Published on 12 Aug 2017
In this special Recap Episode we summarize the events from May to July 1917. Two major Allied spring offensives at Arras and on the Aisne come to an end with mixed results. The Macedonian Front flares up again as does the 10th Battle of the Isonzo. Mutiny in the French army. A stunning British victory at the Battle of Messines. A vicious battle on the heights of Mount Ontigara. The first American troops are landing in France. July sees the great strides of the Kerensky offensive featuring the Russian Women´s Battalion of Death. A showdown between the Bolsheviks and the Provisional Government. The first usage of the dreaded Mustard Gas.
August 13, 2017
War-Weariness I THE GREAT WAR Summary Part 10
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August 12, 2017
Why The Government Shouldn’t Break WhatsApp
Published on 3 Jul 2017
Encryption backdoors – breaking WhatsApp and iMessage’s security to let the government stop Bad Things – sounds like a reasonable idea. Here’s why it isn’t.
A transcript of this video’s available here: https://www.facebook.com/notes/tom-scott/why-the-government-shouldnt-break-whatsapp/1378434365572557/
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August 10, 2017
The Treaty of Westphalia
Published on 20 Nov 2008
Treaty of Westphalia
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August 9, 2017
The Falklands War – A War for Lost Glory I THE COLD WAR
Published on 1 Jul 2015
The Falklands War was based on an old colonial struggle between two former world powers. When the military Junta in Argentina decided to claim the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic they didn’t reckon with Great Britain’s Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher. The British Prime Minister unleashed full scale invasion. The Royal Navy and the British Army landed and ultimately took the capital Port Stanley. The Argentine Army surrendered shortly after that.
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August 8, 2017
Mingles with Jingles Episode 209 – British Battleships in World of Warships
Published on 7 Aug 2017
In which I get all excited about incoming British battleships in World of Warships, and then I see the provisional stats of the higher tier ones and read what it is that makes them “special” and start to get a little worried. I’ve stockpiled hundreds of thousands of free xp for these thing, please don’t let them be shit!
Actually you may be able to help me with that. And then I speculate on what happens when a game starts running out of things it can do to make new units different…
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Tank Chats #15 Tortoise
Published on 25 Feb 2016
Tank Museum Historian, David Fletcher is currently unavailable, so rather than make you all wait, Curator David Willey is here to present Tortoise!
The A39 Tortoise is the ultimate manifestation of the British concept of the heavily armoured, but slow, ‘Infantry’ tank.
It was built in 1947, making it a contemporary of the highly successful Centurion tank. The Tortoise proved to be too slow and unwieldy for the conditions of modern warfare and was a nightmare to transport.
The only service that the Tortoise had was when two tanks took part in trials in Germany in 1948. The Tank Museum’s Tortoise is now the only surviving example.
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August 7, 2017
How to Swear Like a Brit – Anglophenia Ep 29
Published on 20 May 2015
Swearing is a fun stress reliever, and the British do it so well. Anglophenia’s Kate Arnell provides a master class in swearing like a Brit.
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August 6, 2017
Recap Of Our Trip To England I THE GREAT WAR Special
Published on 5 Aug 2017
Stow Maries Great War Aerodrome: http://www.stowmaries.org.uk/
The Tank Museum, Bovington: http://www.tankmuseum.org/
The Prince of Wales, Restaurant: http://www.prince-stowmaries.net/
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August 4, 2017
The Battle of Passchendaele – Mutiny in the German Navy I THE GREAT WAR Week 158
Published on 3 Aug 2017
Douglas Haig had been busy since the Battle of Arras came to an end. He amassed huge artillery concentration, got his hands on the new British Mark IV tanks and had a cunning plan that even involved a naval landing along the Belgian coast. And the opening of the battle was definitely more promising than the Battle of the Somme one year earlier. In Germany, a small naval mutiny is put down at the same time.
G.J. Meyer – A World Undone: http://bit.ly/WorldUndoneWW1
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Experimental Lightweight Browning High Power
Published on 3 May 2017
One of the handguns that resulted from the post-WW2 interest in standardizing arms among the future members of NATO was a lightweight version of the Canadian produced Browning High Power. Experiments began in 1947 to create first a lightened slide by milling out unnecessary material, and then additionally with the use of machined and cast aluminum alloy frames. The first major batch of guns consisted of six with milled alloy frames, with two each going to the Canadian, American, and British militaries for testing.
This would reveal that the guns were in general quite serviceable, except that the locking blocks tended to distort their mounting holes in the alloy frames under extended firing. The cast frames were generally unsuccessful, suffering from substantial durability problems. The program was cancelled in 1951 by the Canadian military, and the last United States interest was in 1952. The example in today’s video is one of the two milled frame guns sent to the US for testing.
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QotD: Shakespeare’s sonnets
The Sonnets were published late in Shakespeare’s career (1609) — by a clever and unscrupulous man. His name was Thomas Thorpe. He ran what was for the times a unique publishing business, playing games with “copyright” that were often unconscionable but, usually, this side of the law. He owned neither a printing press, nor a bookstall — two things that defined contemporary booksellers — subcontracting everything in his slippery way. Indeed, I would go beyond other observers, and describe him as a blackguard; and I think Will Shakespeare would agree with me. Though Shakespeare would add, “A witty and diverting blackguard.”
He collected these sonnets, quite certainly by Shakespeare, but written at much different times and for quite various occasions, from whatever well-oiled sources. Thorpe had a fine poetic ear, and knew what he was doing. He arranged the collection he’d amassed in the sequence we have inherited — 154 sonnets that seem to read consecutively, with “A Lover’s Complaint” tacked on as their envoi — then sold them as if this had been the author’s intention.
We have sonnets not later than 1591, interspersed with others 1607 or later. In one case (Sonnet 145), we have what I think is a love poem Shakespeare wrote about age eighteen, to a girl he was wooing: one Anne Hathaway. (She was twenty-seven.) It is crawling with puns, for instance on her name, and stylistically naïve, but has been placed within the “Dark Lady” sonnets (127 to 152) in a mildly plausible way. It hardly belongs there.
Indeed, once one sees this it becomes apparent, surveying the whole course, that there is rather more than one “Dark Lady” in the Sonnets, and that like most red-blooded men, our Will noticed quite a number of interesting women over his years. But Thorpe has folded them all into one for dramatic effect.
David Warren, “Dark gentleman of the Sonnets”, Essays in Idleness, 2015-05-11.
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August 3, 2017
Not the Nine O’Clock News – Monty Python worshipers
Published on 21 Jan 2009
A sketch from the british series Not the nine o’clock news commenting on the controversy created by the Monty Python’s film – Life of Brian.
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August 2, 2017
Argentina vs United Kingdom: Falklands War 2017
Published on 9 Dec 2016
How would Argentina fare if it tried to take the Falklands again? Does UK have enough forces stationed there to defend itself? Watch the video and find out!
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July 30, 2017
“… sooner or later, and usually sooner, the British will be blamed”
In Pragati, Alex Tabarrok reviews Shashi Tharoor’s 2016 book history of the British Raj, An Era Of Darkness:
“Political Map of the Indian Empire” from Constable’s Hand Atlas of India, 1893.
(via Wikimedia)
At sophisticated dinner parties in Delhi, Calcutta, or Chennai, whenever the discussion turns to politics, one can be sure that sooner or later, and usually sooner, the British will be blamed. It’s a fine parlor game, and clever players can usually find a way to cast blame for whichever side of the debate they favor. Is India’s traditional family falling apart due to internet porn? Blame the British! Are the laws against homosexuality too strong? Blame the British! The British are an easy target because much of what they did was reprehensible. But blaming British imperialism for contemporary Indian problems is also an easy way to let India’s political class off the hook.
An excellent case against the British comes from Shashi Tharoor, bestselling author, former Under-Secretary-General at the United Nations, and current member of the Indian parliament, in his 2016 book An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India (also published this year under the title Inglorious Empire[UK title]).
Tharoor makes three claims:
- The British empire in India, from the seizure of Bengal by the East India Company in 1757 until the end of British government rule in 1947, was cruel, rapacious, and racist.
- India would be much better off today had it not been for British rule.
- Britain’s success and the Industrial Revolution were due to British depredation of India.
The first claim is true, the second uncertain, the third false.
The first claim is the heart of Tharoor’s book: the British empire in India was cruel, rapacious and racist. All true. But who would expect otherwise? Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The theft, the famines, the massacres, the formal and casual racism, the utter hypocrisy of suppressing independence while using hundreds of thousands of Indian soldiers to fight for democracy and freedom in two World Wars — on all this Tharoor stands on solid ground. The ground is solid in part because it has been well-trod. Tharoor brings the case against the East India Company and Britain, initiated by Edmund Burke (1774-1785) and continued by the likes of Indian nationalist Dadabhai Naoroji [PDF] (1901) and American historian Will Durant (1930), to its conclusion and climax with the Indian independence movement. In this, Tharoor is entirely successful and his work deserves to be widely read.
In his eagerness to blame Britain, however, Tharoor reaches for every possible argument in ways that are sometimes misleading and sometimes absurd.
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