PauliosVids
Published 24 Nov 2018Travelling with Britannia Airline from London via Bombay to Tokyo to discover Japan and back via Hong Kong.
July 22, 2023
Look at Life – Ticket to Tokyo (1959)
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July 21, 2023
The Führer Adolf Hitler is Dead!?
World War Two
Published 20 Jul 2023Stauffenberg, Olbricht and the plotters launch Operation Valkyrie. The army moves in to seize power, troops surround the government quarter in Berlin, and Joseph Goebbels is arrested. But things start going wrong pretty much immediately and far away in East Prussia the Nazi fightback begins.
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Belgian Gendarmerie FAL w/ DSA Receiver
Forgotten Weapons
Published 24 Apr 2023A few months ago FN America was able to import 400 parts sets from original Belgian Gendarmerie FAL rifles. I got one of them, and had it completed by DSA. They made receivers with Gendarmerie markings, as well as the barrel and other parts not included with the kit. So today we’ll take a look at the finished rifle and the work that went into completing it.
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QotD: War elephant weaknesses against Roman troops
The best way to think about the weaknesses of war elephants is to look at the question with a specific context, so we are going to narrow in on one of the two key areas where war elephants did not last as a weapon system: the Roman world (both the period of the Republic and the Empire). [B]y the Imperial period, the Romans seem to have decided that elephants were not worth the trouble and discontinued their use. Roman military writers routinely disparage elephants (we’ll see why) as weapons of war and despite the fact that Rome absorbed not one but three states which actively used elephants in war (Carthage, the Ptolemaic and Seleucid Kingdoms) – and thus we may assume three sets of capture, training and breeding programs for maintaining the animals – they did not continue their use. It is one thing not to adopt a foreign weapon, it is quite another to inherit the entire production complex and still say, “no, not for me”.
So today we’re going to ask, “why?” We’ve answered that question in the immediate term – to quote Trautmann (2015) on the point, “the Roman refusal of the war elephant … was based upon a low estimate of its value” (250). To put another way, they thought they sucked. We know elephants could be quite potent in battle, so the answer must be a touch more complicated. We’ll look at this two ways: first (because it’s me) in terms of logistics, and then in terms of anti-elephant tactics, to see why elephants could not succeed against (or with) Rome. I am also going to speculate – just a touch – on which of these factors might explain the other major area elephant warfare did not penetrate: China.
Roman Elephants
But first, a necessary caveat to an objection no doubt already brewing in the minds of some: but didn’t the Romans use elephants sometimes? Yes, though Roman employment of elephants was at best uneven (this is a point, I’d like to note, where Trautmann (2015) shows its value over, for instance, J. M. Kistler’s War Elephants (2006) – the latter’s reading of Roman use of war elephants bends the evidence to serve an argument, rather than the other way around). Nevertheless, the Romans did use war elephants during the last two centuries of the Republic.The Romans had some war elephants (just 20) at Cynocephelae (197 B.C.) against Macedon – these had been drawn from the kingdom of Numidia, which had sided with Rome against Carthage in the Second Punic War. Plutarch (Flam. 8.2-5) leaves the animals out of the battle narrative, but Livy (who is the better source; Liv. 33.9) notes their use to break up the Macedonian right wing, which was not yet even in fighting formation. It’s not clear the elephants were necessary for the Roman victory here and the key action was actually a flanking attack by infantry.
The Romans brought elephants to Magnesia (190 B.C.), but left them in reserve; the Romans only had a few, whereas their Seleucid opponents had brought many more. Moreover, the Roman elephants were smaller African elephants, effectively useless against the large Asian elephants the Seleucids used. Pydna (168 B.C.) against the Macedonians again, is harder to assess because the sources for it are poor (part of Livy’s narrative of the battle is mostly lost). Plutarch (Aem. 19-22) leaves the elephants out again, whereas Livy notes that Perseus’ dedicated elephant-fighting corps was ineffective in fighting the Roman elephants on the right wing, but attributes success there to the socii infantry rather than the elephants (Liv. 44.41.4-6). Kistler reads this as a notable elephant success, but Livy does not say this, instead crediting the socii on the right and the legions breaking up the Macedonian center.
The Romans did find elephants useful in places like Spain or southern Gaul (modern Provence) where just a handful could bewilder and terrify opponents completely unused to and unprepared for them. The last gasp of true Roman war elephants came in 46 B.C., where Julius Caesar defeated a Roman army led by Metellus Scipio which had sixty elephants in it. The elephants lost and one of Caesar’s legions (my personal favorite, Legio V Alaudae (Larks!)) took the elephant as a legionary symbol in commemoration of having beaten them.
So absolutely yes, the Romans of the Middle and Late Republic made some use of war elephants, but it was hardly a distinguished run. As Trautmann notes – quite correctly, in my view – the Romans were always more interested in ways to defeat elephants than to use them.
Bret Devereaux, “Collections: War Elephants, Part II: Elephants against Wolves”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2019-08-02.
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July 20, 2023
The Fights for Assoro & Leonforte with Mark Zuehlke
OTD Military History
Published 19 Jul 2023Join me as I have Mark Zuehlke back on the channel to discuss the fights for Assoro and Leonforte during the campaign in Sicily.
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July 19, 2023
Diplomats Fight the Nazis in Budapest – War Against Humanity 104
World War Two
Published 18 Jul 2023Hungary’s Jews are facing a Holocaust machine in overdrive. The deportation trains are arriving in such volume that even the extermination factory of Auschwitz can barely keep up with the pace. The entire country swiftly becomes Judenfrei and the Jews of Budapest sit helplessly as Adolf Eichmann and his Hungarian collaborators tighten the noose around them. Admiral Miklós Horthy is one of the few who can save them, but so far he has done nothing. Will that change?
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July 18, 2023
QotD: “Nothing to lose”
In line with the notion that people need “a stake in society” in order to refrain from breaking shop windows and taking what they think they have been wrongfully denied (interestingly, the bookshop was the only shop in a very badly looted commercial street that went completely unscathed during the riots), a man called Earl Jenkins — “who was one of up to 60 youth workers who went on to the streets of Toxteth [a poor area of Liverpool] during the disturbances to persuade youngsters not to get involved” — was reported in the Guardian to have said, “If you’ve got nothing to lose, you’ll do what you can to survive, won’t you?”
There was no comment in the newspaper on the deep contradiction in the attitude of Earl Jenkins (let us leave aside the question of how many “youth workers” in Toxteth are needed to prevent a riot there). For if it is true that the riots were a survival mechanism, why was Earl Jenkins trying to persuade young people not to join in? Did he not want them to survive? Suffice it to say that the objects looted during the riots were not such as people on the verge of famine, or who fear that famine is around the corner, might be expected to loot. They were, rather, the things that spoilt children might be expected to want for their birthday.
The term “If you’ve got nothing to lose” in this context is ambiguous. It might mean such penury, such drastic poverty, that you possessed nothing that could have been removed from you. But it clearly cannot mean this, since all the rioters were at liberty, and were clothed, fed, housed, educated (if unsuccessfully), provided with medical care, and given at least a small income, much of which could, in theory at any rate, be removed from them. They could be made homeless; their central heating could be turned off; they could go hungry and literally penniless, made to wear rags; their telephones could be taken from them; they could be deprived of their liberty and even enslaved.
But none of this was going to happen to them and they knew it perfectly well; so in this sense it was indeed true that they had nothing to lose. One of the commissioners appointed to enquire into the riots actually put it succinctly:
When people don’t feel they have a reason to stay out of trouble, the consequences for communities can be devastating …
But the reason they “don’t feel a reason to stay out of trouble” is not because they have nothing to lose in the sense of being so deeply impoverished that they have nothing removable from them, it is because they have nothing to lose because they know that whatever they have will never be removed from them, under any circumstances whatever.
Theodore Dalrymple, “It’s a riot”, New English Review, 2012-04.
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July 17, 2023
The WEF considers whether to use the carrot or the stick next time
Elizabeth Nickson on the World Economic Forum’s latest gathering in China:
Last week the WEFers held their summer camp in China. More to come, they warned us. More pandemics, more catastrophic global warming, more inflation, hell on wheels, they promise us, Armageddon is coming. Be very afraid.
The following was a particularly lovely event:
“How to Stay Within Planetary Boundaries — Carrot or Stick?” which focused on whether to incentivize or force compliance with “climate goals”. It was hosted by some joker who edits a magazine called Nature Energy, no doubt funded by the WEF and read by exactly nobody. And some very po-faced morons of various colors, paid in the six figures, cited a bunch of falsified statistics ending with these pretty little paragraphs:
We are — broadly speaking — agreed that we need to get on track towards a net-zero, climate-safe and nature-positive future, but we know this will not be easy. And we’re going to need to change behaviours of both individuals but also the way that our industries and corporations and also our governments work and practices.
We’re going to need to do this through a mixture of carrots and hopefully perhaps not so many sticks, in some kind of mix. And there is a very active and live debate as to how we go about this. But we’re likely to see an increasing move towards more stick-like interventions …
These guys, they make me laugh. Seriously? How stupid do they think we are? How hated are they? All over the world, they are loathed and laughed at. Every time one of them is taken out, we laugh and laugh and laugh. Larry Fink from BlackRock? Hiding, Scared. Mocked, publicly humiliated. We need a lot more of that.
[…]
They have to destroy western culture, because we middle-class-unnecessary-eaters are too damned uppity. They have stolen so much that when the tipping point arrives, and it will, they will be hung from the highest tree. “Better to ruin those likely to catch and imprison us, and feed on peasants and serfs, the desperate in the rest of the world.”
Proof?
OK, let’s review the Biden/Trudeau/Macron/Sunak economy shall we? Since the out-in-the-open globalist theft of elections during the past three years — Sunak was installed, Trudeau is the most hated man in Canada, Biden is gaga and Macron is just crazy — this is what the bottom 50% are experiencing. Short form, ground into the dirt.
Ninety percent of the jobs “created” were those gained back after the pandemic. Most jobs are going to the foreign born – they work cheap.
Of the roughly 900 days Joe Biden has been in the White House, real wages have fallen for almost 700 days — about 75% of Biden’s time in office. All total, the collective drop in real wages has been 3% rather than the robust real wage gains workers deserve and expect.
Every single American has lost $36,000 to Biden’s inflation. It has crippled us, especially those working in the real (not digital) economy — Uber drivers, truckers, farmers, manufacturers, ranchers, the bottom 50% — gas prices have gone up 50%. Home heating up 23%, milk 16%, beef 25%, eggs 83%. Home prices 32%, rents 15%, electricity 21%.
Let’s not even talk about interest rates. Ten raises in the last 30 months. Last week the Bank of Canada gave its people $26 million in bonuses. Meanwhile, people are losing their houses.
How much more punishment are we expected to take? This is directly caused by their mad hatter spending during the pandemic — which was fake but for a few months in early 2020 — and their subsequent restriction of the energy supply. Restriction of energy causes prices to skyrocket because producing anything requires energy.
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Uncancelled History with Douglas Murray | EP. 06 George Washington
Nebulous Media
Published 27 Dec 2022Allen Guelzo joins Douglas Murray on this episode to discuss George Washington. From his early childhood to his years as president, the two analyze the founding father’s legacy. Should the first president stay cancelled?
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July 16, 2023
Mass Suicide on Saipan – WW2 – Week 255 – July 15, 1944
World War Two
Published 15 Jul 2023Japanese troops and civilians commit mass suicide rather than surrender to the Americans in the Marianas; in Normandy, Caen has finally fallen to the Allies though the fight for St. Lo is not over; the Soviet offensives in the north take Vilnius and the fighting continues up in Finland, but the big eastern front news is the mighty new Soviet offensive in Western Ukraine. (more…)
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Cheap, Effective, Everywhere: The RPG-7
The Tank Museum
Published 7 Apr 2023Join Chris Copson as he presents our latest in Anti-Tank Chats. In this episode, we will delve into the fascinating history and practical applications of the RPG-7, a powerful anti-tank weapon.
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July 15, 2023
Environmental fanatics want to impose “austerity on steroids”
Brendan O’Neill points out the hypocrisy of the progressives who protest against anything smacking of government austerity — often merely a slowing down in the rate of increase of funding that they condemn as “cuts” — yet fervently desire to impose a form of austerity that would literally lead to hundreds of thousands or even millions of deaths:
There are countless contradictions on what passes for the left these days. We’re against sexism, they cry, and then they’ll while away entire days hounding every uppity broad who dares to question the trans ideology. We’re anti-racist, they say, even as they yell “Uncle Tom” at any person of colour who deviates from their white liberal orthodoxies. Be kind, they tweet, in between their venomous crusades against TERFs, gammon, boomers, deplorables, “semi-fascists”, you name it.
We’re against austerity, they insist, and yet then they agitate for an austerity of apocalyptic proportions. This, surely, is the most stark incongruity of the modern left. They rail against every library closure or reform of welfare payments as an intolerable assault on people’s living standards, and then they take to the streets in their thousands in support of a degrowth agenda that would plunge vast swathes of humankind into penury. They’re far meaner than any right-wing penny-pincher they claim to oppose.
[…]
Environmentalism is austerity on steroids. Consider one of JSO’s key demands: “No new oil or gas”. This would be – there’s no other word for it – psychotic. Not only would such a crazed policy instantly throw hundreds of thousands of people out of work, by decommissioning the rigs and mines where they make their living – it would also make it all but impossible to keep society going. The infantile moralism of modern greens would have us believe that vile oil and gas are only used to propel 4x4s and airplanes packed with the rich and other “bad things”. In truth, every facet of our lives requires energy from oil and gas. The delivery of foodstuffs, house-building, schools, hospitals, life-support machines, heaters to protect the elderly from death in winter – all need energy derived from fossil fuels. Or consider libraries. The left wept when Osborne’s cuts led to library closures, but you try running a library in your post-fossil-fuel dystopia. Without oil, gas, electricity and trees torn down to make books, libraries would cease to exist.
As Alex Epstein argues, to “rapidly eliminate fossil-fuel use” would make the world “an impoverished, dangerous and miserable place for most people”. Fossil fuels provide 80 per cent of the world’s energy. Just three per cent comes from solar and wind power, so beloved of green anti-modernists. And even that measly slice of global energy production is, in Epstein’s words, “totally dependent on fossil fuels, especially natural gas, for 24/7 back-up”. That is, if the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, we have to crank up the fossil fuels. Ours is a world in which three billion people still use less electricity than your average American fridge. Agitating for less energy production in such a time is callous beyond belief. It would issue a death sentence on the world’s poor. George Osborne is Father Christmas in comparison with these crusaders against the gains and wonders of modernity.
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The French Intifada
Ed West on the origins of the rising violence in French towns and cities:
I ran an image search for “Paris rioting” and there was a plentiful supply of fiery, eye-catching photos. Not all of these are from the most recent outbreak of violence, but they are certainly representative of how the legacy media is covering the situation.
The recent violence in Paris and elsewhere, which saw attempts to ram the home of a mayor, once again highlighted the trouble the country has with integration. But the French police union describing themselves as being “at war with vermin” illustrated the different mindset to the English-speaking world, and the far more belligerent approach to the problems of diversity.
Like Britain, the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden, France has had difficulties assimilating the children of immigrants from beyond Europe, yet its recent history has proved especially violent and troubled. Britain has jihadi terrorism – 2017 was especially grim – but it has never reached such intensity. Today, as over 130,000 police officers stand guard to protect the Republic on the day of its celebration, it is worth considering the journey that brought it to such a state.
Analysts have often compared Britain’s state multiculturalism with France’s system of laïcité, which tends to downplay the existence of “communities” even to the point of not taking demographic statistics. Although neither country’s approach has entirely been a success, France’s refusal to recognise immigrants as anything but French has often been blamed for the widespread sense of alienation.
Others point to the housing system, which tends towards concentrations of North and West Africans in suburban banlieues, or the less laissez-faire economic policy which results in higher unemployment (in exchange for better social security).
While they no doubt play a part, the biggest single difference is history, as Andrew Hussey recounted back in 2014 in The French Intifada, in particular France’s history with North Africa. To put it in British terms, imagine that Britain’s rule in Pakistan had involved not a small number of administrators and soldiers but instead hundreds of thousands of British settlers arriving in the country, many with the intention of making it a “new America” (i.e. driving the natives out).
That Britain had declared Pakistan an integral part of the country, and that, rather than scarpering in indecent haste when the empire began to disintegrate, Britain had dug in to preserve its rule in a sadistic war of independence, one in which natives and white settlers committed countless atrocities against each other.
And that this violence had spilled into Britain with assassination attempts and terrorism, by both sides, destabilising the country to the point where there was talk of a coup. And that this was happening just as large-scale immigration to the colonial power was taking place.
Britain experienced nothing like as much violence in the dying days of empire, and indeed the only real comparison with our history was the moment when there was almost all-out conflict between Britain’s Protestant and Irish Catholic populations before the First World War.
If French politicians so casually talk of “civil war” between its right wing and the Algerian-descended population, it is because it has already played out this conflict before – one that was never healed, and so invites a sequel.
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Sherman Firefly – What were those wavy lines for?
Armoured Archives
Published 8 Mar 2023This video is going to take a quick look at those wavy lines you might see on some tank barrels, what did they do, and why? And was this ever an officially sanctioned project?
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July 14, 2023
How Hitler Approved His Own Assassination – WW2 Documentary Special
World War Two
Published 13 Jul 2023So far, the German resistance haven’t had much luck with their attempts to kill the Führer, Adolf Hitler. But now, the German war hero Claus von Stauffenberg, together with Friedrich Olbricht and Henning von Tresckow, drives the resistance forward. It’s time to kill Hitler. It’s time for Operation Valkyrie.
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