Quotulatiousness

December 30, 2018

Stalin’s Unexpected Bedfellows – WW2 – 018 – 29 December 1939

Filed under: China, Europe, History, Japan, Military, Russia, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published on 29 Dec 2018

The Chinese Nationalists under command of Chiang Kai Shek is desperately looking to make new or restore old, allies to aid them in their fight against the Japanese. Meanwhile, the Soviets are still struggling to turn the Winter War against the Finnish in their favor.

Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @World_war_two_realtime https://www.instagram.com/world_war_t…

Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
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Written and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Produced and Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Map animations by: Mikk Tali aka Eastory
Community Manager: Joram Appel

Colorizations by Spartacus Olsson and Norman Stewart.

Photos of the Winter War are mostly from the Finnish Wartime Photograph Archive (SA-Kuva).

Eastory’s channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEly…
Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH

From the comments:

IMPORTANT POST SCRIPT NOTE: YouTube age restricted this video, which we find appalling — they also turned off monetisation (but that happens all the time). One of our most important tasks is to reach younger people with deep knowledge about history. While we are aware that some people might find war stories and images of the dead offensive, we cannot bow to that sentiment as it is of utmost important that any story of WW2 also displays the horrors of war. While we are fascinated by military history it is never or goal to glorify armed conflicts, to the contrary. Please help us get this resolved by voicing your opinion in a reply to this comment — we will forward your comments to YouTube.

This is the last World War Two video of 2018! We are looking forward to 2019/1940, which will be filled with many improvements, lots and lots of new content, the start of multiple new series within this channel and maybe even our first roadtrips to the real-life battlegrounds of World War Two. We’re very grateful to have you all onboard and even more so to have over 2000 of you supporting us on Patreon and timeghost.tv. What we do would not be possible without you!

Have a happy and safe New Years Eve and we’ll see you in 2019!

Cheers, Joram on behalf of Indy, Spartacus, Astrid, myself and everyone else at TimeGhost!

Note: Indy refers to a ‘Christmas cribs episode’ on the TimeGhost channel at the end of this video, but at the time of shooting this we didn’t realize that we were going to do a livestream instead. You can check that out on the TimeGhost channel.

December 24, 2018

Sun Yat-sen – A Kidnapping in London – Extra History – #2

Filed under: China, History — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:00

Extra Credits
Published on 22 Dec 2018

Sun Yat-sen moves to a new city for safety, but it will not last long — a year after the Revive China society is destroyed and scattered, he is unwittingly kidnapped in London. He must rely on the ingenuity of his outside ally, Dr. James Cantlie…

Join us on Patreon! http://bit.ly/EHPatreon

December 23, 2018

Trouble in China – WW2 – 017 22 December 1939

Filed under: China, Europe, History, Japan, Military, Russia, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published on 22 Dec 2018

While the Winter War continues with a Soviet armoured attack at Summa and the Lähde Road and the British attack the Germans from the skies in the first official aerial battle of World War Two, there’s trouble in China. Chiang Kai Shek is looking for ways to gain a new advantage on the Japanese.

Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @World_war_two_realtime https://www.instagram.com/world_war_t…

Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tv

Written and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Produced and Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Map animations by: Mikk Tali aka Eastory
Community Manager: Joram Appel

Colorizations by Spartacus Olsson and Norman Steward.

Photos of the Winter War are mostly from the Finnish Wartime Photograph Archive (SA-Kuva).

Eastory’s channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEly…
Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH

December 20, 2018

China’s Cultural Revolution

Filed under: China, History — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In Quillette, James David Banker describes the beginnings of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution:

“The Chinese People’s Liberation Army is the great school of Mao Zedong Thought”, 1969.
A poster from the Cultural Revolution, featuring an image of Chairman Mao, published by the government of the People’s Republic of China.
Image via Wikimedia Commons.

“Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart,” wrote James Baldwin, “for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.” This observation has been confirmed many times throughout history. However, China’s Cultural Revolution offers perhaps the starkest illustration of just how dangerous the “pure in heart” can be. The ideological justification for the revolution was to purge the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the nation more broadly, of impure elements hidden in its midst: capitalists, counter-revolutionaries, and “representatives of the bourgeoisie.” To that end, Mao Zedong activated China’s youth — unblemished and uncorrupted in heart and mind — to lead the struggle for purity. Christened the “Red Guards,” they were placed at the vanguard of a revolution that was, in truth, a cynical effort by Mao to reassert his waning power in the Party. Nevertheless, it set in motion a self-destructive force of almost unimaginable depravity.

The Cultural Revolution commenced in spirit when Mao published a letter indicting a number of Party leaders on May 16, 1966. But it was a seemingly minor event nine days later that ignited the revolution in effect: a young philosophy professor at Peking University named Nie Yuanzi placed a “big-character poster” (a handwritten propaganda sheet featuring large Chinese characters) on a public bulletin board denouncing the university president and others in the administration as bourgeois revisionists. Mao immediately endorsed her protest, which set off a chain reaction of student revolt that swept through China.

That chain reaction was accelerated by “working groups” of ideologues sent to administer schools. Under their tenure, schools became centers of activism rather than learning. Students were encouraged to create big-character posters exposing their own teachers, officials, and even parents. The accused were humiliated in daily “struggle sessions” in which their students and colleagues interrogated them and demanded confessions. The viciousness of these sessions rapidly intensified. Students beat, spat upon, and tortured — in horrifically creative ways — their often elderly teachers and professors. In one case, students demanded their biology professor stare at the sun with wide open eyes. If he blinked or looked away, they beat him. Even middle and elementary school students participated in the struggle sessions, sometimes beating their teachers to death with sticks and belt buckles.

Students were also encouraged to turn on their classmates. As the sins of one generation passed to the next, a new hierarchy was born: the children of revolutionaries on top and the children of “landlords,” “capitalists,” and “rightists” at the bottom. These students were labeled “rotten eggs” and were fair game for the same treatment meted out to their parents. The current president of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping, endured this fate. He was only 15 years old when his father, a loyal Maoist and one-time propaganda chief, was purged, his sister executed, and his own mother forced to denounced Xi as a reactionary. Amid the hysteria, teachers, professors, and intellectuals did not dare to stand up to the students or defend their colleagues lest they suffer similar fates. But they could not escape by being bystanders. With every word and action becoming potential evidence of capitalist sympathy, teachers and intellectuals enthusiastically joined their students in the struggle sessions and screaming rallies.

QotD: An “authentic” peasant diet

Filed under: China, Europe, Food, Health, History, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The fact is that you wouldn’t want to eat like a European peasant of yesteryear, or a Chinese peasant, either. Sure, peasants ate well when the garden was producing and the harvest was ripe. A lot of the year, they ate pretty meager, dull fare. Many of the spices we now take as ordinary — salt and pepper, for example — were pretty pricey. So were meat and cheese, which, like everything else, tended to get pretty scarce in winter. When you read about what people were actually eating most of the year, you realize that diets were dull, repetitive, and heavy on grains and legumes, lightly complimented by salted and dried things (home canning, like many of the other things we think of as traditional, was another Industrial Revolution contribution, and before modern farming practices, cows tended to be “dried off” in the winter to save the expense of the extra feed a milking cow needed). And this stayed true throughout the 19th century for large swaths of the population in both America and abroad.

The farther north you went, the more this was true — it’s probably no accident that Ireland and Scandinavia are not, let us say, renowned for their fantastic contributions to world cuisine. When your growing season is a short cloudy period between miserable winters, you don’t have the raw materials to construct amazing dining experiences. (Sure, every country has at least one or two really good fairly traditional foods. But the shorter the time fresh ingredients are available, the fewer culinary marvels you’ll be able to produce.)

Too, we must remember that not everyone was a good cook. Cooking was a job, not an absorbing hobby, and as with any other job, many people did it badly. Every farm wife could produce enough calories to feed her family (at least, if the raw materials were available). Not all of them could produce anything you’d want to eat. Modern food-processing technology has relieved us of that most “authentic” culinary experience: boring ingredients processed by an indifferent cook into something that you’d only voluntarily consume if you were pretty hungry. Even the memory of these cooks has fallen away, though you’ll encounter a lot of them if you read old novels.

Megan McArdle, “‘Authentic’ Food Is Not What You Think It Is”, Bloomberg View, 2017-02-24.

December 17, 2018

Sun Yat-sen – A Killing in Hong Kong – Extra History – #1

Filed under: China, History — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Extra Credits
Published on 15 Dec 2018

Growing up in Honolulu, Sun Yat-sen had an expansive, exciting education, which would inspire him when he moved to Hong Kong as a young adult ready to change the world as a doctor — and as the leader of the “Revive China Society” interested in overthrowing the Qing government.

Sun Yat-sen was a dangerous man. The Qing were right to fear him. After all, he’d bring 2,000 years of imperial rule crashing down.

Join us on Patreon! http://bit.ly/EHPatreon

December 16, 2018

Perkele! Finland Strikes Back – WW2 – 016 15 December 1939

Filed under: China, Europe, History, Japan, Military, Russia, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published on 15 Dec 2018

In the second week of the Winter War, during multiple counteroffensives, including the famous Sausage War, the Finnish Defence Forces dash any hopes of a quick victory that the Red Army and Stalin might have had.

WW2 day by day on Instagram @World_war_two_realtime https://www.instagram.com/world_war_t…

Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tv

Written and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Produced and Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Wieke Kapteijns
Map animations by: Mikk Tali aka Eastory
Community Manager: Joram Appel

Coloring by Spartacus Olsson

Thumbnail depicting Finnish soldiers using a slingshot to lob grenades at the Red Army. Colorized by Cassowary https://www.flickr.com/photos/cassowa…

Eastory’s channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEly…
Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH

December 2, 2018

The Winter War – WW2 – 014 December 1 1939

Filed under: China, Europe, History, Japan, Military, Russia, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published on 1 Dec 2018

On the last day of November 1939 the Red Army of the USSR invades Finland and the Winter War begins.

WW2 day by day, every day is now live on our Instagram account @World_war_two_realtime https://www.instagram.com/world_war_t…

Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tv

Written and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Produced and Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Iryna Dolka
Community Manager: Joram Appel

Coloring by Spartacus Olsson and Norman Stewart
Norman’s pictures https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/

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

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH

November 26, 2018

Will the Kriegsmarine Rule the Waves? – WW2 – 013 24 November 1939

Filed under: China, Europe, Germany, History, Japan, Military, Russia, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published on 24 Nov 2018

The European Allies seek a countermeasure to the mysterious German mines, in China the Japanese advance, and in Poland it is the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto.

WW2 day by day, every day is now live on our Instagram account @World_war_two_realtime https://www.instagram.com/world_war_t…

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tv

Written and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Produced and Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Wieke Kapteijns and Spartacus Olsson
Community Manager: Joram Appel

Coloring by Spartacus Olsson and Norman Stewart
Norman’s pictures https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/

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

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH

October 9, 2018

Kingdom of Majapahit – Changing Winds – Extra History – #5

Filed under: Asia, China, History, Religion — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Extra Credits
Published on 6 Oct 2018

When Islam arrived in Indonesia, life changed — except within Majapahit, where court drama kept them focused on themselves and unaware of the visits and alliances between Admiral Zheng He and the Sultanate of Malacca — forming new powers in the southern seas.

Support us on Patreon! http://bit.ly/EHPatreon

As we finished this episode, an even more devastating earthquake and tsunami struck the island of Sulawesi. Once again we’ve linked two fundraising efforts—one international aid organization, and another for a local effort. Any help would be deeply appreciated.
https://secure2.oxfamamerica.org/page…
https://kopernik.info/en/donate/palu-…

October 7, 2018

Poland Falls and China Rises – WW2 – 006 October 6 1939

Filed under: China, Germany, History, Japan, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published on 6 Oct 2018

In the West, the sun sets on Poland as the last forces surrender, but her defenders are already regrouping abroad. In the East,​ the sun rises on China as Japan meets yet another defeat.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tv

Written and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Produced and Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Ben Ollerenshaw & Spartacus Olsson
Trainee Editors: Sarvesh and Ben Ollerenshaw
Colorized Pictures by Spartacus Olsson

Colorized pictures by:
Mikołaj Kaczmarek – Kolor Historii https://www.facebook.com/KolorHistorii/
Olga Shirnina – Klimbim https://klimbim2014.wordpress.com
NormanStewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/
Spartacus Olsson

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

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH

September 25, 2018

China’s anti-Japanese attitudes

Filed under: China, History, Japan, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

From the time that Japan broke out of its self-imposed isolation in the late 19th century, China has been one of its main targets, first for military action and more recently for economic expansion and competition. Japan’s reputation in China would have been bad enough even without the Japanese Imperial presence in large portions of China from 1937 through 1945, but the wounds from the Second Sino-Japanese War have never healed.

Last week, Nick Taber reported on some surprisingly intense anti-Japanese sentiments he encountered in China:

In 2017 in a rust-belt city in Northeast China I hopped in a taxi and began chatting with my driver who, when the conversation turned to politics, nonchalantly told me that he wished that the Chinese Government would kill every single Japanese person on the planet. I found this extreme to say the least, so I double-checked just in case my Chinese was failing me, “You mean kill every single Japanese man, woman, and child?”

“Yes, exactly,” he said.

Guessing by his apparent age I wrote my driver off as a fringe extremist whose possibly restricted worldview was likely shaped during the throes of the Cultural Revolution. I presumed that the vast majority of Chinese people today would decisively denounce this kind of violent sentiment of genocide. This presumption was wrong.

Chinese genocidal hatred against the Japanese simply cannot be dismissed as the bigotry of a nationalist fringe movement. Anti-Japanese sentiment is in fact so engrained in Chinese culture that it has become not only a political utility and form of patriotism but even a solid go-to branding opportunity.

The CEO of a major company in Hebei province sets his username on Weibo (China’s Twitter) to “killer of Japanese devils” and likewise a news anchor of a regional TV station sets his Weibo username to “destroy Japanese devils.” Weibo also has hundreds of users with the phrase “bomb Japan” in their username, and after a devastating 6.1 magnitude earthquake struck Osaka in June, the natural disaster began trending on Weibo with a large number of Chinese netizens lamenting that more Japanese people had not been killed. As one user put it, “The whole nation of Japan should perish as soon as possible. It’s an evil race that has infuriated god.”

Certainly not all Chinese hold such genocidal or hateful views. There is a sizeable minority that even frown upon these views and a growing number of more internationally-minded Chinese who have Japanese friends or study in Japan so are at the very least suspicious of this hate. Some Chinese even see this sentiment, in part, as a product of government propaganda and brainwashing. As The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) manages uncertainty over the future of its leadership, it exploits nationalism to boost its popularity and the painful memories of WWII anti-Japanese sentiment provides a relatively low-cost, high-yield opportunity for this purpose.

Chinese citizens who do openly support Japan in any way, shape, or form also risk being seen as traitors. Another user commenting on the Osaka tragedy remarked, “Any Chinese people in Osaka right now travelling or shopping? They should be buried together with the Japanese”.

In 2017, the China Badminton Super League told their own Lin Dan, the number one badminton champion in the world, that he would be forbidden from competing in the playoffs because he had a sponsorship contract with the Japanese sports brand Yonex. In 2012, the Chinese actress Li Bingbing refused to travel to Japan to promote her film, Resident Evil 5, saying that she “personally cannot handle it emotionally”.

The origin of China’s anti-Japanese sentiment lies in the Chinese theater of World War II when the Imperial Japanese Army committed scores of harrowing war crimes on Chinese soil including the mass killing of civilians, sexual slavery, human experimentation, and cannibalism that resulted in the deaths of 10 to 20 million Chinese people.

Bodies of victims along Qinhuai River out of Nanjing’s west gate during Nanjing Massacre.
Detail of original photo by Moriyasu Murase, 村瀬守保 via Wikimedia Commons.

September 23, 2018

How to use the stock market as a scorecard during a trade war

Filed under: Business, China, Economics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At the Continental Telegraph, Tim Worstall explains how even the financial journalists at Fortune are misunderstanding what the changes in stock market values mean during Trump’s ongoing trade disputes with China:

… how stock markets react is not a good guide to the positive effects of tariffs. Quite the opposite in fact. It’s a much better guide to how we’re all getting screwed by tariffs. That is, the better the US stock market does the more evidence we’ve got of the bad effects of tariffs and a trade war.

Think on it. Why is Trump imposing tariffs? To protect American business from competition by those dastardly foreigners. Who loses in the absence of competition from the Yellow Peril? Those American consumers who would have bought those better/cheaper Chinese goods if they were able to. Who gains from tariffs? American businesses who can now gouge the American consumer a little more in the absence of those items imported from East Asia.

So, a rise in the US stock market is a guide to how much more profit American business can screw out of the American public. It’s a measure, a reasonably good and precise one too, of how much we the people are losing from the trade war and tariffs. More exactly, it’s the capitalised value of the ongoing losses we’re suffering from this restriction of our choices, the competition those who supply us face.

That is, the better the stock market performance the higher those costs and the more we’re losing the trade war. That is, as long as you accept that it is consumers, not producers, that matter, but then that’s the standard economic assumption ever since Adam Smith even if it gets lost in Washington DC often enough.

The US stock market rising in response to US tariffs is evidence of the losses from tariffs, not the gains.

September 18, 2018

Kingdom of Majapahit – Wrath of the Khan – Extra History – #2

Filed under: Asia, China, History, Religion — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Extra Credits
Published on 15 Sep 2018

The Mongols came to the island of Java — the King of Singhasari had defied them for too long. But by the time they got there, the king had died, and instead someone claiming to be his stepson, Raden Vijaya, promised to be their vassal. The Mongol forces were in for quite a surprise.

September 6, 2018

Feature History – Chinese Civil War

Filed under: China, History, Japan, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Feature History
Published on 25 Jul 2017

Hello and welcome to Feature History, featuring a civil war that done happened in China.

Help me recognise Taiwan (or not)
https://www.paypal.me/FeatureHistory
Patreon
https://www.patreon.com/FeatureHistory
Discord
https://discord.gg/Zbk4CvR
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I do the research, writing, narration, art, and animation. Yes, it is very lonely

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