Military History Visualized
Published on 25 Aug 2017The Great Purge had a massive effect on Soviet Society and the Red Army. This video gives various insights in the numbers, effects and other aspects.
September 27, 2017
Stalin’s Great Purge – Effects on the Red Army 1936-1938
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September 26, 2017
Serbian Uniforms of World War 1 I THE GREAT WAR Special
The Great War
Published on 25 Sep 2017Serbia was already fighting in World War 1 before it actually spiralled into a global conflict, it had even already seen two wars in 1912 and 1913, so equipping the Serbian Army was a challenge right from the start.
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When virtue signalling is more important than tens of thousands of jobs
In Spiked, Brendan O’Neill slams the (mostly left-leaning) critics of Uber for their blatant two-faced attitudes:
The satire writes itself these days. For the past 16 months, ever since voters said No to the EU, the supposed liberal set has been signalling its virtue over migrant workers. These Remainer types have filled newspaper columns and dinner-party chatter with sad talk about foreigners losing the right to travel to and work in Britain. Yet now these same people have chortled as London mayor Sadiq Khan and his pen-pushers at Transport for London (TfL) have refused to renew Uber’s licence in the capital. Which means 30,000 people will lose work. Many of them migrants. They cry over migrant workers one day, and laugh as they lose their livelihoods the next.
Anyone would think their overriding concern is less with migrants’ right to work than with their own insatiable need to engage in political posturing. And right now, when it’s trendy to be anti-capitalist, to sneer at Silicon Valley fat-cats who make apps that employ people in far from ideal conditions, the posture that guarantees one’s spot in liberal circles is to be Uberphobic. Sticking it to Uber, making a spectacle of one’s haughty disdain for the vagaries of life in 21st-century capitalist society, takes precedence over concern for workers themselves. Welcome to 2017, where it’s cool to be anti-capitalist but not pro-worker.[…]
One of the ugliest sentiments behind Uberphobia is the idea that this service is a threat to the public, especially women. Darkly, the new left is at one with the anti-migrant hard right on this question: both have cheered Uber’s licence loss on the basis that women of London must be protected from unregulated drivers. Let’s get this into perspective. Last year it was revealed that between February 2015 and February 2016 there were 32 allegations of sexual assault against Uber drivers in London. There were a total of 154 allegations against all taxi and car firms, meaning Uber made up a minority of complaints. What’s more, there are millions of Uber journeys in London every year, so the chances of assault are minuscule. It’s the same in the US. There was scandal when it was revealed that Uber had received complaints from women who said they had been raped by drivers. It received five complaints between 2012 and 2015, which means 0.0000009% of car journeys involved an alleged act of rape. Uber is very safe indeed.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that, from both leftish feminists and the hard right, the panic about Uber is driven partly by fear of unregulated foreign men driving around our cities. The state must regulate, they say — and they mean it must regulate both business and foreigners, both fat cats and untrustworthy outsiders, both moneymen and migrants. Cheering as migrant workers lose their work and being complicit in the depiction of migrant drivers as a rapacious threat: sections of the liberal-left have really exposed their prejudices through their posturing against Uber. The tragedy of Uberphobia is that it confirms that even anti-capitalism is now virtue-signalling. It is no longer a serious call to improve working people’s lives; it is just the fleeting thrill of shouting ‘Down with Uber!’ without ever letting the issue of its drivers’ livelihoods cross your pristine, virtuous mind.
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To mark the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution … sorta #TheDeathOfStalin
Entertainment One UK
Published on 11 Aug 2017In Cinemas Oct 20.
The internal political landscape of 1950’s Soviet Russia takes on darkly comic form in a new film by Emmy award-winning and Oscar-nominated writer/director Armando Iannucci.
In the days following Stalin’s collapse, his core team of ministers tussle for control; some want positive change in the Soviet Union, others have more sinister motives. Their one common trait? They’re all just desperately trying to remain alive.
A film that combines comedy, drama, pathos and political manoeuvring, The Death of Stalin is a Quad and Main Journey production, directed by Armando Iannucci, and produced by Yann Zenou, Kevin Loader, Nicolas Duval Assakovsky, and Laurent Zeitoun. The script is written by Iannucci, David Schneider and Ian Martin, with additional material by Peter Fellows.
#TheDeathOfStalin
www.deathofstalin.co.uk
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September 25, 2017
Great Northern War – V: Rise and Fall – Extra History
Extra Credits
Published on 23 Sep 2017Charles XII narrowly escaped the Russian pursuit, with help from the Ottoman Empire. But the weak points in his army had been clearly exposed. Northern Europe united against him – but of course, Charles XII responded by launching a fateful counter-offensive into Norway.
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London’s foolish Uber ban
Iain Murray on the decision by London bureaucrats (backed by the Lord Mayor) to ban Uber in favour of established cab companies:
When I lived in London in the 1990s, I had to use pricey Black Cabs to get around the city at night. However, heaven help you if you wanted to go South of the Thames (as I did when I lived there) after midnight – Black Cabs would just refuse to take you. On one occasion I watched in horror as the cab driver got out and literally started a fight with a driver who had cut him off – and he kept the meter running throughout the fracas.
London’s days of high prices, uncertainty, and danger ended when Uber started operating there in 2012. It went on to dominate the London private hire car market. Today, that was all thrown out as Transport for London (TfL), an Uber competitor in that it runs the Tube and franchises bus services, revoked Uber’s license to operate.
Safety First?
The decision was ostensibly based on health and safety grounds. TfL said:
“TfL considers that Uber’s approach and conduct demonstrate a lack of corporate responsibility in relation to a number of issues which have potential public safety and security implications. These include:
- Its approach to reporting serious criminal offences.
- Its approach to how medical certificates are obtained.
- Its approach to how Enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks are obtained.
- Its approach to explaining the use of Greyball in London – software that could be used to block regulatory bodies from gaining full access to the app and prevent officials from undertaking regulatory or law enforcement duties.”
These grounds are puzzling. Uber has a dedicated team responsible for working with the police regarding incidents with cars that use the Uber app – something London’s Black Cabs lack. Uber’s drivers go through exactly the same background checks and approval processes that Black Cab drivers do. And Uber denies that the Greyball feature has ever been used in London.
Moreover, accusations of violence, especially sexual violence, by Uber app drivers are overblown. As Reuters reports, “Of the 154 allegations of rape or sexual assault made to police in London between February 2015 and February 2016 in which the suspect was a taxi driver, 32 concerned Uber, according to the capital’s police force.” If Uber was uniquely bad in having drivers who attempted sexual assaults, that share should be much higher.
On Saturday night, Perry de Havilland reported on the petition to rescind the TfL decision:
The #SaveYourUber petition has, as of 10:45 pm in London, attracted 600,000+ names, and one of them is mine.
Of course the best way to save Uber is to get rid of Sadiq Khan and make the issue politically radioactive.
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The Truth About Stonehenge – Anglophenia Ep 6
Published on 26 Jun 2014
Siobhan Thompson follows up ‘One Woman, 17 British Accents’ with a video dispelling a commonly believed myth about Stonehenge.
And by the way, Stonehenge isn’t the only stone structure worth visiting in Britain: http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2014/06/impressive-british-stone-structures-arent-stonehenge/
Photos via AP Images.
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QotD: IKEA’s shady history
IKEA itself serves as a fitting symbol of the middle-class masquerade. The company’s well-managed brand obscures the fact that its founder, Ingvar Kamprad, at the time that he founded the store in 1943, was a member of Sweden’s pro-Nazi fascist party, in which he continued to be active at least until 1948 and which he continued to praise for decades after; or that the company used forced prison labor in East Germany until the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is fitting that IKEA’s current worth is unknown, since it is technically owned by a phony-charity shell company incorporated in the Netherlands, enabling Kamprad to evade Swedish taxes. This is not to single out IKEA for particular scorn: one could write an equally lurid laundry list about almost any large corporation; a fascist undertone usually lurks beneath the surface of mass-production and mass-marketing. Consider the fact that Apple uses what is slave labor in all but name in China yet none of their customers seem to care.
Samuel Biagetti, “The IKEA Humans: The Social Base of Contemporary Liberalism”, Jacobite, 2017-09-13.
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September 24, 2017
Why Was Haig Still in Command? I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
The Great War
Published on 23 Sep 2017
Ask your questions here: http://outofthetrenches.thegreatwar.tvIn this week’s OOTT episode we talk about Douglas Haig, the trenches on the British Islands and silencers.
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Brilliant job on the Kalashnikov statue, Tovarisch, but what’s that weapon right there?
The Guardian reports on some emergency fix-ups required to a brand new statue honouring Mikhail Kalashnikov:
Workers have removed part of a new monument to Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor of the Soviet Union’s AK-47 assault rifle, after eagle-eyed Russians noticed that it mistakenly depicted a German second world war weapon.
The monument to the creator of one of Russia’s best known export brands was unveiled in central Moscow three days ago to much fanfare.
A metal bas-relief behind a statue of Kalashnikov depicts the AK-47 and other weapons all supposedly designed by the engineer, who died in 2013.
But embarrassed sculptor Salavat Shcherbakov had to admit that among them was the Sturmgewehr 44 (StG 44) assault rifle used by Nazi troops.
“We will rectify this,” Shcherbakov said in comments broadcast by state-run Rossiya 24 channel. “It looks like this [mistake] sneaked in from the internet.”
By Friday evening a square hole gaped where the German rifle had been depicted in the bas-relief.
Kalashnikov’s weapon, created in 1947, does have a striking resemblance to German arms designer Hugo Schmeisser’s StG 44 rifle, created in 1942, although they have major design differences.
MP44 (Sturmgewehr 44), Germany. Caliber 8x33mm Kurz- From the collections of Armémuseum (Swedish Army Museum), Stockholm. (via Wikimedia)
Kalashnikov АК-47 with bayonet attached (via Wikimedia)
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September 23, 2017
Roger Scruton – On ‘Harry Potter’
Conservatism Archive
Published on Sep 4, 2017
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The Very First Troop Trials SMLE Rifles
Published on 4 Apr 2017
1902 A Pattern: Sold for $31,625 – http://jamesdjulia.com/item/1647-396/
1902 B Pattern: Sold for $31,625 – http://jamesdjulia.com/item/1648-396/One of the British lessons from the Boer War was that the distinction between infantry rifles and cavalry carbines was becoming obsolete. In 1902, they would initiate troop trials on a new short rifle pattern, intermediate in length between the old rifles and carbines, and intended to be issued universally to all troops. This would become the much-loved SMLE – Short, Magazine, Lee Enfield rifle – but first a few choices had to be made.
The 1902 trials rifles were a bit remarkable in being widely liked by the different troops that used them – only a few changes were to be made before formal adoption took place. However, there were two different patterns of the trials rifles, with different models of rear sight. The B pattern used a friction-locked range adjuster, which was found to migrate during firing (not good). The A pattern had a much more secure set of spring loaded locking notched, and would be chosen as the better of the two.
Despite a thousand of these rifles being produced for the trials, these two are the only known surviving examples. The remainder were converted to .22 caliber training guns around 1907, as their non-standard nature made them unsuitable for issue after the formal adoption of the SMLE MkI (later to be retroactively redesignated the Rifle No1 MkI.
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September 22, 2017
British Advance At Passchendaele I THE GREAT WAR Week 165
The Great War
Published on 21 Sep 2017Herbert Plumer had a cunning plan to crack the German defences at Passchendaele, he would “bite and hold” only small pieces of the German Hindenburg Line instead of aiming for the big breakthrough. It was still a costly tactic but it achieved results and the Germans under Ruprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria, were worried.
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September 20, 2017
Tiger Day VIII at The Tank Museum
The Mighty Jingles
Published on 19 Sep 2017It’s Tiger Day once again at The Tank Museum in deepest, darkest Bovington! This time I actually managed to get there and I wasn’t disappointed…
The Tank museum: http://www.tankmuseum.org/home
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September 19, 2017
The Merchant of Death – Basil Zaharoff I WHO DID WHAT IN WW1?
The Great War
Published on 18 Sep 2017For arms dealers like Basil Zaharoff, the late 19th and early 20th century was a time of never ending business opportunities, the great European powers modernised their armies drastically and conflicts like the Russo-Japanese War or the Balkan Wars meant that weapons of all kinds were always in demand. But no other man knew how to influence and profit from the warring nations like “The Merchant of Death” – Basil Zaharoff.
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