The Great War
Published on 12 May 2018Chair of Wisdom Time!
May 13, 2018
Marie Curie in WW1 – Who Killed The Red Baron? I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
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QotD: The lost works of Epicurus
[Most of the original writings of Epicurus have been lost.] There are the elaborate refutations of Epicureanism by Cicero and Plutarch. These inevitably outline and sometimes even quote what they are attacking. There are hundreds of other references to Epicurus in the surviving literature of the ancient world. Some of these are useful sources of information. Some are our only sources of information on certain points of the philosophy.
During the past few centuries, scholars have been trying to read the charred papyrus rolls from a library in Herculaneum buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. Some of these contain works by Philodemus of Gadara, an Epicurean philosopher of the 1st century BC. Much of this library remains unexcavated, and most of the rolls recovered have not really been examined. There are hopes that a complete work by Epicurus will one day be found here.
Above all else, though, is the De Rerum Natura of Lucretius. He was a Roman poet who died around the year 70 BC. His epic, in which he claims to restate the physical doctrines of Epicurus, was unfinished at the time of his death, and it is believed that Cicero himself edited the six completed books and published the text roughly as it has come down to us. This is one of the greatest poems ever written, and perhaps the strangest of all the great poems. It is also the longest explanation in a friendly source of the physical theories of Epicurus.
Therefore, if anyone tries to say in any detail what Epicurus believed, he will not be arguing from strong authority. If we compare the writings of any extant philosopher with the summaries and commentaries, we can see selective readings and exaggerations and plain misunderstandings. How much of what Karl Marx really said can be reliably known from the Marxist and anti-Marxist scholars of the 20th century? Even David Hume, who wrote very clearly in a very clear language, seems to have been consistently misunderstood by his 19th century critics. For Epicurus, we may have reliable information about the main points of his ethics and his physics. We have almost no discussions of his epistemology or his philosophy of mind. Anyone who tries writing on these is largely guessing.
All this being said, enough has survived to make a general account of the philosophy possible. Epicurus appears to have been a consistent thinker. Though it may only ever be a guess — unless the archaeologists in Herculaneum find the literary equivalent of Tutankhamen’s tomb — we can with some confidence proceed from what Epicurus did say to what he might have said. Certainly, we can give a general account of the philosophy.
Sean Gabb, “Epicurus: Father of the Enlightenment”, speaking to the 6/20 Club in London, 2007-09-06.
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May 11, 2018
The Ostende Raid – Peace of Bucharest I THE GREAT WAR Week 198
The Great War
Published on 10 May 2018Even though the first raid on Ostende and the Raid on Zeebrugge were not entirely successful, the Royal Navy is still determined to block access to the German submarine ports in Belgium. And this week they attack Ostende again. Meanwhile, the Germans are planning their next offensives for late May 1918 even though ten percent of the Western Front army has become a casualty in the offensives this year alone.
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May 10, 2018
Enter ADOLF HITLER stage left I BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1919 Part 4 of 4
TimeGhost History
Published on 8 May 2018The fledgling democracy in Germany struggles to survive as the German Revolution escalates into a downright civil war. In one of the German States Bavaria, Adolf Hitler appears on the stage within the context of the Bavarian Soviet Revolution.
Click here for the rest of the Between 2 Wars series: http://goo.gl/enXJWf
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CORRECTION: Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution gave the PRESIDENT of the German Reich the power to suspend civil rights and take armed action, nothing else… our apologies. In this episode we meet Adolf Hitler for the first time. Now some might be surprised about how we portray Hitler and his political views in 1919 and this needs some commentary. Before you go off in any specific direction about Hitler and Naziism, you should therefore read our commentary here https://community.timeghost.tv/t/enter-adolf-hitler-from-the-left-between-2-wars-1919-part-4-of-4/262/3:
Commentary regarding our portrayal of Hitler:
Those of you who follow our work since a longer time will know that we are loath to tell a skewed or biased version of the events we portray. Our aim with how we tell Hitler’s story is neither to exonerate him, nor to vilify him; the facts speak for themselves and we are convinced that we neither need to add, nor subtract emphasis to the story of Hitler and the Nazis.
In many other works covering Hitler you will see a tendency to hang the events of this epoch on the leaders that rose to power in the period. While it is unquestionable that the impact of those leaders was far reaching and instrumental in how the events evolved, it should not be forgotten that these men (and a few women) were not created in a bubble. As postulated in the main historiographical theory dealing with the impact of leadership, Zeitgeist Theory (from where we take or brand name btw.) it is easily seen at that it was not the characters that created the times, but the times that created the characters who then steered the events as they evolved.
This is an uncomfortable position to take, because it leads to the next conclusion: Germany, Japan and Italy did also not exist inside bubbles. This in turn leads us to have to look at the entire picture of the world to understand the events that followed. Inevitably this will not lead to a black and white picture of good guys vs. bad guys. Instead we face a complex situation where many cogwheels interact to bring about the situation that eventually leads to war.
To be clear: once again we are not seeking to exonerate, or vilify anyone. What with the extensive crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Axis powers before and during the war, there is always the risk of comparing apples and oranges when you dive into this area. To avoid that conundrum, the war crimes perpetrated by the Allies are often brushed aside, or simply justified as an unfortunate part of war. Again to be clear: while the firebombing of Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, Osaka and many other cities does constitute war crimes, it does not exonerate the murder of tens of millions of people by the Nazis. Furthermore the sheer difference in numbers and method speak for themselves (if you must look at a comparison of who was worse than the other).
Our interest will always be to tell the story as accurately as we can and let the story itself provide judgement. At no point will we waiver from telling a part of the story just because it makes one side or the other look better or worse. Also, we will not get involved in the moral arguments surrounding this, such as that certain acts were justified because they led to victory, or were the lesser evil. It is not our job to make that kind of moral judgement – that is up to the philosophers of the world and we’re mere tellers of history.
Regarding Hitler’s political views in 1919:
The fact that Hitler had liberal sympathies in 1919, should not be misunderstood as a foundation for an argument that Naziism was a left wing ideology. While Hitler and Drexler did incorporate social welfare concepts and anti-capitalist ideas into their agenda, the national socialist doctrine is clearly a derivative of conservatism, not progressivism.
Contrary to communism that focuses on class and internationalism, Naziism focuses on race and nationalism. Naziism espouses traditional social conservative views regarding gender roles, division of labour, social values, and foreign relations. Communism claims to be egalitarian while Naziism espouses an elitist world view. Communism seeks to create a completely new economic system based on overthrowing traditional trade and profit ideas, Naziism espouses economic protectionism and state regulated capitalism. In one aspect the two ideologies do share a common denominator, namely in the repression of the financial transfer economy (money lending, property speculation and so on). This last bit has often been misrepresented as proof that Naziism is a left-wing ideology, but that would be a fallacious conclusion as this is not at the centre of the ideology, but rather an artifact of the somewhat contradictory antisemitic ideas of Naziism.
Last but not least the main unique feature of Naziism that differentiates it from Fascism is the outspoken antisemitism at the heart of the ideology. Absurdly Hitler came to equate Jews with robber capitalists AND communism. As strange as that is, it’s a way of thinking that was not only prevalent with Hitler, but also with other political thinkers like Charles Maurras, a Frenchman who formulated an early form of Naziism already in the late 1880s and 1890s (yes we will cover him). The basis of this is their belief in a world conspiracy led by the Jews that was aimed at the overthrow of what they perceived as ‘their race.’ Based on that, robber capitalism and Bolshevik Communism were seen as instruments in this imaginary war of the races. The idea was also promoted within the context of the Russian Revolution, where for instance the fabricated Protocols of The Elders of Zion, aimed to show that the ‘Jewish conspiracy’ was a driving force behind the revolution.
May 9, 2018
Royal Navy buys the Terminator … of mines
At The Register Gareth Corfield updates us on the latest step towards Skynet, uh, Seanet:
The Navy’s latest robot minesweeper. It’ll blow things up but leave your pint alone, thankfully
The Royal Navy has acquired a search-and-destroy robot boat intended for destroying mines.
A first for Britain’s naval service, the roboat, built by German firm Atlas Elektronik’s UK subsidiary, drives itself around the high seas towing three auxiliary boats fitted with electro-acoustic transmitters. The transmitters generate pings that trigger modern digital mines at a safe distance from either the roboat flotilla or actual human-carrying shipping.
So far the MoD’s £13m contract with Atlas has netted it one complete boat-with-gear system on an R&D basis, with options available to buy more. The trials boat has just been handed over to the RN following proving of the design’s detect-and-avoid algorithms in what appears to be a live training data-versus-AI comparison exercise.
In maritime terms, the roboats comply with the International Regulations for the Prevention of Collisions at Sea (known as the Colregs – they’re the seagoing version of the Highway Code), though The Register would be most intrigued to see how they cope with scenarios that end up invoking rule 2(b).*
“This autonomous minesweeper takes us a step closer to taking our crews out of danger and allowing us to safely clear sea lanes of explosives, whether that’s supporting trade in global waters and around the British coastline, or protecting our ships and shores,” said defence procurement minister Guto Bebb in the usual canned quote.
* Rule 2, as published (PDF) by the Department for Transport, states: “Construing and complying with these Rules due regard shall be had to all dangers of navigation and collision and to any special circumstances, including the limitations of the vessels involved, which may make a departure from these Rules necessary to avoid immediate danger.”
Update, 14 May: UK Armed Forced Commentary has more information on the unmannned minesweeper system.
12 October 2005 was an historic day for the Royal Navy, because the Hunt class minesweepers HMS Middleton and HMS Ledbury conducted the last evolution at sea involving sweep gear, both the Oropesa mechanical wire system and the combined influence sweep equipment. The Royal Navy at that point had already operated unmanned, remotely controlled sweep systems in 2003 during waterway clearance work in Iraq, notably the opening of Umm Qasr. Under a UOR, a number of Combat Support Boats with remote controls were used to tow the Mini Dyad System (MDS) produced by Australian Defence Industries (ADI) and Pipe Noise Makers. Called Shallow Water Influence Minesweeping System (SWIMS), they were sent ahead of the RN minehunters as precursor sweeps against ground influence mines. The future of MCM was taking the path of stand-off action through unmanned systems and it was felt that the more than 100 years of manned ships sweeping were at an end.
The replacement for the sweep equipment was to come through the Flexible Agile Sweeping Technology, or FAST. The idea was to put two unmanned surface vehicles on the Hunt class vessels by modifying their open, capacious stern area. FAST, however, proved anything but fast, and even though a contract was signed in 2007 by the MOD with the Atlas-QED consortium, comprising Atlas Elektronik UK, QinetiQ and EDO Corporation, the resulting Technology Readiness Demonstrator never made it on the Hunt class. FAST became a test platform that spent the following years doing all sort of trials and demonstrations. Initially intended only for towing sweep kit, it ended up testing remote deployment and recovery of Sea Fox unmanned underwater vehicles, demonstrating that stand off clearance of minefields was possible.
Atlas Elektronik UK continued to work with the MOD and on its own, and eventually developed in-house the ARCIMS (ATLAS Remote Combined Influence Minesweeping System) system, which has enjoyed a first export success in an unnamed Middle East navy and has gone on to become the much delayed replacement for the Hunt’s sweeping capability within the Royal Navy.
An ARCIMS seaframe, but manned, was delivered to the Royal Navy in 2014 for trials and development purposes, and remains in service with the Maritime Autonomous System Trials Team (MASTT) of the Royal Navy as RNMB Hazard.
On 6 march 2015, Atlas received a 12.6 million pounds order from the MOD for a first ARCIMS-derived system, in the unmanned configuration, configured to tow sweeping equipment. The system has now been accepted, and according to MASTT, which has already trialed it extensively, the new boat is called RNMB Hussar.
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Freedom of the Press … except where prohibited by (British) law
Wednesday is a critical day in the history of Britain, in the sense that a long-established freedom is at risk of being curtailed:
Press freedom is hanging by a thread in Britain. Tomorrow, the House of Commons will vote on the Data Protection Bill, and Labour MPs have added amendments to it that would effectively end 300 years of press freedom in this country.
That this profound affront to liberty had almost passed under the radar, until spiked and others began making noise about it over the weekend, shouldn’t surprise us. This vote is the culmination of a slow and covert war on the press that has been waged for the best part of a decade.
This story begins with the Leveson Inquiry, an effective showtrial of the press that sparked dozens of spurious trials of journalists and barely any convictions. Since then, press-regulation campaigners have had to find new and underhand ways to push their agenda on an industry and a public who clearly see right through it.
In the wake of Leveson, a new regulator, Impress, was established and given official recognition. It was an historic moment, in the worst possible sense: this was Britain’s first state-backed regulator since the days of Crown licensing. But it was also a stunningly bad bit of PR for the press-regulation lobby, in that Impress was staffed by tabloid-loathing hackademics and funded by tabloid-loathing millionaire Max Mosley.
No national newspaper signed up to it. And so the Hacked Off brigade has been pushing over the past few years for Section 40, a law that would force publications to sign up to a state-approved regulator, which at the moment means signing up to Impress. Those publications, like spiked, who would refuse on principle, would be required to pay the legal costs of any case brought against them, even if they win.
As such, Section 40 would be a gift to the powerful and the begrudged. It would enable anyone to launch lawsuits aimed at shutting down publications they dislike. This is an opportunity that people who have been exposed by the press would take in a heartbeat. It would undermine not only press freedom, but also natural justice.
And it isn’t just the press who are concerned about this. In 2016, the government opened a public consultation into press freedom, asking members of the public if it should implement Section 40 and commence the second part of the Leveson Inquiry. Out of a huge 174,730 responses, 79 per cent said No to Section 40 and 66 per cent said No to Leveson 2.
Update, 10 May: The vote was too damned close, but it was defeated by a nine-vote margin. Guido has the list of MPs voting in favour of muzzling the press here.
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QotD: The “you can’t get good help” period after WW1
Look, I, like you, heard about how terrible the aftermath of WWI was, and how broke people were right after, and how they were moving to cities and living in tenements. It wasn’t until I was reading a book about the between the war period in England that I realized they were telling me TWO stories which couldn’t both have happened. In the part about the common folk, they were telling me how much poorer they were than before the war. In the part about the great families, they were telling me how the huge rise of the middle class and the building of suburbs had hurt them, and how the newly rich common folk no longer wanted to be servants.
That was one of those “wait a minute.” Sure I was taught both things in school, but you know you write down the bullet point for the test, and that’s it. Now I was going “Who the heck wrote these narratives and why doesn’t anyone question them?”
The truth, btw, from going to primary sources is closer to the second. And the people who wrote the narrative were the unseated noblemen, who did not like all these nouveau riche but who wanted to justify their disgust by showing how it hurt the poor. (It did increase the underclass somewhat, not because of economic conditions, but because a lot of men don’t integrate well after war, and well, WWI was something special by way of trauma.)
There are tons of these when you start poking. For instance the idea that the industrial revolution was unremittingly bad for the poor/people. Looking at China and India and such places right now, all I can do is roll my eyes.
Yeah, sure, the conditions of the early industrial revolution were appalling. And yet people crowded to the cities to take these jobs. What the historians never ask themselves is “How much worse was what they were escaping from?” We know that in India and China and other recently industrialized countries.
Sure the countryside has relatively clean air and more open space, but there are still real famines, and the work was unremitting and brutal and yes, little children worked too (says the daughter of middle class in a rural community whose first “job” was weeding the onion patch at five. And I was a pampered moppet. Kids my age from farming families had what we’d call full time jobs. Factory jobs at least had a stopping time.)
The idea that the industrial revolution was awful comes from upper class historians who could see the little kids twisted by working in the mills but who never consorted closely enough with the rural poor to see the misery behind raising baah lambs and the pretty pretty flowers.
Yeah. So the past isn’t written in stone. And it’s not a conspiracy. Not precisely a conspiracy. Yeah, sure, the Marxists influenced a lot of modern history with their ideas, but that is not necessarily conspiring. They view the world a certain way and it influences how they view the past too.
Sarah Hoyt, “How Do You Know?”, According to Hoyt, 2016-08-24.
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May 8, 2018
The Western Front Awakens – Peace In The East I THE GREAT WAR Summary Part 13
The Great War
Published on 7 May 2018The spring of 1918 brought huge shifts to the fronts of World War 1. The Eastern Front went quiet after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the Western Front returned to a war of movement with the German Spring Offensive 1918.
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Charge of the Light Brigade | Animated History
The Armchair Historian
Published on 28 Dec 2017The Charge of the Light Brigade, Animated History
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QotD: Pay inequality
It probably doesn’t come as news that airline companies pay pilots more than cabin crew — but according to the dogma of the gender wage gap, we’re supposed to find this fact troubling. The British government now requires companies to report their raw gender gap — that is, the difference in the median hourly wages earned by their male and female employees. Ignoring occupational differences, seniority, employment history, hours worked, or any of the countless other factors affecting salaries, these data are misleading at best. Nevertheless, when budget airline EasyJet reported a 51 percent pay gap between its male and female employees, the company knew that its reputation perched on the edge of a PR abyss.
And that’s the whole point of the exercise: simplify statistics to shock people at the seeming injustice done to women and shame companies into action; refuse to compare similar job functions; ignore the fact that, like every other airline, EasyJet’s pilots are disproportionately male, while their cabin crews skew female; forget that almost all carriers compete for the same 4 percent of the world’s female pilots; and whatever you do, don’t mention that the EasyJet CEO, who was in charge of this bigoted organization and also its highest-paid employee until retiring earlier this year, was a woman. The company should be branded with a scarlet “51 percent” until it … does what? Cuts pilots’ pay? Hikes the salaries of female cabin crew? Hires male attendants instead of female? Goes bankrupt?
Kay S. Hymowitz, “Equal Pay Myths: Activists for wage parity ignore stubborn truths”, City Journal, 2018-04-09.
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May 6, 2018
Peace and Revolution I BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1919 Part 3 of 4
TimeGhost History
Published on 5 May 2018The Paris Peace Conference gets underway while the world continues to go up in flames. In 1919 it seems like every corner of the world is plagued by revolutions, strikes, protests, oppression, ethnic violence, massacres, or war.
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Written by Spartacus Olsson and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Spartacus Olsson
Produced by: Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus OlssonA TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH
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Our Trip To Turkey Recap I THE GREAT WAR
The Great War
Published on 5 May 2018Indy and Flo give you a small recap of our amazing trip to Turkey. Cool special episodes coming soon.
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Tank Chats #29 Daimler Dingo Scout Car | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published on 21 Dec 2016The wheeled armoured scout car was the British Army’s principal reconnaissance vehicle from the beginning of World War II until the 1980s.
Scout cars were small and much quieter than a tracked vehicle; units equipped with scout cars relied on stealth to obtain information, rather than fighting for it. The Daimler Dingo entered service with the British Army in 1939 and served until the middle 1960s as a reconnaissance and liaison vehicle used by armoured and infantry divisions.
It was so versatile that a multitude of uses were found for it: medical officers used them to search for casualties in the battle field while one unit even issued a Dingo to its chaplain!
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May 4, 2018
Pershing Under Pressure – The End Of La Lys I THE GREAT WAR Week 197
The Great War
Published on 3 May 2018Even though the German spring offensive is not able to gain any ground in Flanders, the allied casualties are mounting. This increases the pressure on John J. Pershing and the American troops in Europe to finally join the battle.
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QotD: The EU and democracy
The EU is quite clear however that it stands as the champion of democracy, just not the kind of democracy that involves people voting. No, for the EU democracy means compliance with the EU’s standards and rules – any departure indicates a drift towards un-democracy that must be checked by sanctions and punishments, even if people voted for it. The EU’s democratic principles, you understand, trump stuff like elections and voting; they are a purer form of democracy, crafted by unelected officials and demagogues free from popular approval. And yes, there are many in Brussels who actually believe all that.
Raedwald, “Sorry Herr Juncker your woes are just starting”, Raedwald, 2018-04-09.
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