Quotulatiousness

February 8, 2024

“Mwa-mwa-mwa”, they said

Chris Bray expands on the topic of yesterday’s post about the legacy media wanting you not to do your own research because it might lead to the “wrong” kind of answers:

I’m a hundred pages into a book I’ve been meaning to read for years, and I meant to spend last night reading it. But then I accidentally looked at social media.

For years, now, I’ve been watching as journalists and politicians connect a set of fact claims to a conclusion that has nothing to do with the evidence they’ve just given: This happened, and this happened, and this happened, and, trust us, all of that means this. It snaps your head back, because the statement about the meaning of the evidence is so ridiculous they can’t possibly have failed to notice. The news is frequently a series of bizarre interpretive non-sequiturs.

I wrote about a favorite example here, as an army of Barack Obama hagiographers described The Lightbringer’s glorious childhood in Indonesia. He went there with his mother and Indonesian stepfather in 1966, during a massive purge of communists by the army that included a great deal of mass killing, and Obama’s biographers describe the future American president being a young child in a place where rivers were choked with corpses and soldiers marched prisoners through the streets. Then, casually, they conclude that his time in Indonesia was idyllic and warm, and Jakarta was the place where this wonderfully decent future leader learned the gentle values of civic engagement and democratic pluralism.

See also this example, from back in the days when I didn’t have many subscribers, discussing an op-ed piece that described the Freedom Convoy as a movement of anti-government radicals who wanted to live in a society with no rules at all and marched on Ottawa behind the banner of authoritarianism to implement their fascist agenda.

Over and over again, reading the “news” that these people write, you catch yourself muttering but you JUST SAID

Fact claims don’t add up, categories clash, paragraphs self-refute, sentences start out insistently claiming X and then wander into a firm insistence upon Not X before the period arrives at the end. The great complex of global news and politics has the internal consistency and logic of the day ward at a mental hospital.

Last night we seem to have suddenly turned the knob on that machine up to eleven, BECAUSE HITLER IS IN MOSCOW TO DO AN INTERVIEW. The people who are proud that we’re fighting authoritarianism by arresting the leading figure of the political opposition and throwing him off the ballot are also very angry that Tucker Carlson is interviewing an autocrat, and they hate autocracy, so Tucker Carlson must be arrested and bankrupted and barred from returning to the United States, to stand up to authoritarianism. I had a moment last night when I sincerely wondered about the wisdom of paying attention, because the experience of hearing from The Responsible People™ became painfully hallucinatory.

The officials at the EU get to decide who counts as a real journalist and who gets ruined, to protect democracy. Ukraine is the brave and incorruptible vanguard of ideal democracy, by the way, and so pure it floats, like an ad for soap. Nothing bad has ever happened there, you Nazi, but now Satan Putin’s vampire fangs drip with innocent blood, and there’s absolutely nothing else to say about it, send cash.

Watching people like Bill Kristol and David Frum comment on real-world events now is like watching a homeless drug addict having a psychotic break at a bus shelter. The connection between fact and interpretation has become painfully severed. A whole layer of allegedly high-status people have gone barking mad. We need to arrest everyone who disagrees with us about politics or else we’re going to lose our system of open society to authoritarianism, and you really ought to smoke some of whatever we have inside this glass pipe.

September 18, 2023

BM59: The Italian M14

Filed under: History, Italy, Military, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 25 Oct 2017

After World War Two, both the Beretta and Breda companies in Italy began manufacturing M1 Garand rifles. When Italy decided that they wanted a more modern selective-fire, magazine-fed rifle, they chose to adapt the M1 Garand to that end rather than develop a brand new rifle. Two Beretta engineers, Vittorio Valle and Domenico Salza, began work in 1957 on what would become the BM-59. Prototypes were ready in 1959, trials were run in 1960, and by 1962 the new weapon was in Italian military hands.

The BM59 is basically an M1 Garand action and fire control system, but modernized. The caliber was changed to 7.62mm NATO, and the barrel shortened to 19.3 inches. A simple but effective selective fire system was added to the fire control mechanism, and the en bloc clips replaced with a 20-round box magazine (and stripper clip loading guide to match). A folding integral bipod was added to allow the rifle to be used for supporting fire on full auto, and a long muzzle device was added along with a gas cutoff and grenade launching sight to allow the use of NATO standard 22mm rifle grenades.

In this form, the BM59 was a relative quickly developed and quite successful and well-liked rifle. In addition to the Italian military, it was purchased by Argentina, Algeria, Nigeria, and Indonesia. A semiautomatic version was made for the US commercial market and designated the BM62, and a small number of fully automatic BM-59 rifles — like the one in this video — were imported into the US before the 1968 Gun Control Act cut off importation of foreign machine guns.
(more…)

August 27, 2023

6 Strange Facts About the Cold War

Decades
Published 27 Jul 2022

Welcome to our history channel, run by those with a real passion for history & that’s about it. In today’s video, we will be exploring 6 odd Cold War facts.
(more…)

August 15, 2023

History must be forced to fit the narrative

Filed under: Books, History, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Bray revisits an older article from the Obama years:

President Barack Obama and Aung San Suu Kyi in 2014.
Photo via Wikimedia Commons

There is no question that authoritarianism is descending on the United States of America, quickly. There is also no question where it’s coming from, as you quickly learn from the current social media musings of the most wonderfully progressive people. Trump must be silenced NOW! Why is the authoritarian being ALLOWED TO SPEAK? Ruth Ben-Ghiat, please call your office.

How have we gotten here?

I’ve mentioned before a looooong essay I wrote, more than ten years ago, about the cottage industry in Barack Obama hagiographies. Obama’s fellatiographers noted, for example, that Obama’s stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, had been ordered back to Indonesia in 1966, and that photos of him from that time show him in the uniform of the Indonesian army. They also mention, with remarkably disingenuous vagueness, that there was maybe some political trouble going on in Indonesia while Obama was there as a child and his stepdad was a soldier.

But what was happening in the mid-1960s in Indonesia is that the Indonesian Communist Party tried to restructure Sukarno’s careful balancing of competing forces in the new country with the kidnapping and killing of a group of right-wing flag officers by leftist soldiers, beheading conservative military power — after which the military responded with the wholesale killing of hundreds of thousands of communists, often with machetes and with a serious commitment to doing the job as grimly as possible: bodies in rivers, heads on pikes, slow killing in front of mass graves. Here’s my last paragraph from that section on the Obama biographies:

    And the lesson? Indonesia was where “Ann was Barry’s teacher in high-minded matters—liberal, humanist values”, Remnick concludes. It’s where she taught him the values of “honesty, hard work, and fulfilling one’s duty to others”, where she lectured him about “a sense of obligation to give something back”, Scott adds. It’s where she “worked to instill ideas about public service in her son”. Because Indonesia in the late sixties was the perfect place and time to learn about liberal humanist values and public service.

Barack Obama was a Democrat who attained the presidency, which means that journalists knew he had to be a sainted figure, and he was the first black president, which means that journalists knew he had to be brilliant and extraordinary. So they assembled the threads of his story — Barack Obama went to Indonesia in 1966 with his stepfather, a soldier, during a long period of extraordinarily brutal political retribution by the Indonesian army — and then, pro forma, wove those threads into the foundation of “liberal, humanistic values”.

If Barack Obama had spent his childhood torturing kittens to death and eating their eyeballs in front of a sobbing crowd of kitten-loving toddlers, the Obama biographies would have said that Barack Obama spent his childhood torturing kittens to death and eating their eyeballs in front of a sobbing crowd of kitten-loving toddlers, a heartwarming experience that taught him the value of democratic pluralism and fundamental human decency. The story was written before anyone began working on it: Barack Obama [experience TBD] and [experience TBD], the formative experiences that made him the kind and wonderful genius he is today.

See also this recent discussion with David Garrow, a historian who has written a new (corrected: published a post-Obama-presidency) biography — and who found, as he researched his subject, that he was often looking at evidence no one had ever pursued before. The hagiographers of the Obama presidency-era weren’t looking for evidence; they already knew the story they meant to write. They came up with some evidence-simulating objects for form’s sake, to assemble their liturgy in the apparent form of biography. Their “Barack Obama” was never Barack Obama.

Their “Donald Trump” is not, now, Donald Trump. There’s a formula; they apply it. There’s a narrative to be written. Donald Trump said he would repeal two federal regulations for every new regulation he implemented — textbook authoritarianism! Donald Trump said that America has fought a bunch of “dumb wars”, and should be much more careful about foreign military involvement — JUST LIKE ADOLF HITLER!!!!!!

It’s beside the point to note that the conclusions never matched the evidence. They were never meant to.

This is crazymaking behavior. Constantly spinning narratives that have nothing to do with anything in the actual, physical world is a recipe for a psychotic break. And we have multiple layers of institutional actors who cosplay “elite” — in media, in academia, in government, and in corporations — who’ve been playing with their shadow puppets for so long that they’ve forgotten they’re shadow puppets. They believe themselves.

That’s how you get to we need a single-party ballot to prevent authoritarianism and we have to arrest the opposition leader to prevent authoritarianism. It’s socially distributed insanity, a real descent into the world of false symbols. And it’s becoming incredibly dangerous.

November 19, 2022

“But actually, vat ve haf to confront is ze deep, systemic, and structural restructuring of our world”

Because, as Chris Bray points out, there’s no point in restructuring the non-structural structures or something…

The G20 leaders flew to Bali this week to cosplay social repulsiveness and to hear from Klaus Schwab, who has no government position or formal place in the G20, making the G20 gathering a kind of executive committee meeting for something that rhymes with “Morld Meconomic Morum”.

The terrifyingly vacuous Bond villain said that ve must fundamentally restructure ze vorld, flattering the geniuses like Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden who will now use their personal wisdom and strength to do the restructuring.

(That’s an excerpt — the whole thing is here, if you want to punish your mind.)

There’s so much to love in this babbling, starting with the fact that the wealthiest and most powerful nations in the world can’t manage to deliver decent audio. But listen to what the man says:

1.) Looking out into an audience of the world’s major national leaders, he says that we face a global “multi-crisis”, made up of “economic, political, social, and ecological, and institutional crisis”.

Accepting the premise for the sake of argument, who caused all that crisis? Hello, leaders of the ruined world, I honor your wisdom and clarity, and turn to you to fix your broken countries that you’ve been leading.

2.) “But actually, vat ve haf to confront is ze deep, systemic, and structural restructuring of our world. Und zis vill take some time! Und ze vorld vill look differently, after ve haf gone through zis transition process.”

This is all of Klaus Schwab in three sentences: We must do structural restructuring, see, not non-structural restructuring. And after we have completely, deeply, systematically restructured literally everything in the entire world, the world will look — wait for this, because this is insight from the most renowned of all the experts, a deep mind who you may struggle to follow — different. Yes, changing things a lot makes them not be the same. Und zis is vy Klaus Schwab receives ze big bucks! You and I could not think at this level! Stand at attention!

3.) “Politically, the driving forces for this political transformation, of course, is the transition into a multipolar world, which has a tendency to make our world much more fragmented.”

Political fragmentation, then — the transition into multipolarity — causes fragmentation. The fragmentation into multipolarity makes the world fragmented, thereby, you see, fragmenting it. Careful, Klaus, you’ll accidentally write a whole Thomas Friedman column with your mouth.

The man is like a novelty gift with a pop-up clown inside it: You press the button, and it makes nonsensical streams of word-sounds. Fortunately, however, Klaus was speaking to an audience of Joe Biden, so I’m sure it sounded deep in the room.

October 10, 2022

Look at Life — Trouble Shooters (1964)

Filed under: Asia, Britain, History, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

PauliosVids
Published 20 Nov 2018

From the comments:

David Mills
1 year ago
We never wore berets but jungle hats. This is an honest attempt to illustrate their role but so obviously, painfully stage managed. In reality, it was a hot, sweaty, stinking environment with constant tensions. Contacts were few and far between. Going into the IBAN long houses and chatting with the headman (Kampong Ketua) was fascinating, useful and, for the short period, relaxing. Between June 1965 and Aug 1982 I had four tours in the area. Learning Malay was essential and welcomed by the indigenous population.

Iolis
1 year ago
The late Paddy Ashdown at 6.36. Later in life he would becone leader of Britain’s Liberal Democrat Party. He sadly died on 22 December 2018.

(more…)

September 16, 2022

Look at Life — East of Suez (1966)

Filed under: Asia, Britain, History, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

PauliosVids
Published 20 Nov 2018

More than 50,000 British soldiers, sailors and airmen police the rivers and jungles of Borneo.

(more…)

April 12, 2022

Last War Patrol of HMS Terrapin

Filed under: Britain, History, Japan, Military, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

The History Guy: History Deserves to be Remembered
Published April 11, 2022

On her seventh war patrol, in the south Java Sea, the T class British submarine HMS Terrapin and her crew had faced the terror of battle and barely survived. Badly damaged and far from home, sometimes the drama of war is not just in the battle, but in the voyage home.

Check out our new community for fans and supporters! https://thehistoryguyguild.locals.com/

This is original content based on research by The History Guy. Images in the Public Domain are carefully selected and provide illustration. As very few images of the actual event are available in the Public Domain, images of similar objects and events are used for illustration.

You can purchase the bow tie worn in this episode at The Tie Bar:
https://www.thetiebar.com/?utm_campaign=BowtieLove&utm_medium=YouTube&utm_source=LanceGeiger

All events are portrayed in historical context and for educational purposes. No images or content are primarily intended to shock and disgust. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Non censuram.

Find The History Guy at:
New community!: https://thehistoryguyguild.locals.com/
Please send suggestions for future episodes: Suggestions@TheHistoryGuy.net

The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered is the place to find short snippets of forgotten history from five to fifteen minutes long. If you like history too, this is the channel for you.

Awesome The History Guy merchandise is available at:
https://teespring.com/stores/the-history-guy

Script by THG

#history #thehistoryguy #WWII

Experimental video embed from Rumble.com. Please let me know if you have problems viewing this video.

March 15, 2022

FN FNC: The Belgian 5.56mm NATO Carbine

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 12 Nov 2021

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

https://www.floatplane.com/channel/Fo…

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.forgottenweapons.com

The FNC (Fabrique Nationale Carabine) was FN’s followup to the unsuccessful CAL rifle. Chambered for the newly-adopted 5.56mm NATO cartridge, the FNC uses a long stroke gas piston system very reminiscent of the AK, combined with a stamped upper and milled aluminum lower. After about 5 years of development, the FNC was put on the market in 1980, and was quickly purchased by Indonesia, along with a license for domestic production as the Pindad SS-1. It would also be adopted by Sweden as the AK-5 (minus the 3-round burst functionality) and Belgium. About 6,000 semiautomatic sporting models were imported into the US. A number of those, including this one, were legally registered as transferrable machine guns before 1986.

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle 36270
Tucson, AZ 85740

March 6, 2022

Lugers for the Dutch East Indies Army

Forgotten Weapons
Published 3 Nov 2021

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

https://www.floatplane.com/channel/Fo…

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.forgottenweapons.com

Note: When I say the double magazine pouch is unique for this model, I was not thinking about those issued with LP-08 Artillery Lugers.

While the Dutch Army dithered over new pistol adoption, the Dutch East Indies Army (KNIL) took more decisive action and adopted the Luger as the M11 in 1911 after a few years of testing. They ordered the first batch of 4,181 from DWM in the years before World War One. After the Treaty of Versailles, German companies were barred from military production, and so the KNIL bought a batch of 6,000 Lugers from the Vickers company in the UK. These were still insufficient for the force, and in 1928 they ordered one final batch of guns.

This final batch was made by DWM. The Allied Control Commission ceased operation in 1927 and left Germany, and DWM almost immediately resumer Luger production. This final batch consisted of 3,828 more M11 pattern pistols. All three batches were in a single serial number range, starting at 1 and running to 14020. They were chambered for the 9x19mm Parabellum cartridge, with 4 inch (100mm) barrels. Unit marks were engraved originally on the back of the frame, but in 1919 this was replaced with the use of a small brass plaque on the trigger guard. A plaque on the left side of the frame was introduced for unit marks in 1939, as seen on this example.

We also have an original KNIL M11 holster and double magazine pouch to take a look at — accessories that are extremely rare today.

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle 36270
Tucson, AZ 85740

February 26, 2022

QotD: Taste in decoration

Filed under: Architecture, Humour, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The villa itself is beautiful, a tasteful combination of traditional Javanese and Balinese influences with a secluded pool and tropical garden. The architect should be commended. The decorators, however, should be fed to wild pigs. To call the interior “kitsch” is to be too kind. Gilt framed mirrors compete with gilt framed pictures and massive gilt encrusted chandeliers. Understatement and elegance are in short supply. Indeed, they’ve fled the premises in horror. Vulgar tchotkies, however, abound. A life size porcelain tiger crouches in the entry way. Cherubs peer down from walls and [the owner is] a Muslim for christsake.

It’s as if a Las Vegas wedding chapel designer had been abducted, brought to Indonesia, and forced, at gun-point, to lower his standards. One half-waits for the Elvis impersonator to come down the staircase.

Conrad, “The Long Weekend”, The Gweilo Diaries, 2004-09-28

October 27, 2021

Looting WW2 Java Sea Wrecks – “The Biggest Grave Robbery in History”

Filed under: Asia, Australia, Britain, History, Japan, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Historigraph
Published 26 Oct 2021

Support on Patreon to help keep the videos coming https://www.patreon.com/historigraph
Come join the historigraph discord: https://discord.gg/cjTaHFNAjS
Buy Historigraph Posters here! historigraph.creator-spring.com

Follow me on Twitch for upcoming livestreams! https://www.twitch.tv/historigraph

► Second Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpIj…
► Twitter: https://twitter.com/historigraph
► Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/historigraph

Sources:

[A] Mediacorp documentary on the salvaging: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9iRR…
[B] Footage of the wreck of Prince of Wales, by Nigel Sinclair – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YD96F…
[C] Footage of the wreck of Repulse, by Clayton Neilson – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3U_e…

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia…
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/201…
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/201…
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-…
[5] https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitst…
[6] https://www.reclamet.co.uk/scrap-meta…
[7] https://www.nst.com.my/news/2015/10/n…
[8] https://www.maritime-executive.com/ar…

September 18, 2021

What if Pearl Harbor Never Happened, Life in Cyprus, and Peasant Armies of China – WW2 – OOTF 024

Filed under: China, Europe, Greece, History, Japan, Middle East, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

World War Two
Published 17 Sep 2021

Ever wonder what would have happened if Japan just never attacked Pearl Harbor but invaded the Indies anyway? Or how the people of Cyprus are faring in the war? Or if the Chinese armies had any specialized combat forces? Find out in this Out of the Foxholes!
(more…)

August 9, 2021

1815 Eruption of Mount Tambora

The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered
Published 6 May 2020

In 1815, the volcano Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa in the Dutch East Indies erupted in the most explosive volcanic eruption in human history. The explosion affected the world’s climate, changing history in surprising ways. The History Guy recalls the forgotten history of the year without a summer.

This is original content based on research by The History Guy. Images in the Public Domain are carefully selected and provide illustration. As very few images of the actual event are available in the Public Domain, images of similar objects and events are used for illustration.

You can purchase the “offshore” bow tie worn in this episode at The Tie Bar:
https://www.thetiebar.com/?utm_campai…​

All events are portrayed in historical context and for educational purposes. No images or content are primarily intended to shock and disgust. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Non censuram.

Find The History Guy at:

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TheHistoryGuy​

The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered is the place to find short snippets of forgotten history from five to fifteen minutes long. If you like history too, this is the channel for you.

Awesome The History Guy merchandise is available at:
teespring.com/stores/the-history-guy​

Script by THG

#volcano​ #thehistoryguy​ #history

From the comments:

The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered
11 months ago
A viewer complained that much of the footage of volcanoes were volcanoes dissimilar to Tambora. Notably, Tambora is a stratovolcano. Lava from stratovolcano eruptions tends to be very viscous and cools quickly, whereas much of the footage in the episode is from shield volcanos in Hawaii, which produce free-flowing lava. Please understand that I can only use media in the Public Domain. I did not mean to misinform the audience by using the available footage and photographs.

May 14, 2021

100,000 Dead British Subjects in Burma – WAH 034 – May 1942, Pt. 1

Filed under: Asia, Britain, Europe, Germany, History, Japan, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 13 May 2021

A large number of European and asian inhabitants of South-East Asia are locked up in Japanese prison camps, while in Burma, a big refugee crisis claims the lives of thousands. In Auschwitz-Birkenau and Sobibor, gassing Jews on an immense scale begins.
(more…)

Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress