Only if you make a very literal interpretation - attacking the existence of something can be assumed to mean questioning the merit or value of it existing, and it really isn't a big incongruity.
So the "coloured" Divisions of the US army in WWII were implausible? The Maori Battalion of the New Zealand army was a mistake? The Indian Divisions of the British Imperial army should never have existed? ... Subjugated peoples living as second class citizens without many of the rights of their "betters" have often been used as independent military formations, with a long history of great success. And these examples are only the most modern, this tradition goes back as far as the history of war. This particular argument is dead, history proves you wrong.
And again. Critiquing something as bad or inconsistent is absolutely not synonymous with suggesting it should not exist. "attacking the very existence" is either a reference to the denial that something does exist or at a stretch a denial that it should exist. Considering the context of Shiwen's criticism that provides interpretations both negative and positive that are ALL conditional on the JSA existing plus some other stuff. The other stuff either something that is missing from the fluff OR plus an interpretation of the fluff you don't want to face. It is unreasonable and not remotely honest to pretend there was an attack on the existence of the JSA, the criticism being leveled not only recognizes the existence of JSA but is contingent on the existence of the JSA and revolves around what else is missing as a result. I suspect it is your own severe denial that leads you to incorrectly conflate criticism with an impossibility of existence. Well that or the Admiral REALLY wants to beat up a strawman about an imaginary attack on irrelevant historical military groups and will bend anything he can to do so.
I'm confused. You're citing historical ethnic military units that didn't rebel en masse, to try and claim that an ethnic military unit which did rebel en masse cannot indicate incompetence in its imperial power? Thai Sectorial Army exists? Yes. Shows Yu Jing incompetence? No. Korean Sectorial Army exists? Yes. Shows Yu Jing incompetence? No. Mongol Sectorial Army exists? Yes. Shows Yu Jing incompetence? No. Uighur Sectorial Army exists? Yes. Shows Yu Jing incompetence? No, To try and paint this as an argument that giving any constituent population a military force = incompetence is entirely false. As to your examples, in each case there you can see the controlling imperial power has imposed systems of control: has judged these formations safe to muster and not in danger of rebellion, and has (at least initially) mandated members of the imperial ethnicity hold command and officer positions. The latter is pretty awful, morally speaking, but certainly a competent step by an imperial state for assuring that the occupied or oppressed nation it is arming with guns can be trusted to be loyal. If we're going to go down the path of real military units, and I do agree that is where we'll find the best examples, what you actually want to dig up are examples of oppressed minorities, who were given their own military units which then rebelled against their imperial power, without that power having been incompetent. That would certainly prove me wrong, and be rather fantastic for recontextualizing this particular aspect of Uprising in my mind. I can't think of an example off-hand, but unsurprising as if I could I'd probably not have made this argument in the first place.
Oh you mean the "coloured" Divisions commanded by white Generals who still had - as a result of racism - questioned the performance of the troops on their race and questioned the usability of "racial" divisions ? You mean the Maori Bataillion, where at the beginning they also only used european New Zealanders as Officers and NCOs and where the establishment of the division was ALL about possible improvements of their situation (making them not keen on revolting) ? You mean the Indian Division where the life in the military might have been an improvement already and where they, at the end of the service, got a pension (hinting again at the reason why someone might voluntarily join such an army AND stay loyal ?) You mean ethnic divisions like the polish in the Soviet and British Army which, while often treated like garbage, still where loyal simply because of the prospect of a free polish nation and a later return to Poland (and also sometimes simply bigger hate towards Nazis than Soviets)? You mean all those ethnic, cultural and religious divisions which often stayed loyal because of money; improvement of their previous life situation; potential new priviliges or rights; more important considerations like the relation to the enemy; fear and brutality in the officer ranks; strict control; social position and social understanding of the involved parties; specific reformation of the upper organization (state, local leadership, ...) ... ? You know, all those possible elements that were put into place or were considered to make sure that the army doesn't start fighting against each other (or in the cases of "superior" positioned ethnic divisons - were they made sure that the rest is constantly reminded what will happen if their beneficial priviliges and rights should be revoked). You mean as far as the history of war, despite the fact that not only war and it's concepts, organisation, problems and struggles changed fundamentally (Frederick the Great was less concerned with something like "ethnic uprsing" in his ranks and more with making sure that his soldiers actually fight and not run away - he descriped desertation as sometimes a bigger casualty during battles than actually dead or wounded soldiers) but even the concepts of ethnicity, nation, race, social ranks, understanding of the world and their surroundings (sometimes some of those aspect not being even remotely close to what we understand today or utterly non-existent ) AND all that throughout the world where those concept where most of the time not understood in an anglo-centric vocabulary ? Sure ... sure ... If you really think that history proofs him wrong ...
Can we please NOT get this thread locked, too? Thanks. You mean like the Indian units in the 1850s? Definitely considered second-class citizens despite their being the highest caste of the locals, and immense numbers of them rebelled in 1857. At least anecdotally, that's because they thought the ammunition they were using (which required you to bite open the paper cartridge) was greased with pig and/or beef fat. Pig fat was objectionable to the Muslim troops who made up most of the Bengali Cavalry, beef fat was objectionable to the Hindus who made up most of the Bengali Infantry. (I admit I'm grossly oversimplifying for brevity, there were other issues at play. But the ammunition was more or less the straw that broke the camel's back). And then some asshole high-caste Bengali was abusing a low-caste worker from the Dum-Dum arsenal who told him that the Bengali had broken caste by biting the new ammunition, was unclean (nevermind that the new ammunition wasn't being made or even issued at Dum-dum). Instant rage!!! And from 1860 on, none of the high-caste Indians were permitted to be enlisted in the Army of the British Raj, only the "Martial Castes" that had supported the British in putting down the rebellion were allowed to continue to be soldiers. Which was extremely insulting to the high-caste, as soldiering was an honorable occupation in India, but now they had to lower themselves to being merchants or heavens forbid, farmers! ===== Now, back to the FTL comms issue. Metatron/Darao are from the EVO Hacker/Repeater fluff. PanO had it first, then YJ developed their Darao system, probably in reverse-engineering. Those are the systems that allowed a hacker on Earth to support combat ops on Paradiso. If Aleph is allowed to use the Metatron system for highest-priority comms, then there should be an O12-leased Metatron system going into each Aleph server farm. It's explicit in Campaign Paradiso that Aleph does have server farms. If I were a nation as heavily dependent on Aleph as PanO or Yu Jing are, I would have demanded that my combat alert notifications have access to those fastest-possible communications links.
The "greased with pig fat" lie was propaganda used to sow dissent. That it's being taken seriously as historical fact doesn't reflect well. This is the claim I was responding to. The existence of these historical examples prove that this claim is false.
I would like to remind everyone the Ghurka regiments still operate as a respected part of the UK's military to this day.
The fact is we know almost nothing about the Party's plan to insure the Loyalty of the JSA and we knew just as little about the work to subvert those measures as ant claim of competence / Incompetence is basically headcanon. One thing I pretty sure of is that after this we will probally not see any ethnic sectorials for Yu Jing.
He's not. He's claiming that the idea that Yu Jing wouldn't have listeners checking to see if JSA was about to rebel against them makes them incompetent.
Correct me if I'm wrong; 1. Didn't the other ethnicities (except Uighur) get properly integrated, leaving only the Japanese as the problem. 2. Aren't the other banners regional banners rather than segregated ethnic banners, meaning it's purely social distribution of people that makes a certain banner identifiable as "Korean". Again, JSA being the odd one out since it was an attempt at re-integrating and quelling rebellion through concessions. Edit: read the "bright side" post and added Uighur exception
If JSA-aligned actors had, say, crashed a spaceship into something important, nobody would be complaining. That sounds like the kind of thing they'd do. They did a lot more than that.
Aleph has to have server farms... those are her "neurons" after all XD. The question is the known ones are real... call me a paranoid, but having FTL comms means I can have my neural processors where I frigging want... and space is frigging big! Add to that how Quantum-Entangled comms, if they are what the name implies (and not another mislabel like "posthuman"), are impossible to trace once delivered (the working is 2 bit-analogue entangled pieces of matter, that disregarding distance keep the same state. So you can alternate between 2 examples to transmit data digitally. The question is if those degrade or not after use, of course). Anyway, if EVO hackers are kept as "a hacker controls the remote from another planet, maybe even another system entirely", just having a frigging EVO on each planet with YJ presence means instant comms. So the delay of both the attack and alert status would have been nearly instantaneous, meaning that the JSA had to hit everywhere they wanted to at the same time. You should stop that train of thought, since it seems like you have decided the conclusion before reading what the other side was trying to convey. You claim that since historically several armies have had culturally-segregated units inside, the JSA rebellion was impossible to predict or detect, in response to the claim that it is not logical to have a mistrusted, oppressed minority NOT under watch (or under a useless watch) when it is given weapons and military training. Those two cannot be compared with historical records to my knowledge, but it would be the same as, little after USA's Civil War, the North having the South forming an army, and letting them post themselves wherever they wanted without oversight (it is an extreme example, but I'm not sure more subtle ones would convey the full feeling).
Yeah, we should really stop there because 1) JSA was specifically created because they were the only ethnic minority with such demands for a segregated army and 2) the Civil War example you're referring to is the KKK - literally. And that's where we really should stop.
That is explicitly not what I was responding to. I quoted what I was responding to. My response has nothing to do with the ability to detect or predict the uprising.
It was noted at the time that what it was greased with was an issue, for the reasons I noted. Also, I am greatly simplifying things because I don't want to write another wall-o-text. Well, the various Black units during WW2 generally performed better than their White counterparts, usually because they had an extra 6-12 months of training before they went into combat. The Bengal Presidency troops in India were the only ones that rebelled, since they were the ones whose rights were being infringed, with the ammunition issue simply being the last straw. The Bombay and Madras Presidency troops were a different part of the Indian caste system, so didn't have a problem with getting deployed overseas. The Bengali troops were not supposed to be deployed anywhere they couldn't march to, as that would make them unclean. No, the other ethnicities have their own Sectorial Armies as well, the Japanese Sectorial had a notably different character than the typical YJ force. The different ethnicities were encouraged to settle in their own areas (like Kuraimori for the Japanese), and the army units assigned to those locations were encouraged to enlist locals. The Banner Armies are separate from the mono-cultural armies, and the Banner forces are mixed. I'm expecting them to be primarily Chinese (using current population proportions), but the US military has slightly different demographics than the US as a whole (even different branches have different demographics, more Hispanics in the Marines, for example). Current populations: China: 1403m South Korea: 51m North Korea: 26m Japan: 126m Mongolia: 3m Given those proportions, a Banner Army is going to be ~85% Chinese, ~8% Japanese, 4% South Korean, 2% North Korean, 0.2% Mongolian If Yu Jing was serious about preventing revolts, they'd be pushing mixed forces, and assigning new recruits to areas far away from their homes. The fact that various ethnicities were allowed/encouraged to have their own areas and make up the armies protecting those areas shows that they were all trusted.
There are definitely regional armies, set up under the StateEmpire Army 'regional dispersion program', small forces which have acquired the cultural traits and trappings of the dominant local nation, using the local language when they are operating independently, the Japanese Sectorial Army is merely the largest of these forces. I'd place those non-JSA forces as equivalents to the Gurkha Regiment, Maori Battalion , etc, since they were distinct units with distinct traditions and national origins, that did not suddenly rise up as one in rebellion. Its all in N3 Human Sphere, there's a Ministry of Information press release on pp.57 describing the national armies and JSA in particular. A press release which is, one would expect, full of propaganda... taken at face value, Yu Jing didn't consider there to be a need for oversight of the JSA, their loyalty was deemed certain, but if there were controls and monitoring in place the MoI is unlikely to announce them to the public. I'd initially dismissed the Mutiny as an example because it was so disorganized, and because the end result was the British Empire deeming the Company too incompetent to run India and so replacing it with the Raj. But that was probably tarring a good source as a whole, when there is a lot more meat to draw from... an imperial power unprepared for the vast scale of local troops rising against it, those local troops dominated by the upper classes of the local society (the Domaru in the case of JSA), several different factors building to a trigger point (even if that trigger wasn't the simple story of greased cartridges). I think the issue of incompetence is one that becomes undeniably dominant the shorter and cleaner the initial stage of Uprising unfolds. The sudden coordinated Kempeitai-Tatenokai-Kuge-JSA movement to neutralize the local Imperial Service garrisons. How do you miss something that required such planning and coordination across Yu Jing military and civil groups alongside criminal terrorist elements whose control is amongst the primary duties of the Imperial Service? The sudden just-as-planned surprise is probably the wrong way to go, but it may not even BE the way things went, Infinity background never gives us complete objective accounts but a series of news reports and opinion pieces. Lets say Yu Jing shows the JSA the same trust as other national/regional armies, despite the oppression of the population... they assume that the Domaru will not reneg on sworn oaths of loyalty, that the Haramaki and Keisotsu seek advancement to first-class status through service. They've vetted, perhaps not deep enough but to some degree. And of course, canonically the Imperial Service serves as Yu Jing's military police, there are Celestial Guard and Agents working with military units, that provide some form of monitoring, though no greater than the Banner Armies or the Korean Sectorial Army. Then, the spark. The indiscriminate collateral damage on the consulate station. At first, some JSA units rebel, spontaneous across multiple theatres... some might do so peacefully, simply refusing to leave barracks or follow orders, some militantly with violence. Imperial Service are a policing unit, and a harsh one, but they're not working at full capacity here... you don't need Wu Ming for MP duty, Hsien and Agents are directly assigned by the Emperor so are unlikely day-to-day military police, and thus Bao aren't there since they need Agent supervision (you dont need Kuang Shi here either, so the MPs are Order-starved ^_^). You have Celestial Guard detachments, and they start by trying to restore military discipline, making examples. This makes things worse, and since they're police not army they need to call in support to engage rebelling military regiments... other JSA units. Some follow the order, and JSA units fight JSA units. Some refuse. Some even turn on their MPs. The balance of casualties and loyalties here explains outcomes... Domaru are more likely to refuse or resist, as they are upper class and closely tied to the Kuge, while Haramaki are more likely to follow the orders of a Celestial Guard. Now, the Kuge have plotted influence with the Domaru, with the Kempeitai, with the Tatenokai. While all this is unfolding, they are moving to coordinate rebel JSA units, to bomb Imperial Service bases, to arrest off-duty MPs and/or their families as hostages (and remember canonically YuJingese devotion to family is such that the Party bemoans being unable to overcome it). As the Kempeitai remove Yu Jing-loyal JSA officers, and Imperial Service strength is broken down, more JSA units side with the rebellion (particularly, as their spontaneous rebellions desperately look for overarching leadership), the MPs are killed or imprisoned, Yu Jing's military which has been carefully distributed to maintain balance with PanO in various theatres and oppose the Combined Army on Paradiso needs to reposition units as it becomes apparent this is a civil war, a process probably slowed by the rival bureaucracies at play... does the Imperial Service admit they're losing control to the Ministry of State Defense? Certainly not until things have already gone past a pretty severe point. And thus we reach August 3 in the Uprising timeline, when rebels have neutralized Yu Jing oversight and the conflict evolves into open war.
Sorry, not my intention to thread (I didn't even realize it could be drawn on it) on issue #2. You made a quote of, literally, this: As far as I understand those two paragraphs, the first indicates a doubt (where the Japanese a minority actually oppressed?), and the second expands on the doubt. If they were an oppressed culture, then giving them the JSA without oversight means incompetence to the extent of not having enough brain matter to reach their positions at the helm of a country (much less to hold it). If they were not an oppressed culture, then they didn't live as badly as portrayed and the Uprising was a sham from start to finish... one that, for some reason, only the JSA gets to tell their version of, like some sort of victorious faction (flash news: in the past, winning meant crushing the other side. That did not happened here, so resorting to "history gets written by the victor" is actually inaccurate). That would lead to cultural homogenization, possibly increasing the possibility of revolts. I think that was done by the Roman Empire, incidentally? with the objective of "romanizing" first the legionaries, and then the places they were granted land to live as retirement. Just speculating there, though.
