johnfabian
21d ago
For some reason I was thinking about the OJ Simpson trial today, and it reminded me of your comment.
Even this analogy is somewhat inapt; it would require for OJ Simpson to have been unrepentantly open about killing them, with the defence team meanwhile trying and failing to construct alternative scenarios regardless.
Like I've said many times everytime SS starts beating this drum, Holocaust deniers never seem to come up with a convincing way to get around the fact that the Nazis were quite happy to admit they had killed millions of Jews. At best they would feign that they had somehow been coerced, or threatened, or were just following orders.
Churchill in this message was actually reusing some of the same words he had used in a message to Anthony Eden two days previously (in the context of learning about the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz):
"There is no doubt this is the most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world, and it has been done by scientific machinery by nominally civilised men in the name of a great State and one of the leading races of Europe. It is quite clear that all concerned in this crime who may fall into our hands, including the people who only obeyed orders by carrying out the butcheries, should be put to death after their association with the murders has been proved. I cannot therefore feel that this is the kind of ordinary case which is put through the Protecting Power, as, for instance, the lack of feeding or sanitary conditions in some particular prisoners' camp. There should therefore, in my opinion, be no negotiations of any kind on this subject. Declarations should be made in public, so that everyone connected with it will be hunted down and put to death." link
Ironically enough he torpedoes two denialist claims in this short message. No wonder they pretend it doesn't exist.
johnfabian
17d ago
This makes it all the more peculiar that nobody has been able to experimentally demonstrate and therefore verify the greenhouse effect.
Experimentally proving the greenhouse effect is a common science class task for sixth graders. The author of this could probably do it with materials that exist in his house. This is a rather extreme self-imposed ignorance.
johnfabian
17d ago
They sort of flip Jessica and Paul's eagerness with respect to the missionara protectiva prophecy; in the book Paul is all for it and Jessica reluctant. But in the movie it is Jessica who is the insistent one and Paul troubled with it. This makes Jessica seem much more manipulative and also lumps her in with the rest of the Bene Gesserit when she was supposed to be the black sheep
johnfabian
15d ago
It might depend on what level of salami slicing is attempted. Estonia is a very soft target; there doesn't need to be some massive build-up of force to seize most or all of it. So let's say you have a normal force distribution at standard readiness in the Leningrad Military District. All of a sudden the wire comes in - ethnic Russians have been killed by the government of Estonia, and the rest need immediate protection to prevent the same! It's only a 200 km drive to Tallinn from the border. There are negligible forces in your way. How much preparation is actually needed at this point?
johnfabian
15d ago
I think a significant part of it is simply staff size. A 10-man team can create a work of art. A 1000-man team is answering to shareholders first.
johnfabian
14d ago
Would there be? Does NATO risk nuclear war for the sake of Estonia?
What if it's just a border incursion? The Russians penetrate some 20 or 30 km and then stop. What if it's just shelling or a few bombs dropped on military bases?
I don't think this is something particularly likely, but the Russians might think it valuable to test the waters on how united NATO really is, especially if Trump is elected again.
johnfabian
10d ago
There's another element: discovering wealth does not necessarily make you wealthier. Within 100 years of discovering the Cerro Rico at Potosi which essentially doubled the world's silver supply, the Spanish crown was serially bankrupt.
johnfabian
5d ago
Absolutely not. Don't even bother thinking about it again. They were out to scam you and you just got them first.
johnfabian
4d ago
Lots of places sell or "misplace" their mailing lists to other parties.
johnfabian
2d ago
One might argue that it would predict that Churchill would get a pass from the anti-fascist collective, given that the thing he's most famous for is helping to defeat the most prominent example of fascism in human history.
Not if the argument is that Churchill was in charge of an only-slightly-less-fascist state, whose conflict with the greater was merely about Who Should Dominate.
Among quasi-Marxist (this is misleading because contemporary leftists almost uniformly haven't read Marx) people in the present they have already decided that the Soviet Union, near-alone, defeated Nazi Germany.
johnfabian
21hr ago
This is just the substack equivalent of the more deranged branches of critical theory. They posit that because they are against the people who claim all media is actually engaged in fighting a war for the fate of the soul of society and YOU need to pick a side, that in fact all media is actually engaged in fighting a war for the fate of the soul of society (but different). I'm fond of reading tea leaves but I think one loses the point (and fun) of it when you start smashing your head into your cup.
I was reflecting upon this earlier today when I saw on Reddit that the children's show Bluey had uploaded to youtube an episode that had been "banned" in the US. It wasn't actually banned, but Disney decided not to include it in the show's episodes for American subscribers. You can watch it here and take a guess as to why that might be. If you haven't heard of Bluey, it was the second-most watched television show (in total minutes) in America last year in spite of its short format. It's a charming show and is much more tolerable to adults than much of contemporary children's programming, most of which seems like the virtual equivalent of crack cocaine. It's been in the news recently because it may or may not have ended (?) despite being massively successful and profitable. I took a gander at some of the culture warring over it and it's invariably idiotic. The lunatic left see its messages of friendship and inclusion as proof it is secretly Marxist; the retarded right see a wholesome nuclear family with nary a Pride flag in sight and think it's hiding its power level. This kind of reading-into-things seems to me little different than the kind in the linked article.
Any time I see stuff like this my eyes protectively glaze over and my curiosity is ended. All of this kind of culture war obsession just strikes me as so incredibly infantile.
he says "puck". It's an old saying about why Wayne Gretzky was so good.
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