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Here's a look back at the Coronation weekend in numbers:
The biggest military parade in 70 years will be remembered for showcasing British ceremonial at its best. 💙
#King Charles III#Coronation Service 2023#Coronation 2023#UK Ministry of Defence#military parade#His Majesty The King
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British military intelligence reports that Russia is removing nuclear warheads from Soviet-era cruise missiles, substituting inert ballast for the warheads, and firing them at Ukraine.
Essentially, Russia is so depleted in its weaponry that it’s firing blanks.
The unarmed missiles can still cause damage. Purists may not like this description, but a cruise missile is essentially a rather small jet with no crew. We saw what larger jets as weapons did on 9/11. Russia increasingly follows the terrorist playbook.
This peculiar use of cruise missiles is bizarre and shows how desperate Russia is getting.
One unintended effect of this is that it’s at least causing a marginal reduction in the number of Russia’s nuclear weapons.
Of course many Russian cruise missiles, armed or not, never quite make it to their intended targets.
#invasion of ukraine#russia#cruise missiles#depletion of weapons#nuclear warheads#firing blanks#uk defence intelligence#uk ministry of defence#крилаті ракети#крылатые ракеты#россия#россия - террористическая страна#владимир путин#путин хуйло#военные преступления#україна переможе#слава україні
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I don't know about you, but the topic of aliens and UFOs has always fascinated me. As a British man, I've often wondered what our government knows about extraterrestrial life and whether they've had any encounters with unidentified flying objects.
There have been numerous reports of UFO sightings in the UK, with some of the most famous occurring in the 1980s in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk. It's been dubbed the "British Roswell" and is still talked about to this day. Many eyewitnesses claim to have seen a triangular-shaped craft with bright lights and symbols on its side, hovering above the forest.
Despite the number of reported sightings, the British government has always been tight-lipped about their involvement with UFOs. The Ministry of Defence did, however, release a dossier in 2009 that detailed sightings and investigations between 1978 and 2002. But even then, they were careful to state that there was no evidence to suggest that any of the sightings were extraterrestrial in nature.
As someone who loves the idea of aliens and UFOs, I can't help but wonder what the truth really is. Are we really alone in the universe, or have we been visited by beings from other planets? Until we have concrete evidence, we can only speculate and imagine what lies beyond our world.
So, what do you think? Have you had any encounters with UFOs or know of any interesting sightings in the UK? Let me know in the comments.
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Held yesterday in Delhi, the 2 plus 2 dialogue, serves as a means to discuss and evaluate all dimensions of the India-UK Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.
#India UK 2+2#british ministry of defence#trade#energy#health#civil aviation#technologies#mea india#ministry of external affairs india#maritime security#international cooperation#comprehensive strategic partnership#India UK 2 Plus 2#humanitarian assistance#Foreign and Defence Dialogue#defence dialogue#India UK Dialogue#hadr#fcdo#counter terrorism#news#news update#news blog#blogging
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"Israel expects support from western capitals because they have nearly as much to fear from a verdict against Israel as Israel itself. They have staunchly backed the killing spree, with the US and UK, in particular, sending weapons that are being used against the people of Gaza, making both potentially complicit.
According to a cable from the Israeli foreign ministry, leaked to the Axios website, Israel hopes that, given the difficulties of making a legal case in defence of its actions, diplomatic and political pressure on the court’s justices will win the day instead. ... Israel’s 'strategic goal' at the court, according to the leaked cable, is to dissuade the judges from making a determination that it is committing genocide. But more pressing is Israel’s need to prevent the Hague court from ordering an interim halt to the attack.
... The purpose of South Africa’s case is not to arbitrate what happens once Israel has annihilated the Palestinians of Gaza, as far too many observers appear to imagine. It is to stop Israel from annihilating the people of Gaza before it is too late.
Based on strange logic, Israel’s supporters imply that the genocide charge is unwarranted because the real aim is not to exterminate the Palestinians of Gaza but to induce them to flee. ... The International Court of Justice must not adopt a wait-and-see approach, pondering whether Israel’s bombing campaign and siege lead to extermination or 'only' ethnic cleansing. That would strip international humanitarian law of all relevance.
If Israel and its western allies fail to bludgeon the court into submission, and South Africa’s case is accepted, it will not only be Israel in legal difficulties.
A genocide ruling from the court will impose obligations on other states: both to refuse to assist in Israel’s genocide, such as by providing arms and diplomatic cover, and to sanction Israel should it fail to comply.
An interim order halting Israel’s attack will serve as a line in the sand. Once made, any state that fails to act on the injunction risks becoming complicit in genocide.
That will put the West in a serious legal bind. After all, it has not just been turning a blind eye to the genocide in Gaza; it has been actively cheering it on and colluding in it. ... The truth is that a genocide ruling by the court will open up a can of worms for the West, and its readiness to accept that the provisions of international law apply to it too."
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Defense Secretary co-chairs India-UK DCG meeting; Review defence, strategic relations
Defense Secretary co-chairs India-UK DCG meeting; Review defence, strategic relations
New Delhi Defense Secretary Ajay Kumar co-chaired the India-UK Defense Advisory Group (DCG) meeting with his counterpart David Williams, UK Permanent Under Secretary of State for Defense, in London on 3 October, the Defense Ministry said in a statement.
He said they reviewed the progress of various service level bilateral groups and other defense cooperation mechanisms.
Ajay Kumar discussed a…
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#yemen#jerusalem#tel aviv#current events#palestine#free palestine#gaza#free gaza#news on gaza#palestine news#news update#war news#war on gaza#rishi sunak#britain
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Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense has a public service message via Twitter for Russian tourists who are vacationing in Crimea which was illegally seized by Vladimir Putin in 2014.
It’s never a good idea to vacation in a war zone. But it’s an even worse idea to vacation next to a Russian air base which doesn’t bother to camouflage or hide the planes it uses to launch missiles at Ukrainian schools, hospitals, and apartment buildings.
Russian warplanes destroyed in Crimea airbase attack, satellite images show
At least eight Russian warplanes appear to have been damaged or destroyed in the recent attack on Saky airbase in Crimea, according to newly released satellite images, in contrast to Russian claims that none were damaged.
Late on Wednesday Ukraine’s air force said at least nine Russian aircraft were destroyed on the ground following Tuesday’s dramatic explosions at the Saky airbase, which Russia said killed one, wounded 14 and damaged dozens of nearby houses.
Kyiv has not publicly claimed responsibility for the attack – although it is doing so in private – while an adviser to the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has suggested partisans might have been involved.
Zelenskiy referred to the attack in his Wednesday evening address. “In just one day, the occupiers lost 10 combat aircraft: nine in Crimea and one more in the direction of Zaporizhzhia,” he said. “The occupiers also suffer new losses of armoured vehicles, warehouses with ammunition, logistics routes.”
Via satellite, here are before and after views of the Russian airbase at Saky.
The Ukrainians are making excellent use of the weapons they’re getting from NATO and other friendly sources.
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One thing this war has revealed is that a lot of Russian military equipment is basically crap. UK military intelligence released this observation on Twitter today.
If you were the defense minister of a country wishing to buy arms and military equipment, would you still be giving serious consideration to Russia after watching all that footage of the turrets easily popping off of their tanks and “precision” missiles which go way off target? This war is an “anti-commercial” for the Russian arms industry.
#invasion of ukraine#crimea#tourists#saky#russian airbase#russian aircraft destroyed#ukraine ministry of defence#uk ministry of defence#russian arms industry#vladimir putin#владимир путин#путин хуйло#россия#это ВОЙНА а не 'спецоперация'#крим це україна!#слава україні!
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In an interview with Rare developers about Donkey Kong Country published in 2017, character designer Kevin Bayliss recalls that the development of the game required so many powerful Silicon Graphics workstations that the studio received a phone call from the UK Ministry of Defence about the hardware, asking them about its purpose.
Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Small Findings | Source
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Left My Friend’s Body Outside the Mithraeum: One New Zealander’s account of the New Zealand stuff in Nona the Ninth
A few points before we begin:
I’ve quoted everything out of context, but probably don’t read this if you don’t want to be spoiled for the book.
I’m just one person (a Pākehā North Islander millennial, for context), but hopefully I caught most of it. Please tell me if you see anything I missed!
If you see something and think, ‘Tumblr user junozeta, why have you included this piece of information when it is very easily Google-able,’ it’s for the sake of completeness.
Kia ora!
Dramatis personae
Stop It, name assumed, lies under counter at dairy, red colour, big sized, four legs
Dairy: A corner store.
John 20:8
Dilworth. Otago. Auckland. Overseas to Corpus. (She likes the word corpus; it sounds nice and fat.) Then another year abroad, where he got the grant and met the men who would make things happen. Special pleading with the New Zealand government and Asia-Pacific Environmental, at his suggestion, then back to the facility outside Greytown.
Here John is reciting his credentials. Dilworth is a private boys’ boarding school in Auckland. (ETA: Please see this reblog by sixth-light for better context.) Auckland and Otago will be referring to the universities, which are notably the only two in NZ with medical schools. I will add that having studied more in NZ than overseas does not afford you a lot of prestige.
Greytown is a small town (population 2,720 as of 2021) in the lower North Island, near Wellington. (I note here that Trentham, the presumptive namesake of the Second House’s Trentham, is also near Wellington, as is Maymorn, which Tamsyn Muir has said Mercymorn was originally named after.)
Chapter 1
“Is that pikelet mix?” she said.
Pikelet: Like a pancake, but smaller and denser.
Palamedes stood like he was playing a game of Hot Chocolate and the tagger was looking right at him. Hot Chocolate was in fashion with her friends at the moment and Nona wanted to get really good at it.
Putting this here to state for the record that I’m not familiar with Hot Chocolate as a name for a game of that kind. (ETA: An anon was, though, as a different name for Red Light, Green Light. See, not all of NZ is the same.)
I’ve met leaders like Unjust Hope before.
“Unjust Hope” could be from “The Ikons” by James K. Baxter, a famous New Zealand poet.
John 5:20
He said, It was the last one that was getting to me. I knew all those bodies by name. Funny to say, but they were my mates, you know? I’d worked on them for such a long time, and they’d given us so much, and now they were going to get dumped in some concrete skip because after what we’d done to them they couldn’t be cremated or buried safely. I hated that.
Mates: Friends. Classic Kiwi.
Skip: A dumpster.
I didn’t have to worry about the public or the media—we had a pet cop, P—. She’d made detective by that point; was going on to big things in the MoD.
MoD: Probably self-explanatory, but Ministry of Defence.
We only had the demo cans; the mass-produced ones were made in a Five Eyes factory in Shenzhen.
Five Eyes: A surveillance alliance between NZ, Australia, the UK, the US, and Canada. As of 2022, not actively military, nor ostensibly involved with China. Much to think about.
I went around to everyone, talking to my favourites—I know it was weird having favourites, but let’s bloody face it, I’d gone weird—not even saying goodbye, just saying it’ll be fine, hang on for me, kia kaha, kia māia.
Kia kaha, kia māia: Well-known Māori phrase meaning “be strong, be brave”.
John 15:23
You wouldn’t believe how stupid guys get over compliments on our looks, I was vain as.
Vain as: “[adjective] as” is a classic Kiwi way to say that something is extremely [adjective].
P— said I looked like a Māori TV Pink Panther.
Māori TV: Worth noting here that this is a TV channel, and not a generic reference.
Someone’s Honda. Someone’s Mazda. Someone’s four-wheel drive. Someone’s shed. A Macca’s sign.
Shed: A garage.
Macca’s: McDonald’s.
A— and M— moved in with me, and G— set up outside; he was sleeping in his ute. C— was staying with N—, long days. She left us early in the morning and came back the next day with sausage rolls for breakfast.
Ute: A pickup truck. (Short for “utility vehicle”.)
Sausage rolls: A classic NZ food.
You hear all the cicadas in the grass, you hear the dogs in the next town over barking. You hear the moreporks in the trees and the possums skittering over shed roofs.
Morepork: A native owl (Ninox novaeseelandiae).
Possums: Worth noting that NZ has the Australian kind (Trichosurus vulpecula).
He was the bravest dog I’d ever met. Half Chihuahua, half pug. Nan called him Ulysses S. Grunt.
Maybe worth noting here that “Grant” and “Grunt” are pronounced much more alike in an NZ accent than they would be in a North American one.
Chapter 9
Cam ducked into a bakery and came out with a warm and probably radioactive paper bag of pastries that had been under the bakery light the whole time.
Almost certainly a reference to this iconic cultural moment.
She had already got her towel and the old shirt she used to swim in—much easier to go naked, but the others had all objected to this, and Cam had said it would make her a sniper target—and her jandals, and then after masks were tied and hats put on they walked to the beach in the low dusk.
Jandals: Flip-flops. Classic Kiwi.
“I’d give Palamedes the hiding of his fucking life if he wasn’t renting an ass with you.”
Hiding: A beating.
John 5:18
They were lying head-to-head, their eyes aimed at the right part of the sky to see, or in this case not see, the Southern Cross.
Southern Cross: The constellation on the NZ flag. Known formally as, of course, Crux.
There was so much to figure out. But I’d got a dream team on tap, eh? People who could think. C—’s N—, she was on board. C— was still pretending they weren’t dating—she was an artist, so that was cool. If you have two scientists and an engineer and a detective and a lawyer and an artist you’re pretty much sweet as.
Eh: We tend to end sentences with this quite a lot (though of course it’s not just us).
Sweet as: “all good”. Classic Kiwi.
Back then we thought maybe there was something about the ground, something about our particular patch in the Wairarapas, but if we loaded up the ute with a bunch of bodies and looked out for the cops we could do the same thing anywhere else.
The Wairarapas: The region of NZ where Greytown is located. This is an informal way to refer to it, its proper name being the Wairarapa.
“Is that pikelets, Pyrrha? You’re a legend.”
Calling someone a legend to express approval, while not new, has become deeply entrenched in the local consciousness over the last decade or so, thanks to a recognisable anti-drink driving campaign. (If you’ve heard of the “ghost chips” ad, it’s one of those.)
Chapter 12
Crown Him with Many Crowns Thy Full Gallant Legions He Found It in Him to Forgive
He Found It in Him to Forgive: Lyrics from a classic NZ song, “Dominion Road” by The Mutton Birds.
“Why does Pash hate us so much?”
Worth noting here that “pash” (both a noun and a verb) is slang for making out.
John 8:1
You’ve got a wizard out in the wop-wops who’s now got blanket bans from nearly every video upload site and a whole bunch of people have entered the country because of his YouTube channel, the government isn’t all, Love that small-business entrepreneur spirit.
The wop-wops: The middle of nowhere. Often just “the wops”.
Didn’t mention that I’d only gone to Parachute ’cause of the underage drinking.
Parachute: A Christian music festival that existed from 1992 to 2014.
She’d won medals for competition shooting back north in Hamilton, but we’re not talking Jesse James. We’re talking Hamilton.
Hamilton: A city in the North Island (it’s the next city south of Auckland) which it is nationally popular to disparage, especially if you’re from Auckland (this is mutual).
Chapter 16
Crown Prince Kiriona Gaia
Kiriona: Transliteration of “Gideon” into te reo Māori.
“It can’t be my blood. It must be someone else’s. Maybe it’s tomato sauce.”
Pretty throwaway, this one, but when she says tomato sauce this is the kind I think of.
Chapter 18
“Whew!” said Nona. “Is the classroom munted?”
Munted: Busted, fucked up.
John 5:1
There was a lot of it, but we had a lot of people who needed a feed. We sat there with the window cracked so G— could hear us while he manned the barbie, which in the dark gets unwholesome as hell, and we ate off paper plates, and I told them …
A feed: A meal.
Barbie: I think this one should be easy.
He said, Which just goes to show that only getting to NCEA Level 2 isn’t going to stop you making waves in life, right. You can still eat steak, talk to wizards, and take down the government.
NCEA Level 2: This is the qualification you get in your second-to-last year of high school (typically at age 16, which is the age at which you can leave school), and has historically been the minimum you need for university entrance.
This is fairly easy to infer anyway, but John et al. being young enough to have done NCEA (it was introduced in the early 2000s) and old enough to have gone to Parachute to underage drink tells you pretty soundly that they’re millennials.
John 3:20
He said, So I went to the governments that were still sympathetic, sort of, like ours, and all the Trans-Pacifics, and we threw down our evidence.
Probably referring to the TPP.
Not only that, they looked at us and were like, We were going to put you fellas in jail, weren’t we?
Pronounce this as “fullas”, with the U as in “up”.
John 9:22
A bunch of the guys were her old coworkers—guys she’d gone through training with in Porirua, beer buddies.
Porirua: A small city near Wellington.
John 1:20
He said, So here’s us, planning to meet these agents in neutral territory, across the ditch, over in the huddle where the Territory refugees were.
The ditch: The Tasman Sea.
But they weren’t only aggro about G—, they were aggro that a nuke might go off and kill a couple million people. I was like, Guys, it’s fine, they’re Australian.
There’s a rivalry.
John 5:4
Like those old power-washing ads. Spray and walk away, right?
A very recognisable series of ads.
(End of post! If you have learned anything, I’ll be stoked.)
#this is what i was put on earth for#nona the ninth#nona the ninth spoilers#the locked tomb#locked tomb originals
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Britain’s Conservative government has issued notices to the media to suppress reports of the operations of the Special Air Service (SAS) in Gaza.
On Saturday, the Socialist Worker, newspaper of the Socialist Workers Party, revealed it had been sent a “D Notice” Saturday morning from the Defence and Security Media Advisory (DSMA) Committee requesting it not publish information relating to the operations of the SAS.
D Notices are used by the British state to veto the publication of news damaging to its interests. The slavish collusion of the mainstream media ensures that such notices function as gag orders. A high level branch of the state, the DSMA’s chair is Paul Wyatt, Director General Security Policy at the Ministry of Defence. Other committee members include the Deputy National Security Adviser, Cabinet Office; Director National Security at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office; Director National Security at the Home Office; and the Director National Security at the Ministry of Defence.
An article by Socialist Worker editor Charlie Kimber notes, “Specifically this ‘D notice’ concerned British special forces operating in the Middle East.” The e-mail to the media was from the DSMA secretary, Brigadier Geoffrey Dodds, he added.
Dodds states, “Reports have started to appear in some publications claiming that UK Special Forces have deployed to sensitive areas of the Middle East and then linking that deployment to hostage rescue/evacuation operations.
“May I take this opportunity to remind editors that publication of such information contravenes the DSMA notice code. I therefore advise that claims of such deployments should not be published nor broadcast without first seeking Defence and Security Media advice”.
He added, “This Notice aims to prevent the inadvertent disclosure of classified information about Special Forces and other MOD units engaged in security, intelligence and counter-terrorist operations, including their methods, techniques and activities.”
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