World War Two
Published 11 Dec 2021The Japanese try and fail to supply their starving soldiers. The Allies fail to break through in Tunisia and New Guinea. The fighting in the USSR is bloody, but the Axis prepare for a new offensive there.
(more…)
December 12, 2021
One Year Since Pearl Harbor – WW2 – 172 – December 11, 1942
Comments Off on One Year Since Pearl Harbor – WW2 – 172 – December 11, 1942
QotD: Britain’s alienated intelligentsia of the 1930s
In intention, at any rate, the English intelligentsia are Europeanized. They take their cookery from Paris and their opinions from Moscow. In the general patriotism of the country they form a sort of island of dissident thought. England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during “God save the King” than of stealing from a poor box. All through the critical years many left-wingers were chipping away at English morale, trying to spread an outlook that was sometimes squashily pacifist, sometimes violently pro-Russian, but always anti-British. It is questionable how much effect this had, but it certainly had some. If the English people suffered for several years a real weakening of morale, so that the Fascist nations judged that they were “decadent” and that it was safe to plunge into war, the intellectual sabotage from the Left was partly responsible. Both the New Statesman and the News-Chronicle cried out against the Munich settlement, but even they had done something to make it possible. Ten years of systematic Blimp-baiting affected even the Blimps themselves and made it harder than it had been before to get intelligent young men to enter the armed forces. Given the stagnation of the Empire, the military middle class must have decayed in any case, but the spread of a shallow Leftism hastened the process.
It is clear that the special position of the English intellectuals during the past ten years, as purely negative creatures, mere anti-Blimps, was a by-product of ruling-class stupidity. Society could not use them, and they had not got it in them to see that devotion to one’s country implies “for better, for worse”. Both Blimps and highbrows took for granted, as though it were a law of nature, the divorce between patriotism and intelligence. If you were a patriot you read Blackwood’s Magazine and publicly thanked God that you were “not brainy”. If you were an intellectual you sniggered at the Union Jack and regarded physical courage as barbarous. It is obvious that this preposterous convention cannot continue. The Bloomsbury highbrow, with his mechanical snigger, is as out-of-date as the cavalry colonel. A modern nation cannot afford either of them. Patriotism and intelligence will have to come together again. It is the fact that we are fighting a war, and a very peculiar kind of war, that may make this possible.
George Orwell, “The Lion And The Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius”, 1941-02-19.
Comments Off on QotD: Britain’s alienated intelligentsia of the 1930s
December 10, 2021
History Summarized: Britain and the Empire
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 20 Aug 2021How is it that the history of some islands off the northern coast of Europe balloons into a worldwide history? Empire is how! Let’s dig into the history of Britain since Union of the Crowns of England and Scotland in 1603, and follow that narrative through the monumental rise and precipitous fall of the British Empire.
Special thanks to the community members on Discord who assisted me with my script: Corvin the Crow, Johnny, Jdedredhed, Joud, Jéuname, Klieg, RileyTheProcrastinator, The Missing Link, and thesleepingmeerkat
SOURCES & Further Reading: The Great Courses Lecture series Foundations of Western Civilization II: A History of the Modern Western World by Robert Buchols lectures 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 30, The History Of England volumes 3 Rebellion, 4 Revolution & 5 Dominion by Peter Ackroyd, Scotland: A Concise History by Fitzroy MacLean, The Great Cities in History by John Julius Norwich, A Concise History of Wales by Geraint H. Jenkins, Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans by James Stavridis.
Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.
PATREON: https://www.Patreon.com/OSP
PODCAST: https://overlysarcasticpodcast.transi…
DISCORD: https://discord.gg/osp
MERCH LINKS: http://rdbl.co/osp
OUR WEBSITE: https://www.OverlySarcasticProductions.com
Find us on Twitter https://www.Twitter.com/OSPYouTube
Find us on Reddit https://www.Reddit.com/r/OSP/
Comments Off on History Summarized: Britain and the Empire
December 9, 2021
The sequel to the British disaster at the Battle of Coronel, the German disaster at the Battle of the Falkland Islands
On December 8th, the people of the Falkland Islands observe “Battle Day” to commemorate the British naval victory off the islands in 1914. This is the bookend to the Battle of Coronel the previous month (described here and here), where a Royal Navy squadron was almost annihilated by Imperial Germany’s East Asia Squadron under Vice-Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee. At the Battle of the Falkland Islands, an equally lop-sided victory eliminated von Spee’s ships with minimal damage to Rear Admiral Sir Frederick Doveton Sturdee’s squadron. In The Critic, A.S.H. Smyth outlines the events as shown in a British film released in 1927:
Battle of the Falkland Islands, 1914 by William Lionel Wyllie. SMS Scharnhorst rolls over and sinks while SMS Gneisenau continues to fight.
Originally published in 1918 by Cassel & Company. Retouched image via Wikimedia Commons
Rear Admiral Sir Frederick Doveton Sturdee (unimprovably British, isn’t it?), Chief of War Staff at the Admiralty, and at distinct risk of being scapegoated for the Coronel catastrophe, was summarily appointed Commander-in-Chief South Atlantic and Pacific(!) and despatched posthaste by [First Sea Lord John “Jackie”] Fisher (with whom he did not get on), on something of a do-or-die mission as the commander of new, eight-cruiser squadron.
The Admiral Superintendent of Devonport warns that Sturdee’s two battle cruisers, Invincible and Inflexible, cannot be ready before Friday the 13th November. First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill balks at that ill-omened date, and orders that they sail on the 11th, ready or not. (Students of the 1982 conflict may see more than a couple of parallels here.) Cue: dockyard refitting montage.
Cut to the German colony at Valparaiso, where his countrymen fête von Spee’s glorious German victory in their first naval battle. “Damnation to the British Navy!” they want to toast. No, says, von Spee: “to a gallant enemy.” Handed a bouquet of flowers, he says he’ll keep them for his funeral “when my time comes.” For “when were the British ever content to leave an enemy to his triumph?”
Von Spee was well aware, it seems, that running the gauntlet up through the Atlantic was going to be a torrid prospect, even without a veangeful enemy on the look-out for him personally. But homeless (Tsingtau had fallen to the Japanese), in need of fuel, and down to half their ammunition, von Spee’s captains urged him now to head for Germany, and he agreed.
Von Spee’s ships were in need of dockyard maintenance and not steaming efficiently, but thanks to a captured British collier they were not in need of coal to be able to get home. Before setting off from where they’d been refuelling, Spee decided to strike another blow against the British and raid the Royal Navy’s supply base at Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands where only local militia were expected to be defending.
It was, among other things, sheer bad luck that von Spee came up to Stanley just a few hours after Sturdee had arrived with his group of cruisers — all newer, faster, and better-gunned than their fatigued German counterparts — and was busily refuelling. Likewise, that the sea was calm, there was little wind, and visibility was excellent. Too late, Gneisenau observes that there are British warships in the harbour! (The acting here is particularly terrible.)
It has been suggested that von Spee had not known that the British ships were “waiting” there (they hardly were); but it has also been alleged that he was misled by poor German intelligence, or even false British cryptography. [The Wikipedia article on the battle credits misinformation by British intelligence for leading von Spee into the trap.]
In Britain, meanwhile, the Admiralty is under the impression that Sturdee is the one who has been caught unawares in the Falkland Islands. Von Spee is a mere 12 miles away, and none of the British ships have their steam up. The FIVF [the Falklands Islands Volunteer Force] are called out, as the ships are ordered to go from zero to hero. One poor lad has to run up the Union Jack in local weather conditions (I’ve been that lad: he has my sympathies); another forgets his rifle, as emphasised by a heavily-asterisked title card.
As so often happens, Fate now played its hand, and Canopus, parked, with her fully-functioning 12-inch guns (so missed at Coronel) in Stanley Harbour, as the Islands’ main defensive battery, came into her own. As the Germans turn and run, Canopus opens fire, and soon enough the “grimly purposeful” cruiser group — “fittingly bearing names from the four corners of Britain … Kent, Cornwall, Glasgow and Carnarvon” — set off in pursuit.
The maths was simply not on the Germans’ side. Sturdee even sent his men below to eat. At midday, he called them back to Action Stations. Von Spee responded by ordering his light cruisers to scatter and make for neutral ports, while Scharnhorst and Gneisenau remained to “accept action to cover their escape”. Flashback to the presentation of those flowers.
Comments Off on The sequel to the British disaster at the Battle of Coronel, the German disaster at the Battle of the Falkland Islands
QotD: “The Knowledge” of London’s licensed cab drivers
Obtaining the Knowledge is a formidable intellectual feat: indeed, neuroscientists have used it to demonstrate by brain scans differences between London taxi drivers and others in the possession of spatial knowledge and powers of orientation. And the result of the regulation requiring the Knowledge is that London taxi drivers, besides being small businessmen working largely on their own account and therefore committed to their profession, are generally intelligent, capable men. No doubt the advent of GPS will reduce the need for much of this effort, at least among unlicensed drivers, who were never required to have it anyway. The license was, and is, a guarantee of quality; and the point remains that regulation is not sometimes without benefit to the public.
What do the regulation of London taxi drivers and the success of the vaccination program have in common? I think that it is in the clarity, but also in the modesty, of their goals. The object of the regulation of taxi drivers, for example, is to produce a large cadre of drivers who provide an excellent public service — and the means to achieve this object are unmistakably and obviously connected to that goal. Any group comprising tens of thousands of human beings will contain some who fall below, even much below, the standard desired, but I know of no profession whose members more approximate its ideal. The drivers are justly proud of what they are. There have been no efforts to make saints, or even good people, of them; all that is required is that no ill be known of them and that they have the requisite knowledge. In 50 years of taking London taxis, I’ve never had a bad experience and have had innumerable good ones.
Theodore Dalrymple, “A Cure for Government Incompetence”, City Journal, 2021-08-30.
Comments Off on QotD: “The Knowledge” of London’s licensed cab drivers
December 8, 2021
What if the refugee flow was crossing the Channel the opposite way?
In The Critic, Joel Rodrigues considers what the media narrative would say if the constant stream of migrants from the EU to Britain was reversed, as all the major media outlets predicted would happen if Brexit went through:
This map shows the location of the Strait of Dover between England and France, and part of the English Channel and the North Sea. It also shows nearby towns such as Dover, Calais, and Dunkirk.
Image created by NormanEinstein via Wikimedia Commons.
Imagine “tent” cities on the Kent coast, similar to “the Jungle” that existed in Calais up until 2016. These camps are the type of camps that the Remain campaign (wrongly) warned would spring up if Britain voted to leave the EU, as part of their Project Fear campaign. The tent cities are full of migrants, hoping to reach the French coast and the “sunlit uplands” of the European Union.
The camps are filthy, riddled with violent crime, and it is here that people traffickers sell spaces on dinghies to cross the channel for thousands of pounds a ticket. The British police and immigration services are aware of undocumented people living in squalor in the camps, but largely do nothing.
Occasionally a camp is cleared to placate the locals, but it quickly springs up somewhere else. The British government make no effort to document, accommodate or process the migrants living in appalling conditions on its territory. Instead, it blames the “pull factor of the EU’s single market”, saying that many of these migrants have family in France and want to live in a French or German speaking society. A junior British minister suggests that the black market economies in the EU are also a pull factor, and that there are a “lack of safe asylum routes” into the EU.
People smugglers continue operating from the British coast, and the migrant camps expand. Dinghies are now launched daily from the UK towards the continent. Police are aware of the launches, but do nothing. The RNLI and Royal Navy escort these flimsy boats until they are in EU waters, despite their not being seaworthy. Thousands succeed in making the crossing.
Then, tragedy strikes when a boat sinks. Statements are released from the British and French governments lamenting the loss of life. Trying to find a solution, Emmanuel Macron writes a letter to Boris Johnson urging increased collaboration, with joint patrols if necessary, to prevent a repeat of the tragedy.
The British government issue a response claiming that the perfectly conciliatory letter is in fact unacceptable, a “threat to British sovereignty”, and that France is uninvited from crisis talks. British media later reports that in a meeting with some of his advisors, Boris Johnson branded Emmanuel Macron as “a clown in charge of a circus”.
Imagine the media commentary and narrative in the UK surrounding such a situation, especially post-Brexit.
“Migrants die fleeing racist, Brexit-ridden, plague island,” says an op-ed in the Guardian. The comments are largely agreed that Boris Johnson is personally responsible for each of their deaths.
“UK condemned as using migrants to destabilise the EU’s single market,” reports the BBC. Parallels are also drawn in The Times between Boris Johnson and Belarus’ Lukashenko. There are mass demonstrations outside Parliament as the crisis worsens.
One can imagine the EU Commission swiftly and publicly denouncing the UK and drawing up sanctions. The Labour party would likely call it a national scandal, and demand resignations, as well as accusing the government of taking a hardline stance as cynical electioneering.
I searched for public domain or Creative Commons images of the English Channel migrant crisis, but came up surprisingly empty, hence the generic map to illustrate this post. I had expected to be inundated with lots of heart-rending images of desperate refugees, but not this time…
Comments Off on What if the refugee flow was crossing the Channel the opposite way?
SA80 History: The Pre-Production XL85 and XL86
Forgotten Weapons
Published 17 May 2017Armament Research Services (ARES) is a specialist technical intelligence consultancy, offering expertise and analysis to a range of government and non-government entities in the arms and munitions field. For detailed photos of the guns in this video, don’t miss the ARES companion blog post:
http://armamentresearch.com/british-e…
The SA80 saga continues today with the final pre-production versions of the L85A1 and L86A1, although at this point they still both carry XL designations, as they were not yet formally adopted weapons. In these weapons we can see a couple last distinctive mechanical changes, but perhaps more importantly by this time the worker morale at RSAF Enfield was thoroughly in the tank. It had become well known that the factory complex was going to be taken public or sold outright, and it was widely expected that Enfield would be shut down as a result. A new facility would be built in Nottingham, but none of the rank and file staff expected to transfer. They would be laid off, and they knew it. Not surprisingly, quality control suffered as a result.
As for the guns themselves, the first distinctive visible improvement was in the magazine well. In the XL70 weapons, the bottom half of the magazine well had been simple welded onto the bottom of the lower receiver, in order to retain the easy stamping of that element. On these guns, that have been replaced by a separate box which encompassed the magazine and was spot welded into the lower receiver. This change in construction method allow the magazine well to be much more precisely located in the receiver, and then fixed in place without the risk of warping the thin sheet metal of the lower receiver – while still retaining the simple stamping of that lower.
The other visible change was to the Light Support Weapon, and it consisted of a long “girder” support added below the barrel. This was intended to mount the bipod onto, in the hopes of resolving the long-running problem of split groups in the LSW. This was a problem in which the first round of a burst would hit substantially low and left relative to the rest of the burst. While the LSW was a quite accurate weapon in semiautomatic mode, this split group problem was a substantial detriment to its effectiveness as a proper support weapon.
http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…
If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow
Comments Off on SA80 History: The Pre-Production XL85 and XL86
December 7, 2021
QotD: The decline of class distinctions in Britain
This war, unless we are defeated, will wipe out most of the existing class privileges. There are every day fewer people who wish them to continue. Nor need we fear that as the pattern changes life in England will lose its peculiar flavour. The new red cities of Greater London are crude enough, but these things are only the rash that accompanies a change. In whatever shape England emerges from the war it will be deeply tinged with the characteristics that I have spoken of earlier. The intellectuals who hope to see it Russianized or Germanized will be disappointed. The gentleness, the hypocrisy, the thoughtlessness, the reverence for law and the hatred of uniforms will remain, along with the suet puddings and the misty skies. It needs some very great disaster, such as prolonged subjugation by a foreign enemy, to destroy a national culture. The Stock Exchange will be pulled down, the horse plough will give way to the tractor, the country houses will be turned into children’s holiday camps, the Eton and Harrow match will be forgotten, but England will still be England, an everlasting animal stretching into the future and the past, and, like all living things, having the power to change out of recognition and yet remain the same.
George Orwell, “The Lion And The Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius”, 1941-02-19.
Comments Off on QotD: The decline of class distinctions in Britain
December 4, 2021
When King James VI became King James I and VI
In his latest Age of Invention newsletter, Anton Howes discusses how the King of Scotland succeeded to the English throne as well:
King James I (of England) and VI (of Scotland)
Portrait by Daniel Myrtens, 1621 from the National Portrait Gallery via Wikimedia Commons.
It’s late March 1603, and an exhausted messenger arrives in Edinburgh bearing a sapphire ring. He has ridden for over two days straight, over hundreds of miles, and his hair and clothes are matted with blood — on the way he had fallen from his horse, a hoof striking him directly in the head. It’s a miracle he’s alive, but he knows it has been worth it. He is the very first to tell you that your childless first cousin twice removed — the killer of your mother, whom you never knew — is finally dead. You, King James VI of Scotland, are James I of England as well.
[…]
James’s accession was a frenzy. From the very moment of Elizabeth’s death, her entire patronage network was turned on its head. Her chief ministers, the Privy Council, were relatively safe. Some of them had been corresponding with James for years. But they could only look on, anxiously, as a rush of would-be cronies went north to meet their new king. The exhausted messenger with the sapphire ring, Sir Robert Carey, was just the first. Carey had been related to Elizabeth I on her mother’s side — he was her first cousin once removed. (Carey’s grandmother was the “other Boleyn girl”, played by Scarlett Johansson in the 2008 film — although there’s no solid evidence, it’s not totally impossible that Carey was actually related to Elizabeth on her father’s side instead …) But that family connection meant nothing now that the queen was dead.
The sudden reset of the source of all patronage meant that the earlier the access to the new king’s person, the greater the chance of gaining his favour. Carey may have angered the Privy Council by riding ahead of their formal letters to James, but his exertion won him an on-the-spot appointment as a gentleman of the bedchamber, and his wife became a lady in waiting to James’s queen. The Careys were soon charged with the care of the royal couple’s younger sickly child, and when that child eventually became Charles I, Carey was made Earl of Monmouth. Not a bad result for a head wound and a two days’ ride, though I’m sure the horses would disagree. An old proverb about England was that it was “a paradise for women, a purgatory for servants, and a hell for horses” — something that James’s accession really put to the test. One teenage noblewoman reported how she and her mother killed three horses in a single day, pushing them hard despite the heat, in their rush to meet the new queen.
Just as courtiers flocked to James, however, the king wanted to win friends and allies too. So he handed out favours like confetti. Before he had even reigned a single year, he had created 934 knighthoods — already more than the 878 that Elizabeth I, her generals, and her lord deputies in Ireland had created over the course of her entire 45-year reign. One morning, during his journey down to London, James knighted more people than Elizabeth had in her first five years — all before he’d even had his breakfast. The sheer volume of new knighthoods prompted Francis Bacon — one of about 300 to be knighted in London ahead of the coronation — to call it a “divulged and almost prostitute title”.
The same went for peerages. Elizabeth, over her long reign of almost half a century, had created only 18 new titles. James, before he had even been crowned, had already created 12 — mostly turning knights into lords, and raising some lords into earls. Along with the honours came grants of land, annual pensions, and one-off gifts — not only to James’s new English courtiers, but to his old Scottish favourites too. James’s arrival was an explosion of largesse. (Not all were happy about the relative loss of favour, of course […] at least one pro-invention courtier got involved in a treasonous plot against the new king and ended up losing his head.)
James’s largesse even extended to policy. As he triumphantly marched into London, he issued a proclamation to immediately suspend all of Elizabeth’s patent monopolies, to be re-granted pending review. (This did not apply to patents for trading corporations or guilds.) Rather than leaving the validity of patents to be tested in the common-law courts, at great legal cost to those affected, he would have his Privy Council systematically examine them first, only allowing them if they were in the public interest. He characterised it as a continuation — even a “perfecting” — of Elizabeth’s partial measures a couple of years earlier, which we discussed in Part II. With his proclamation also condemning various other unpopular things, like high court fees, his new subjects were overjoyed.
But the honeymoon was not to last.
Comments Off on When King James VI became King James I and VI
How mail trains collected letters without stopping – Post Trains
Train of Thought
Published 3 Dec 2021In this video, we take a look at how post trains would collect and deliver mail without the need to stop, mostly by yeeting the post out of the train
This video falls under the fair use act of 1976.
Comments Off on How mail trains collected letters without stopping – Post Trains
December 3, 2021
A bureaucratic mandate for never-ending intervention — induced offensensitivity
Theodore Dalrymple notes the increasing reach of the bureaucracy in policing everyday language in a supposed attempt to protect the easily offended feelings of minority groups, but really in yet another way to increase the role of bureaucrats (and their staffing and budget allocations):
Original infographic from Treetopia – https://www.treetopia.com/Merry-Christmas-vs-Happy-Holidays-a/304.htm
Underlying the bureaucratic desire to reform language are two assumptions: first that it is the duty of bureaucrats to prevent offense to people occasioned by the use of certain words, and second that they know what words will give offence to people.
Of course, there are only certain categories of people who needed to be protected from taking offence: that is because, in the estimate of their would-be and self-appointed protectors, they are very delicate and can easily be tipped into depression or states of mind even worse than depression.
Whether it is flattering, condescending or downright insulting to consider people so delicate that they cannot hear certain words that were hitherto considered innocuous, I leave to readers to decide. For myself, I think that to regard people as psychological eggshells is demeaning to them, but other may think differently.
But the question still arises as to whether the people supposedly in need of bureaucratic intervention actually do take offence at the allegedly offensive words, such as Christmas, when they are uttered.
This is not as straightforward a question as might at first appear, for people can be taught or encouraged to be easily offended, especially if they will derive certain advantages, political, social or even financial, from being, or claiming to be, offended. If you pay someone to be ill, he will be ill; if you pay someone to be offended, he will be offended.
It is in the interests of bureaucracies that the population should become hypersensitive, for then it will run to the bureaucrats for so-called protection from offensiveness.
A hypersensitive population creates endless work for the bureaucrat to do: he will have constantly to adjudicate between the claims of those who have taken, and those who have allegedly given, offence. Conflict and stoked-up anger are to him what fertilizer is to corn.
For much of the population, hypersensitivity becomes a duty, a pleasure and a sign of superiority of mind and moral awareness. In addition, it is an instrument of power. And, of course, habit becomes character. What may have started out as play-acting becomes, with repetition, deadly sincerity.
People who have had to be taught what microaggressions are because they have not noticed them eventually come to believe in their reality and that that they have been subjected to them. Then they start to magnify them in their minds until they seem to them very serious: they become self-proclaimed victims.
There are two things that victims seek in our law-saturated world: revenge and compensation. Neither of these things can be achieved without the aid of a large apparatus of bureaucrats (civil-litigation lawyers are bureaucrats of superior intelligence who are usually endowed also with a modicum of imagination).
Comments Off on A bureaucratic mandate for never-ending intervention — induced offensensitivity
Australian-American War of 1942 – The Battle of Brisbane
World War Two
Published 2 Dec 2021America shares a language and large parts of its culture with Britain and Australia. But when tens of thousands of US troops arrive in 1942, things will be far from smooth. While the alliance remains firm, their soldiers will spend almost as much time fighting each other as they do the Axis.
(more…)
Comments Off on Australian-American War of 1942 – The Battle of Brisbane
“Power corrupts and absolute power …” is something governments are not eager to give up, post-pandemic
Miguel Castaneda quotes Lord Acton’s famous aphorism (which I truncated in my headline) and warns of the consequences of giving governments too much power:
“Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. The words of Lord Acton, a fierce opponent of state power, are sadly no less relevant today than they were at his time of writing.
Over the past 20 months, the authoritarian approach of Western leaders has been justified by our representatives as a necessary response to a global emergency. Whether that’s true or not is up for discussion, however, one thing remains clear: such attitudes have handed governments a level of power that, left unchecked, severely curtails individual rights.
This path is not unique to the UK, nor is it unique to Europe. We’re seeing a near global normalisation of state overreach. Lockdowns in many liberal democracies have been brought in suddenly and without thorough scrutiny.
In this country, at no point were other methods to address the pandemic tested. They were barely even suggested. And with little counter from the mainstream media, the UK and others have normalised shutting down the country for the purpose of virus control.
It was only a few months ago that Australia locked over 5 million people after identifying a single case. A severe overreaction which likely contributed to the dramatic fall in Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrisson’s approval ratings of the handling of the pandemic, which fell from 85 per cent at the start of the pandemic to 47 per cent in the latest poll in August.
A commonly overlooked consequence of these authoritarian practices is the precedence it sets for how governments can and should act when faced with novel challenges. It has been predicted that future pandemics will become more frequent, and perhaps more deadly. Are we going to react again by shutting entire populations in their homes?
Looking to the continent, the ease at which governments are bringing in authoritarian measures should be an international scandal. Take Austria, where a national lockdown has just been extended until at least December 11th. Or Germany, which has announced today a de facto lockdown for the unvaccinated, and is debating bringing in a policy of mandatory vaccinations.
This extreme way of thinking is a new virus spreading across the Western world. Spain, France, Italy, Greece and Australia have all seen similar policies introduced.
Comments Off on “Power corrupts and absolute power …” is something governments are not eager to give up, post-pandemic
December 1, 2021
The Titanic Struggle for Reunion Island – WW2 Special
World War Two
Published 30 Nov 2021It might only be tangentially relevant to the war as a whole, but the Battle for Reunion Island is not only interesting in and of itself, it serves as a microcosm for the war for the French in general. Check it out!
(more…)
Comments Off on The Titanic Struggle for Reunion Island – WW2 Special
