• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Forgotten History

Following through ideas and links and assocations out of a genuine interest - discovered that despite the weight of evidence that North Korea is not a nice place to live, and the general availability of this evidence in the West, and the way it all stacks up in a way no reasonable person could ignore (unless they really, really, make an effort not to) - that you still get a devoted hard-core of people outside NK who truly believe the DPRK to be a workers' paradise where everybody is happy, content, well-fed, well-housed under the benign and fatherly wing of the Dearly Beloved Great Leader. In the past I had just enough of an association with far left politics in Britain to be aware of the existence of a grouping even other people on the revolutionary Left thought were odd and strange. "Tankies", so-called because they believed the workers' revolution needed to go into places like Hungary and Czechoslovakia with lots of tanks, so as to reinforce the dialectic arguments in a very forceful way, and root out anti-social and counter-revolutionary elements by force for necessary re-education. "Tankies" were also the dwindling hard-core whose only criticism of Joseph Stalin was that he could get a bit squishy-soft and compassionate. After Stalin's demise, the need for a Great Leader transferred to Enver Hoxha , Ceaucescu, Jaroslawski, et c.

It seems as if today, the Tankie mentality only really has one place left to go, as there is a dearth of far-left dictators... the world ain't what it was, hey?

Enter the Korean Friendship Association, whose British wing seeks to dispel all those fascist and capitalist slurs on the Workers' Paradise and the Beloved Leader.

https://www.nknews.org/2019/05/leaving-the-british-friends-of-north-korea-eight-years-in-the-uk-kfa/

Anyway. via - indirectly via - the KFA, I found myself looking at some of the things North Korea alleges about the Korean War of 1950 - 54. A lot of them are either batshit crazy or have grown in the telling, for instance. When I got as far as war crimes and alleged mass murders carried out, with slavering glee, by the United Nations coalition, with inhuman American fascists giving the orders, I was poised to dismiss this a a load of invented bollocks too.

Only to discover that in one case, the North Koreans do not appear to have been making it up. The history at this distance is confused and it is entirely possible the NK side is milking it for everything it can get, but something appears to have happened at Sinchon in 1950, as the American/South Korean armies retreated back to the 38th Parallel. (This is the same US Army that also did raw things at places like My Lai, 18 years later, its army tending to have dismissive ideas about "gooks".)

Big question.... how many war crimes were commited by American and Allied troops in Korea in 1950 - 54? Not something taught in our history classes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinchon_Massacre
 
Last edited:
Oh why are we so not surprised?

All utopias are unpleasant. Yet, maybe we should strive towards them.

(Does that even make sense?)
 
Following through ideas and links and assocations out of a genuine interest - discovered that despite the weight of evidence that North Korea is not a nice place to live, and the general availability of this evidence in the West, and the way it all stacks up in a way no reasonable person could ignore (unless they really, really, make an effort not to) - that you still get a devoted hard-core of people outside NK who truly believe the DPRK to be a workers' paradise where everybody is happy, content, well-fed, well-housed under the benign and fatherly wing of the Dearly Beloved Great Leader. In the past I had just enough of an association with far left politics in Britain to be aware of the existence of a grouping even other people on the revolutionary Left thought were odd and strange. "Tankies", so-called because they believed the workers' revolution needed to go into places like Hungary and Czechoslovakia with lots of tanks, so as to reinforce the dialectic arguments in a very forceful way, and root out anti-social and revolutionary elements by force for necessary re-education. "Tankies" were also the dwindling hard-core whose only criticism of Joseph Stalin was that he could get a bit squishy-soft and compassionate. After Stalin's demise, the need for a Great Leader transferred to Enver Hoxha , Ceaucescu, Jaroslawski, et c.

It seems as if today, the Tankie mentality only really has one place left to go, as there is a dearth of far-left dictators... the world ain't what it was, hey?

Enter the Korean Friendship Association, whose British wing seeks to dispel all those fascist and capitalist slurs on the Workers' Paradise and the Beloved Leader.

https://www.nknews.org/2019/05/leaving-the-british-friends-of-north-korea-eight-years-in-the-uk-kfa/

Anyway. via - indirectly via - the KFA, I found myself looking at some of the things North Korea alleges about the Korean War of 1950 - 54. A lot of them are either batshit crazy or have grown in the telling, for instance. When I got as far as war crimes and alleged mass murders carried out, with slavering glee, by the United Nations coalition, with inhuman American fascists giving the orders, I was poised to dismiss this a a load of invented bollocks too.

Only to discover that in one case, the North Koreans do not appear to have been making it up. The history at this distance is confused and it is entirely possible the NK side is milking it for everything it can get, but something appears to have happened at Sinchon in 1950, as the American/South Korean armies retreated back to the 38th Parallel. (This is the same US Army that also did raw things at places like My Lai, 18 years later, its army tending to have dismissive ideas about "gooks".)

Big question.... how many war crimes were commited by American and Allied troops in Korea in 1950 - 54? Not something taught in our history classes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinchon_Massacre

There were definitely massacres committed by western forces. The BBC series by Max Hastings detailed some of them. Out of interest, the US MIA/POW lobby was influential, even in Hollywood, despite the numbers 'only' being about 4000 cases. For context, allied forces MIA in Korea were about 50,000. Of course Vietnamese civilian casualties were up to 3 million and Korean ones were over a million.
 
Also BBC iplayer has an amazing film about an unemployed Danish baker who became the number two person in the world KFA, in order to expose just how depraved the regime is. It's beyond parody.
 
Also BBC iplayer has an amazing film about an unemployed Danish baker who became the number two person in the world KFA, in order to expose just how depraved the regime is. It's beyond parody.
Related to this sort of thing?
 
Oh why are we so not surprised?

All utopias are unpleasant. Yet, maybe we should strive towards them.

(Does that even make sense?)
It's in human nature to, I think. The kicker is - everybody would have a different idea as to what constitutes "utopia" and one person's conception of utopia would be somebody else's dystopia - inevitable. And if one person is alpha enough to try to make their personal utopia work, with the assistance of others who buy into it, then a lot of other people end up on the receiving end - you end up with Pol Pot, Hitler, Branch Davidianism, the Worldwide Church of God.... and in this case, Juche.

Of course there's Swift's dictum, or perhaps it was Voltaire, that for every proposed Utopia, you have to measure this against the general inability of most of the human race to manage something as relatively simple as a chicken run.

One thing that's come out of even a cursory investigation of available material on North Korea is that it isn't as black-and-white as that. Something that has come out in my online viewing is that where objective outside observers have been able to get access to ordinary Koreans, people do still laugh, and dance, and live the best lives they possibly can. This does not appear to be stage-managed (although you can never be certain). I'm prepared to buy into Pyongyang, the capital, being a sort of "privilege zone" where people are not generally worked to death, where nobody starves (but only one person manages to get obese), where the standard of available housing seems to be on a par with, perhaps, East Germany as was (the most successful Soviet Bloc state), and available food and clothing is adequate-verging-on-good by Western standards. The "social compact" of communism appears to be working here - do not make waves or oppose the State and you will be looked after, cradle to grave. Even the candid unauthorised film material seems to show people here who genuinely do appear happy with their lot; it would be really hard for the State to force people to fake that degree of what could be called contentment, and for them to fake it all the time - especially when the people being filmed seem genuinely unaware of the hidden cameras. And this is really at odds with the received wisdom in the West, it has to be said. Even if you view the KFA as a bunch of idealistic dreamers at odds with reality - you still get the impression that we are not being told or shown everything about NK and the bits that do not fit the narrative are being edited out.

Not that I'd want to live there, and equally clandestine undercover fiming outside Pyongyang suggests a grimmer, more horrible, reality outside the "Potemkin village" of Pyongyang. But what you see of North Korea has a sort of stark aesthetic attractiveness to it; paradoxically, I got a sense of physical space and physical open-ness about it. In some respects, it is an extraordinarily beautiful landscape.

And... will the selective editing going on today become the history we are taught tomorrow - with the things which are carefully edited from the narrative now becoming the "forgotten history" of tomorrow, leading to a researcher discovering forgotten archive video of genuinely happy North Koreans, and having a "wtf!" moment at seeing something utterly at odds with the accepted doctrine?
 
Last edited:
Ireland was once a tobacco-producing country!

The hybrid plants appear to have been used as a "base" for blends, so their European origin was not much advertised.

Most of this documentary is given over to Ireland's oldest tobacconists, Cahill's. The owner is a mine of information and a most eloquent speaker on the pernicious weed. She has diversified into tea-blending. They find a young pipe-enthusiast, who seems to have drifted in from another age - though the video seems to date from 2020! :pipe:
 
Last edited:
Ireland was once a tobacco-producing country!

The hybrid plants appear to have been used as a "base" for blends, so the European origin was not much advertised.

Most of this documentary is given over to Ireland's oldest tobacconists, Cahill's. The owner is a mine of information and a most eloquent speaker on the pernicious weed. She has diversified into tea-blending. They find a young pipe-enthusiast, who seems to have drifted in from another age - though the video seems to date from 2020! :pipe:

Tea leaves are also linked with nicotine these days.
https://medicine.uq.edu.au/article/2018/08/prisoners-smoke-nicotine-infused-tea-leaves#:~:text=Following a ban on tobacco,lozenges mixed with tea leaves.&text=Around 74% of prisoners entering the system are smokers.
 
A bitter sweet tale.

An Indian student won acclaim in Wales as a bard and became the first woman to get a law degree from University College London. And although racial prejudice brought a heartbreaking end to a three-year relationship she never went home, writes Andrew Whitehead.

Dorothy Bonarjee was Indian by birth, English by upbringing, French by marriage - and Welsh at heart. To put it another way, she was the perpetual outsider, sometimes by chance, and at other times by choice. Even the moment of her greatest achievement in 1914 - winning one of Wales's most prestigious cultural prizes while still a teenager - is notable above all because she was so obviously not Welsh.

In India, Dorothy Bonarjee and her family stood apart, by class, culture and religion. They were upper-caste Bengali brahmins, but Dorothy spent her childhood living a simple life on the family estate hundreds of miles away from Bengal in Rampur, near India's border with Nepal. They were also Christians - her grandfather served as a Scottish pastor in Calcutta (now Kolkata) after being converted by celebrated Scottish missionary Alexander Duff.

Dorothy's life changed utterly in 1904 when - along with her brothers, Bertie and Neil - she was sent to London for her schooling. She was just 10 years old. Dorothy's parents - both of whom had spent time in Britain - wanted their children to be, like them, part of the "England returned" who were increasingly running India on behalf of the imperial power. ...

https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-55430717
 
Roman Oratorical Gestures
Roman Oratorical Gestures - YouTube
Note: this guy looks funny in that costume and American accent but he's really good. Here's his longer lecture on Cicero:
Cicero and the Secrets of Persuasive Oratory - YouTube
Thing is, with the advent of the internet, online lectures and You Tube videos, there's a really big (and interesting) 'thing' about hand gestures while lecturing going on now. Linked, by psychology and subconscious 'body language', I find it fascinating!
 
Why did so many Germans support Hitler?
by Tyler Cowen March 30, 2005 at 7:47 am in
A well-respected German historian has a radical new theory to explain a nagging question: Why did average Germans so heartily support the Nazis and Third Reich? Hitler, says Goetz Aly, was a "feel good dictator," a leader who not only made Germans feel important, but also made sure they were well cared-for by the state.

Why did so many Germans support Hitler? - Marginal REVOLUTION
 
It's quite simple, really. Hitler used large socialist public projects, such as motorway construction and the creation of Volkswagen, to revive the German economy. It was a success. If only they'd stopped there and allowed the people to enjoy their new-found affluence.
 
It's quite simple, really. Hitler used large socialist public projects, such as motorway construction and the creation of Volkswagen, to revive the German economy. It was a success. If only they'd stopped there and allowed the people to enjoy their new-found affluence.
There's no doubt that Hitler's "national socialism" was genuine in the sense that fair-haired Aryan Germans were given a lot of perks by the State, but having got their support he was then able to begin his campaign of conquest. Whether he had that planned out from the beginning, and whether he had thought he could do it without opposition from Britain and other major powers, is the question. In Speer's book he mentions Hitler referring to the war with Britain as "this mess," as though it really hadn't occurred to him that he would be challenged over his actions.
 
Thing is, with the advent of the internet, online lectures and You Tube videos, there's a really big (and interesting) 'thing' about hand gestures while lecturing going on now. Linked, by psychology and subconscious 'body language', I find it fascinating!

And Ninjas and esoteric Buddhism:
Kuji-in_Hand_Seals.jpg


And the most common gesture I see often these days:
It's not the "OK" symbol; it's used by Obama and others as if invisible darts are being thrown each tome a point is being made --or a deadly magic dart is being tossed at the opponent..
ct-1559227328-fkycqw5wh9-snap-image
 
The effects of the Wall Street crash can't be ignored either. Immediately prior to that Germany had made a good recovery from the First World War and the hyperinflation of the early twenties (where ordinary people suffered but the government was able to pay reparations with almost worthless currency). All of a sudden there was another economic shock. The Nazis were very good at capitalising on such situations, as we all know. Even then they struggled in some of the elections in the early thirties, they only ended up in power thanks to some silly people who thought they could control Hitler.
 
Whether he had that planned out from the beginning, and whether he had thought he could do it without opposition from Britain and other major powers, is the question. In Speer's book he mentions Hitler referring to the war with Britain as "this mess," as though it really hadn't occurred to him that he would be challenged over his actions.
I don't think Hitler wanted Germany to go into a head-to-head clash with Britain, or he avoided thinking about it altogether. He really did think that he could invade Europe without Britain doing something. A touch of naivete, perhaps.
 
Today, 500 years ago, Pope Leo X excommunicated Luther and all his followers. This papal ban has never been retracted. Also the Lutherans proclaimed the pope to be the Antichrist. This has also never been retracted. Time to do it this year?

Also: there'll be a big party in Worms to celebrate the start of the reformation. Quite a nice little town, Worms.

https://amp.dw.com/de/500-jahre-lut...-ökumene/a-56086454?__twitter_impression=true
 
There's no doubt that Hitler's "national socialism" was genuine in the sense that fair-haired Aryan Germans were given a lot of perks by the State, but having got their support he was then able to begin his campaign of conquest. Whether he had that planned out from the beginning, and whether he had thought he could do it without opposition from Britain and other major powers, is the question. In Speer's book he mentions Hitler referring to the war with Britain as "this mess," as though it really hadn't occurred to him that he would be challenged over his actions.
Have been recently reading a book on the German navy in WW2 and the man in charge, Raeder, was assured by Hitler that war with the UK would not happen before 1945 at the earliest - Hitler was sure we wouldn't declare war over Poland. And the evidence is that he really didn't want a war with the UK, he was seeking some sort of naval treaty to allow a respectable sized navy for the Germans. Even after Dunkirk Hitler was hoping we'd sue for peace. At the same time planning to invade us.

The trouble with analysing Hitler, certainly after 1939, is that he basically trusted no-one and all his long term plans stayed pretty much in his head until he gave the orders.
 
Today, 500 years ago, Pope Leo X excommunicated Luther and all his followers. This papal ban has never been retracted. Also the Lutherans proclaimed the pope to be the Antichrist. This has also never been retracted. Time to do it this year?

Also: there'll be a big party in Worms to celebrate the start of the reformation. Quite a nice little town, Worms.

https://amp.dw.com/de/500-jahre-luther-bann-neuer-anlauf-der-ökumene/a-56086454?__twitter_impression=true

When I was a kid I thought that Luther's opposition to the Diet of Worms was actually a refusal to eat worms!
 
An Indian student won acclaim in Wales as a bard and became the first woman to get a law degree from University College London. And although racial prejudice brought a heartbreaking end to a three-year relationship she never went home, writes Andrew Whitehead.

Reading through @ramonmercado 's post I discover that Dorothy Bonarjee married french painter Paul Surtel. I own one of his paintings. Now returning you to your normal programming! :)
 
Simone Segouin mostly known by her codename Nicole Minet was only 18-years-old when the Germans invaded. Her first act of rebellion was to steal a bicycle from a German military administration and to slice the tires of all of the other bikes and motorcycles so they couldn't pursue her. She found a pocket of the Resistance and joined the fight using the stolen bike to deliver messages between Resistance groups.
She was an extremely fast learner and quickly became an expert at tactics and explosives. She led teams of Resistance fighters to capture German troops, set traps and sabotaged German equipment. As the war dragged on her deeds escalated to derailing German trains, blocking roads, blowing up bridges and helping to create a German-free path to help the Allied forces retake France from the inside. She was never caught.
Segouin was present at the liberation of Chartres on August 23rd 1944 and then the liberation of Paris two days later. She was promoted to lieutenant and awarded several medals including the Croix de Guerre. After the war she studied medicine and became a paediatric nurse. She is still going strong and this October (2021) she will turn 96 :badge:

awarresist.jpg


'I was proud to march into Paris as Resistance fighter' says Simone Segouin - Soldiering On Awards
 
Last edited:
It's quite simple, really. Hitler used large socialist public projects, such as motorway construction and the creation of Volkswagen, to revive the German economy. It was a success. If only they'd stopped there and allowed the people to enjoy their new-found affluence.
Im pretty sure the peoples car or voljswagon was a ponzi scam at the time and nobody who paid up front for one actyally got one, they were first mass produce by the british army operating the volkswagon factories, but i may have dreamed it
 
Back
Top