World War Two
Published 19 Oct 2021With the ascent of the radio, popular music became an important cultural phenomenon for the masses throughout the world. Therefore, it is the perfect mouthpiece for Allied war propaganda during the Second World War.
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October 20, 2021
Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition – Music of World War Two – WW2 – On the Homefront 011
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Alberta and Quebec, the dark twins of Confederation
In The Line, Jen Gerson explains why the Alberta government is consciously taking some of its strategies for dealing with the feds and other provinces from the generations-long success that has been Quebec’s planbook:
Quebec — as the single largest recipient of equalization cash — is often a target of anger in these parts, but I’d encourage any readers from thereabouts not to read too much into this fact. Both Alberta and Quebec suffer from a culture of political grievance that feed off one another. Alberta resents the fiscal balances, often casting Quebec as an ungrateful recipient of the very oil wealth that the latter regards with contempt. And I can only imagine how Quebec must read this; as a signal of its own isolation from Anglo culture more broadly. On both sides, I see politicians who have made a generational art of milking these respective grievances.
So sometimes it’s worthwhile to point this out.
Alberta doesn’t hate Quebec.
The provinces exist on flip sides of the very same coin; they are each others’ dark twins, and Alberta seeks mostly to emulate its French sibling.
Kenney made this point entirely explicitly in the days leading up to the referendum.
“We’re using this to get leverage to basically take a page out of Quebec’s playbook in having successfully dominated the political attention of the federation for the last 40 or 50 years.”
What playbook was he referencing, here?
The answer is obvious; the separation referenda of 1980 and 1995. In fact, the whole logic of Alberta’s referenda last night was predicated on a novel reading of the Quebec Secession Reference, in which a clear majority on a clear question must force the federal government to the negotiating table in good faith. The fact that this reference spoke to a secession question — and not a longstanding quibble over an item within the constitution — is a material difference from a legal point of view, but not a psychological one.
The hope is that this referenda will give us somethin akin to the “leverage” Quebec has enjoyed vs. Ottawa since its failed separation referenda; and the disproportionate financial and cultural incentives that followed in the following decades. Essentially, Alberta is asking for the leverage of a true separatist movement without suffering the risk of actually separating. We are play-acting a little Potemkin secession referendum, here. If it falls to me to point out the show is a little childish and even a touch pathetic, well, so be it.
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Chocolate | British Pathé
British Pathé
Published 22 Sep 2016BON APPETIT – FOOD MONTH ON BRITISH PATHÉ (SEPTEMBER 2016): Chocolate.
We all love a bit of chocolate, so have a watch of these vintage films which show different chocolates being made, as well as the celebrations when sweet rationing came to an end.
(Film Ids: 1601.11, 313.13, 1108.14, 1401.17)
Music:
The Show Must Be Go (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b…A NEW THEME EVERY MONTH!
Each month, a range of new uploads and playlists tell the story of a particular topic through archive footage. Let us know what themes you’d like to see by leaving us a comment or connecting with us on social media.BRITISH PATHÉ’S STORY
Before television, people came to movie theatres to watch the news. British Pathé was at the forefront of cinematic journalism, blending information with entertainment to popular effect. Over the course of a century, it documented everything from major armed conflicts and seismic political crises to the curious hobbies and eccentric lives of ordinary people. If it happened, British Pathé filmed it.Now considered to be the finest newsreel archive in the world, British Pathé is a treasure trove of 85,000 films unrivalled in their historical and cultural significance.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
A VIDEO FROM BRITISH PATHÉ. EXPLORE OUR ONLINE CHANNEL, BRITISH PATHÉ TV. IT’S FULL OF GREAT DOCUMENTARIES, FASCINATING INTERVIEWS, AND CLASSIC MOVIES. http://www.britishpathe.tv/
FOR LICENSING ENQUIRIES VISIT http://www.britishpathe.com/
British Pathé also represents the Reuters historical collection, which includes more than 136,000 items from the news agencies Gaumont Graphic (1910-1932), Empire News Bulletin (1926-1930), British Paramount (1931-1957), and Gaumont British (1934-1959), as well as Visnews content from 1957 to the end of 1984. All footage can be viewed on the British Pathé website. https://www.britishpathe.com/
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QotD: The English
National characteristics are not easy to pin down, and when pinned down they often turn out to be trivialities or seem to have no connection with one another. Spaniards are cruel to animals, Italians can do nothing without making a deafening noise, the Chinese are addicted to gambling. Obviously such things don’t matter in themselves. Nevertheless, nothing is causeless, and even the fact that Englishmen have bad teeth can tell something about the realities of English life.
Here are a couple of generalizations about England that would be accepted by almost all observers. One is that the English are not gifted artistically. They are not as musical as the Germans or Italians, painting and sculpture have never flourished in England as they have in France. Another is that, as Europeans go, the English are not intellectual. They have a horror of abstract thought, they feel no need for any philosophy or systematic “world-view”. Nor is this because they are “practical”, as they are so fond of claiming for themselves. One has only to look at their methods of town-planning and water-supply, their obstinate clinging to everything that is out of date and a nuisance, a spelling system that defies analysis, and a system of weights and measures that is intelligible only to the compilers of arithmetic books, to see how little they care about mere efficiency. But they have a certain power of acting without taking thought. Their world-famed hypocrisy – their double-faced attitude towards the Empire, for instance – is bound up with this. Also, in moments of supreme crisis the whole nation can suddenly draw together and act upon a species of instinct, really a code of conduct which is understood by almost everyone, though never formulated. The phrase that Hitler coined for the Germans, “a sleep-walking people”, would have been better applied to the English. Not that there is anything to be proud of in being called a sleep-walker.
George Orwell, “The Lion And The Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius”, 1941-02-19.
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