Published on Dec 24, 2016
Simón Bolívar hoped to bring the nations of South America together in one great federation, but he feared that people would think he meant to make himself a king. He tried to step back, but revolution threatened from within his ranks and his body had grown weak with illness.
February 4, 2017
Simón Bolívar – VI: All Good Things – Extra History
February 1, 2017
QotD: Che Guevara and his modern fans
Denial is also a common factor among people on the left who want to believe in the failed experiment known as Communism. This is nothing new, since Walter Duranty of the New York Times was famous for denying the atrocities of Stalin and is still honored by the media elite to this day. Though some of the worst deniers are those who want to believe the romantic story of Cuba being liberated by Che Guevara and Fidel Castro from the evil grasp of the Batista regime. The Cuban revolution is by far one of the greatest stories ever sold.
People are always shocked to learn that the Cuban revolution succeeded with little resistance since Castro had bribed the top brass in Batista’s military to stand down. It also didn’t help that the Batista regime was so unpopular among the people that there weren’t too many who were willing to risk their lives to defend it. It’s also funny that Che Guevara is thought of as the George Washington of guerrilla warfare, but in reality Barney Fife was a better comparison. Actually I think that may be an insult to Barney Fife because at least he wasn’t dumb enough to shoot himself in the chin, like our “guerilla master” did. His failed revolutions in Bolivia and the Congo are a direct testament to his skills as a master in guerilla warfare.
The one thing that Che was good at was killing hundreds, if not thousands of unarmed people, including women and children. The man was such a humanitarian that he had a wall in his office knocked down so that he could have a nice view of the killing fields, when the “enemies of the state” were being purged. Hipsters who like to wear his T-Shirts as always shocked to hear that he wasn’t a selfless rebel who wanted to help the working class, except to take them to the killing fields of course.
To all the hippies, artists, musicians, and actors who like to venerate the man, you are the type of person that Che despised the most. If you had long hair, wore blue jeans and listened to Rock ‘n’ Roll or had any flare for the arts, you would likely find yourself thrown into a labor camp.
Sean Gangol, “Denial”, Libertarian Enterprise, 2015-07-19.
January 25, 2017
Simón Bolívar – IV: Defeat is Not Surrender – Extra History
Published on Dec 10, 2016
Failure had taught Simón Bolívar one important lesson: no single state in Spanish South America could win independence alone. To succeed, he needed to form one great state, united and able to stand up to the might of Spain.
January 22, 2017
Simón Bolívar – III: Leavings and Returns – Extra History
Published on Dec 3, 2016
The failure of his first attempted revolution in Venezuela only fanned the flames of Simón Bolívar’s determination to end Spanish reign over South America. Convinced that he needed to unite the entire continent in freedom, he gathered troops and set out with a new purpose. But his ferocity threatened to overwhelm his ideals.
January 19, 2017
Simón Bolívar – II: Francisco de Miranda – Extra History
Published on Nov 26, 2016
When Napoleon conquered Spain, the Spanish colonies no longer had a clear leader to follow. Bolívar seized on this opportunity to promote his dreams of Venezuelan independence, but he stumbled from lack of experience. A man named Francisco de Miranda took control instead.
January 6, 2017
January 2, 2017
Simón Bolívar – I: Reverberations – Extra History
Published on 19 Nov 2016
Born to one of the wealthiest families in Venezuela, Simón Bolívar imbibed the ideals of revolution from a tutor who inspired him to travel to Europe as a young man. What he saw and learned, he would one day bring back to foment revolution in the Spanish colonies of Latin America.
November 22, 2016
Franz Joseph I – The Father of Austria-Hungary I WHO DID WHAT IN WW1?
Published on 21 Nov 2016
On this day 100 years ago, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary died after 66 years on the thrown. He became emperor in a turbulent time and some say that only his reign held the empire together when the minorities demanded more and more independence.
October 9, 2016
The Chinese Labour Corps in Russia During World War 1 I OUT OF THE ETHER
Published on 8 Oct 2016
In another exiting episode of Out Of The Ether, Indy reads a great comment by a Russian fan about the situation of Chinese workers in Russia.
September 29, 2016
Today’s utopian visionaries
Daniel Greenfield describes them very well:
The sort of people who set off class wars as a hobby have very particular classless societies in mind. The average left-wing revolutionary is not poor. He is a homicidal dilettante from the upper classes with a burning conviction of his own importance that he is unwilling to realize through disciplined labor. His revolution climaxes with a classless society in which he is at the very top.
Not near the top, not adjacent to the top, as he usually was before, but at the very top.
Utopia has a class system. At the top are the thinkers, the philosopher kings who develop plans based on how things ought to be and then turn them over to lesser men to actually implement. They are the priestly class of an ideological movement whose deity is politics and whose priests are politicians.
In a planned economy, they are the titans of industry and finance, they are the heads of banks and the men who move millions and billions around the board, and they are utterly unfit for the job. But they also make decisions in matters of war and science. And in all things. They measure political heresy in all things and all the activities of man are measured against their dogma and rewarded or punished.
This is the way it was in the Soviet Union or Communist China. But take a closer glance at the White House and see if you don’t spot the occasional similarity.
In the middle of Utopia’s class system is the middle class. This is not the middle class you are familiar with. There are no small business owners here. No one striving to make it up the ladder. Utopia’s middle class is the bureaucracy, the interlinked hive mind of government and non-profits.
At the top of Utopia’s class system are the philosopher-planners who issue the regulations. Or rather they offer objectives. The bureaucracy filters them through successive layers, transforming grandiose ideas into stultifying regulations and each successive layers expands them into further microcosms of unnecessary detail. This expansion of regulations also expands the bureaucracy. One feeds off the other.
July 14, 2016
Bastille Day – Rush
Uploaded on 14 Jul 2009
HAPPY BASTILLE DAY, July 14.
June 7, 2016
Russia’s Finest General – Aleksei Brusilov I WHO DID WHAT IN WW1?
Published on 6 Jun 2016
Aleksei Brusilov was the mastermind of Russia’s finest moment in World War 1: The Brusilov Offensive. Although it didn’t achieve it’s planned objective, it broke the back of the Austro-Hungarian Army. The life of Aleksei Brusilov was an interesting one between the cultures and even after Imperial Russia was gone, his career was not over.
May 24, 2016
The Age Of Warlords – China in WW1 I THE GREAT WAR Special
Published on 23 May 2016
China was in a constant period of unrest and turmoil after the Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion. None of the new leaders and presidents could really consolidate their power in China and a struggle between the different warlords. broke out. At the same time, China was eyeing a more prominent role within the international community and sent 150,000 workers to the Western Front as part of the Chinese Labour Corps.
May 11, 2016
QotD: They call them “revolutions” for a reason
Off goes the head of the king, and tyranny gives way to freedom. The change seems abysmal. Then, bit by bit, the face of freedom hardens, and by and by it is the old face of tyranny. Then another cycle, and another. But under the play of all these opposites there is something fundamental and permanent — the basic delusion that men may be governed and yet be free.
H.L. Mencken, Preface to the first edition of The American Credo : A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind, 1920.