World War Two
Published 17 Feb 2022Outnumbered, outgunned, and outproduced by the Allies, the noose seems to be tightening slowly but surely around the Third Reich. For Joseph Goebbels, salvation lies in a radical transformation of the economy and society – Total War. But first, he must sell it to the German people.
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February 19, 2022
When Goebbels Signed Germany’s Suicide Pact – WW2 Special
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Freedom Convoy organizers arrested, Ottawa police “operations” pre-empt Parliamentary session to debate the invocation of the Emergencies Act. Just another day in Trudeaupia
Parliament was scheduled to debate the Prime Minstrel’s use of the Emergencies Act, but the session was cancelled because the Ottawa police were conducting an “operation” on Parliament Hill. The police also warned journalists to avoid the area for their own safety. Nothing disturbing or authoritarian about attempting to ensure that there won’t be any independent reports on the “operation”, right? This isn’t the kind of “free and democratic society” most of us imagined it was just a few days ago.
Jordan Peterson points out the amazing tone-deafness of the federal government on yet another topic:
ReasonTV looked at the “Revolt of the Canadian Truckers” and compared it to other populist protest movements of recent years:
PPC leader Maxime Bernier sent out this email to supporters:
There is violence in the streets of Ottawa.
The police, armed with riot gear, are brutalizing and arresting peaceful demonstrators from the truckers’ convoy.
Meanwhile, Parliament is not sitting today because of this police operation. All parties agreed to stay away while the regime cracks down on dissidents.
Just like in a banana republic.
They should have been debating Trudeau’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act.
The Emergencies Act replaced the War Measures Act in 1988. The only other times in Canadian history that it was invoked were during the First and Second World Wars, and during the October Crisis in 1970.
There is no emergency in Canada. No war, no insurrection, no terrorist attack, no sanitary or environmental catastrophe that justifies invoking this law.It’s outright illegal, undemocratic, and unconstitutional for this government to give itself exceptional powers to deal with peaceful demonstrators.
It’s a power grab on Trudeau’s part to crush dissidence, that’s all it is.
Trudeau and his Finance minister Chrystia Freeland have given themselves the power to freeze the bank accounts not only of the organizers of the Freedom Convoy, but of anyone who is suspected of helping and funding them.
And we’re supposed to believe that a government that has violated our Constitution and our rights and freedoms for two year will not abuse these new powers?
Nicholas, it’s a dark day for Canada.
But it’s not over. We will continue to fight this authoritarian government, and bring back freedom, respect and justice to this country.
Don’t despair. Stay strong and free.
-Max
The good folks at Spiked explain why the truckers must win:
GiveSendGo sent an email in response to queries about whether the truckers had received the money that had been donated:
Where’s the money?
The questions keep on coming, so we want to answer!
The number one question people are asking right now is, “Have the truckers received the funds?” Our answer is this: “Yes, the truckers have received some of the funds paid out to the ‘Adopt a Trucker’ campaign.”
As this plays out with the Canadian government, there have been steps taken to prevent the funds from being “frozen”. Currently, the bulk of the funds are in an undisclosed U.S. bank.
Right now, the teams involved are actively discussing the legal options for getting the funds where they need to go. (Thank you to those who’ve sent in suggestions, you’ve definitely had some creative ones!)
What we need from you:
We ask that you do not request a refund at this time as these funds will be needed for the truckers and their legal teams. Additionally, please be patient and pray for wisdom for all involved. We will keep you updated as we move forward.
Thank you for all your prayers and support over these past few weeks!
“But as for you, be strong and courageous, for your work will be rewarded.” 2 Chronicles 15:7
Shine Brightly!
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Antique Antics: The Doge’s Palace
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 5 Nov 2021To celebrate my marriage to my Darling Wife Cyan, I asked her to select this video’s topic. Now, given she chose Venice, I wonder who truly gave the gift to whom?
SOURCES & Further Reading: A History of Venice by John Julius Norwich, Francesco’s Venice by Francesco Da Mosto, Venice: City of Dreams from Rick Steves’ Europe, and perhaps literally the most fun source I’ve ever stumbled upon: a 17-page document from the actual Museum of the Doge’s Palace in Venice, explaining the history of the building and the collections inside. The bottom of their building-history webpage has a link to download the magnificent full-PDF, enjoy: https://palazzoducale.visitmuve.it/en…
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QotD: Army marching speed in the pre-industrial era
The intuitive and a touch clever method is to take normal human walking speed – around 3mph – multiply it by walking hours per day (maybe 8) and go with that. This makes intuitive sense, but if large army logistics made intuitive sense, they wouldn’t be hard, and as Clausewitz says (drink!) “War is very simple, but the simplest thing is very hard.” Logistics is very hard. So why don’t armies move at c. 25 miles per day?
So let’s think about – in very general terms – what needs to happen and in what order for a large body of infantry to march. Everyone wakes up and starts to get moving (probably around 5am). Breakfast needs to happen, which may require making fires. Tents need to be struck and stowed along with all of the gear in the baggage train and individual soldiers need to stow their own equipment. All sorts of small tasks add up to eat away parts of the morning. Then everyone needs to get gathered and ready to march.
And now – because you are a large body of infantry, you wait. Let me explain – let’s take a nominally full strength (c. 3,000 men) American Civil War brigade, marching on a road 13ft or so wide. You can get five men (a little cramped) into a single row on that road, meaning that the infantry itself stretches 600 ranks deep. Unlike in the movies (which love ultra-compact marching formations because it looks cool) you need a few feet of separation between rows for best effect (WW2 US Army guidelines specified 2-5 yards), let’s assume each soldier occupies about 5 feet in the marching order. So the infantry is 3,000ft long (914m; nine football fields). We also need unit separation (between the regiments, it’s important to avoid “accordioning” on the march and facilitate control; WW2 army regs suggested 100 yards between companies, 50 yards between platoons, so these could be quite large), so let’s round up to 4,000 ft (1219m; 13 football fields).
But we also have tents, food supplies, spare ammunition and all sorts of other of what the Romans would have called impedimenta (sidenote: if you are thinking, “well, but a pre-gunpowder army doesn’t need this; 1) arrows take up space and 2) camp entrenching supplies – the Romans marched heavy). How many wagons, pack animals or porters you need varies – the Romans seem to have often moved with a mule for every six-to-eight men, plus the army’s siege train. A good rule-of-thumb I’ve seen for American Civil War estimates is around 20 wagons per thousand, so 60 wagons. Rule of thumb in the ACW is 80 wagons to a mile of road, so our wagon train ought to take up around another 4,000ft.
(Sidenote: you can see why logistics gets complicated fast. Even in explaining a rule of thumb, I have to resort to rules of thumb, or else we have to inventory all of the stuff an infantry brigade needs, and all of the food they need and then parcel it out by wagons (and then figure for the mule-or-horse teams for the wagons) and on and on. Fortunately for the historians, this sort of work was done by the armies at the time and written down, so we tend to use their staff-work.)
So the entire force is probably a bit more than 8,000 ft long – 1.5 miles. In practice, there’s actually a lot more space eaten up in separation (between wagons, between men) so it would be longer, but I don’t want to get lost in the details. And this is for just 3,000 infantry – we have no cavalry with their many spare horses (three per man as a typical minimum) or god forbid a siege train which might involve hundreds of wagons.
Bret Devereaux, “New Acquisitions: How Fast Do Armies Move?”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2019-10-06.
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