Category: Historical Events

On the Slaughter Bench of History

Historical Events 21 Comments

“Forces, ideas, prejudices, institutions, conflicts, all are surely important. Yet that still leaves the individuals, not in the end that many of them, who had to say yes, go ahead and unleash war, or no, stop.” The men on top are the men who matter most, and the most important thing about them is their inadequacy: “It was Europe’s and the world’s tragedy in retrospect that none of the key players in 1914 were great and imaginative leaders who had the courage to stand out against the pressures building up for war.”

Algis Valiunas on The First World War and its lessons. (originally published in 2014)

*link fixed, sorry

“That never happened.”

Historical Events 40 Comments

When Ryan Boyko was in high school, he saw a documentary about the Ukrainian Canadian Internment during the First World War. Boyko, a descendant of Ukrainians, was curious to find out more so he asked his teacher.
 
“And he said, ‘you mean the Japanese internment during the Second World War? And I said, ‘no, I mean the Ukrainian internment during the First World War,’ ” Boyko says. “He said, ‘that never happened.’ ”

“Higher Ups Wouldn’t Listen”

Historical Events Terrorism 11 Comments

Before 9/11, only a few dedicated law-enforcement and intelligence agents understood the enormity of the terrorists’ ambitions.

At the end of the Cold War, the beginning of this international Sunni terrorist organization was something nobody imagined could happen, because ‘Arabs can’t work together, and these guys are a bunch of ragheads who’ve been fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan.’ Except that we knew there was a lot of very well-educated people who had been hanging out together in Afghanistan for 10 years.

 

Those of us who worked it weren’t under those illusions, but that was the conventional wisdom—that they weren’t capable of doing anything. We were in the Counterterrorist Center, which was the first center in the CIA [established in 1986], so the rest of the organization didn’t really understand what we did, and we were looked down on. So that combination of factors, and having women, frankly, be in the forefront of this, made it hard to convince people. My experience is, from studying these things academically, it takes about 10 years to turn people’s mindsets around. We didn’t have 10 years.

h/t K

A Society Without Money. Or Brains.

Great Moments In Socialism Historical Events Uncategorized 28 Comments

Cambodia was to return to ‘Year Zero,’ and recover its former glory, removed from the modern world and the unnecessary corruption of its influences. In order to facilitate the eradication of capitalism, the National Bank was blown apart and all forms of money were banned. Marriages were now arranged by the state, and children were taught to obey the government instead of their parents… By May 1978, the effort to produce a communist system of agriculture had failed utterly and the population was starving… Throughout this period, the emptied city of Phnom Penh stood as a ghost town, a reminder of a lost civilisation of business and commerce.

Matthew Blackwell on the megalomaniacal horrors of the Khmer Rouge. One of these.

Strange Bedfellows: Western Leftists & Islamic Totalitarians

Baiting The Left Historical Events Insufferable Twits 15 Comments

There’s an old adage that “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”. This seems to be about the only way to explain why Leftists in the West, particularly much of the MSM, have dismissed the cries for freedom of Iranians:

Starting last Thursday, Iranians by the hundreds of thousands began expressing that disappointment along with rising anger — risking their lives by staging protests in more than two dozen cities across the country. As I write this, an estimated 15 protestors have been killed by government forces. Hundreds have been arrested.

Much of the Western media has downplayed this upheaval. Others have asserted that the protests are just about “a sluggish economy” and “an increase in the price of eggs” — in other words, apolitical and non-ideological.

The chants being heard in the streets tell a different tale. Among them: “We don’t want an Islamic Republic!” “Death to the Dictator!” “Mullahs Must Get Lost!” “The Clerics Act Like Gods!” Death or freedom!” “Leave Syria, think about us!” “Not Gaza, not Lebanon, my life for Iran!” Also this statement of grim determination: “We will die. [But] we will take back Iran.” No, it’s not just the economy, stupid.

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