Quotulatiousness

October 23, 2020

On Stalin’s Secret Service – Richard Sorge – WW2 Biography Special

Filed under: Germany, History, Japan, Military, Russia, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

World War Two
Published 22 Oct 2020

A spy who is famous for warning Stalin about Hitler’s plan to invade the Soviet Union. But he was so much more than that. His fascinating life begins in the Caucasus and eventually leads him to Tokyo.

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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
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Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Monika Worona
Sound design: Marek Kamiński

Colorizations by:
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Daniel Weiss
Mikołaj Uchman

Sources:
Bundesarchiv
Milu.ru
Archive.org

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

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

World War Two
16 hours ago (edited)
More fascinating World War Two spy stuff we know you love. We’ve already spoken about Popov, Enigma, and much more, but what makes Sorge particularly stand out is the amount of praise he has consistently received. Both Tom Clancy and Ian Fleming have said they consider him one of the world’s greatest spies, and other espionage workers, including ones who worked on the opposing side to him, have admitted their admiration for the man.

The EU’s sudden but inevitable betrayal on Brexit deal

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

After a long absence, Nigel Davies posts on the breakdown of the British talks with the EU:

… I suggested that the EU would finally have to face the fact that the failure of their system was nothing to do with xenophobic little countries in the Balkans, or corrupt east European dictatorships, or incompetent Mediterranean democracies in permanent crisis.

No this disaster — the disaster that finally reveals just how impossible the European “project” is — will be at the hands of the morally superior, self righteous goody two shoes of Europe … principally France and the Netherlands.

And it will be for the obviously domestic partisan, (and completely ethically unfathomable), reason, of protecting the unnatural rights of a few fisherman who have had the unlikely and unreasonable benefit of unfettered access to British fishing waters for the decades that Britain has been in the EU.

(An unwarranted privilege for which they probably should pay compensation … Certainly if Britain was an “unjustly persecuted” Asian or African country instead of an “obviously evil” European one, compensation for this unnatural practice would be a demand of every new age propagandist of any colour.)

Nonetheless I have been amazed at the number of column inches wasted in the last week as some journalists try and pretend that it must be the British who are being unreasonable. Or indeed that there is even a remote possibility that the EU could ever come to an agreement, no matter what the British do. (Short of the British admitting that it was all a ghastly mistake, and submitting to total and permanent subservience to the benign dictatorship of the Brussels bureaucrats of course.)

The truth is that the EU is completely incapable of accepting any agreement, because that presumes that 27 individual nations can agree to overcome the drag of their own domestic policies to agree on a common good. (Or on a common decency that would require even the slightest domestic discomfort in one or more of their members.)

“The Lion From The North” – Gustavus Adolphus – Sabaton History 090 [Official]

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Media, Military, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Sabaton History
Published 22 Oct 2020

It was a time of religion and war. Legends tell the tale of a mighty Swedish King, a Lion from the North, who arrived in the German Empire with a mighty host to save Protestantism. Beyond the legends, Gustavus Adolphus was a warrior king who sought to create a Swedish empire through hegemony on the Baltic Sea. Once, Sweden’s involvement in the 30 Years War had begun out of sheer necessity, but soon send her armies on a path of glory and fame. But would this path lead the Swedish King to victory or his inevitable demise?

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

Listen to “The Lion From The North” on the album Carolus Rex: https://music.sabaton.net/CarolusRexEN

Watch the Official Music Video of “The Lion From The North” here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1gvN…

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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 Brodén, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Community Manager: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Editor: Karolina Dołęga
Sound Editor: Marek Kaminski
Maps by: Eastory – https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory
Archive: Reuters/Screenocean – https://www.screenocean.com

Visual Sources:
– Nationalmuseum
– Arms of Vasa courtesy of Sodacan from Wikimedia
– Nils Forsberg Gustav II Adolf courtesy of Nils Forsberg, Swedish painter from Wikimedia
– Death of King Gustav II Adolf of Sweden by Carl Wahlbom courtesy of Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP (Glasg) from Wikimedia
– Icons from The Noun Project: Cannon by Graphic Nehar, Man by Milinda Courey

All music by: Sabaton

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

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

The British Library goes “woke”

Filed under: Books, Britain, Bureaucracy, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

David Warren views this development with alarm and disdain:

British Library reading room.
Photo from the British Library website.

Did you know? That, “Racism is the creation of white people”?

Of course you did, if you are young, woke, and poorly educated, like the white woman who is now the British Library’s Chief Librarian. (“Liz Jolly.”) Her statement, in a video to staff last summer, promoting her Decolonizing Working Group, though perfectly acceptable to Guardian subscribers, was mocked by several African and Asiatic scholars who have depended upon that library’s resources over the years. Noting that history is more complicated than Ms Jolly was ever told, they criticized her as “pig ignorant,” &c.

But her explicitly racist “anti-racist” programme proceeds, with aggressive “anti-racist” exhibitions, new “anti-racist” signage, and so forth. The demand to de-acquisition authors who do not reinforce the current ideological stereotypes has not yet gathered to full force, but has started.

The capture of essentially all major cultural institutions by unhinged political fanatics with daddy issues, is among the signs of our times. Those who resist are driven out of employment; those who accede have a lock on the splendidly-paid positions, for which beleaguered taxpayers are billed. The consequences to Western Civ are not trifling.

Perhaps I am unfair to single out just the one career arts bureaucrat, when there are thousands to choose from. I may even be prejudiced, not only against white people, but against those of the scheduled races who have cooperated in trashing the institutional heritage of the Big Wen.

For London was my Athens, back in the day, and I take these things personally. My British Museum Library ticket was among my most cherished possessions, and the old Reading Room among my favourite haunts. I am now so old that I can remember when such places were ruled, and staffed, by respectably boring establishment types with Oxbridge degrees.

In a different context, we’ve seen just how eager Oxbridge types of the 1930s were eager to join the Soviet spy networks, so the change in establishment staff at non-explicitly communist establishments was only a matter of time…

Tank Chats #83 Valiant | The Tank Museum

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

The Tank Museum
Published 30 Aug 2019

Described by David Fletcher as the worst tank at The Tank Museum! Find out how the WW2 Valiant tank failed in quite so many areas.

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QotD: Every military organization

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

Regardless of T.O., all military bureaucracies consist of a Surprise Party Department, a Practical Joke Department, and a Fairy Godmother Department. The first two process most matters as the third is very small; the Fairy Godmother Department is one elderly female GS-5 clerk usually out on sick leave.

Robert A. Heinlein, Glory Road, 1963.

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