Quotulatiousness

October 18, 2020

The diplomatic spat with China is “forcing the prime minister to bring out the biggest guns in his arsenal: his really serious socks”

Filed under: Cancon, China, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The Line shows just how seriously Justin Trudeau is taking China’s most recent not-so-veiled threats against Canadians in Hong Kong:

The warm glow of a good feed faded quickly in Ottawa, alas, where our nice little vacation from history continues its unravelling apace. China’s ambassador to Canada is issuing increasingly dire threats to the safety of our citizens, specifically the hundreds of thousands of Canadians living in Hong Kong, forcing the prime minister to bring out the biggest guns in his arsenal: his really serious socks, a very frowny photograph by Adam Scotti, and, we expect, the imminent announcement that on top of all her current duties, Chrystia Freeland will be appointed Progressive Minister In Charge Of Figuring Out What The Hell We Should Do About China But Not In A Way That Offends Anyone The Middle Class Build Back Green Error Error Program Alarm—

Whoa! Sorry! The Freeland Job Generator glitched again. No surprise, considering the miles Trudeau has put on it in only five years. Let’s hope it doesn’t give out entirely — we’d need 47 years to procure another one.

Anyway, as to the matter at hand, your Line editors are pragmatic folk. Canada can’t punch at the same level as China; under Mr. Trudeau, indeed, despite all our for-Liberal-egos-only preening about Canada being back, we can’t even punch at the same level as Ireland and Norway. But it’s time Canadians face facts: we can either continue pretending that China’s increasingly aggressive and threatening behaviour is a problem that will go away if we ignore it long enough, or we can at least pretend that we have balls and take what actions we can. Obviously we’re not going to send a fleet to parade up and down their coast, but there are things we can realistically do, and we aren’t. Australia, for instance, also in Beijing’s sights, has rolled out a series of measures to curtail China’s substantial influence there. Canada ought to be doing the same. And we could start by immediately banning Huawei, and encouraging every other country that would listen — which doesn’t seem to be many — that they should too.

Do we expect the Liberal government to do this? No. Making money shilling for the Chinese regime is the best thing to happen to post-politics Liberals since Ontario’s air ambulance service. But they should do this. And the delay is only gonna make it hurt more when events eventually force us to accept that China is not our friend, never has been, and never will be under the current political leadership.

October 16, 2020

“The Art of War” – Wisdom of Sun Tzu – Sabaton History 089 [Official]

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

Sabaton History
Published 15 Oct 2020

Sun Tzu says: “The Art of War is of vital importance to the state. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin.” The Chinese Art of War by Sun Tzu is one of the most influential books in history. Throughout the centuries it would accompany generals, statesmen, and philosophers alike. Those who follow his teachings, who safeguard themselves against defeat and make sure of victory before the battle is fought, will triumph. Those who know everything about themselves and their enemies will achieve supreme excellence.

The Art of War by Sun Tzu Text: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/132/1…

Support Sabaton History on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistory

Listen to “The Art of War” on the album The Art of War:
https://music.sabaton.net/TheArtOfWar

Watch the Official Live Clip of “The Art of War” here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYoK1…

Listen to Sabaton on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/SabatonSpotify
Official Sabaton Merchandise Shop: http://bit.ly/SabatonOfficialShop

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard and Wieke Kapteijns
Produced by: Pär Sundström, Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Brodén, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Community Manager: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Editor: Karolina Dołega
Sound Editor: Marek Kaminski
Maps by: Eastory – https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory
Archive: Reuters/Screenocean – https://www.screenocean.com

Visual Sources:
– Pictures of Ming Dinasty courtesy of Yprpyqp from Wikimedia
– Pictures from the period of Opium War courtesy of Massachusetts Institute of Technology © 2010 Visualizing Cultures
– Wellcome Images
– Major National Historical and Cultural Site in China
– Pictures of The Art of War book courtesy of vlasta2, bluefootedbooby on flickr.com
– Metmuseum
– Picture of Eastern Han Calvary courtesy of GaryLee Todd from Wikimedia
– Granger Archive
– Hallwyl Museum
– Nomura Art Museum
– The icons from The Noun Project: Man by vanila, Asian woman by Jaime Serra, Wise Man by Éléonore Sabaté

All music by: Sabaton

An OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.

© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.

October 10, 2020

China’s national memories are oddly inconsistent

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

At UnHerd, Bill Hayton looks at the one conflict between China and a western nation that bulks disproportionally large in the current Chinese government’s historical grievance-bank:

“The 98th Regiment of Foot at the attack on Chin-Kiang-Foo, 21 July 1842.”
Painting by Richard Simkin (1840-1926) via Wikimedia Commons.

Take three mid-19th century Asian conflicts: one killed 20 million people, one killed well over 100,000 and a third killed 20,000. Which one, despite being barely noticed by the Chinese government at the time, is the most discussed today and has become emblematic of an historic clash between East and West?

The immensely deadly Taiping Rebellion between 1850 and 1864 and the vicious conflict between “Hakka” and “Cantonese” peoples between 1855 and 1867 are barely known outside China, despite their far bloodier impacts on human lives. We know vastly more about the “First Opium War” of 1840 because it has played a totemic role in two political arenas: one in China and one in the UK. And in both places, the origins of the war have been obscured and distorted to suit political agendas.

In China, the “Opium War” marks the beginning of what the Communist Party currently calls the “century of national humiliation” — a period of unrelenting misery that only ended in 1949 with the Party’s victory in the Chinese Civil War. It is a narrative that underpins both the Party’s right to rule China and its increasingly assertive foreign policy. In Britain, the narrative of the war has been a weapon wielded variously by Liberal critics of a Whig government, puritan campaigners against drugs, leftist opponents of British foreign policy and Twitter-users claiming that white people are inherently racist. All these critiques and narratives caricature the evidence.

In the comic-book version, the British Empire went to war in 1840 to force an illegal and immoral drug, opium, down the respiratory passages of the Chinese people, purely for its own ill-gotten ends. This narrative is oddly patronising. It assumes that the Chinese side were merely naïve dupes, hapless victims to imperial power. It is time to recognise that there were several protagonists in the First Opium War.

On one side were the British free-traders, men who wanted an end to Chinese restrictions on commerce, whether of cotton or opium. There was also an East India Company anxious to maintain its good relations with local officials, and a London government and its critics with their own agendas. On the other was an imperial court in Beijing split between reformers and a clique of Chinese conservative “scholar-officials” intent on keeping foreign influence at bay. In the middle was an Asian financial problem triggered by a European war.

October 9, 2020

The passing of the “unipolar moment”

Filed under: Cancon, China, Government, India, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In The Dominion Ben Woodfinden considers the return of foreign policy concerns to Canadian politics after a multi-decade disappearance:

The collapse of the Soviet Union ushered in what the late Charles Krauthammer, in a famous Foreign Affairs essay [PDF], called the “unipolar moment” in which the United States became the unquestioned global hegemon, with no true political, economic, or ideological rivals left. We have been living for the last three decades in this moment.

But Krauthammer’s use of “moment” is deliberate. Krauthammer readily admitted that unipolarity was temporary, and that “no doubt, multipolarity will come in time.” Were he alive today, Krauthammer would probably be ready to proclaim the unipolar moment over. Great power rivalry is back, and the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this, killing off any hopes that the relationship between an increasingly aggressive China and the United States could be anything other than adversarial.

This rivalry looks set to become the defining feature of the post-COVID international order, and as the Meng Wanzou case and the kidnapping of the two Michaels reveals, Canada finds itself unavoidably caught in the middle of this burgeoning rivalry. Where Canada fits into this is now one of the most important questions facing our country today.

Canada’s relationship with the United States is our most important relationship. We are unavoidably connected to our neighbour, and our relationship with the United States is a largely amiable one. But despite our integration and close ties with America, Canada remains a sovereign nation, and most Canadians retain a desire for Canada to continue to behave and act like one. Similarly, while it is a Canadian pastime to criticize the flaws and failings of our southern neighbour, we still share the same fundamental democratic values. Thus when it comes to figuring out where Canada stands in the middle of this new great power rivalry, we have little choice but to be broadly aligned with the United States and other free democratic nations.

[…]

Canada can accomplish these goals by prioritizing the strengthening of our relationship with other democratic nations that share our values and are also wary of the rise of an aggressive China with global ambitions. There is no shortage of other nations that fit this description. Most obvious are other Commonwealth nations with which we share common values and history. I’ve written before here in defence of CANZUK, a proposed agreement between Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom that would strengthen economic ties and prioritize foreign policy and military coordination between these four nations. This is a good start, and strengthening the relationship between other Westminster nations to ensure that we all have an independent voice alongside America would be valuable to all prospective CANZUK members. [Federal Conservative leader Erin] O’Toole was an early supporter of CANZUK during his 2017 leadership bid, and this is something we should prioritize.

Another Commonwealth nation that Canada should prioritize the strengthening of economic and political relations with is India, a nation also threatened by an assertive China. While Canada-India relations have soured under the current government, rebuilding this relationship should be a priority. The current Indian government is not without its controversies and diaspora politics in Canada is complicated to put it mildly. But in the face of a confrontational and dangerous Chinese regime, we don’t have much choice other than to pursue closer and warmer relations with India, even if this will displease some.

October 8, 2020

Keeping up with the Bonapartes, Sino-German relations and Barbarossa news – WW2 – OOTF 018

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

World War Two
Published 7 Oct 2020

What were the Bonapartes up to during World War Two? How were the German casualties of Operation Barbarossa reported, if at all, in Germany? And what exactly was the relationship between China and Germany in World War Two? Join Indy in the Chair of Infinite Wisdom to find out.

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

Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @ww2_day_by_day – https://www.instagram.com/ww2_day_by_day
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Lewis Braithwaite, Ian Sowden, and Samir Mechel
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Lewis Braithwaite, Ian Sowden, and Samir Mechel
Edited by: Monika Worona
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)

Colorizations by:
Daniel
Mikołaj Uchman
Musvage

Visual sources:
Bundesarchiv

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

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

October 4, 2020

A huge new German Offensive begins – Operation Typhoon! – WW2 – 110 – October 3, 1941

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

World War Two
Published 3 Oct 2020

Adolf Hitler’s renewed drive on Moscow, the Soviet capital, begins this week, even as the Japanese drive on Changsha ends. But major news this week is the colossal amount of equipment, arms, and ammunition that Britain and the neutral USA plan to ship to the beleaguered Soviet Union.

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

Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @ww2_day_by_day – https://www.instagram.com/ww2_day_by_day
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Written and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Miki Cackowski
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)

Colorizations by:
Dememorabilia – https://www.instagram.com/dememorabilia/
Carlos Ortega Pereira, BlauColorizations – https://www.instagram.com/blaucolorizations
Norman Stewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/
Klimbim – https://www.flickr.com/photos/2215569…

Sources:
Bundesarchiv
Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
RIA Novosti archive, image #585208
Yad Vashem 3725/4
Picture of Lord Beaverbrook, courtesy Yousuf Karsh, Dutch National Archives
Graphics of Hawker Hurricane, courtesy Martin Čížek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hu…
Graphic of P-39Q Airacobra, courtesy Martin Čížek https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi…
From the Noun Project: Skull by Muhamad Ulum, Radar by Econceptive, Mining by Pham Duy Phuong Hung, golds by iconsphere, Diamond by IconMark, puncture by supalerk laipawat, tire by Juan León, wool ball by IconMark, Boots by Atif Arshad, Oil by TTHNga, Needle by artworkbean, Gloves by Berkah Icon, Knife by Vladimir Belochkin, saw by Stepan Voevodin, forceps by IcoLabs, Chest X-ray by Turkkub, pills by Komkrit Noenpoempisut, antibiotics by UNiCORN, Roll by rivercon

Soundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Johan Hynynen – “Dark Beginning”
Johannes Bornlof – “Death And Glory 3”
Jon Bjork – “For the Many”
Johannes Bornlof – “Last Man Standing 3”
Reynard Seidel – “Deflection”
Johannes Bornlof – “The Inspector 4”
Bonnie Grace – “The Dominion”
Johannes Bornlof – “Deviation In Time”
Gunnar Johnsen – “Not Safe Yet”
Rannar Sillard – “March Of The Brave 10”

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

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

September 28, 2020

It’s been a while since these stickers occupied pride of place on every Prius bumper, hasn’t it?

Filed under: China, History, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Arthur Chrenkoff wonders “Whatever happened to ‘Free Tibet’?”

With its heyday probably twenty years ago, it used to be a major cause celebre for artists and activists, with bumper stickers adorning countless cars, including – proverbially – the early Priuses. It was mostly a thing of the left (certainly in Australia it was largely associated with the Greens) and the hippies and New Agers enchanted by the wit and wisdom of the Dalai Lama, spruiking his version of Buddhism from exile. This probably scared many people off, which is a pity because the question of Tibetan independence shouldn’t be judged on the merits of its incense burning Western supporters.

So what happened? Tibet is certainly still not free – if anything the things have gotten worse on the rooftop of the world – but the campaign has largely dropped out of the public consciousness. I don’t quite know the answer myself. Maybe some political causes, like fashion trends, have limited life spans. Maybe the left has learned to stop worrying and live with China as one of the few viable alternatives to the “Western neoliberal world order”. Maybe China has become too rich and powerful to hope that candle-lit vigils for Lhasa will do any good.

So what’s been happening in Tibet lately, just out of interest?

September 27, 2020

Free from the Nazi Occupation – but for how long can it last? WW2 – 109 – September 26, 1941

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

World War Two
Published 26 Sep 2020

In former Yugoslavia, the Republic of Uzice breaks free from the German occupation, even as the Germans are mopping up the masses of shattered Soviet Armies after last week’s capture of Kiev. In the north, it really looks as if Leningrad will hold out for the time being, and German troops from both north and south converge on the center for the coming drive on Moscow.

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

Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @ww2_day_by_day –https://www.instagram.com/ww2_day_by_day
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Written and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)

Colorizations by:
– Olga Shirnina, a.k.a. Klimbim – https://klimbim2014.wordpress.com/
– Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/
– Norman Stewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/
– Carlos Ortega Pereira, BlauColorizations – https://www.instagram.com/blaucolorizations
– Mikołaj Uchman
– Jaris Almazani (Artistic Man) – https://instagram.com/artistic.man?ig…

Sources:
– Bundesarchiv, CC-BY-SA 3.0: Bild_146-2005-0176, Bild_183-J21813,
– Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe

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

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

September 20, 2020

Another week, another half million for the Germans – WW2 – 108 – September 19, 1941

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

World War Two
Published 19 Sep 2020

Kiev falls to the Germans, yielding hundreds of thousands of prisoners as whole armies are surrounded, but behind the lines all over German-occupied territories, partisan movements are gaining steam. Meanwhile, in China, Japan launches another campaign against Changsha.

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

Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @ww2_day_by_day – https://www.instagram.com/ww2_day_by_day
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Written and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Monika Worona
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)

Colorizations by:
– Norman Stewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/
– Carlos Ortega Pereira, BlauColorizations – https://www.instagram.com/blaucolorizations
– Olga Shirnina, a.k.a. Klimbim – https://klimbim2014.wordpress.com/
– Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/
– Jaris Almazani (Artistic Man) – https://instagram.com/artistic.man?ig…
– Daniel Weiss

Sources:
– Ra Boe / Wikipedia / Lizenz: Creative Commons CC-by-sa-3.0 de
– Mil. ru
– Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
– Estonica

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

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

September 18, 2020

Was the Wuhan Coronavirus (aka Covid-19) created in a Chinese lab?

Filed under: China, Health, Science — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Rowan Jacobsen profiles the scientist who believes, based on her own research, that the Wuhan Coronavirus was not a naturally occurring mutation and was instead deliberately created in a Chinese government lab:

It wasn’t long before she came across an article about the remarkable stability of the virus, whose genome had barely changed from the earliest human cases, despite trillions of replications. This perplexed Chan. Like many emerging infectious diseases, COVID-19 was thought to be zoonotic — it originated in animals, then somehow found its way into people. At the time, the Chinese government and most scientists insisted the jump had happened at Wuhan’s seafood market, but that didn’t make sense to Chan. If the virus had leapt from animals to humans in the market, it should have immediately started evolving to life inside its new human hosts. But it hadn’t.

On a hunch, she decided to look at the literature on the 2003 SARS virus, which had jumped from civets to people. Bingo. A few papers mentioned its rapid evolution in its first months of existence. Chan felt the familiar surge of puzzle endorphins. The new virus really wasn’t behaving like it should. Chan knew that delving further into this puzzle would require some deep genetic analysis, and she knew just the person for the task. She opened Google Chat and fired off a message to Shing Hei Zhan. He was an old friend from her days at the University of British Columbia and, more important, he was a computational god.

“Do you want to partner on a very unusual paper?” she wrote.

Sure, he replied.

One thing Chan noticed about the original SARS was that the virus in the first human cases was subtly different — a few dozen letters of genetic code — from the one in the civets. That meant it had immediately morphed. She asked Zhan to pull up the genomes for the coronaviruses that had been found on surfaces in the Wuhan seafood market. Were they at all different from the earliest documented cases in humans?

Zhan ran the analysis. Nope, they were 100 percent the same. Definitely from humans, not animals. The seafood-market theory, which Chinese health officials and the World Health Organization espoused in the early days of the pandemic, was wrong. Chan’s puzzle detectors pulsed again. “Shing,” she messaged Zhan, “this paper is going to be insane.”

In the coming weeks, as the spring sun chased shadows across her kitchen floor, Chan stood at her counter and pounded out her paper, barely pausing to eat or sleep. It was clear that the first SARS evolved rapidly during its first three months of existence, constantly fine-tuning its ability to infect humans, and settling down only during the later stages of the epidemic. In contrast, the new virus looked a lot more like late-stage SARS. “It’s almost as if we’re missing the early phase,” Chan marveled to Zhan. Or, as she put it in their paper, as if “it was already well adapted for human transmission.”

That was a profoundly provocative line. Chan was implying that the virus was already familiar with human physiology when it had its coming-out party in Wuhan in late 2019. If so, there were three possible explanations.

For the record, my strong suspicion is that she is correct about the origins of the virus, but I don’t think it was deliberately released by the Chinese government. I think if it had been deliberate, it would have been much more directly “weaponized” in both delivery mechanism and targeting.

September 5, 2020

Chinese 7.62mm Sten Gun

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

Forgotten Weapons
Published 13 May 2020

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

https://www.floatplane.com/channel/Fo…

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…

During World War Two, Canada supplied some 73,000 Sten guns (made by the Long Branch arsenal) to Chinese Nationalist forces in an effort to help them fight the Japanese. These Stens were standard MkII pattern guns, chambered for the 9x19mm Parabellum cartridge. However, many of these were eventually converted to 7.62mm Tokarev ammunition, especially after the victory of the Communist forces over the Nationalists. The conversion involved a new barrel and new magazine and magazine well. The 7.62mm barrels were typically longer than the original ones, and the magazine of choice was that of the PPS-43. Some were done by installed a magazine adapter into the original magazine well, and some (like this one) were done by cutting off the original magazine well and replacing it with a new one. In addition, some Sten guns were made domestically in China, both in 9mm and 7.62mm. The 7.62mm Tokarev cartridge was popular both from Russian pistols and submachine guns and also from China’s long military use of the dimensionally-identical 7.63mm Mauser cartridge in C96 pistols.

Many thanks to the Royal Armouries for allowing me to film and disassemble this interesting submachine gun! The NFC collection there — perhaps the best military small arms collection in Western Europe — is available by appointment to researchers:

https://royalarmouries.org/research/n…

You can browse the various Armouries collections online here:

https://royalarmouries.org/collection/

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle #36270
Tucson, AZ 85740

September 2, 2020

Trust – the limiting factor on Chinese tech firms’ growth

Filed under: Business, China, Government, India, Media, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Henrik Tiemroth on the “glass ceiling” that Chinese technology companies are struggling with:

The rise of Chinese technology firms has been one of the major developments of the last decade. As some of those companies expand their operations overseas, some observers see China laying the groundwork for a broader imperial project, using their growing digital might to project power and influence. By 2030, will we all be sending messages on WeChat, searching on Baidu, and shopping on Alibaba?

Probably not. As China’s major tech firms attempt to expand to global markets, they are running into a glass ceiling of their government’s own making: people don’t trust them. The recent ban on ByteDance’s popular social media app TikTok in the United States demonstrates the extent – and the limits – of China’s digital ambitions.

TikTok was the first Chinese internet product to have a mass following in the United States. As of 2020, the app has 100 million active users in the US – about a third of the population. But the popular and seemingly innocuous app for making, viewing and sharing quippy homemade music videos has been declared a national security threat.

In August, President Trump signed an executive order effectively banning the app, along with WeChat, unless their US operations are taken over by a domestic company. Given the close links between Chinese companies like ByteDance and the government, they argue, the data collected on American users of the app could be used by the Chinese state for espionage or other nefarious purposes.

The Trump administration is not the first government to take this step. In July, India banned TikTok, along with 59 other Chinese apps, amid rising tensions with China. The government cited similar concerns about the potential for mining and misuse of private data. Indonesia temporarily banned the platform in 2018, and Japan is reportedly considering following the US’s lead.

Across the world, people are becoming warier of who uses their data and how. Lawmakers are perking up, as the implications of data for national security are becoming more clear. In 2018, the European Union implemented landmark data privacy laws. In the US, tech CEOs are regularly dragged before congressional committees and a bipartisan movement for regulation is building.

Chinese internet companies face those same concerns and then some. It’s one thing to have your personal data used to promote conspicuous consumption. It’s another entirely to have it weaponized by a sophisticated digital surveillance state at the cutting edge of data-driven totalitarianism.

Cold War 2.0 — you’re soaking in it

Filed under: Cancon, China, Economics, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Ted Campbell responds to a recent article in Foreign Affairs by Nadia Schadlow:

Dr Schadlow posits that “A new set of assumptions should underpin U.S. foreign policy … [and, concomitantly, the foreign polices of the US led West, including Canada’s, because] … Contrary to the optimistic predictions made in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, widespread political liberalization and the growth of transnational organizations have not tempered rivalries among countries. Likewise, globalization and economic interdependence have not been unalloyed goods; often, they have generated unanticipated inequalities and vulnerabilities [and] although the proliferation of digital technologies has increased productivity and brought other benefits, it has also eroded the U.S. military’s advantages and posed challenges to democratic societies.”

After outlining the rosy assumption made by leaders and policy makers from Richard Nixon through Bill Clinton to Barack Obama ~ assumption which I shared, Nadia Schadlow says that “China had no intention of converging with the West [because] The Chinese Communist Party never intended to play by the West’s rules; it was determined to control markets rather than open them, and it did so by keeping its exchange rate artificially low, providing unfair advantages to state-owned enterprises, and erecting regulatory barriers against non-Chinese companies. Officials in both the George W. Bush and the Obama administrations worried about China’s intentions. But fundamentally, they remained convinced that the United States needed to engage with China to strengthen the rules-based international system and that China’s economic liberalization would ultimately lead to political liberalization. Instead, China has continued to take advantage of economic interdependence to grow its economy and enhance its military, thereby ensuring the long-term strength of the CCP.” Of course, from a Chinese perspective it might, very reasonably, appear that the liberal, US made (in the late 1940s) “rules based international system” was, in fact, designed to strengthen the US economy and enhance its military and ensure America’s long term strength … and that is not, many would say, a totally unreasonable view.

[…]

America’s allies, including Canada, need to step up and help the USA (and India) with the containment of both China and Russia in several regions: in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe, too. Canada is a G-7 nation. It needs to start acting like one.

Australians, Brits, Canadians and Danes need not share Dr Schadlow’s Trumpian view of the world and of Cold War 2.0 to understand that:

  1. It is here. We are in it, like it or not; and
  2. Like its predecessor, it can turn hot if we do not manage it with care.

Now, at this time, the conventional wisdom is that foreign and defence policy must take a back seat to beating COVID-19 and restarting the economy. But, the Chinese and the Russians are not putting their plans on hold while they deal with the pandemic. (Maybe that’s why Justin Trudeau admires China’s “basic dictatorship” so much.) They will both be moving ahead with plans that aim to put the US-led West, including Canada, at a disadvantage. Additionally, now is a good time to announce plans to build more new warships ~ two or three large helicopter carriers, another supply ship (for a total of four) 16 major surface combatants (the new Type 26 ships) and a dozen smaller corvettes … can be and politicians should say will be built here in Canada, by Canadian workers. Defence related projects, when well conceived and directed, can be great long-term job creators. Canada can do both: speed up our recovery from the pandemic and strengthen our global position by making defence procurement a priority for the recovery.

An artist’s rendition of BAE’s Type 26 Global Combat Ship, which was selected as the Canadian Surface Combatant design in 2019, the most recent “largest single expenditure in Canadian government history” (as all major weapon systems purchases tend to be).
(BAE Systems, via Flickr)

August 31, 2020

Why was Europe better with guns? – The History of Guns

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

History Clarified
Published 3 Dec 2018

China invented gunpowder (combustible powder), so why was it the European nations that went out and conquered the world using firearms?

This video looks at some geographical factors to examine what allowed Europe to innovate while China and most of the world fell behind with gunpowder weapons.

This focuses heavily on Kenneth Chase’s Book, Firearms: A Global History to 1700. He tries to get away from just looking at drill, organization, and state production of firearms to see how geography helped create the necessary conditions for those other innovations.

Interested in your own copy? Check out the link below:

DISCLAIMER: This video description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links below, I’ll receive a small commission.

https://amzn.to/2Vedi1e

The map of Japan is under Creative Commons 4.0.

August 28, 2020

National “cheater density” for popular online games

Filed under: Business, China, Gaming, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Richard Currie summarizes the findings of Ruby Fortune’s cheater research (note that there’s no data on China because reasons):

Ever torn your keyboard from the desk and flung it across the room, vowing to find the “scrub cheater” who ended your run of video-gaming success? Uh, yeah, us neither, but a study into the crooked practice might help narrow down the hypothetical search.

The research, carried out by casino games outfit Ruby Fortune, has produced a global heatmap of supposed cheater density.

According to the website, this was done by analysing “search trend and search volume data to reveal where in the world is most likely to cheat while playing online multiplayer video games”. The report looks at the frequency of search engine queries for the most-played video games and measures them against searches for related cheat codes, hacks and bots, to show which country has the highest density of cheaters, and which cheat categories are the most popular in each location.

[…]

There is a massive hole in the data, however, thanks to the Great Firewall of China, which has a terrible reputation for ruining the experience of online games.

If there was any doubt that the Middle Kingdom would otherwise take Brazil’s crown, consider that Dell once advertised a laptop for the market by saying it was especially good for running PUBG plugins to “win more at Chicken Dinner”, a reference to the “Winner winner chicken dinner” message that comes up on a victory screen.

Data from the Battle Royale granddad’s anti-cheat tech provider, BattlEye, has also suggested that at one point 99 per cent of banned cheaters were from China.

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