Map Thread XIX
- Thread starter water123
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Somehow I don't think that blood-and-soil nationalism is the solution to this! Reconcilliation policies and the formation of a unified Iraqi national identity that isn't based on religion are far better than creating two sectarian states that are almost certainly going to be at each others' throats from day one. I honestly think it's kind of gross that you seem to think that ethnoreligious violence and mass population transfers are an inevitability.
I understand that you did humanitarian work there, but consider! As an American or Brit or otherwise Westerner acting as an agent of a foreign government, you are not going to be encountering the most enlightened and tolerant members of Iraqi society. It's very easy when you're poor to blame your misfortunes on the [Shi'as/Sunnis] and call it a day, rather than taking the time and effort (which, due to living in poverty, you often cannot afford to expend) to grasp the higher causes of the bad things that have happened to you.
It's the same reason why nationalist populism is so appealing to many poor folks in the West: it's just easier to scapegoat people who are different than to work together as a society to fix these large-scale problems. That doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't fix those problems, though, not by a longshot. A unified, harmonious Iraq is both possible and far better a solution than the ethnoreligious gerrymandering you seem to be in favor of.
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Here's my first ever attempt at using Inkscape to make a map, rather than the classic MS Paint. It is a closeup on my home province in my TL A Bohemian Winter, which is currently in the planning stages of development. One of the biggest PoDs is that Henry IV of France avoids his assassination in 1610, living until 1623. This is a map of the Kingdom of Acadia in 2018, 400 years after Henry IV officially opened the then colony to Huguenot settlement.
Any questions or comments on the map or TL are welcome!
Any questions or comments on the map or TL are welcome!
Planet Nine confirmed to exist, and another planet beyond it (the “Mars-size body,” which are actively being theorized to exist alongside those slightly larger)? Yep. You got me. I’m a sucker for settings based on wishful thinking.
so is this incomplete? because I'm wondering if you're going to do the description for the rest of the political balls seen on the spectrum, and I'm guessing there is going to be a write-up?
Love it-especially the layout of the map. India having a US-y colour kinda bugs me though. I'd have gone with a purplish-blue.
Excellent map with a realistic portrayal of global geopolitics (and orbital mechanics!)
One thing that’s a bit unclear to me: what specifically is China’s challenge to the status quo? If it is dominating the South China Sea and Indonesia is in its corner, it has secured the Malacca and the sea lanes to the Middle East and Africa, and fulfilled its main geopolitical imperative (though India might cause some trouble.)
The 'dudes with a flamethrower' could win precisely because they were a small group (giving them an advantage in terms of being able to tell who is where, if anyone has gone missing, being able to be around and monitor each other, etc...) in a lifeless, empty, isolated environment. In, say, the jungles of the Amazon then The Thing could be literally every single animal or even potentially the plants - and the only people you could even potentially trust to be uninfected are the people immediately around you (good luck coordinating an army literally incapable of working together out of fear of the others being infected).I don't think so, as I said to Ameck16, the war is winnable especially if the big boys bring out some WMDs and as long as the army keeps its distance from the melee only creatures, I mean the Thing was beaten in the movie, and that was by some dudes with a flamethrower, so imagine what a well-equipped army could do
Then again, as B_Munro said, the 'Harpies' seem weaker than The Thing.
Oh yeah, because dividing the Raj into India and Pakistan sure created a whole lot of peace.
Could you imagine what would be happening if Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh were all still united today? That's a recipe for disaster, destruction, full-on civil war, and probably some ethnic cleansing and genocide. A lot less peaceful than border skirmishes, minor terrorism, disputes over Kashmir, and painting the Pakistani flag on some of India's sacred cows.
(Yes, Pakistanis in Kashmir actually did this. Personally, I think the world would be a much better place if instead of terrorism we just did things like this more often than, ya know, killing people.)
Alex Richards
Donor
Eh Iraq's a lot less artificial than people usually talk about- the division between 'Mesopotamia' and 'Syria' in terms of economics, social links, administration and the like goes back really far.
India's got almost as many Muslims living in it than there are in Pakistan- it was actually more until relatively recently. So this is very much a 'depends on circumstances' thing IMO.
So India can handle 780 or so languages spoken in its borders; more ethnic groups and tribal identities than even that; and, besides the Hindu majority, significant communities of Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains; but adding more Muslims to the mix will inevitably result in ethnoreligious civil war? I'm not sure I'm picking up what you're putting down, my dude.
Given that India, the 3rd (2nd until relatively recently) most Muslim-populated country in the world, has managed to avoid any large scale ethno-religious oppression/genocides even with Pakistan's existence there to inflame Islamophobia? I'm gonna have to disagree with you.
Anyway, we should probably stop this discussion before we invoke the wrath of a mod.
Dementor
Banned
This is quite different from the map in the timeline. Is this is a diversion within the timeline or a different interpretation?
Arkocento
Donor
The Number of Terrorist acts, that Im imagining being replaced by pranks is radically approaching infinity.
Example
The Gunpowder Plot is actually just a large stash of fireworks that, when they explode, create a lovely message in the sky that says:
King James is a wanker
Finished Season 3 of Stranger Things last night, and couldn't resist:
Project Montauk
From its establishment in 1940 to its closure in 1975, the Montauk Research Facility, located at the tip of Long Island, was purportedly a meteorological station operated by the Combined Syndicates Air Force: the declassification of the Parsons Papers in 1995, however, has shed some more light on possibly the strangest element of the Kalterkrieg.
Jack Parsons, an experimental physicist, a practising Occultist who carried on a correspondence with Aleister Crowley, and a committed Syndicalist, defected from the Pacific States to the CSA in 1939. Finding employment with the CSA’s military research division, he had convinced the General Directorate by 1940 to provide funding for a series of research projects evaluating the applicability of remote viewing, telekinesis, and ESP in the service of World Syndicalism. By the mid 1940s, this project had expanded into an attempt to make contact with what Parsons referred to as the “outer world”, a proposed separate reality through which virtually instantaneous travel would be possible to any other point on Earth: it was intended to use heat diffusion between the two realities to provide an infinite supply of energy. As the project progressed, however, Parsons became increasingly concerned about the potential impact of establishing a conduit into the “outer world”, circulating papers which suggested that the creation of a point of contact could potentially lead to a radical restructuring of reality radiating out from Montauk at phenomenal speeds – in the ninety seconds following the successful conclusion of the experiment, he anticipated that much of New England and significant portions of Quebec and the New York and Atlantic Syndicates would have been subject to this restructuring.
By 1950, a failure to produce verifiable results of any kind had doomed the initial incarnation of the Montauk Research Facility. Parsons died, ostensibly in a lab accident, in 1952: his successor, B. F. Skinner, shifted the focus of the Facility towards psychological behavioural analysis and modification in the hopes of finding a sustainable “cure” for political dissidents.
Project Montauk
From its establishment in 1940 to its closure in 1975, the Montauk Research Facility, located at the tip of Long Island, was purportedly a meteorological station operated by the Combined Syndicates Air Force: the declassification of the Parsons Papers in 1995, however, has shed some more light on possibly the strangest element of the Kalterkrieg.
Jack Parsons, an experimental physicist, a practising Occultist who carried on a correspondence with Aleister Crowley, and a committed Syndicalist, defected from the Pacific States to the CSA in 1939. Finding employment with the CSA’s military research division, he had convinced the General Directorate by 1940 to provide funding for a series of research projects evaluating the applicability of remote viewing, telekinesis, and ESP in the service of World Syndicalism. By the mid 1940s, this project had expanded into an attempt to make contact with what Parsons referred to as the “outer world”, a proposed separate reality through which virtually instantaneous travel would be possible to any other point on Earth: it was intended to use heat diffusion between the two realities to provide an infinite supply of energy. As the project progressed, however, Parsons became increasingly concerned about the potential impact of establishing a conduit into the “outer world”, circulating papers which suggested that the creation of a point of contact could potentially lead to a radical restructuring of reality radiating out from Montauk at phenomenal speeds – in the ninety seconds following the successful conclusion of the experiment, he anticipated that much of New England and significant portions of Quebec and the New York and Atlantic Syndicates would have been subject to this restructuring.
By 1950, a failure to produce verifiable results of any kind had doomed the initial incarnation of the Montauk Research Facility. Parsons died, ostensibly in a lab accident, in 1952: his successor, B. F. Skinner, shifted the focus of the Facility towards psychological behavioural analysis and modification in the hopes of finding a sustainable “cure” for political dissidents.
In contrast to Partition, which was a destructive disaster which contained ethnic cleansing and genocide in it?
Furthermore, I should also the most destructive act in the history of the subcontinent since independence was the Bangladesh Genocide - a genocide by Muslims to other Muslims. You are severely overestimating the Hindu-Muslim rivalry. And much of the reason the Hindu-Muslim rivalry is so massive is because many people on both sides of the border can name a relative who was killed in Partition, or evicted from their home during Partition, or both. Without Partition, this reason to hate would not exist.
this is very cool, but i dont see information lag being that big of a deal, its only 5 years tops to get news signals from other settlements. also how is going fast only economical for short distances? surely the longer the journey is the more economical it os to go fast. just got to accelerate up to speed and decelerate back to a stop. very little resistance in space, so you dont need to be contastly burning to keep your velocity. even small comunities would ballon out very quickly into the billions, at least compared to millennia, centauri should be packed and everyone should know it because they are watching centauri tv dramas out in deep space. 400 year voyage i can see being mighty strenuous, but an 80 year voyage i can see being successful. there is still the worry of mission drift i guess, and maybe kids born in deep space wont really care for orbital living, even if itsfresh in family memory.
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They were gonna be at each other's throats anyways, the whole point of that map was that it was balkanized
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