Quotulatiousness

September 6, 2020

The war is two years old – WW2 – 106 – September 5, 1941

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

World War Two
Published 5 Sep 2020

It is two years this week since Germany invaded Poland. That European conflict soon became a global one. Japan’s invasion of China began two years before that, but with Japan allied to the Axis Powers, they are now the same conflict. Those Axis are all fighting together now to try and defeat the Soviet Union, but the war has grown not just in the scale of the armies fighting, but also in the scale of man’s inhumanity to man. We see that this week in German occupied territory.

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Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tv

Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @ww2_day_by_day – https://www.instagram.com/ww2_day_by_day
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Written and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)

Colorizations by:
– Norman Stewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/
– Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/
– Carlos Ortega Pereira – BlauColorizations, https://www.instagram.com/blaucoloriz…

Sources:
– Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
– Yad Vashem: 2725_22A, 1044-148
– SA-Kuva
– Bundesarchiv, CC-BY-SA 3.0: N_1603_Bild-030
– FORTEPAN – Csorba Dániel
– Marit Larsen on Wikimedia Commons

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

Tank Chats #78 Cruiser Mark I A9 | The Tank Museum

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Tank Museum
Published 21 Jun 2019

The Tank Cruiser Mark I A9 is an interwar British tank. Tank Historian David Fletcher talks through the very first cruiser tank to go into service.

Support the work of The Tank Museum on Patreon: ► https://www.patreon.com/tankmuseum

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Tank 100 First World War Centenary Blog: ► http://tank100.com/ #tankmuseum #tanks #tankchats

QotD: The process of writing fiction

Filed under: Books, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Like most writers, when I am in the throes of composing fiction I don’t actually think about my work’s future readers. All my attention and mental energy are focused on the immediate task in front of me. Scene by scene, I have to hold in my head who these people are, what they’ve just done in the prior scene and their prior lives, what will happen next (which, depending on what they do right now, can turn out to be something quite unexpected), their relationships to each other and how they are developing, and scripting the dialogue — or choreographing it, since characters’ conversations sometimes feel more like a dance than like a play, and are definitely a form of action. What should be in the next scene, the next paragraph, the next sentence, the next word — oh, not that word, this one would work better, that bit of syntax needs rearranged for clarity, and oh dear that sentence is far too long, better cut it in half and restructure it … The process of writing is like sandpainting in a windstorm.

Adding in a consciousness of the audience while doing all this would be like the tap-dancing centipede, who did fine until he started thinking about where he was putting all those feet.

Lois McMaster Bujold, introduction to the Taiwanese edition of The Curse of Chalion by Fantasy Foundation/Cite Publishing, 2020-03-25.

September 5, 2020

History Summarized: The Viking Age

Filed under: Britain, Europe, France, History, Humour, Religion, Russia — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 4 Sep 2020

The Vikings are enjoying a new wave of enthusiasm in popular culture, but these seafaring Norsemen are still quite clearly a misunderstood force in medieval European history. So let’s take a wide look at the European world during The Viking Age!

Check out Yellow’s livestreams over at https://Twitch.tv/LudoHistory

SOURCES & Further Reading: The Vikings by Walaker Nordeide and Edwards, Vikings: A Very Short Introduction by Richards, Age of the Vikings and The Conversion of Scandinavia by Winroth, The Vikings By Harl via The Great Courses, The Viking World by Graham-Campbell, The Viking Way by Price.

This video was edited by Sophia Ricciardi AKA “Indigo”. https://www.sophiakricci.com/

Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.

DISCORD: https://discord.gg/kguuvvq

PATREON: https://www.Patreon.com/OSP

MERCH LINKS: https://www.redbubble.com/people/OSPY…

OUR WEBSITE: https://www.OverlySarcasticProductions.com
Find us on Twitter https://www.Twitter.com/OSPYouTube
Find us on Reddit https://www.Reddit.com/r/OSP/

From the comments:

Ludohistory
23 hours ago (edited)
Thanks so much for having me on and letting me help out! It was a lot of fun (even if I talked a little too fast sometimes)! To clarify a piece that I know I did cover too briefly — missionary trips to Scandinavia occurred in Denmark around 823, on the orders of Louis the Pious, and in Sweden in 829, when Ansgar, a Frankish monk, traveled to the town of Birka, where he found a very small Christian community, probably mostly enslaved or formerly enslaved people, and converted a couple of Norse people, including the town prefect. (The graveyard for that town, incidentally, is where the 10th century “female warrior” that made waves a few years ago was buried).

There’s a lot we didn’t get a chance to talk about about the diaspora and its ending, so if there’s anything you all are curious on or find unclear, let me know here or on twitter 🙂

Finally, if you liked this, all the VODs for my personal streams (where I try to ramble about history in games) can be found by clicking on my name, and tomorrow I’ll be streaming CKIII on twitch (link in the description)!

Beginning the transition from personal rule to the modern bureaucratic state

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Economics, Europe, Government, History — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Anton Howes discusses some of the issues late Medieval rulers had which in some ways began the ascendency of our modern nation state with omnipresent bureaucratic oversight of everyone and everything:

… the bureaucratic state of today, with its officials involving themselves with every aspect of modern life, is a relatively recent invention. In a world without bureaucracy, when state capacity was relatively lacking, it’s difficult to see what other options monarchs would have had. Suppose yourself transported to the throne of England in 1500, and crowned monarch. Once you bored of the novelty and luxuries of being head of state, you might become concerned about the lot of the common man and woman. Yet even if you wanted to create a healthcare system, or make education free and universal to all children, or even create a police force (London didn’t get one until 1829, and the rest of the country not til much later), there is absolutely no way you could succeed.

King James I (of England) and VI (of Scotland)
Portrait by Daniel Myrtens, 1621 from the National Portrait Gallery via Wikimedia Commons.

For a start, you would struggle to maintain your hold on power. Fund schools you say? Somebody will have to pay. The nobles? Well, try to tax them — in many European states they were exempt from taxation — and you might quickly lose both your throne and your head. And supposing you do manage to tax them, after miraculously stamping out an insurrection without their support, how would you even begin to go about collecting it? There was simply no central government agency capable of raising it. Working out how much people should pay, chasing up non-payers, and even the physical act of collection, not to mention protecting that treasure once collected, all takes substantial manpower. Not to mention the fact that the collecting agents will likely siphon most of it off to line their own pockets.

[…]

It was not until 1689, when there was a coup, that an incoming ruler allowed the English parliament to sit whenever it pleased. Before that, it was convened only at the whim of the ruler, and dispersed even at the slightest provocation. In 1621, for example, when James I was planning to marry his heir to a Spanish princess, Parliament sent him a petition asserting their right to debate the matter. Upon hearing of it, he called for the official record of parliamentary proceedings, personally ripped out the page with the offending vote, and promptly dissolved the Parliament. The downside, of course, was that James could not then acquire any parliamentary subsidies.

Ruling was thus an intensely personal affair, of making deals and finding ways to circumvent deals you had inherited. Increasing your capabilities as a ruler – state capacity – was thus no easy task, as the typical ruler was stuck in an essentially medieval equilibrium. Imposing a policy costs money, but raising money involves imposing policy. Breaking out of this chicken-and-egg problem took centuries of canny leadership. The rulers who achieved it most would today seem hopelessly corrupt.

To gain extra cash without interference from Parliament, successive monarchs first asserted and then abused their ancient prerogative rights to grant monopolies over trades and industries. They eventually granted them to whomever was willing to pay, establishing monopolies over industries like gambling cards or alehouses under the guise of regulating unsavoury activities. They also sold off knighthoods and titles, and in 1670 Charles II even made a secret deal with the French that he would convert to Catholicism and attack the Protestant Dutch, all in exchange for cash. Anything to not have to call a potentially pesky Parliament. At times, the most effective rulers even resembled mob bosses. Take Elizabeth I’s anger when a cloth-laden merchant fleet bound for an Antwerp fair in 1559 was allowed to depart. Her order to stop them had not arrived in time, thus preventing her from extracting “loans” from the merchants while she still had their goods within her power.

Laying Out the Door Tenons | The Cabinet Project #14 | Free Online Woodworking School

Filed under: Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Matt Estlea
Published 2 Sep 2020

In this lesson, I’ll show you how to transfer the measurements of the mortise components cut in the previous lesson, to the rail components that will be cut in the next lesson.

See the FULL lesson here:
https://mattestlea.com/free-online-wo…
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My name is Matt Estlea, I’m a 24 year old Woodworker from Basingstoke in England and my aim is to make your woodworking less s***.

I come from 5 years tuition at Rycotewood Furniture Centre with a further 1 year working as an Artist in Residence at the Sylva Foundation. I now teach City and Guilds Furniture Making at Rycotewood as of September 2018.

If you’re interested in studying at Rycotewood, view their courses here:
www.mattestlea.com/rycotewood

I also had 5 years of experience working at Axminster Tools and Machinery where I helped customers with purchasing tools, demonstrated in stores and events, and gained extensive knowledge about a variety of tools and brands. I discontinued this at the start of 2019 to focus solely on video creation and teaching.

During the week, I film woodworking projects, tutorials, reviews and a viewer favourite ‘Tool Duel’ where I compare two competitive manufacturers tools against one another to find out which is best. I also have a Free Online Woodworking School which you should definitely check out!

www.mattestlea.com/school

I like to have a laugh and my videos are quite fast paced BUT you will learn a lot, I assure you.

Lets go make a mess.

Kareem Shaheen on the shame of mask-shaming

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Health, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In The Line, Kareem Shaheen — who is a mask-wearer and was one before they were made mandatory — explains why shaming anti-maskers is a terrible way to encourage compliance, but a great way to virtue-signal:

“Covid 19 Masks” by baldeaglebluff is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

The mask shaming mirrors the way social media has warped our culture. The Twitter and ‘gram “in crowd” flaunt its mask use to demonstrate an ostensibly superior grasp of morals and science — and to bully those who don’t follow its cues. Those who perceive themselves to be on the outside of this circle can’t help but cringe at the manipulation and grandstanding behind these seemingly well-intentioned gestures.

Mask resistance, then, becomes a virtue signal of its own.

And, of course, Twitter itself has been a cesspool of counter-productive shame. Back in July, the hashtag #NoMasks trended, which gave the illusion of a groundswell of opposition against mandatory masking laws. But an analysis by First Draft, a nonprofit based in the United Kingdom, examined 8,000 Twitter accounts that used the hashtag. It found that the majority of people who tweeted #NoMasks were actually pro-mask. Their condemnation of the supposed anti-mask contingent actually boosted #NoMasks, bringing more people in contact with related conspiracy theories and arguments against wearing masks.

The moralizing is all the more galling because our own governments were forced to do an embarrassing about-face on their efficacy.

In the early weeks of the pandemic, health agencies in Canada and the United States recommended against wearing masks because there was insufficient evidence that they could prevent the spread of the virus, remember? They said that masks would provide a sense of false security, and suggested that we were all too dumb to know how to wear them properly.

This despite widespread use of masks in Asia, and while there was a growing consensus in hard-hit parts of Europe that they were effective and necessary.

With so much confused messaging, it’s no mystery that so many people are now skeptical about wearing masks. Sure, some of the most ardent mask-haters are also Q-Anon-spouting, anti-vaxxer crystal-healing masks-are-fascism conspiracy theorist kooks. But not all them fit that description.

And the problem with all of this is that if you’re actually trying to convince people to wear masks — as opposed to merely demonstrating your own superior morality via the veil — shame is one of the least effective methods of persuasion.

Chinese 7.62mm Sten Gun

Filed under: Cancon, China, History, Military, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 13 May 2020

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

https://www.floatplane.com/channel/Fo…

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…

During World War Two, Canada supplied some 73,000 Sten guns (made by the Long Branch arsenal) to Chinese Nationalist forces in an effort to help them fight the Japanese. These Stens were standard MkII pattern guns, chambered for the 9x19mm Parabellum cartridge. However, many of these were eventually converted to 7.62mm Tokarev ammunition, especially after the victory of the Communist forces over the Nationalists. The conversion involved a new barrel and new magazine and magazine well. The 7.62mm barrels were typically longer than the original ones, and the magazine of choice was that of the PPS-43. Some were done by installed a magazine adapter into the original magazine well, and some (like this one) were done by cutting off the original magazine well and replacing it with a new one. In addition, some Sten guns were made domestically in China, both in 9mm and 7.62mm. The 7.62mm Tokarev cartridge was popular both from Russian pistols and submachine guns and also from China’s long military use of the dimensionally-identical 7.63mm Mauser cartridge in C96 pistols.

Many thanks to the Royal Armouries for allowing me to film and disassemble this interesting submachine gun! The NFC collection there — perhaps the best military small arms collection in Western Europe — is available by appointment to researchers:

https://royalarmouries.org/research/n…

You can browse the various Armouries collections online here:

https://royalarmouries.org/collection/

Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle #36270
Tucson, AZ 85740

QotD: Teenage girls

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

Some years back when our daughter was navigating adolescence, my wife remarked that teenage girls don’t really have friends. They have allies. And those alliances tend to be of the Ribbentrop/Molotov variety and can shift in a nanosecond.

R. Sherman commenting at DavidThompson.com, 2018-06-05.

September 4, 2020

The ϟϟ and Wehrmacht Murder Inc. – War Against Humanity 017 – August 1941, Part 2

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Military, Russia, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

World War Two
Published 3 Sep 2020

Fegelein’s and Himmler’s actions to ‘comb’ the Pripet Marshes for Jews continues. The largest mass-murder yet is committed in Kamianets-Podilskyi, while new methods to commit genocide on an industrial scale are being devised.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tv

Follow WW2 day by day on Instagram @ww2_day_by_day – https://www.instagram.com/ww2_day_by_day
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sources

Hosted by: Spartacus Olsson
Written by: Spartacus Olsson and Joram Appel
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Joram Appel
Edited by: Miki Cackowski
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)

Colorizations by:
Carlos Ortega Pereira, BlauColorizations – https://www.instagram.com/blaucoloriz…
Jaris Almazani (Artistic Man) – https://instagram.com/artistic.man?ig…
Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/
Norman Stewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/
Spartacus Olsson
Mikolaj Uchman
Klimbim – https://www.flickr.com/photos/2215569…

Sources:
Bundesarchiv
Yad Vashem 4220/2, 9292/17, 1570, 4248/20, 953, 4788/72, 75EO4, 3150/122, 48AO4, 4220/3, 10470/23, 4572/3, 4613/1055, 7283/146, 5705/48, 4216/18, 94DO1, 90FO3, 4613/625
National Parliament Library of Georgia
Bildersammlung des Bistumsarchivs Münster, des Erbnehmers der Urheberrechte
USHMM
Corpses of Auschwitz prisoners in block 11 (Auschwitz I) February 1945, USHMM, courtesy of Instytut Pamięci Narodowej
Lithuanian militia force Jewish women to undress before execution in the Pajuoste Forest 1941-1942, USHMM, courtesy of Saulius Berzinis
www.auschwitz.org
Bletchley Park Trust
Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
From the Noun Project: Skull by Muhamad Ulum from the Noun Project

Soundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
Johan Hynynen – “Dark Beginning”
Andreas Jamsheree – “Guilty Shadows 4”
Farell Wooten – “Blunt Object”
Fabien Tell – “Last Point of Safe Return”
Skrya – “First Responders”
Wendel Scherer – “Growing Doubt”
Jon Bjork – “For the Many”
Gunnar Johnsen – “Not Safe Yet”
Cobby Costa – “Flight Path”

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

Shinzō Abe

Filed under: Government, History, Japan, Politics — Tags: — Nicholas @ 05:00

Kapil Komireddi on the achievements of Shinzō Abe, “the man who saved Japan”, who served four non-consecutive terms as Prime Minister between 2006 and 2020:

Shinzō Abe, Prime Minister of Japan, 2006-7 and 2012-20.
Official portrait from the Government of Japan under Government of Japan Standard Terms of Use (Ver. 2.0)

To appreciate the achievement of Shinzo Abe, who on Friday announced his decision to resign as Japan’s prime minister because of faltering health, consider the state of the country he inherited. Between 2007, the year Abe vacated the prime minister’s office after serving exactly for a year, and 2012 — when Abe staged a spectacular comeback — Japan had seen off five prime ministers in rapid succession. In fact, with the exception of Junichiro Koizumi, no Japanese prime minister had completed the full four-year term since 1987. A debilitating fatalism had seized Japan: a nation that had risen from the ashes of World War II to become the richest economy on earth after the United States was becoming reconciled to the prospect of irretrievable decline.

Such a posture may have struck some as virtuous. To Abe, it was sacrilegious. The scion of a storied political dynasty, he wanted Japan to become a “nation which can withstand the raging waves for the next 50 to 100 years to come”. Abe nursed a lifelong grievance against what he described as the “terrible” Constitution drafted by the Allied forces after Japan’s decimation in 1945. His greatest political aspiration was to revoke the clause that shackled Tokyo to pacifism as a form of punishment for the sins of imperial Japan. In a land where singing the national anthem with enthusiasm can be seen as a symptom of hawkishness, Abe approached voters with a pledge to “take back Japan”. As a campaigner, he was a populist before the word entered common usage. Once in office, however, he evolved into something altogether different.

The ideological passions that animated his politics were almost instantly subordinated to the higher cause of dispassionate service to Japan. As democracy after democracy fell to populists, Abe, the original populist, travelled in the opposite direction: a rare leader in the democratic world who did not allow partisanship to consume him. Abe did not disavow his conservatism: he aligned it to the challenges before him. The upshot? In the eight years since his return to power in 2012, he presided over the longest period of economic expansion in Japan’s post-war history and the lowest unemployment rate in at least a quarter century. He introduced free preschool and day care for children between the ages of 3 and 5 and created the conditions for the entry of a record number of women into the workforce.

Imparting stability to Japan was the preliminary act. As Tobias Harris reminds us in his important and outstanding new biography of Japan’s outgoing prime minister, The Iconoclast, Abe did not hesitate to dispute and dismantle the dogmas of his own side to pursue policies — such as the guest worker programme — he believed were imperative to securing Japan’s future. He deployed, Harris writes, “his power to defy his conservative allies and open Japan to the world”. At the same time, he strove to be conciliatory with all those who did not vote for him, regarded him with implacable suspicion, and marched against his “militarism” on the streets. This perhaps explains why, despite protests, criticism and scandal, he was able to lead his conservative Liberal Democratic Party to a series of comfortable victories at the ballot box and cement its position effectively as the default party of government in Japan.

“The Final Solution” – The Holocaust – Sabaton History 083 [Official]

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Media, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Sabaton History
Published 3 Sep 2020

Since Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, the Jews of Germany had suffered years of harsh anti-Jewish policies, harassment and public humiliation. The Nazis wanted the Jews to never feel safe or welcome again. With the Third Reich’s expansion and the start of the Second World War, more and more European Jews fell victim to persecution, ghettoisation and violence. It was hard to imagine that the crimes against them could get any worse. But by December 1941, the Nazis began preparing for a “Final Solution of the Jewish question”.

It aimed at nothing less than the extermination of all Jewish life in Europe.

Support Sabaton History on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistory

Listen to “The Final Solution” on the album Coat Of Arms:
https://music.sabaton.net/CoatOfArms

Listen to Sabaton on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/SabatonSpotify
Official Sabaton Merchandise Shop: http://bit.ly/SabatonOfficialShop

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: Maria Kyhle
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Brodén, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Community Manager: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Editor: Iryna Dulka
Sound Editor: Marek Kaminski
Maps by: Eastory – https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory
Archive: Reuters/Screenocean – https://www.screenocean.com

Sources:
– Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
– Bundesarchiv, CC-BY-SA 3.0: Bild_183-B04489, Bild_183-B04491, Bild_152-23-07A, Bild_101I-134-0782-24, Bild_183-E13871, Bild_101I-134-0769-33
– Yad Vashem: 139BO1, 1554_1, 1427_85, 1605_1722, 12CO9, 1552/34
– Imperial War Museum: HU 51692, HU 51689

All music by: Sabaton

An OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.

© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.

“They have insurance”

Filed under: Business, Economics, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Brad Polumbo debunks the notion that it’s somehow “okay” to loot and vandalize businesses “because they have insurance” and that somehow means that nobody suffers.

A building burning in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd.
Photo by Hungryogrephotos via Wikipedia.

Since the death of George Floyd in late May, violent riots and looting have broken out in many major cities, eventually overshadowing peaceful protests and calls for criminal justice reform. From Portland to Chicago to Kenosha, rioters have smashed windows, lit fires, attacked government properties, assaulted people in the streets, and looted storefronts.

In Minneapolis alone, vandals have destroyed at least 1,500 properties, many of them minority-owned businesses, and caused billions of dollars in property damage. Many people have been injured or killed during the chaos.

[…]

Even if all the affected property was fully insured — and it wasn’t — rioting has taken a vast human toll as well.

Consider that at least 15 people were killed during the initial riots after Floyd’s death, and that more have died in the unrest since. When arson and looting consume the streets, people inevitably get hurt and caught in the crossfire. That’s why the Minneapolis police found a burnt corpse in a pawn shop days after arsonists had passed through.

Insurance might fund that property’s restoration, but it can’t bring a dead man back to life.

[…]

Big companies like Walmart and Target generally have expensive, premium insurance plans. But many of the mom-and-pop enterprises and small businesses targeted in the riots didn’t have expensive insurance plans. In some cases, their more modest plans don’t cover damage from riots or don’t cover it in full.

“Situations where there’s a lot of devastation like this, a lot of times people find they’re underinsured and don’t have enough coverage,” Illinois Insurance Association Hotline President Janet Patrick told CBS Minnesota. “And so once the damage has been done, it’s too late. You can’t buy more coverage.”

According to Insurance Journal, 75 percent of US businesses are under-insured. And according to the New York Times, about 40 percent of small businesses have no insurance at all.

How England used to vote

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

Learnhistory3
Published 1 May 2011

Rowan Atkinson as Edmund BlackAdder in a sketch on the voting situation before 1832. Rotten boroughs and pocket boroughs etc

Script excerpt from BlackAdder Scripts:

At Mrs. Miggins’ home

E: Well, Mrs. Miggins, at last we can return to sanity. The hustings are
over, the bunting is down, the mad hysteria is at an end. After the
chaos of a general election, we can return to normal.

M: Oh, has there been a general election, then, Mr. BlackAdder?

E: Indeed there has, Mrs. Miggins.

M: Oh, well, I never heard about it.

E: Well of course you didn’t; you’re not eligible to vote.

M: Well, why not?

E: Because virtually no-one is: women, peasants, (looks at Baldrick)
chimpanzees (Baldrick looks behind himself, trying to see the animal),
lunatics, Lords…

B: That’s not true — Lord Nelson’s got a vote!

E: He’s got a boat, Baldrick. Marvelous thing, democracy. Look at
Manchester: population, 60,000; electoral roll, 3.

M: Well, I may have the brain the size of a sultana…

E: Correct…

M: …but it hardly seems fair to me.

E: Of course it’s not fair — and a damn good thing too. Give the like of
Baldrick the vote and we’ll be back to cavorting druids, death by
stoning, and dung for dinner.

B: Oh, I’m having dung for dinner tonight.

M: So, who are they electing when they have these elections?

E: Ah, the same old shower: fat tory landowners who get made MPs when
they reach a certain weight; raving revolutionaries who think that just
because they do a day’s work that somehow gives them the right to get
paid… Basically, it’s a right old mess. Toffs at the top, plebs at the
bottom, and me in the middle making a fat pile of cash out of both of them.

M: Oh, you’d better watch out, Mr. BlackAdder; things are bound to change.

E: Not while Pitt the Elder’s Prime Minister they aren’t. He’s about as
effective as a catflap in an elephant house. As long as his feet are warm
and he gets a nice cup of milky tea in the sun before his morning nap,
he doesn’t bother anyone until his potty needs emptying.

QotD: Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Filed under: History, India, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Born into a Shia mercantile family, Jinnah left for England after high school, where he studied law and acquired a love for parliamentary procedure. Thoroughly and poshly anglicized (200 Savile Row suits were found in his closet after his death), he returned to India before the First World War, armed with a fearsome reputation as a barrister so brilliant judges tried to avoid him, and committed to Hindu-Muslim unity. His English was exquisite, but he spoke no Urdu. Completely secular, Jinnah was so indifferent to his religion — he drank and ate pork — that he planned Pakistan’s inauguration-day banquet as a luncheon, unaware it was Ramadan (they changed it to dinner).

Jinnah’s political intentions are hotly contested. According to New York Times Pakistan expert, Jane Perlez, many Pakistan researchers contend Jinnah had no interest in an Islam-dominated state, but “used the idea of Pakistan as a mere bargaining chip for Muslim majority rights within a loosely united post-colonial India.” With no autobiography or recollections from close friendships for our guidance, Jinnah remains a shadowy historical player, a political loner with an indeterminate goal beside Nehru, Gandhi and Viceroy Lord Mountbatten.

It is quite possible, for example, that Jinnah created the Muslim League and employed the rhetoric of Islam (slogan: “Islam in Danger”) and started wearing native clothes to harness religious fervour to political ambitions never fully articulated. But we can’t ever know, as a lifetime of chain smoking caught up with Jinnah, and he died before the first (bloody) year of Pakistan’s existence was out.

In Jinnah’s first speech to his newly minted country, though, we have this strong intentional clue: “You are free. You are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to do with the business of the state.”

Barbara Kay, “A celebrated figure today could well be the condemned sinner of tomorrow”, National Post, 2018-06-05.

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