We Have Mentioned This Event Before
It remains obscure to 99% of the globe and the Ruffians don't like to be reminded about it because they lost, which they took very badly, as they do any defeat. The official Ruffian history states that they lost the war because of boring beetles affecting the pistachio harvest in the Sanjak of Novi Pazar. Also, the Japanese were using atom bombs and gamma-ray lasers and kamikaze exploding dolphins, and they cheated <Cont. Page 960 of 'Government Excuses'). Art!
Someone's getting a spanking and it's not the Nipponese
That above shows the Ruffian battlefleet getting demolished at the Battle of Tsushima, by Japanese ships that were all built on the Clyde, which must have irked the Ruffians immensely at the time and definitely still does today.
On land, the war was fought over occupied Chinese territory, which was very cheeky of both parties, and it presaged a lot of the military equipment used later in the Balkans and the First Unpleasantness. Liberal use was made of machine guns, barbed wire, siege howitzers, field howitzers, bolt-action magazine rifles, trenches and reinforced concrete bunkers. Art!
The Japanese won every battle, but their casualty lists were enormous and by the time they had achieved a strategic victory over the Tsar's forces, they had absolutely no reserves left. Not only that, they as a nation were on the brink of bankruptcy. Thus they had to accept the Treaty of Portsmouth, which was exceptionally lenient to the Ruffians.
Curiously enough, both peoples felt they had lost and been swindled out of true victory, which led to the 1905 Revolution in Ruffia and a revolt, if not a revolution, in Japan. The Japanese government fell after violent riots in Tokyo and other major cities. Art!
Don't make the mistake of thinking that the Japanese were the good guys here, they were merely the slightly lesser of two evils. They had, after all, been waging war against China since 1894. Winning against Ruffia in 1905 emboldened them in effectively conquering Korea, without any battles as they had long been present in the country and infiltrated it's ruling institutions. Those they disapproved of were banned. Korean political parties? Banned. Korean language? Banned. Korean literature? Banned. Anything the Japs didn't like in the slightest was hit with the ban hammer. Art!
As an example, they destroyed the Korean agricultural sector by requiring native farmers to complete rafts of complicated paperwork in order to work their land, prove possession of or acquire more land. Anyone slack in doing this had their lands instantly confiscated, which were then acquired by the Japanese 'Oriental Development Company', who then sold them at very low prices to immigrant Japanese farmers. Forty percent of all Korean agricultural land was stolen in this way, leading to immense hardship for the farmers and peasants affected. Art!
Such ruthless and brutal oppression is exactly how the Japanese behaved in China, as described in 'Wild Swans'; grinding native culture into the dust and insisting on the awesome supremacy of Japan, Japanese culture and their Emperor. Not so very different from the Nazis and their Eastern and Middle European satrapies, in fact.
This yoke lay on the Koreans for 40 years, from that enabling victory over the Ruffians until the South Canadians atom-bombed the Japs into surrender and suddenly - the Japanese were gone. This, dear reader, is why the Koreans might tolerate the Japanese government, but they aren't fond of it. If you want to immediately start a fight in Korea, start going on about 'comfort women' and that the Nipponese were perfectly entitled to arrange same, but take the precaution of carrying a plastic bag to take your teeth home in. Art!
That's the Japanese ideographic Kanji language, which has about 48,000 obsolescent characters that are now only found in historic texts. To be literate in Kanji means being adept with 2,000 characters, or rather less than the Chinese ideographic alphabet.
However, still a far cry from the Korean Hangul alphabet of 24 letters, which they refined down from an original 28. Now whose language is superior*?
"The War Illustrated Edition 204 13th April 1945"
These pictures might not be the debut of my new digital camera, but if there's a line of data along the bottom (or the side), that's the device they were taken with. Art!
"Italians join us in cracking their late ally" states the blurb, although from what I can tell, only those soldiery upon the tank at lower starboard are Italian. It's difficult to tell the difference as the Italians serving in the 8th Army in Italy used British battledress and British weapons. Here you see the ancient and reliable method of transporting supplies in mountains at top port - artillery shells brought up by mule. To starboard are Royal Signallers busy operating their arcane kit and in the middle the blurb claims that these Shermans were 'on reconnaissance' which Conrad rather doubts, as they had the smaller and nippier M5 Stuart to carry out that role. At lower port you have that hammer of the henemy, a 5.5' gun, delivering one hundred pounds of good news to the Teutons. Art!
Once again, this map is weeks out of date so it gives away nothing new. By the time of publication, the Allies were already across the Rhine. You can see the hatched area of the Saar now behind Allied lines, which is bad news for the Teutons as this was one of their prime industrial concentrations. The fact that the line butts up against the Ruhr, their other prime industrial concentration, is also bad news for Herr Schickelgruber.
You What? Redux
For some reason the browser keeps updating with mystifying items that Conrad does not understand or appreciate. I posted one of these about Obsidian, and if they refuse to apostrophise it I shall too. Art!
From what my aging intellect can grasp here, 'Steam' is a database of online games that one can pay to play, and there the laws of reality and common sense break down. Note, once again, that they don't apostrophise anything here. The youth of today! Why, I remember when 'Manic Miner' was o
And Another Redux
This one concerns the Orange Land Whale's 'TMTG' stock, which 'Forbes' accurately described as more recently illustrating DJ Tango's political fortunes, rather than his DJT stock value. Now the election, inauguration and honeymoon period are over, they feel the value might more closely reflect the actual price. Art!
Well, that's not good for Donold. What's even more concerning for him is that in less than a week his TMTG needs to publish it's annual report, which ought to include things like cash flow, revenue, earnings, anticipated strategies, predictions and other forward-looking information. However - that word finally! - there has been a paucity of any such information over the past years Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4, so eyes will be focussed sharply on what comes out of Pumpkinhead's appointees by the beginning of March. Art!
Those who bought his stock in anticipation of it's value soaring into the stratosphere have been cruelly disappointed. As of this weekend it's lost $40 per share, so some people have taken a bath on this. Tee hee!
Finally -
I'm glad I walked down to Lesser Sodom earlier before the storm arrived, it's miserable out there. Definitely weather for hearty filling stew, which is cooking in the oven as I type, an adaptation from the diabetic cookbook. Anchovies? No fear! Who wants to eat fish-flavoured salt?
Chin chin!
* English, of course, as if you need to even ask.
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