Quotulatiousness

January 17, 2020

Zionism, Arabism & Colonialism in the Middle East | BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1936 Part 1 of 3

Filed under: Britain, France, History, Middle East, Military — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

TimeGhost History
Published 16 Jan 2020

After more than twenty years of colonial management, promises made but few promises kept and ethnic & cultural clashes in the area, unrest in the Middle East erupts in violence. A series of movements originate in this time, with long lasting consequences.

Watch our episode about the Middle east in the 1920s here: https://youtu.be/y6tSvRbvh2s

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Joram Appel
Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Joram Appel
Fact-Checking by: Jonas Srouji
Edited by: Daniel Weiss
Sound design: Marek Kaminski

Sources:
Arab by LINECTOR from the Noun Project
Bomb by P Thanga Vignesh from the Noun Project

Colorizations by:
– Dememorabilia – https://www.instagram.com/dememorabilia/
– Adrien.Colorisation – https://instagram.com/adrien.colorisa…
– Norman Stewart

Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
– “Dawn Of Civilization” – Jo Wandrini
– “The Inspector 4” – Johannes Bornlöf
– “Easy Target” – Rannar Sillard
– “First Responders” – Skrya
– “Not Safe Yet” – Gunnar Johnsen
– “Deflection” – Reynard Seidel
– “The Charleston 3” – Håkan Eriksson

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

TimeGhost History
42 minutes ago (edited)
We have already covered “Carving up the Middle East” in one of our first Between Two Wars episodes (watch here: https://youtu.be/y6tSvRbvh2s), but we felt like we had to return to the area one more time as all that carving had quite some consequences. This means that a large part of this episode is about colonialism, Zionism, Arabism, race and ethnicity. I’m also aware of the complicated modern-day conflict in the area, many of which originate in [the events covered in] this episode. However, we would like the comment section to be reserved for debating the history. We’re not going to engage with people discussing modern-day issues and politics, and we’re going to be quite strict in monitoring any racist or otherwise hateful comments.

Cheers,
Joram

Labour’s underlying problem

Filed under: Britain, History, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In UnHerd, James Bloodworth explains why the Labour Party will have to change to get back into power in Britain:

Jeremy Corbyn speaking at a Rally in Hayfield, Peak District, UK on 25th July 2018.
Photo by Sophie Brown via Wikimedia Commons.

George Orwell was famously contemptuous of much of the left intelligentsia. “England is perhaps the only great country where intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality,” he wrote in his 1941 essay “England, Your England“. “In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution.”

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

There has always been a healthy suspicion of jingoism and flag-waving on the Left. However it wasn’t this that Orwell was referring to. Few wrote more damning screeds about the British empire than the former colonial policeman, who was always willing to give the “blimps” who ran Britain a good kicking. Rather, Orwell was referring to a more generalised contempt many on the Left felt towards Britain and — by extension — their fellow countrymen.

Socialism to Orwell meant bread and butter issues of higher wages and more freedom — freedom itself depending to a large extent on how much money one has. Yet the movement attracted its fair share of cranks. It was this penumbra of crankishness that prevented socialism from developing a mass following. A major hallmark of it was its anti-Britishness.

Jeremy Corbyn has been compared plenty of times over the past five years to the “vegetarian, fruit-juice drinking, Nature Cure quack, pacifist” oddballs Orwell wrote about in The Road to Wigan Pier. In Orwell’s time these types seemed to gravitate towards the socialist movement “like bluebottles to a dead cat”, as he put it. Since Corbyn became leader in 2015 something similar has occurred: the Labour Party has been flooded with conspiracy theorists, antisemites and various other subliterate fools. Uniting almost all of them is a profound contempt for Britain and in particular British foreign policy.

This is arguably a major reason Labour lost the recent election. “Such was the demonisation of Jeremy Corbyn,” wrote the Labour MP Liam Byrne, “that hundreds of voters I met thought Labour’s leader was a ­communist terrorist sympathiser who wouldn’t push the nuclear button or sing the national anthem.”

This isn’t so much the “demonisation of Jeremy Corbyn” as an accurate summation of the Labour leader’s views. Seumas Milne and Andrew Murray, two of Corbyn’s first appointments as advisers, are communists. Corbyn called members of Hamas and Hezbollah “honoured friends”. He fraternised with the IRA and argued for the abolition of Nato. He has obfuscated shamefully over acts of aggression directed against Britain, such as during the Skripal poisoning in Salisbury. It is not demonising someone to accurately list the things they have said and done.

SdKfz 2 Kettenkrad: Germany’s Halftrack Motorcycle

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, Technology, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 16 Jan 2020

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The Sd.Kfz. 2 Kettenkraftrad (aka Kettenrad) is a deliciously German sort of vehicle, a small utility tractor made with a pair of treads and motorcycle front wheel. It was powered by a 4 cylinder Opel automotive engine generating 36 horsepower, and had a 3-speed gearbox with high and low range transfer case. Top speed was 44 mph, and it could tow about 1,000 pounds of ammunition or other supplies in a small 2-wheeled trailer, or directly tow light artillery pieces.

The vehicle was developed in 1939, and in mass production in time to see substantial use in Operation Barbarossa; the German invasion of Russia. Although complex to maintain and expensive to produce, the Kettenkrad was quite well suited to the terrain and distances of the Eastern Front. As the war progressed and supplies became scarcer and artillery became heavier it was less universally useful, but remained in service until the very end of the war, tasked with jobs as mundane as towing aircraft at airfields. After the war, they were put into civilian agricultural service (much like the Jeep in the US).

This example is in the rental fleet at DriveTanks.com, available for instruction and driving to anyone. It is one of my very favorite vehicles from World War Two, and I really appreciate DriveTanks giving me the opportunity to do some driving on it and show it to you! See all their available rentals here:

https://www.drivetanks.com

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The crying need for “regime change” … in Canadian newsrooms

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Middle East, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Selley discusses the amazingly tone-deaf “corrections” issued by CBC and CTV over their malicious misquoting of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s comments on the Iranian government:

Harper did not advocate military intervention in Iran, or indeed any particular intervention whatsoever. Despite describing Iran (accurately) as an “anti-Semitic state” premised on “religious fanaticism and regional imperialism” that is standing resolutely in the way of cooperation between other Middle Eastern nations, Harper didn’t even advocate “a complete change of government.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper speaking at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 26, 2012.
World Economic Forum photo via Wikimedia Commons.

“I do believe we need to see a change in Iran if we are going to see peace in the Middle East,” he said.

“Without a change in the nature of the government of Tehran,” he said, “the Middle East will continue to be in turmoil.”

He said he hoped the furious protests in Iran might nudge the country toward “a better trajectory.”

These are perfectly anodyne statements. Who doesn’t want the Iranian regime to alter its behaviour?

Clarification or correction? I would say this calls for something more like “colossal embarrassment necessitating deep introspection.”

The root problem, I think, is that so much of Canadian politics is purely for show. We are a sparsely populated, not very powerful nation where the differences between the two major federal parties are remarkably small — and thus so are the stakes. It requires special measures to keep people interested, as much for the media as for politicians.

[…]

That’s how the big outlets like CBC and CTV make the sausage of the day, and it’s understandable. They do great investigative work, but the beast needs feeding not just every day, but all day every day. During the campaign I would watch colleagues set up for live hits in various parking lots and back yards and sometimes even on the campaign bus, and imagine them speaking the truth: “I’m here in Delta, B.C. and there’s f–k-all to report. Back to you, Kent.” But the viewers must never know. They need drama, as weak as it might be. I can easily imagine how that principle transformed “a changed regime” into “regime change.”

The real problem with this reporting regime is when it’s applied to things that actually do matter. There are serious potential consequences to telling the world that Stephen Harper thinks, in essence, that we should declare war on Iran with an eye to bouncing the ayatollahs. Harper’s successor and his government are in the midst of an extremely delicate and frankly improbable operation to find out precisely what happened the morning of Jan. 8 in the skies above Tehran and seek justice for the victims and their families. Those families don’t deserve fake news about a warmongering former PM, and I’m sure our diplomats would prefer members of the unchanged Iranian regime didn’t come across it either.

This isn’t a Canadian federal election. It’s real life, and needs to be covered as such.

HK4: Heckler & Koch’s Multi-Caliber Pocket Pistol

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published on 28 Aug 2019

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The H&K Model 4 was named for the fact that it was offered in four different calibers – .22LR, .25 ACP, .32 ACP, and .380 ACP. The gun came with a complete set of spare barrels and magazines to allow conversion between all of them, and interesting feature not offered by any other pistols like it at the time. The design was by Alex Seidel, one of the founding engineers of H&K. He had familiarity with the Mauser HSc from his time working at Mauser, and it was the rough basis fo the HK4.

The changes between centerfire calibers required nothing more than swapping barrels (and recoil springs, which were pinned to the barrels) and magazines. Differing spring strength for each caliber were enough to make the gun both safe and reliable in the different chamberings. To convert to .22LR rimfire, it was also necessary to unscrew the removable breech face and flip it around. The breech face had two firing pin holes (one centerfire and one rimfire), and the firing pin could pivot enough to use either one. When the breech face was removed, the firing pin could be positioned for whichever setting was desired.

The HK4 was interesting and reasonably successful, but never able to really compete with guns like the Walther PP and PPK. During a 16-year production run from 1968 until 1984 a total of 38,200 were made, including 12,400 for the German customs police.

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QotD: The Bible

Filed under: Books, Quotations, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I once had on my shelves the massive Variorum Teacher’s Edition of the Holy Bible, edited by Cheyne, Clarke, Driver, Goodwin, Sanday — all once names to reckon with — anno Domini 1881. It contained the text of the King James, unrevised. But it also contained extensive notes, alternative readings, explanatory essays and other materials to help even the reader without Greek, Latin, Hebrew, or any dialect of Syriac, to see into the text. Books like Frederic Kenyon’s Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts (1895) keyed into this Variorum. That book I still have, and although it is now more than a century past its “sell-by,” it continues to offer a foundation on which an intelligent, independent reader may build an understanding of all the genuine advances in biblical scholarship, since — decidedly better than any later introduction I know of.

In my former life, when I entertained grand schemes, I dreamt of publishing a multi-volume revision of that Variorum, with the latest scholarship, but attached to the same old, resonant King James text. (This project could as well have been mounted on the explicitly Roman, and similarly magnificent, Douay-Rheims.)

There are now, in print, more than one hundred alternative English translations of the Bible, and the reader who buys, say, the top twenty, to compare them, is wasting time. He could actually save time by mastering the original languages. I rather think it was the Devil’s idea, to undermine the simple Christian’s confidence in Scripture by means of multiple translations, and innumerable petty and irrelevant distractions.

The New English Bible‘s first volume, a translation into “modern idiom” of the New Testament, was published in 1961. It is dated now in a way the KJV will never be, and has in fact been succeeded by the many other “improved” — and desperately flawed — ever more “modern” editions, including those which intentionally misrepresent the original texts to keep up with the latest “gender” abominations. Yet even when it first appeared, T. S. Eliot could say that the new translation “astonishes in its combination of the vulgar, the trivial, and the pedantic.”

That criticism holds, so far as I can see, for every modern-language “update” of scripture and liturgy. The hard truth is that the medium of contemporary language is incapable of conveying the substance we require.

Remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers have set.

David Warren, “A rant”, Essays in Idleness, 2017-12-13.

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