Quotulatiousness

February 15, 2022

“Freedom”. You proles keep using that word. The CBC doesn’t think it means what you think it means

Filed under: Cancon, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In Monday’s NP Platformed newsletter, Colby Cosh considers what this mysterious and esoteric word “freedom” seems to mean to the CBC:

A screenshot from a YouTube video showing the protest in front of Parliament in Ottawa on 30 January, 2022.
Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

You may have heard that truck-driving protesters have taken over downtown Ottawa and several important border crossings here in Canada. These festive but obstructive people often claim, it is said, to be seeking some esoteric substance known as “freedom”. NP Platformed, unable to locate this “freedom” in the conventional periodic table, consulted a range of chemists in search of expert advice.

One suggested that the word was plainly a misspelling of “friedium”, implying the existence of an element or other matter known only to the Germans. Several hypothesized a molecular relationship with the abolished industrial refrigerant “freon”, raising questions about whether the Montreal Protocol has been subverted. Firm conclusions eluded our quest, but we are sure that a royal commission of inquiry will eventually be convened to get to the bottom of it all.

CBC News, confronted with the same information, did not appeal to the good old exact sciences for help. Instead, its reporters rang up every “hate” expert in their Rolodex of left-wing academics. This yielded tidbits of wisdom, such as this one: freedom “is a term that has resonated … You can define it and understand it and sort of manipulate it in a way that makes sense to you and is useful to you, depending on your perspective.” We’re pretty sure our chemical theories are less stupid than whatever this is supposed to be, but it does bear the imprimatur of Ontario Tech University, the renowned (checks notes) Oshawa-based home of the (checks notes again) Ridgebacks.

The CBC’s obtuse explanation of how the word “freedom” has been used in the past by fascist nasties, and absolutely nobody else in the annals of history, is rightly coming in for plenty of heckling. NP Platformed couldn’t resist joining in, but we would observe that this news copy bears signs of an actual journalistic crisis. If you are paying attention, you have heard about, or even seen video of, the torrents of abuse received by CTV and Global news reporters visiting the “Freedom Convoy” in Ottawa. One can only imagine the fear and frustration of CBC News employees, who know that they are much more attractive targets for misbehaviour — being a recognized part of the Ottawa blob that hinterland protesters are in town specifically to torment and terrorize.

Most of them are no doubt staying well clear of the protests, and for the public broadcaster to develop good sources within an amorphous CBC-hating right-wing movement is a plain impossibility. What’s left is Rolodex journalism. We did a lot of it back in the day, at the late, legendary Alberta Report — which, in our time, was vigorously hated by somewhere between half and two-thirds of the population of Alberta.

Total War on Valentine’s Day – WW2 – Reading Comments

Filed under: Americas, Australia, Europe, France, Germany, History, Military, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 14 Feb 2022

Another installment of Across the Airwaves, where we highlight some of the best viewer comments under our videos. It’s Valentine’s Day and we’re feeling pretty romantic, so Indy and Spartacus will be reading comments that are all about love, humanity, and relationships.
(more…)

King James I and his court favourites

Filed under: Britain, Government, History — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the latest Age of Invention newsletter, Anton Howes continues the tale of King James I of England (also King James VI of Scotland at the same time, the crowns still being legally separate) and his use of favourites to help him avoid going back to Parliament to ask for money:

Portrait of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham, 1625.
Oil painting by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) via Wikimedia Commons.

At the same time, James found a way to filter many of the petitions before they even reached him. This was something he already did in his original kingdom, Scotland, occasionally sending a noble “favourite” — like his kinsmen the duke of Lennox and the marquess of Hamilton — to dispense patronage and manage its parliament. Yet he increasingly, and even scandalously, relied on favourites in England too.

Using a favourite could make some sense from a political standpoint. Favourites often owed everything they had in terms of wealth, protection, titles and standing to the king personally. As creatures of the king, their loyalty was assured. They served an important practical function by dispensing patronage and absorbing pesky petitions, and could insulate the king himself from blame. Should the king make a mistake, his favourite was the obvious man to take the fall.

But for James, the use of favourites went beyond mere practicality, if they were ever practical at all. His interest could also be romantic.

Although James was married with kids, his favourite by 1607 was one Robert Kerr, the younger son of a minor Scottish laird. A mere groom of the bedchamber, about twenty years James’s junior, he had fallen from his horse in a jousting accident and broken his leg. The king helped nurse him back to health, and was soon besotted. Kerr — often anglicised to Carr — was very rapidly given money, titles, and lands. Within a year he had been knighted, after four years made a viscount, and in 1613 an earl.

But what had been so rapidly gained, could be just as rapidly lost. In 1614, a rival faction at court made sure that another, even younger and more attractive man would catch the king’s eye. This was George Villiers, the 22-year-old younger son of an obscure knight. With his “effeminate and curious” hands and face, as well as a remarkable physique — a clergyman, later a bishop, marvelled at his “well compacted” limbs — Villiers’s rise made Kerr’s seem slow. Every year brought him a new title: in 1615 Villiers was made a knight, 1616 a viscount, 1617 an earl, and 1618 a marquess — a very rare title in England, last given to an influential co-regent of Edward VI, and before that to Anne Boleyn so that she could marry king Henry VIII.

Eventually, incredibly, in 1623 James made Villiers a duke. This was a title that was typically reserved for members of the royal family, or else given by very powerful regents to themselves — Villiers was the first in neither of those categories to be made a duke in 140 years. And he hadn’t even been born into the nobility! The apparent lesson: working on your triceps can really, really pay off.

Yet Villiers had more than just an angelic face and muscles. He seems to have had a real talent for politics, very quickly asserting independence from the faction that had put him before the king. And he would somehow remain the favourite even after James died and was succeeded by his heterosexual son, Charles I. In the dangerous waters of courtly faction — Robert Kerr had meanwhile been found guilty of murder and was imprisoned in the Tower — Villiers knew how to keep himself afloat, and even to chart a course of his own.

And he was extraordinarily corrupt.

Krieghoff: Lugers for the Luftwaffe

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published 20 Oct 2021

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One of the scarce, small-production manufacturers of the Luger is Krieghoff — Heinrich Krieghoff to be exact. Kreighoff Waffenfabrik was a smallish arms company that wanted to get into major contracts with the rearming German military in the 1930s. They began by bidding on a contract for 10,000 Luger pistols for the Luftwaffe, and won. Krieghoff had previously worked as a subcontractor for the Simson company rebuilding Lugers under the Weimar government. Kreighoff got control of the Simson Luger tooling, and used it to manufacture a new set themselves.

Krieghoff built a total of 13,825 Luger pistols. The first 10,000 were delivered to the Luftwaffe between 1935 and 1937. A further 2,000 were delivered in small batches between 1940 and 1944, with a final 200 in 1945. In addition to these, 1,625 were sold commercially, including a few highly embellished examples. They are renowned for their excellent quality, and have always attracted particular collector interest.

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QotD: Breaking the trench stalemate with tanks

Filed under: Britain, France, History, Military, Quotations, Technology, Weapons, WW1 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Where the Germans tried tactics, the British tried tools. If the problems were trenches, what was needed was a trench removal machine: the tank.

In theory, a good tank ought to be effectively immune to machine-gun fire, able to cross trenches without slowing and physically protect the infantry (who could advance huddled behind the mass of it), all while bringing its own firepower to the battle. Tracked armored vehicles had been an idea considered casually by a number of the pre-war powers but not seriously attempted. The British put the first serious effort into tank development with the Landship Committee, formed in February of 1915; the first real tanks, 49 British Mark I tanks, made their first battlefield appearance during the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Reliability proved to be a problem: of the 49 tanks that stepped off on the attack on September 15th, only three were operational on the 16th, mostly due to mechanical failures and breakdowns.

Nevertheless there was promise in the idea that was clearly recognized and a major effort to show what tanks could do what attempted at Cambrai in November of 1917; this time hundreds of tanks were deployed and they had a real impact, breaking through the barbed wire and scattering the initial German defenses. But then came the inevitable German counter-attacks and most of the ground taken was lost. It was obvious that tanks had great potential; the French had by 1917 already developed their own, the light Renault FT tank, which would end up being the most successful tank of the war despite its small size (it is the first tank to have its main armament in a rotating turret and so in some sense the first “real” tank). This was hardly an under-invested-in technology. So did tanks break the trench stalemate?

No.

It’s understandable that many people have the impression that they did. Interwar armored doctrine, particularly German Maneuver Warfare (bewegungskrieg) and Soviet Deep Battle both aimed to use the mobility and striking power of tanks in concentrated actions to break the trench stalemate in future wars (the two doctrines are not identical, mind you, but in this they share an objective). But these were doctrines constructed around the performance capabilities of interwar tanks, particularly by two countries (Germany and the USSR) who were not saddled with large numbers of WWI era tanks (and so could premise their doctrine entirely on more advanced models). The Panzer II, with a 24.5mph top speed and an operational range of around 100 miles, depending on conditions, was actually in a position to race the train and win; the same of course true of the Soviet interwar T-26 light tank (19.3mph on roads, 81-150 mile operational range). Such tanks could have radios for coordination and communication on the move (something not done with WWI tanks or even French tanks in WWII).

By contrast, that Renault FT had a top speed of 4.3mph and an operational range of just 37 miles. The British Mark V tank, introduced in 1918, moved at only 5mph and had just 45 miles of range. Such tanks struggled to keep up with the infantry; they certainly were not going to win any race the infantry could not. It is little surprise that the French, posed with the doctrinal problem of having to make use of the many thousands of WWI tanks they had, settled on a doctrine whereby most tanks would simply be the armored gauntlet stretched over the infantry’s fist: it was all those tanks could do! The sort of tank that could do more than just dent the trench-lines (the same way a good infiltration assault with infantry could) were a decade or more away when the war ended.

Moreover, of course, the doctrine – briefly the systems of thinking and patterns of training, habit and action – to actually pull off what tanks would do in 1939 and 1940 were also years away. It seems absurd to fault World War I era commanders for not coming up with a novel tactical and operational system in 1918 for using vehicles that wouldn’t exist for another 15 years and yet more so assuming that they would get it right (since there were quite a number of different ideas post-war about how tanks ought to be used and while many of them seemed plausible, not all of them were practical or effective in the field). It is hard to see how any amount of support into R&D or doctrine was going to make tanks capable of breakthroughs even in the late 1920s or early 1930s (honestly, look at the “best” tanks of the early 1930s; they’re still not up to the task in most cases) much less by 1918.

Bret Devereaux, “Collections: No Man’s Land, Part II: Breaking the Stalemate”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2021-09-24.

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