Quotulatiousness

December 19, 2020

History-Makers: Ibn Khaldun

Filed under: Africa, Books, History, Humour, Middle East — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 18 Dec 2020

Big thanks to our friend Al-Muqaddimah for his help with this video. The look of this video’s maps is an homage to his wonderful mapmaking style. For more Islamic History, check out his channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf0O…

From the coast of Tunisia across the Straits of Gibraltar, over the Atlas Mountains, and east to the Nile of Egypt, Ibn Khaldun had certainly seen history at work. That experience came in handy as he wrote The Muqaddimah, a genre-defining masterwork of Historiography — not just retelling the events of the past, but explaining their causes and effects through the lens of human behavior and sociology.

SOURCES & Further Reading: Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography by Irwin, The Muqaddimah

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

Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.

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January 27, 2019

Churchill Tank vs German 88 – Tunisia 1943

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

Mark Felton Productions
Published on 19 Dec 2018

The Battle of Steamroller Farm in Tunisia in 1943 is notable for how much damage a pair of British Churchill tanks managed to inflict on the Germans, whom they surprised after climbing a ‘tank-proof’ ridge. Find out the full thrilling story of the tough Churchill in action.

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January 8, 2019

Tank Chats #40 Crusader | The Tank Museum

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

The Tank Museum
Published on 30 Jun 2017

In the 40th Tank Chat, David Fletcher looks at the Second World War Crusader tank.

The first Crusader III was delivered in May 1942. Crusader IIIs were landed first in Algeria on 13 November 1942, but removed from service upon conclusion of the campaign in Tunisia in May 1943. This vehicle probably never left England, as it was held by the School of Tank Technology, before transfer to the Tank Museum in 1949. This vehicle is painted to represent a tank serving in Tunisia.

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October 21, 2018

Tank Chats #36 Tiger 131 | The Tank Museum

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, Technology, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Tank Museum
Published on 21 Apr 2017

Tiger 131 is the most famous tank in The Tank Museum’s collection and arguably the most famous tank in the world.

Here curator David Willey discusses the history of Tiger 131, it’s current place and importance in the collection, and its future.

Support the work of The Tank Museum on Patreon: ► https://www.patreon.com/tankmuseum
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July 3, 2018

French North Africa in World War 1 I THE GREAT WAR Special

Filed under: Africa, France, History, Military, WW1 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The Great War
Published on 2 Jul 2018

Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco were all part of French North Africa before and during World War 1. They all contributed in material and men to the war effort and the French colonial soldiers were praised for their bravery.

May 16, 2018

Crusader Tank | Animated History

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

The Armchair Historian
Published on 25 Jun 2016

April 23, 2013

What we know (so far) about the would-be Via bombers

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Railways — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:18

Maclean’s has a summary pulling together files from Nicholas Köhler, Charlie Gillis, Michael Friscolanti and Martin Patriquin on what is known about the two men arrested yesterday in a plot to commit an act of terror on a Canadian passenger train:

One of the men, Raed Jaser, is believed to have grown up in a Palestinian family with Jordanian roots. Court records seem to indicate he went on to a troubled history in Toronto, where authorities arrested him after a months’-long investigation they say ultimately leads back to al-Qaeda elements in Iran.

Although he is not a Canadian citizen, Jaser, 35, appears to have been in Ontario for at least two decades.

In October 1995, a man with the same name and year of birth was criminally charged in Newmarket, Ont., with fraud under $5,000 (the charge was withdrawn a year later). In December 2000, a week after his 24th birthday, Jaser was arrested and charged again, this time with uttering threats. Although court records show he was convicted of that charge, it’s not clear what sentence he received.

[. . .]

Details about the other man police say was involved in the plot, [Chiheb] Esseghaier, a resident of Montreal, are also coming into focus. A highly trained engineer, he had the resumé of an academic poised to go places.

As recently as last month he was publishing research papers.

The March 2013 edition of journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics published a paper on advanced HIV detection by Esseghaier, Mohammed Zourob and a fellow PhD student named Andy Ng.

According to his CV, Esseghaier was born in Tunisia. He received an engineering degree from Institut Tunisia’s National des Sciences Appliquées et de Technologie in 2007, with his masters degree following in 2008. He then moved to Université de Sherbrooke to research “SPR biosensor and gallium arsenide semi-conductor biofunctionnalization.” In November 2010, he joined Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS), a graduate institution associated with the Université du Québec.

March 26, 2013

Tunisians troll their own government with memestorm

Filed under: Africa, Government, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:38

Timothy Geigner on the Tunisian response to a government that fails to comprehend YouTube:

You will remember the nation of Tunisia for being a flash point of the Arab Spring revolution, in which social media and the internet played a massive role, as well as for the post-revolution government’s subsequent crackdown on those tools that brought them into power. There seems to be something of an ongoing problem within Middle East governments, in that they simply don’t recognize how to handle popular dissent, often taking on the very characteristics of the dissenter’s complaints to an almost caricature level. In that respect, while it may sound silly, any government learning to deal with the open communication system of the net is going to have to come to terms with memes and the manner in which they spread.

Which brings us back to Tunisia. They seem to have a problem with this Gangnam Style, Harlem Shake combo-video produced by some apparently fun-loving Tunisian students (the original was taken down due to a highly questionable copyright claim, by the way, because while even the Tunisian government wasn’t evil enough to block the video, a bogus DMCA claim had no such qualms).

You can guess how the Tunisians reacted…

March 1, 2011

The shifting tide of extreme wealth

Filed under: Economics, Europe, France, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:07

Ever wonder how the children of wealthy foreign potentates fit in with “ordinary” wealthy westerners? Anne Applebaum says the relationship has shifted from bare toleration all the way out to sycophancy, but its most noticeable change is the way they can buy influence and apologists:

Money, even foreign money (and particularly that Saudi money), has always been able to buy access to Western statesmen. But in the last decade or so, the proportions have subtly shifted. The democratic West has become relatively poorer, while a clutch of undemocratic “emerging” markets have become richer. To put it more bluntly, Western politicians, ex-politicians, and even aristocrats have become much, much poorer than the very, very rich businessmen emerging from the oil-and-gas states of Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. Twenty years ago, no retired British or German statesman would have looked outside his country for employment. Nowadays, Blair advises the governments of Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, among others; Gerhard Schröder, the former German chancellor, collects a paycheck from Gazprom, the Russian energy behemoth.

True, there is a legitimate argument for maintaining contacts with dictators: Blair helped persuade Col. Qaddafi to give up his nuclear weapons program in 2003, and in the last 10 days he has twice called the dictator and asked him to stop shooting his people. It hasn’t helped, of course, but it can’t hurt to try.

But there is no justification for taking dictators’ money or befriending their offspring, especially not while simultaneously playing politics with their parents. This is not just a British problem, either. Frank Wisner, the U.S. envoy sent by President Barack Obama to negotiate with Hosni Mubarak in the early days of the Egyptian revolution, also works for Patton Boggs, a law firm that has worked for the Egyptian government. The administration was reportedly angry when he unexpectedly opined that Mubarak “must stay” just a few days before Mubarak fled Cairo. But should anyone have been surprised? Meanwhile, Michelle Alliot-Marie, the French foreign minister, has just lost her job because she went on holiday in Tunisia during the revolution, hitched a few rides on a private plane belonging to a friend of the Tunisian president, and helped her father do a business deal there. When she got back, she tactfully suggested that the French help their friends in the Tunisian police put down the riots.

February 3, 2011

Middle East unrest spreads to Yemen

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Middle East, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:37

First Tunisia, then Egypt, now Yemen:

Tens of thousands of Yemenis squared off in street protests for and against the government on Thursday during an opposition-led “Day of Rage,” a day after President Ali Abdullah Saleh offered to step down in 2013.

Anti-government activists drew more than 20,000 in Sanaa, the biggest crowd since a wave of protests hit the Arabian Peninsula state two weeks ago, inspired by demonstrations that toppled Tunisia’s ruler and threaten Egypt’s president.

But an equally large pro-Saleh protest also picked up steam, and supporters of the president who has ruled Yemen for more than three decades drove around the capital urging Yemenis over loudspeakers to join their counter-demonstrations.

The protests in Sanaa fizzled out by midday, with demonstrators on both sides dispersing peacefully ahead of a traditional afternoon break to chew qat, a mild stimulant leaf widely consumed in Yemen.

January 7, 2010

Tracking the effectiveness of bloggers by arrests

Filed under: China, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:30

2009 was a tough year for journalists, with at least 76 killed and arrests and physical assaults increased over last year. In a back-handed way, the effectiveness of bloggers and other informal journalists could be measured by the ways in which they get harassed, intimidated, or otherwise interfered with as they tried to report on the news:

Meanwhile, the spotlight is increasingly falling on bloggers, as 2009 was the first year that more than 100 bloggers and cyber-dissidents were imprisoned.

In a number of countries online dissent is now a criminal offence: authorities have responded to the internet as pro-democracy tool with new laws and crackdowns. A pair of Azerbaijani bloggers were sentenced to two years in prison for making a film mocking the political elite.

China was still the leading Internet censor in 2009. However, Iran, Tunisia, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and Uzbekistan have all also made extensive use website blocking and online surveillance to monitor and control dissent. The Turkmen Internet remains under total state control. Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer remains in jail, while well-known Burmese comedian Zarganar has a further 34 years of his prison sentence to serve.

However, the Report also notes that democratic countries have not lagged far behind, instancing the various steps taken by European countries to control the internet under the guise of protection against child porn and illegal downloading. It also notes that Australia intends to put in place a compulsory filtering system that poses a threat to freedom of expression.

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