Advanced Warfare Quotes

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Marriage, [...], the most advanced form of warfare in the modern world.
Malcolm Bradbury (The History Man)
The host thus forming a single united body, is it impossible either for the brave to advance alone, or for the cowardly to retreat alone
Sun Tzu (The Art of War)
No matter how complex or advanced magical warfare grew, rocks moving at high speed would always be relevant.
John Bierce (The Siege of Skyhold (Mage Errant, #5))
The most effective and enduring form of warfare against liberation is the implanting of material and intellectual needs that perpetuate obsolete forms of the struggle for existence.
Herbert Marcuse (One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society)
(I) went to see the noble knights of Holy Anocracy. By the time they assembled, the inn finished assimilating the new gaming consoles. I waved my hand and three huge flat screen opened in the stone walls of the vampire quarters. Wall spat out sets of controllers. “Greetings,” I said. “House Krah, House Sabla and House Vorga, may I present Call of Duty.” The three screens ignited simultaneously, playing the opening of the Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Soldiers in high tech armor shot at target, flew across the screen from bomb impacts, and walked dramatically in slow motion. Vehicles roared, Marines roared louder, and Kevin Spacey informed us that politicians didn’t know how to solve problems but he did. The vampires stared at the screens. “This is a game of cooperative action,” I said, “Where a small elite force can triumph against overwhelming odds.” At the word elite, they perked up like wild dogs who heard a rabbit cry. “The game will teach you how to play it. May the best House triumph over their opponents.
Ilona Andrews (Sweep in Peace (Innkeeper Chronicles, #2))
You may have heard the expression “greater levels, greater devils.” This typically implies that when you are promoted spiritually, you should expect more intense warfare in your life. Yet what we sometimes fail to realize is that when God promotes us, He also protects us.
Kris Vallotton (School of the Prophets: Advanced Training for Prophetic Ministry)
Arrested spiritual development, either in the initial or the more advanced stages, is always an exposed position. Spiritual immaturity always leaves us vulnerable to Satan’s attacks.
E.M. Bounds (Guide to Spiritual Warfare)
An up-front enemy is rare now and is actually a blessing. People hardly ever attack you openly anymore, showing their intentions, their desire to destroy you; instead they are political and indirect. Although the world is more competitive than ever, outward aggression is discouraged, so people have learned to go underground, to attack unpredictably and craftily. Many use friendship as a way to mask aggressive desires: they come close to you to do more harm. (A friend knows best how to hurt you.) Or, without actually being friends, they offer assistance and alliance: they may seem supportive, but in the end they’re advancing their own interests at your expense. Then there are those who master moral warfare, playing the victim, making you feel guilty for something unspecified you’ve done. The battlefield is full of these warriors, slippery, evasive, and clever.
Robert Greene (The 33 Strategies Of War (The Modern Machiavellian Robert Greene Book 1))
As a whole the world is more primitive today than it was fifty years ago. Certain backward areas have advanced, and various devices, always in some way connected with warfare and police espionage, have been developed, but experiment and invention have largely stopped, and the ravages of the atomic war of the Nineteen-fifties have never been fully repaired.
George Orwell (Animal Farm and 1984)
Remember all missional advancement always engages missional resistance.
Gary Rohrmayer
So before and during the war, the Bush administration had to build up an image in people's minds of Iraq as a monstrous military superpower, in order to mobilize enough popular hysteria so that people here would go along with their policies. And again, the media did their job 100 percent. So I don't know how well you remember what was going on around the country back then, but people were literally quaking in their boots about the extraordinary might of Iraq―it was a superpower with artillery we'd never dreamt of, all this kind of stuff.93 I mean, this was a defenseless Third World country that was so weak it had been unable to defeat post-revolutionary Iran in eight years of warfare [from 1980 to '88]―and that was with the support of the United States, the Soviet Union, all of Europe, the Arab oil countries: not an inconsiderable segment of world power. Yet with all those allies, Iraq had been unable to defeat post-revolutionary Iran, which had killed off its own officers' corps and barely had an army left: all of a sudden this was the superpower that was going to conquer the world? You really had to be a deeply brainwashed Western intellectual even to look at this image―a defenseless Third World country threatening the two most advanced military forces in the world, the United States and Britain―and not completely collapse in ridicule. But as you recall, that's what all of them were saying―and people here really believed it.
Noam Chomsky (Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky)
Rather, I have long contended that Islam is unique among the major world religions in having a developed doctrine, theology, and legal system mandating warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers. There is no orthodox sect or school of Islam that teaches that Muslims must coexist peacefully as equals with non-Muslims on an indefinite basis. I use the term “radical Islam” merely to distinguish those Muslims who are actively working to advance this subjugation from the many millions who are not, as well as to emphasize that the stealth jihad program is truly radical: it aims at nothing less than the transformation of American society and the imposition of Islamic law here, subjugating women and non-Muslims to the status of legal inferiors.
Robert Spencer (Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam Is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs)
It’s sometimes argued that there’s no real progress; that a civilization that kills multitudes in mass warfare, that pollutes the land and oceans with ever larger quantities of debris, that destroys the dignity of individuals by subjecting them to a forced mechanized existence can hardly be called an advance over the simpler hunting and gathering and agricultural existence of prehistoric times. But this argument, though romantically appealing, doesn’t hold up. The primitive tribes permitted far less individual freedom than does modern society. Ancient wars were committed with far less moral justification than modern ones. A technology that produces debris can find, and is finding, ways of disposing of it without ecological upset. And the schoolbook pictures of primitive man sometimes omit some of the detractions of his primitive life—the pain, the disease, famine, the hard labor needed just to stay alive. From that agony of bare existence to modern life can be soberly described only as upward progress, and the sole agent for this progress is quite clearly reason itself.
Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)
Not only are your visitors technologically advanced, they have greater social cohesion, or they would not have been able to reach your shores. They are coming into a world where tribal warfare is dominant, where one human being cannot recognize another, where everyone claims different allegiances and authorities. They are coming into a world where people are ruining their environment at a frightening pace. They are coming into a world where people are fearful, superstitious and self-indulgent and where there is great tragedy, suffering and human abuse. How would this world look to you if you were a visitor coming here for the first time? Even with your human viewpoint, you can gain a perspective of how you must look to those who are visiting. Will they be compassionate towards you? Will they attempt to help you? Will they attempt to avoid you? Will they want to have a relationship with you? Can they trust you? Can you be relied upon? Are you consistent enough in order to establish relations? These are all meaningful questions for you to ask in order to gain a Greater Community perspective, even from a human point of view. Seeing yourself from a Greater Community perspective will show you what you must accomplish and what your great disabilities are at this time. This will give you a new understanding of yourself, one that is very fair and honest.
Marshall Vian Summers (Greater Community Spirituality: A New Revelation)
Here he honed his talent for guerrilla warfare, the principles of which he condensed to a sixteen-syllable jingle for his illiterate peasant troops: Di jin, wo tui; di zhu, wo rao; Di pi, wo da; Di tui, wo zhui (when the enemy advances, retreat; when the enemy rests, harass; when the enemy grows tired, attack; when the enemy retreats, pursue).
Julia Lovell (Maoism: A Global History)
One could argue that these Japanese atrocities carried out were typical of the chaos and brutality that often accompany warfare; but this cannot be said for Unit 731. Much like their counterparts in Nazi Germany did in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, the Japanese experimented on humans like lab rats, all in the name of medical and military advancement.
Derek Pua (Unit 731: The Forgotten Asian Auschwitz)
The path of scientific discovery in U.S. communication research was not decided in advance by the government or anyone else, of course. Although government funding did not determine what could be said by social scientists, it did play a major role in determining who would do the "authoritative" talking about communication and an indirect role in determining who would enjoy access to the academic media necessary to be heard by others in the field.
Christopher Simpson (Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare, 1945-1960)
The responsibility of setting an army in motion must devolve on the general alone; if advance and retreat are controlled from the Palace, brilliant results will hardly be achieved. Hence the god-like ruler and the enlightened monarch are content to play a humble part in furthering their country's cause [lit., kneel down to push the chariot wheel]." This means that "in matters lying outside the zenana, the decision of the military commander must be absolute." Chang Yu also quote the saying: "Decrees from the Son of Heaven do not penetrate the walls of a camp."]
Sun Tzu (SUN TZU THE ART OF WAR FULL TEXT ( ILLUSTRATED ): 2020 Edition Classic Book Of Military Strategy And Thought Based On Chinese Warfare)
  It will be necessary for you to intentionally set aside time each day to go before the Lord for revelation and insight as well as to stay in alignment with the heart of God. Know in advance that there will be spiritual warfare, but that as you stay in your covenant position you will grow in your faith and learn how to overcome and push back the resistance of the enemy.   This will be a rewarding and challenging spiritual experience as you determine to plow up the ground of your heart, advancing in deeper levels of surrender and trust with understanding. You will then be able to encourage others in their faith and to humbly lead others in discussion.
John Mulinde (The Wake-Up Call)
Regional powers could redress the overall military balance by a strategy geared to prolonging any war beyond the willingness of the “advanced” country’s public to sustain it—as France experienced in Algeria and Vietnam; the United States in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan; and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Asymmetric warfare operated in the interstices of traditional doctrines of linear operations against an enemy’s territory. Guerrilla forces, which defend no territory, could concentrate on inflicting casualties and eroding the public’s political will to continue the conflict. In this sense, technological supremacy turned into geopolitical impotence.
Henry Kissinger (World Order)
Artificial Intelligence, deep learning, natural language processing, computer vision, and other related characteristics: super-computing, eventually quantum-computing, and nano and bio technologies; advanced big-data analytics; and other emerging technologies are beginning to offer an entirely new way of war, and at command speeds hitherto unimaginable. The revolution in sensor and command and control technologies is matched and enabled by developments in long-range, hypersonic “intelligent” weaponry and new swarms of killing machines allied to a range of directed-energy weapons. Such a potentially revolutionary change in the character and conduct of war must necessarily impose entirely new ways of defense.
David H. Petraeus (Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine)
Men, you are in a war. You are in a spiritual conflict. You are in a battle of epic proportions. Others have lined up to face you, and their only goal is to keep you from advancing God’s kingdom down the field of life. Because of them, the passes thrown to you can’t always be within your grasp. In fact, often because of the nature of the battle, they are thrown high. Yet you have been given all that you need to reach up into heaven and bring victory down to earth. God never said it would be easy. He never said there wouldn’t be missed passes along the way. But what He did say is that the victory is yours if you will reach up and grab it. And later finish this war on a knee. Prayer. It is a kingdom man’s primary weapon of warfare. With it, you will touch heaven and change earth.
Tony Evans (Kingdom Man: Every Man's Destiny, Every Woman's Dream)
Our greater beastliness lies not in a penchant for brute force,but in our greater corruption, nihilism, and decadence; in our servitude to the overwhelming systems we create; in the sociopathic rationalism we adopt to master natural forces and to compete with the machines we build;and in the scientistic idolatry that co-opts the religious impulse. Of course the ancients resorted more to brute force: they lacked the infrastructure to punish their enemies and victims in a safer, more sophisticated fashion, with advanced legal regimes and mass-produced, maximum security prisons; with engineered propaganda for social conditioning; and with economic, cyber, and drone warfare. We channel our aggression with more sophisticated instruments, but the use of those instruments doesn’t ennoble us.
Benjamin Cain (Rants Within The Undead God (First Installment))
The battle of Borodino – the bloodiest single day in the history of warfare until the first battle of the Marne over a century later – was fought on Monday, September 7, 1812.* ‘The emperor slept very little,’ recalled Rapp, who kept waking him up with reports from the advance posts that made it clear that the Russians hadn’t escaped in the night yet again. The Emperor drank some punch when he rose at 3.a.m., telling Rapp: ‘Fortune is a liberal mistress; I have often said so, and now begin to experience it.’93 He added that the army knew it could only find provisions in Moscow. ‘This poor army is much reduced,’ he said, ‘but what remains of it is good; my Guard besides is untouched.’94 He later parted his tent curtains, walked past the two guards outside and said, ‘It’s a little cold but here comes a nice sun; it’s the sun of Austerlitz.
Andrew Roberts (Napoleon: A Life)
As a civilization progresses, it goes through wars, pandemics, catastrophes. those that survive grow more astute, more perceptive, more advanced. Diseases are conquered, infirmity eliminated. Life spans increase. Suffering becomes largely a memory. "Meanwhile, their explorers and historians find evidence of past cultures, and cultures before that. At first it is exciting. But all they keep finding are ruins. And slowly, either through science or history, every advanced civilizations becomes aware of a disturbing possibility -- that their futures may end in ruin too. "The civilization then rushes to probe other stars, even other galaxies; it increases its research, attempting to manipulate space, time, in the hope that somewhere, someone might have found an escape, a loophole. "But eventually, the find, and solve, the mathematical equation that explains the entire universe." "I think our scientists are working on something like that too," Shizuka said. Lan shook her head. "They'll need to find the Grand Unified Theory a few more times before they can even begin to understand what 'everything' is -- sorry, I didn't mean to offend your civilization." Shizuka shrugged. "No offense taken." "Still, should your civilization survive, it will eventually find the same equation. And that will be your death sentence. For in that equation, there will be no forever, no eternity. Nothing. "And this collapse, and all its attendant despair, is the Endplague." Shizuka was puzzled. Space aliens, she could understand. Purple skin? Cute. Two elbows? Weird, but fine. Galactic warfare? Frankly, expected. Being a refugee? Of course. But how could the mere concept of mortality be enough to topple advanced civilizations? People live, people die, and so what?
Ryka Aoki (Light from Uncommon Stars)
One of the advantages of living in a constitutional federal republic is that we have the ability, if not the duty, as citizens to repair or replace those acts of legislation under which we have agreed to live. We must act when it has become evident that said legislation no longer serves us as a people or advances the principles upon which this nation was founded, one of these being “the pursuit of happiness,” which may only be secured through wealth creation. If it burdens the debt obligation of the government, it cannot be creating wealth. If it does not advance the cause of regaining American competitive dominance in the global marketplace, it is not creating wealth. If legislation and regulation were proposed that taught people how to fish instead of providing fish, then the unemployed would find a way to create jobs for each other. Wealth creation is mankind’s natural objective when given the opportunity and the tools.
Ziad K. Abdelnour (Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics)
As it stands, a large number of firms in all advanced economies specialize in warfare as a business, and are thus reliant on perpetuating war to continue being in business. They live off government spending exclusively, and have their entire existence reliant on there being perpetual wars necessitating ever‐larger arms spending. In the United States, whose defense spending is almost equal to that of the rest of the planet combined, these industries have a vested interest in keeping the U.S. government involved in some form of military adventure or other. This, more than any strategic, cultural, ideological, or security operations, explains why the United States has been involved in so many conflicts in parts of the world that cannot possibly have any bearing on the life of the average American. Only with unsound money can these firms grow to such enormous magnitude that they can influence the press, academia, and think tanks to continuously beat the drums of more war.
Saifedean Ammous (The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking)
JANUARY 28 MY KINGDOM WILL BE ESTABLISHED IN YOUR LIFE MY KINGDOM COME, My will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. My kingdom will advance and be established through the preaching and teaching of My Word, and through My miracles of healing. Let the gates of your life and city be opened for the King of glory to come in. I am robed in majesty and armed with strength; indeed, the whole world is established, firm, and secure because My throne was established long ago—from all eternity. Do not be afraid, little one, for it has pleased Me to give you the kingdom. Let men know of My mighty acts and the glorious majesty of My kingdom. Let the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of My Son, Jesus Christ. MATTHEW 4:23; PSALMS 24:7; 103:19–22; 145:12 Prayer Declaration Your kingdom come, Lord, Your will be done. Lord, You reign. You are clothed with majesty and strength. Your throne is established of old. You are from everlasting. I receive the kingdom because it is Your good pleasure to give it to me. Let me speak of the glory of Your kingdom and talk of Your power.
John Eckhardt (Daily Declarations for Spiritual Warfare: Biblical Principles to Defeat the Devil)
belief in the Fish is part of a larger myth that goes back to the legendary times of the Yellow Emperor. In those days the world of mirrors and the world of men were not, as they are now, cut off from each other. They were, besides, quite different; neither beings nor colors nor shapes were the same. Both kingdoms, the specular and the human, lived in harmony; you could come and go through mirrors. One night the mirror people invaded the earth. Their power was great, but at the end of bloody warfare the magic arts of the Yellow Emperor prevailed. He repulsed the invaders, imprisoned them in their mirrors, and forced on them the task of repeating, as though in a kind of dream, all the actions of men. He stripped them of their power and of their forms and reduced them to mere slavish reflections. Nonetheless, a day will come when the magic spell will be shaken off. The first to awaken will be the Fish. Deep in the mirror we will perceive a very faint line and the color of this line will be like no other color. Later on, other shapes will begin to stir. Little by little they will differ from us; little by little they will not imitate us. They will break through the barriers of glass or metal and this time will not be defeated. Side by side with these mirror creatures, the creatures of water will join the battle. In Yunnan they do not speak of the Fish but of the Tiger of the Mirror. Others believe that in advance of the invasion we will hear from the depths of mirrors the clatter of weapons.
Jorge Luis Borges (The Book of Imaginary Beings)
Hitler deployed four panzer groups with a total of seventeen panzer divisions and 3,106 tanks2 for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. In addition, two independent panzer battalions, Pz.Abt. 40 and Pz.Abt. 211, were deployed in Finland with 124 tanks (incl. twenty Pz.III). The 2 and 5.Panzer-Divisionen were refitting in Germany after the Greek Campaign in April 1941 and were in OKH reserve. Otherwise, the only other extant panzer units were the 15.Panzer-Division with Generalleutnant Erwin Rommel in Libya and two panzer brigades in France. No other panzer units were in the process of forming in Germany. Consequently, the OKH was committing virtually all of the available German panzer forces to Barbarossa, with negligible reserves and limited monthly production output to replace losses. In mid-1941, German industry was producing an average of 250 tanks per month, half of which were the Pz.III medium tank. Combat experience in France and Belgium in 1940 indicated that the Germans could expect to lose about one-third of their medium tanks even in a short six-week campaign, which Hitler regarded as acceptable losses. Furthermore, German industry had no tanks beyond the Pz.III or Pz.IV in advance development. The Heereswaffenamt (Army Weapons Office) only authorized Henschel and Porsche to begin working on prototypes for a new heavy tank four weeks before Operation Barbarossa began, and this program had no special priority until after the first encounters with the Soviet T-34 and KV-1 tanks in combat.
Robert Forczyk (Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front, 1941–1942: Schwerpunkt)
From the beginning of the nineteenth century until Hiroshima, strategic thought was dominated by post-Napoleonic, Clausewitzian notions, and these notions have pervaded the thinking of many whose primary interests are far from removed from military matters. In their crude, popularized form, these ideas stress a particular form of war, conflicts between nationalities; they stress the primacy and desirability of offensive warfare in pursuit of decisive results (thus inspiring an aversion to defensive strategies); and they imply a sharp distinction between the state of peace and the state of war. Finally, these ideas accord primacy to the active use of military force, as opposed to the use of images of force, for the purposes of diplomatic coercion. Only since 1945 has the emergence of new technologies of mass destruction invalidated the fundamental assumptions of the Clausewitzian approach to grand strategy. We, like the Romans, face the prospect not of decisive conflict, but of a permanent state of war, albeit limited. We, like the Romans, must actively protect an advanced society against a variety of threats rather than concentrate on destroying the forces of our enemies in battle. Above all, the nature of modern weapons requires that we avoid their use while nevertheless striving to exploit their full diplomatic potential. The revolutionary implications of these fundamental changes are as yet only dimly understood. It is not surprising, therefore, that even contemporary research on Roman military history is still pervaded by an anachronistic strategic outlook.
Edward N. Luttwak (The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire: From the First Century Ce to the Third)
The same effort to conserve force was also evident in war, at the tactical level. The ideal Roman general was not a figure in the heroic style, leading his troops in a reckless charge to victory or death. He would rather advance in a slow and carefully prepared march, building supply roads behind him and fortified camps each night in order to avoid the unpredictable risks of rapid maneuver. He preferred to let the enemy retreat into fortified positions rather than accept the inevitable losses of open warfare, and he would wait to starve out the enemy in a prolonged siege rather than suffer great casualties in taking the fortifications by storm. Overcoming the spirit of a culture still infused with Greek martial ideals (that most reckless of men, Alexander the Great, was actually an object of worship in many Roman households), the great generals of Rome were noted for their extreme caution. It is precisely this aspect of Roman tactics (in addition to the heavy reliance on combat engineering) that explains the relentless quality of Roman armies on the move, as well as their peculiar resilience in adversity: the Romans won their victories slowly, but they were very hard to defeat. Just as the Romans had apparently no need of a Clausewitz to subject their military energies to the discipline of political goals, it seems that they had no need of modern analytical techniques either. Innocent of the science of systems analysis, the Romans nevertheless designed and built large and complex security systems that successfully integrated troop deployments, fixed defenses, road networks, and signaling links in a coherent whole.
Edward N. Luttwak (The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire: From the First Century Ce to the Third)
A fierce battle was taking place at Tobruk, and nothing thrilled him more than spirited warfare and the prospect of military glory. He stayed up until three-thirty, in high spirits, “laughing, chaffing and alternating business with conversation,” wrote Colville. One by one his official guests, including Anthony Eden, gave up and went to bed. Churchill, however, continued to hold forth, his audience reduced to only Colville and Mary’s potential suitor, Eric Duncannon. Mary by this point had retired to the Prison Room, aware that the next day held the potential to change her life forever. — IN BERLIN, MEANWHILE, HITLER and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels joked about a newly published English biography of Churchill that revealed many of his idiosyncrasies, including his penchant for wearing pink silk underwear, working in the bathtub, and drinking throughout the day. “He dictates messages in the bath or in his underpants; a startling image which the Führer finds hugely amusing,” Goebbels wrote in his diary on Saturday. “He sees the English Empire as slowly disintegrating. Not much will be salvageable.” — ON SUNDAY MORNING, a low-grade anxiety colored the Cromwellian reaches of Chequers. Today, it seemed, would be the day Eric Duncannon proposed to Mary, and no one other than Mary was happy about it. Even she, however, was not wholly at ease with the idea. She was eighteen years old and had never had a romantic relationship, let alone been seriously courted. The prospect of betrothal left her feeling emotionally roiled, though it did add a certain piquancy to the day. New guests arrived: Sarah Churchill, the Prof, and Churchill’s twenty-year-old niece, Clarissa Spencer-Churchill—“looking quite beautiful,” Colville noted. She was accompanied by Captain Alan Hillgarth, a raffishly handsome novelist and self-styled adventurer now serving as naval attaché in Madrid, where he ran intelligence operations; some of these were engineered with the help of a lieutenant on his staff, Ian Fleming, who later credited Captain Hillgarth as being one of the inspirations for James Bond. “It was obvious,” Colville wrote, “that Eric was expected to make advances to Mary and that the prospect was viewed with nervous pleasure by Mary, with approbation by Moyra, with dislike by Mrs. C. and with amusement by Clarissa.” Churchill expressed little interest. After lunch, Mary and the others walked into the rose garden, while Colville showed Churchill telegrams about the situation in Iraq. The day was sunny and warm, a nice change from the recent stretch of cold. Soon, to Colville’s mystification, Eric and Clarissa set off on a long walk over the grounds by themselves, leaving Mary behind. “His motives,” Colville wrote, “were either Clarissa’s attraction, which she did not attempt to keep in the background, or else the belief that it was good policy to arouse Mary’s jealousy.” After the walk, and after Clarissa and Captain Hillgarth had left, Eric took a nap, with the apparent intention (as Colville
Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
There is no doubt that 'force multipliers' - squad automatic weapons - have changed the character of warfare once again, just as their predecessors did during the First World War, if perhaps not to quite the same degree. In the immediate future it seems that most armies will be using some form of 5.56mm machine-gun at squad level, be it a box-fed LSW or belt-fed SAW. If there is a cloud on the horizon where modern light machine-guns are concerned it is that they are not powerful enough for long-range work, or for penetrating cover and light armour. Nevertheless, the new generation of light machine-guns will remain in use well into the next century, not least because they are popular with the soldiers who operate them, the machine-gunners. Likewise, there will still be a place for the heavier GPMG, which does have the 'punch' that the LSW lacks. Machine-guns themselves have become lighter, and their operating principles both more secure and more efficient; the ammunition they use has shrunk to a quarter of its original size and become almost 100 percent reliable. The one important thing which has not changed dramatically is the human component; the attitude with which man faces the prospect of death in battle, and how he prepares himself to face that possibility quite deliberately, for it was the original invention of the machine-gun which reformed that. More than any other single 'advance' in weapons technology, the machine-gun allowed an individual (or actually, a small team of men) to dominate a sector of the battlefield. They had an inhuman advantage which simply had to be exploited if they were to be on the winning side, whether their opponents were Zulus, Sioux, or Dervishes, or other industrialized nations to be beaten into last place in the race toward economic supremacy. Whether the machine-gun has been as important, in any sense at all of the word, as it near-contemporary, the internal combustion engine - or even, date one say it, the bicycle or sewing machine - is still to be decided, but there is one clear, irrefutable fact connected with its short history: it has killed tens of millions of men, women and children and blighted the lives of tens of millions more.
Roger Ford (The Grim Reaper: Machine Guns And Machine-gunners In Action)
The history of warfare has always been a struggle between measures and countermeasures, and so it will be with asymmetric warfare. During the 1970s and 1980s, the U.S. offset strategy incorporated modern information technology in its weapons to offset the numerical superiority of the military forces of the Soviet Union. The strategy has come to be known as the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). After the effectiveness of the new RMA weapons was convincingly demonstrated in DESERT STORM, nations potentially hostile to the United States began to seek "offsets to the offset strategy," i.e., countermeasures to America's RMA weapons. Since they are not able to copy U.S. weapons (indeed, even our technically advanced allies have been slow to do so), they are led to the development of asymmetric warfare techniques. More specifically, they seek to develop RMA weapons; their objective is to give the United States pause before it uses its superiority in conventional weapons. The Department of Defense must, therefore, take steps to reduce the vulnerability of its RMA systems to these asymmetric measures.
Ashton B. Carter
This precocious advance may have had a lot to do with the nature of the plain between the Yangtze and Yellow rivers. The territory is well suited both for agriculture, which leads to population growth, and for warfare, the two principal propellants of state formation. A relentless process of consolidation forced tribal systems to yield to states. In 2000 BC, a large number of political entities—traditionally put at 10,000—existed in the Yellow River valley. By the time of the Shang dynasty in 1500 BC, these had dwindled to some 3,000 tribal chiefdoms. The Eastern Zhou dynasty began in 771 BC with 1,800 chiefdoms and ended with 14 entities that were much closer to states. During the ensuing Warring States period, which lasted from around 475 BC to 221 BC, the 7 remaining states were reduced to 1. China
Nicholas Wade (A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History)
Spiritual warfare is not about naming territorial spirits, claiming the ground or binding demons. It is all about the gospel. It is to live a gospel life, to preserve gospel unity and to proclaim gospel truth. It is to do this in the face of a hostile world, a deceptive enemy and our own sinful natures. And it is to pray to a sovereign God for gospel opportunities. Advance comes through godliness, unity, proclamation and prayer. Timothy Chester, on Ephesians 621
Christopher J.H. Wright (The Mission of God's People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission (Biblical Theology for Life))
the Millennium Project, founded after a three-year feasibility study with the United Nations University, Smithsonian Institution, and the Futures Group International, where synthetic biologists affirm that “as computer code is written to create software to augment human capabilities, so too genetic code will be written to create life forms to augment civilization.”[24] Furthermore, as biotech, infotech, nanotech, and cognotech breakthroughs quickly migrate with appropriate synergies to create widespread man-machine adaptation within society, a “global collective intelligence system [hive supermind] will be needed to track all these science and technology advances,” the report goes on to say.
Thomas Horn (Forbidden Gates: How Genetics, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Synthetic Biology, Nanotechnology, and Human Enhancement Herald The Dawn Of TechnoDimensional Spiritual Warfare)
A stable mind and a double heart seldom meet.  That place speaks full to this, I Tim. 1:5, ‘The end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith un feigned.’  Now mark what follows, ver. 6—‘from which some have swerved’—or as it is in the original, not aiming at—‘having turned aside unto vain jangling.’ They never aimed at the power of holiness in receiving truth, that by it they might advance in their love, faith, and other graces.
William Gurnall (The Christian in Complete Armour - The Ultimate Book on Spiritual Warfare)
basics of being a monarch – maths, reading, writing, warfare, basic torture, tax collection, advanced torture and tax collection with advanced torture.
Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson and the Greek Heroes (Percy Jackson's Greek Myths Book 2))
pride and vain-glory are the most dangerous of all vices, and that they are the most difficult to be discovered, and the last that are vanquished in the spiritual warfare; that humility is the very foundation of all true virtue, and our progress in it the measure of our advancement in Christian perfection.
Alban Butler (The Lives of the Saints: Complete Edition)
Valeriano and Maness have written Russia's obituary before the actual outbreak of hostilities. And why have they done this? Becuase they believe that America has already won the peace. But this is demonstrably not so. Simply look at who the U.S. president is. Look at what is taught in American schools. Now ask yourself whether this has happened through a process unconnected with Russian military strategy. The nonsense of "cultural Marxism" is nothing more than a form of psychological warfare used in advance of a military attack. The promotion of nonsense in place of common sense is a form of sabotage. This kind of sabotage has been practiced on us for decades. And we have not challenged it.
J.R. Nyquist
Expropriations are armed operations and a guerrilla tactic carried out to finance, support and advance the movement towards revolution.
Carlos Marighella (Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerilla)
Toynbee provided this familiar downward course of empire with identifiably modern trappings. The ruling elite eventually becomes a class of Oscar Wildes, combining decadence of manners with sexual promiscuity and perversion; degenerate art à la Max Nordau raises its deliberately ugly head; language degenerates into slang and vulgar colloquialisms, and religion into syncretic mystery cults and occult magic. Can there be any doubt, Toynbee asked in 1939, on the eve of World War II, that all these are now leading characteristics of the modern West? “Nationalistic internecine warfare,” Toynbee related “[and] the combined drive of energies generated by the recently released forces of Democracy and Industrialism” have let loose the forces of chaos. “These considerations and comparisons suggest that we are already far advanced in our time of troubles.
Arthur Herman (The Idea of Decline in Western History)
In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Pinker calculates the average homicide rate among eight primitive societies, arriving at an alarming 14 per cent. This figure appeared in respected journals like Science and was endlessly regurgitated by newspapers and on TV. When other scientists took a look at his source material, however, they discovered that Pinker mixed up some things. This may get a little technical, but we need to understand where he went wrong. The question we want to answer is: which peoples still hunting and gathering today are representative of how humans lived 50,000 years ago? After all, we were nomads for 95 per cent of human history, roving the world in small, relatively egalitarian groups. Pinker chose to focus almost exclusively on hybrid cultures. These are people who hunt and gather, but who also ride horses or live together in settlements or engage in farming on the side. Now these activities are all relatively recent. Humans didn’t start farming until 10,000 years ago and horses weren’t domesticated until 5,000 years ago. If you want to figure out how our distant ancestors lived 50,000 years ago, it doesn’t make sense to extrapolate from people who keep horses and tend vegetable plots. But even if we get on board with Pinker’s methods, the data is problematic. According to the psychologist, 30 per cent of deaths among the Aché in Paraguay (tribe 1 on his list) and 21 per cent of deaths among the Hiwi in Venezuela and Colombia (tribe 3) are attributable to warfare. These people are out for blood, it would seem. The anthropologist Douglas Fry was sceptical, however. Reviewing the original sources, he discovered that all forty-six cases of what Pinker categorised as Aché ‘war mortality’ actually concerned a tribe member listed as ‘shot by Paraguayan’. The Aché were in fact not killing each other, but being ‘relentlessly pursued by slave traders and attacked by Paraguayan frontiersmen’, reads the original source, whereas they themselves ‘desire a peaceful relationship with their more powerful neighbors’. It was the same with the Hiwi. All the men, women and children enumerated by Pinker as war deaths were murdered in 1968 by local cattle ranchers.40 There go the iron-clad homicide rates. Far from habitually slaughtering one another, these nomadic foragers were the victims of ‘civilised’ farmers wielding advanced weaponry. ‘Bar charts and numeric tables depicting percentages […] convey an air of scientific objectivity,’ Fry writes. ‘But in this case it is all an illusion.
Rutger Bregman (Humankind: A Hopeful History)
Epidemics also feed on “the news”. I recall hearing of germ warfare experiments performed in the 1940’s. Two towns were chosen. One town was “bombed” with leaflets, the other was not. Then days later the biological weapon was deployed. The town that was warned succumbed in high percentages. The town without warning had a very low incidence of infection and the weapon had poor military effectiveness. So thanks cable news, 24/7 coverage in advance of flu season really helps the public, Not!
T.C. Randall (Forbidden Healing, The Curiously Simple Solution to Disease)
European historians have often, though not unanimously, assumed that European modern warfare was the one true path, a system that developed logically and inevitably from the nature of the advancing technology of guns. Since Europeans by their own definition were the most rational and logical of people, their mode of warfare was also the most rational and logical. Those who did not adopt it after seeing it were being deliberately irrational, or lacked the ability to advance their polity to the point where it could follow it.
Peter A. Lorge (The Asian Military Revolution: From Gunpowder to the Bomb (New Approaches to Asian History, Series Number 3))
It’s sometimes argued that there’s no real progress; that a civilization that kills multitudes in mass warfare, that pollutes the land and oceans with ever larger quantities of debris, that destroys the dignity of individuals by subjecting them to a forced mechanized existence can hardly be called an advance over the simpler hunting and gathering and agricultural existence of prehistoric times. But this argument, though romantically appealing, doesn’t hold up. The primitive tribes permitted far less individual freedom than does modern society. Ancient wars were committed with far less moral justification than modern ones. A technology that produces debris can find, and is finding, ways of disposing of it without ecological upset. And the schoolbook pictures of primitive man sometimes omit some of the detractions of his primitive life—the pain, the disease, famine, the hard labor needed just to stay alive. From that agony of bare existence to modern life can be soberly described only as upward progress, and the sole agent for this progress is quite clearly reason itself. One
Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)
In fact, I would say this particular generation gap might almost be called chemical warfare – the pot-heads versus the booze-heads. Actually, though, it would be more accurate to call it religious warfare – but only the pot-heads realize that there is a religious issue at stake . . . Drugs have always been considered either sacred or diabolical. The background of drug use in history involves charms, magic potions, holy sacraments and Devil’s orgies. In more advanced societies, the same cluster of ideas carries over into our modern distinctions between legal intoxicants, which are good, and illegal dope, which is bad. But that is purely a matter of social definition.
Robert Anton Wilson (Sex, Drugs & Magick – A Journey Beyond Limits)
The simple fact of the matter is that wars can not be won in this way. Militias can play an important role in defending the gains of a revolution, in organizing irregular warfare within a circumscribed region, and in suppressing counter-revolutionary activity within the zone of a revolution. But without a regular army of its own the revolution can not hold back the advances of an invading army.
Christopher Day (The Historical Failure of Anarchism: Implications for the Future of the Revolutionary Project (Kasama Essays for Discussion))
White Man, to you my voice is like the unheard call in the wilderness. It is there, though you do not hear it. But, this once, take the time to listen to what I have to say. Your history is highlighted by your wars. Why is it all right for your nations to conquer each other in your attempts at domination? When you sailed to our lands, you came with your advanced weapons. You claimed you were a progressive, civilized people. And today, White Man, you have the ultimate weapons. Warfare which could destroy all men, all creation. And you allow such power to be in the hands of those few who have such little value in true wisdom. White Man, when you first came, most of our tribes began with peace and trust in dealing with you, strange white intruders. We showed you how to survive in our homelands. We were willing to share with you our vast wealth. Instead of repaying us with gratitude, you, White Man, turned on us, your friends. You turned on us with your advanced weapons and your cunning trickery. When we, the Indian people, realized your intentions, we rose to do battle, to defend our nations, our homes, our food, our lives. And for our efforts, we are labelled savages, and our battles are called massacres. And when our primitive weapons could not match those which you had perfected through centuries of wars, we realized that peace could not be won, unless our mass destruction took place. And so we turned to treaties. And this time, we ran into your cunning trickery. And we lost our lands, our freedom, and were confined to reservations. And we are held in contempt. 'As long as the Sun shall rise...' For you, White Man, these are words without meaning. White Man, there is much in the deep, simple wisdom of our forefathers. We were here for centuries. We kept the land, the waters, the air clean and pure, for our children and our children's children. Now that you are here, White Man, the rivers bleed with contamination. The winds moan with the heavy weight of pollution in the air. The land vomits up the poisons which have been fed into it. Our Mother Earth is no longer clean and healthy. She is dying. White Man, in your greedy rush for money and power, you are destroying. Why must you have power over everything? Why can't you live in peace and harmony? Why can't you share the beauty and the wealth which Mother Earth has given us? You do not stop at confining us to small pieces of rock an muskeg. Where are the animals of the wilderness to go when there is no more wilderness? Why are the birds of the skies falling to their extinction? Is there joy for you when you bring down the mighty trees of our forests? No living things seems sacred to you. In the name of progress, everything is cut down. And progress means only profits. White Man, you say that we are a people without dignity. But when we are sick, weak, hungry, poor, when there is nothing for us but death, what are we to do? We cannot accept a life which has been imposed on us. You say that we are drunkards, that we live for drinking. But drinking is a way of dying. Dying without enjoying life. You have given us many diseases. It is true that you have found immunizations for many of these diseases. But this was done more for your own benefit. The worst disease, for which there is no immunity, is the disease of alcoholism. And you condemn us for being its easy victims. And those who do not condemn us weep for us and pity us. So, we the Indian people, we are still dying. The land we lost is dying, too. White Man, you have our land now. Respect it. As we once did. Take care of it. As we once did. Love it. As we once did. White Man, our wisdom is dying. As we are. But take heed, if Indian wisdom dies, you, White Man, will not be far behind. So weep not for us. Weep for yourselves. And for your children. And for their children. Because you are taking everything today. And tomorrow, there will be nothing left for them.
Beatrice Mosionier (In Search of April Raintree)
Russia selling arms to China, U.S. Navy concerned July 30, 1997 Web posted at: 12:00 P.M. EST (1700 GMT) From Washington chief correspondent Michael Flasetti WASHINGTON (TCN)—As tensions mount in the South China Sea, a confrontation between the Chinese and UN military, led by the U.S. Navy, seems inevitable. Adding to the danger of the situation is the news, reportedly obtained by the CIA, that Russia has been arming China with advanced weapons, among them nuclear attack submarines that may be deployed into the waters surrounding the Spratly Islands. The news that Russia has been selling arms to the Chinese is not new. Over the past two years, China has taken delivery of four Russian Kilo-class diesel submarines, which are considerably less advanced than Russia’s nuclear submarines. However, the possibility that Russia has sold more advanced submarines to the Chinese is of great concern to White House military advisers. A source close to the Joint Chiefs of Staff has disclosed that the Russians have even collaborated with the Chinese on a prototype nuclear attack submarine, and that the submarine may see action in the Spratly conflict. If true, this presents a possible shift in the balance of naval power in the region, and a great concern to the recently downsized U.S. Navy. Russian president Gennadi Zyuganov, himself a conservative Communist like Chinese leader Li Peng, refused to comment on the possibility of advanced weapons sales to China, yet did say that Russia enjoys a balanced trade agreement with China on the sales of certain weapons, including Kilo class submarines. Russia, cash-poor since the breakup of the Soviet Union, clearly depends on submarine sales to China to help fund social and economic projects, as well as the upgrading of its own navy.
Tom Clancy (SSN: A Strategy Guide to Submarine Warfare)
If we gauge societies in light of the developmental maturity of their citizens, we see very little difference, even between extremes. One society may be, on average, slightly further along than another, but the reality is that no society has advanced beyond the stage where girls play dress-up and boys torture frogs.
Jed McKenna (Spiritual Warfare (The Enlightenment Trilogy Book 3))
Faith means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse.
Kathryn McBride (A Warrior's Prayerbook for Spiritual Warfare)
Today’s rebel groups rely on guerrilla warfare and organized terror: a sniper firing from a rooftop; a homemade bomb delivered in a package, detonated in a truck, or concealed on the side of a road. Groups are more likely to try to assassinate opposition leaders, journalists, or police recruits than government soldiers. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, masterminded the use of suicide bombings to kill anyone cooperating with the Shia-controlled government during Iraq’s civil war. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, perfected the use of massive car bombs to attack the same government. Hamas’s main tactic against Israel has been to target average Israeli citizens going about their daily business. Most Americans cannot imagine another civil war in their country. They assume our democracy is too resilient, too robust to devolve into conflict. Or they assume that our country is too wealthy and advanced to turn on itself. Or they assume that any rebellion would quickly be stamped out by our powerful government, giving the rebels no chance. They see the Whitmer kidnapping plot, or even the storming of the U.S. Capitol, as isolated incidents: the frustrated acts of a small group of violent extremists. But this is because they don’t know how civil wars start.
Barbara F. Walter (How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them)
Naval Warfare: For surface vessels and even submarines there was much continuity between the First and Second World Wars. The battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines of the 1939-45 period were generally bigger, faster, and better armed than their 1914-18 predecessors but not fundamentally different. Indeed, they had not changed much since the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. Yet naval warfare was nevertheless transformed by the introduction of aviation. Fleets that were once built around battleships came to be built around aircraft carriers instead. Aircraft proved superior not just to conventional surface ships but also, in the Battle of the Atlantic, to submarines as well. German U-boats preying on Allied shipping were foiled through a variety of means including convoying of merchants ships and the use of radar and sonar. But the weapon that proved most effective was an aircraft dropping depth charges. The dispatch of long-range B-24s equipped with the latest radar to patrol the North Atlantic in 1943 helped to turn the tide against the U-boats. The proliferation of small escort carriers also allowed air cover for convoys even in the middle of the ocean. Submarines proved more effective in teh Pacific, where the vast distances precluded effective patrolling by aircraft and where the Japanese did not devleop the types of advanced antisubmarine techniques employed by the Allies in the Atlantic. U.S. submarines took a heavy toll on Japanese merchantmen and warships alike once they managed to fix the problems that bedeviled their Mark 14 torpedo early in the war. "A force comprising less than 2 percent of U.S. Navy personnel," naval historian Ronald Spector would write of U.S. submariners, "had accounted for 55 percent of Japan's losses at sea." The torpedo, whether launched by submarines, surface ships, or airplanes, proved the biggest ship-killer of the war.
Max Boot (War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History: 1500 to Today)
A newly-released series of video documentaries — The Labour Files — based on material leaked from Britain’s Labour Party revealed how the right-wing within the party mortified the former party leader, the far-left Jeremy Corbyn, costing him his position. The documentary uncovers Israel’s role in orchestrating the departure of Corbyn who had been a vocal proponent of Palestinian rights. Evidence reveals that the Israel Lobby within the Labour Party — supported by other pro-Israel camps in Britain — campaigned against the left-wing Corbyn, accusing him of antisemitism. The right-wing party establishment manipulated these allegations to its own political advantage, which eventually led to the election of the pro-Israel Keir Starmer as party leader in 2020. While the future course of Labour’s left wing is uncertain, one thing is for sure — Israel is an apartheid regime. The Zionist lobby has been using hybrid warfare techniques to procure worldwide legitimacy for Israel’s illegal actions in Palestine. As the Labour Files reveal, Israel has waged a war of fabricating narratives and counter-narratives. In this sort of warfare with limitless bounds, the only positive that can be drawn is that everyone is a soldier. At a time when great powers have given in to the deceptive Israel lobby and no Muslim state is in any position to challenge Israeli advances in Palestine using conventional methods, we need to focus on building our capacity to effectively counter the Zionist narrative. With the right-wing ex-Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, set to return after elections next month, the plight of Palestinians will only exacerbate. It is high time we stopped blatantly labelling one another as ‘Yahoodi Agents’ and started educating ourselves. The least we can do for Palestinians is continue exposing the pro-Israel elements engaged in the widespread dissemination of Zionist propaganda.
Shawez Ahmad
Louis Wirth made no bones about his suspicion of the groups that were traditionally known as “ethnic,” ic., the recent immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Like Stalin, his mentor on the nationalities issue, Wirth considered ethnics as a fifth column which could not be trusted to serve the interests of the ruling class. Those interests became national security issues once that elite succeeded in maneuvering America into war. In this he shared the political views of the psychological warfare establishment as well as the ethnic prejudices which undergirded them. The purpose of psychological warfare as it was resurrected at the University of Chicago in the late ’30s was ultimately ethnic. The WASP elite used their advanced communications techniques to prevent ethnic groups in America from communicating with their countries of origin but also to disrupt communications among the members of those groups in the United States as well. “At heart modern psychological warfare has been a tool for managing empire,” writes Christopher Simpson, “It’s primary utility has been its ability to suppress or distort unauthorized communication among subject peoples, including domestic U.S. dissenters who channeled the wisdom or morality of imperial policies.
E. Michael Jones (The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing)
Given the recent remarkable advances in artificial intelligence, scouting will probably involve “algorithmic warfare,” with competing AI systems plowing through vast amounts of data to identify patterns of enemy behavior that might elude human analysts. Identifying enemy operational tendencies may also aid commanders in employing their forces more effectively, similar to the way the introduction of operations research aided the allies in identifying effective convoy operations during the Battle of the Atlantic in World War II.30 AI could potentially assist efforts to develop malware, which could be used to erase or corrupt enemy scouting information, including the enemy’s AI algorithms themselves. If these efforts are successful, enemy commanders may lose confidence in their scouts, producing a “mission kill,” in which much of the enemy’s scouting force continues to operate but where its product is suspect.
Andrew F. Krepinevich (The Origins of Victory: How Disruptive Military Innovation Determines the Fates of Great Powers)
The evidence of history is that no advance which can be applied to the killing of other human beings goes unused.
Malcolm Potts (Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World)
Only in the last three centuries, LeBlanc points out, have advanced states steadily lowered the overall body count to where just 3 percent of the world’s people die from warfare these days, even though a few of the remaining wars and genocides have grown to world-war scale.
Stewart Brand (Whole Earth Discipline: Why Dense Cities, Nuclear Power, Transgenic Crops, Restored Wildlands, and Geoengineering Are Necessary)
The perpetrator of such a misdemeanor must have a motive. Is UMMO the private joke of a group of Spanish engineers? Is it a psychological warfare exercise, as some French analysts suspect? Or is the truth more complex, rooted in a social reality where the ideas and symbols of UMMO have acquired a life of their own, their special mythology, and a set of beliefs that feed on themselves? We can at least be certain of one thing: the UMMO documents do not come from advanced beings trying to demonstrate their existence to us. But try to explain it to their disciples! Very few UFO believers, and even fewer of their New Age counterparts, have any formal training in science. They are easily awed by any document that contains a few equations and a numerical system of base 12. Yet if they had some awareness of modern technology, they would realize how easy it should be for an advanced race to prove its genuine skill to a society like the human race. After reading the masses of documents purportedly coming from the planet UMMO, I asked myself: if I had the opportunity to communicate with intelligent beings of an earlier time, such as the high priests of Egypt, how would I establish a meaningful dialogue? I certainly would not insult them by sending a letter beginning with ”We are aware of the transcendence of what we are about to tell you”—especially if I had an imperfect command of hieroglyphics! Instead, I would concentrate on a few points of valuable, verifiable information. Since the Egyptians already knew how to make electrical batteries and were aware of the magnetic properties of certain minerals, I would send them a simple set of instructions to make a coil and a compass. I could explain resistance and Ohm’s Law, a simple equation that was easily within the grasp of their mathematicians. Or I would tell them about making glass and lenses from sand. If they wanted proof, I would not bother to reveal to them set theory or the fact that E is equal to mc2. Instead, I would send them a table predicting future eclipses, or a diagram to build an alternator, or Leonardo da Vinci’s design for variable-speed cogwheels. That should get the attention of the top scientists in their culture and open up a dialogue. Unfortunately, the extraterrestrials of UMMO and other planets never seem to communicate at this level. Are they afraid of collapsing our society by appearing too advanced with respect to us? This hypothesis does not hold, since they have chosen a very obvious way of showing themselves in our skies.
Jacques F. Vallée (Revelations)
The spirit of prayer is a grace infused, but advanced to further degrees by daily exercise.
William Gurnall (The Christian in Complete Armour - The Ultimate Book on Spiritual Warfare)
I have never really understood our gene-father's obsession with martial glory. It always seemed to me more efficient to simply eradicate our foes from orbit. Pound the earth flat and build over the ashes. And if they dig in? There are ways. Saboteurs, chemical weapons - there are hundreds of ways of dismantling a world and its population that do not involve orbital insertions and glorious advances into the teeth of enemy fire. Perhaps I overestimate the intelligence of our species. Perhaps we are little more than psychopathic apes, driven to fashion clubs and smash out the brains of our closest neighbours. And here I thought you were the clever one. I figured that out the day of my culling, when my family forced my cousins and me to fight for the honour of joining the Third. War as you describe it would be little more than pest control. What is there for the gods to feed on? Where is the desire for victory, the savagery, the hope and despair? Where is the entertainment? I believe you have made my point for me. No, you are not listening. On my pilgrimage, I learned much. Win or lose, the gods feast on our deeds. A man pets a stray, and his small pleasure in the kindness of the act feeds Slaanesh. A woman strikes her crying child, and that awful moment of elation she feels feeds Khorne. A Munitorum drone considers suicide. Nurgle grows fat on his despair. A merciful strategist devises a plan for bloodless victory, and Tzeentch is content. The Word Bearers believe the gods crave worship. But the gods care for nothing save filling their bellies with our sorrows. Intentionally or not, we are all meat for the beast. Even you, Fabius.
Josh Reynolds (Fabius Bile: The Omnibus (Fabius Bile: Warhammer 40,000))
All of us must stand guard at the door of our souls and spirits with the correct armor donned in preparation for battle. Soldiers do not wait until threats are detected in the distance, shots are fired, or enemies are breaking down their doors to prepare for battle. No, soldiers are ready in advance! They are suited up for war- prepared from first light with others standing watch throughout the night! It is to be the same for those of us fighting in this battle for our eternal lives! Why do we so often insist on going out to face the enemy unprepared and ill equipped? Surely, we do not enjoy defeat- we do not wish to be knocked in the ditch of life, to backslide and fall away from our first love- our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ?
Stacy Angelique McDonald (As You Rise: Scriptural Insights to Help You Get and Stay on The Narrow Way)
From sea's wide spring || out flows the tide: It advances, retreats, || it smashes, crushes. The lament for Cú Roí || has distressed me; The cold silencing, of a hard man || full of passion: I've seldom heard || of greater misfortune.
Taliesin (The Book of Taliesin: Poems of Warfare and Praise in an Enchanted Britain)
Even if he has, like Haig, considerable ability, and can learn to overcome the more disastrous products of a weak ego, the man who reaches a position of high command out of a compulsive thirst for personal advancement will tend to lack that creative talent and flexibility of mind so necessary in modern warfare
Norman F. Dixon (On the Psychology of Military Incompetence)
In terms of innovation in ideas, our nonstate foes leveraged the vast body of literature on guerrilla warfare (in particular Lind et al.’s 4GW) that was developed in the United States. It isn’t unusual that the people who develop these new theories of warfare live in the countries that don’t benefit from them. Advanced Western military theory has historically provided sustenance to our revisionist foes. For example, the British military theorists J. F. C. Fuller and B. H. Liddell Hart provided the theoretical basis of armored warfare that Heinz Guderian and others, in the nascent German military before World War II, used to formulate the blitzkrieg. So while the image of al-Qaeda strategists squatting in Afghan caves reading Lind et al.’s 4GW theory may be hard to imagine, it shouldn’t be any more fantastic than Guderian practicing Fuller’s theories with cardboard tanks. Both happened.
John Robb (Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization)
Even now, the synthetic forces that will plot man’s wholesale annihilation are quietly under design in leading laboratories, public and private, funded by the most advanced nations on earth, including the official governments of the United States, France, Britain, Australia, and China, to name a few.
Thomas Horn (Forbidden Gates: How Genetics, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Synthetic Biology, Nanotechnology, and Human Enhancement Herald The Dawn Of TechnoDimensional Spiritual Warfare)
the California case, the rhythms of tax reduction are strong indicators of structural change and, as table 3 demonstrates, show how the Keynesian state’s delegitimation accumulated in waves, culminating, rather than originating, in Tom Bradley’s 1982 and 1986 gubernatorial defeats. The first wave, or capital’s wave, is indicated by the 50 percent decline in the ratio of bank and corporation taxes to personal income taxes between 1967 and 1986 (California State Public Works Board 1987). Starting as early as 1968, voters had agitated for tax relief commensurate with the relief capital had won after putting Ronald Reagan in the governor’s mansion (Mike Davis 1990). But Sacramento’s efforts were continually disappointing under both Republican and Democratic administrations (Kirlin and Chapman 1994). This set in motion the second, or labor’s, wave, in which actual (and aspiring) homeowner-voters reduced their own taxes via Proposition 13 (1978).25 The third, or federal wave, indicates the devolution of responsibility from the federal government onto the state and local levels, as evidenced by declines of 12.5 percent (state) to 60 percent (local) in revenues derived from federal aid. The third wave can be traced to several deep tax cuts the Reagan presidential administration conferred on capital and the wealthiest of workers in 1982 and again in 1986 (David Gordon 1996; Krugman 1994). The sum of these waves produced state and local fiscal crises following in the path of federal crisis that James O’Connor ([1973] 2000) had analyzed early in the period under review when he advanced the “welfare-warfare” concept. As late as 1977–78, California state and local coffers were full (CDF-CEI 1978; Gramlich 1991). By 1983, Sacramento was borrowing to meet its budgetary goals, while county and city governments reached crisis at different times, depending on how replete their reserves had been prior to Proposition 13. Voters wanted services and infrastructure at lowered costs; and when they paid, they tried not to share. Indeed, voters were quite willing to pay for amenities that would stick in place, and between 1977–78 and 1988–89, they actually increased property-based taxes going to special assessment districts by 45 percent (Chapman 1991: 19).
Ruth Wilson Gilmore (Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (American Crossroads Book 21))
Few persons appreciate the steadiness and courage required, when all around is in flight and confusion, for a force to advance steadily to the post of danger in front and meet the exulting enemy. Such men are heroes, and far more worthy of honor than those who fight in the full blaze of successful warfare.
Abner Doubleday (Chancellorsville and Gettysburg Campaigns of the Civil War - VI)
the average citizens, the backbone of the civilization. These were the ones Enoch felt were exploited at the expense of this class warfare for power. The society appeared to be an advancement of civilization, but Enoch believed it moved toward the inevitable centralization of power into the hands of the elite priestly caste, of which he was one. It remained a point of cognitive dissonance for him.
Brian Godawa (Enoch Primordial (Chronicles of the Nephilim #2))
Philolaus of Corinth (about 730 B.C.?) had supposedly enacted regulations ensuring that the farms at Thebes might remain the same number in perpetuity. The Corinthian Pheidon, “one of the most ancient of the lawgivers,” purportedly argued that the population and the number of plots ought always to remain roughly equal. An even more shadowy figure, Phaleas the Chalcedonian, advanced the concept that all citizens of the polis ought to hold equal amounts of property.148
Donald Kagan (Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece)
If the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had seemed to inaugurate a brand-new chapter in the history of warfare, supposedly making all other weapons obsolete and creating a world where military power rested only with the richest, most technologically advanced nations, then the Korean battlefield defeats of early July 1950 shattered that belief
David Halberstam (The Coldest Winter)
We all recognize this portrait of boyhood. The male mind appears to be innately tribal—that is, structured in advance of experience so that boys and men enjoy doing the sorts of things that lead to group cohesion and success in conflicts between groups (including warfare).20 The virtue of loyalty matters a great deal to both sexes, though the objects of loyalty tend to be teams and coalitions for boys, in contrast to two-person relationships for girls.21
Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion)
Certain backward areas have advanced, and various devices, always in some way connected with warfare and police espionage, have been developed, but experiment and invention have largely stopped,
George Orwell (1984)
Cloak and Dagger was lost in the summertime NBC schedule, lumped into a mystery block with several other shows of far inferior quality. It never attracted a sponsor and got almost no critical attention, but the recent discovery of the entire run reveals a gripping show with every story an unpredictable departure from formula. It was the story of the wartime activities of the OSS—the Office of Strategic Services—“this country’s first all-out effort in black warfare … dropping undercover operators behind enemy lines, organizing local partisans to blow bridges and dynamite tunnels, operating the best spy systems of Europe and Asia.” It was a tense half-hour of patriots and traitors, of love affairs doomed by war, of triumph, tragedy, and failure. The stories did not always end with the lovers embraced and the mad-dog Germans reeling in defeat: the hero-agent, in accomplishing his mission, sometimes gave up his life. It opened with a question by actor Raymond Edward Johnson: Are you willing to undertake a dangerous mission for the United States, knowing in advance you may never return alive? It was transcribed and had a definite “canned” sound, which may also have helped turn listeners away.
John Dunning (On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio)