Quotulatiousness

January 19, 2018

Assassination Attempt on Lenin – Chaos in Romania I THE GREAT WAR Week 182

Filed under: History, Military, Russia, WW1 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

The Great War
Published on 18 Jan 2018

This week in Russia, Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin was almost killed by sharpshooters in Petrograd and the Constituent Assembly meets. Tensions rise as Russia issues an ultimatum to Romania, with an order for their King’s arrest. There are also machinations in Finland and some action on the Western Front.

Day 4 Cuban Missile Crisis – Soviet nukes ready to strike the US

TimeGhost
Published on 6 Nov 2017

On the 19th of October 1962, the Soviet nuclear forces on Cuba are working on getting the warheads for their SS4 missiles combat ready. In Washington, President John F. Kennedy faces off with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including General Curtis LeMay (his arch enemy), who demand more freedom for military action.

January 18, 2018

Day 3 Cuban Missile Crisis – The Soviet Nuclear Forces on Cuba

TimeGhost
Published on 2 Nov 2017

On October 18 1962, President Kennedy meets with USSR Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, one of the architects of placement of missiles on Cuba. While the two beat around the bush, Khrushchev and Gromyko’s execution of the Soviet military and nuclear build up on Cuba continues.

January 17, 2018

Day 2 Cuban Missile Crisis – Preparing to Invade Cuba

TimeGhost
Published on 30 Oct 2017

On October 17th, 1962, preparations for an invasion of Cuba under the codename Ortsac were set in motion. The U2 Dragon Lady spy plane continued to yield more alarming pictures of Cuban missile sites and President Kennedy was urged to restrain his dogs of war.

January 16, 2018

Day 1 Cuban Missile Crisis – Shall we destroy Cuba, Mr. President?

TimeGhost
Published on 26 Oct 2017

On 16 October 1962. the Cuban Missile Crisis begins. President Kennedy assembles his advisors in EXCOMM to find an adequate response to the threat posed by Soviet nuclear missiles on Cuba.

On October 14 1962, Air Force pilot Richard Heyer flies over the island of Cuba in a U2 spy plane. The photos he brings back show three installations of Soviet nuclear Medium Range Ballistic Missile launch sites, with SS-4 and SS-5 missiles waiting to be made deployable. Russia now has nuclear first strike capacity and could launch an attack on the US mainland just as quickly as the Americans could on Russia from Turkey.

Spartacus Olsson
Camera by: Jonas Klein
Edited by: Spartacus Olsson, Jonas Klein

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH

January 15, 2018

Day 0 Cuban Missile Crisis – Atomic Tests and Missiles Discovered

TimeGhost
Published on 24 Oct 2017

In the summer of 1962, a war of words between the United States and the Soviet Union and a number of nuclear tests on both sides increased tensions that had been mounting for years. Both sides were living under increasing panic that the other would ‘press the button’ and launch a preemptive nuclear strike, possibly destroying the world in the process. When on October 14 1962 the US discovered missiles on Cuba, that fear increased and almost came true.

Simulate a nuclear bomb anywhere: http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Spartacus Olsson
Produced and Directed by: Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Camera by: Jonas Klein
Edited by: Jonas Klein, Spartacus Olsson

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH

January 14, 2018

Prologue 2 Cuban Missile Crisis – The Cold War Heats Up

TimeGhost
Published on 19 Oct 2017

For 13 days in October 1962 the world came closer to nuclear holocaust than ever before, but the Cuban Missile Crisis didn’t start in Cuba – it had its roots in Berlin, Italy and Turkey, the domestic political situation in the US facing the newly elected President John F Kennedy, and in the USSR, where Premier Nikita Khrushchev had taken leadership of the Soviet through a harsh four year power struggle after Stalin’s death in 1953.

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Spartacus Olsson
Produced and Directed by: Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Camera and editing by: Jonas Klein

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH

January 13, 2018

Prologue 1 Cuban Missile Crisis – The Cold War Begins

Filed under: Americas, Military, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost
Published on 17 Oct 2017

This series follows the Cuban Missile Crisis day, by day. In this initial prologue we explore some of the background to the crisis. During the 1950s the ideological divide between totalitarian Communism and democratic capitalism pits the USSR against the US as both super powers try to expand their sphere of influence. In parallel a series of misunderstandings and false assumptions heats up the nuclear arms race and sees the US pull further ahead of the USSR in military dominance. The increasing pressure on both sides eventually brings them head to head during several covert operations, proxy wars and, direct confrontations including the Berlin Crisis and eventually the Cuban Missile Crisis.

December 29, 2017

Ludendorff Plans for a Spring Offensive I THE GREAT WAR – Week 179

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Italy, Military, Russia, WW1 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The Great War
Published on 28 Dec 2017

This week, the peace negotiations are underway at Brest-Litovsk. Meanwhile, the German High Command begins to plan for a game-changing offensive in the spring. There’s action in Italy on the Piave Front, and the Ottomans try to recapture the Holy City.

December 21, 2017

The bloody 20th century and the leaders who helped make it so

Filed under: China, Germany, History, Military, Russia, WW1, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Walter Williams on the terrible death toll of the 20th century, both in formal war between nations and in internal conflict and repression:

The 20th century was mankind’s most brutal century. Roughly 16 million people lost their lives during World War I; about 60 million died during World War II. Wars during the 20th century cost an estimated 71 million to 116 million lives.

The number of war dead pales in comparison with the number of people who lost their lives at the hands of their own governments. The late professor Rudolph J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii documented this tragedy in his book Death by Government: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900. Some of the statistics found in the book have been updated here.

The People’s Republic of China tops the list, with 76 million lives lost at the hands of the government from 1949 to 1987. The Soviet Union follows, with 62 million lives lost from 1917 to 1987. Adolf Hitler’s Nazi German government killed 21 million people between 1933 and 1945. Then there are lesser murdering regimes, such as Nationalist China, Japan, Turkey, Vietnam and Mexico. According to Rummel’s research, the 20th century saw 262 million people’s lives lost at the hands of their own governments.

Hitler’s atrocities are widely recognized, publicized and condemned. World War II’s conquering nations’ condemnation included denazification and bringing Holocaust perpetrators to trial and punishing them through lengthy sentences and execution. Similar measures were taken to punish Japan’s murderers.

But what about the greatest murderers in mankind’s history — the Soviet Union’s Josef Stalin and China’s Mao Zedong? Some leftists saw these communists as heroes. W.E.B. Du Bois, writing in the National Guardian in 1953, said, “Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature. … The highest proof of his greatness (was that) he knew the common man, felt his problems, followed his fate.” Walter Duranty called Stalin “the greatest living statesman” and “a quiet, unobtrusive man.” There was even leftist admiration for Hitler and fellow fascist Benito Mussolini. When Hitler came to power in January 1933, George Bernard Shaw described him as “a very remarkable man, a very able man.” President Franklin Roosevelt called the fascist Mussolini “admirable,” and he was “deeply impressed by what he (had) accomplished.”

December 9, 2017

Berlin Airlift: The Cold War Begins – Extra History

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Germany, History, Military, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Extra Credits
Published on 7 Dec 2017

Tension between the Soviet Union and their former World War 2 Allies escalated into a hostile blockade of Berlin. All sides wanted to avoid another war, but the United States, Great Britain, and France refused to bend to Stalin’s pressure. They came up with a daring plan to supply Berlin by air.

November 13, 2017

Feature History – Polish-Soviet War

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

Feature History
Published on 11 Nov 2017
Hello and welcome to Feature History, featuring The Great War…and a video around it.
|THE GREAT WAR| Ungern-Sternberg – https://wp.me/p2hpV6-aCu
———————————————————————————————————–
I do the research, writing, narration, art, and animation. Yes, it is very lonely
Music
Marcin Przybyłowicz – Drink Up, There’s More!
Marcin Przybyłowicz – Merchants of Novigrad
Marcin Przybyłowicz – You’re Immortal
Johan Soderqvist – Main Theme #4 (very descriptive name)
Marcin Przybyłowicz – Cloak and Dagger
Marcin Przybyłowicz – The Song of the Sword-Dancer
Marcin Przybyłowicz – Witch Hunters
Marcin Przybyłowicz – Silver for Monsters
Marcin Przybyłowicz – The Hunter’s Path
Marcin Przybyłowicz – A Story You Won’t Believe

October 4, 2017

QotD: Transnational progressivism

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

The Soviets didn’t invent [transnational progressivism], but they promoted it heavily in a deliberate — and appallingly successful — attempt to weaken the Lockean, individualist tradition that underlies classical liberalism and the U.S. Constitution. The reduction of Western politics to a bitter war for government favor between ascriptive identity groups is exactly the outcome the Soviets wanted and worked hard to arrange.

Call it what you will — various other commentators have favored ‘volk-Marxism’ or ‘postmodern leftism’. I’ve called it suicidalism. It was designed to paralyze the West against one enemy, but it’s now being used against us by another. It is no accident that Osama bin Laden so often sounds like he’s reading from back issues of Z magazine, and no accident that both constantly echo the hoariest old cliches of Soviet propaganda in the 1930s and ’40s.

Another consequence of Stalin’s meme war is that today’s left-wing antiwar demonstrators wear kaffiyehs without any sense of how grotesque it is for ostensible Marxists to cuddle up to religious absolutists who want to restore the power relations of the 7th century CE. In Stalin’s hands, even Marxism itself was hollowed out to serve as a memetic weapon — it became increasingly nihilist, hatred-focused and destructive. The postmodern left is now defined not by what it’s for but by what it’s against: classical-liberal individualism, free markets, dead white males, America, and the idea of objective reality itself.

The first step to recovery is understanding the problem. Knowing that suicidalist memes were launched at us as war weapons by the espionage apparatus of the most evil despotism in human history is in itself liberating. Liberating, too, it is to realize that the Noam Chomskys and Michael Moores and Robert Fisks of the world (and their thousands of lesser imitators in faculty lounges everywhere) are not brave transgressive forward-thinkers but pathetic memebots running the program of a dead tyrant.

Brittingham and other have worried that postmodern leftism may yet win. If so, the victory would be short-lived. One of the clearest lessons of recent times (exemplified not just by kaffiyeh-wearing western leftists but by Hamas’s recent clobbering of al-Fatah in the first Palestinian elections) is that po-mo leftism is weaker than liberal individualism in one important respect; it has only the weakest defenses against absolutist fervor. Brittingham tellingly notes po-mo philosopher Richard Rorty’s realization that when the babble of conflicting tribal narratives collapses in exhaustion, the only thing left is the will to power.

Again, this is by design. Lenin and Stalin wanted classical-liberal individualism replaced with something less able to resist totalitarianism, not more. Volk-Marxist fantasy and postmodern nihilism served their purposes; the emergence of an adhesive counter-ideology would not have. Thus, the Chomskys and Moores and Fisks are running a program carefully designed to dead-end at nothing.

Eric S. Raymond, “Gramscian damage”, Armed and Dangerous, 2006-02-11.

September 27, 2017

Stalin’s Great Purge – Effects on the Red Army 1936-1938

Filed under: History, Military, Politics, Russia — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Military History Visualized
Published on 25 Aug 2017

The Great Purge had a massive effect on Soviet Society and the Red Army. This video gives various insights in the numbers, effects and other aspects.

September 24, 2017

Brilliant job on the Kalashnikov statue, Tovarisch, but what’s that weapon right there?

Filed under: History, Russia, Technology, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

The Guardian reports on some emergency fix-ups required to a brand new statue honouring Mikhail Kalashnikov:

Workers have removed part of a new monument to Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor of the Soviet Union’s AK-47 assault rifle, after eagle-eyed Russians noticed that it mistakenly depicted a German second world war weapon.

The monument to the creator of one of Russia’s best known export brands was unveiled in central Moscow three days ago to much fanfare.

A metal bas-relief behind a statue of Kalashnikov depicts the AK-47 and other weapons all supposedly designed by the engineer, who died in 2013.

But embarrassed sculptor Salavat Shcherbakov had to admit that among them was the Sturmgewehr 44 (StG 44) assault rifle used by Nazi troops.

“We will rectify this,” Shcherbakov said in comments broadcast by state-run Rossiya 24 channel. “It looks like this [mistake] sneaked in from the internet.”

By Friday evening a square hole gaped where the German rifle had been depicted in the bas-relief.

Kalashnikov’s weapon, created in 1947, does have a striking resemblance to German arms designer Hugo Schmeisser’s StG 44 rifle, created in 1942, although they have major design differences.

MP44 (Sturmgewehr 44), Germany. Caliber 8x33mm Kurz- From the collections of Armémuseum (Swedish Army Museum), Stockholm. (via Wikimedia)


Kalashnikov АК-47 with bayonet attached (via Wikimedia)

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress