World War Two
Published 5 Jun 2021The supposedly surprise Japanese operations against Midway Atoll and the Aleutian Islands kick-off, but they don’t know that Allied intelligence has cracked their codes. As the Japanese fleet advances in the Central Pacific and Japanese planes bomb Midway, the US Navy has a big surprise waiting for them.
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June 6, 2021
Midway, pt.1 – Clash of the Titans – 145a – June 5, 1942
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QotD: The Soviet Union in the Cold War, China today
Back in the days of the Cold War, much was said about the titanic power of the Soviet Union. The USSR, we were told, was a superpower the equal of the United States, possibly even superior. This meme was spread by lefties who wanted the USSR to win, by sincere pacifists hoping to stop war before it could begin, and by an enormous cohort of liberals who repeated it because they heard it from the first two. (Much liberalism can be explained this way. It’s the ultimate “I heard it from somebody” ideology.)
Needless to say, it was gibbering nonsense. The late ’80s Soviet collapse revealed that the USSR was never any kind of power at all – an economy that didn’t produce, weapons that didn’t work, a populace addicted to drink and overwhelmed with despair. “Bulgaria with nukes” is how someone characterized it, and truer words were never spoken. That remains the case today, despite Vlad Putin’s chest-beating, and it’s likely to remain the case as far ahead as anyone can see.
The same trope is being repeated regarding China. China, we are told, is the coming nation. The second largest economy on Earth, soon to be the first. A billion and a half people, each more educated than any American; a military power second to none, with advanced weapons of a nature that we can only gape at. A country exercising its power over vast reaches of the Pacific and moving into the Indian Ocean, Africa, and the Mideast with no one to oppose it.
We hear this from the likes of Thomas Friedman, who has spent much of his career looking for his personal Mussolini. It’s repeated by deeper figures across the political spectrum. In fact, it can be said without exaggeration to have become received wisdom.
There’s no point in asking how true this is. The proper question to ask is whether it embodies any truth at all.
J.R. Dunn, “The Myth of China as Superpower”, American Thinker, 2019-01-09.
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June 5, 2021
Battle of Khalkhin Gol 1939 – Soviet-Japanese War
Kings and Generals
Published 17 May 2020Our animated historical documentary series on modern warfare continues with a coverage of the Battles of Khalkin Gol of 1939, as the USSR and Japan clashed in Mongolia and Manchuria. Although this short war didn’t change much in the Far East, it played a huge role during World War II.
Cold War channel: http://bit.ly/2UHebLI
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We are grateful to our patrons and sponsors, who made this video possible: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17…
The video was made by Leif Sick, while the script was developed by Ivan Moran
This video was narrated by Officially Devin (https://www.youtube.com/user/OfficiallyDevin)
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June 1, 2021
Rise and Fall of the Sikh Empire explained in less than 7 minutes
Epimetheus
Published 8 Oct 2019Rise and Fall of the Sikh Empire explained in less than 7 minutes Sikh history documentary
This video covers Sikh history from the Guru Nanak till the fall of the Sikh Empire.
This video and others like it are sponsored by my Patrons over on patreon.
https://www.patreon.com/Epimetheus1776
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May 30, 2021
Rommel’s Desert Dash – The Whole Bloody Afrika Korps! – Gazala – WW2 – 144 – May 30, 1942
World War Two
Published 29 May 2021Erwin Rommel begins his surprise new offensive with “Rommel’s Moonlight Ride”, bringing all of his mighty mobile units to the fray in North Africa, while in the Pacific, dozens of warships and tens of thousands of men set sail from Japan — their mission? Attack the Aleutian Islands and Midway Island, but above all, destroy the US Pacific Fleet!
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May 29, 2021
Justin Trudeau is clearly not concerned about China or Chinese involvement in Canadian affairs
In The Line, Jen Gerson outlines the PM’s latest display of insouciance in regard to anything involving China, their ruling Communist party, or the Chinese military:
The Globe and Mail reported last week that Canada’s top infectious disease research centre, the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, had hosted and otherwise collaborated with guest researchers and scientists from China — including some with links to that country’s military or government. O’Toole asked about this in the House, and Trudeau gave a very routine Trudeauvian non-answer. O’Toole and other Tories kept up the questioning, Trudeau eventually responded with this (as per Hansard): “Mr. Speaker, we have always and will always take this threat seriously. Public safety officials have met with more than 34 universities to help them keep their research safe. In 2020, CSIS engaged more than 225 different organizations, including universities, to ensure that they were aware of foreign threats. I also want to mention that we are seeing a disturbing rise in anti-Asian racism. I hope that my Conservative Party colleagues are not raising fears about Asian Canadians.”
Sigh. Where do we begin?
First of all, though this may shock our readers, the Sun papers, and its columnists, have been known to exaggerate their criticisms of the PM. The PM gave a more substantive answer than Lilley gave him credit for. You can disagree with the PM — see below! — without getting cute with what he actually said. The racism line was dumb, and shitty. It was beneath the PM and unfair to the legitimate questions that were being asked. Trudeau shouldn’t have said it, and he was right to get called out for it.
So yes, a dick move by the PM — in a hundred years, maybe one of his descendants can apologize for it. But let’s not take our eye off the ball.
Trudeau’s answers were more than Lilley suggested, but they’re still not good enough. O’Toole and the Conservatives are onto something. China’s ruling regime is aggressive, brutal, and thuggish. They’re a threat to security abroad, they’re committing outright crimes against humanity against their own religious minorities, they’ve crushed Hong Kong underfoot, and they’re actively hostile to Canada. None of this is racist to note.
And yet our federal Liberals remain alarmingly unable to admit any of this. We don’t buy that it’s just a matter of political expediency, an awkward but necessary consequence of the ongoing detention of the two Michaels. Hell, we wish that the Liberals were just being publicly cautious with their real views on Beijing while remaining clear-eyed about the threat behind closed doors. The evidence continues to suggest that the federal Liberals, from Trudeau on down, remain hopelessly naïve about the nature of Beijing’s rulers, even as more and more of our allies are getting real about what the next generation or two of geopolitics is gonna look like for the Western alliance. (Which Canada remains a part of, whether Trudeau likes it or not.)
The growing tensions with a rising China are a big deal. It is only going to become a bigger deal. The Liberals need to get with the program. We hope to see more on this across the Canadian media — and hopefully it’s a bit more useful and productive than what the Sun ran with this week. The Liberals look terrible on this file already for entirely legitimate, serious reasons. We don’t need to pop our aging joints as we stretch and contort ourselves to make it seem so.
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History Buffs: Midway Part Two
History Buffs
Published 28 May 2021As promised here is Part Two of my Midway review. Hope you guys enjoy it 🙂
You can join Nebula today and get Curiosity Stream at 26% off for a year! Click on the link below
http://curiositystream.com/historybuffs
Part Two of this review will be out next Friday on the 28th of May!● Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HistoryBuffs_
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Depression and suicide rates during the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic
At Works in Progress, Scott Alexander looks at the details of rates of depression (which went up during the pandemic) and suicides (which surprisingly went down):
When COVID started spreading, life got more depressing, people became more depressed, but suicide rates went down. Why?
First, are we sure all of that is true? I won’t waste your time listing the evidence that life got more depressing, but what about the other two?
Ettman et al. conveniently had data from nationally representative surveys about how many Americans were depressed before COVID-19. They found another nationally representative sample and asked them the same questions in late March/early April 2020, when the first wave of US cases and lockdowns was at its peak. They found that 3 times as many people had at least one depression symptom, and 5–10x as many people scored in the range associated with “moderately severe” or “severe” depression.
This is a good study. It’s published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a good journal. It’s been cited 50+ times in 6 months. Really the only thing anyone could have against it is the implausibly large effect it found. But it matches similar studies from Australia, Portugal, and around the world. Let’s say it’s real.
Along with the increased depression came an increase in people who said they were thinking about suicide. According to the US CDC, more than twice as many Americans considered suicide in spring 2020 compared to spring 2018 (10.7% vs. 4.3%).
Yet completed suicide rates stayed flat or declined. It’s hard to tell exactly which, because suicide is rare and noisy, and you need lots of data before anything starts looking statistically significant. But there are studies somewhere between “flat” and “declined” from Norway, England, Germany, Sweden, and New Zealand.
We also have two more complete reports from larger countries that help us see the pattern in more detail. First is Japan. Studies by Tanaka and Nomura broadly agree on a similar pattern — a slight decrease in suicides in the earliest stage of the pandemic (spring 2020) followed by a larger increase during the autumn. Here’s Nomura’s data:
The top graph is women, the bottom is men. The blue and red lines represent the 95% confidence range for an “average” year. Months that differ significantly from the average have little dots on top of their bars. You can see that April 2020 had significantly less suicide than average, among both genders, and July/August/September have more than average for women (and trend on the high side for men too).
Second is the US. The US Centers for Disease Control recently released their “nowcast” of 2020 deaths. These use the limited amount of data they have now to predict what the trends will look like once all the data comes in; their prediction process seems reasonable and we can probably treat the figures as canonical. Here’s their main result:
Suicide rates were pretty normal until March, when they dropped off pretty quickly and stayed low until midsummer. They’ve since hovered around normal again. Overall, suicides declined by 5.6%.
All these countries combine to form a picture of suicide rates dipping very slightly during the first and most frantic period of the pandemic — March to May — and then going back to normal (except in Japan, where things have since gotten worse). Thus the paradox: increasing depression combined with decreasing suicides. What’s going on?
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May 27, 2021
History Summarized: Ancient China
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 28 Dec 2018Check out our website at www.OverlySarcasticProductions.com
And after that we’ll defeat the Huns! Join Blue on a trek through the early centuries of Chinese History, from legendary foundations to the Shang and Zhou dynasties, past the Warring States Period, and into the Han dynasty — if you get to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, you’ve gone too far.
Further reading: China: A History by John Keay
Kings and Generals’ fantastic videos on this subject:
Bactrians: https://youtu.be/IQATsepKoLE
War of the Heavenly Horses: https://youtu.be/g6Rphg_lwwMPATREON: www.patreon.com/OSP
MERCH LINKS:
Shirts – https://overlysarcasticproducts.threa…
All the other stuff – http://www.cafepress.com/OverlySarcas…Find us on Twitter @OSPYouTube!
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May 26, 2021
The Great All-Out Battle – Naval Warfare in the Pacific – WW2 Special
World War Two
Published 25 May 2021Before the infamous day that was Pearl Harbor, US and Japanese military planners worked to envision what a future war in the Pacific would look like. With the entire region now a war zone, it is time to put their theories to the test. Watch the video to find out what these are.
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May 24, 2021
History Buffs: Midway Part One
History Buffs
Published 21 May 2021Thank you guys so much for your patience. Quarantine has made somethings difficult and I know its been a while but it’s finally here! I hope you enjoy it!
You can join Nebula today and get Curiosity Stream at 26% off for a year! Click on the link below
http://curiositystream.com/historybuffs
Part Two of this review will be out next Friday on the 28th of May!● Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HistoryBuffs_
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May 23, 2021
AF is short of fresh water – WW2 – 143 – May 23, 1942
World War Two
Published 22 May 2021Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov arrives in London to meet with Churchill, but at home in the USSR the Germans have launched an instantly successful offensive. In North Africa and Malta the British are building up, unaware that Erwin Rommel is just about to strike, and an American ruse discovers secret Japanese attack plans.
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May 21, 2021
Life Inside a Japanese PoW Camp – WW2 Special
World War Two
Published 20 May 2021The inhuman, torturous, and deadly Japanese PoW Camps famous from Bridge over the River Kwai, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, Empire of the Sun, and more recently Unbroken are a world of abuse and mistreatment managed by willfully incompetent and sadistically brutal men.
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May 17, 2021
Christopher Hitchens – On EconTalk discussing George Orwell [2009]
CaNANDian
Published 25 Sep 2012Christopher Hitchens talked with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about George Orwell. Drawing on his book Why Orwell Matters, Hitchens talked about Orwell’s opposition to imperialism, fascism, and Stalinism, his moral courage, and his devotion to language. Along the way, Hitchens made the case for why Orwell matters.
Download audio: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009…
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May 16, 2021
Joseph Stalin Jumps the Gun – 142 – May 16, 1942
World War Two
Published 15 May 2021The Soviets pre-empt a German offensive with one of their own in the south of the Eastern Front, but that’s not the only fighting. The skies over Malta and the waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence are full of action. Meanwhile, two races against time — and the Japanese — come to an end in India.
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