July 1st, 2009
>>The Final Solution, as the Nazis called it, was originally only one of the exterminatory projects to be implemented after a victorious war against the Soviet Union. Had things gone the way that Hitler, Himmler, and Göring expected, German forces would have implemented a Hunger Plan in the Soviet Union in the winter of 1941–1942. As Ukrainian and south Russian agricultural products were diverted to Germany, some 30 million people in Belarus, northern Russia, and Soviet cities were to be starved to death. The Hunger Plan was only a prelude to Generalplan Ost, the colonization plan for the western Soviet Union, which foresaw the elimination of some 50 million people. (…)
At a time when German resistance to Hitler receives attention in the mass media, it is worth recalling that some participants in the July 1944 plot to kill Hitler were right at the center of mass killing policies: Arthur Nebe, for example, who commanded Einsatzgruppe B in the killing fields of Belarus during the first wave of the Holocaust in 1941; or Eduard Wagner, the quartermaster general of the Wehrmacht, who wrote a cheery letter to his wife about the need to deny food to the starving millions of Leningrad.<<
The New York Review of Books: Holocaust: The Ignored Reality. Also contains often neglected facts about the Great Terror in the Soviet Union, the geographics of World War II’s mass killings, and about the Expulsion of Germans (”Vertreibung”) after the war:
>>Although the expulsions were a case of collective responsibility, and involved hideous treatment, mortality rates among German civilians—some 600,000 out of 12 million—were relatively low when compared to the other events discussed here. Caught up in the end of a horrible war fought in their name, and then by an Allied consensus in favor of border changes and deportation, these Germans were not victims of a calculated Stalinist killing policy comparable to the Terror or the famine.<<
(Hat Tip: Will)
Posted in Antifa, Breakcore, Cut-up Germany | No Comments »
June 25th, 2009
Peter [the Deacon, who wrote in the twelfth century] tells us that Constantinus was born at Carthage, by which he probably means Tunis, since Carthage was no longer in existence, but went to Babylon, by which Cairo is presumably designated, since Babylon had ages before been reduced to a dust heap, to improve his education. His birth must have been around 1015.
Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, vol.1, p.744. Thorndike does not give any further reasons for those substitutions, i.e. why anyone would have referred to Cairo as Babylon, if it was common among writers of the time etc. He also translates “regis Babiloniorum” (of the king of the Babylonians) as “of the caliph,” apparently for the same reason.
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April 27th, 2009
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April 5th, 2009
>>Early Greek history “sets a special challenge to the disciplined mind. It is a game with very few pieces, where the skill of the players lies in complicating the rules”. So wrote Iris Murdoch in her novel The Nice and the Good. Strictly speaking, she was referring to the archaic period. But in practical terms, it could be extended to embrace the whole of ancient history, where sources are few; or, rather, appear in a sudden floods (usually associated with a very well-preserved writer such as Cicero) closely followed by frustrating periods of drought. Historians must wring every last drop of juice from this or that inscription, potsherd, or literary source, proceeding with painstaking care and engaging in minute acts of close-reading. But then the fun of it is that they may make the most extraordinary leaps of the imagination to bridge the gaps. This process, of almost pettifogging exactitude combined with what some might regard as little short of fantasy, can be frustrating. But it is this marriage of precision, abstract thinking and creativity that makes ancient history so absorbing and endlessly fresh. Someone is always coming along and knocking down the fragile house of cards constructed by the last thinker, and boldly building another elegant edifice.<<
Charlotte Higgins: End of an era (Guardian)
Tags: Ancient Greece, Charlotte Higgins, Greek, Guardian, Review, Robin Waterfield, Socrates, Why Socrates Died
Posted in Cut-up History | No Comments »
March 27th, 2009
>>But many rapists acquire what is sometimes called a “social license to operate” from the model of sex as a commodity (which constructs consent as the “abscence of no”) and from its close corollary, the social construct of “slut.”<<
Thomas Macaulay Millar: Toward a Performance Model of Sex, in: Friedman/Valenti: Yes means yes!
Tags: commodification, feminism, friedman, performance model of sex, sexism, slut, thomas macaulay millar, valenti, yes means yes
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January 4th, 2009
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November 14th, 2008
>>GP: Why do you deal with so many negatives?
M2: To dissolve them.
GP: Will you develop that point?
M2: No.<<
The Principia Discordia
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November 14th, 2008
>>“A is not A,” Hagbard explained with that tiresome patience of his. “Once you accept A is A, you’re hooked. Literally hooked, addicted to the System.”<<
(Shea/Wilson: The Illuminatus Trilogy!)
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