core conflict of the series. Rand is struggling to stop a missile that's already been launched, prevent an end everyone can see coming. It's not just 'I need to defeat the big bad evil overlord or everything will be bad forever', it's 'I need to stop the Dark One or that's the end of human beings as an idea'.

What's especially interesting is that Jordan isn't even framing the Wheel/Pattern as uniformly good, because it's history and history is messy and complicated and full of contradictions and no easy answers. The Wheel, the Pattern, is not some force for righteousness. It's a neutral fact of existence. Not what's best or what's ideal- those are subjective and grounded in human understanding of the world- but what's necessary and what's true. To want to break free from history, to break the Wheel, is to want to break free of being human. That's what the Forsaken all truly want (as I have talked about before): to leave behind their humanity, and their willing to sacrifice whatever it takes to do it. What that looks like and what motivates that desire is different for each of them but their united in that common goal, and they all either disregard the consequences of what it will mean or don't understand them.

The story of history is one of incredible suffering and amazing triumph: it's full of heartache and joy in equal measure. It's not fair or just or simple to understand, but it is a reflection of who we all are collectively. The fight to preserve the Wheel isn't a fight to preserve what is good or ideal, it is a fight to preserve what is human. Because as long as the story can keep going, we can have hope for tomorrow.

And Jordan promises right from the offing that their will always be a tomorrow. No beginnings. No endings. Just whatever comes next.

As we enter a period of history that is the most uncertain it's ever been in my lifetime, I can't help but I think of the incredible courage and strength it must have taken be staring down the barrel of nuclear armageddon and stubbornly insist that there would be a tomorrow. The man wrote eleven of the best books ever made exploring this exact struggle- about never giving in to despair or pain, never buying into the belief that things are hopeless, that humanity sucks and we're all doomed.

And remembering that...I don't know. It makes a little easier to breath and keep walking towards tomorrow myself.

[soon-palestine]

Israel, the world’s most innocent country, fell victim to a horrific attack from Iran with zero reported casualties on the same day Israel killed dozens of civilians in Gaza.

Israel had been minding its own business, quietly bombing hospitals, schools, universities, mosques, and an embassy, when the Iranian regime launched their outrageous attack for no apparent reason. Thankfully, the US and UK scrambled jets to defend Israeli airspace because it’s wrong to bomb countries in the Middle East, unless your name is Israel, in which case you can do all the bombing you want.

Every British and American ship in the region is now in grave danger and the risk of terror attacks on our soil has surely increased, but you will be relieved to know our countries have not benefitted in any way from our intervention. Personally, I can’t think of a better way for Israel to spend our tax money.

Our leaders have condemned Iran in the strongest possible terms, which is confusing because I thought we were supposed to remain ambiguous and say we’re investigating the matter when such an attack occurs. Perhaps this is one of those rules that only applies to Israel though.

When informed of the attack, a calm and rational Suella Braverman screamed: “WAR! I WANT WAR!” and when she’d stopped hyperventilating, she added: “This must be the end of western backsliding on Israel,” because she thinks we have not been sufficiently supportive of their genocide. Anyone who is not on the same side of the argument as Suella Braverman must ask serious questions about themselves.

Iran’s unprovoked attack involved giving Israel adequate warning and launching 30-year-old missiles, 99% of which were intercepted, and then saying the matter is closed unless Israel escalates further. The fact Iran would consider retaliating to further escalation from Israel shows just extreme these lunatics are.

Among Iran’s targets was the Israeli air base from which the missiles that struck its embassy were launched, killing 13 on April 1. As of yet, we have no indication as to why Iran carried out the attack, but we’re going to tell you it’s because they want to start World War III. Psychos.

Conspiracy theorists have suggested it’s actually Benjamin Netanyahu who wants escalation, but it’s unclear why the man who faces political oblivion, and possibly jail, would be incentivised to draw his allies into the fight and cause everyone to forget his many war crimes.

Israel, the country that definitely does not want war, has vowed an “unprecedented” response against Iran which will probably kill many more than zero people. If Iran expresses disapproval at Israel’s next mass murder, it’s because they’re trying to destabilise the region. At this point, we’ll have no choice but to help Israel do to Iran what we’ve spent six months helping them do to Gaza - launch precision strikes that destroy 70% of the buildings in the country and leave survivors living in tents.

Worryingly, we’ve just discovered at the most convenient moment that Iran has enough uranium to build 12 nuclear bombs. If it were true that Iran had so much weapon-grade uranium, it would be incredibly stupid to attack them, but we’re going to insist we must attack them because we’re weapon-grade idiots - and we think you are too.

Please just switch your brain off and accept what you’re being told, you simpletons! What matters is rich people can afford nuclear bunkers if this all goes horribly wrong. In the meantime, you can look forward to lots of exciting stories in the media about bringing back conscription and describing how you are likely to die in humanity's final war. Are you looking forward to radiation sickness and nuclear winter? Because they sound like brilliant fun! x

Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed this outstanding piece of journalism as much as I did, you can support my work here:

[metamorphesque]

I have said this before, and I will say it again: the us, israel and turkey are the wombs of evil—warmongering, unscrupulous, immoral killing machines wreaking havoc, desolation, and death anywhere they tread.

My heart goes out to Palestinians, and I dread what this means for us Armenians. In case you didn't know, israel, supported by the us in all its military "endeavors," is heavily supporting the azeris (thus the us-israel-azeri military pipelines). And what are the azeris doing with all those weapons?

On March 5 [2023], the Israeli Haaretz newspaper published an astounding article titled, “92 Flights from Israeli Base Reveal Arms Exports to Azerbaijan.” The article reported that on March 2, Azerbaijan’s Silk Way Airlines’ cargo plane landed in Israel’s Ovda military airport. Two hours later, it returned to Baku via Turkey and the Georgian Republic. In the last seven years, this is the 92nd cargo flight from Baku to Ovda, the only airfield in Israel that is allowed to export explosives. These military shipments increased substantially during Azerbaijan’s attacks on Armenia/Artsakh in 2016, 2020, 2021 and 2022. President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan has described Israel’s covert relations with Azerbaijan as being like an iceberg – nine-tenths of it is below the surface. Israel supplies almost 70-percent of Azerbaijan’s weapons and in return receives about half of its imported oil. Haaretz quoted foreign media sources disclosing: “Azerbaijan has allowed the Mossad [Israel’s intelligence agency] to set up a forward branch [in Azerbaijan] to monitor what is happening in Iran, Azerbaijan’s neighbor to the south, and has even prepared an airfield intended to aid Israel in case it decides to attack Iranian nuclear sites. Reports from two years ago stated that the Mossad agents who stole the Iranian nuclear archive smuggled it to Israel via Azerbaijan. According to official reports from Azerbaijan, over the years Israel has sold it the most advanced weapons systems, including ballistic missiles, air defense and electronic warfare systems, kamikaze drones and more.” Haaretz revealed that Azerbaijan’s Silk Way Airlines “operates three weekly flights between Baku and [Israel’s] Ben-Gurion International Airport with Boeing 747 cargo freighters.” In addition, some Eastern European countries circumvent the ban on the sale of weapons to Azerbaijan by shipping them via Israel. The restriction of the sale of weapons by Europe and the United States to Armenia and Azerbaijan created an opportunity for Israel to earn billions of dollars in weapons’ sales to Azerbaijan. Haaretz reported that “Israel has exported a very wide range of weapons to the country [Azerbaijan] – starting with Tavor assault rifles all the way to the most sophisticated systems such as radar, air defense, antitank missiles, ballistic missiles, ships and a wide range of drones, both for intelligence and attack purposes. Israeli companies have also supplied advanced spy tech, such as communications monitoring systems from Verint and the Pegasus spyware from the NSO Group – tools that were used against journalists, the LGBT community and human rights activists in Azerbaijan, too.”

The Stockholm International Peace Institute wrote: “Israel’s defense exports to Azerbaijan began in 2005 with the sale of the Lynx multiple launch rocket systems by Israel Military Industries (IMI Systems), which has a range of 150 kilometers (92 miles). IMI, which was acquired by Elbit Systems in 2018, also supplied LAR-160 light artillery rockets with a range of 45 kilometers, which, according to a report from Human Rights Watch, were used by Azerbaijan to fire banned cluster munitions at residential areas in Nagorno-Karabakh,” even though Israel and 123 other countries have banned the use of cluster bombs. Haaretz reported: “In 2007, Azerbaijan signed a contract to buy four intelligence-gathering drones from Aeronautics Defense Systems. It was the first deal of many. In 2008 it purchased 10 Hermes 450 drones from Elbit Systems and 100 Spike antitank missiles produced by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and in 2010 it bought another 10 intelligence-gathering drones. Soltam Systems, owned by Elbit, sold it ATMOS self-propelled guns and 120-millimeter Cardom mortars, and in 2017 Azerbaijan’s arsenal was supplemented with the more advanced Hanit mortars. According to the telegram leaked in Wikileaks, a sale of advanced communications equipment from Tadiran was also signed in 2008.”

According to Haaretz, “Israel and Azerbaijan took their relationship up a level in 2011 with a huge $1.6 billion deal that included a battery of Barak missiles for intercepting aircraft and missiles, as well as Searcher and Heron drones from Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). It was reported that near the end of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020, a Barak battery shot down an Iskander ballistic missile launched by Armenia. Aeronautics Defense Systems also began cooperating with the local arms industry in Azerbaijan, where some of the 100 Orbiter kamikaze (loitering munitions) drones were produced – drones that Azerbaijan’s defense minister called ‘a nightmare for the Armenian army.’” In 2021, “an indictment was filed against [Israel’s] Aeronautics Defense Systems for violating the law regulating defense exports in its dealing with one of its most prominent clients. A court-imposed gag order prevents the publication of further details. A project to modernize the Azerbaijani army’s tanks began in the early 2010s. Elbit Systems upgraded and equipped the old Soviet T-72 models with new protective gear to enhance the tanks’ and their crews’ survivability, as well as fast and precise target acquisition and fire control systems. The upgraded tanks, known as Aslan (Lion), starred in the 2013 military parade. Azerbaijan’s navy was reinforced in 2013 with six patrol ships based on the Israel Navy’s Sa’ar 4.5-class missile boats, produced by Israel Shipyards and carrying the naval version of the Spike missiles, along with six Shaldag MK V patrol boats with Rafael’s Typhoon gun mounts and Spike missile systems. Azerbaijan’s navy also bought 100 Lahat antitank guided missiles.”

In 2014, “Azerbaijan ordered the first 100 Harop kamikaze drones from IAI, which were a critical tool in later rounds of fighting. Azerbaijan also purchased two advanced radar systems for aerial warning and defense from IAI subsidiary Elta that same year…. Two years later, Azerbaijan bought another 250 SkyStriker kamikaze drones from Elbit Systems. Many videos from the areas of fighting showed Israeli drones attacking Armenian forces…. In 2016, during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Baku, Aliyev revealed that contracts had already been signed between the two countries for the purchase of some $5 billion in ‘defensive equipment.’ In 2017, Azerbaijan purchased advanced Hermes 900 drones from Elbit Systems and LORA ballistic missiles from IAI, with a range of 430 kilometers. In 2018, Aliyev inaugurated the base where the LORA missiles are deployed, at a distance of about 430 kilometers from Yerevan, Armenia’s capital. During the war in 2020, at least one LORA missile was launched, and according to reports it hit a bridge that Armenia used to supply arms and equipment to its forces in Nagorno-Karabakh. More advanced Spike missiles were sent in 2019 and 2020.”

[odinsblog]

Collective punishment of an entire group is prohibited under international law. Israel’s proposed siege would be a war crime that indiscriminately harms innocent people, especially the sick, the disabled, the elderly and small children, who never supported Hamas, a group repeatedly propped up by Benjamin Netanyahu himself, to sow division amongst the Palestinian people.

This in no way excuses Hamas raping women and murdering innocent children and the elderly. That’s terrorism. That’s war crimes. A war crime doesn’t stop being a war crime based on who does it, or which side you support. I had the great misfortune of having watched some of the videos of what happened. I don’t know how anyone can see this and not be heartbroken and dismiss it because of some idiotic, “they had it coming” mentality.

Look, Palestine is being oppressed. By Israel. Israel is doing the oppression. Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal. We can and should support Palestine. We do not, however, have to ignore war crimes to support Palestine. Similarly, Western media outlets should stop ignoring and downplaying Israel’s long and well documented history of war crimes and other atrocities committed against Palestinian civilians and reporters.

And please pay close attention to who resorts to antisemitism to “defend” Palestine. The cause of the Palestinian people is strong enough without using bigotry and racism.

(video)

Finally, this is not a “war” between Palestine and Israel. Those words disingenuously imply a false equivalence, that both sides are evenly matched. They are not. The Palestinian ≠ Hamas, and the Palestinian people and Gazans do not have tanks, armored personnel carriers, helicopters, an air force, a navy, an army, nuclear weapons, and a sophisticated missile defense system. Israel, however, does have all of those things.

Hamas ≠ Palestine.

Palestinians do not have to be the perfect victims to deserve our support and sympathy.

[tanadrin]

in traditional fantasy dwarves live underground because they are based on scandinavian earth-spirits--hence also their association with mineral wealth and craftsmanship.

in a high-magic d&d-like setting i think it would be fun instead to play dwarves as paranoid survivalists who live in the fantasy equivalent of fallout shelters and nuclear missile silos, deadlocked in some kind of sorcerous MAD dilemma with each other and terrified of the collapse of civilization. maybe i'll play my next DF fort like this...

[smytherines]

[This was supposed to be a joke post, but it turned into an essay on the Cold War and nuclear brinksmanship in Spies Are Forever. Sorry]

Once again thinking about Tatiana Slozhno-- who for all intents and purposes would be considered a rogue KGB agent working with the Americans-- unilaterally detonating a hydrogen bomb on an island in the Pacific ocean. The geopolitical implications would be off the fucking charts

Hydrogen bombs are hundreds of times more powerful than the standard atomic bomb. For comparison, an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 people died when the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima (and hundreds of thousands died from radiation-related illnesses in the years following WWII). It killed everyone within a 1 mile radius of the blast

For a hydrogen bomb, the blast radius is more like 5 to 10 miles, depending on the yield. A 15 megaton yield (they range from 10 to 50) hydrogen bomb test performed by the US (code name Bravo) vaporized two entire islands, part of a third island, and left a 6,000 ft wide, 240ft deep crater in the fucking ocean. It was 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

Now clearly, in the show, this is not considered a big deal. Tatiana doesn't seem to be on the run, Cynthia says that relations with Russia are the best they've been in ages. But in the real world it would be absolute global pandemonium with the potential to escalate the Cold War into a full scale nuclear war

Just to give some context here-- one year after the 1961 portion of Spies, the Cuban Missile Crisis happens. Here's a very very condensed version: Cuba has a communist revolution, the USSR finally has a staging area for nukes that could easily hit the US and tries to bring nukes to Cuba on ships, there's a tense 13 day standoff between the US and USSR that very nearly results in WWIII and complete nuclear annihilation. Most historians consider this the height of the Cold War. This is the incident that led to the phrase "Mutually Assured Destruction"

So imagine that a hydrogen bomb explodes in the Pacific ocean. There is no way to hide that after the fact, so both nuclear superpowers would know about it fairly quickly. In October of 1961 the Soviets detonated Tsar Bomba, a 50MT yield hydrogen bomb and the most powerful nuclear weapon ever tested, and US intelligence knew about it well in advance. They had spy planes close enough to the detonation that the protective plating on the plane was damaged.

Assuming they are able to connect it to Tatiana (lots of questions about how she was able to send a rocket shoe from far enough away to not get incinerated but oh well), the US would see it as a hostile act from a Russian agent. The Russians would consider her a traitor working with the Americans. Relations between the two countries would most likely deteriorate, not improve.

And this is more of a tangent, but I also think this era of nuclear brinksmanship (both countries having their hand hovering over the button, so to speak) is potentially a big motivation for Owen. I think he is clearly making irrational, emotional choices post-fall, BUT I also think he is the sort of man who needs to believe his decisions are based in logic and pragmatism.

So what logical justification can Owen find? Well, there's the idea that mass surveillance is already happening, already escalating, that this is the way the world is headed and if Chimera wants to succeed they need to get out ahead of it.

But I think the initial buy-in, how Chimera gets Owen ideologically committed to their organization and plan, is by using this constant looming threat of nuclear annihilation. By saying "these two countries and their little spy games are going to turn the world to ash if we let them. We need one neutral, central power to hold all the cards if we want to survive as a species." I think that would be a very powerful argument to a man who was just left for dead by his own agency and his American partner, who is presumably severely injured in a Soviet prison. A man who has a keen interest in foreign policy.

Because one of many things I find fascinating about Owen Carvour is that his/Chimera's plan is actually pretty rational, especially in comparison to a Bond villain. The Bond universe version of Chimera is called Spectre, and their plans are absolutely batshit stuff like "blow up the moon," and 10 variations of "giant space laser to kill everybody." Shit that doesn't even seem like it would benefit the villains because it's so over the top.

Chimera's plan is vile, but not outlandish. It is essentially just taking an idea that is already in development for the global superpowers, and finishing it first so they have all the power. It's a plan grounded in real world events. A big news story in 2013-2014 was the National Security Agency's PRISM program, which revealed how absolutely massive the US surveillance state had become, how the US was essentially turning everybody into spies (they just weren't aware of it).

I do sometimes wonder if someone in TCB read Glenn Greenwald's book (the reporter who broke the story), because Chimera's plan feels very specific to that late Obama era of the surveillance state

Holy shit this got so long.

Anyways Spies Are Forever 2 should follow Tatiana as she goes on the run to avoid trial at The Hague (I'm joking please don't kill me)

[bisexual-lemon1]

I wanna talk about the main four mechanisms albums, and the ways in which they tackle tragedy. This shouldn’t be too long, and I’m kinda new to writing essays like this, but it seemed like fun.

Firstly OUATIS, I could go on and on abour OUATIS, like how the tragedy of OUATIS is baked into the genre. from the get go it’s about war and trauma and fascism, all things that while not exclusively, lend themselves to death and murder. You can listen to the first half of OUATIS and realize “oh shit, everyone involved is gonna die” by genre and the thematics of it alone.

Because that’s what war does

That’s what war is

For UDAD it’s a little more esoteric, and I probably have the least to say about it cuz it’s not my least Favoirte, not bad, just my least favorite. I think the best way to describe it is the line from twisted threads “how can you expect to escape if you were caught in a web before you began.” It’s made clear from the base set up that the olympians control everything, and as much as a heroic victory and triumph would be nice, some things just truly are too big to fail. Though arguably, amongst all the albums it has the best ending, the Olympians may not be brought down(in the album), the city might not be saved

But Ulysses gets to die, truly die and rest.

Something billions, perhaps trillions had stolen from them.

HNOC is definitely one of my favorites on this, being such a distinct and fun story and narrative. The tragedy is of the people themselves, and in a way I think it makes it the “most tragedy” out of the four, all of its preventable, yet entirely understandable. Hell, “just this once there could be a happy ending” is literally a line in it. Mordred’s actions are deplorable and violent and ruin everything but they’re understandable. He lost everything, why should the world live? It’s a dip into true nihilism and whag could lead someone to feel that way. Sometimes worlds are saved, and sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes worlds are killed, sometimes they simply grow old, but sometimes they kill themselves. And I think what makes it the most special compared to the other three is when it becomes doomed. OUATIS is about a bloody war, UDAD they were born into a web, TBI yhe conflict itself was resolved 80 years before the modern day the story is told through. But HNOC wasnt doomed from the start, the station wasn’t guaranteed to die, the Saxons weren’t guaranteed to be slaughtered. Yet nonetheless they were.

And finally TBI, now it’s what rly got my brain going on all of this, because I had the question “where does the tragedy become inevitable?” And frankly, there’s a lot of answers. TBI is doomed because the nuclear chaos was on its way before lyfrassir was even before. Because Odin wouldn’t stop no matter what. Because even if they hadn’t of messed with kyvasir there would have been dozens of other bifrost trains. But more than ALL OF THAT I think that the tragedy is inevitable because, as the album says. “A day, a week, a thousand years, means naught to what the train draws near.” It doesn’t matter, even if Loki’s missile had killed Odin and stopped the bifrost, someone else would have come along. Even the victory we got in the album itself, it wasn’t a victory, it was merely a prolonging, inevitable death was merely stalled, that’s the closest thing anyone could ever get to victory against the roiling nuclear chaos.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

Israel’s retaliatory strike on Iran three weeks ago destroyed a secret nuclear weapons research facility, according to the US-based news site Axios, citing American and Israeli officials.

It had been thought that Iran’s nuclear sites had escaped attack following US diplomatic pressure on Israel to avoid the risk of triggering all-out war.

Axios quoted a US official saying, “They conducted scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a nuclear weapon. It was a top secret thing.”

Most of the Iran government was unaware of what was going on there, the official said.

Among the targets Israel struck in response to an Iranian missile barrage before Rosh Hashanah was the military complex at Parchin, southeast of Tehran.

The Taleghan 2 facility at Parchin had previously been used to test explosives to set off a nuclear device, according to the Institute for Science and International Security, before Iran halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003.

Iran has denied interest in the production of nuclear weapons.

However, American and US intelligence were concerned to detect research activity at the location last year that could be used for nuclear weapons and the US privately warned Iran against continuing, Axios reported.

A US official told the website that last month’s strike against Taleghan 2 “was a not so subtle message that the Israelis have significant insight into the Iranian system even when it comes to things that were kept top secret and known to a very small group of people in the Iranian government”.

[brucewaynehater101]

HC that the only place the Batcomputer can't hack is North Korea and the bunkers of the US Nuclear Missile Command, but that's because both are still using floppy discs and it's like trying to interrogate a flatworm

I wonder how sentient Batcomputer feels about different technology. Does it have a list? Does it rate other technology based on speed, hackability, components, function, etc.?

What does it think about karaoke machines?