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mariacallous · 11 months ago

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“How much evil we must do in order to do good,” the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote in 1946. “This, I think, is a very succinct statement of the human situation.” Niebuhr was writing after one global war had forced the victors to do great evil to prevent the incalculably greater evil of a world ruled by its most aggressive regimes. He was witnessing the onset of another global conflict in which the United States would periodically transgress its own values in order to defend them. But the fundamental question Niebuhr raised—how liberal states can reconcile worthy ends with the unsavory means needed to attain them—is timeless. It is among the most vexing dilemmas facing the United States today.

U.S. President Joe Biden took office pledging to wage a fateful contest between democracy and autocracy. After Russia invaded Ukraine, he summoned like-minded nations to a struggle “between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.” Biden’s team has indeed made big moves in its contest with China and Russia, strengthening solidarity among advanced democracies that want to protect freedom by keeping powerful tyrannies in check. But even before the war between Hamas and Israel presented its own thicket of problems, an administration that has emphasized the ideological nature of great-power rivalry was finding itself ensnared by a morally ambiguous world.

In Asia, Biden has bent over backward to woo a backsliding India, a communist Vietnam, and other not so liberal states. In Europe, wartime exigencies have muted concerns about creeping authoritarianism on NATO’s eastern and southern fronts. In the Middle East, Biden has concluded that Arab dictators are not pariahs but vital partners. Defending a threatened order involves reviving the free-world community. It also, apparently, entails buttressing an arc of imperfect democracies and outright autocracies across much of the globe.

Biden’s conflicted strategy reflects the realities of contemporary coalition building: when it comes to countering China and Russia, democratic alliances go only so far. Biden’s approach also reflects a deeper, more enduring tension. American interests are inextricably tied to American values: the United States typically enters into great-power competition because it fears mighty autocracies will otherwise make the world unsafe for democracy. But an age of conflict invariably becomes, to some degree, an age of amorality because the only way to protect a world fit for freedom is to court impure partners and engage in impure acts.

Expect more of this. If the stakes of today’s rivalries are as high as Biden claims, Washington will engage in some breathtakingly cynical behavior to keep its foes contained. Yet an ethos of pure expediency is fraught with dangers, from domestic disillusion to the loss of the moral asymmetry that has long amplified U.S. influence in global affairs. Strategy, for a liberal superpower, is the art of balancing power without subverting democratic purpose. The United States is about to rediscover just how hard that can be.

A DIRTY GAME

Biden has consistently been right about one thing: clashes between great powers are clashes of ideas and interests alike. In the seventeenth century, the Thirty Years’ War was fueled by doctrinal differences no less than by the struggle for European primacy. In the late eighteenth century, the politics of revolutionary France upheaved the geopolitics of the entire continent. World War II was a collision of rival political traditions—democracy and totalitarianism—as well as rival alliances. “This was no accidental war,” German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop declared in 1940, “but a question of the determination of one system to destroy the other.” When great powers fight, they do so not just over land and glory. They fight over which ideas, which values, will chart humanity’s course.

In this sense, U.S. competition with China and Russia is the latest round in a long struggle over whether the world will be shaped by liberal democracies or their autocratic enemies. In World War I, World War II, and the Cold War, autocracies in Eurasia sought global primacy by achieving preeminence within that central landmass. Three times, the United States intervened, not just to ensure its security but also to preserve a balance of power that permitted the survival and expansion of liberalism—to “make the world safe for democracy,” in U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s words. President Franklin Roosevelt made a similar point in 1939, saying, “There comes a time in the affairs of men when they must prepare to defend, not their homes alone, but the tenets of faith and humanity on which their churches, their governments, and their very civilization are founded.” Yet as Roosevelt understood, balancing power is a dirty game.

Western democracies prevailed in World War II only by helping an awful tyrant, Joseph Stalin, crush an even more awful foe, Adolf Hitler. They used tactics, such as fire-bombing and atomic-bombing enemy cities, that would have been abhorrent in less desperate times. The United States then waged the Cold War out of conviction, as President Harry Truman declared, that it was a conflict “between alternative ways of life”; the closest U.S. allies were fellow democracies that made up the Western world. Yet holding the line in a high-stakes struggle also involved some deeply questionable, even undemocratic, acts.

In a Third World convulsed by instability, the United States employed right-wing tyrants as proxies; it suppressed communist influence through coups, covert and overt interventions, and counterinsurgencies with staggering death tolls. To deter aggression along a global perimeter, the Pentagon relied on the threat of using nuclear weapons so destructive that their actual employment could serve no constructive end. To close the ring around the Soviet Union, Washington eventually partnered with another homicidal communist, the Chinese leader Mao Zedong. And to ease the politics of containment, U.S. officials sometimes exaggerated the Soviet threat or simply deceived the American people about policies carried out in their name.

Strategy involves setting priorities, and U.S. officials believed that lesser evils were needed to avoid greater ones, such as communism running riot in vital regions or democracies failing to find their strength and purpose before it was too late. The eventual payoff from the U.S. victory in the Cold War—a world safer from autocratic predation, and safer for human freedom, than ever before—suggests that they were, on balance, correct. Along the way, the fact that Washington was pursuing such a worthy objective, against such an unworthy opponent, provided a certain comfort with the conflict’s ethical ambiguities. As NSC-68, the influential strategy document Truman approved in 1950, put it (quoting Alexander Hamilton), “The means to be employed must be proportioned to the extent of the mischief.” When the West was facing a totalitarian enemy determined to remake humanity in its image, some pretty ugly means could, apparently, be justified.

That comfort wasn’t infinite, however, and the Cold War saw fierce fights over whether the United States was getting its priorities right. In the 1950s, hawks took Washington to task for not doing enough to roll back communism in Eastern Europe, with the Republican Party platform of 1952 deriding containment as “negative, futile, and immoral.” In the 1960s and 1970s, an avalanche of amorality—a bloody and misbegotten war in Vietnam, support for a coterie of nasty dictators, revelations of CIA assassination plots—convinced many liberal critics that the United States was betraying the values it claimed to defend. Meanwhile, the pursuit of détente with the Soviet Union, a strategy that deemphasized ideological confrontation in search of diplomatic stability, led some conservatives to allege that Washington was abandoning the moral high ground. Throughout the 1970s and after, these debates whipsawed U.S. policy. Even in this most Manichean of contests, relating strategy to morality was a continual challenge.

In fact, Cold War misdeeds gave rise to a complex of legal and administrative constraints—from prohibitions on political assassination to requirements to notify congressional committees about covert action—that mostly remain in place today. Since the Cold War, these restrictions have been complemented by curbs on aid to coup makers who topple elected governments and to military units that engage in gross violations of human rights. Americans clearly regretted some measures they had used to win the Cold War. The question is whether they can do without them as global rivalry heats up again.

IDEAS MATTER

Threats from autocratic enemies heighten ideological impulses in U.S. policy by underscoring the clash of ideas that often drives global tensions. Since taking office, Biden has defined the threat from U.S. rivals, particularly China, in starkly ideological terms.

The world has reached an “inflection point,” Biden has repeatedly declared. In March 2021, he suggested that future historians would be studying “the issue of who succeeded: autocracy or democracy.” At root, Biden has argued, U.S.-Chinese competition is a test of which model can better meet the demands of the modern era. And if China becomes the world’s preeminent power, U.S. officials fear, it will entrench autocracy in friendly countries while coercing democratic governments in hostile ones. Just witness how Beijing has used economic leverage to punish criticism of its policies by democratic societies from Australia to Norway. In making the system safe for illiberalism, a dominant China would make it unsafe for liberalism in places near and far.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reinforced Biden’s thesis. It offered a case study in autocratic aggression and atrocity and a warning that a world led by illiberal states would be lethally violent, not least for vulnerable democracies nearby. Coming weeks after Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin had sealed a “no limits” strategic partnership, the Ukraine invasion also raised the specter of a coordinated autocratic assault on the liberal international order. Ukraine, Biden explained, was the central front in a “larger fight for . . . essential democratic principles.” So the United States would rally the free world against “democracy’s mortal foes.”

The shock of the Ukraine war, combined with the steadying hand of U.S. leadership, produced an expanded transatlantic union of democracies. Sweden and Finland sought membership in NATO; the West supported Ukraine and inflicted heavy costs on Russia. The Biden administration also sought to confine China by weaving a web of democratic ties around the country. It has upgraded bilateral alliances with the likes of Japan and Australia. It has improved the Quad (the security and diplomatic dialogue with Australia, India, and Japan) and established AUKUS (a military partnership with Australia and the United Kingdom). And it has repurposed existing multilateral bodies, such as the G-7, to meet the peril from Beijing. There are even whispers of a “three plus one” coalition—Australia, Japan, the United States, plus Taiwan—that would cooperate to defend that frontline democracy from Chinese assault.

These ties transcend regional boundaries. Ukraine is getting aid from Asian democracies, such as South Korea, that understand that their security will suffer if the liberal order is fractured. Democracies from multiple continents have come together to confront China’s economic coercion, counter its military buildup, and constrict its access to high-end semiconductors. The principal problem for the United States is a loose alliance of revisionist powers pushing outward from the core of Eurasia. Biden’s answer is a cohering global coalition of democracies, pushing back from around the margins.

Today, those advanced democracies are more unified than at any time in decades. In this respect, Biden has aligned the essential goal of U.S. strategy, defending an imperiled liberal order, with the methods and partners used to pursue it. Yet across Eurasia’s three key regions, the messier realities of rivalry are raising Niebuhr’s question anew.

CONTROVERSIAL FRIENDS

Consider the situation in Europe. NATO is mostly an alliance of democracies. But holding that pact together during the Ukraine war has required Biden to downplay the illiberal tendencies of a Polish government that—until its electoral defeat in October—was systematically eroding checks and balances. Securing its northern flank, by welcoming Finland and Sweden, has involved diplomatic horse-trading with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who, in addition to frequently undercutting U.S. interests, has been steering his country toward autocratic rule.

In Asia, the administration spent much of 2021 and 2022 carefully preserving U.S. ties to the Philippines, at the time led by Rodrigo Duterte, a man whose drug war had killed thousands. Biden has assiduously courted India as a bulwark against China, even though the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has curbed speech, harassed opposition leaders, fanned religious grievances, and allegedly killed dissidents abroad. And after visiting New Delhi in September 2023, Biden traveled to Hanoi to sign a “comprehensive strategic partnership” with Vietnam’s one-party regime. Once again, the United States is using some communists to contain others.

Then there is the Middle East, where Biden’s “free world” coalition is quite the motley crew. In 2020, Biden threatened to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” over the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. By 2023, his administration—panicked by Chinese inroads and rising gas prices—was trying to make that country Washington’s newest treaty ally instead. That initiative, moreover, was part of a concept, inherited from the Trump administration, in which regional stability would rest on rapprochement between Arab autocracies and an Israeli government with its own illiberal tendencies, while Palestinian aspirations were mostly pushed to the side. Not surprisingly, then, human rights and political freedoms receded in relations with countries from Egypt to the United Arab Emirates. Biden also did little to halt the strangulation of democracy in Tunisia—just as he had decided, effectively, to abandon Afghanistan’s endangered democracy in 2021.

Indeed, if 2022 was a year of soaring rhetoric, 2023 was a year of awkward accommodation. References to the “battle between democracy and autocracy” became scarcer in Biden’s speeches, as the administration made big plays that defied that description of the world. Key human rights–related positions at the White House and the State Department sat vacant. The administration rolled back sanctions on Venezuela—an initiative described publicly as a bid to secure freer and fairer elections, but one that was mostly an effort to get an oppressive regime to stop exporting refugees and start exporting more oil. And when a junta toppled the elected government of Niger, U.S. officials waited for more than two months to call the coup a coup, for fear of triggering the cutoff of U.S. aid and thereby pushing the new regime into Moscow’s arms. Such compromises have always been part of foreign policy. But today, they testify to key dynamics U.S. officials must confront.

THE DECISIVE DECADE

First is the cruel math of Eurasian geopolitics. Advanced democracies possess a preponderance of power globally, but in every critical region, holding the frontline requires a more eclectic ensemble.

Poland has had its domestic problems; it is also the logistical linchpin of the coalition backing Ukraine. Turkey is politically illiberal and, often, unhelpful; nonetheless, it holds the intersection of two continents and two seas. In South and Southeast Asia, the primary barrier to Chinese hegemony is a line of less-than-ideal partners running from India to Indonesia. In the Middle East, a picky superpower will be a lonely superpower. Democratic solidarity is great, but geography is stubborn. Across Eurasia, Washington needs illiberal friends to confine its illiberal foes.

The ideological battlefield has also shifted in adverse ways. During the Cold War, anticommunism served as ideological glue between a democratic superpower and its autocratic allies, because the latter knew they were finished if the Soviet Union ever triumphed. Now, however, U.S. enemies feature a form of autocracy less existentially threatening to other nondemocracies: strongmen in the Persian Gulf, or in Hungary and Turkey, arguably have more in common with Xi and Putin than they do with Biden. The gap between “good” and “bad” authoritarians is narrower than it once was—which makes the United States work harder, and pay more, to keep illiberal partners imperfectly onside.

Desperate times also call for morally dexterous measures. When Washington faced no serious strategic challengers after the Cold War, it paid a smaller penalty for foregrounding its values. As the margin of safety shrinks, the tradeoffs between power and principle grow. Right now, war—or the threat of it—menaces East Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Biden says the 2020s will be the “decisive decade” for the world. As Winston Churchill quipped in 1941, “If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.” When threats are dire, democracies will do what it takes to rally coalitions and keep the enemy from breaking through. Thus, a central irony of Washington’s approach to competition is that the same challenges that activate its ideological energy make it harder to keep U.S. diplomacy pure.

So far, the moral compromises of U.S. policy today are modest compared with those of World War II or the Cold War, in part because the constraints on unsavory methods are stronger than they were when Hitler and Stalin stalked the earth. But rules and norms can change as a country’s circumstances do. So Biden and his successors may soon face a daunting reality: high-stakes rivalries carry countries, and leaders, to places they never sought to go.

When the Cold War started, few officials imagined that Washington would conduct covert interventions from Afghanistan to Angola. Just three years ago, hardly anyone predicted that the United States would soon fight a proxy war meant to bleed Putin’s army to death in Ukraine. As the present competitions intensify, the tactics used to wage them could become more extreme.

Washington could find itself covertly trying to tip the balance in elections in some crucial swing state if the alternative is seeing that country shift hard toward Moscow or Beijing. It could use coercion to keep Latin America’s military facilities and other critical infrastructure out of Chinese hands. And if the United States is already ambivalent about acknowledging coups in out-of-the-way countries, perhaps it would excuse far greater atrocities committed by a more important partner in a more important place.

Those who doubt that Washington will resort to dirty tricks have short memories and limited imaginations. If today’s competitions will truly shape the fate of humanity, why wouldn’t a vigilant superpower do almost anything to come out on top?

DON’T LOSE YOURSELF

There’s no reason to be unduly embarrassed about this. A country that lacks the self-confidence to defend its interests will lack the power to achieve any great purpose in global affairs. Put differently, the damage the United States does to its values by engaging dubious allies, and engaging in dubious behavior, is surely less than the damage that would be done if a hyperaggressive Russia or neototalitarian China spread its influence across Eurasia and beyond. As during the Cold War, the United States can eventually repay the moral debts it incurs in a lengthy struggle—if it successfully sustains a system in which democracy thrives because its fiercest enemies are suppressed.

It would be dangerous to adopt a pure end-justifies-the-means mentality, however, because there is always a point at which foul means corrupt fair ends. Even short of that, serial amorality will prove politically corrosive: a country whose population has rallied to defend its values as well as its interests will not forever support a strategy that seems to cast those values aside. And ultimately, the greatest flaw of such a strategy is that it forfeits a potent U.S. advantage.

During World War II, as the historian Richard Overy has argued, the Allied cause was widely seen to be more just and humane than the Axis cause, which is one reason the former alliance attracted so many more countries than the latter. In the Cold War, the sense that the United States stood, however imperfectly, for fundamental rights and liberties the Kremlin suppressed helped Washington appeal to other democratic societies—and even to dissidents within the Soviet bloc. The tactics of great-power competition must not obscure the central issue of that competition. If the world comes to see today’s rivalries as slugfests devoid of larger moral meaning, the United States will lose the asymmetry of legitimacy that has served it well.

This is not some hypothetical dilemma. Since October 2023, Biden has rightly framed the Israel-Hamas war as a struggle between a flawed democracy and a tyrannical enemy seeking its destruction. There is strong justification, moral and strategic, for backing a U.S. ally against a vicious proxy of a U.S. enemy, Iran. Moreover, there is no serious ethical comparison between a terrorist group that rapes, tortures, kidnaps, and kills civilians and a country that mostly tries, within the limits war imposes, to protect them.

Yet rightly or wrongly, large swaths of the global South view the war as a testament to American double standards: opposing occupation and appropriation of foreign territory by Russia but not by Israel, valuing the lives and liberties of some victims more than those of others. Russian and Chinese propagandists are amplifying these messages to drive a wedge between Washington and the developing world. This is why the Biden administration has tried, and sometimes struggled, to balance support for Israel with efforts to mitigate the harm the conflict brings—and why the war may presage renewed U.S. focus on the peace process with the Palestinians, as unpromising as that currently seems. The lesson here is that the merits of an issue may be disputed, but for a superpower that wears its values on its sleeve, the costs of perceivedhypocrisy are very real.

RULES FOR RIVALRY

Succeeding in this round of rivalry will thus require calibrating the moral compromises inherent in foreign policy by finding an ethos that is sufficiently ruthless and realistic at the same time. Although there is no precise formula for this—the appropriateness of any action depends on its context—some guiding principles can help.

First, morality is a compass, not a straitjacket. For political sustainability and strategic self-interest, American statecraft should point toward a world consistent with its values. But the United States cannot paralyze itself by trying to fully embody those values in every tactical decision. Nor—even at a moment when its own democracy faces internal threats—should it insist on purifying itself at home before exerting constructive influence abroad. If it does so, the system will be shaped by regimes that are more ruthless—and less shackled by their own imperfections.

The United States should also avoid the fallacy of the false alternative. It must evaluate choices, and partners, against the plausible possibilities, not against the utopian ideal. The realistic alternative to maintaining ties to a military regime in Africa may be watching as murderous Russian mercenaries fill the void. The realistic alternative to engaging Modi’s India may be seeing South Asia fall further under the shadow of a China that assiduously exports illiberalism. Similarly, proximity to a Saudi regime that carves up its critics is deeply uncomfortable. But the realistic alternative to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is probably a regime that remains quite repressive—and is far less committed to empowering women, curbing religious zealots, and otherwise making the country a more open, tolerant place. In a world of lousy options, the crucial question is often: Lousy compared with what?

Another guiding principle: good things don’t all come at once. Cold War policymakers sometimes justified coup making and support for repressive regimes on grounds that preventing Third World countries from going communist then preserved the possibility that they might go democratic later. That logic was suspiciously convenient—and, in many cases, correct. Countries in Latin America and other developing regions did eventually experience political openings as they reached higher levels of development, and democratic values radiated outward from the West.

Today, unseemly bargains can sometimes lead to better outcomes. By not breaking the U.S.-Philippine alliance during Duterte’s drug war, Washington sustained the relationship until a more cooperative, less draconian government emerged. By staying close to a Polish government with some worrying tendencies, the United States bought time until, late last year, that country’s voters elected a coalition promising to strengthen its democratic institutions. The same argument could be made for staying engaged with other democracies where autocratic tendencies are pronounced but electoral mechanisms remain intact—Hungary, India, and Turkey, to name a few. More broadly, liberalism is most likely to flourish in a system led by a democracy. So simply forestalling the ascent of powerful autocracies may eventually help democratic values spread into once inhospitable places.

Similarly, the United States should remember that taking the broad view is as vital as taking the long view. Support for democracy and human rights is not an all-or-nothing proposition. As Biden’s statecraft has shown, transactional deals with dictators can complement a strategy that stresses democratic cooperation at its core. Honoring American values, moreover, is more than a matter of hectoring repressive regimes. A foreign policy that raises international living standards through trade, addresses global problems such as food insecurity, and holds the line against great-power war serves the cause of human dignity very well. A strategy that emphasizes such efforts may actually be more appealing to countries, including developing democracies from Brazil to Indonesia, that resist democracy-versus-autocracy framing because they don’t want any part of a Manichean fight.

Of course, these principles can seem like a recipe for rationalization—a way of excusing the grossest behavior by claiming it serves a greater cause. Another important principle, then, revives Hamilton’s dictum that the means must be proportioned to the mischief. The greater the compromise, the greater the payoff it provides—or the damage it avoids—must be.

By this standard, the case for cooperation with an India or a Poland is clear-cut. These countries are troubled but mostly admirable democracies that play critical roles in raging competitions. Until the world contains only liberal democracies, Washington can hardly avoid seeking blemished friends.

The United States should, however, be more cautious about courting countries that regularly engage in the very practices it deems most corrosive to the liberal order: systematic torture or murder of their people, coercion of their neighbors, or export of repression across borders, to name a few. A Saudi Arabia, for instance, that periodically engages in some of these practices is a troublesome partner. A Saudi Arabia that flagrantly and consistently commits such acts risks destroying the moral and diplomatic basis of its relationship with the United States. American officials should be more hesitant still to distort or destabilize the politics of other countries, especially other democracies, for strategic gain. If Washington is going to get back into the coup business in Latin America or Southeast Asia, the bad outcomes to be prevented must be truly severe—a major, potentially lasting shift in a key regional balance of power, perhaps—to justify policies so manifestly in tension with the causes the United States claims to defend.

Mitigating the harm to those causes means heeding a further principle: marginal improvement matters. Washington will not convince leaders in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, or Vietnam to commit political suicide by abandoning their domestic model. But leverage works both ways in these relationships. Countries on the firing line need a superpower patron just as much as it needs them. U.S. officials can use that leverage to discourage extraterritorial repression, seek the release of political prisoners, make elections a bit freer and fairer, or otherwise obtain modest but meaningful changes. Doing so may be the price of keeping these relationships intact, by convincing proponents of human rights and democracy in Congress that the White House has not forgotten such issues altogether.

This relates to an additional principle: the United States must be scrupulously honest with itself. American officials need to recognize that illiberal allies will be selective or unreliable allies because their domestic models put them at odds with important norms of the liberal order—and because they tend to generate resentment that may eventually cause an explosion. In the same vein, the problem with laws that mandate aid cutoffs to coup plotters is that they encourage self-deception. In cases in which Washington fears the strategic fallout from a break in relations, U.S. officials are motivated to pretend that a coup has not occurred. The better approach, in line with reforms approved by Congress in December 2022, is a framework that allows presidents to waive such cutoffs on national security grounds—but forces them to acknowledge and justify that choice. The work of making moral tradeoffs in foreign policy begins with admitting those tradeoffs exist.

Some of these principles are in tension with others, which means their application in specific cases must always be a matter of judgment. But the issue of reconciling opposites relates to a final principle: soaring idealism and brutal realism can coexist. During the 1970s, moral debates ruptured the Cold War consensus. During the 1980s, U.S. President Ronald Reagan adequately repaired—but never fully restored—that consensus by combining flexibility of tactics with clarity of purpose.

Reagan supported awful dictators, murderous militaries, and thuggish “freedom fighters” in the Third World, sometimes through ploys—such as the Iran-contra scandal—that were dodgy or simply illegal. Yet he also backed democratic movements from Chile to South Korea; he paired rhetorical condemnations of the Kremlin with ringing affirmations of Western ideals. The takeaway is that rough measures may be more tolerable if they are part of a larger package that emphasizes, in word and deed, the values that must anchor the United States’ approach to the world. Some will see this as heightening the hypocrisy. In reality, it is the best way to preserve the balance—political, moral, and strategic—that a democratic superpower requires.

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the-four-terrapins · 4 months ago

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I got a question to all of you boys! Have you all heard of the legendary Sun Wukong? He’s a Bo staff wielding monkey with immortality, does great martial arts, and full of mischief! He even has his own video game called Black Myth Wukong that is super popular right now! Also, if all you four were to meet him in person for the first time, would you want to be buddies with him and try to have him be with you guys as part of the team? I would love to know the details! 😁

We have heard the story of Sun Wukong. It is based off a Chinese Buddhist monk named Xuanzang, who did a 10,000 mile/16 year journey to track down holy texts in India. It birthed the novel "Journey to the West" written by Wu Cheng'en. Wu created Tang Sanzang in Xaunzang's honor who had three mythical creatures hwlping him with his journey including the monkey Sun Wukong.

From that story, he is a bit of a mischief maker, Like Mikey here. Gets himself into trouble and gets locked inside a mountain until Tang finds him. He redeems himself protecting Tang on his journey. Which in turn elevates him to honorary Buddha.

If we met him I'm sure Mikey would latch onto him in no time. He doesn't do well with authority so I think him and I would need some time to adjust but I'm sure we'd all be happy to become friends. Someone with superpowers is always nice to have around to have your shell.

#leonardo tmnt #lady-maria-the-wolf225 #Sun wukong #everyone likes monkeys

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fortressofserenity · 6 months ago

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Orientalism as it is

Orientalism is the tendency to view eastern cultures and countries through a specific, often non-eastern lens, and it's a standpoint that others these cultures a lot. There are some people who say that the Avatar series is orientalist in the sense of how it's practically a white person's idea of an eastern world, not somebody with the lived cultural experience examining some of those ideas in such a story.

It becomes more evident that despite taking so much influence from both China (traditional Chinese characters have been used for the story) and India, the programme imposes an oddly western undertone in the way the superpowers are portrayed. It's often the four Greek elements of air, earth, fire and water but neither the five Chinese elements of wood, fire, earth, metal and water nor the five Indian elements of air, fire, earth, space and water.

The lack of any prominent Indian coded character who's neither Guru Pahtik nor those two villains (Pi and that thug) is kind of jarring since things like the concept of the avatar, reincarnation and even some of the names like King Bumi (odd since Bhumi is a girl's name) are taken from the South Asian cultures. That's not to say it never exerted any influence further east, but that it's strange to exclude more Indian coded characters there.

Not only that but somebody else also said that the way Avatar presents reincarnation is an affront to the Indian concept of it, where despite differences each new incarnation is a continuation of the other. Sort of like how sequels continue a story in some way, so the Indian concept of reincarnation is practically like this. Another person also pointed out how the Avatar's respective authors have a clear bias towards East Asia.

Despite how some of the ideas and concepts were taken from South Asia, it is rather strange why there aren't any prominent South Asian coded characters who aren't Guru Pahtik. Indeed it seems as if the Avatar creators reveal a troubling tendency in western geek circles where there's a tendency to kind of fetishise East Asian countries (Japan and to some extent, China and South Korea) but ignore, if not demonise West and South Asian ones.

Especially Arab and South Indian cultures, where names taken from the former are used for dissidents. It's even more ironic to think that the four Greek elements are in turn derived from the Iranian version, that I feel a version of Avatar that's more based on Middle Eastern cultures would be more organic. More believable than the East Asian and South Asian influences, since the Middle Easterners also inherently have this.

Particularly due to the influence of Zoroastrianism or something, though it's also surprising why there's not a single bender who's got a Middle Eastern name themselves. The lack of Middle Eastern-coded characters who aren't dissidents nor barbarians is strange, given it's Iran that originated the four elements. But then again I don't think it's particularly common for western geeks to be really into the Middle East.

I suspect one possible reason why anime gained so much traction in the west has to do with the ghost of Japonisme, an early trend in western art that takes cues from Japan as well as Chinoserie for China. But the ghost of Japonisme is stronger if it weren't for how popular Japanese comics and animation are among geeks, so it seems Avatar really is like a 2000s version of both Japonisme and Chinoserie.

Orientalism never left geek culture and especially western geek scenes, it's something that highly informs preferences and a viewpoint. It's not necessarily wrong to like Japan or even China, but that there's something about western geek culture's orientalism that rubs me the wrong way.

#orientalism #avatar the last airbender #atla #animation #racism #art history #china #japan #india

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fryandleelasbigfling · 2 years ago

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i think leela deserves more appreciation than she gets.

i mean obviously there’s the people who just kind of degrade her into a pinup girl, we can all agree that’s lousy. but i think even a lot of good natured fans will write her off as the no-nonsense straight man to fry and bender, the “one with the braincell,” the one who has everything together and isn’t really willing to get silly like the boys.

and yeah that can be true, especially in earlier seasons. but i think people underappreciate leela’s development and the fact she really is a messed-up, complicated, weird woman.

for one thing, her kickass fighting abilities are well understood, but her kung-fu skill emerged as a way to work out her anger from being bullied, so she often resorts to violence as a defense mechanism even when it isn’t necessarily needed. in “hell is other robots” she gets freaked out by the mosh pit and beats up the other concertgoers, “bender’s game” is about how her anger can overtake her and even being punished for violence won’t faze her, and in “lethal inspection” she outright admits violent outbursts are how she copes with mortality. “anthology of interest 1″ shows that she will descend into a murderous rampage at the slightest provocation if she had just a bit worse impulse control.

she’s also really stubborn! like, she will have a full-on mental breakdown if someone insists she can’t do something, because she has such an issue with being treated as unwanted and “worthless” that she needs to prove herself as highly capable of anything. "the sting," “mobius dick” and “bender’s game” are both great examples, as is the back half of “bender’s big score” -- note the sharp turn from “happy, calm, in love, willing to let other people handle the situation” to “insists on taking charge, kicking ass, and self-isolating” after lars leaves her at the altar.

also as great as it is that she’s more organized than fry, this veers into some weird habits like freezing all her dinners a month in advance and having a very minimalist apartment for a while. this plays into how anxious she gets about taking risks. she is very pedantic about grammar and can get ridiculously overzealous about keeping her crew safe and healthy. however she gets bored and frustrated when she doesn’t have excitement in her life.

she is very bad at organizing papers, preferring to just hide things away even when they become too big to ignore (symbolic!), completely failing when she steps in for hermes in “lethal inspection.” she also forgot to vote despite preaching about it all episode in “a head in the polls.” she is not as infallible as she wants people to believe! she just tries harder to justify it to herself than others, because she also has a severe guilt complex -- if she admits to herself that she did something wrong, she feels she needs to be punished.

she has a lonely, mundane home life. she can struggle with creativity and settle on an unexciting option (i.e. wanting to use superpowers for “humdrum activities” in “less than hero”), which is where fry’s tendency to blurt out any idea that comes to mind comes in handy.

despite being fairly fashionable, she sometimes struggles with traditional femininity. not just bc of her attitude and mutations but also her feet and breath stink lmao. she also has a bit of a potty mouth and has said “fuck” (bleeped out) in at least three episodes. she's a terrible singer (despite katey herself being a great singer).

she is implied to have a “hedonistic” past and used to drive around in a mausoleum as a teenager. she went to her prom alone with a dress made of carpet remains. she dropped out and “bummed around india for a while” after college.

she has a massive soft spot for animals, including “gross” ones like leeches, and despite all her violence, she usually backs down if it means a (perceived) innocent animal will be hurt. this can sometimes backfire on her (i.e. “into the wild green yonder”). she is very protective and empathetic towards living creatures, probably cuz she never had anybody looking out for her. she likes to read books about animals to relax.

she regularly visits the orphanarium and is very concerned with being a good role model for those kids, emphasizing especially with sally. it is repeatedly implied in the (admittedly semi-canon) comics that she wants to be a mother.

she plays with her hair when she’s nervous or flirty. she had an anxiety attack and physically froze up when she thought a mutant was stalking her. she had a bedwetting problem as a child and even her warden still holds it over her head.

she has repressed mental illness related to her lack of family growing up and has a desperate need for companionship, but sets high standards so she won’t get her heart broken first. whenever she’s single, she is very cynical about love and doesn’t do well seeing happy couples.

she seems very obsessed with normality and stability which is why she often seeks men of high status to date, even if they turn out to be jerks. however, she outgrows this after meeting her family, as she becomes extremely attached to them despite their low status and embraces her mutant culture quickly.

her mutations are not limited to her eye. she not only has a whole episode about her now-cured genetic mutant disease, but she occasionally lays an egg and has talons on her elbows. depending on the episode, she can be quite disabled by her single eye due to her lack of depth perception. there’s also the singing boil but that episode sucks lol

she also can get really horny lol. once she’s dating fry steadily, she tends to initiate things a lot more, even in public. i think it’s sometimes more of a fanservice thing but it’s always funny to see her so down bad, especially in the comedy central era

she likes bender because of his “in your face attitude” and often has a playful dynamic with him despite disapproving of his lack of morals. she doesn’t like amy a lot of the time but they can get along and comfort each other when the time is needed. i’m not even getting into her and fry because that’s its own post.

overall i just love leela a lot, she’s such a weird, complicated, fascinating character and i could go on about her All Day.

#turanga leela #leela #futurama #sorry this became a leela wiki page i couldnt decide what to cut. its all important to me.

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allthebrazilianpolitics · 3 months ago

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Brazil’s global balancing act is trickier than ever

“Brazil is back,” vowed president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to cheering crowds at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt two years ago. Having defeated his hard-right rival, Jair Bolsonaro, and won back power after more than a decade out of office, Lula wanted to flag not only his own comeback but his desire to return the South American giant to the global stage.

During Lula’s first two terms, and before corruption scandals tarnished his reputation, the former metal worker had been feted as an international star. At one of the first meetings in 2009 of the G20, a body that gave Brazil a rare seat at the top table, then US president Barack Obama dubbed him “the most popular politician on Earth”. That same year, Brazil also co-founded the Brics bloc of developing nations.

Now Brazil — and Lula — are back in the spotlight. On Monday, the president will host the G20 leaders in Rio de Janeiro, one in a series of high-profile international summits to come. Some time next year, Brazil will welcome the newly expanded Brics group of emerging countries, and in November 2025 will also host the annual UN climate conference in the Amazon port of Belém.

Lula’s return to centre stage says much about the shifting geopolitics of the era, as growing competition for influence between the US and China gradually overshadows a system of international institutions once dominated by Washington.

The new environment has opened up space for a group of middle-ranking powers, many of them not formally aligned — among them Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia and the Gulf states, as well as India, a potential future superpower. Many of these governments are trying to expand their international influence in part by playing off the US, China and in some cases Russia.

But Brazil’s efforts to take advantage of the changing geopolitical landscape are also facing challenges. Lula’s attempt to act as a regional power and mediate the political crisis in Venezuela has floundered. Brazil, which prides itself on its own transition from dictatorship to democracy, has been uncomfortable at Russia and China’s efforts to make the Brics group more openly anti-western. And the election of Donald Trump in the US is likely to complicate Lula’s plan to showcase its climate diplomacy.

The country, say analysts, now finds itself having to navigate a much more complicated international scenario, in which its traditional neutrality may come under pressure from all sides. “Brazil is hedging. It’s on the fence,” says Oliver Stuenkel, a foreign policy expert at Brazil’s Getulio Vargas Foundation, of its approach to China and the US.

“Brazil is seeking to implement now this strategy of multi-alignment in a very uncertain global environment,” he adds. “Its major source of power, the capacity to navigate multilateral fora . . . is under so much strain now that this strategy of multi-alignment will become more challenging and maybe more costly.”

#brazil #brazilian politics #politics #foreign policy #luiz inacio lula da silva #image description in alt #mod nise da silveira

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rajasthan-political-leader · 18 days ago

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Col Rajyavardhan Rathore: His Vision for India’s Future

Colonel Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore is a man of many talents — a war hero, an Olympic silver medalist, a former Union Minister, and a visionary leader. His journey from the battlefield to the Olympic podium and then into politics and governance reflects his deep commitment to India’s progress.

As a leader, Col Rathore envisions an India that is strong, self-reliant, and empowered, particularly in the areas of youth development, sports, digital innovation, and national security. His vision is built on discipline, hard work, and nation-first thinking — values he has upheld throughout his career.

In this article, we explore Colonel Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore’s vision for India’s future and the key areas where he aims to bring transformation.

1. Empowering India’s Youth: The Future of the Nation

India’s youth are its greatest asset, and Col Rathore believes that investing in young minds will drive the nation forward.

Key Initiatives for Youth Empowerment:

✅ Skill Development Programs: Equipping young Indians with 21st-century skills like coding, AI, entrepreneurship, and leadership. ✅ Encouraging Sports Culture: Making sports an integral part of education to instill discipline, teamwork, and resilience. ✅ Youth Leadership Programs: Providing platforms for youth to engage in policy-making, governance, and nation-building.

🚀 Vision: A future where every Indian youth is *skilled, confident, and ready to lead the world in innovation and progress.

2. Making India a Global Sporting Powerhouse

As an Olympic silver medalist, Col Rathore understands the potential of sports in shaping a nation’s identity. He envisions an India where sports are not just recreational but a professional career choice.

His Key Contributions to Indian Sports:

🏅 Khelo India Initiative: Identifying and nurturing young talent from the grassroots level. 🏅 Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS): Providing world-class training and financial support to elite athletes. 🏅 Infrastructure Development: Setting up modern training academies, sports universities, and high-performance centers.

🚀 Vision: India to become a top-5 sporting nation in the world, producing champions across all disciplines.

3. National Security: Strengthening India’s Defenses

With his military background in the Indian Army, Col Rathore emphasizes the importance of national security and defense preparedness.

Strategic Priorities:

🔹 Modernizing Armed Forces: Upgrading defense technology with AI, cybersecurity, and advanced weaponry. 🔹 Strengthening Border Security: Ensuring that India’s borders are well-guarded and protected against threats. 🔹 Encouraging Youth to Join the Army: Promoting patriotism and a service mindset among young Indians.

🚀 Vision: A self-reliant and technologically advanced defense system, making India a stronger and safer nation.

4. Digital India: A Tech-Driven Future

Col Rathore believes that technology and digital transformation are key to making India a global superpower.

His Vision for Digital India:

💻 Expanding Digital Infrastructure: Ensuring high-speed internet access in rural and urban areas alike. 📱 Smart Governance: Using AI, big data, and automation to improve public services and reduce corruption. 🚀 Start-Up Revolution: Creating policies that support entrepreneurs, innovators, and digital businesses.

🚀 Vision: India to become the world’s technology and AI hub, driving innovation globally.

5. Fitness and Healthy Living for a Stronger India

Col Rathore has always emphasized the importance of fitness and mental well-being. He envisions an India where every citizen prioritizes health and fitness.

His Major Initiatives:

💪 #HumFitTohIndiaFit Campaign: A nationwide movement to promote fitness and healthy living. 🏋️‍♂️ Sports Integration in Education: Making physical education compulsory in schools. 🍏 Nutrition Awareness: Promoting healthy eating habits and tackling malnutrition.

🚀 Vision: A fit, healthy, and energetic India, ready to take on global challenges.

6. Strengthening India’s Global Image

Col Rathore envisions an India that leads the world in diplomacy, trade, and cultural influence.

Global Leadership Goals:

🌍 Boosting India’s Soft Power: Showcasing Indian culture, heritage, and values on the global stage. 📈 Expanding Trade & Economy: Encouraging Make in India and Aatmanirbhar Bharat to strengthen the economy. 🤝 Diplomatic Strength: Building strong international relations through defense, technology, and trade partnerships.

🚀 Vision: India as a global leader in economics, culture, and politics.

7. Education Reform: Preparing India for the Future

Col Rathore believes that education is the foundation of a strong nation. He advocates for modernizing India’s education system to focus on skill-based learning and innovation.

Key Education Reforms:

📚 NEP (National Education Policy): Making learning more practical and research-driven. 🔬 STEM & AI Education: Encouraging students to excel in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. 📖 Bridging the Urban-Rural Gap: Bringing quality education to every corner of India.

🚀 Vision: An India where every student has access to world-class education and limitless opportunities.

8. Women Empowerment and Gender Equality

Col Rathore is committed to ensuring equal opportunities for women in sports, politics, and business.

Major Focus Areas:

👩‍🎓 Education for Girls: Ensuring every girl child has access to quality education. ⚖️ Equal Pay & Opportunities: Promoting gender equality in sports and workplaces. 🏋️‍♀️ Encouraging Women in Sports & Leadership: Supporting female athletes, leaders, and entrepreneurs.

🚀 Vision: An India where women have equal rights, respect, and opportunities.

The Future Col Rathore Wants to Build

Colonel Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore’s vision for India is bold, inspiring, and transformative. His ideas focus on youth empowerment, sports excellence, national security, digital innovation, education reform, and women’s empowerment.

🔥 His Vision for 2047 (100 Years of India’s Independence): ✅ A self-reliant, globally competitive economy ✅ A top sporting nation producing world champions ✅ A digitally advanced, AI-driven society ✅ A secure, strong India with modern defense forces ✅ An inclusive, gender-equal, and opportunity-driven nation

💬 His Message to Indians: “India’s future lies in the hands of its youth. If we dream big, work hard, and stay disciplined, we can make India the greatest nation in the world.”

🚀 With his leadership and vision, India is well on its way to becoming a global superpower.

Jai Hind! 🇮🇳

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hautsreadsmarvel · 18 days ago

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“Fantastic Four” (issues 22-24, +1 Human Torch issue)

In these issues, the Four come to more closely resemble their modern-day incarnations in terms of catchphrases, powers, and rivalries.

“The Return of the MOLE MAN!” (1961)

This issue is pretty hype. The Mole Man is kind of the least important part of it, especially since his plan is more or less the same as last time (sinking cities instead of sinking atomic power plants), but at least he’s campier about it. As for the hype parts:

After Reed uses a gizmo to evaluate Sue’s invisibility powers, he determines there is more that she’s capable of, which conveniently gets proven right afterward as she interrupts an argument between Torch and Thing with a forcefield! Her invisibility is apparently some kind of energy projected over herself, and now she can give it form. She can also turn other things invisible.

(Wait, the Thing has to shave?? Doesn’t his hair get disappeared by his transformation? Like, whenever it gets shown over multiple panels the process always involves him balding just before his signature rocky exterior kicks in. Where would he… hm.)

Sue’s expanded powerset makes her markedly more useful this time around. It even lets her escape the Mole Man’s incredibly silly traps (and I do mean silly: while Johnny gets stuck in a room that reacts to flame by shooting out an extinguishing gust, Sue gets stuck in a room that’s just half-visible and half-invisible stuff, and she opens it by finding the door hidden under the illusions. Why not just put her in a normal room with a sturdy locked door? The Mole Man is too clever for his own good.)

I can’t stress enough how delightful I find the day-to-day of superpowered folks, and the F4 serve heavily on that front.

Thing banter continues to be on point. It does feel weird for him to make fun of Reed’s Captain Obvious exclamation when literally everybody in these comics narrates everything that’s happening all the time, but he gets points for being the first one to do so.

He said the thing! Thing said the thing!! It’s clobberin’ time!!!

“The Master Plan of Doctor Doom!” (1961)

I’ll frontload the stuff I didn’t like in this issue: a weak starting plot thread, and least-grade Indian racisms (as in vs people from India, not vs native Americans).

In this one, Reed becomes really curmudgeonly because he’s been working so long while it feels like everyone else is slacking off, so the Four bicker with each other and nobody can agree on who should be the leader. Reed’s insults and temper seem to come from nowhere, there’s a lot of “nobody can understand Sue because she’s a female! A ~feeeemaleeeeee!” stuff going on, and at the end everyone agrees Reed should be the leader while he reaffirms his need for and friendship with the others, so it’s a real nothingburger of a plot motivator.

The Indian racisms once again include “Indians are drawn as white people with turbans” and Torch referring to an Indian guy using Rudyard Kipling-isms.

Setting those things aside.

Sue is useful! (The dinosaur is an escapee from DOOM’s time machine, which they relocated to their HQ)

DOOM bails out three criminals and gives them each a superpower (low-tier superstrength, enhanced hearing, and fireproof-ness), and takes advantage of the Four’s temporary schism to have each of them capture a member of the F4 w assistance from DOOM’s technology.

DOOM gives his very first “I must best Reed!” speech, and captures him himself. He then seals away his henches in another dimension (for villain reasons), and prepares to kill the F4 now that they’re imprisoned (instead of having killed them when they were unconscious during the trip to his prison, both because villain reasons and because “escape room that takes you to space” is a very cool execution method).

He fights the F4 and loses, but not before demonstrating his new flight and defensive cryo-field technology.

Also he trapped Johnny by luring him into a car that turned out to be lined with asbestos. I think he knew by this point that the Torch can nova flame his way out of asbestos traps, but also that Johnny wouldn't dare hurt a good-looking car.

“The Infant Terrible!” (1961)

I was fairly whelmed by this one, so I’ll keep it brief. A strange alien is going around doing big reality warping feats, like making the streets overflow with giant humanoid constructs, conjuring giant milk bottles, creating soda tap fountains, etc. Reed deduces from the things it’s conjuring and the way it’s behaving it’s essentially a baby. Some gangsters learn about his theory from the news and lure it away with candy, and try to make it an accomplice in their crimes, but the baby keeps screwing up their crimes and the F4 beat the gangsters. However, the gangsters antagonize the baby, and it becomes afraid of humanity, causing disasters in its superpowered tantrum. Reed sends a signal to deep space to find its parents, its parents come pick it up.

I have very few thoughts about this issue, except to say that some of the art looks weird. This contains some of the worst illustrations of the F4 I’ve seen so far, including some pretty weird head and eye shapes for Sue.

“The Torch Meets the Iceman!” (1951 1961)

The Travis Starnes reading order claims this was published in 1951, but clearly whenever it makes such a claim it’s off by a decade. Whatever.

Anyways, the reason I actually bothered covering this Human Torch story is that it’s… actually enjoyable? There have been a few others that were promising, but they were usually brought low by fakeout cameos (such as an advertised Spider-Man only showing up for one inconsequential panel) or by the Torch’s gratingly overbearing ego. Neither of those things happens here. We’re promised a meet up with the Iceman of X-Men fame, and we get it; and the Torch is mostly in action mode the whole time, rather than incessantly going “hey, everyone, look at me, I’m so cool (yeah really cool slick just like ice)”.

Ah, that’s why the Thing is so strong. He carried everyone during group projects.

Johnny goes on a date on a boat, and Bobby Drake decides to land a date as well, coincidentally ending up on the same boat. (Fun fact: Iceman can get cold when he’s not in snowman mode)

Villains are rarely wise, but yeah, random citizen, how do they expect to get away with piracy on the Hudson? Notwithstanding how difficult that would be in real life, astute readers will recall the US gov’t was willing to nuke New York City just to obliterate an unidentified flaming object*. The moment the Barracuda is away from any other boat, FWOOM, right?

The Torch and the Iceman initially have a little trouble with their anti-synergies…

…but they rescue each other several times, even when the dread (snort) Captain Barracuda (snerk) comes up with plans to disable individual heroes, such as spraying hosewater over Iceman to freeze him into an immobile lump or forcing the Torch to put out one of his own fires to avoid burning the ship down.

The action in this ish was pretty good, elevated by the frission of two heroes falling into sync pretty much immediately, and more importantly, by the Torch not being a fucking ass to another hero for stepping on his turf (as he acted priorly w Spider-Man).

It’s really hard to take Piracy on the Hudson seriously. It was helped earlier by Captain Barracuda being a clever man, as previously mentioned, but then at the end he just like… spontaneously forgets? About the Iceman? He spends four panels being confused about the ice??

*See the very first issue of the Fantastic Four! (Man, I’ve always wanted to do one of these asterisks)

#hrm liveblog #the fantastic four #marvel comics #after i wrote out a whole pgraph about the Thing shaving i realized it was joke. :| oh well leaving it in #“buh wuh solar wave is a nonsensical plot device” shut up. shut the fuck up. ask oneself what makes more sense->#->a world where people can teleport and build teleporters but there are no natural examples of teleportation phenomena?->#->or one where there are? Duh. i would also like to ask the strawman why they read supers-fiction for Muh Realisms #i stopped doing “counters” in the notes bc i skip some stories in which they would soar. but just know the asbestos counter is. up there.#cw racism #btw racism vs native americans already happened in the F4 series. didnt mention it bc I only throw hissy fits for historical stuff if ->#->I think it really drags. as I'm here to give my impressions of the stories not morally condescend to the past and the dead

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darkmaga-returns · 25 days ago

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By James Hickman, Schiff SovereignThe year was 1901, and it was pretty much a who’s who of American business and finance at the time. Andrew Carnegie. JP Morgan. Charles M. Schwab. Elbert Gary (namesake of the city Gary, Indiana).

It would be as if Elon Musk, Billy Gates, and Carl Icahn all got together on a new venture. It would be pretty much guaranteed to be a big deal.

Those early 20th century titans formed what would become the world’s largest and most important company in that era— US Steel.

This was a period of history in which the United States was growing by leaps and bounds. Entire cities were built from nothing. Rail was being feverishly laid across the country. New buildings and skyscrapers were going up in major cities.

And steel made it all possible. In 1901 it was the most vital commodity in the world, far more important than oil. And US Steel dominated the market; they had— by far— the best quality, the most efficient production, the most reliable distribution.

But that was more than a century ago.

Today US Steel is barely alive. It loses more than a billion dollars each year in negative Free Cash Flow, and it has only managed to survive by issuing a mountain of debt.

Now, it would be easy to blame US Steel’s problems on competition with rising, low-cost manufacturing superpowers like China and India (whose nations boast the world’s #1 and #2 steel producers respectively).

But that’s a far too simplified (and frankly incorrect) explanation. The US economy— including the steel manufacturing industry— is far more productive than India or China. Way more.

China’s Baowu Steel Group is the world’s largest steel company by production volume, with an annual output of more than 130 million metric tons. But with nearly 400,000 employees, the Chinese firm’s steel production per employee is less than HALF of what a US Steel worker can produce.

So, US Steel is still able to out-produce its Chinese competitors.

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kazukibou · 6 months ago

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This gives me an idea of the Chiaki AI being accessible as a portable prototype used by a selected group within the Future Foundation, Hajime and maybe within Hope's Peak itself?

I think if or when Kazuki gets drunk is likely when he turns 18. It's most likely a gift from one of his family members (Most likely Komaru).

Since Japan is one of the first restored nations post-DR3, would Japan become the new dominant world superpower for some time? (At least a few decades before the United States, Western Europe, India and China's economy recovers)

Being given the title "The Ultimate Hope" and helped the world recover from Despair. How overwhelmed was Makoto whenever he met world leaders, got several interviews and even some celebrities wanting to meet him?

As for Kyoko being more of a private person, I'm assuming it was more difficult for her to handle in comparison to her husband?

It's super hard with me being a Hinanami lover because I want them happy together, but KKB cannot they can't be together. Like, I fear Hajime getting too attached to the AI. Maybe it'd be a good story? Idk if I wanna do that.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the drinking age for Japan was 20?

While Japan did restore, something tells me there'd be issues with like, the economy, and trust from other nations. Yeah, Future Foundation made it not as bad but...still a hard hit

Makoto would be super overwhelmed like to this day he still is humble and doesn't really understand how much of a great guy he is and how he brought hope to the world. the whole "ir wasn't just me I'm just any other guy!" type.

and yeah Kyoko could hide it but she didn't line the attention. She was raised as a private person. She may have revealed her skills to be scouted by Hope's Peak, but that was going to he a one time thing...too much attention.

#kazukibou #ask kazukibou

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ashesandhackles · 10 months ago

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15, 16, 21, 30 for the ask game!

Ello niyati! :) thanks for these asks!

15. a saying, joke, or hermetic meme that only people from your country will get?

Already answered here.

16. which stereotype about your country you hate the most and which one you somewhat agree with?

I am always very taken aback by white people - this I am specifically referring to Australian students who came to my university for an exchange program - who come to India and become very surprised that we can speak English, and that we speak it very well.

Bruh, I speak English better than my own native language! We were colonised!

The stereotype I somewhat agree with - well, I know a lot of people really hate poverty porn documentaries made by white creators and go #thisisnotMyIndia because they live in a metropolitan city. And I agree that the certain lens that a white creator employs when talking about poverty and class in India is troublesome (eyeroll at weird exoticism of it and them playing into some Oriental tropes), it is a very large part of India and does exist. The India mainstream discourses refusal to talk about it and wanting to focus on the aspirational dream of Superpower India (which doesn't exist, btw) is why I have higher tolerance for that content than a lot of people do.

Oh and the fact that joint family system can be feel strange to anyone outside the country with how enmeshed they are into your life.

21. if you could send two things from your country into space, what would they be?

Our food. Who will live on space without a good chai and samosa?

And music. :)

30. do you have people of different nationalities in your family?

Already answered here.

Not from Us asks

#asks

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mariacallous · 5 months ago

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What would you want to tell the next U.S. president? FP asked nine thinkers from around the world to write a letter with their advice for him or her.

Dear Madam or Mr. President,

Congratulations on your election as president of the United States. You take office at a moment of enormous consequence for a world directly impacted by the twin challenges of energy security and climate change.

Democrats and Republicans disagree on many aspects of energy and climate policy. Yet your administration has the chance to chart a policy path forward that unites both parties around core areas of agreement to advance the U.S. national interest.

First, all should agree that climate change is real and worsening. The escalating threat of climate change is increasingly evident to anyone walking the streets of Phoenix in the summer, buying flood insurance in southern Florida, farming rice in Vietnam, or laboring outdoors in Pakistan. This year will almost certainly surpass 2023 as the warmest year on record.

Second, just as the energy revolution that made the United States the world’s largest oil and gas producer strengthened it economically and geopolitically, so will ensuring U.S. leadership in clean energy technologies enhance the country’s geostrategic position. In a new era of great-power competition, China’s dominance in certain clean energy technologies—such as batteries and cobalt, lithium, graphite, and other critical minerals needed for clean energy products—threatens America’s economic competitiveness and the resilience of its energy supply chains. China’s overcapacity in manufacturing relative to current and future demand undermines investments in the United States and other countries and distorts demand signals that allow the most innovative and efficient firms to compete in the global market.

Third, using less oil in our domestic economy reduces our vulnerability to global oil supply disruptions, such as conflict in the Middle East or attacks on tankers in the Red Sea. Even with the surge in U.S. oil production, the price of oil is set in the global market, so drivers feel the pain of oil price shocks regardless of how much oil the United States imports. True energy security comes from using less, not just producing more.

Fourth, energy security risks extend beyond geopolitics and require investing adequately in domestic energy supply to meet changing circumstances. Today, grid operators and regulators are increasingly warning that the antiquated U.S. electricity system, already adjusting to handle rising levels of intermittent solar and wind energy, is not prepared for growing electricity demand from electric cars, data centers, and artificial intelligence. These reliability concerns were evident when an auction this summer set a price nine times higher than last year’s to be paid by the nation’s largest grid operator to power generators that ensure power will be available when needed. A reliable and affordable power system requires investments in grids as well as diverse energy resources, from cheap but intermittent renewables to storage to on-demand power plants.

Fifth, expanding clean energy sectors in the rest of the world is in the national interest because doing so creates economic opportunities for U.S. firms, diversifies global energy supply chains away from China, and enhances U.S. soft power in rapidly growing economies. (In much the same way, the Marshall Plan not only rebuilt a war-ravaged Europe but also advanced U.S. economic interests, countered Soviet influence, and helped U.S. businesses.) Doing so is especially important in rising so-called middle powers, such as Brazil, India, or Saudi Arabia, that are intent on keeping their diplomatic options open and aligning with the United States or China as it suits them transactionally.

To prevent China from becoming a superpower in rapidly growing clean energy sectors, and thereby curbing the benefits the United States derives from being such a large oil and gas producer, your administration should increase investments in research and development for breakthrough clean energy technologies and boost domestic manufacturing of clean energy. Toward these ends, your administration should quickly finalize outstanding regulatory guidance to allow companies to access federal incentives. Your administration should also work with the other side of the aisle to provide the market with certainty that long-term tax incentives for clean energy deployment—which have bipartisan support and have already encouraged historic levels of private investment—will remain in place. Finally, your administration should work with Congress to counteract the unfair competitive advantage that nations such as China receive by manufacturing industrial products with higher greenhouse gas emissions. Such a carbon import tariff, as proposed with bipartisan support, should be paired with a domestic carbon fee to harmonize the policy with that of other nations—particularly the European Union’s planned carbon border adjustment mechanism.

Your ability to build a strong domestic industrial base in clean energy will be aided by sparking more domestic clean energy use. This is already growing quickly as market forces respond to rapidly falling costs. Increasing America’s ability to produce energy is also necessary to maintain electricity grid reliability and meet the growing needs of data centers and AI. To do so, your administration should prioritize making it easier to build energy infrastructure at scale, which today is the greatest barrier to boosting U.S. domestic energy production. On average, it takes more than a decade to build a new high-voltage transmission line in the United States, and the current backlog of renewable energy projects waiting to be connected to the power grid is twice as large as the electricity system itself. It takes almost two decades to bring a new mine online for the metals and minerals needed for clean energy products, such as lithium and copper.

The permitting reform bill recently negotiated by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso is a good place to start, but much more needs to be done to reform the nation’s permitting system—while respecting the need for sound environmental reviews and the rights of tribal communities. In addition, reforming the way utilities operate in the United States can increase the incentives that power companies have not just to build new infrastructure but to use existing infrastructure more efficiently. Such measures include deploying batteries to store renewable energy and rewiring old transmission lines with advanced conductors that can double the amount of power they move.

Grid reliability will also require more electricity from sources that are available at all times, known as firm power. Your administration should prioritize making it easier to construct power plants with advanced nuclear technology—which reduce costs, waste, and safety concerns—and to produce nuclear power plant fuel in the United States. Doing so also benefits U.S. national security, as Russia is building more than one-third of new nuclear reactors around the world to bolster its geostrategic influence. While Russia has been the leading exporter of reactors, China has by far the most reactors under construction at home and is thus poised to play an even bigger role in the international market going forward. The United States also currently imports roughly one-fifth of its enriched uranium from Russia. To counter this by building a stronger domestic nuclear industry, your administration should improve the licensing and approval process of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and reform the country’s nuclear waste management policies. In addition to nuclear power, your administration should also make it easier to permit geothermal power plants, which today can play a much larger role in meeting the nation’s energy needs thanks to recent innovations using technology advanced by the oil and gas sector for shale development.

Even with progress on all these challenges, it is unrealistic to expect that the United States can produce all the clean energy products it needs domestically. It will take many years to diminish China’s lead in critical mineral supply, battery manufacturing, and solar manufacturing. The rate of growth needed in clean energy is too overwhelming, and China’s head start is too great to diversify supply chains away from it if the United States relies solely on domestic manufacturing or that of a few friendly countries. As a result, diminishing China’s dominant position requires that your administration expand economic cooperation and trade partnerships with a vast number of other nations. Contrary to today’s protectionist trends, the best antidote to concerns about China’s clean technology dominance is more trade, not less.

Your administration should also strengthen existing tools that increase the supply of clean energy products in emerging and developing economies in order to diversify supply chains and counter China’s influence in these markets. For example, the U.S. International Development Finance Corp. (DFC) can be a powerful tool to support U.S. investment overseas, such as in African or Latin American projects to mine, refine, and process critical minerals. As DFC comes up for reauthorization next year, you should work with Congress to provide DFC with more resources and also change the way federal budgeting rules account for equity investments; this would allow DFC to make far more equity investments even with its existing funding. Your administration can also use DFC to encourage private investment in energy projects in emerging and developing economies by reducing the risk investors face from fluctuations in local currency that can significantly limit their returns or discourage their investment from the start. The U.S. Export-Import Bank is another tool to support the export of U.S. clean tech by providing financing for U.S. goods and services competing with foreign firms abroad.

Despite this country’s deep divisions and polarization, leaders of both parties should agree that bolstering clean energy production in the United States and in a broad range of partner countries around the world is in America’s economic and security interests.

I wish you much success in this work, which will also be the country’s success.

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anarcho-occultism · 2 years ago

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Khan Noonien Singh

Khan Noonien Singh (August 15th, 1947-disappeared June 4, 1996) was an Indian activist, politician and dictator best known for his rule as Prime Minister of the Republic of India from 1984 to 1991 and as Khan of the Great Khanate of India from 1991 to 1996. Singh was born in 1947 to Adhar Singh and Hira Dakkar on the very date India officially became independent. Dakkar, notably, was the granddaughter of the famed Indian pirate/revolutionary and member of Britain’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Prince Chhatrasal Dakkar, better known as Captain Nemo. He was one of several hundred ‘midnight children’ born at the very moment India gained independence and like many of them was a metahuman. Singh, in particular, possessed latent psychic abilities that enabled him to quickly understand the emotions and intentions of those around him, a tool which greatly enabled him both as a child and into adulthood. Singh, owing to these abilities, would be discovered, kidnapped and forcibly recruited into the Chrysalis Project, a program intended to develop superior humans. The Chrysalis Project was the brainchild of the post-World War II incarnation of Hydra and was overseen by Wilhelm Strasse, a Nazi scientist smuggled out as part of Operation Paperclip who remained loyal to the ideals of that system. Singh’s treatment at the hands of the Chrysalis Project, which de facto raised him from 1950 to 1958, was extraordinarily mixed as was the case with many metahumans part of the project. On one hand, they were idealized as incarnations of a new super-race that would one day rule the world by the Hydra scientists running the program. On the other hand, the fact that so many Chrysalis subjects were not in line with Hydra’s Nazi racial ideals meant many were subject to physical violence and abuse and the project often tasked the metahuman children with a wide array of dangerous tasks.

Singh in particular was put in a number of heavily perilous situations at the behest of the Chrysalis Project. He was tasked with obtaining Kanamit technology during the brief lull between their departure from Earth and the world’s governments seizing their technology. Singh managed to pilfer only a single device, which was nonetheless enough to allow the Chrysalis Project to rapidly analyze human DNA. Singh was also sent to the underwater city of Rapture in 1959 to obtain plasmids, managing to sneak both in and out undetected thanks to playing off different factions within the city against each other. Hydra viewed the plasmids as a potential tool to augment their own ranks and avoid the need for the likes of Singh to directly father children. Singh also was tasked with carrying out contact with various other large criminal and terrorist cells to offer Hydra’s covert support to the likes of SPECTRE, THRUSH and KAOS as part of efforts to provoke global instability. By the time he reached age 13, Singh had already had dozens upon dozens of brushes with death and killed over 30 people personally. However, at this age, Singh finally came to question the Chrysalis Project’s intentions, recognizing the contradictions that his youth had caused him to ignore before. Singh would lead a small insurrection against Hydra in India, burning down the local Chrysalis Project facility and murdering several of those he knew were operating on Hydra’s behalf within India, most notably the mad scientist Dr. Cyclops. In the years that followed, Singh was somewhat aimless and unsure of what to do next, absent other direction. In other circumstances, he might have become a superhero and he initially did hold the likes of Superman in high esteem. However, in the early 1960’s, the emergence of the mutant community helped push him in a different direction.

The global backlash towards mutants was largely sparked by a belief that being born with superpowers was a result of literally mutation at birth. To many who hated them, mutants were as abominable as any kaiju and for similar reasons. The hostility to metahumans in general was pervasive, but there was a sense that for those who had become superhuman there was some attachment to baseline humanity left. However, mutants did not have to have that attachment and thus, in the view of anti-mutant activists, a distinct threat. In response to this backlash came the rise of Erik Lensherr, known better as Magneto. Magneto advocated a doctrine that mutants were the next stage of human evolution and should seek to take their rightful place as dominant over the rest of humanity, echoing the beliefs of John Wainwright. Singh would quickly come to embrace this mindset, though he welded it with unique elements of his own country’s circumstances. Seeing the destitution and poverty so many experienced in India firsthand–himself having lived through it after fleeing the Chrysalis Project–Singh came to believe that a part of why mutants should dominate was out of a sense of duty to uplift ‘lower’ humanity’s station. In this sense, Singh’s Augment ideology can be understood as a spiritual successor to Gellert Grindelwald’s perspective of wizard supremacy for the good of wizards and non-wizards alike as well as the even earlier conception of ‘white man’s burden’ that was popular in the 19th century. Singh wrote a series of letters to Lensherr outlining his beliefs of this sort and, while Lensherr never formally replied, a number of his later attitudes reflected heavy similarities to Singh’s thought and were a blueprint for his governorship of Genosha in the 1980’s.

Singh was able to lie low until the late 1970’s, when like many other Indian metahumans he was designated an enemy of the state by Prime Minister Priya Duryodhani. Duryodhani, seeking to seize dictatorial power for herself, used fear of civil unrest and metahumans as a tool to justify taking on emergency powers that enabled her to suspend elections and quash dissent by force. Most relevant to Singh, however, were the efforts of Duryodhani’s government to eliminate the Midnight Children and other metahumans. Hundreds of them were taken into government custody and subjected to abusive medical procedures that left most of them depowered and sterile. Singh himself was imprisoned and subject to this horrendous treatment, but managed to escape with some portion of his powers remaining. Singh was reportedly hidden by a man named Raghaven, who due to a psychotic break perceived Singh as his own son Raghu whom had been a victim of police violence during the Emergency. Eventually, the Emergency ended in 1977 and Duryodhani was removed from power in subsequent elections, but an embittered Singh vowed vengeance. He concluded the only way to protect metahumans in India was for them to seize control of the state apparatus. Singh over the next several years worked to build a power base, making contact with outside metahumans such as the Tomorrow People and Lensherr’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in a bid to gain support for his plans to seize political power. Within India, Singh recruited the bulk of surviving Midnight Children to his side and additionally built support among opposition to the regime, in particular focusing on dissenting government officials like Indu Sarkar and Vikram Malhotra (whom Singh gained the loyalty of by having a mutant ally of his heal a series of physical and mental injuries inflicted upon him by police).

Singh himself, meanwhile, used his charm to infiltrate the Kaurava Party and get close to Duryodhani. By the time of her 1980 return to power, Singh was a part of Duryodhani’s personal guard. By repeatedly halting (staged) assassination attempts, Singh has made himself seem a loyal supporter of Duryodhani. Singh continued to bide his time and build a covert power base of mutants and baseline humans alike within India while waiting for the opportune moment to claim full power. That moment would arrive in 1984, when World War III broke out after, in the wake of most American-based superheroes being abducted by the otherworldly beings known as the Beyonder or the Monitor, President Cyclops/Webster made a poorly-timed joke that convinced the Soviets to activate Project Koschei and invade large swathes of Europe and North America. While the rest of the world was distracted by trying to use Gojira to contain Cthulhu, the ongoing fighting in Germany, Hawaii and the Rockies and British Prime Minister Jim Jasper’s proclamation of a fascist ‘English Socialist’ regime in Britain after usurping Joan Carpenter, Singh had a perfect opening to organize the assassination of Duryodhani and her followers. Singh personally struck down the Prime Minister and allies embedded throughout India made quick work of fellow Kaurava Party members. Not only Kaurava Party leaders were targeted, Singh also eliminated a number of key opposition figures, high-ranking figures within the Indian military and even prominent businessmen and actors whom he deemed a threat to his rule. Singh’s proclamation of taking power in India occurred only after well over 1,000 men and women whom could have stood in his way were eliminated by his followers. The official story Singh provided was that Soviet operatives had sought to decapitate the Indian government as they had already done in neighboring China, which already was beginning to collapse into civil war. Singh’s assumption of the role of Prime Minister of India was thus framed as an effort to maintain stability.

Singh’s swift action and prepared excuses were crucial to giving his regime the legitimacy it needed early on. In the name of anti-communism, Singh was able to continue to purge potential threats to his rule. Singh did not, however, only have an iron fist to offer the people of India. He also pursued investment in infrastructure, education, healthcare and entertainment for the public, something that was both a logical outgrowth of his philosophy and a crucial act to wooing an uncertain public to his side. Singh spent the first three years of his reign largely focused on this consolidation of power, but after the 1986 general election allowed Singh loyalists to sweep Parliament, Singh felt comfortable enough to begin looking outward once more. His first priority was India’s large neighbor: China. Chinese-Indian relations had long been frosty, with a number of border skirmishes being fought with the country under their previous leader Chairman Peng Guoliang. But now Peng was dead, a victim of a Soviet first strike on Beijing, and a country with hundreds of millions was in the middle of a bloody struggle for power not seen since the 1930’s. Chinese refugees fled into Southeast Asia and India alike and Singh was easily able to make the case that intervention to restore order in China was a matter of India’s national interest. Both the Soviets and the United States also viewed restoring stability in China as important, but even after World War III formally ended in 1985, neither side was willing to trust the other in the country. India, in a sense, would be a nice, neutral compromise in the minds of American and Soviet leaders who agreed to Singh’s plan. Singh selected the warlord Wu Qinghua as the ideal candidate to manage China, ostensibly due to her ties to the old government coupled with a reformist bent. However, in reality, there was another reason for choosing her. Wu Qinghua was closely aligned with the Chinese criminal masterminds Fu Manchu, Shen Yu, and Zhang Tong–all three of whom were closely tied to the supernatural elements of Chinese history. The three figures were de facto immortal and possessed a number of heightened physical and mental abilities. Singh viewed them as natural allies to his own belief system and, as it turned out, they agreed.

By 1989, Indian support and the supernatural arsenal of the 3 ‘hidden hands’ behind Chairwoman Wu enabled China to once again be under one government (outside of Taiwan and Zheng Fa, which stubbornly clung to independence). With an ally/de facto puppet state secured in the North, Singh next sought to recruit additional allies across the globe. His vision had cleared considerably thanks to learning more of the supernatural world from Zhang–the Augment world would not only be run by mutants and superhumans, but by wizards, witches, cyborgs, vampires and any others whom had, by birth or by growth, transcended the domain of ‘normal’ humans. Singh invested a lot of time drawing former subjects to psychic research programs like the Athena Plan, Project Firestarter and the Zener Project to India, offering not only protection but a chance for vengeance. Singh also engaged in overtures to supernatural beings he considered potential allies, to mixed success. Lucius Malfoy and other remnant Death Eaters in Britain cordially received his overtures, but did not sincerely plan to taking much action to align with him. Queen Beryl’s Dark Kingdom comparatively was more open to such an arrangement, though Beryl herself harbored ambitions to rule the world on her own and viewed Singh as disposable. On the other hand, the ancient vampire known as Sariel who held those he fed upon in an unusually strong thrall, rejected the prospect of any alliance outright, vowing to conquer the world on his own. Singh quickly realized he could not solely rely on unusual humans as allies and by the time he officially proclaimed the Great Khanate of India he was ready to form alliances of convenience with mundane humans.

One of Singh’s first mundane allies was Kazakh dictator Ivan Radek, who infamously helped orchestrate the hijacking of Air Force One in 1991 while President James Marshall was aboard it. The extent to which Singh was in favor of such an action remains uncertain, but it is known Singh publicly condemned the hijacking and cut off Radek with little fanfare. He had his other allies Zateb Kazim and Heinrich Krull act with more discretion moving forward. The formal beginning of the conflicts dubbed the Eugenics Wars would only begin in 1992 following the assumption of power by ultranationalists in Japan. Japan’s existing pro-American government had been badly weakened by the destruction of Tokyo by the entity known as Akira in 1989 and order was restored largely at gunpoint by ultranationalist General Ryoichi Yoshi, who was deeply nostalgic for Japan’s imperial past. Singh viewed Yoshi as a potential ally and privately urged him to form a military regime, but Yoshi instead stood aside in favor of Mogataru Koga. However, an economic crisis allowed the collapse of his government and the ascension of Hiroshi Goto as Prime Minister, who began implementing Yoshi’s far-right policies including responding to rising violence in schools (demonstrated primarily by 1989’s Akademi High School murders) by forcing teenagers into deathmatches. For the Goto government, the United States was a particular enemy and, with Singh’s support, Japan launched an open war on the United States in 1992. The war was brief, owing to Japan’s comparatively weak military footing. Most of the potential aces in the hole–the use of mechas, weaponization of Monsterland kaiju or large-scale intervention by Japanese superheroes–were stymied by antiwar sentiment on the part of those whom could have introduced them. In the end, Japan was defeated and the Singh-aligned government collapsed (though not before killing US President Florentyna Kane in an attack on the US Capitol).

Singh was undeterred by the failure of his Japanese allies. Indeed, he ramped up the Great Khanate’s support to sympathetic factions across the globe. When South Africa collapsed into civil war amidst a coup by hardliner Karl Voster, Singh made sure to provide Vorster with large amounts of weapons and even some metahuman support. Singh also provided manpower and weapons to M. Bison’s regime in Panau as it began invading neighboring island nations such as Banoi, Lilliput and Patusan. Genosha proved to be a natural ally of Singh’s government, acting as a hub from which Indian-made weapons and volunteers provided by Singh could flow to various allies of convenience. The terrorist organization Cobra also partnered with Singh out of convenience, ramping up the threat posed by the group considerably since the denting given to it by 1980’s counterterrorism efforts. Cobra was Singh’s preferred proxy for installing Khanate-friendly governments in Southeast Asia, which succeeded in Sarkhan and Laos even as it drew Vietnam, Vietmahl, Cambodia and Thailand to unite against them. Even ostensible opponents of metahumans were willing to form alliances of convenience with Singh’s government. When Ayatollah Daryaei’s Iran annexed Iraq, proclaimed the formation of the United Islamic Republic and invaded Kuwait, Qumar and Asran simultaneously, India and their puppet government in China were the nations who blocked a resolution condemning their actions at the United Nations and funneled heavy amounts of aid to the country. The period from 1992 to 1994 was characterized by these small-scale proxy conflicts.

It was 1995 that would see the conflict really ramp up in intensity thanks to the crashing of a meteor near the Tiber River carrying the element Tiberium. Singh, wishing to seize the material for his own use, convinced his ally Hank Scorpio to mount a coup in the United States. Scorpio was able to temporarily seize the Eastern Seaboard and forced President Jack Stanton to resign in favor of his Vice President Bud Hammond. In Russia, a coup was likewise attempted by Ivan Tretiak, a Russian hardliner seeking to restore the USSR by ousting Russian President Sergei Karpov. While these coups were ultimately repelled, they delayed the securing of Tiberium. Singh would form a common cause with the Brotherhood of Nod, whom under the command of their enigmatic leader Kane wanted to seize Tiberium as well. Singh’s support for Scorpio, Tretiak and Nod would at last force the world’s hands, with Russia and the US agreeing to implement crippling sanctions on India and China. China’s government yielded first, with Wu Qinghua being forced to stand down in favor of Lian Ma. Meanwhile, Singh’s hold in India, for the first time in a dozen years, faced dissent. Strikes and protests that could have been crushed with little backlash in previous years now escalated to riots, the people of India no longer believing in Singh’s promises of a brighter future for India. Singh still resisted launching outright war until 1996, when the Global Defense Initiative announced an intervention into India to remove a Brotherhood of Nod cell within the country. Singh ordered the Indian Armed Forces to resist the intervention, which they did for a time but the outcome was never in doubt. Singh vanished from New Delhi alongside his closest allies and followers on June 4th. Lakshmi Rupavathy, the leader of Singh’s previously-impotent opposition, would become Prime Minister of what was now once again the Republic of India.

The fact Singh disappeared has led to no shortage of theories about what became of him. Some believe Singh, much like the earlier would-be conqueror Adenoid Hynkel, committed suicide after realizing his failure to fulfill his ambitions. However, the additional disappearance of so many of his core allies–many of whom were also well-known figures–has meant many are dissatisfied with that explanation (though something like the Jamestown mass suicide is theoretically possible, it would be difficult to destroy all the bodies involved). Some claim Singh and the Brotherhood of Nod’s leader Kane had in fact been the same person and Singh had simply gone to join the Brotherhood in full as his rule in India collapsed. Due to the lack of resemblance between Kane and Singh, this theory is largely the provenance of cranks. Some claim that Singh escaped back in time or to a parallel reality–with declassified documents indicating Singh had made contact with a parallel world dominated by a nation calling itself the Domination of Draka serving as fuel for this belief. This is a theory that, while possible, has little other evidence going for it. One of the most popular theories is that Singh and his followers escaped to outer space, either to find another planet to settle upon or simply to wait to return to Earth. Many who believe this theory claim that Singh and his followers may have been responsible for directing the Harvester fleet towards Earth or launching the Wolf-Biederman asteroid (sometimes also known as ‘Dottie’) at the planet, citing that the meteor appeared to change trajectories before heading towards the planet, unlike the previous near-miss of the Hamner-Brown comet. Despite doubts about the veracity of that claim, declassified documents from Singh’s rule do indicate a robust investment in space travel technology. Of all theories, this may prove to be the most credible, but remains unconfirmed to this day. Despite the frequent brutality of Singh’s rule, a number of people in India actually hold Khan Noonien Singh in high regard, owing to his investments in public services and his efforts to increase India’s international standing. A cult venerating Singh as a living god has a shockingly high following in India, with it being estimated the vanished dictator is worshiped by just under 1 million people.

Star Trek, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Midnight’s Children, Marvel Comics (Captain America, X-Men, Secret Wars, Iron Man), Wolfenstein: The New Order, To Serve Man, Bioshock, James Bond, The Man From UNCLE, Get Smart, Shikari (1963 film), DC Comics (Superman, Crisis on Infinite Earths), Odd John, Harry Potter, The Great Indian Novel, Piravi, The Tomorrow People, Indu Sarkar, Hazaaron Khwaishen Aisi, Whoops Apocalypse!, Murder in the White House, A Colder War, Red Storm Rising, Red Dawn, Hotline Miami 2, 1984, The Devil’s Alternative, The Shoes of the Fisherman, The Red Detachment of Women, The Insidious Doctor Fu Manchu, Evil Genius, Phoenix Wright, Terror in Resonance, Firestarter, Second Sight, Sailor Moon, The Strain, Air Force One, Sahara, The Simpsons (Cape Feare, You Only Move Twice), Akira, I Was Born But…, Jack Ryan Series (Debt of Honor, Executive Orders), Yandere Simulator, Battle Royale, Godzilla, The Prodigal Daughter, Vortex, Mortal Combat, Just Cause, Dead Island, Gulliver’s Travels, Lord Jim, GI Joe, The Ugly American, Destroy All Humans!, The West Wing, Full Metal Panic!, Command & Conquer, Primary Colors, Political Animals, The Saint, Maanagara Kaaval, The Great Dictator, The A-Team (Children of Jamestown), The Domination Series, Deep Impact, Armageddon, Lucifer’s Hammer

#star trek #league of extraordinary gentlemen #mega crossover #eugenics wars #x men #midnight’s children

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