Overly Sarcastic Productions
27 April 2014Yeah, sorry. I don’t like this play very much. I know it’s a classic, I know it inspired countless other love stories… I… I can’t help it. It’s just too funny. I’m sorry if you actually thought this play was tragic, because I did not respect your opinion here at ALL.
Sabaton History
Published 7 Nov 2019Europe had grown weary of war by the summer of 1648 and after much deliberation, peace talks in Westphalia had reached their final stages. Warlords across the entire continent were preparing for peace but not all of them agreed. The exceptionally ruthless German-Swedish General Königsmarck advanced into Bohemia to lay siege to Prague.
Support Sabaton History on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistory
Listen to Carolus Rex (Where “1648” is featured):
CD: http://bit.ly/CarolusRexStore
Spotify: http://bit.ly/CarolusRexSpotify
Apple Music: http://bit.ly/CarolusRexAppleMusic
iTunes: http://bit.ly/CarolusRexiTunes
Amazon: http://bit.ly/CarolusRexAmz
Google Play: http://bit.ly/CarolusRexGooglePlayListen to Sabaton on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/SabatonSpotify
Official Sabaton Merchandise Shop: http://bit.ly/SabatonOfficialShopHosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard and Wieke Kapteijns
Produced by: Pär Sundström, Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Broden, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Maps by: Eastory
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Sound Editing by: Marek KaminskiEastory YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEly…
Archive by: Reuters/Screenocean https://www.screenocean.com
Music by Sabaton.Sources:
– Thumbnail image: Petri Krohn, CC BY-SA 3.0.
– Les misères et les malheurs de la guerre – The British Museum
– “Germania: dos mil años de historia alemana” series from Fondo Antiguo de la Biblioteca de la Universidad de Sevilla
– The peace of Munster painting courtesy of Amsterdam Museum
– RijksMuseumAn OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.
© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.
From the comments:
Sabaton History
2 days ago
This episode about “1648” is about peace and about a devastating and deadly siege to Prague. We enjoy doing these episodes as we usually only make episodes about more modern topics. Now, we have to do without film and photo material, and be creative with paintings and sketches. Kudos to the editor Iryna who makes that work brilliantly! If you agree and want to support our work, you can do so by going to our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistoryCheers, the Sabaton History team.
Chris Selley believes that introducing the notion of “sin” as an appropriate thing to discuss with a politician will be a very bad idea for Canadian politics:
Andrew Scheer, paid tool of Big Dairy, chugs some milk during a Press Gallery speech in 2017. I’ve called him the “Milk Dud” ever since.
Screencapture from a CTV video uploaded to YouTube.
At a Wednesday press conference in Ottawa, a Globe and Mail reporter asked Andrew Scheer if he believes homosexuality is a “sin.” He didn’t answer, as has become his trademark on this file; instead he pledged, for the umpteenth time, simply to stand up for gay rights in all their forms.
It has been maddening to watch: Despite literally dozens of opportunities, he could never bring himself to explicitly support equal marriage. Bringing “sin” into the question is a novelty, though, and it’s one of which we need to be exceedingly leery.
[…]
The question of “sin” takes us into new and dangerous territory, however. There is what politicians do, and then there is what they think, and then — buried way down under many layers of irrelevance — there is their personal relationship, if any, with higher powers and their associated scriptures; there is the question of what they think that higher power would make of other people’s behaviour; there is what they believe will happen to those people’s immortal souls.
These are not topics the secular media should be concerning themselves with, and nor should the average voter. No one would approve of someone they like being put through such an inquisition. Liberals would be aghast if their avowedly Catholic leader were asked if his faith played a role in his government not eliminating restrictions on gay and bisexual men donating blood, for example. Liberals often speak glowingly of the days when politicians set aside religion and pursued the greater good — politicians like Pierre Trudeau, a devout Catholic who famously said “what goes on in private between two consulting adults is their own private business,” but who somewhat less famously spoke of “separating the idea of sin and the idea of crime.”
Trudeau Sr. was absolutely right that the state should have no dominion over sin, in any sense of the word. That should go for politics, too. Politicians of known faiths and devoutness have advanced many of progressive Canadians’ most cherished causes — public health care, most notably — and politicians of unknown faiths and devoutness have taken us down dark alleys. And vice versa. There is nothing we can do with information about a politician’s personal metaphysical views except raise new barriers to entry into a politics that needs fewer.
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 12 April 2014Here it is! The Scottish Play. The bloodiest of the bloody. An epic tale of magic, madness and stabbing. It’s so gory, even Tarantino thinks it’s over the top.
Making it funny was pretty tough. 😀
Because male sexuality is all about the visuals, men’s magazines are filled with pictures of naked women with freakishly large breasts and women’s magazines are filled with pictures of beauty products and ass-cantilevering $2,000 stilettos. Men evolved to go for signs of reproductively hot prospects — an hourglass figure, youth, clear skin, symmetrical faces and bodies, and long shiny hair: all indicators that a woman is a healthy, fertile candidate to pass on a man’s genes.
Women co-evolved to try to make themselves look reproductively hot, though that’s not how we think of it. […] Because men are turned on by disembodied photos of boobs, butts, and coochies, they’re quick to pull down their pants, click their cameraphone, and text some woman they just met a close-up of their zipperwurst. Really bad idea.
Men who’ve done this should pick up a Harlequin romance, which is basically porn for women (from the ravishing by some hot gazillionaire to the final commitment-gasm).
See any photo spreads of male crotch shots tucked in there anywhere, boys?
This is not an error of omission. Women aren’t fantasizing about seeing your willy; they’re fantasizing that somebody in the royal family will pluck them out of suburbia and marry them in Westminster Abbey.
Amy Alkon, Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck, 2014.
Orwell himself saw all this happen when he read Catalan newspapers as well as British ones during the Spanish Civil War, several years before joining the BBC. Condemning press distortions, above all how several English newspapers reported the war, he wrote: “I saw great battles where there had been no fighting and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed … I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines.'” Given the gridlock in American politics, and the never-ending verbal warfare between news outlets on the Right such as Fox News and on the Left such as MSNBC, Orwell appears all too accurate in his “predictions.”
One of the features of the world of Oceania reflecting Orwell’s prescience is its official language, Newspeak, an argot resembling a kind of Morse code that satirizes advertising norms, political jargon, and government bureaucratese. The purpose of Newspeak is to limit thought, on the view that “you can’t think what you lack the words for.” Ultimately, this impoverished language seeks to narrow and control human thought. (Does Twitter represent a step in that direction?) Purged of all nuance and subtlety, denuded of variety, and reduced to a few hundred simple words, Newspeak ultimately promises to render all independent thought (or “thoughtcrime”) impossible. If it cannot be expressed in language, it cannot be thought. And anything can fill the vacuum, such as 2 + 2 = 5. That is the equation — a perfect example of “doublethink” — which O’Brien indoctrinates Winston to accept in Room 101 and which marks the final step of the latter’s brainwashing. As the Party defines it, “doublethink” consists in holding “two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” In 2018, Trump’s lead lawyer, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, declared in a TV interview: “Truth isn’t truth.” A few months later, a talking head defended a critical news report on the grounds that, just because it is “not accurate doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
It testifies both to the brilliance of Orwell’s vision and to the bane of our times that Nineteen Eighty-Four retains so much relevance.
John Rodden and John Rossi, “George Orwell Warned Us, But Was Anyone Listening?”, The American Conservative, 2019-10-02.
One of the key elements aiding Hitler and the NSDAP to take power and stay in power in Germany in the 1930s was the constant, ongoing propaganda campaign orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels. Hitler and the Nazi party were lauded as the perfect Germanic solution to every problem and Jews, socialists, homosexuals, and other undesireable elements were belittled and used as targets of hate. A big part of Goebbels’ propaganda revolved around one idea, the “Big Lie”:
Hitler, Göring, Goebbels and Hess.
Photo via Wikimedia Commons.
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.
By suppressing competing voices and having all the methods of reaching the people repeating the same story, the Nazis solidified their control on power in Germany that lasted until 1945, and was only demolished by massive military effort by the United States, the Soviet Union, and the British Commonwealth. Propaganda is a very powerful tool that works distressingly well to implant and nurture evil ideas in a subject population.
Modern propagandists in the west generally don’t have the power of the state aiding them, but if they get enough of the channels of communication — especially the entertainment channels — to co-ordinate the message, the effects can be very strong:
… I perfectly understand the legitimacy of feminist concerns regarding the portrayal of women in the media as consistently demure, retiring, and subservient to men. I grant that, in most of the action/adventure movies that I saw growing up, women would typically twist an ankle or get captured and then require rescuing by the swashbuckling male hero — and I realize how galling this must have been to generations of women. And therefore, a certain correction was undoubtedly in order. But what is problematic now is the Nietzschean quality of the reaction, by which I mean, the insistence that female power has to be asserted over and against males, that there is an either/or, zero-sum conflict between men and women. It is not enough, in a word, to show women as intelligent, savvy, and good; you have to portray men as stupid, witless, and irresponsible. That this savage contrast is having an effect especially on younger men is becoming increasingly apparent.
In the midst of a “you-go-girl” feminist culture, many boys and young men feel adrift, afraid that any expression of their own good qualities will be construed as aggressive or insensitive. If you want concrete proof of this, take a look at the statistics contrasting female and male success at the university level. And you can see the phenomenon in films such as Fight Club and The Intern. In the former, the Brad Pitt character turns to his friend and laments, “we’re thirty year old boys;” and in the latter, Robert De Niro’s classic male type tries to whip into shape a number of twenty-something male colleagues who are rumpled, unsure of themselves, without ambition — and of course under the dominance of an all conquering female.
It might be the case that, in regard to money, power, and honor, a zero-sum dynamic obtains, but it decidedly does not obtain in regard to real virtue. The truly courageous person is not threatened by another person’s courage; the truly temperate man is not intimidated by the temperance of someone else; the truly just person is not put off by the justice of a countryman; and authentic love positively rejoices in the love shown by another. And therefore, it should be altogether possible to hold up the virtue of a woman without denying virtue to a man. In point of fact, if we consult the “all conquering female” characters in films and TV, we see that they often exemplify the very worst of the traditional male qualities: aggression, suspicion, hyper-sensitivity, cruelty, etc. This is what happens when a Nietzschean framework has replaced a classical one.
My point is that it is altogether possible — and eminently desirable — to say “you go boy” with as much vigor as “you go girl.” And both the boys and the girls will be better for it.
Sabaton History
Published 31 Oct 2019The exact topic of Sabaton’s song “Unbreakable” will forever be a mystery. But we do know that it has to do with guerrilla warfare, which is what Indy will dive into in this episode.
Support Sabaton History on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistory
Listen to The Art of War (where “Unbreakable” is featured):
CD: http://bit.ly/TheArtOfWarStore
Spotify: http://bit.ly/TheArtOfWarSpotify
Apple Music: http://bit.ly/TheArtOfWarAppleMusic
iTunes: http://bit.ly/TheArtOfWariTunes
Amazon: http://bit.ly/TheArtOfWarAmz
Google Play: http://bit.ly/TheArtOfWarGooglePlayListen to Sabaton on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/SabatonSpotify
Official Sabaton Merchandise Shop: http://bit.ly/SabatonOfficialShopHosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson and Markus Linke
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard and Wieke Kapteijns
Produced by: Pär Sundström, Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Broden, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Maps by: Eastory
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Sound Editing by: Marek KaminskiEastory YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEly…
Archive by: Reuters/Screenocean https://www.screenocean.com
Music by Sabaton.Sources:
– RIA Novosti archive
– Colorization of Mao Zedong by Olga Shirnina a.k.a. Klimbim
– IWM: NA 15129
– Water splash sound effect – littlerobotsoundfactoryAn OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.
© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.
From the comments:
Sabaton History
2 days ago
There are many examples where guerrilla warfare was used in an attempt to force out or at least harass a foreign invader or domestic military power. Partisan movements are almost always connected to a certain ideology or party — after all, they rebel against a power they disagree with. We haven’t mentioned a lot of different movements and causes in this episode, not because we don’t value or support them or their cause, but because we have a limited amount of time to cover a general topic in. As Indy also states in the video, we have picked several examples to describe what guerrilla warfare was. Please share any additional groups or events that are relevant for this episode, but keep it civil and keep your political thoughts to yourself.
Cheers, The Sabaton History team
TimeGhost History
Published 31 Oct 2019After Hitler seized power in Germany in January 1933, he rapidly transformed the Democratic Weimar Republic into a repressive, totalitarian and racist state. In 1934, Germany became Nazi Germany.
Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Subscribe to our World War Two series: https://www.youtube.com/c/worldwartwo…
Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Spartacus Olsson and Francis van Berkel
Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Francis van Berkel and Spartacus Olsson
Edited by: Wieke Kapteijns
Sound design: Marek KamińskiImage sources: Bundesarchiv, Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-15282A / Georg Pahl, Heinz Bergschicker Deutsche Chronik 1933-1945 – Ein Zeitbild der faschistischen Diktatur
Icons from the Noun Project: Police by IconTrack, soldier by Simon Child, police man by Gregor Cresnar, hello by Universal Icons.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
From the comments:
Spartacus Olsson
2 hours ago
Now, this episode explains the measures that the Nazis used to gain control over the German people. It is not an attempt to justify, or be apologetic of the responsibility for the horrors committed during the Nazi regime. But it is also not a blanket condemnation of Germans. What happened in Germany starting in 1933 should serve us all as a warning to what can happen when you let loose authoritarian power, normalize lies as an acceptable part of political discourse, and make mainstream the disregard of basic human values. We should all think of that although the Nazis were especially efficient in their implementation of an authoritarian system, they are by far not the only ones that have succeeded in seducing whole a nation into blind hatred and acceptance of the suffering and death of others to forward an ideology. We should remember that freedom and democracy is essential, but also that words matters. The beginning of oppression starts with an endless stream of lies that confuse public discourse to the point that facts don’t matter anymore and truth becomes fiction. This video shows us what can happen next. Our mantra as a channel is to focus on the facts, not our opinions, not our ‘truth’ — just the facts m’am — and that is what we have presented here, for better or worse.
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 1 Dec 2013Here we go again! It’s only taken me several months…
Sarcastified Shakespeare returns, this time with a look at that historical tragedy we all love to write essays about, Julius Caesar!
I think the real main character here was Brutus’s crippling self-esteem issues…
Some people’s innate hatred of jazz is simply the result of an unfortunate experience, but then anyone who’s witnessed Art Blakey performing a three-and-a-half hour drum solo is entitled to feel a little peeved (and I speak as someone who has seen one at close quarters). On top of this, some people just don’t get it. Like the later work of James Joyce, the films of Tarkovsky and “tax harmonisation”, the fact that some things will always lie just beyond the common understanding is something jazz enthusiasts must learn to live with.
Also, jazz has often been victim to the vagaries of fashion, destined to be revived at the most inappropriate moments. The last time jazz was really in the limelight was back in the mid-Eighties, when it became the soundtrack du jour in thousands of matt-black bachelor flats all over designer Britain and when every style magazine and beer ad seemed to look like a Blue Note album cover. Jazz went from being a visceral, corporeal music to a lifestyle soundtrack. This was the age of Style Council, of Absolute Beginners … of Sting. Buying into jazz was meant to lend your life a patina of exotic sophistication and was used to sell everything from Filofaxes and coffee machines to designer jeans and sports cars.
Dylan Jones, “The 100 best jazz albums you need in your collection”, GQ, 2019-08-25.
Sabaton History
Published 24 Oct 2019The Battle of Rorke’s Drift was the last stand for the British defenders, facing thousands of Zulu fighters with only a few hundred of their own.
Support Sabaton History on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistory
Listen to The Last Stand where “Rorke’s Drift” is featured):
CD: http://bit.ly/TheLastStandStore
Spotify: http://bit.ly/TheLastStandSpotify
Apple Music: http://bit.ly/TheLastStandItunes
iTunes: http://bit.ly/TheLastStandItunes
Amazon: http://bit.ly/TheLastStandAmz
Google Play: http://bit.ly/TheLastStandGooglePlayWatch the official lyric video of “Rorke’s Drift” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9Bup…
Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard and Wieke Kapteijns
Produced by: Pär Sundström, Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Broden, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Maps by: Eastory
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Sound Editing by: Marek KaminskiEastory YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEly…
Archive by: Reuters/Screenocean https://www.screenocean.com
Music by Sabaton.Sources:
– The National Archives UK
– A group of Zulu men in war dress, a photograph by Robert Harris. Credit: Wellcome Collection.
– Episodes in the Zulu wars, Credit: Wellcome Collection
– Field ambience by dobroide from freesound.orgAn OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.
© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.
From the comments:
Sabaton History
2 days ago (edited)
One nation’s heroic history is another’s national tragedy. In academia, the horrors of imperialism get more and more attention each year. In this episode, besides covering the events that unfolded during the Battle of Rorke’s Drift, we try to capture the ambiguous nature of colonial history. Yes, the last stand of the British soldiers against an overwhelming Zulu force is impressive, but whether or not it should be celebrated is open for debate. We would like to have this conversation in the comments down below, but keep it civil. Any racist, apologist or revisionist comments can lead to a ban.
Cheers, The Sabaton History Team.
I had the chance to pull together a cabinet, and all the applicants seemed to be men … I went to a number of women’s groups and said, “Can you help us find folks?” and they brought us whole binders full of women.
Now, I’ll happily grant that the phrase “binders full of women” is an awkward one. It sounds like the menus they bring out on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane when Bill Clinton and Harvey Weinstein settle in for a weekend getaway.
But here’s the thing: What Romney did was exactly what feminist groups insist elected politicians should do. He saw that there were “too many” men in the applicant pool, so he reached out to some feminist groups and asked for help. Some feminist groups reached out to him — and he listened to them, too. And then he hired more women.
The monster!
Here’s Jon Stewart mocking him for it. Here’s Ronan Farrow. And here’s Bill Maher, a man who must be sweating like a hooker in church over Hollywood’s post-Weinstein zero-tolerance for piggishness toward women.
Jonah Goldberg, “Binders Full of Asininity”, National Review, 2017-10-13.
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 13 April 2013Well, this one is longer than the last one, but in fairness it’s 2000% shorter than the actual movie.
Continuing the trend, this video summarizes THE TRAGEDIE OF HAMLET PRINCE OF DENMARK, commonly known as Hamlet.
Goodness, he really is a whiner, isn’t he? And he’s supposed to be the sympathetic character!
Note: This is the second version of Hamlet Summarized, because I made the mistake of using a copyrighted song in the last one. Oops.
However, viewers took to Twitter to insist that Andy and Kim Leamon and their two children from Southampton who have £170 a week to spend on food, clothes and socialising after paying their mortgage and bills are certainly not struggling.
It’s not, by local standards, exactly great riches, to be sure. But that is £2,210 of disposable income per person per year. That’s on the fringes of the top 30% of all global incomes. 70% or so are poorer.
Note again, this is their disposable income, after housing, bills and taxes, the global income number is before all of that. Or, as we might also put it, this is unimaginable riches by global or historical standards.
Tim Worstall, “Well, yes, there’s a point here”, Tim Worstall, 2017-10-20.
Powered by WordPress