World War Two
Published 6 Dec 2021For the past months, we have continuously mentioned the fighting on the Kokoda Track, but it was often a mere footnote next to the colossal battles happening throughout the world. Today, we give you a unique recap of all that’s been going on in this remote theater of war.
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December 7, 2021
Kokoda Trail: D-by-D Recap 01
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How are things going in Honduras?
For those not following the Honduran experiment with ZEDEs (las Zonas de Empleo y Desarrollo Económico — Zones for Employment and Economic Development) also known as “charter cities” or “model cities”, Scott Alexander provides a handy summary of the situation in the wake of the recent Honduran elections:
Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador
Image via Google Maps.
The socialist opposition has won Honduras’ election and pledges to fight against charter cities there. “Immediately upon assuming the presidency, we are going to send the National Congress an initiative for the repeal of the ZEDE law,” incoming president Xiomara Castro said.
This was what everyone was afraid of. But the last party tried pretty hard to protect ZEDEs from trigger-happy successors, and the constitution currently says that the only way to get rid of them is to win two consecutive 2/3 votes to do so, then give the existing projects ten years to wind down.
Can the socialists get a 2/3 majority? Wikipedia predicts the incoming Honduran Congress will look like this:
Liberty and Refoundation (the socialists) will probably enter into a coalition with the Savior Party and have 65/128 seats for a bare majority. They need 86 votes for a 2/3 majority, which in theory they can get if the Liberal Party agrees. The Liberal Party seems centrist and hard to pin down, but this article includes the following great quote:
“The Liberal Party opposes the ZEDEs because, above all, they undercut our national sovereignty, and because we don’t want them to become hideouts for extraditable criminals,” said [Liberal Party leader Yani] Rosenthal, who served a three-year prison sentence in the United States for money laundering and participating in a criminal scheme with the Los Cachiros cartel.
Rosenthal kind of goes back and forth elsewhere, but in the end I think he’ll vote with the socialists on this. Still, there’s some speculation that his party might not vote as a bloc, and even a few defectors would be enough to prevent a supermajority.
In theory, even if the socialists win two consecutive votes, they have to give the projects ten years to wind down. Ten years is forever in politics, and probably before then the capitalists will get back into power and say never mind, everyone can keep doing what they’re doing. The socialists are aware of this and say that their supplementary strategy is to have everything about the ZEDE law declared unconstitutional.
This should be a hard sell, because ZEDEs are a constitutional amendment, plus the current Supreme Court explicitly ruled a few years ago that they were constitutional. But apparently the Honduran Supreme Court can declare constitutional amendments unconstitutional if it really wants. And the new government will get to appoint a new Supreme Court in two years, and although the exact process is complicated, they may be able to get people who agree with them on this.
Also, incoming president Castro is married to Manuel Zelaya, a former president who tried to pull an Andrew Jackson after the Supreme Court ordered him to stop holding an illegal referendum to change term limits in his favor. He ordered the military to hold the referendum anyway, and was only ousted after the military couped him instead. So this is not exactly a family known for their deep respect for the exact wordings of laws or court rulings (not that anyone in Honduras has really excelled on that front). See further speculation eg here and here. And here’s Mark Lutter from Charter Cities Institute on the elections and the future.
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The Byzantine Army, Dark To Golden Age
Epimetheus
Published 22 Mar 2019The Byzantine army, Dark to Golden age
This video was sponsored by Skillshare
Sources
Romano-Byzantine armies 4th-9th Centuries (David Nicolle)
Larousse Encyclopedia of Ancient and Medieval History (Marcel Dunan)
The Late Roman Infantryman (Simon MacDowall)
Byzantium Beyond the Golden Gate
Fall of the West (John Lambshead)
The Late Roman Cavalryman (Simon MacDowall)Tags:
Byzantine history, Byzantine, Byzantine documentary, Eastern Roman, Byzantine army, ancient history, Byzantine Cataphract, Byzantine Roman, history, Bulgaria Byzantium, Byzantine military, Byzantine legion, Byzantine empire, fall Byzantine, ancient, Rome, Constantinople, Byzantine empire documentary, crash course Byzantine empire, Byzantium, Byzantine army structure, Byzantine vs Roman, theme system, theme Byzantine, Roman tactics, Byzantine tactics, eastern Roman empire
From the comments:
Epimetheus
2 years ago (edited)
Notes/additional info:1. Should the empire be called Byzantine, Roman or Greek? I see people arguing for each of these in the comments and there is merit to each of these; but it is important to note that they called themselves Roman, they were majority Greek in population and language spoken, and the term Byzantine is useful in differentiating the time period and has been colloquially used for a long time (although not during the empire) Being a reference to the earlier name of Byzantium for the city of Constantinople.
2. When I refer to “native troops” this includes many other ethnic groups living within the empire, notably the Armenians who lived in Anatolia for hundreds of years and had assimilated in many ways but maintained different views on aspects of the Christian faith which was the most striking differentiating factor between them and the rest of the population of the empire.
3. The Strategos and Domestikos label should be switched on the captions at 6 mins 17 secs in. A Strategos led a Thema(ta) and a Domestikos led a Tagma(ta). Unfortunately I switched those by accident and stared at the screen for a while and did not notice that … sorry guys ;(
4. The Varangian Guard was a personal bodyguard unit to the emperor which are pretty cool, they were mostly comprised of Norsemen (Scandinavians), Rus and Saxons. They are the unit I refer to when I mention a Scandinavian unit.
5. The coolest unit (in my opinion) that I did not mention was the Akritai which were kinda like the Cossacks in that they were a loosely controlled border guard on the eastern side of the empire; and were the subject of much folklore and poems and such.
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Sarah Hoyt on the nonsense of so many pandemic measures
Posting at Instapundit, Sarah Hoyt lists some of the many, many poor and even counter-productive public-health-theatre measures most western governments have been indulging in since the beginning of 2020:
Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Wikimedia Commons.
Let’s say you’re one of those insane people who dismissed the low numbers of death/serious illness aboard the Diamond Princess because apparently people on cruise ships have “top quality medical care” (Coo-ey! Is the sky made of candy floss in your world?) in what world — even a candy floss sky one — did it make sense to close local grocery stores but keep Walmart open? In what world did it make sense to direct flow in stores so everyone crammed in through the same door, and everyone walked the same path (thereby a crowded/grimy, etc. path)? In what world did reducing hours of stores make sense? In what world did it make sense to wear a mask to your table then remove it to eat? (Are you less contagious when sitting?) In what world did curfews make sense? In what world did mask mandates outside in botanic gardens and zoos make sense? In what world did it make sense that you were hectored for getting out and driving around, while remaining your car?
In what world did the government stomp on every — no matter how crackpot or inocuous — rumored treatment? In what world, despite all studies to the contrary, do two layers of thin fabric stave off viral infection? In what world are doctors and nurses laid off by the thousands during a supposed pandemic? And finally in what world does it make any sense that a completely ineffective — if not (the numbers are not trustworthy in the sense that we can’t trust anything from collection to reporting, but in the UK there are indications that way) counterproductive — vaccine is being forced on the population by government mandate?
The deaths of so many people — thanks to dodgy statistical reporting and frequent moving-the-goalpost sleights of hand we may not know exactly how many — are tragic, but the deliberate destruction of public trust in our governments, healthcare systems, and media reporting will continue for a long, long time to come. The Wuhan Coronavirus has not been the civilization-wrecker we were all told to fear, but the breakdown in trust will make us all more vulnerable the next time a serious disease strikes. Trust is earned, slowly, and rebuilding lost trust will be a much slower process.
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The Oberg Color Film Footage of Pearl Harbor – December 7, 1941
midway512
Published 7 Dec 2018This short documentary tells the story of Harold & Eda Oberg, and the film footage they recorded of the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941. The couple captured shots during and after the attack on Hickam Army Airfield.
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QotD: The decline of class distinctions in Britain
After 1918 there began to appear something that had never existed in England before: people of indeterminate social class. In 1910 every human being in these islands could be “placed” in an instant by his clothes, manners and accent. That is no longer the case. Above all, it is not the case in the new townships that have developed as a result of cheap motor cars and the southward shift of industry. The place to look for the germs of the future England is in the light-industry areas and along the arterial roads. In Slough, Dagenham, Barnet, Letchworth, Hayes – everywhere, indeed, on the outskirts of great towns – the old pattern is gradually changing into something new. In those vast new wildernesses of glass and brick the sharp distinctions of the older kind of town, with its slums and mansions, or of the country, with its manor-houses and squalid cottages, no longer exist. There are wide gradations of income, but it is the same kind of life that is being lived at different levels, in labour-saving flats or council houses, along the concrete roads and in the naked democracy of the swimming-pools. It is a rather restless, cultureless life, centring round tinned food, Picture Post, the radio and the internal combustion engine. It is a civilization in which children grow up with an intimate knowledge of magnetoes and in complete ignorance of the Bible. To that civilization belong the people who are most at home in and most definitely of the modern world, the technicians and the higher-paid skilled workers, the airmen and their mechanics, the radio experts, film producers, popular journalists and industrial chemists. They are the indeterminate stratum at which the older class distinctions are beginning to break down.
This war, unless we are defeated, will wipe out most of the existing class privileges. There are every day fewer people who wish them to continue. Nor need we fear that as the pattern changes life in England will lose its peculiar flavour. The new red cities of Greater London are crude enough, but these things are only the rash that accompanies a change. In whatever shape England emerges from the war it will be deeply tinged with the characteristics that I have spoken of earlier. The intellectuals who hope to see it Russianized or Germanized will be disappointed. The gentleness, the hypocrisy, the thoughtlessness, the reverence for law and the hatred of uniforms will remain, along with the suet puddings and the misty skies. It needs some very great disaster, such as prolonged subjugation by a foreign enemy, to destroy a national culture. The Stock Exchange will be pulled down, the horse plough will give way to the tractor, the country houses will be turned into children’s holiday camps, the Eton and Harrow match will be forgotten, but England will still be England, an everlasting animal stretching into the future and the past, and, like all living things, having the power to change out of recognition and yet remain the same.
George Orwell, “The Lion And The Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius”, 1941-02-19.
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