Quotulatiousness

August 21, 2020

British Deserters, Sword Fights, and Poison Gas – WW2 – OOTF 016

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

World War Two
Published 20 Aug 2020

What happened to deserters in the British Army? Did Chinese and Japanese troops ever engage in sword to sword combat? Why didn’t Germany use poison gas on the battlefield? Find out the answers to all these questions in today’s Out of the Foxholes!

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Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Rune Væver Hartvig
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: Rune Væver Hartvig
Edited by: Jakub Janiec
Sound design: Marek Kamiński

Colorizations:
Mikołaj Uchman

Visual Sources:
Imperial War Museums: HU 762498, Q 79508, El Alamein 1942, E 18542, B5114, MH 26392, F2845,
Library of Congress
Antoine from Flickr.com
National Archives NARA
Bundesarchive
Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
The icons from Noun Project by: Milinda Courey, Arthur Shlain, Delwar Hossain, ahmad, Muhamad Ulum, Rooty, Simon Child, carlotta zampini, Wonmo Kang, Vectors Point, Eucalyp

Music:
“Break Free” – Fabien Tell
“Ancient Saga” – Max Anson
“Defeated” – Wendel Scherer

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

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

Geography works against CANZUK ever happening

Filed under: Australia, Britain, Cancon, Economics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Ted Campbell is a big fan of the CANZUK scheme (Canada-Australia-New Zealand-United Kingdom) to create an “anglosphere” power alongside the current economic big-hitters on the world stage like the United States, China and the European Union. I agree it has historical, nostalgic appeal, but as Aris Roussinos points out, geography is a big stumbling block to it ever being much more than an idea:

Since losing the empire, Britain has notoriously struggled to find a role on the world stage. Initial attempts to piggyback on the power of our successor as global hegemon, the United States, by acting as a guiding force — a Greece to America’s Rome, in Harold Macmillan’s phrase — faltered due to the total absence of interest ever shown in this arrangement by any American administration.

The subsequent attempt to remould Britain as a European power acting in concert with its continental neighbours through the European Union was an unhappy marriage, and has ended in a rancorous divorce whose final settlement is still to be determined. Adrift on the world stage, we are in need of good ideas.

Instead, we are offered CANZUK, a reheated Edwardian fantasy of a globe-spanning Anglosphere acting as a world power which excites the enthusiasm of a small coterie of neoliberal and neoconservative ideologues, if no one else.

In a recent piece for the Wall Street Journal, the historian and Churchill biographer Andrew Roberts argued that the CANZUK nations — Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK — ought to establish “some form of federation among them” as a “second Anglospheric superpower” combining “free trade, free movement of people, a mutual defense organization and combined military capabilities” , which would “create a new global superpower and ally of the U.S., the great anchor of the Anglosphere”.

One cannot fault Roberts for the grandeur of his vision, even if the details of how this would actually work are left to others to fill in. Instead, we are reassured, this would not be a centralising project like the hated EU; rather, “its program for a loose confederal state linking the Westminster democracies would be clearly enunciated right from the start.” Already, we see the harsh hand of reality ready to crush this initially appealing vision. On the one hand, CANZUK is a globe-spanning superpower ready to be born; on the other, it is merely a loose grouping of separate national governments, which would, like all national governments, act according to their own interests above all.

By totting up the different GDP figures of the various CANZUK nations, Roberts claims that his proposed Empire 2.0 “would have a combined GDP of more than $6 trillion, placing it behind only the U.S., China and the EU,” while “with a combined defense expenditure of over $100 billion, it would also be able to punch above its weight”.

Yet the flaws of this argument are obvious. As other critics have noted, only a minuscule proportion of the CANZUK nations’ trade is with each other, save New Zealand, an economic satellite of Australia. Australia is a great East Asian trading power, and will remain so. Canada is enmeshed in the greater North American trading sphere, as are we with Europe, whatever Brexiteers may wish. As always, the simple matter of geography trumps the affective bonds between far-flung kith and kin, whatever their emotional appeal.

“Uprising” Pt. 2 – The Liberation of Paris 1944 – Sabaton History 081 [Official]

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

Sabaton History
Posted 20 Aug 2020

Mid-August 1944. The battle for France enters its decisive phase. With the Allied spearheads just 100 km away from Paris, the Résistance prepares for its long-awaited uprising. While collaborators and fascist officials flee the city in panic, many insurgents are eager to immediately rise up against the occupation and fight the Germans in the streets. But there is need for caution. The Germans are still there in force, and they have tanks and machine guns. The fear that this might turn into “another Warsaw” if the Allies don’t show up in time is very real.

Support Sabaton History on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistory

Listen to “Uprising” on the album Coat Of Arms:
https://music.sabaton.net/CoatOfArms

Watch the Official Music Video of “Uprising”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01IaK…

Listen to Sabaton on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/SabatonSpotify
Official Sabaton Merchandise Shop: http://bit.ly/SabatonOfficialShop

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard and Wieke Kapteijns
Produced by: Pär Sundström, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Broden, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Editor: Iryna Dulka
Sound Editor: Marek Kaminski
Archive by: Reuters/Screenocean https://www.screenocean.com
Community Manager: Maria Kyhle
All music by Sabaton

Sources:
– Imperial War Museum: B 9298
– Bundesarchiv, CC-BY-SA 3.0: Bild_101I-027-1477-16, Bild_183-2008-0710-500, Bild_183-2003-1112-500
– lubini from freesound.org

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

© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.

Virtuesplaining Blazing Saddles

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

Paul du Quenoy says that Mel Brooks is cancelled after all:

It seems like only yesterday that HBO Max, the financially troubled American cable television network’s new film streaming service, signalled its virtue by removing Gone With The Wind from viewing so that the classic film could be properly “contextualised” as what presenter and University of Chicago film professor Jacqueline Stewart calls “a prime text for examining expressions of white supremacy in popular culture”. She believes this is useful for the “re-education” of audiences who might otherwise stray into thoughtcrime.

Mel Brooks’s smash hit 1974 comedy Blazing Saddles, which seems to have been added to HBO Max since the Gone With The Wind dust up and is known for its liberal use of the feared and loathed “n-word”, arrived with a similarly patronising disclaimer already installed. In a three-minute introduction that apparently cannot be skipped over, Stewart is there again, this time to inform viewers that “racist language and attitudes pervade the film”, while instructing them that “those attitudes are espoused by characters who are portrayed here as explicitly small-minded, ignorant bigots … The real, and much more enlightened, perspective is provided by the main characters played by Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder”.

Thanks, Aunt Jacqueline. If you have not seen Blazing Saddles – and if you are under the age of forty there is an excellent chance some prudish authority figure sanitised it out of your cosseted millennial existence – it stands as one of the greatest, and the certainly the funniest, anti-racist films of all time. Based on a story by Andrew Bergman, Brooks conceived it as a scathing send-up of racism and the hypocrisy that still enabled it after the great civil rights victories of the 1960s. Brooks’s idiom was a parody of the classic Western, by then an exhausted genre that had, among other flaws, become inanely predictable and was much criticised for leaving out minorities. A landmark of American film, Blazing Saddles was selected in 2006 for inclusion in the US National Film Registry, which recognises “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant films” worthy of preservation.

Drenched in hilarity – and by my count using the “n-word” 17 times in its 93-minute run – the plot involves a conspiracy by an avaricious U.S. state attorney general who wants to drive white settlers off land he needs to complete a profitable railroad project. After having outlaws wreak mayhem on the townspeople, he recommends that the governor appoint a black sheriff to restore law and order, cynically assuming that their racism will cause them to reject the new lawman and give up. Despite a rough initial reception, the sheriff outwits attempts to get rid of him and, with the help of a washed up but sympathetic alcoholic gunslinger, leads the townspeople to victory, winning their love and respect before moving on to other brave deeds.

While HBO no longer wants to risk having its paying customers think for themselves (and what stale corporate outfit uneasily transitioning to a crowded new market wouldn’t?), it could rightly be said that anyone dumb enough to miss the film’s message might be a recent product of Anglo-American higher education. I do not mean this at all facetiously. Decaying and run by a self-important clerisy whose demands to be taken seriously only become shriller as it declines in reach and vitality – and from which any participant can be dismissed for even the slightest speech or behavioural infraction – academia naturally discourages humour. Jokes, which can almost always cause some kind of offence, are simply too risky to be told or laughed at, even in private. Finding the wrong thing funny can invite career-hobbling accusations that one has demeaned a student or colleague and thereby made them feel unacceptably “uncomfortable” or even physically “unsafe”. Perceived flippancy bruises sanctified “professional seriousness” in a way tantamount to sacrilege. The only tolerated exceptions are a kind of solemn irony that offers comfort in coping with academia’s increasing irrelevance and a resigned gallows humor about its ever more limited prospects.

Don’t Use Pallet Wood!! USE THIS INSTEAD…(Cull Wood Vs. Pallet Wood)

Filed under: Woodworking — Tags: — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Honest Carpenter
Published 2 May 2020

Pallet wood projects have been all the craze for a while now. But, in general pallets are very SUB-PAR lumber, and they have other problems associated with them as well! There is a much better option out there: CULL WOOD. This short video from The Honest Carpenter will compare the two: pallet wood vs. cull wood.

DON’T USE PALLET WOOD!

Pallets are typically pine or oak, but they’re inferior grades of that lumber. They’re shaggy and the end grain splits. Not to mention that they’re full of nails!

To work with pallets, you often have to break them down. But, the spiral shank nails don’t come out easily. Then, you might have nail fragments in your lumber, which can damage your saw blades, or harm you.

Also, pallet wood is not as thick as most dimensional lumber (it’s usually only 1/2″ to 5/8″ thick). And, pieces are typically only 3′ to 4′ long. So, you have to work around these dimensional limitations from the beginning of a project.

Also, pallet wood sometimes contains dangerous insecticides, such as METHYL BROMIDE!

AVOID PALLETS MARKED WITH THE LETTERS “MB” OR “EUR.” THEY’VE BEEN FUMIGATED.

Even non-fumigated pallets may have had chemicals spilled on them during shipping. And, pallet wood is never actually “treated” (with a fungicide), so they will eventually rot outside.

CULL WOOD IS THE SUPERIOR OPTION!

Cull wood is wood that has been pulled off the shelves at lumberyards because it isn’t quite up to salable standards. In many cases, it will contain only minor defects.

This wood is often marked down 70%! In some cases, you can even get it for free…

Also, cull wood comes in all varieties and dimensions. It is actual lumber–the same kind you would typically use for projects. And, it won’t have contain nails or spilt chemicals.

Thanks for watching the video!

Be sure to visit us at The Honest Carpenter Website:
www.thehonestcarpenter.com

Don’t Use Pallet Wood!! USE THIS INSTEAD…(Cull Wood Vs. Pallet Wood)

QotD: Our overprotective culture

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

Our society has become an overprotective mother. If you protect people, you reduce their competence.

There’s a rule of thumb for dealing with elderly people in old age homes: Never do anything for anyone that they can do for themselves. It sounds cruel, but it’s not cruel.

This is one of the pathologies of our culture. A major pathology, and this is associated with a kind of immaturity and a kind of fear and this Oedipal mother problem, which is, “I don’t want you to suffer any distress right now.” Fine, but what about tomorrow and next week and next month? You might have to suffer a lot of distress right now so that you’re better next week and next month.

Jordan Peterson, “Christie Blatchford Sits Down With ‘Warrior For Common Sense’ Jordan Peterson”, National Post, 2018-02-07.

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