Pentagon holds first gay pride event
I don’t whether to laugh or cry. I think the latter though
Month: June 2012
Documentary Storm
DocumentaryStorm, a website for documentary lovers has asked me to help them promote their site and help them celebrate their one year anniversary. After checking it out I agreed, they have a pretty good collection of military themed documentaries. I have highlighted some of the ones I think are the best below. Fell free to check out their list at DS Military Videos. The Great War, This is the complete Great War series that was initially aired by PBS in the ’90s. The Survivors of Stalingrad: A good series about the battle for Stalingrad and the subsequent fate of the German troops who were captured there. Ancient Warriors: … More after the Jump…
Medieval Swordsmanship
Found a really interesting website today about a society aiming to recreate medieval and renaissance sword-fighting methods based on the instructions produced during the period. It is the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts. They have a fairly extensive website with plenty of interesting discussion of medieval fighting styles. They also rightly point out that what we see in movies is about as far removed from reality as The Hobbit. Very interesting site and worth checking out.
Awesome Quote:
What do you call it when someone steals someone else’s money secretly? Theft. What do you call it when someone takes someone else’s money openly by force? Robbery. What do you call it when a politician takes someone else’s money in taxes and gives it to someone who is more likely to vote for him? Social Justice.
Thomas Sowell – 27 Dec 2011 – Jewish World Review
Book Review: The Last Full Measure: How Soldiers Die in Battle by Michael Stephenson
[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the publisher for purposes of reviewing it. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] Michael Stephenson’s work The Last Full Measure: How Soldiers Die in Battle follows somewhat in the tradition of classics such a Keegan’s The Face of Battle and Victor David Hanson’s The Western Way of War. Where it differs from these two works as that while Keegan and Hanson focus on specific battles or time periods this book aims to be a more general description of the experience of combat throughout recorded history. In that, the book is … More after the Jump…
A Travesty Calling for Action
In today’s edition of Stars and Stripes and the LA Times is an article about a combat engineer facing charges for actions he took in combat in Afghanistan last year. The gist of the story is that the soldier involved shot an unarmed female in the middle of a firefight who was moving towards the rear of her vehicle. The description of the incident from the article is here: His convoy was reeling from a roadside bomb, his fellow soldiers were engaged in combat with insurgents and a mysterious black car had just screeched to a stop in the middle of the firefight. Some nine minutes later, a black door opens. Second 1: A … More after the Jump…
The Reality of War – Violent Death
Today I was reading a selection of articles from Foreign Affairs magazine dealing with modern Counterinsurgency and its perceived success or failure. One of the things that struck me about the articles and that Bing West brings out in his rebuttal to two critiques of a piece he wrote is the modern predilection for forgetting, either purposefully or not, that war is in essence about man killing man. What should be the enduring image of war is that of a battlefield strewn with bodies after the armies have moved on such as those below. That is not the image that the modern West has of warfare though. … More after the Jump…
D-Day 68th Anniversary
Just a reminder for everyone to stop today and take a moment to reflect on the events that happened 68 years ago today on the shores of Normandy in France. This is the day that the Allies opened up the long-awaited Second Front against Hitler’s Germany. The invasion took place along almost 50 miles of French coast using five named invasion beaches. From south to north the beaches were named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. The first days objectives were not reached over most of the front and in many places it would take weeks to reach objectives that were supposed to have been taken … More after the Jump…
Book Review: Why Germany Nearly Won: A New History of the Second World War in Europe by Steven D. Mercatante
[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] At first glance Why Germany Nearly Won: A New History of the Second World War in Europe is another of the rehashing’s of WWII in the East and West that have become so popular since the fall of communism in the 1990’s and the opening of previously closed Russian archives. That first glance would be wrong. Steven Mercatante has produced a very well written history of the war in the East that goes to the heart of why the Eastern … More after the Jump…