World War Two
Published on 6 Oct 2018In the West, the sun sets on Poland as the last forces surrender, but her defenders are already regrouping abroad. In the East, the sun rises on China as Japan meets yet another defeat.
Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tvWritten and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Produced and Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Ben Ollerenshaw & Spartacus Olsson
Trainee Editors: Sarvesh and Ben Ollerenshaw
Colorized Pictures by Spartacus OlssonColorized pictures by:
Mikołaj Kaczmarek – Kolor Historii https://www.facebook.com/KolorHistorii/
Olga Shirnina – Klimbim https://klimbim2014.wordpress.com
NormanStewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/
Spartacus OlssonArchive by Screenocean/Reuters http://www.screenocean.com
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH
October 7, 2018
Poland Falls and China Rises – WW2 – 006 October 6 1939
A measurable positive from the USMCA process
Michael Geist points out that one of the aspects of the son-of-NAFTA deal will be to help Canadians exercise their freedom of speech online by providing a “Safe Harbour” provision similar to the one that US law provides:
Internet free speech is not typically an issue associated with trade agreements, but a somewhat overlooked provision in the newly-minted U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) promises to safeguard freedom of expression by encouraging Internet companies to resist pressure to remove content. My Policy Options op-ed notes the USMCA’s Internet safe harbour rule – modelled on U.S. law – remedies a longstanding problem in Canada that left large Internet platforms reluctant to leave third party content such as product reviews, blog posts, and social media commentary online in the face of unsubstantiated complaints.
Once implemented, Internet companies will benefit from assurances they will not face liability for failing to take down third party content or for proactively taking action against content considered harmful or objectionable. While the safe harbour provision does not apply to intellectual property, when combined with the preservation in the deal of the USMCA protects Canada’s notice-and-notice system for copyright, whereby rights holders can file complaints over alleged infringements but there is no takedown procedure for the removal of content. Taken together, the Canadian legal framework will encourage free speech, largely looking to court orders for mandated takedowns of content or good faith efforts by platforms to address harmful content.
The absence of a Canadian safe harbour rule has meant the same companies that require court orders prior to the removal of content for claims originating in the U.S., frequently take down lawful content in Canada based on mere unproven allegations due to fears of legal liability. Further, the absence of safe harbour protections creates a disincentive for both new and established services to use Canada to store data or maintain a local presence.
The Internet safe harbour approach originates from the earliest days of the commercial Internet. In 1996, the United States enacted the Communications Decency Act, legislation designed to address two emerging concerns: the online availability of obscene materials and the liability of Internet services for hosting third party content. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the obscenity provisions on constitutional grounds, but the safe harbour remained intact and quickly emerged as a cornerstone of U.S. Internet policy.
Paul Sellers | How to sharpen a handplane
Paul Sellers
Published on 7 Feb 2012Paul Sellers demonstrates how to sharpen a plane on diamond stones using a convex bevel method. To find out more about Paul Sellers or the projects he is involved with visit http://paulsellers.com.
QotD: Hitler’s over-arching “grand strategy”
… on the internal evidence of Mein Kampf, it is difficult to believe that any real change has taken place in Hitler’s aims and opinions. When one compares his utterances of a year or so ago with those made fifteen years earlier, a thing that strikes one is the rigidity of his mind, the way in which his world-view doesn’t develop. It is the fixed vision of a monomaniac and not likely to be much affected by the temporary manoeuvres of power politics. Probably, in Hitler’s own mind, the Russo-German Pact represents no more than an alteration of time-table. The plan laid down in Mein Kampf was to smash Russia first, with the implied intention of smashing England afterwards. Now, as it has turned out, England has got to be dealt with first, because Russia was the more easily bribed of the two. But Russia’s turn will come when England is out of the picture — that, no doubt, is how Hitler sees it. Whether it will turn out that way is of course a different question.
Suppose that Hitler’s programme could be put into effect. What he envisages, a hundred years hence, is a continuous state of 250 million Germans with plenty of “living room” (i.e. stretching to Afghanistan or thereabouts), a horrible brainless empire in which, essentially, nothing ever happens except the training of young men for war and the endless breeding of fresh cannon-fodder. How was it that he was able to put this monstrous vision across? It is easy to say that at one stage of his career he was financed by the heavy industrialists, who saw in him the man who would smash the Socialists and Communists. They would not have backed him, however, if he had not talked a great movement into existence already. Again, the situation in Germany, with its seven million unemployed, was obviously favourable for demagogues. But Hitler could not have succeeded against his many rivals if it had not been for the attraction of his own personality, which one can feel even in the clumsy writing of Mein Kampf, and which is no doubt overwhelming when one hears his speeches …. The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. One feels it again when one sees his photographs — and I recommend especially the photograph at the beginning of Hurst and Blackett’s edition, which shows Hitler in his early Brownshirt days. It is a pathetic, dog-like face, the face of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs. In a rather more manly way it reproduces the expression of innumerable pictures of Christ crucified, and there is little doubt that that is how Hitler sees himself. The initial, personal cause of his grievance against the universe can only be guessed at; but at any rate the grievance is here. He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon. One feels, as with Napoleon, that he is fighting against destiny, that he can’t win, and yet that he somehow deserves to. The attraction of such a pose is of course enormous; half the films that one sees turn upon some such theme.
George Orwell, “Review of Mein Kampf” by Adolf Hitler”, 1940.
October 6, 2018
Development of the Panzer Arm to 1939
The_Chieftain
Published on 28 Sep 2018Synchronising in with the World War Two channel as they go over the German invasion of Poland, a discussion of how the Germans went from “Bad Germans, no tanks!” to “What hit us?” in the period between 1918 and 1939.
The written article on Panzerjager referenced: https://worldoftanks.com/en/news/chie…
To be clear, Wargaming/WoT is not involved in this video, I just mention them for background.
Selected sources:
The Challenge of Change: Winton & Mets (Chapter by Corum)
Storm of Steel: Habeck
Frieser: The Blitzkrieg Legend
Panzer Tracts: Jentz & Doyle
Interview with Panzermuseum Director Raths. (Upcoming video)
The Tank That Time Forgot – Vimoutiers Tiger
Mark Felton Productions
Published on 14 Sep 2018A video for all big cat lovers – the interesting story of Tiger 231, the Vimoutiers Tiger. Left behind in France by the retreating Germans in August 1944, this rare beast has had fascinating life. Discover the story here.
QotD: Macroeconomics
[I]t’s not too much to say that macroeconomics in the Samuelsonian-Keynesian mode abstracts away from most of what is essential in economics. Market processes and entrepreneurial searches for profit; specialization; the complementarity of different capital goods with each other and with labor; the role of relative prices; the reality and importance of institutions; the reality and importance of the fact that politicians are relatively uninformed and self-interested agents. These important aspects of economic and social reality are either ignored or treated haphazardly in too much of what is called “macroeconomics.”
Don Boudreaux, “Quotation of the Day…”, Café Hayek, 2016-11-05.
October 5, 2018
When the marketing department took over tool sales
Paul Sellers was standing in line at one of his local big box store (in my part of North America, it’d be a Home Depot or Lowes), and he happened to glance at some of the packaging for otherwise pretty ordinary tools:
I’m never sure when it started, a point where you could no longer determine what something is by its name. A form of sensationalism was somehow loosed and we lost sincerity to titles declaring ‘not ordinary’ that hid what was, when all said and done, intrinsically quite the ordinary. All the handsaw makers followed suit latterly with model names like piranha, sabretooth and barracuda. Then they backed up claims with reference terms such as, “Using a handsaw impacts on all the muscles and joints in your arm. The ERGO™ handle is designed with users, tasks and environments in mind to make the job…” blah, blah, blah! The truth is that saw makers of the 18th century put far more effort into the development of ergonomic design of saw handles than any modern maker and all modern makers either copied what existed or dumbed down the designs to come up with the most basic one-size fits all design.
Photo by Paul Sellers
In reality of course nothing’s really changed except that the handles are pre moulded plastic and the teeth cannot be sharpened any more. I was in my local builders merchants waiting to pay and stood staring at the signage of the two nearest products facing me. Whereas these stab saws and jab saws convey a sense of brutalising aggression, it’s the marketer that suggests that this is what the buyer needs. Aggressive marketers think that that is indeed what the user wants, a kind of macho-man aggression to his work. The packaging has changed to use brighter hi-viz lines, letters and numbers with rip tares and wild hogs with tusks as the marketers way of connecting the would-be user to a sale of his products. Imagine, even a common degreasing agent remains the same as it was ten years ago is packed and wrapped with a punchy headline header, “Cleans like crazy!”, too, but why the wild ‘Mad Hog’ title replete with tusks? Reminds me of the Arkansas Razorback football team. What they don’t probably realise is that they would have sold as well without it. I guess they thought that they had that insider knowledge of what the trades people needed, right?
My suspicion is that there are really two distinct markets for tools and tool-related products like these. The first, and more stable market is the trades, where the demand is probably pretty steady and unlikely to shift much no matter what the marketers put on the packages. Tradespeople generally like to use known brands that they can depend on for consistent value at a given price point. These folks aren’t the target for all the marketing flash and bumf — they’ll keep buying the “Old Reliable™” brand until/unless they sell the brand to a cheaper manufacturer and the quality of the end product starts to slip. The target instead is … you. You, the non-regular user of “jab saws” or “stab saws” or even degreasing agents. You probably don’t have much recent experience with any of the current brands of tools, so you’re significantly more likely to be swayed by how the tools and materials are marketed. You’re the sucker who (they hope) will fall for the bright colours, eye-catching packaging, and mucho-macho descriptions.
And they wouldn’t keep doing it if it didn’t work.
Germany’s Reckoning – Bulgarian Armistice I THE GREAT WAR Week 219
The Great War
Published on 4 Oct 2018The 14 Points: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourtee…
While Bulgaria signs the Armistice of Salonika and effectively exits the war as the first of the Central Powers, the Hindenburg Line is broken on the Western Front. It dawns among the German leadership, that an armistice is necessary and in a desperate attempt to secure a more favourable position at the negotiations table, the Kaiser agrees to a “revolution from the top” that gives more political say to the Reichstag.
A quick way for Doug Ford to reduce Ontario’s electrical rates
Ross McKitrick, Elmira Aliakbari and Ashley Stedman outline one of the fastest ways for the Ontario government to get Ontario electricity rates back down toward the national average:
The Ford government seems to want to repair Ontario’s electricity market. It recently moved to scrap the Green Energy Act and reportedly plans to eliminate or alter the so-called Fair Hydro Plan.
While these moves will mitigate future price increases, they won’t reduce current electricity prices. In fact, according to a Fraser Institute study being released today, to lower existing prices the government must reduce what’s known as the “Global Adjustment” — an extra charge on electricity. It won’t be easy, but reducing the global adjustment could bring down electricity prices by about 24 per cent.
This would be welcome news for Ontarians, as electricity prices increased 71 per cent from 2008 to 2016, far outpacing electricity-price growth in other provinces.
[…]
Between 2008 and 2017, the GA grew from less than one cent per kilowatt-hour (a common billing unit for energy) to about 10 cents, accounting for the entire increase in Ontario electricity commodity costs over that time. Therefore, the key to lowering power prices in Ontario is to reduce the GA.
In our study, we use reports published by the Ontario Energy Board to breakdown the GA to better understand where the money goes and provide specific recommendations on how to lower electricity prices. We found that the largest component of the GA charge — nearly 40 per cent — funds subsidies paid to renewable energy sources (wind, solar, etc.) under feed-in-tariff contracts, yet these sources only provide seven per cent of Ontario’s power output.
And notably, the GA provides almost 90 per cent of revenue earned by renewable generators, with only 10 per cent coming from actual power sales. This overwhelming reliance on government subsidies (paid by ratepayers) rather than actual electricity sales reveals how distorted the pricing structure has become in Ontario.
Know Your Ship #50 – C and D Class Destroyers – HMS Crescent & Diana, HMCS Fraser & Margaree
iChaseGaming
Published on 10 Sep 2018A Know Your Ship episode talking about C & D class destroyers, in particular HMS Crescent and Diana and their later service as part of the Royal Canadian Navy HMCS Fraser and Margaree. Enjoy!
QotD: Thomas Jefferson, Epicurean
As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us. Epictetus indeed, has given us what was good of the stoics; all beyond, of their dogmas, being hypocrisy and grimace. Their great crime was in their calumnies of Epicurus and misrepresentations of his doctrines; in which we lament to see the candid character of Cicero engaging as an accomplice. Diffuse, vapid, rhetorical, but enchanting. His prototype Plato, eloquent as himself, dealing out mysticisms incomprehensible to the human mind, has been deified by certain sects usurping the name of Christians; because, in his foggy conceptions, they found a basis of impenetrable darkness whereon to rear fabrications as delirious, of their own invention. These they fathered blasphemously on him who they claimed as their founder, but who would disclaim them with the indignation which their caricatures of his religion so justly excite. Of Socrates we have nothing genuine but in the Memorabilia of Xenophon; for Plato makes him one of his Collocutors merely to cover his own whimsies under the mantle of his name; a liberty of which we are told Socrates himself complained. Seneca is indeed a fine moralist, disguising his work at times with some Stoicisms, and affecting too much of antithesis and point, yet giving us on the whole a great deal of sound and practical morality. But the greatest of all the reformers of the depraved religion of his own country, was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from the dross of his biographers, and as separable from that as the diamond from the dunghill, we have the outlines of a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man; outlines which it is lamentable he did not live to fill up. Epictetus and Epicurus give laws for governing ourselves, Jesus a supplement of the duties and charities we owe to others. The establishment of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent moralist, and the rescuing it form the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from artificial systems, **** invented by ultra-Christian sects, and unauthorized by a single word ever uttered by him, is a most desirable object, and one to which Priestley has successfully devoted his labors and learning. It would in time, it is to be hoped, effect a quiet euthanasia of the heresies of bigotry and fanaticism which have so long triumphed over human reason, and so generally and deeply afflicted mankind; but this work is to be begun by winnowing the grain form the chaff of the historians of his life. I have sometimes thought of translating Epictetus (for he has never been tolerably translated into English) by adding the genuine doctrines of Epicurus from the Syntagma of Gassendi, and an abstract from the Evangelists of whatever has the stamp of the eloquence and fine imagination of Jesus. The last I attempted too hastily some twelve or fifteen years ago. It was the work of two or three nights only, at Washington, after getting through the evening task of reading the letters and papers of the day. But with one foot in the grave, these are now idle projects for me. My business is to beguile the wearisomeness of declining life, as I endeavor to do, by the delights of classical reading and of mathematical truths, and by the consolations of a sound philosophy, equally indifferent to hope and fear.
I take the liberty of observing that you are not a true disciple of our master Epicurus, in indulging the indolence to which you say you are yielding. One of his canons, you know, was that “that indulgence which prevents a greater pleasure, or produces a greater pain, is to be avoided.” Your love of repose will lead, in its progress, to a suspension of healthy exercise, a relaxation of mind, an indifference to everything around you, and finally to a debility of body, and hebetude of mind, the farthest of all things from the happiness which the well-regulated indulgences of Epicurus ensure; fortitude, you know is one of his four cardinal virtues. That teaches us to meet and surmount difficulties; not to fly from them, like cowards; and to fly, too, in vain, for they will meet and arrest us at every turn of our road. Weigh this matter well; brace yourself up; take a seat with Correa, and come and see the finest portion of your country, which, if you have not forgotten, you still do not know, because it is no longer the same as when you knew it. It will add much to the happiness of my recovery to be able to receive Correa and yourself, and prove the estimation in which I hold you both. Come, too, sand see your incipient University, which has advanced with great activity this year. By the end of the next, we shall have elegant accommodations for seven professors, and the year following the professors themselves. No secondary character will be received among them. Either the ablest which America or Europe can furnish, or none at all. They will give us the selected society of a great city separated from the dissipations and levities of its ephemeral insects.
I am glad the bust of Condorcet has been saved and so well placed. His genius should be before us; while the lamentable, but singular act of ingratitude which tarnished his latter days, may be thrown behind us.
I will place under this a syllabus of the doctrines of Epicurus, somewhat in the lapidary style, which I wrote some twenty years ago; a like one of the philosophy of Jesus of nearly the same age, is too long to be copied. Vale, et tibi persuade carissimum te esse mihi.
**** e. g. The immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of Hierarchy, &c.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Short, 1819-10-31.
Syllabus of the doctrines of Epicurus
Physical
The Universe eternal.
Its parts, great and small, interchangeable
Matter and Void alone.
Motion inherent in matter, which is weighty & declining
eternal circulation of the elements of bodies.
Gods, an order of beings next superior to man.
enjoying in their sphere their own felicities,
but not meddling with the concerns of the scale of beings below them
Moral
Happiness the aim of life
Virtue the foundation of happiness
Utility the test of virtue.
Pleasure active and in-dolent.
In-dolence is the absence of pain, the true felicity
Active, consists in agreeable motion
it is not happiness, but the means to produce it.
thus the absence of hunger is an article of felicity; eating the means to produce it.
The summum bonum is to be not pained in body, nor troubled in mind
i.e. In-dolence of body, tranquility of mind.
to procure tranquility of mind we must avoid desire & fear, the two
principal diseases of the mind.
Man is a free agent.
Virtue consists in: 1. Prudence 2. Temperance 3. Fortitude 4. Justice
to which are opposed: 1. Folly 2. Desire 3. Fear 4. Deceit
October 4, 2018
The True Frontier – Cordwainer Smith – Extra Sci Fi
Extra Credits
Published on 2 Oct 2018The godson of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, Paul Linebarger led an exciting life of unusual achievements well before he got into writing science fiction — including setting up one of the United States’ first psychological warfare units. Under his pen name, he wrote the trend-bucking work Scanners Live in Vain.
Vikings at the quarter-season mark – Drink the purple Kool-Aid or burn it all down?
It’s been a disappointing start to the NFL season for Minnesota Vikings fans, with a merely adequate performance against the 49ers and a tie at Green Bay followed by the “what the hell just happened” home loss against Buffalo and then a short week to travel to L.A. to fall just short against the Rams. One of the team’s emotional leaders is away from the field dealing with mental health concerns, second-year running back Dalvin Cook still isn’t healthy enough to play a full game, and last year’s number one defensive unit is playing like they’re not really sure what they’re supposed to be doing on the field. If you go full-on pessimist, as Dan Persons writes, the season might as well be over:
Prairie Gun Works Timberwolf: British Trials Sniper Rifle
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 26 Sep 2017Armament Research Services (ARES) is a specialist technical intelligence consultancy, offering expertise and analysis to a range of government and non-government entities in the arms and munitions field. For detailed photos of the guns in this video, don’t miss the ARES companion blog post:
http://armamentresearch.com/north-ame…
The Timberwolf is a bolt action precision rifle made by Prairie Gun Works of Manitoba, Canada. It was initially made as a commercial rifle in a number of different calibers, and in 2001 it won Canadian trials to become the C14 Timberwolf Medium Range Sniper Weapon System (replacing the C3A1 Parker-Hale 7.62 NATO rifle previously used in that role).
The Timberwolf was also tested by the British military, and the one we have in today’s video (courtesy of the Shrivenham Defense Academy) is serial number UK001; the British trials rifle. It was not adopted, and the British opted to continue using Accuracy International bolt action rifles for its snipers.
In both the Canadian issue configuration and the British trials version, the rifle is chambered for the .338 Lapua Magnum cartridge, allowing a longer supersonic range than 7.62mm NATO.
http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow
