Published on 10 Aug 2017
This week Russo-Romanian forces clash with the Central Power´s counteroffensive in the Second Battle of Oltuz. The failure of the Kerensky Offensive disheartens the Russian army and radicalizes the homefront. While the Bolsheviks were calling for “Peace, Bread and Land”, the new commander of the Russian army Lavr Kornilov strives to become a strong authoritarian figure for the political right. And the Battle of Passchendaele reveals a scarred, broken battlefield of mud and destroyed equipment. Despair is everywhere.
August 11, 2017
Despair Everywhere – Battle of Mărășești I THE GREAT WAR Week 159
Comments Off on Despair Everywhere – Battle of Mărășești I THE GREAT WAR Week 159
Penn & Teller on Gun Control
Published on 11 Feb 2013
Penn and teller explain the 2nd amendment in very simple, easy to understand terms. Just the way it was written.
Comments Off on Penn & Teller on Gun Control
August 10, 2017
The Treaty of Westphalia
Published on 20 Nov 2008
Treaty of Westphalia
Comments Off on The Treaty of Westphalia
August 9, 2017
Ernst Zündel, “the Zelig of Holocaust denial”
In the National Post, Colby Cosh tells the tale of Canada’s “favourite” holocaust denial specialist:
Ernst Zündel, the Zelig of Holocaust denial, died suddenly this weekend at his ancestral home in the Black Forest of Germany. If he had died sooner, before his 2005 deportation from this country, I am afraid he would have been widely described in obituaries as “German-Canadian.” He lived here from 1958 to 2000, unsuccessfully trying a couple of times to obtain official citizenship, and was visible for years as a self-styled opponent of Germanophobic stereotypes in the popular media.Ernst Zündel in 1992 on the day of his legal victory in R. v. Zündel (via Wikipedia)
Foreseeably, Zündel turned out to be the ultimate German stereotype himself: a war baby who used Canada as a refuge from conscription and anti-Nazi laws back home, all while obsessively re-litigating the Second World War in pseudonymous anti-Semitic pamphlets and books. Most ethnic Germans abroad wouldn’t deny the Holocaust or complain of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy, as Zündel did, but… well, if you have studied German history seriously enough to talk about it socially, you will have run into folks who have funny ideas and tiny chips on their shoulder about, say, First World War reparations or the bombing of Dresden.
[…]
It should be remembered that by 1986 Zündel was already well on his way to establishing his place in Canadian legal history. He had already been convicted once under the Criminal Code’s “spreading false news” section, eventually struck down by the Supreme Court in 1992’s R. v. Zündel. Free speech absolutists argued then that the legal and social pursuit of Zündel merely served to increase his notoriety.
As a purely empirical question of history, this is hard to resolve. But we know that protests and the exertions of the police failed to stop Zündel from winning over Irving, and thus acquiring international influence. It may have done nothing but enhance his credentials as a pseudo-intellectual grappler, defying social scorn and the force of law.
The authorities were eventually able to bundle Zündel off to Germany through a legal door that has since closed. He was deported as an undesirable alien on the basis of a ministerial “security certificate” — not long before the Supreme Court denounced the use of secret evidence in deportation proceedings, and made such certificates harder to obtain. After Zündel’s deportation, an apparatus of progressive opposition to security certificates was quick to materialize. One cannot help wondering: if he were still alive in Canada in 2017, and the state tried to banish him, who might be out marching on his behalf, defending him as an “undocumented Canadian”?
Comments Off on Ernst Zündel, “the Zelig of Holocaust denial”
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.
Comments Off on The Falklands War – A War for Lost Glory I THE COLD WAR
August 8, 2017
The Baltic States in World War 1 I THE GREAT WAR SPECIAL
Published on 7 Aug 2017
Before the First World War, what are today Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were part of the Russian Empire. As that empire fought and fell, so to fought the soldiers of the Baltic States, first during the war, and then in their struggles for eventual independence.
Comments Off on The Baltic States in World War 1 I THE GREAT WAR SPECIAL
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.
Comments Off on Tank Chats #15 Tortoise
QotD: The next “Carrington Event”
The last one happened in 1859. The Earth was hit by a cloud of magnetized plasma from a “coronal mass ejection” — something that our Sun often does. Most fly off in other directions; the last that barely missed us was in July, 2012. (You can tell it missed from the fact that the Internet still exists.) The last bullseye on our beloved planet was named after the brilliant English amateur astronomer, Richard Carrington (1826–75), who, in the course of figuring out what happened, demonstrated the existence of “solar flares.”
He was trying to explain why telegraph operators all over the world, on the 1st of September, 1859, were suddenly getting electric shocks; and then, prior to the whole cable system going down, why some had been able to send and receive messages even after disconnecting their power. Too, why auroras had lit up the night sky at temperate latitudes so bright people could read newspapers by it; or why those at higher elevations near the equator could enjoy the aurora borealis and the aurora australis — simultaneously.
Now, the world a sesquicentury ago was not so dependent upon electricity as it is today. And the system of telegraphy was so ridiculously simple, that it was soon repaired. I daresay Morse Code is worth learning in preparation for the next Carrington Event — which, when it comes, we will be able to predict, at best, a few hours in advance. (Other cosmic events might impinge on our lifestyles meanwhile, but I like to consider my apocalypses one at a time.)
Gentle reader may do a mental inventory of the gizmos in his environment that are connected directly or indirectly to the power grid. Then add in anything that contains a computer chip, whether it happened to be “on” or “off” when the Earth’s magnetic field was impacted. For I assume it will all turn “on” of its own, for a brief but memorable interval.
The “beauty” (as they say in Cape Breton) is that we have no back-up system, and moreover, there can be no back-up, except what we can rig from horse, or paddle. For we have made ourselves totally dependent upon sparks.
On the plus side, the environmentalists may exult, because the quick reduction of the world’s population to post-Plague mediaeval levels could prove a lucky break for the other endangered species.
It will, even more happily, improve national security for the survivors in USA. For the same magnetic storm that makes the cities (and towns) of America uninhabitable will also have disabled the military capacities of Russia, China, and Iran. If they want to come at us they will have to do so in sailing ships. Moreover, the depopulation of Mexico will probably reduce the invasion threat from there, whether or not Donald Trump is President.
David Warren, “The highest tech”, Essays in Idleness, 2015-08-22.
Comments Off on QotD: The next “Carrington Event”
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/
Comments Off on Recap Of Our Trip To England I THE GREAT WAR Special
August 5, 2017
History of Writing – The Alphabet – Extra History
Published on Jul 29, 2017
Where did the alphabet come from? How did it develop, and why? The writing systems first developed in Sumer provided a basis for the written word, but their system of characters also inspired a shift to single phoneme systems where each letter represents a distinct sound.
Comments Off on History of Writing – The Alphabet – Extra History
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
Comments Off on The Battle of Passchendaele – Mutiny in the German Navy I THE GREAT WAR Week 158
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.
Comments Off on Experimental Lightweight Browning High Power
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.
Comments Off on QotD: Shakespeare’s sonnets
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!
Comments Off on Argentina vs United Kingdom: Falklands War 2017
