Explanation: Before the Legions became a professional and voluntary military force, it was the norm for Roman citizens of the Early and Mid-Republic to teach their sons the MANLY ART OF WAR, so that when they came of age and the yearly conscriptions came about, they would be ready to not shame the family name assembling on the Field of Mars!
Also, I found a Chinese Romaboo group on Facebook and I unironically adore them. They're better Romaboos than I am.
No doubt that the area they were fighting in was once a nice place. Unfortunately, much of the Western Front on WW1 was like that - when it wasn't wonderful fields being ruined, it was quiet villages and towns. No one left but the rats and the troops - and the rats didn't have as much use for furniture.
The new director of Amnesty International in the Americas has criticized the use of the military and heavy-handed measures to combat crime in the region: ‘The Armed Forces are not trained to ensure public safety’...
Article is very interesting and talks about the mix of goals in regards to the protests, and how speech negatively and positively helps accomplish those goals.
The protesters who seized Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall on Tuesday swiftly unfurled a banner down the front of the storied building with just one word: intifada.
It’s hard to deny that there have been antisemitic incidents on the campus, including the targeting of students, probably Jewish, called “Nazi bitches” and told to “go back to Poland”.
The day before the police shut down the protests, pro-Palestinian students led marches around the heart of the campus chanting “Brick by brick, wall by wall, Israel will fall” and “We don’t want no two state, we will take all of it”. Others led with a variation on the popular but contentious “river to the sea” slogan: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab.” One protester cried: “Fuck Israel, Israel’s a bitch.”
The university suspended one of the protest leaders, Khymani James, after video emerged of him saying in January that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” and “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists”.
James also said that Zionists, white supremacists and Nazis “are all the same people” because their existence is “antithetical to peace”.
“I feel very comfortable, very comfortable, calling for those people to die,” he said.
Two slogans in particular draw accusations that they amount to calls for violence against Jews and therefore make Jewish students feel threatened by those who chant them.
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is frequently denounced as a call to eradicate Israel and even its Jewish population. The demand for an intifada is widely seen as invoking the Palestinian suicide bombing campaign against Israel of the early 2000s.
Some Palestinian activists say that one is a call for equal rights for Palestinians in a single state and the other for a popular uprising to achieve that. They note that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, used a similar phrase to “the river to the sea” in January when he said that his country “must have security control over the entire territory west of the Jordan River”.
Even so, Norman Finkelstein, the Jewish American political scientist who is a strong critic of Israel, advised the protesters to reconsider the use of slogans that can be used against them. Finkelstein went to Columbia to praise the students for raising public consciousness about the Palestinian cause but he advised them “to adjust to the new political reality that there are large numbers of people, probably a majority, who are potentially receptive to your message”.
“One has to exercise at a moment like this, if for no other reason than for the people of Gaza, one has to exercise maximum responsibility. Maximum responsibility to get out of one’s navel, to crawl out of one’s ego, and to always keep in mind one particular question: what are we trying to accomplish at this particular moment?” he said.
Once Finkelstein has finished speaking, a protester took the microphone and led a chant of “from the river to the sea”.
Egyptian and US mediators have reported signs of compromise in recent days and Egyptian state news channel Al-Qahera said on Saturday that a consensus had been reached in the indirect talks over many of the disputed points but gave no further details. However, many analysts remain pessimistic after five months of stop-start...
For an idea of the kind of power wound up in these engines...
"And any one may learn the force of the engines by what happened this very night; for as one of those that stood round about Josephus was near the wall, his head was carried away by such a stone, and his skull was flung as far as three furlongs (600 meters). In the day time also, a woman with child had her belly so violently struck, as she was just come out of her house, that the infant was carried to the distance of half a furlong (100 meters), so great was the force of that engine. " - Flavius Josephus
"In the course of these contests a builder on our side, whose name I do not recall, happened to be standing behind a scorpion, when a stone which one of the gunners had fitted insecurely to the sling was hurled backward. The unfortunate man was thrown on his back with his breast crushed, and killed; and his limbs were so torn asunder that not even parts of his whole body could be identified." - Ammianus Marcellinus
Watercolor of 17th century AD Moscow
Kapilikaya Rock Tomb, modern Turkiye
Celtic-style wooden shields found in Southern Denmark, dated 4th century BCE
A GOOD CITIZEN TRAINS THE CHILDREN YOUNG
British soldiers on the Western Front cooking food in a helmet, WW1, 1917
Medieval excuses to cancel a date
Battle of Lincoln, England, 1217
Ana Piquer, human rights activist: ‘The militarization promoted by the government of Mexico has not improved security’ (english.elpais.com)
The new director of Amnesty International in the Americas has criticized the use of the military and heavy-handed measures to combat crime in the region: ‘The Armed Forces are not trained to ensure public safety’...
How pervasive is antisemitism on US campuses? A look at the language of the protests (www.theguardian.com)
Article is very interesting and talks about the mix of goals in regards to the protests, and how speech negatively and positively helps accomplish those goals.
Hopes of Gaza ceasefire rise as Hamas delegation arrives in Cairo (www.theguardian.com)
Egyptian and US mediators have reported signs of compromise in recent days and Egyptian state news channel Al-Qahera said on Saturday that a consensus had been reached in the indirect talks over many of the disputed points but gave no further details. However, many analysts remain pessimistic after five months of stop-start...
Roman Ballista and Scorpio artillery pieces during a siege
Vespasianus Titus Tunnel, a Roman-era waterway for diverting floodwaters, modern-day Turkiye
Bronze votive figurine of an archer, Sardinia, 10th-9th century BCE
Must be from the South
Experimental Soviet jeep with a mounted anti-tank gun for airdrop with paratroopers, WW2, 1943 or 1944?
New adventuring party just dropped
US Jeep as size comparison to the shell of a Nazi 800mm railway gun, WW2, 1945