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Barry Foster posted:I break this out whenever this comes up, because it is extremely hard for even the most jingoistic right wing warmongers to argue with. Video: "War is a calculated and condoned slaughter of human beings" Commentators: "Too right! If people had understood that maybe the Nazis could've been left in peace!" 
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Sep 17, 2015 10:28
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forkboy84 posted:Nick Cohen hasn't been on the left since 2002.
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Sep 17, 2015 10:48
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Jeb Bush wants to put Margaret Thatcher on the $10 bill. Weird how the news she covered up child rape hasn't affected her sainthood among the conservatives of the world. Weird. Strange.
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Sep 17, 2015 10:50
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I don't know if 'Thatcher belongs in a gallery of slavers and tyrants' is praise.
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Sep 17, 2015 11:00
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Guavanaut posted:I don't know if 'Thatcher belongs in a gallery of slavers and tyrants' is praise. She certainly doesn't deserve to be on the same list as fuckin' Abraham Lincoln.
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Sep 17, 2015 11:03
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Gorn Myson posted:He was part of that group of commentators that came out as liberals when the 9/11 and the Iraq War tested their credentials. So yeah, he hasn't been on the left since he started calling for conflict in the Middle East in his columns. Which makes this column even funnier. So another one in the long list of people who completely flipped their poo poo over 9/11.
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Sep 17, 2015 11:05
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Kokoro Wish posted:Said the education minister. He also had a pop at Blackadder for portraying the First World War as "as a misbegotten shambles - a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite. " Which from what history of it I've studied was a fairly accurate summary. That said, I've always thought that Blackadders explanation about the start of the WWI to be a pretty good summation of events. quote:"Well, possibly. But the real reason for the whole thing was that it was too much effort not to have a war."
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Sep 17, 2015 11:10
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Venmoch posted:He also had a pop at Blackadder for portraying the First World War as "as a misbegotten shambles - a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite. " Which from what history of it I've studied was a fairly accurate summary. Sadly this does very much sum up the origins of WW1. I agree UK education on WW1 leads tightening up; I ended up with numerous misconceptions and had the impression, at 16, that the war was nothing but toffs ordering people to march directly into machinegun fire, but WW1 was utterly ghastly. It's more the difference between drug abuse programs that show realistic effects of hard drug abuse long-term vs drug abuse programs that show your brain decaying and dropping out of society altogether from smoking one marijuana. Conveniently we also left out the shady poo poo the British empire was up to at the time, of course.
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Sep 17, 2015 11:25
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If you wan a good account of public school boys in WW1 I recommend Into The Silence. From the cover you'd assume it's all about climbing Everest but a really solid chunk of the book is the grotesque poo poo all the climbers saw in the War. There's also a lot of fascinating information on the Raj.
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Sep 17, 2015 11:29
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Oberleutnant posted:I just walked in on a bunch of women in their 50s - the sorts of women who are wealthy enough not to have to work and who spend their ample free time doing volunteer conservation work at stately homes, and who, I would bet the bollock of your choice, habitually vote conservative - singing the praises of "Mr Corbyn" whom they all agree is "very genuine". It's been pointed out before that a great many of his policies are things touted by the Conservative party in the mid 20th century. Not that I think that invalidates them; rather it's a sign of how insane politics has become, that suggestions which are perfectly reasonable and objectively moderate can be considered dangerously radical by the press and the political machine whilst having broad cross-party appeal with actual voters.
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Sep 17, 2015 11:29
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I find "Out of touch Generals" as really letting them off the hook. Trench Warfare favored the defenders massively and the tools to deal with it just hadn't been invented at the time, so many Generals tasked with winning the war settled on a war of attrition as the only way to win since a break through of the lines simply wasn't possible anymore. Their intention was that if they just throw enough men into the meat grinder eventually the enemy will run out of things to shoot them with. They weren't clueless at all to the casualties that'd be suffered in offensives, they just saw it as the price of victory.
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Sep 17, 2015 11:45
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Phone posting but Rifkind and Straw have been cleared of the accusations of misconduct regarding the Telgraph sting.
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Sep 17, 2015 12:06
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Fans posted:I find "Out of touch Generals" as really letting them off the hook. Trench Warfare favored the defenders massively and the tools to deal with it just hadn't been invented at the time, so many Generals tasked with winning the war settled on a war of attrition as the only way to win since a break through of the lines simply wasn't possible anymore. What else were they supposed to do, exactly? Just sit there indefinitely with a chunk of France occupied by Germany?
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Sep 17, 2015 12:09
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feedmegin posted:What else were they supposed to do, exactly? Just sit there indefinitely with a chunk of France occupied by Germany? Try to figure out actually effective tactics instead of rejecting reality and repeating the same failure over and over?
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Sep 17, 2015 12:11
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Edit: ^^ The thread has moved on, but funnily enough that viewpoint is another one of the things tackled in the articleTomViolence posted:In all my enthusiastic scholarship concerning the first world war, I never once was told that the millions dying in squalour in the trenches were all upper class. gently caress me, are there actually people out there that think the war disproportionately effected the gentry? And not the hundreds of thousands of working class conscripts and volunteers whose lives were thrown into the mincer? Jesus christ. Given your scholarship, you may know all of these already, but I found this article dispelling the 10 biggest WW1 myths to be quite interesting.
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Sep 17, 2015 12:16
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feedmegin posted:What else were they supposed to do, exactly? Just sit there indefinitely with a chunk of France occupied by Germany? That's the argument they were making at the time. My point was the generals were not stupid men out of touch with the situation. There was a conscious decision to send hundreds of thousands to their deaths in offensives purely to drain the resources of the enemy.
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Sep 17, 2015 12:18
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feedmegin posted:What else were they supposed to do, exactly? Just sit there indefinitely with a chunk of France occupied by Germany?
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Sep 17, 2015 12:18
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Prince John posted:Edit: ^^ The thread has moved on, but funnily enough that viewpoint is another one of the things tackled in the article the last one is hilarious apparently lots of people had a great time
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Sep 17, 2015 12:21
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Phoon posted:the last one is hilarious apparently lots of people had a great time Number 9 is also pretty bullshit. Versailles was harsh. That 1870 was also pretty drat harsh and World War 2 ended with literally unconditional surrender and the disintegration of the German state doesn't alter that, nor were the Nazis the only ones who said it was harsh - for example noted Fascist John Maynard Keynes.
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Sep 17, 2015 12:28
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feedmegin posted:What else were they supposed to do, exactly? Just sit there indefinitely with a chunk of France occupied by Germany? wait for the other guys to try the same thing so they walk into your machine guns, p much as patton said, it's not about dying for your country as much as it is about the other guy dying for his
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Sep 17, 2015 12:34
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feedmegin posted:Number 9 is also pretty bullshit. Versailles was harsh. That 1870 was also pretty drat harsh and World War 2 ended with literally unconditional surrender and the disintegration of the German state doesn't alter that, nor were the Nazis the only ones who said it was harsh - for example noted Fascist John Maynard Keynes. Yes but GAYnard Keynes was a homosexual man. The Pink Swastika strikes again!
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Sep 17, 2015 12:34
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I have here in my hand a list of 10 that were made known to the Vatican State as being sympathisers of the  Proper McCarthyist denunciations in the church going on today.
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Sep 17, 2015 12:36
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I always thought that one of the problems in WW1 was that the generals had sort of realised by 1916 that a lot of the fighting would only result in stupid levels of casualties and wanted to hole up and just starve out Germany. The problem was that I think there was an election running at the time and various different political groups were all pushing for it to be under their leadership that the hun would be driven back and so kept calling for more and more attacks. I think I read that somewhere in one of the ww1 discussions in this forum actually. That and what should have happened should have been the encirclement of Germany matched up with better logistics and living spaces in the trenches. That and making sure tanks don't just fall over.
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Sep 17, 2015 12:40
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Venmoch posted:He also had a pop at Blackadder for portraying the First World War as "as a misbegotten shambles - a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite." Which from what history of it I've studied was a fairly accurate summary. Well, that was pretty much his point though - that the widespread view of WW1 as portrayed by both historians and Blackadder was wrong, that contemporaries thought the WW1 generals had done the best they could, and that the idea that they were incompetent butchers developed in the 1960s.
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Sep 17, 2015 12:43
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Forums Terrorist posted:wait for the other guys to try the same thing so they walk into your machine guns, p much Yes, but the Germans were occupying French territory. We weren't occupying theirs. That's kind of the point, 'sit around and do nothing' is basically equivalent to 'hand over a chunk of France to Germany', which was always going to be rather a non-starter.
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Sep 17, 2015 12:43
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We'd covered ww1 in school and I had seen innumerable specials on TV about it... But recently finished listening to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History 6 parter on the 1st world war and I didn't know the half of it... Seems a good balance between facts and figure and personal accounts... And for an American I found his voice pretty inoffensive which is important when the total runtime is close to 23 hours... ....
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Sep 17, 2015 12:45
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Fans posted:I'm still not entirely sure what the Privy Council's function is and why we even still have it. I think it does a load of administrative stuff to do with Royal Things about which I know practically nothing. Its most practical function is that it's a supreme court for certain Commonwealth countries and possibly overseas territories - it's able to do this because there are a load of ultra qualified and experienced judges that are members.
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Sep 17, 2015 12:55
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Forums Terrorist posted:wait for the other guys to try the same thing so they walk into your machine guns, p much Machineguns were terrifying, yes, but they were not the true problem of WW1. You could not just sit in your trench and wait for men to march into you, because they would just do something more devastating to you. The issue with WW1 is that they went into the war expecting to fight a regular war, where two armies marched at one another until they won like European wars past. But weapons had advanced to a point where machinegun fire could cut down a line marching like that. So, they burrowed into trenches and played a more defensively minded war, but not purely defensive. This opened up great opportunities to put machineguns into bunkers on good vantage points, snipers crawling through No Man's Land, and worst of all, artillery. Artillery was the big killer in WW1, and there was little that could be done to prevent it. One of the few great ways of preventing the loss of life to artillery was to just build trenches in zig-zag patterns instead of straight lines. By mixing gas and the use of artillery you could cut most pushes or defences short over 20 or 30 minutes. You drop 2 gas shells on either side of a trench, and most of the enemy will either be unable to see while they fire, or they will need to move into the centre. You then shell gently caress out of the centre where all of their men had moved to. Artillery could be fired extremely quickly, as breach loading had arrived on the scene, and with a well organised assault you could carpet and kill most men in a section of a trench in a matter of minutes. As such, just sitting and waiting would have been a bad idea in general. You would have been inviting the enemy to shell the living hell out of your men every time they tried to make a push. Most of your line would break, the enemy would get into your trench while your side is in dissarray, and you would be pushed out, forcing a counter attack. You would only be losing land, even if at a slightly higher cost to the enemy. If you are not pushing, then your defence becomes little more than a siege, and with the strength of artillery that was just not a good idea to do. You needed to be advancing. This is all without considering the importances of strategic positioning, such as an easily defensible hill, forest line, etc which provides great cover to attack from, which the enemy might have. You would need to push forwards to take those positions, otherwise you would be at their mercy. The enemy would notice a lack of offensives from your own side, and adjust their strategy accordingly.
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Sep 17, 2015 13:02
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Cerebral Bore posted:Try to figure out actually effective tactics instead of rejecting reality and repeating the same failure over and over? They did, and by 1918 they had; but it basically involved inventing a way of war in which everything was done differently to how it had been before the war and was fought with weapons and doctrines that would have been totally unthinkable before the war. Add to that a succession of failed battles in which it seemed like success was oh-so-nearly at hand, and if only we do generally the same things as last time but make these few important but relatively slight alterations we'll achieve a major success; and a corrosive command culture which was exactly what you'd expect from a bunch of public schoolboys, and it's very understandable why it took so long for anyone to figure out what they needed to do to get anywhere. What the war needed more than anyone else was either a military genius or an exceptionally good people person; a Zhukov, a Bill Slim, a Rommel, or an Eisenhower, someone who either could have thought far enough outside the box himself, or else empowered a subordinate or colleague with more brains to do the thinking. There were a few who might potentially have been that, but they all either came a cropper somehow (falling out with the boss, being appointed as the wrong man for the wrong job, having a shell fall on their head) or were too junior at the start of the war to have much influence until 1918. If anyone is more interested in the subtleties of this, I have a blog following the war day-by-day, where we're just about to fall headlong into a major autumn offensive on the Western Front, Winston Churchill's mates are still trying and failing to kill Clement Attlee on Gallipoli for him, and the Indian Army is just about to get itself into serious trouble trying to march on Baghdad. (If you want a quick example of one of those oh-so-nears, try the Battle of Neuve Chapelle for size.) Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 13:07 on Sep 17, 2015 |
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Sep 17, 2015 13:04
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Prince John posted:Edit: ^^ The thread has moved on, but funnily enough that viewpoint is another one of the things tackled in the article Did the article also tackle the fact that when actually competent guys got to be in charge the offensives suddenly worked again?
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Sep 17, 2015 13:04
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Another Person posted:Machineguns were terrifying, yes, but they were not the true problem of WW1. You could not just sit in your trench and wait for men to march into you, because they would just do something more devastating to you. The issue with WW1 is that they went into the war expecting to fight a regular war, where two armies marched at one another until they won like European wars past. But weapons had advanced to a point where machinegun fire could cut down a line marching like that. So, they burrowed into trenches and played a more defensively minded war, but not purely defensive. This opened up great opportunities to put machineguns into bunkers on good vantage points, snipers crawling through No Man's Land, and worst of all, artillery. Artillery was the big killer in WW1, and there was little that could be done to prevent it. One of the few great ways of preventing the loss of life to artillery was to just build trenches in zig-zag patterns instead of straight lines. thanks field marshal montgomery
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Sep 17, 2015 13:06
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Oberleutnant posted:thanks field marshal montgomery salute your ranking officer when he talks to you, and be prepared for the big push
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Sep 17, 2015 13:13
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I hate to say it, but even as a fan of Corbyn generally I think his performance at PMQs was weak. The questions from members of the public thing felt a bit breakfast TV (And Sue from Norwich thinks _____. Thanks Sue!) but that may just be me. I do like the idea in principle. Also, even though I loathe him, Cameron gave a very polished performance. PMQs is a very good format for his style because the other guy doesn't have the opportunity to drill down and it's easy to give soundbite answers, which he does with real conviction. If I knew nothing about politics and I had watched PMQs I wouldn't have thought Corbyn was in the same league as Cameron as a politician.
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Sep 17, 2015 13:13
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Cerebral Bore posted:Did the article also tackle the fact that when actually competent guys got to be in charge the offensives suddenly worked again? The Battle of Amiens, which finally shattered static trench warfare in 1918, was led by General Rawlinson (and given to him by Haig and Foch, who'd both been failing away since 1914), who had presided over some of the bloodiest gently caress-ups on the Somme two years earlier. It just isn't that simple.
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Sep 17, 2015 13:13
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I'd like to plug the Youtube channel The Great War as being a really interesting way of bringing WWI to life. They do one episode a week covering the events of the war on that week exactly 100 years prior. What's I especially like about it is that although it's a military history show, it never glosses over the carnage and brutality of the war. It does specials on things like the war poets, and on occasions where it discusses interesting new technologies or innovations, it is careful always to remind the viewer that the consequence of those innovations was usually tens of thousands of more people dying. It also has this 1910s newsy feel. It's good!
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Sep 17, 2015 13:15
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If it's true that Artillery was so devastating, then why was the battle of the Somme such an unremitting clusterfuck for the allies? The German lines lost very few of their men to the three or so days of solid artillery fire that were directed at them, and were able to pretty much rip the poo poo out of the advancing British line. I know it wasn't exactly a huge difference and individual assaults could have effect, but the fact that the German soldiers did seem to have better built bunkers (concrete and everything! Looks nicer than some london flats I have lived in) makes the idea that Artillery was just a wonder weapon look a little suspect. Though I could be misinterpreting it. Modern History isn't my strong suit.
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Sep 17, 2015 13:16
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Pistol_Pete posted:Nick Cohen announcing his resignation from the Left in a spectacularly Dan Hodgesesque piece: Isn't the Spectator known for hiring precisely the sorts of racists, fascists, and misogynists he accuses 'the left' of hanging out with? Taki immediately comes to mind, but there may be more.
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Sep 17, 2015 13:17
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Trin Tragula posted:The Battle of Amiens, which finally shattered static trench warfare in 1918, was led by General Rawlinson (and given to him by Haig and Foch, who'd both been failing away since 1914), who had presided over some of the bloodiest gently caress-ups on the Somme two years earlier. It just isn't that simple. The Canadian offensive in the autumn of 1916 and the Battle of Vimy Ridge in January 1917 showed how to break trench warfare. It is in fact very simple, if the war had been run by competent people, the competent lower-ranking general officers such as Arthur Currie who showed actual results would have been recognized and their ideas would have been adopted far sooner. Likewise an idiot bungler like French would never have been allowed to stay on as CiC after he basically ran away with his tail between his legs in 1914. One of the biggest parts of military competence is recognizing talent and promoting it accordingly, and everybody in WWI completely failed that part until there was no arguing the results anymore, with the inevitable result of pissing away even more lives as bunglers stayed in charge and the competent languished in mid-level positions. Cerebral Bore fucked around with this message at 13:24 on Sep 17, 2015 |
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Sep 17, 2015 13:22
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I've seen a couple of people point out that Labours handling of the press attacks on Corbyn may be somewhat hobbled by the recent departure of one of their most senior press officers (a former Sunday Telegraph editor of all things) who has switched to be Khan's chief communication officer for his campaign. Corbyn's just appointed a former senior advisor to Livingstone while he was mayor to be director of "rebuttal" so we might see some more active combatting of the media soon
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Sep 17, 2015 13:23
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I have a new favorite Labour MP now. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/09/17/jess-phillips-diane-abbott-corbyn_n_8151468.html quote:Talking to The Huffington Post UK, Ms Phillips, who despite being elected in May has already earned a reputation for being one of the most outspoken MPs, said: “I roundly told her to gently caress off.” People are saying Labour needs a voice, can it be hers? Telling everyone to gently caress off?
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Sep 17, 2015 13:23
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