infrateal posted:

getfiscal posted:
why does jonathan swift want us to eat babies

After Swift's proposal was adopted to savory success the Admiralty began to take his other satires seriously, investigating and subsequently conquering the fantastic lands reported by Gulliver. Eventually only Brobdingnag stood against the rapacity of Albion; no ship could even approach, as the children of the enormous aboriginals were expert rock-skippers, and could snap mainmasts at whim. But doom could only be forestalled so long.

The polymaths of Laputa were enslaved to levitate other colonial landmasses. Foremost of these was Eire, curiously empty and redolent of barbeque sauce; it lead the descent of islands to surround the King of Brobdingnag's palace with a new mountain range, smokestacked with immense artillery which shredded the giants' army of swords and honor. Inside the ring, redcoated cavalry charged astride houyhnhnms, the intelligent horses broken and conditioned by years of beatings into thigmotaxis, making this force as difficult to stomp as cockroaches or rats--a fitting comparison for the invaders. Any giant who seized a broom was shot with curare flechettes from elephant guns; nothing could stop the tiny, pasty vermin. The King was riddled with tranquilizers, chained, and the army capitulated; Brobdingnag became obeisant to a smaller Crown of vaster tyranny.

But as time passed the British found their subjects' size simply too copious in the event of insurrection or even of unruly children, as flung rocks were still dangerous... and then the East India Company reported it had been canning babies for so long all the indigenous women had passed into menopause with no offspring to replace them. The Americans having seceded and the Australians become poisonous, the brits were faced with a dire confluence of crises indeed! The solution was a program of eugenics and axolotlan gene-splicing to reduce the brobdingnagian race to a state of neoteny, biological adult babyhood, where their size would be less extreme and their motor skills insufficient for petrojection.

"and thus today the great playpens which succor our fancy, the pastures acrawl with titans most tender and the mahouts who watch o'er them; there is no sweeter sound than the cooing of a herd when cheerios like truck tires roll into the feeding ravine, lo, so sweet as to mask the stench of a behemoth befouled diapey"

lol

Crow posted:
WOW THANKS ASSHOLES. I BET YOU FEEL REALLY GOOD THAT LIBYANS ARE DYING AND YOU'RE NOT POSTING LINKS TO STUFF. FUCKED UP

paypal sent to moammar gadoffi

discipline posted:
wow mummar... my hat off to you sir

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Mukhtar

The Turks and their Libyan allies withdrew to the countryside instead of surrendering, and the Italians bombarded the city for three days, then proclaimed the Tripolitanians to be "committed and strongly bound to Italy."

are shell trajectories ionic or covalent

discipline posted:

Tsargon posted:
that nato managed to pull this off at such a late date (relative to the lifespan of their organization) honestly makes me upset

elaborate?

to draw a parallel, one of the big 'themes' to Early Obama was the idea of showing that this whole America thing (that is, liberal democracy) can still work. a problem with finance: financial reform! a problem with healthcare: healthcare reform! that all of these solutions were awful, and sometimes made the problems themselves worse, didnt matter. the whole point was to 'get something passed' and therefore show that The System Can Work if only it was given a chance.

the nato intervention in libya, as richard seymour said a bit ago (altho he didnt draw the parallel), follows this same line: after 10 years of military quagmire, libya is going to be understood as the 21st century Good War, showing that Humanitarian Intervention can still work.

its frustrating because by all indications nato should be a corpse, but spain did fight england to a draw as late as 1748 so its not like this sort of thing is impossible. just frustrating.

discipline posted:
I'm really baffled how many self-proclaimed "leftists" are so excited about the fall of great socialist people's "highest HDI in africa" libyan arab jamhariya to a bunch of NATO-backed al qaeda thugs. not to mention the ones who are just ready to sink their teeth into mumar qadaffi, a man who has done more for the people of africa than they will ever do themselves.

I'm not sure why people think it's ever appropriate for a population to suffer tremendous loss on account of the politics of its leadership. in any case qadaffi now enjoys 70% approval and the NATO assault has galvanized support for him despite whatever criticisms people have, so it's pretty much a moot point. At this point it doesn't really matter if he's a stooge or not, he's the leader of the resistance so that's who people are going to rally behind.

The rebels are literally serial rapists.

discipline posted:

Tsargon posted:
its frustrating because by all indications nato should be a corpse, but spain did fight england to a draw as late as 1748 so its not like this sort of thing is impossible. just frustrating.

yeah nato belongs in the trash can for what it was originally intended for. it's just a ghurka that outsources. however it makes a lot of sense in today's Empire in that it's like, some sort of weird global tribute military.

I opened this thread with a bad War Nerd so I will offer a good one now: http://exiledonline.com/wn-38-balkan-armies/