Quotulatiousness

July 17, 2020

“Uprising” – The 1944 Warsaw Uprising – Sabaton History 076 [Official]

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Media, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Sabaton History
Published 16 Jul 2020

August 1944. After nearly 5 years of suffering and oppression at the hands of the Nazis, the Polish resistance in Warsaw was ready to rise up against the German occupation. With the Red Army approaching towards the Vistula from the east, the insurgents planned to take over much of the Polish capital and hold it until help from their Allies arrived. In the early morning hours of August 1, groups of armed young men broke the curfew and stormed official buildings and German warehouses. But as insurgents fought for their lives and future, the outside world however, remained eerily quiet to their pleas for help.

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Listen to “Uprising” on the album Coat Of Arms:
“CD: http://bit.ly/CoatOfArmsStore
Spotify: http://bit.ly/CoatOfArmsSpotify
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Watch the Official Music Video of “Uprising” here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01IaK…

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Music by Sabaton

Colorizations by Mikołaj Kaczmarek – Kolor Historii – https://www.facebook.com/KolorHistorii/

Sources:
– Imperial War Museum: H 4963.
– Mil.ru
– Bundesarchiv, CC-BY-SA 3.0: Bild_183-S73507, Bild_146-2005-0038, Bild_101I-695-0411-02A, Bild_183-97906, Bild 101I-695-0425-13, Bild_146-1973-113-23, Bild_146-1996-057, Bild_146-1994-054-30
– Liftarn from Wikimedia

An OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.

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Not being racist isn’t enough … now you need to be actively anti-racist

Filed under: Books, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In The Critic, Ewa Dymek and Mateusz Dymek review Me and White Supremacy: How to Recognize your Privilege, Combat Racism and Change the World by Layla F. Saad (the North American release is subtitled “Combat Racism, Change the World and Become a Good Ancestor”):

Conceptually, systemic racism is a fuzzy concept. It morphs from being defined as an institution with racist policies to one with no racist policies and no racist individuals but is nevertheless still racist. In certain circles to come out and ask for clarity on what systemic racism is, is to reveal your own deep lack of intellectual sophistication: because nowadays everyone knows what it is – it’s this BIG thing. How big? What follows is quite a lot wide, circular arm movements illustrating that systemic racism is BIG and EVERYWHERE. And exactly where everywhere, is followed by eye rolling. Then, inevitably, the words “unconscious bias” will accompany the definition, to which a genuine response might be: “But you don’t consider yourself a racist, do you?” And silence will follow. It wasn’t a trick question but any answer in this particular milieu is tricky. To say out loud: “Yes, I am a racist” can obviously sound somewhat KKK. But to say the opposite could, according to the “creative visionary” Ms. Layla Saad, mean that “you have been conditioned into a white supremacist ideology, whether you have realized it or not.”

This, of course, is not an outlier view but in line with modern “Anti-racist” theories, such as Ibram X Kendi’s assertion that “the claim of ‘not racist’ neutrality is a mask for racism” or Robin DiAngelo’s insistence that a person declaring herself non-prejudice “only protects racism” (the author of White Fragility also penned the foreword to this book).

If these contradictions make perfect sense to you and wide, circular hand gestures are enough to explain the nuances of omnipresent racism, then you are primed for Ms. Saad’s acutely distressing self-help book Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor. Adapted from her 28-day Instagram challenge and drawn from childhood experiences of white supremacy in Wales and Swindon (before finishing up her schooling at a British private school in Qatar), the book is a heady mix of Mein Kampf meets The Secret. This bestseller takes the shape of an arduous course where each day you solemnly address the nuances of your deep hidden and latent racism towards the “BIPOCs” (Black, Indigenous, Persons of Colour). Daily written responses to journaling prompts are demanded of you (one would imagine in a jotter with a clenched black fist on its cover).

The core tenet of the Anti-Racist movement, as well as Ms. Saad’s curriculum, is to see the Western world through a racialist perspective, i.e. race and racism is always there to be found if you just put the hard work in. Ms. Saad explains: “I can count on one hand the number of times I experienced overt racism” but her teachings are not about that tangible, obvious type of racism, it’s about another type. The big and everywhere type. Through the Me and White Supremacy experience you will have to (if you’re white or “white-passing”) scrutinise every interaction with a person of a different skin colour for evidence of fetishisation, tokenism, colourism and “optical allyship” (helping a BIPOC just for show). Even as a bi-racial person, you will learn how each and every encounter with a BIPOC is probably an oppression and/or aggression that upholds your “internalised white privilege”. If the BIPOC in question happens to be your own child, you may find you are tokenising them too.

Showdown in the United Nations | The Cuban Missile Crisis | Day 10

Filed under: Americas, History, Military, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost History
Published 16 Jul 2020

On October 25, 1962 while the US Navy are looking for something to do in the Caribbean, US Ambassador to the UN Adlai Stevenson is about to face off with USSR Ambassador to the UN, Valerian Zorin in a historic showdown at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

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: Spartacus Olsson, Jonas Klein & Karolina Dołęga
Sound design: Marek Kamiński

Colorizations:
Carlos Ortega Pereira, BlauColorizations, https://www.instagram.com/blaucoloriz…
Klimbim

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

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

Justin Trudeau IS the Liberal Party and he’s not planning to go away

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

The government is doing what it can to ride out the storm of yet another ethics investigation into the Trudeau family entanglements with WE, and no rational person expects Justin Trudeau to be even a bit chastened by the experience — he genuinely has no idea what the fuss is all about, and he has no inclination to step aside from his patrimony. Even if he did … the Liberals have nobody who could credibly step up:

Some, however, are wondering whether it’s time for the Liberals to start thinking about life after Justin Trudeau. It would be understandable if his leadership were in jeopardy. The ethics commissioner is commencing his office’s third official investigation into events that could have been avoided had the prime minister simply not done unnecessary things: vacationed on the Aga Khan’s island; inserted himself in the prosecutorial chain of command to “save” 9,000 jobs at SNC-Lavalin that were not in jeopardy; sole-sourced a giant jobs program to his buddies Craig and Marc. This theory holds that Chrystia Freeland is ready and willing and able to take over. And then everything would be, somehow, better.

There doesn’t seem to be much to hang it on. Exactly one MP, Toronto backbencher Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, appears willing to put his name to complaints about the Trudeau Gang’s latest easily-avoided snafu, and he’s not being impolite about it. Polling shows little sign that the scandal is leaving a mark on Liberal voting intentions: Canadians seem very grateful for the federal government’s terrible-to-middling performance during the pandemic. “Snap election, Trudeau super-majority” remains a competing Ottawa narrative.

But it’s an intriguing thought: The Justin Trudeau Liberals, without Justin Trudeau — intriguing because it’s basically a black hole. Way back in the Michael Ignatieff era there was this idea that the Liberals would assemble the best minds of various generations and turn themselves into a party that believed in things and behaved as such in government. There was to be a conference in Montreal, modelled on Lester Pearson’s 1960 think-fest in Kingston, Ont., which spawned various useful ideas including the Canada Pension Plan.

No one remembers much about the 2010 think-fest, which was, coincidentally enough, titled “Canada 150,” because all this “ideas” mumbo jumbo soon became a moot point. Justin finally agreed to run for leader, and he might as well have been unopposed, and it turned out he was really good at doing what Liberals have always believed in: winning.

Get rid of the Trudeau brand, warts and all, and what do you have? Freeland is an impressive person, though she’s also deputy prime minister and was presumably in the cabinet room as this WE disaster was conceived and implemented. You have a couple of very useful and competent veteran ministers in Carolyn Bennett and Marc Garneau. You have some greener ministers who might shine in a less top-down power structure. But mostly you have a flaky centre-left operation that doesn’t know how to do anything better than spend money and broadcast its own self-styled virtue.

Trudeau is damn good at that. Everything suggests he would walk away with an election held next week. Surely it’s unlikely he’s going anywhere he doesn’t want to.

L96A1: The Green Meanie – the First Modern Sniper Rifle

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published 16 Feb 2019

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

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The Accuracy International Precision Marksman rifle was the winner of the British MoD’s competition to replace the L42A1 as the standard British sniper rifle, and was accordingly adopted as the L96A1. It was the vanguard of the modern sniper rifle, with a highly modular chassis design, and it revolutionized British sniping performance. Thanks to Steve Houghton, was have access today to one of a tiny number of original L96A1 rifles in private hands. If you are interested in learning more, I highly recommend checking out Steve’s newly released book, The British Sniper: A Century of Evolution. It can be found at:

https://www.swiftandboldpublishing.co…

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
PO Box 87647
Tucson, AZ 85754

QotD: Gandhi’s views on chastity

Filed under: Health, History, India, Quotations, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… even more important, because it is dealt with in the movie directly — if of course dishonestly — is Gandhi’s parallel obsession with brahmacharya, or sexual chastity. There is a scene late in the film in which Margaret Bourke-White (again!) asks Gandhi’s wife if he has ever broken his vow of chastity, taken, at that time, about forty years before. Gandhi’s wife, by now a sweet old lady, answers wistfully, with a pathetic little note of hope, “Not yet.” What lies behind this adorable scene is the following: Gandhi held as one of his most profound beliefs (a fundamental doctrine of Hindu medicine) that a man, as a matter of the utmost importance, must conserve his bindu, or seminal fluid. Koestler (in The Lotus and the Robot) gives a succinct account of this belief, widespread among orthodox Hindus: “A man’s vital energy is concentrated in his seminal fluid, and this is stored in a cavity in the skull. It is the most precious substance in the body … an elixir of life both in the physical and mystical sense, distilled from the blood … A large store of bindu of pure quality guarantees health, longevity, and supernatural powers … Conversely, every loss of it is a physical and spiritual impoverishment.” Gandhi himself said in so many words, “A man who is unchaste loses stamina, becomes emasculated and cowardly, while in the chaste man secretions [semen] are sublimated into a vital force pervading his whole being.” And again, still Gandhi: “Ability to retain and assimilate the vital liquid is a matter of long training. When properly conserved it is transmuted into matchless energy and strength.” Most male Hindus go ahead and have sexual relations anyway, of course, but the belief in the value of bindu leaves the whole culture in what many observers have called a permanent state of “semen anxiety.” When Gandhi once had a nocturnal emission he almost had a nervous breakdown.

Gandhi was a truly fanatical opponent of sex for pleasure, and worked it out carefully that a married couple should be allowed to have sex three or four times in a lifetime, merely to have children, and favored embodying this restriction in the law of the land. The sexual-gratification wing of the present-day feminist movement would find little to attract them in Gandhi’s doctrine, since in all his seventy-nine years it never crossed his mind once that there could be anything enjoyable in sex for women, and he was constantly enjoining Indian women to deny themselves to men, to refuse to let their husbands “abuse” them. Gandhi had been married at thirteen, and when he took his vow of chastity, after twenty-four years of sexual activity, he ordered his two oldest sons, both young men, to be totally chaste as well.

Richard Grenier, “The Gandhi Nobody Knows”, Commentary, 1983-03-01.

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