Quotulatiousness

October 1, 2023

It’s written as a satire, but I think it accurately reflects the widespread historical ignorance in Canada

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Tristin Hopper imagines the diary entries for a week in the life of a Canadian politician:

Period Speech

In the wake of the Canadian House of Commons accidentally applauding a former member of the Waffen-SS, one of many embarrassing facts it’s revealed is the ruinous state of the history education among Canada’s elected representatives. Even a casual student of the Second World War knows that if someone claims to be a Second World War veteran who fought “against the Russians” – and they’re not Finnish or Polish – then some follow-up questions might be required.

Monday

Imagine the depths of my embarrassment: That I, a sworn member of His Majesty’s Imperial Royal Canadian Legislative Parliament, should be caught applauding a Nazi. A literal foot soldier of the Kaiser! The bloodthirsty invaders of Vimy Ridge! The same forces of subjugation and conquest who staged the unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor and sent the HMS Titanic to a watery grave. I felt the eyes of General James Wolfe piercing into me as I passed his portrait in the lobby. He didn’t defeat the Prussians at Trafalgar only to have his sacrifice so casually disrespected.

Tuesday

Would that the presence of a Nazi in Parliament be the only time our politics have been sidelined by the troubled history of a foreign land. But alas, we find ourself plunged into the issue of Khalistan. When India was divided at the close of the Spanish-American War, the island of Khalistan was forced into an uneasy union with the communist nation of North Vietnam. Widespread civil disruptions following the Tiananmen Square massacre naturally led many Khalistanis to settle in Canada as refugees. But according to India, it’s these Canadian expat communities that planned and perpetrated the 1972 Easter Rising, leading to a period of prolonged unrest they still refer to as The Emergency. Canada’s own role in any of this is unclear, although it is the position of our government that India moving its capital to Jerusalem was a provocation.

MGD PM9 Rotary-Action Submachine Gun

Filed under: France, History, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 23 May 2017

The PM9 was an interesting an unique submachine gun designed by Louis Debuit for the French firm Merlin and Gerin (hence the MGD name – Merlin, Gerin, Debuit) in the late 1940s and early 50s. The design was intended to provide a very compact package, which it did with a very short action, folding stock, and folding magazine.

The PM9 uses a delayed blowback action, and the delaying is done by a rotating flywheel-type block and clock spring. The bolt and flywheel act somewhat like the piston and crank in an engine. As the bolt (piston) moved rearward in a straight line, it forces the flywheel (crank) to rotate because the two are connected. In the case of the PM9, the connection is a nub on the flywheel that rides in a vertical slot in the bolt. The flywheel is pushing against the clock spring to rotate, and the combination of the its inertia and spring pressure keep the bolt closed long enough for pressure to drop to a safe level. The rotary action allows this to be done in a much smaller package than typical submachine guns.

The PM9 was initially chambered for 7.65 French Long, but quickly changed to standard 9mm Parabellum for the production models. It used the same magazine as the German MP38/MP40, giving it a 32-round capacity. In addition to the model with a skeletonized folding stock, the PM9 was also available with a fixed wooden stock and either short barrel of long carbine barrel. A relatively small number of guns were produced in France in 1954 and 1955, but they failed to find commercial success. In 1956 the German Erma company acquired a license to build the PM9, but abandoned the idea after making a few prototypes.
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QotD: Curry

Filed under: Americas, Food, India, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I’ve just had my version of a hot curry. Now, every single Indian friend of mine just fell off their chair laughing. My Bangladeshi friend I am sure is rolling on the floor. Because honestly, their reaction to it would probably be something like: “Be quite tasty if it had any chili in it.” Or “Bit mild.”

Of course for me, that was sweaty forehead, and under my eyes beading with it, burning lips and the thought that I ought to put a roll of toilet paper in the freezer for later.

In no small part … it is what you are used to. The chili pepper was native to Mexico. It’s not something the Indians were used to … once. But they have made it their own, and added their regional variant to it, making the food they add this foreign spice to very much characteristic of their culture and their cuisine. To them it very much part of what they are. Oddly, it seems expat Indians end up eating even hotter curries than those eaten in the country — fascinating in itself.

This is something millions of non-Indian folk across the world appreciate too. Now-a-days you’ll find many families who are neither culturally nor genetically Indian who have grown up eating curries. Many of them will be very knowledgeable about what a good curry ought to be, and some of them will even prepare it with strict adherence to the methods that good cooks in the Indian subcontinent use, and go to great lengths to get the right ingredients.

Of course: if we’re going to get puerile and talk “cultural appropriation” – it’s worth reminding people that the key ingredient came from Mexico. And, if you bother to start researching many of the other much beloved ingredients – they, as often as not had their origins elsewhere. This is as much part of being human as following these silly fads is. Whenever you look at any so-called cultural appropriation, you’ll find the xyz people actually adopted chunks of that culture from … someone else, and changed it a little to suit themselves. That’s as natural to humans as farting. Some people may do it less than others, but we all do it.

Curry and the world-wide spread of curries, has mostly been a win for the species, outside of the ill-judged dodgy vindaloo eaten after sixteen pints of lager.

Dave Freer, “Curry”, Mad Genius Club, 2019-08-26.

September 30, 2023

With the international situation so stable and peaceful, Canada intends to cut military spending by $1 billion or so

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Military — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 05:00

I didn’t think Justin Trudeau could possibly come up with another stunt to outrage our allies, but I stand corrected:

Canada’s top general revealed on Thursday that the armed forces is facing nearly $1 billion in cuts by the Liberal government, saying that military leaders are struggling to understand the change as the forces deal with more pressures in an unstable world.

Speaking to MPs Thursday during a meeting of the defence committee, Chief of Defence Staff Wayne Eyre was asked about proposals to cut $15 billion across the government, which the Liberals promised to do in the spring budget.

Eyre said the Defence Department’s piece of that cut will hurt.

“There’s no way that you can take almost $1 billion out of the defence budget and not have an impact, so this is something that we’re wrestling with now,” he told MPs.

Eyre said he had been discussing the cuts with military leaders and they’re struggling to understand the change.

“Our people see the degrading declining security situation around the world and so trying to explain this to them is very difficult,” he said.

Conservative Defence critic MP James Bezan said he hopes the military doesn’t weaken its readiness with these cuts.

“I sure hope we’re not going to hear stories that we can’t afford to put the fuel in the tanks and train guys in armour, we’re not going to put diesel in the ships and not have the Navy go out there and training, we can’t afford to do maintenance on our tanks,” he said. “We have to make sure we continue to move forward in training and operations.”

Deputy Minister of Defence Bill Matthews said the department is looking at ways to ensure the cuts don’t hurt the ability of the military to fight.

Not to be too cynical, but the Canadian Armed Forces are already well below the funding level we promised our allies we’d achieve, and it impacts pretty much everything the CAF needs to do. It’s quite possible that a budget cut of that size will end meaningful participation in NATO land operations in Estonia, Latvia, Poland, and other front-line allied nations.

The Man Who Stole the Atomic Bomb

Filed under: History, Military, Russia, USA, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 29 Sep 2023

In the New Mexico desert, a secret team of scientists is working flat out to develop atomic bombs. It’s the most important American military project in history. But one of those scientists lives a double life. Klaus Fuchs has decided to betray his country and share America’s most secret technology with the Soviet Union. But is he the only person who has turned traitor?
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Multiculturalism has led to a “promissory note that the West cannot fulfill”

Filed under: Britain, Europe, History, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Colby Cosh on a recent speech by British Home Secretary Suella Braverman decrying the inevitable result of western multicultural attitudes and actions:

The Rt Hon Suella Braverman KC MP, Secretary of State for the Home Department.
Picture by Rory Arnold / No 10 Downing Street via Wikimedia Commons.

U.K. Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s scathing criticism of the postwar framework for refugee protection needs to be considered, but is falling on deaf ears

The concept of multiculturalism, whether you like it or not, is of acknowledged Canadian origin. So perhaps we should all flinch a little when it is grumblingly condemned by European leaders — an increasingly common phenomenon that may have reached a new pinnacle on Tuesday.

Suella Braverman, the United Kingdom’s Conservative home secretary, appeared at the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the American Enterprise Institute to deliver a resounding critique of the postwar framework for refugee protection and of the “misguided” and “toxic” multiculturalism doctrine that has bent it out of shape.

Braverman’s speech is meeting with an orgy of denunciation among British liberals and celebrities. On the other hand, the inevitable fate of the speech is to be laughed off by anti-immigration critics who have heard British and European politicians warn for decades that humanitarianism cannot be a suicide pact for Old World nation-states — without ever doing anything much themselves to change migration policy.

In Braverman’s account, European countries devised the United Nations Refugee Convention largely to sort out the continent’s own affairs in the aftermath of the Second World War. Refugees are defined in the text as those with a “well-founded fear of being persecuted,” but the treaty is now interpreted so as to permit ill-disguised economic migration, to encourage unlawful and risky crossings of seas and borders, and to facilitate prolonged shopping by migrants among desirable destination countries.

The result, for better or worse, is that refugee protections are now potentially available to nigh on a billion people, creating a “promissory note that the West cannot fulfill.” (Or, as French President Emmanuel Macron put it a few days ago, “We (Europeans) cannot accommodate all the misery in the world.”) Braverman enumerates four critiques of a period in which “there has been more migration to the U.K. and Europe … than in all the time that went before.”

Why did the North Africa Campaign Matter in WW2?

Filed under: Africa, Australia, Britain, Germany, History, Italy, Middle East, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Intel Report
Published 8 Jun 2023

As Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps rolled into Egypt in 1942, the only thing standing between them and Cairo and the Suez Canal was the British 8th Army. In this video we look at what was at stake for both sides, and why the North African campaign made a crucial impact on the outcome of the Second World War.
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QotD: Incentives matter, college student edition

Filed under: Education, History, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I have been accused of disliking college students. Guilty as charged. I regard them the way I do the Diversity. I like certain individuals just fine, but as a whole, when it comes to interacting with them as a group, I’m Bartleby the Scrivener: “I would prefer not to”.

Which is an odd position for someone who spent as long as I did toiling in the groves of academe to take, I realize. So let me explain: As with the Vibrancy, I dislike their behavior – intensely. But I don’t blame them for acting that way. If you want to know what’s wrong with our entire Postmodern, homo economicus way of looking at the world, there you go. I don’t blame them, because they have every rational incentive to behave that way, and none not to (indeed, acting other than they do comes with a considerable cost).

College kids don’t read, don’t study, don’t do anything other than attempt, insofar as possible, to regurgitate lectures word-for-word on the “exam”, after which they promptly forget everything. Once more, with feeling: I do not blame them for this, since pretty much everything they “learn” is so worthless, it’s antimatter education. I’m not joking when I say it’s all just Social Justice Mad Libs: “The [group] was oppressed by Whitey through [adjective] [adjective] [noun], and that’s why Pale Penis People are evil.”

For example, I taught for a few semesters at a college that tried very hard to run “African-American” versions of core classes as a marketing stunt. There was “US History to 1865”, for example, and, in parallel, “African-American History to 1865.” Leaving aside the fact that you could cover the whole fucking course in about five minutes – “there sure was a lot of slavery back then!” – even the faculty, all of whom were of course raving SJWs, laughed at the sheer pointlessness of it. “US to 1865” was already nothing but “Negroes and Lesbians save the Republic!”, or vice versa, depending on whether or not the prof teaching the course this semester was the Angry Black Feminist Marxist, or the Angry Marxist Feminist Lesbian.

Severian, “College Kids”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2020-12-12.

September 29, 2023

Canada is back on the world stage … the world comedy stage

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Tristin Hopper lauds Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s most unmistakable success in raising Canada’s profile among comedians, satirists, and parodists:

Justin Trudeau with dark makeup on his face, neck and hands at a 2001 “Arabian Nights”-themed party at the West Point Grey Academy, the private school where he taught.
Photo from the West Point Grey Academy yearbook, via Time

For most of Canadian history, it was a given that the identity and reputation of the country’s prime minister was unknown to the world’s non-Canadian satirists. There are no Mort Sahl routines about John Diefenbaker or Peter Sellers impersonations of Lester Pearson — and the one time Saturday Night Live parodied a Canadian prime minister, it was Canadian cast member Mike Myers doing Jean Chrétien.

But that’s all changed under the incumbent Trudeau government. Foreign comedians (even those addressing mostly foreign audiences) are routinely getting laughs out of jokes about Canadian politics.

At the beginning of Justin Trudeau’s premiership in 2015, his high international profile spurred the occasional foreign joke about his unusually good looks or perceived arrogance.

At the 2016 White House Press Correspondent’s Dinner, U.S. President Barack Obama cracked a joke about being told that the new Canadian prime minister had replaced him as the world’s progressive darling. “I said Justin, just give it a rest,” he said.

[…]

South African-born Daily Show host Trevor Noah has done Trudeau-specific segments on the show about half-a-dozen times, and even included an entire Trudeau monologue in his 2022 comedy special I Wish You Would.

“My favourite Trudeau scandal by far is where he went on a trip to India and then became Indian,” Noah said.

In a 2019 Daily Show segment about Trudeau’s blackface scandals, Noah noted the “commitment” of Trudeau having applied black makeup to his face, legs and even arms in one instance. “The whole day were you leaving makeup on doorknobs? … If he touched (other white people) he’d leave a black handprint on them?”

[…]

Just last year, another New York-based Comedy Cellar regular, Andrew Schulz, devoted an entire five minutes to roasting the Canadian prime minister at a show in Canada — yielding a video that’s now pushing two million views on YouTube.

“Yo Punjabis, be honest; when Trudeau did the Punjabi-face, what was more offensive? That he put on the turban or that he made y’all dark skinned?” said Schulz, before launching into a string of jokes about Trudeau’s recent put-down of the Freedom Convoy protests — and the popular rumour that he’s the secret love child of a certain Caribbean dictator.

“His dad would be so embarrassed … because Fidel Castro was all about protest.”

WW2 Jet Engine Development

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Military, Technology, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 28 Sep 2023

Jet planes and jet engine technology revolutionized air travel, as we are all well aware. However, the development of jet planes during WW2 was fraught with all sorts of obstacles and hurdles. Let’s take a look at it.
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Bored? Lonely? No girlfriend? Mister, you want an AI Girlfriend!

Filed under: Health, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

As discussed earlier, GenZ men live in a sexual hellscape unless they meet statistically unlikely criteria. Many of them turn to alternatives like online gaming and porn … but some are apparently paying for AI Girlfriends:

Apparently ads for AI girlfriends have been all over TikTok, Instagram and Facebook lately. Replika, an AI chatbot originally offering mental health help and emotional support, now runs ads for spicy selfies and hot role play. Eva AI invites users to create their dream companion, while Dream Girlfriend promises a girl that exceeds your wildest desires. The app Intimate even offers hyper-realistic voice calls with your virtual partner.

This might seem niche and weird but it’s a fast growing market. All kinds of startups are releasing romantic chatbots capable of having explicit conversations and sending sexual photos. Meanwhile, Replika alone has already been downloaded more than 20 million times. And even just one Snapchat influencer, Caryn Marjorie, makes $100,000 a week by charging users $1 a minute to chat with the AI version of herself.

Of course most people are talking about what this means for men, given they make up the vast majority of users. Many worry about a worsening loneliness crisis, a further decline in sex rates, and ultimately the emergence of “a new generation of incels” who depend on and even verbally abuse their virtual girlfriends. Which is all very concerning. But I wonder, if AI girlfriends really do become as pervasive as online porn, what this will mean for girls and young women? Who feel they need to compete with this?

Most obvious to me is the ramping up of already unrealistic beauty standards. I know conservatives often get frustrated with feminists calling everything unattainable, and I agree they can go too far — but still, it’s hard to deny that the pressure to look perfect today is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. And I don’t think that’s necessarily pressure from men but I do very much think it’s pressure from a network of profit-driven industries that take what men like and mangle it into an impossible ideal. Until the pressure isn’t just to be pretty but filtered, edited and surgically enhanced to perfection. Until the most lusted after women in our culture look like virtual avatars. And until even the most beautiful among us start to be seen as average.

History-Makers: Plato

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History, Humour — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 9 Jun 2023

For the best experience, project this video onto the wall of a cave.

SOURCES & Further Reading:
Five Dialogues by Plato, translation and introduction by G.M.A. Grube – Introductory Readings in Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy, Second Edition, edited by C.D.C. Reeve and Patrick Lee Miller – Plato Vol I: Euthyphro Apology Crito and Phaedo from Loeb Classical Library, Edited and Translated by Chris Emlyn-Jones and William Preddy. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Plato https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pl…
I also have a degree in Classical Studies, specifically in “Classics and Philosophy”
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QotD: Collecting jazz

Filed under: Humour, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

So how do you build a collection? What do you do once you’ve wandered off into the jazz section. What do you buy? Not only is there just so much … stuff, but it’s an ever-expanding world. I mean, even if you knew everything there was to know about jazz, how could you possibly own it all? There are nearly as many jazz albums as there are women in the world and how could you sleep with all of them? As with any other type of music, there are some classic records you’d be mad to ignore, but with jazz you really have to plough your own furrow. The jazz police are a proscriptive lot – look to them for recommendations and they’ll tell you that Norah Jones and Stan Getz aren’t jazz, that Blue Note shouldn’t have signed St Germain and that Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” is only ever good for paint commercials. However, these are probably the same people who, 40 years ago, would have told you that Abba don’t make good pop music or that punk was a flash in the pan.

And there were some things I just didn’t get. Ornette Coleman was one. At the same time Miles Davis was breaking through with modal jazz forms, Coleman invented free jazz with The Shape Of Jazz To Come. Over half a century after the event it is difficult to recapture the shock that greeted the arrival of this record, but it just gave me a headache. Coleman played a white plastic saxophone that looked like a toy, he dressed like a spiv and was a master of the one-liner, the “Zen Zinger” (stuff like, “When the band is playing with the drummer, it’s rock’n’roll, but when the drummer is playing with the band, it’s jazz”), so I really wanted to like his music. But I couldn’t. No matter how much I tried. As far as I was concerned he was improvising up his own sphincter.

Dylan Jones, “The 100 best jazz albums you need in your collection”, GQ, 2019-08-25.

September 28, 2023

North Korea’s special train for “Dear Leader”

Filed under: Asia, History, Railways — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In The Critic, Peter Caddick-Adams discusses the North Korean leader’s special train, used to transport Kim Jong Un to destinations within North Korea and further afield to Russia, China, and other rail-accessible destinations:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s private train in China in 2010.

It was pulled by two heavy locomotives. Next an armoured anti-aircraft wagon. After the baggage car came the leader’s steel-plated Pullman, followed by a command coach containing a conference room and communications centre. Connected to them, the 22-man security detail travelled in their own rolling stock. Beyond was a dining car, two coaches for guests, and of all things a bathing wagon, then a second dining car. Bringing up the rear were two sleeping cars, a press wagon for the news hounds, another baggage car and finally another anti-aircraft wagon. The coachwork was of the finest materials, hardwoods and high-grade leather, armour-plated, and bristling with guns and radio antennae. Outside in all weathers, day and night, other protective guards swept along the tracks.

There was something charmingly old fashioned about the decision of Kim Jong Un, leader of North Korea, to travel by train to meet his fellow dictator, Vladimir Putin. Over here, even when buffered by a railcard, Network Rail can sometimes fail spectacularly as an ambassador for this effortless mode of transport. Yet, we forget how important journeying by train was and remains. Important figures frequently opt for the smooth clickety-clack over air or road for their expeditions. The method is discreet, away from prying eyes, yet connected to a nationwide network that avoids congestion. Passengers can wine and dine, sleep, relax, study, converse and think. Rail lines are easy to guard, whereas the boulevards are full of threatening traffic and potential ambush points. Franz Ferdinand, Reinhard Heydrich, Charles de Gaulle and John F. Kennedy found this out to their cost between 1914 and 1963. Fatally in three out of four cases.

Some leaders have a phobia about flying. Stalin was one, which was why the only summit meetings he attended, at Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam, were ones connected to Moscow by rail. Perhaps President Putin, a known fancier of custom-built rolling stock, will now fear a weird kind of Karma for having arranged the eternal flight of his former chef, Yevgeny Prigozhin. The president has several trains, each containing an identical office to those in his state dacha, the Kremlin and St Petersburg. All look the name, making it impossible for the viewer, and potential assassin, to know where he is. Maybe his long-distance travel plans will be dictated by iron roads from now on?

[…]

The North Korean’s father, Kim Jong Il, hated taking to the air, instead relying on his old green-and-yellow-liveried rolling stock to convey him around his hermit kingdom. Loaded with extravagant foods, fine wines and attended by glamorous staff, the elder Kim used it on the last state visit of a North Korean to Russia in 2002. “It was possible to order any dish of Russian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese or French cuisine,” remembered one journalist. “Live lobsters were taken to stations along the route, with cases of Bordeaux and Burgundy”. However, the size, opulence and weight of this upmarket rolling McDonald’s restricted its speed to a graceful 40mph. Kim Senior’s Great Continental Railway Journey took one month. Michael Portillo, eat your heart out.

Paranoid about their personal security, the Kim family have traditionally relied on around 90 special carriages, usually made into three trains. The first handles advance security; the next carries the Kim entourage; whilst the last houses bodyguards and other personnel. The middle train, with its wall-mounted lighting, beds, sofas and armchairs reupholstered in “tasteful” reddish-pink leather (I know), was the one in which the current Kim lounged on his way to summits in Beijing and Hanoi, and travelled south in 2019 to meet President Trump in the Korean Demilitarised Zone.

The recent state visit of Kim aboard the twenty-hour Pyongyang to Vladivostok Express, no stops, should give us pause for thought. With him travelled officials closely connected with his weapons development and military science teams, and his younger sister, Kim Yo Jong. In addition to being the regime’s propagandist-in-chief, she acts as gatekeeper to her overweight, chain-smoking brother, who became leader after the sudden death of their father in 2011. Kim’s North Korean Night Mail carried a significant assembly of his regime’s inner circle.

Gaulois Palm Pistol

Filed under: France, History, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 23 Nov 2014

The Gaulois (Gallic) was a compact squeeze-type palm pistol made by the Manufrance concern in St. Etienne in the 1890s. It held 5 rounds of 8mm ammunition (similar to the .32 Extra-Short used in other types of palm pistols) and was fired by squeezing the rear grip into the body of the gun.

As with the other weapons of this type that achieved some popularity in the 1880s through early 1900s, the Gaulois eventually faded from the market because of the improvements in conventional handguns. Something like a compact Iver Johnson revolver offered all the capabilities (if not more) of a Chicago Protector or My Friend or Gaulois, without the loading and aiming difficulties of those designs.
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