Quotulatiousness

June 25, 2020

Designing a JAPANESE Inspired PICNIC BENCH from Scratch | The Picnic Bench Project – Part #1

Filed under: Woodworking — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Matt Estlea
Published 24 Jun 2020

This isn’t going to be your basic, run-of-the-mill picnic bench. This picnic bench is going to be a one-of-a-kind, Japanese influenced picnic bench with all the traditional hand-cut joints you could ask for.

This is going to be a great project, don’t miss out on it!
#designingapicnicbench #buildingapicnicbench #thedesignprocess
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My name is Matt Estlea, I’m a 24 year old Woodworker from Basingstoke in England and my aim is to make your woodworking less s***.

I come from 5 years tuition at Rycotewood Furniture Centre with a further 1 year working as an Artist in Residence at the Sylva Foundation. I now teach City and Guilds Furniture Making at Rycotewood as of September 2018.

If you’re interested in studying at Rycotewood, view their courses here:
www.mattestlea.com/rycotewood

I also had 5 years of experience working at Axminster Tools and Machinery where I helped customers with purchasing tools, demonstrated in stores and events, and gained extensive knowledge about a variety of tools and brands. I discontinued this at the start of 2019 to focus solely on video creation and teaching.

During the week, I film woodworking projects, tutorials, reviews and a viewer favourite ‘Tool Duel’ where I compare two competitive manufacturers tools against one another to find out which is best. I also have a Free Online Woodworking School which you should definitely check out!

www.mattestlea.com/school

I like to have a laugh and my videos are quite fast paced BUT you will learn a lot, I assure you.

Lets go make a mess.

Capitalism and slavery

Filed under: Books, Britain, Economics, History, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In Quillette, Matthew Lesh explains why glib claims that slavery was somehow “essential” to early capitalism or that slavery was the cause of western wealth just don’t hold up to any historical scrutiny:

Auction at Richmond. (1834)
“Five hundred thousand strokes for freedom; a series of anti-slavery tracts, of which half a million are now first issued by the friends of the Negro” by Wilson Armistead and “Picture of slavery in the United States of America” by George Bourne.
New York Public Library via Wikimedia Commons.

It has become a common trope that slavery and the slave trade is responsible for the industrial revolution, if not our entire modern prosperity. Slavery is often called capitalism’s “dark side.” A recent column in the Guardian claimed the slave trade “heralded the age of capitalism” and Guardian columnist George Monbiot said on Twitter: “The more we discover about our own history, the less the ‘trade’ on which Britain built its wealth looks like exchange, and the more it looks like looting. It meant extracting stolen resources and the products of slavery, debt bondage and land theft from other nations.” The same line has been taken by London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who tweeted: “It’s a sad truth that much of our wealth was derived from the slave trade.”

But what did the “father of modern economics,” Adam Smith, actually think about slavery? And is it responsible for our modern prosperity?

Adam Smith argued not only that slavery was morally reprehensible, but that it causes economic self-harm. He provided economic and moral ammunition for the abolitionist movement that came to fruition after his death in 1790. Smith was pessimistic about the potential for full abolition, but he was on the side of the angels.

Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, contains perhaps the best known economic critique of slavery. Smith argued that free individuals work harder and invest in the improvement of land, motivated by their interest in earning a higher income, than slaves. Smith refers to ancient Italy, where the cultivation of corn degraded under slavery. The cost of slavery is “in the end the dearest of any,” Smith writes.

His thinking about slavery can be traced further back. In the Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms, delivered in 1763 long before Britain’s abolitionist movement was formalised, Smith writes:

    Slaves cultivate only for themselves; the surplus goes to the master, and therefore they are careless about cultivating the ground to the best advantage. A free man keeps as his own whatever is above his rent, and therefore has a motive to industry.

Smith describes how serfs in Western Europe — in feudal relationships with lords — were progressively transformed into free tenants as they acquired cattle and tools. Harvests were more evenly divided between landlord and tenant to encourage better use of land, and tenants eventually progressed to simply giving the landlord a sum for lease. As government became more established, the influence of lords over the lives of tenants was also loosened.

Capitalism was, as Marx described, the next stage in human development after feudal slave relations. Smith’s commercial society is in direct opposition to a slave society. Smith, at his core, is an advocate for individuals being free to specialize and trade, including to trade their labor. Everyone acting with regard to their “own interest,” not because of coercion, creates general prosperity.

Smith’s case against slavery is proven by history: The huge uptick in human prosperity came largely after the end of feudal relations and the abolition of slavery and the slave trade. We are many magnitudes richer than when lords held slaves, or even chattel slavery proliferated in the Americas. The setting free of humanity led to extraordinary innovation and entrepreneurialism. This is only possible, as Smith argued, when individuals can benefit from the fruits of their own labor (slaves cannot hold property in their own name, and hence cannot trade or choose to specialise).

We didn’t become rich because a few hundred years ago people toiled on farms in awful conditions. In fact, the opposite. “It was precisely the replacement of human muscle power with that of steam and machines which did away with the vileness of chattel slavery and forced labor,” Tim Worstall has explained.

USA Starts the Atomic Arms Race | The Cuban Missile Crisis I Prelude 1

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Military, Russia, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost History
Published 24 Jun 2020

When WW2 ends the former Allies find themselves at odds with each other over ideological and economic world domination. In an atmosphere of increasing escalation, the US pulls ahead in the nuclear arms race. While the Soviet Union tries to catch up, they are far behind, and yet humanity soon faces potential destruction many times over.

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

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

Colorizations:
– Daniel Weiss

Sources:
– Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-30562-0001,
– Color by Klimbim

Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
– “Cold Eyes” – Elliot Holmes
– “Juvenile Delinquent” – Elliot Holmes
– “Nightclub Standoff” – Elliot Holmes
– “Scope” – Got Happy
– “Zoot Suit” – Elliot Holmes
– “Car Chase in Virginia” – White Bones
– “When They Fell” – Wendel Scherer
– “Kissed by Thunder” – Elliot Holmes

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

TimeGhost History
1 day ago
This is the first of two preludes before we will cover the Cuban Missile Crisis day-by-day in 13 episodes. Our hardcore fans might recognise this series, as these are a remake of the very first series that we ever did on this YouTube channel. Not only did we improve the set and the audio and video quality, also did we gain access to a lot more unique archive material. These episodes were also edited by dedicated editors (back then Spartacus had to edit them) and we have the help of Ryan who makes graphics and our coloriziation squad who bring history to life. We have come a long way since the old version of this was first published. We thank everyone for sticking around but especially those who joined the TimeGhost Army at www.patreon.com/timeghosthistory or https://timeghost.tv. We wouldn’t be here without them!
Cheers,
Joram

What is the purpose of public art?

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

In his latest Age of Invention newsletter, Anton Howes engages with a topic that is in the headlines today as we find ourselves in the midst of an unexpected outbreak of iconoclasm:

The John Cassidy (1860-1939) statue of Edward Colston, which stood in Bristol from 1895-2020 before being taken down and thrown into Bristol harbour during the protests after the death of George Floyd.
Photo by William Avery via Wikimedia Commons.

… public art in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries used to be about inculcating virtue, which is something we seem to have forgotten. Public art was explicitly moralising, and not in the subversive way so often seen today, which leads us to question ourselves but rarely gives us answers. Back then, public art was instead meant to inspire. In painting, for example, the most prestigious and public-facing genre was history painting. History painting showed allegorical, mythological, and religious scenes, as well as those from actual history, in order to illustrate the exploits of the great and good, setting an example to us of integrity and public-spiritedness.

Importantly, the subjects of history paintings were taken from classical Greek or Roman history, or from mythology or religion, because such figures were generally uncontroversial — they could be upheld as paragons of virtue in a way that more recent and local historical figures could not. And the same went for statues, which became the main mediums of public art because the spaces available for history paintings were lacking. (The great room of the Society of Arts, by the way, has some of the few major history paintings in the country, all executed by the troubled self-proclaimed genius James Barry — the fastest riser in the Royal Academy’s history, and also, as far as I know, the only person to ever be expelled from it)

So, if some public statues have become controversial, that’s a clear sign of their failure. To the Victorians who put up the statue of slave trader Edward Colston in 1895, he must have seemed a distant and uncontroversial paragon of philanthropy. But today, he is mostly remembered for his murderous avarice. As such, he doesn’t deserve space on our streets or squares, for much the same reason that people in the eighteenth century avoided putting up statues of Oliver Cromwell — depending on your politics, he was either an ambitious and fanatical tyrant, or a selfless promoter of parliamentary liberties. Either way, it was the controversy itself that made him unsuitable: controversy got in the way of moral education. (Funnily enough, Cromwell seems to have got his public statues in the 1890s, too, just like Colston — maybe it was a low-point for the quality of history-teaching?)

I’m worried, however, that we’ve lost the self-confidence to replace them with statues that uncontroversially inculcate virtue (and in more than just a subversive or critical way). I suspect it take the delusions of grandeur of a James Barry to pull it off — someone who thought the history painter akin to a poet, like Shakespeare. But, as Tim Almond pointed out to me on twitter, perhaps we already do have such forms of virtue-promoting public art, and that all that has changed is the medium. Thus, rather than gazing upon statues or history paintings, we instead watch blockbuster superhero movies.

20mm Lahti L39 Antitank Rifle (Shooting & History)

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 12 Sep 2016

Sold for $10,350.

The Lahti L39 was the Finnish answer to the need for an anti-tank rifle, developed just before the Winter War. The rifle was created by noted Finnish designed Aimo Lahti, who had pressed for it to use a 13.2mm cartridge. However, arguments for using a 20x138B cartridge won out, based on hopes to use that cartridge in both antitank and antiaircraft roles, as well as testing that showed the 20mm projectile to have greater terminal effect.

The L39 was not available for use in the Winter War (having been adopted barely 2 months before the Russian attack), but was used extensively in the Continuation War. While improved tank armor quickly became thick enough to protect against the round, it was used for a variety of anti material roles, attacking machine gun positions, bunkers, light vehicles, and more. In 1944, an anti-aircraft version was also produced, firing in full auto and using 15-round magazines.

Today, ammunition is available from a few companies, typically using lathe-turned new cases and surplus 20mm Vulcan projectiles.

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

QotD: Cultural appropriation

Filed under: History, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

In the ever-widening gyre of what cannot be appropriated without causing offense, now even American heroes are off limits. Apparently, Caucasians are no longer allowed to quote Martin Luther King. While I almost sympathize with the view that too many people of all colors tend to only quote King’s more saccharine words, it is surreal that some African-Americans would be outraged that others quote such an admirable American: “MLK belongs to us. Do not dare to quote my MLK. My Martin Luther King Jr., was not here for white people. Keep his name out your thin-lipped mouth. Y’all banned forever.” Belongs? Like a possession? Is the bitter irony of talking about King as a possession — mere chattel, the private property of a particular group — lost on some members of the current generation of African Americans? I had thought that, at least since the passage of the 13th Amendment, people could not be owned.

Joseph Mussomeli, “Victim Privilege, Cultural Appropriation, & the New Enslavement”, The Imaginative Conservative, 2018-02-09.

June 24, 2020

Napoleon’s Great Blunder: Spain 1808

Filed under: Britain, Europe, France, History, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Epic History TV
Published 16 Jan 2019

In 1808, Napoleon’s rivalry with Britain led to an ill-fated intervention in Portugal and Spain, that sparked a nationalist revolt against the French. At Bailén Napoleon’s Empire suffered its first major defeat, and though Napoleon himself then arrived in Spain to reassert French military dominance, he could not prevent the escape of Sir John Moore’s small British army, after its defensive victory at Corunna on 16 January 1809. The British army would return, under new leadership, to play a major part in his downfall.

Get early access and a vote on future topics by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/epichistorytv

With thanks to HistoryMarche, check out his channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8MX…

Find Osprey books on the Napoleonic Wars here:
https://ospreypublishing.com/

Great books about the Napoleonic Wars (as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases):
The Napoleonic Wars http://geni.us/R5ZI9c
Corunna 1809 http://geni.us/IHLD
Peninsular War Atlas http://geni.us/S6Na84z
Napoleon the Great http://geni.us/NqMW

#EpicHistoryTV #NapoleonicWars #Napoleon

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Thanks to The 95th Rifles Battle Re-enactment and Living History Society: https://www.95thrifles.com/

Trudeau government wants to introduce an Internet “link tax”

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Michael Geist on the Trudeau government’s latest indications of support for a tax grab to benefit certain favoured groups and organizations:

Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault, 3 February 2020.
Screencapure from CPAC video.

Last week, Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault called into question his own government’s policies on supporting news media, suggesting that those programs should be replaced by copyright rules that would open the door to payments from internet companies such as Google and Facebook. Mr. Guilbeault indicated that a legislative package was being prepared for the fall that would include new powers for Canada’s communications regulator and what are commonly referred to as Netflix taxes and internet linking taxes.

My Globe and Mail op-ed notes the government’s support for new internet taxes should not come as a surprise. There were strong signals that the spring budget – postponed indefinitely due to the current public health crisis – was going to include expanding sales taxes to capture digital sales such as Netflix or Spotify subscriptions.

[…]

It is Mr. Guilbeault’s plans for a link tax that should spark the most concern, however. The government has long promoted its policies designed to support the Canadian media sector, including direct funding for local journalism as well as labour and subscription tax credits. The taxpayer cost runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars, but is justified on the grounds that journalism is an essential service that requires public support.

Yet Mr. Guilbeault now says that government should not be funding media, characterizing the policies as short term measures aimed at mitigating a media emergency. Instead, Mr. Guilbeault supports a controversial copyright reform measure that would establish a news publisher’s right to demand payment for services that link to their content.

This payment – effectively a tax on linking – raises a host of concerns, not the least of which is that the proposal was not recommended by the government’s own copyright review last year. Copyright reform in Canada is always complicated, particularly given that responsibility for it is shared with Innovation, Science and Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains, but delving into reforms that sparked protests in Europe could be politically risky for a minority government.

News organizations already benefit from large platforms linking to their content since the links generate visitors that increase advertising revenues and paying subscribers. Organizations that do not want the links can easily opt-out of appearing in services such as Google News or Facebook. In fact, after Google shut down its Google News service in Spain, studies found publisher website traffic dropped by 10 per cent.

BESAL: Britain’s Emergency Simplified Light Machine Gun

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 8 Aug 2017

Armament 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/british-b…

The BESAL is a simplified redesign of the Bren light machine gun, developed by a BSA employee named Faulkner. The design of the gun was motivated by the disastrous retreat of the British Army from Dunkirk in 1940, where they abandoned a huge amount of weaponry and war material, including most of their Bren guns.

The Bren gun was in production only as the BSA factory, which was at great risk to German bombing — and the Bren included a number of complex parts that could not be effectively put into production elsewhere in the UK on short notice. It was with this in mind that Faulkner designed the BESAL, which used much simpler components which could be made in a great number of small shops. Decentralized production would have made it a much more resilient process in the case of invasion (similar to German small arms production late in the war).

By the time the BESAL prototypes were built, tested, and approved as being reliable and effective, however, the immediate threat of invasion had passed and the Bren was in production at the Inglis factory in Canada as well as at BSA. The BESAL design was shelved for use in case it became necessary again, but it never was.

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…

If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow

QotD: Youthful opinions

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

It is very natural for young men to be vehement, acrimonious and severe. For as they seldom comprehend at once all the consequences of a position, or perceive the difficulties by which cooler and more experienced reasoners are restrained from confidence, they form their conclusions with great precipitance. Seeing nothing that can darken or embarrass the question, they expect to find their own opinion universally prevalent, and are inclined to impute uncertainty and hesitation to want of honesty, rather than of knowledge.

Samuel Johnson, The Rambler No. 121, 1751-05-14.

June 23, 2020

Defending Britain with a Bayonet | Hobart’s Pike | The Tank Museum

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

The Tank Museum
Published 24 May 2020

Director Richard Smith looks at Percy Hobart and the incredible weapon he was issued on joining the Home Guard at the start of WW2; a bayonet welded to a pole. Major General Percy Hobart commanded the 79th Armoured Division and gave the revolutionary, specialised tanks used on D-Day their nickname “Hobart’s Funnies”.

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Tank 100 First World War Centenary Blog: ► http://tank100.com/

The “Battle of Dijon”

Filed under: France, Law, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

I post a lot of accounts of ancient and modern wars and battles, but the “Battle of Dijon” actually took place earlier this month and has been widely mischaracterized in the media, as John Lichfield recounts:

Dijon viewed from Saint-Bénigne Cathedral with the Palace of the States of Burgundy, the Notre-Dame and Saint-Michel churches, the Saint-Nicolas tower, the former Saint-Bénigne abbey palace (ENSA), The Lafayette galleries, the old department stores at Le Pauvre Diable and la Ménagère.
Photo by Twibo2 via Wikimedia Commons (caption translated by Google Translate).

Dijon, the capital of Burgundy, rarely attracts the world’s attention. There is Dijon mustard of course. There is Dijon blackcurrant liqueur (Cassis de Dijon). There are many beautiful, old Burgundian streets and buildings. But of all the medium to large cities in France, Dijon (population: 159,000) is surely the least talked about.

Then, abruptly, last weekend Dijon had the great misfortune to become newsworthy. War broke out, we were told, between “Chechen gangs” and “Arab gangs”. The dispute was, some French media reported, about the right to traffic drugs. The Daily Mail announced that the French army had been sent in to restore order. Marine Le Pen compared Dijon to Beirut. Similar “wars between migrant communities” now threatened, she said, all over France.

All these reports were, I believe, wrong or deeply misleading. What did happen in Dijon over four days the other weekend was surreal and disturbing. But the incidents defy simple explanation or political point-scoring. They say, perhaps, more about Chechnya, and the values — good and bad — of exiled Chechens, than they do about the wider racial issues of France. The severity of the violence probably owed something to the frustrations of France’s recent nine weeks of Covid lockdown. The political and media reaction was skewed by the fact that the events occurred while France was in the midst of a debate about race and policing – in the wake of the George Floyd killing in the United States.

On Sunday evening, on the third night of violence in Dijon, President Emmanuel Macron happened to be addressing the nation on TV. He said, among many other things, that he would resist all pressure to splinter France into ethnic communities.

So what had happened over four days in Dijon? There are several conflicting accounts. Here, briefly, are the facts that I have been able to establish.

On 9th June a 15-year-old (some say 16-year-old) boy of Chechen origin was badly beaten up outside a chicha (hookah) bar in central Dijon. His attackers were local men in their 30s of African and North African origin. According to the Chechen version of events, the men were drug-dealers. The injured boy apparently had no connection with drugs. The dealers attacked him because local Chechens were known to be hostile to drug-trafficking. They put a gun in the boy’s mouth and said: “We hate Chechens. We’re going to let you live so you can tell the other Chechens what’s going to happen to them.”

Three days later a convoy of cars arrived in Dijon packed with Chechen men from several other parts of France, as well as Belgium and Germany. Local media and police say that there were 100 of them; the Chechens say that there were only 15. They smashed up the chicha bar, assaulted its owner and then rampaged through the multi-racial Les Grésilles area of council estates just north-east of central Dijon.

Operation Barbarossa – Biggest Land Invasion in History – WW2 – 096a – June 22 1941

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

World War Two
Published 22 Jun 2020

June 22 1941. The first day of Operation Barbarossa begins as Adolf Hitler’s German armies invade Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union with the largest force on the longest front ever seen in human history…

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tv

Links Indy mentioned:
Special episode on the tanks of Barbarossa – https://youtu.be/gh7mt2OS770
Special episode on trucks and Barbarossa logistics – https://youtu.be/4lSCnOltYdY
Special episode about Blitzkrieg tactics – https://youtu.be/qej9DX28-xw

Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @World_war_two_realtime https://www.instagram.com/world_war_two_realtime
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Written and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)

Colorizations by:
– Olga Shirnina, a.k.a. Klimbim – https://klimbim2014.wordpress.com/
– Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/
– Norman Stewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/
– Jaris Almazani (Artistic Man), https://instagram.com/artistic.man?ig…
– Dememorabilia – https://www.instagram.com/dememorabilia/

Sources:
– Mil.ru
– Bundesarchiv, CC-BY-SA 3.0: Bild_146II-277,
– RIA Novosti archive, CC-BY-SA 3.0: image 613694, Shagin
– F l a n k e r from Wikimedia
– The Al Goldstein collection in the Pandora Music repository at ibiblio.org.
– Les Préludes, Poema sinfonico n°, Franz List and Herbert von Karajan (dir), CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Via Marco Calvo, http://www.marcocalvo.it/

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

Pushback for Chinese aggression in the Himalayas

Filed under: China, India, Military — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In Quillette, Cleo Paskal outlines the Chinese military action last week and a few of the reactions in civil society:

The western portion of the Line of Actual Control, separating the Eastern Ladakh and Aksai Chin (map by CIA). In the Demchok sector, only two claim lines are shown. The line was the focus of a brief war in 1962.
Wikimedia Commons.

High in the Himalayan mountains, Chinese soldiers ambushed Indian troops this week, resulting in a brutal battle on the Indian side of their shared border. Twenty Indians were killed, while China won’t disclose its losses. It was the deadliest confrontation on the border in over 40 years. As a result, some Indian strategists are openly discussing recognizing Taiwan and providing more visibility to the Dalai Lama, state-owned telecoms are blocking Chinese equipment from 4G upgrades, and millions of Indians downloaded an app that helps remove Chinese apps from their phones (before Google removed it). All of this comes at a time when much of the world remains angry at China’s leaders for their initial handling of the COVID-19 crisis.

This week’s apparent provocation is part of a larger recent pattern with China. From the South China Sea, to Taiwan, to Hong Kong, Beijing has been seeking to change facts on the ground in a way that benefits its own strategic and economic interests. In a recent Atlantic Council discussion of the India-China border issue (convened before the latest fighting), senior American diplomat Ambassador Alice Wells summed the situation up well: “There’s a method here to Chinese operations. [A]nd it is that constant aggression, the constant attempt to shift the norms, to shift what is the status quo, that has to be resisted.”

For decades China has tried to expand its strategic reach along its de facto south-western border through the invasion of Tibet, land swaps with Pakistan, and war with India. To this end, China treats British Empire-era maps as political props to variously brandish or dismiss, as best suits Beijing’s goals. For example, it effectively accepted the 1914-era McMahon Line delineation in its border agreement with Myanmar, but rejects it with India.

The Line of Actual Control (LAC) separating China and India runs through rugged, high-altitude terrain that has witnessed multiple conflicts going back to the 1962 India-China border war. In recent weeks, there have been Chinese incursions at several points along the LAC, reportedly involving thousands of troops. In some spots, the Chinese military is digging in on the Indian side, while expanding its already considerable support infrastructure on their side of the LAC.

Delhi is particularly concerned about Chinese advances near India’s Daulat Beg Oldie (DBO) high-altitude military airfield, an essential Indian forward base that provides oversight of the strategic Karakoram Highway (KH) linking China’s western Xinjiang Autonomous Region with Pakistan, including the Gwadar Port on the Indian Ocean. It is a key component of the multi-billion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

Legends Summarized: The Journey To The West (Part VII)

Filed under: Books, China, History, Humour, Religion — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 27 Dec 2019

Journey to the West Kai, episode 4: Trouble in Taoist Town!

Thrills! Excitement! Pigsy takes a bath! Sandy fights an alligator! Monkey helps Tripitaka cheat on a high-stakes game show! And as always, everyone forgets about the horse!

Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.

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