F-15 Eagle

 

https://plane-encyclopedia.com/cold-war/f-15-eagle/

The F-15 Eagle is beyond any doubt one of the most famous air superiority fighters of the second half of the Cold War, and a worthy successor of the also famous McDonnel Douglas F-4 Phantom. For instance, its predecessor was designed to be a fighter with attack capabilities for any weather condition, and the same concept was taken into account when developing the Eagle, only that it was intended mainly for air superiority. Interestingly, and despite the F-4 being a naval plane for most of the part, the F-15 would be a combat eagle on use by the USAF. There is also another thing both planes have in common, despite being the Phantom already in combat and the Eagle yet to be developed: the Vietnam War. As it happens, high number of casualties made the US Navy and the Air Force, along with the influence of Secretary of State Robert McNamara, to look for new models to replace the existing ones, including the Phantom. The introduction of the Mig 25 Foxbat provided the final argument in favour of the development of a new aircraft for air superiority. And with while the Navy would ultimately incorporate the Grumman F-14 Tomcat, the USAF decided to go for its own fighter, resulting in the F-15, being the counterpart of the Tomcat and taking the Mig-25 as inspiration in terms of performance, to say the least.

The F-15 Eagle is single-seat – or double seat in tandem in certain versions – twin-engine all-weather tactical fighter/air superiority fighter with attack and bombing capabilities, with cantilever shoulder-mounted wings. As it was briefly mentioned, the Vietnam War gave way for its requirement given the high losses to soviet-made aircraft (often old models) back in 1964, with 1968 being the year of requirements issuing and 1969 the year when development of the Eagle began. The main requirement was for the new fighter to be of air superiority and having secondary attack capacities. McDonnell Douglas was the company that awarded the requirements, thus developing the Eagle from the abovementioned year and flying the first prototype in 1972. NASA, in addition, came to take active part in the development of the F-15, especially on its mission requirements, at the same time of the development by the industry contractors.

The Eagle became to be one of the most advanced fighters of the times, clearly fulfilling its mission as it is considered the best air superiority fighter. The secret of its effectiveness and resilience lies on its structure, which is made of metal and then titanium at most of its components, and the empennage made of composite materials – twin aluminium/composite material honeycomb – and the vertical stabilizers made of boron-composite skin. This allowed the tails and the rudders to be very thin yet resistant. The wing also plays its role in bestowing the flying and combat capabilities of the F-15, as this has a cropped delta shape with a leading-edge sweepback of 45 degrees. There are no leading-edge flaps, and the trailing edge – or posterior area of the wing – is having ailerons and a simple high-lift flap. As a result, the wing’ low loading allows the F-15 to be very manoeuvrable without sacrificing speed in the process. The powerplant (two Pratt & Whitney F100-PW-100 turbofans engines with afterburners) and the avionics also play a role in providing the F-15 with its exceptional qualities: The former by bestowing speeds of up to 2.5 Mach and a good time/altitude ratio, the latter by allowing the crew to track and engage targets at distanced up to 160 km (87 miles) and targets at very low and high altitudes.

The F-15 has proven to be a platform capable of receiving structural and avionics/electronics improvements, further enhancing its combat and flight capabilities, with new radars, computers, weapons controls and armament type, powerplants (Pratt & Whitney F-100-PW-220), warning and navigation systems. The F-15 could even receive low visibility technologies, proving the adaptability and capacity of the aircraft to incorporate the latest technologies, as it is the case of the proposed F-15SE Silent Eagle, where its weapons carrying capabilities are proposed to be equally upgraded. This version could co-operate with 5th generation air assets, let alone to almost operate like one.

The F-15 has witnessed action not only in the air campaigns waged by the USA in the Middle East, the Balkans and Central Asia, but also with other air forces, being the Israeli Air Force where the F-15 have had similar combat intensity, and the Saudi Air Force making some considerable use of their F-15s. With the USAF, the F-15 on its different configurations achieved air superiority by shooting down many air assets of Iraq in air-to-air combats or in the ground, as well as to inflict a serious damage to Iraqi military and governmental infrastructure, contributing at a great extend to the sound victory of the Coalition in 1991. The F-15 even managed to destroy a low flying helicopter with a laser guided bomb. The F-15 kept a watch in enforcing the established no-fly zones after this conflict. The Balkans were another scenario where the F-15s made their presence to be felt, by pounding Serbian ground targets and even scoring 4 enemy kills (Serbian Mig-29s). The Second Iraq War, Afghanistan and strikes against ISIS saw the F-15E mainly in action, attacking important targets on these three scenarios, and even providing Close Air Support (CAS) for the troops in the ground.

With the Israeli Air Force, it achieved its first air-to-air kill, establishing then Israeli air superiority over the skies of Lebanon and against Syrian air assets. It had seen use also as a long-range striker and as a platform for attacking specific targets. Saudi Arabia also had some air kills in the 80’s and during Operation Desert Storm, using the F-15s nowadays to strike important targets in Yemen.

As of now, the F-15 is still in service and production (by Boeing, as McDonnell Douglas was absorbed by this company), with the USAF considering to operate with this fighter until 2025 or 2040 at the latest, and production to be maintained until 2019. So far, 1074 units have been produced (by 2012).

Design

The F-15 is an all metal (later on aluminium) semi-monocoque fighter with a shoulder-mounted wing, powered by two engines: 2 Pratt & Whitney F-100-PW-100 (F-15A, F-15B and F-15C) or F-100-PW-220 (F-15DJ and F-15 J), or F-100-PW-229 (F-15E). Two engine air intakes are located at each side of the fuselage, starting from the half area of the cockpit with a intake ramp configuration. The wings have a characteristic shape of a cropped delta shape with a leading-edge sweptback of 45 degrees, starting at nearly half of the wing. It lacks of manoeuvring flaps at the leading edge, having only a simple high-lift flap and ailerons at the trailing edge. As the wing has a low loading with high thrust-to-weight ratio, the F-15 can perform tight turns without any loose of speed, capable also of sustaining high G forces. Noteworthy to point out that the airfoil thickness has a variation of 6% at the wing root, to 3% at the wingtip. The empennage is made out of metal, with the two vertical stabilizers made out of honeycomb twin aluminium and composite materials covered with boron-composite skin, allowing them to be thin but very resisting. This means that the F-15 has two tails, the same way as the Grumman F-14 and the Mig 25. The horizontal stabilizers also have a remarkable characteristic of their own, as they have dogtooth within their structural shape, being able to move independently thus increasing control. The aerodynamic brake is located on the top of the fighter’s structure, behind the cockpit. The landing gear is a retractable tricycle. Noteworthy to point out that the F-15E lack of the typical exhaust petals covering the engine nozzles.

The cockpit is placed high in the frontal part of the aircraft, featuring a one-piece windscreen and a large canopy, allowing a full 360 degrees visibility for the pilot. In most F-15 variants the canopy is designed for one pilot. However, the F-15B, F-15D, F-15DJ and F-15E have a canopy designed for a crew of two: a pilot and a weapons officer in the case of the F-15E, and the student and instructor in the case of the training versions.

The wings and the same structure of the fighter allows it to carry a large number of weaponry and other devices. Among the weaponry normally carried by the F-15, there are AIM-7F/M Sparrow, AIM-120 AMRAAM, AIM—9L/M Sidewinder, as well as the M61 Vulcan Gatling gun at the right wing root. Other armament the F-15 is usually armed with are a varied array of free-fall and directed bombs, rockets, air-ground or anti-ship missiles, such as the AGM-84K SLAM-ER, AGM-84H Harpoon Block II anti-ship missiles, AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile JASSM, AGM-88 HARM anti-radar missiles, and AGM-154 JSOW missiles. ECM pods, external fuel tanks and low-drag conformal fuel tanks (CTFs), which are attached to the sides of the air intakes and cannot be dropped, are usually among the additional equipment carried by this fighter.

The avionics of the F-15 allow an optimal operationalization of the armament carried by this fighter, as well as its navigation and combat-electronic performance and multi-mission capabilities. Among the avionics of the F-15, it could be accounted: Heads Up Display (HUD), the advanced pulse-Doppler Raytheon radars APG-63 and APG-70, the AN/ASN-109 Inertial Guidance System, the Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing System (JHMCS), ECM pods, Hazeltine AN/APX-76 or Raytheon AN/APX-119 IFF device, Magnavox AN/ALQ-128 Electronic Warfare Warning Set (EWWS), Loral AN/ALR-56 radar warning receiver and a Northrop-Grumman Electronics System ALQ-135 internal counter-measures system. All of these comprise the electronic brain of the fighter, which in combination with the powerplant, the aerodynamics and the weapons systems, makes of the F-15 an outstanding air asset that can achieve supreme control over the skies it operates.

As the design of the F-15 allows adaptation and upgrades, all of the versions were receiving gradual upgrades in avionics and engines, being the F-15E the most prominent. Yet some versions operated by other air forces, such as the Israel Air Force and the Republic of Korea Air Force can receive electronic and avionics components developed by those nations, proving that the Eagle is entirely adaptable to receive technology other than of its country of origin. And its versatility allows combat conversions, explaining why a single airframe can have air superiority, attack or electronic warfare missions, deciding the outcome of any campaign either in the skies or the ground.

An Eagle Not to Mess With

The F-15 has proven to be a very powerful asset and a though adversary for those obliged to face it, feeling the powerful strike of the F-15. It has a suitable name that makes honour to its combat capabilities, which have been proven in action from the year it was unleashed. During the 1991 Gulf War and the aftermath, the F-15 achieved air superiority and delivered hard blows to the Iraqi military assets, by scoring 32 fixed-wing aircraft as confirmed kills (Iraqi fighters, fighter/bombers, transport airplanes and trainers that fell under the claws of the F-15), and 4 helicopters as kills. Many of these kills were achieved in air-to-air combats or simply by attacking the Iraqi air assets on the ground, being involved also in the hunt for valuable targets or by watching the skies over Iraq and the Balkans. In the hands of Israel and Saudi Arabia, the F-15 Eagle scored 41 and around 4-5 air kills respectively. With Israel, the F-15 left a deep impression on those that were targeted by its bombs. In the Balkans, the F-15 scored four air kills and equally contributed to pound the Serbian military facilities at Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo.

The Eagle began the 21st century with more capabilities to increase its striking power, as well as seeing more combat in the light of the 9/11 attacks and the campaigns against terrorism. During the Second Iraq war of 2003, the Eagle once and again delivered precision strikes that decimated Iraq’s combat capacities. During the Afghan campaign, it attacked key Taliban and terrorist targets, at the point of even supporting the troops on the ground, and in recent years, it contributed at weakening the military power of Libya during its own Arab Spring, as well as striking important targets in the anti-terrorist campaign over Syria, Libya and Iraq. The F-15 Eagle has been on active duty basically during its entire operational life, being at the very first line.

The Eagle, as a last, could be able to destroy the eyes above the skies, as it was used for experimental tests where it fired a two-staged anti-satellite missile, proving capable for doing so. It has more than fulfilled the requirements set for its development after the nasty experiences of the Vietnam War, war that gave birth to one of the most powerful and memorable birds in all the history of aviation, being the Eagle a milestone by itself.

On Georgia Street in Downtown Vancouver. Autumn of 2020.

 Georgia Street is an east–west street in the cities of Vancouver and Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. Its section in Downtown Vancouver, designated West Georgia Street, serves as one of the primary streets for the financial and central business districts, and is the major transportation corridor connecting downtown Vancouver with the North Shore (and eventually Whistler) by way of the Lions Gate Bridge. The remainder of the street, known as East Georgia Street between Main Street and Boundary Road and simply Georgia Street within Burnaby, is more residential in character, and is discontinuous at several points.

West of Seymour Street, the thoroughfare is part of Highway 99. The entire section west of Main Street was previously designated part of Highway 1A, and markers for the '1A' designation can still be seen at certain points.

Starting from its western terminus at Chilco Street by the edge of Stanley Park, Georgia Street runs southeast, separating the West End from the Coal Harbour neighbourhood. It then runs through the Financial District; landmarks and major skyscrapers along the way include Living Shangri-La (the city's tallest building), Trump International Hotel and Tower, Royal Centre, 666 Burrard tower, Hotel Vancouver and upscale shops, the HSBC Canada Building, the Vancouver Art Gallery, Georgia Hotel, Four Seasons Hotel, Pacific Centre, the Granville Entertainment District, Scotia Tower, and the Canada Post headquarters. The eastern portion of West Georgia features the Theatre District (including Queen Elizabeth Theatre and the Centre in Vancouver for the Performing Arts), Library Square (the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library), Rogers Arena, and BC Place. West Georgia's centre lane between Pender Street and Stanley Park is used as a counterflow lane.

East of Cambie Street, Georgia Street becomes a one-way street for eastbound traffic, and connects to the Georgia Viaduct for eastbound travellers only; westbound traffic is handled by Dunsmuir Street and the Dunsmuir Viaduct, located one block to the north.

East Georgia Street begins at the intersection with Main Street in Vancouver's Chinatown, then runs eastwards through Strathcona, Grandview–Woodland and Hastings–Sunrise to Boundary Road. East of the municipal boundary, Georgia Street continues eastwards through Burnaby until its terminus at Grove Avenue in the Lochdale neighbourhood. This portion of Georgia Street is interrupted at several locations, such as Templeton Secondary School, Highway 1 and Kensington Park.

Georgia Street was named in 1886 after the Strait of Georgia, and ran between Chilco and Beatty Streets. After the first Georgia Viaduct opened in 1915, the street's eastern end was connected to Harris Street, and Harris Street was subsequently renamed East Georgia Street.

The second Georgia Viaduct, opened in 1972, connects to Prior Street at its eastern end instead. As a result, East Georgia Street has been disconnected from West Georgia ever since.

On June 15, 2011 Georgia Street became the focal point of the 2011 Vancouver Stanley Cup riot.

 

Treasures of the World | Taj Mahal

 

https://www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld/a_nav/taj_nav/main_tajfrm.html

Long long ago, in a land called Hindustan, reigned a dynasty of Kings as cultured as they were courageous... It isn't that they were without fault – they could be cruel and cunning warriors – but they were also men of exceptionally good taste, and blessed with the bountiful means to express their vision, they built a splendid empire of beauty, knowledge and grace beyond any known before.

Now there was one among them, known as "King of the World," whose heart's passion burned like fire, and who built a monument for the sake of love that would capture the imagination of the world...

At the age of fifteen, the prince who would be called King of the World met a refined and highborn young girl at a bazaar within the walls of the royal palace in Agra. Court poets celebrated the girl's extraordinary beauty. "The moon," they said, "hid its face in shame before her." For both, it was love at first sight. Five years would pass before the auspicious day chosen for their wedding, and from that moment, they became inseparable companions.

Prince Khurram was the fifth son of the Emperor Jahangir, who ruled in the country now known as India in the sixteenth century. Although the prince was not the eldest son, he soon became the favorite.

"Gradually as his years increased, so did his excellence," wrote Jahangir. "In art, in reason, in battle, there is no comparison between him and my other children." At his father's command, Prince Khurram led many military campaigns to consolidate the empire, and in honor of his numerous victories, Jahangir granted him the title "Shah Jahan", "King of the World", a tribute never before paid to an as yet uncrowned Mughal king.

But when Jahangir's health failed, his sons rivaled for succession to the throne. Ultimately, after years of battle and the deaths of his brothers under suspicious circumstances, Shah Jahan was victorious. In 1628, the King of the World ascended the throne in a ceremony of unrivaled splendor. Beside him stood his queen, his comrade and confidante. He titled her "Mumtaz Mahal", "Chosen One of the Palace", and commissioned for her a luxurious royal residence of glistening white marble. In turn, she gave him tender devotion, wise counsel and children – many children – to insure the continuance of the magnificent Mughal dynasty.

The reign of Shah Jahan marked the long summer of Mughal rule, a peaceful era of prosperity and stability. It was also an age of outrageous opulence, and a time when some of the world's largest and most precious gems were being mined from India's soil. According to author and art historian Milo Beach, "Jewels were the main basis of wealth, and there were literally trunks of jewels in the imperial treasury, trunks of emeralds, sapphires, rubies and diamonds. Shah Jahan inherited it all. He had immense wealth and tremendous power and palaces all over the country." The splendor of his court outshone those of his father and grandfather. Inscribed in gold on the arches of his throne were the words, "If there be paradise on earth, it is here."

But in this world, there is an ancient tradition: sweet pleasure is not without bitterness...

In 1631, in the fourth year of his reign, Shah Jahan set out for Burhanpur with his armies to subdue a rebellion. Even though Mumtaz Mahal was in the ninth month of a pregnancy, she accompanied him as she had done many times before. On a warm evening of April in 1631, the queen gave birth to their fourteenth child, but soon afterwards suffered complications and took a turn for the worse. According to legend, with her dying breath, she secured a promise from her husband on the strength of their love: to build for her a mausoleum more beautiful than any the world had ever seen before.

The King cried out with grief, like an ocean raging with storm... He put aside his royal robes and for the whole week afterward, His Majesty did not appear in public, nor transact any affairs of state... From constant weeping he was forced to use spectacles, and his hair turned gray...

Shah Jahan grieved for two years. By official opinion, he never again showed enthusiasm for administering the realm. His only solace would be found in the world of art and architecture, and an obsession with perfection that would last his lifetime. Six months after the death of his wife, he laid the foundation for her memorial across the Jamuna River near his palace in Agra... the jewel of India, the far-famed Taj Mahal.

Pearly pink at dawn and opalescent by moonlight, Mumtaz Mahal's tomb is so delicately ethereal that it threatens to disappear during Agra's white-heat afternoons. In the center of the mausoleum lie the remains of the Empress. Subdued light filters through the delicate screens surrounding her cenotaph and mullahs chant verses from the Koran. It is here that Shah Jahan came with his children to honor the memory of his beloved wife. Here, at last, he found solace.

But Shah Jahan's tranquility was suddenly shattered when his son Aurangzeb assailed the throne. Just as Shah Jahan had conspired against his brothers for Jahangir's empire, so did his own son plot against him. In 1658, Aurangzeb declared himself emperor and imprisoned his father in a tower of the Red Fort in Agra. For Shah Jahan, King of the World, who once commanded the unbounded wealth of an empire, his only consolation would be a view across the Jamuna River to his vision of Paradise.

Shah Jahan created his vision of the world, not as it is, but rather as it should be – harmonious, graceful and pure. Inspired by love and shaped to perfection, the Taj Mahal immortalizes one man's love for his wife and the splendor of an era.

Let the splendor of the diamond, pearl and ruby vanish like the magic shimmer of the rainbow. Only let this one teardrop, the Taj Mahal, glisten spotlessly bright on the cheek of time...

Lunar: Silver Star Story - The Greatest Overlooked RPG? - Xygor Gaming

 

My review of Lunar: Silver Star Story for the Sega CD and Sony PlayStation.

If Mughals did not loot India, what exactly was their contribution to India?

 

https://www.dailyo.in/variety/rajputs-mughal-empire-india-economy-medieval-india-british-raj-1857-revolt/story/1/21997.html

India gained Independence in 1947 after a long struggle for freedom from British imperialism. Perhaps because of this, and the lack of historical knowledge and sense, we see all conquests as colonisation.

Historian Harbans Mukhia, an authority on medieval India, describes colonisation as “governance of a land and its people, now on behalf of and primarily for the economic benefits of a community of people inhabiting a far-off land”.

According to him, the Mughals came to India as conquerors but lived in the subcontinent as Indians, not colonisers. They merged their identity as well as that of their group with India and the two became inseparable, giving rise to an enduring culture and history.

He goes on to say Mughals being seen as foreigners was never a point of discussion till quite recently, so well had they integrated and assimilated into the country they had made their own.

There was no reason for it either, since Akbar onwards, all Mughals were born in India with many having Rajput mothers and their “Indianness” was complete.

Babur had invaded India at the behest of Daulat Khan Lodi and won the kingdom of Delhi by defeating the forces of Ibrahim Khan Lodi at Panipat in 1526 AD. Thus he laid the foundation of the Mughal Empire.

Most Mughals contracted marriage alliances with Indian rulers, especially Rajputs. They appointed them to high posts, with the Kachhwaha Rajputs of Amber normally holding the highest military posts in the Mughal army.

It was this sense of a shared identity with the Mughal rulers that led the Indian sepoys who rose up in 1857 against the British East India Company in the first war of Indian Independence, to turn towards the aged, frail and powerless Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar — they coronated him as Emperor of Hindustan and decided to fight under his banner.

Between the 16th and 18th centuries, the Mughal Empire was the richest and most powerful kingdom in the world and as French traveller Francois Bernier who came to India in the 17th century wrote, “Gold and silver come from every quarter of the globe to Hinduostan.”

This is hardly surprising considering that Sher Shah and the Mughals had encouraged trade by developing roads, river transport, sea routes, ports and abolishing many inland tolls and taxes.

Indian handicrafts were developed. There was a thriving export trade in manufactured goods such as cotton cloth, spices, Indigo, woollen and silk cloth, salt etc. Indian merchants trading on their own terms and taking only bullion as payment led Sir Thomas Roe to say, “Europe bleedeth to enrich Asia”.

This trade was traditionally in the hands of the Hindu merchant class who controlled the trade. In fact, Bernier wrote that Hindus possessed “almost exclusively the trade and wealth of the country”. Muslims, on the other hand, mainly held high administrative and military posts.

A very efficient system of administration set up by Akbar facilitated an environment of trade and commerce.

This led the East India Company to seek trade concessions from the Mughal Empire and eventually control and destroy it.

A very interesting painting in the possession of the British Library named "The East Offering Her Riches to Britannia" dated 1778 shows Britannia looking down on a kneeling India who is offering her crown surrounded by rubies and pearls. The advent of the famous drain of wealth from India started with the East India Company not the Delhi Sultanate or the Mughals.

Edmund Burke was the first to use the phrase in the 1780s when he said, India had been "radically and irretrievably ruined" through the Company’s "continual drain" of wealth.

Let us examine India’s economic status prior to its becoming a British colony.

The Cambridge historian Angus Maddison writes in his book, Contours of the world economy, 1–2030 CE: essays in macro-economic history, that while India had the largest economy till 1000 AD (with a GDP share of 28.9 per cent in 1000AD) there was no economic growth. It was during the 1000 -1500 AD that India began to see a economic growth with its highest (20.9 per cent GDP growth rate) being under the Mughals.

In the 18th century, India had overtaken China as the largest economy in the world.

In 1952, India’s GDP was 3.8 per cent. “Indeed, at the beginning of the 20th century, "the brightest jewel in the British Crown" was the poorest country in the world in terms of per capita income”, said former prime minister Manmohan Singh.

In 2016, on a PPP-adjusted basis, India’s was 7.2 per cent of the world GDP.

Since its established now that the Mughals did not take away money let’s talk of what they invested in. They invested in infrasturcture, in building great monuments which are a local and tourist draw generating crores of rupees annually. As per figures given by the ministry of culture in Lok Sabha, just the Taj Mahal built by Shah Jahan has an average annual ticket sale of more than Rs 21 crore. (Last year saw a drop in visitors to the Taj Mahal and figures stood at Rs 17.80 crore.)

The Qutub Complex generates more than Rs 10 crore in ticket sales, while Red Fort and Humayun’s Tomb generate around Rs 6 crore each.

A beautiful new style known as Indo-Islamic architecture that imbibed the best of both sensibilities was born.

They invested in local arts and crafts, and encouraged old and created new skill sets in India. As Swapna Liddle, the convenor of INTACH's Delhi Chapter says, “To my mind the greatest Mughal contribution to India was in the form of patronage to the arts. Whether it was building, artisanal crafts like weaving and metalworking, or fine arts like painting, they set standards of taste and perfection that became an example for others to follow, and brought India the global recognition for high quality handmade goods that it still enjoys.”

Mughal paintings, jewels, arts and crafts are the key possessions of many a western museum and gallery as they were looted in and after 1857. Some can be found in Indian museums too.

Art and literature flourished under the Mughal Empire. While the original work was being produced in the local and court languages, translation from Sanskrit to Persian, too, was taking place.

Akbar encouraged the translation of the Ramayana and the Mahabharat to dispel the ignorance that often led to communal hatred.

Dara Shukoh’s Persian translation of the Upanishads named Sirr-e-Akbar was taken by Bernier to France, where it reached Anquetil Deperron, who translated it into French and Latin.

The Latin version then reached the German philosopher, Schopenhauer, who was greatly influenced by it and called the Persian Upanishad “the solace of his life”. This awakened an interest in Post-Vedic Sanskrit literature among the European Orientalists.

It wasn’t only Mughal emperors who were building structures — Hindu mansabdars and traders were building temples and dharmshalas in many cities, especially Banaras.

Madhuri Desai, in her extremely well-researched book Banaras Reconstructed, writes: “The riverfront ghats bear an uncanny resemblance to the Mughal fortress-palaces that line the Jamuna river in Agra and Delhi.”

It’s dangerous to generalise history especially on communal lines. While economic deprivation for the ordinary Indian existed, as it did in other societies of the world, as Frances W Pritchett, Professor Emerita, Columbia University says, “The impression one gains from looking at social conditions during the Mughal period is of a society moving towards integration of its manifold political regions, social systems and cultural inheritances. The greatness of the Mughals consisted in part at least in the fact that the influence of their court and government permeated society, giving it a new measure of harmony.”

Thus, to say that the Mughals looted India is a falsification of history.

It’s always best to read history to get facts, and not WhatsApp forwards — where people often share false information to suit their own bias.

Mr. Plinkett's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Review

 

At long last, Mr. Plinkett's review of the latest Indiana Jones film has made its way to youtube!

Now listening to Between The Lines by Janis Ian and Breakin' by various artists...

 

West Georgia and Seymour – sw corner

 

https://changingvancouver.wordpress.com/2017/01/23/west-georgia-and-seymour-sw-corner/

The buildings on the edge of the image on the left are a set of Mission styled 1920s stores designed by H H Gillingham. Across Seymour is a theatre, which in this 1973 image was known as the Strand Theatre. Across the lane was the Birks Building, demolished in 1975 with the theatre to allow the construction of the Vancouver Centre. The construction of Birks in 1912 had required the demolition of three early office buildings built by Canadian Pacific directors before 1890.

The theatre was opened in August 1920 as the Allen Theater, one of the first super deluxe movie houses in Canada; described in promotional material as ‘Canada’s finest and most modern photoplay theatre’. It cost $300,000 to build and it was completed in only six months. Some reports say that after a year the Allen chain of 50 theatres were bankrupt and theatre was purchased for a nickel on the dollar, reopening as the Strand with 1,950 seats in 1923. Others suggest that the Ontario based Allen family reorganized their operation with US partners, creating the Famous Players brand. The first is more accurate: the Allen family were from Ontario but had moved their operations to Calgary in 1910. They expanded their chain significantly in the late 1910s, often hiring Detroit architect C Howard Crane, (with Kiehler & Schley).  This theatre had many modern amenities including built-in cigarette lighters and, in a local touch, featured work by Vancouver sculptor Charles Marega.

A decline in movie attendance, the loss of the rights to show Paramount movies and increased competition in the early 1920s did see the company bankrupt, and they sold to Famous Players in 1923 at a significant loss. Most cinemas were renamed as a Capitol – but not in Vancouver where there was already a Capitol down Seymour Street.

Both the Allen and Strand featured live vaudeville acts before their movies, sometimes supplied by Fanchon and Marco, (Fanchon Simon and her brother Marco Wolff). Even after relaunching with US backers, the cinemas were not immune to outside economic realities. In 1932, the theater went dark for a year due to the depression; (Fanchon and Marco were booked at the Orpheum instead). Ivan Ackery managed the Strand in 1934 and recalled hired the Dumbells, a touring musical-comedy show formed by a group of soldiers from the 3rd Division, to appear before the movies.

Although built as a movie theatre, the stage was large enough to permit use as a regular theatre. In 1940, for example, The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo  performed at the Strand. The show featured a cast of 150, including Alicia Markova.

Image source City of Vancouver Archives CVA 447-391

Mughal Empire Dominated the World

 

https://historyofyesterday.com/mughal-empire-39eb1e7d6045

The Mughal Empire was the largest manufacturing and economic power in the world at the end of the 17th century. The famous Taj Mahal, one of the new Seven Wonders of the World, is a prime example of the Mughal wealth.

The British were so impressed by the wealth and power of the Mughal emperors, that the slightly changed word “mughal” entered the English language. The term “mogul” describes an all-powerful ruler of industry such as the music or finance industry.

The rulers of the Mughal Empire owned many of the world’s biggest diamonds, including the famous Koh-i-Noor. Originally weighing 186 carats (37.2 g), the diamond was later re-cut and is now part of the British crown jewels.

The throne of Mughal Emperors, called the Peacock throne, is the best illustration of the prosperity of the Mughal Empire. Made of over 1 tonne of gold (1150 kg) and 230 kg of gems it would be worth over one billion US dollars today.

The famous gemstones such as the Koh-i-Noor (186 carats), the Akbar Shah (95 carats), the Shah (88.77 carats), the Jehangir (83 carats), and the Timur ruby (283 carats) decorated the Peacock throne.

A brief history of the Mughal Empire

The Mughal Empire, known also as the Mogul Empire, ruled most of today’s Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The Mughal rulers were Mongols by ethnicity and Muslims by religion. Most of their subjects were Hindus.

The first Mughal Emperor, Babur, was a descendant of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane. They had the wish for conquest in their DNA.

The third Mughal Emperor, Akbar, was one of the best rulers in human history.

Akbar expanded the size of the empire, allowed the freedom of religion, improved human rights, and the education system. The Hindus could get senior positions in the government and military. He also implemented reforms that led to the economic prosperity and stability of the Mughal Empire.

The empire reached its peak under the emperor Aurangzeb, who ruled from 1658 to 1707. The following story shows the importance of the Mughal Empire on a global scale:

When the English pirate Henry Every looted a convoy of Mughal ships, returning from the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, furious emperor Aurangzeb triggered the first global manhunt in the human history to get his revenge.

The Aurangzeb's descendants were weak rulers who were mere puppets to the British. The British East India Company defeated and exiled the last Mughal ruler Bahadur Shah Zafar in 1858.

The wealth of the Mughal Empire

Around 1700, the GDP of the Mughal Empire had risen to 24% of the world economy surpassing both China and entire Western Europe. The Mughal Empire became the world’s dominant power.

The wealth of the Mughal Empire around the year 1700 would translate to a staggering $21 trillion today.

The Mughals were the world’s leaders in manufacturing at the end of the 17th century, producing 25% of the world’s industrial output.

The Europeans connected the world through sea lanes and the Mughal Empire became integrated into international trade. Through trade, silver from the Spanish Americas poured into the empire. Spices from the Far East traveled through the empire to Europe. The most traded spice, the black pepper, originated from India.

Europe wanted Mughal products, especially cotton and silk textiles. The high-quality cotton fabric from India was much more comfortable to wear than wool or linen. Actually, the English word for the “pyjamas” originated from the Hindi word “pajama”, meaning the “loose trousers”.

Half of the manufacturing power of the Mughal Empire came from the province of Bengal Subah. The province encompassed much of modern Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal and it accounted for 12% of the world’s GDP. Today’s equivalent would be the combined GDPs of Italy, the UK, France, Brazil, and Canada.

Contemporary scholars described the province as a “Paradise of nations”. The people of Bengal Subah had the world’s highest living standards and wages.

The living standards in the Bengal Subah were better than those in Great Britain, which had the highest living standards in Europe.

The plunder of Bengal Subah contributed to the Industrial Revolution in Britain during the 18th century. The money looted from the Bengal was used for industrial investments and vastly increased British wealth.

Conclusion

After the decline of the Mughal Empire and a century of the British oppression and exploitation, India lost much of its global power. However, today India is one of the emerging superpowers of the world and has the world’s fastest-growing economy.

1982 Honeywell computers commercial (Elisabeth Shue)

 

On Lonsdale Avenue in North Vancouver. Autumn of 2020.

 

How 'Rich' was Mughal India?

 

https://cisindus.org/2020/11/19/how-rich-was-mughal-india/

In the past two decades a concerted effort has been made by a group of compromised self-proclaimed historians like Rana Safvi and Ramachandra Guha to prove that everything good in India was brought to it by the Muslims and particularly the Mughals. One of the primary claims is that Mughal India was ‘rich’. Historian Saumya Dey in this brilliant article analyzes whether even this claim was true or not.

Those Pious, Grateful Liberals

It has been a while that I have been noticing a trend on social media. Every now and then, I see some pious liberal on Facebook or Twitter thanking the Mughals for making India ‘rich’. As the liberals imagine, Babur and his descendants made our country a veritable land of milk and honey. How tenable is this imagination though? And how right are our liberals in thanking the Mughals in retrospect?

We cannot deny that there was a lot of wealth in Mughal India, as is indicated by the grandeur of Mughal architecture. It sure cost a lot to construct the Red Forts at Agra and Delhi, the Taj Mahal, and the many tombs of the Mughal rulers and nobility. The Mughal dynasty and nobility possessed and flaunted a measure of wealth that inspired legends in contemporary Europe – Europeans talked about the ‘Great Mogul’s’ riches with awe. Indeed, in the English language we still sometimes refer to billionaire industrialists and bankers as ‘Moguls’. The sight of untold amounts of wealth reminds us of the Mughals even today. There is no doubt that the Mughal rulers and nobility lived it up.

However, was Mughal India truly and genuinely ‘rich’? Was there, in other words, general prosperity and economic wellbeing in Mughal India? By any means, just the ruler and the ruling class being wealthy does not make a country ‘rich’.  One finds so many instances of Arab, African, or South American dictators amassing vast treasures and living lavishly. But these tyrants ruled desperately poor countries. So, I propose, we ought not to be blinded by the glittering affluence of the Mughal royalty and nobility and hastily term Mughal India ‘rich’. Let us first consider the living standards of the broad masses living in the Mughal realms. Only then, I believe, we shall be in a proper position to decide as to whether Mughal India was ‘rich’ or not.

The ‘Great Divergence’ and Impoverished Artisans

Mughal rule in India coincided with the onset of what many economic historians term the ‘Great Divergence’. What is meant by this is that living standards in Mughal ruled India began to noticeably fall behind those in Northwestern Europe. To put it in plainer language, as Mughal rule was first established and then consolidated over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most Indians seem to have beenquite worse off than the inhabitants of the relatively prosperous parts of Europe. This is indicated by some wage data provided in a research paper authored by Bishnupriya Gupta and Debin Ma. We see that average silver wages for unskilled workers amounted to 3.4 grams per day in southern Englandfrom 1550 to 1599. The comparable figure for India in the same period is only 0.7 grams. One must note that this is exactly the time when the Mughal Empire was striking roots in India. According to Gupta and Ma, the silver wage data “unambiguously” suggests that “the Great Divergence was already well established in the sixteenth century.” India, the two contend, now more resembled “the backward parts of Europe.” Again, the variance between silver wages in England and India remained considerable in the first half of the seventeenth century, when Mughal ‘glory’ was at its apogee. From the year 1600 to 1649, unskilled workers in the south of England earned 4.1 grams of silver wages per day on an average. Their Indian counterparts received only 1.1 grams of the same in this period.

Though I am unable to furnish wage data for skilled workers in Mughal India, it does not look like that they fared a lot better than their unskilled coevals. Going by anecdotal evidence, a lot of them appear to have provided their labor to the ruling class under coercion. In this sense, their situation seems comparable to that of the ‘dependent’ or ‘servile’ peasantry of feudal Europe. It was a common practice for the Mughal monarchs and nobility to have ateliers in their palaces and maintain a number of artisans. The French traveler Francois Bernier writes that “nothing but sheer necessity or blows from a cudgel” made them go on. As about the independent artisans, Bernier’s account suggests that they were quite inadequately compensated for what they made. For example, Bernier writes that the Mughal nobility were likely to “pay for a work of art considerably under its value and according to their own caprice….” An artisan, it seems, could not protest this treatment. If he did, he could suffer physical violence. According to Bernier, the Mughal ‘omrah’ [nobility] did not hesitate to “punish an importunate artist…with the korrah (sic.)”, or the whip. I assume, Bernier must mean “importunate” in demanding a fair price. I must also add that, having been personal physician to prince Dara Shikoh, Bernier must have had the opportunity to observe the ways of the Mughal nobility up close. Due to the princely patronage he enjoyed, he very possibly had access to Emperor Shahjahan’s court. It is, thus, very unlikely that our Frenchman is fibbing or making things up here.

Thus, poorly treated and paid by the rulers and nobility, artisans in Mughal India appear to have generally lived in poverty. As Bernier observes, they could aspire to nothing more than “satisfying the cravings of hunger” and dressing in the “coarsest raiment.” Upward mobility in this section of the population, it seems, was not common. Bernier’s verdict on the lot of the artisans is that they “could never hope to attain to any distinction” or purchase “either office or land….”

Agriculture in Mughal India

How did the great bulk of the Indian population, the peasantry, fare under Mughal rule? Not very well, as we see. A rich mine of information on agriculture, rural relations of production, and the peasantry in the Mughal Empire is Irfan Habib’s The Agrarian System of Mughal India. Currently Professor Emeritus at the Department of History, Aligarh Muslim University, this very detailed monograph by him throws considerable light on the sad plight of the peasantry in the Mughal Empire, its terrible oppression, and the ills that plagued the Mughal agrarian administration. Let me, by the way, point out to the reader that this is the same Irfan Habib who had charged at the Kerala Governor, Arif Mohammad Khan, at the Indian History Congress last year when he had spoken in support of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) during his speech. Prior to committing that act so richly becoming of his age and dignity, Prof. Irfan Habib had also, for years, used every possible ruse and casuistry to prevent the construction of a temple on the so called ‘disputed site’ at Ayodhya. Hence, I believe, when a man such as this concedes that agriculture and the peasantry in Mughal India were beset with a few problems, it must really have been so.

Irfan Habib writes that there was extensive trade in agricultural produce in the Mughal Empire.The nomadic banjaras, for example,transported foodgrains in bulk over long distances. These were then sold in marts in different corners of the Empire. This trade in foodgrains was also aided by the abolition of the many varieties of transit dues under Mughal rule. But did the peasantry benefit from this marketization of agricultural produce? No, not quite. There was, it seems, a considerable gap between the “price obtaining in the secondary market and that paid to the peasants.” As it seems, the latter price was much lower. This “margin” was probably caused by the peasants’ “indebtedness, the various cesses, the malpractices in the market and the imposition of monopolies….” The Mughal era Indian peasant, thus, does not appear to have been particularly prosperous, despite all the commercialization of agricultural produce that took place then. Therefore, we see that, while agricultural produce moved in the direction of the urban centers and was marketized, the opposite did not happen to a commensurate degree. Urban manufactures did not find a market in the rural areas, very likely because the peasants were in no position to purchase them. Habib writes that

“the more prosperous zamindars must have sought superior quality cloth, jewelry and weapons fashioned in the towns. But whether the peasants also contributed to such demand to any considerable extent may well be doubted. On the whole, the trade was heavily in one direction – from villages to towns.”

Discussing the living conditions of the general populace, Habib is remarkably candid. He quotes the Dutch traveler Palsaert who visited India in the reign of Jahangir. We see that Palsaert was particularly struck by the misery of the common masses. They, he observed, suffer from a poverty

“great and miserable…[and their life] can be depicted or accurately described only as the home of stark want and the dwelling place of bitter woe.”

Habib discusses the diet and clothing of the rural masses in the light of this remark. He admits that the peasants subsisted only on the coarsest grains. Sometimes, as a matter of fact, they could not afford even these. The peasants of Sind, for instance, writes Habib, survived on the seeds of a wild grass (called dair) “for quite a long period each year.” Just as the diet, the clothing of the rural people was extremely rudimentary, presumably on account of their wretched poverty. Vast numbers of rural men and women, it seems, could afford to cover only the middle of their bodies with a small piece of cloth. Habib mentions this Englishman who lived in India in Jahangir’s reign and observed that their forms would be naked but for “their privities (sic.).” Equally rudimentary and rude were the dwellings of the rural folks. These were fashioned out of bamboo, reeds, or mud.

Famines and periods of scarcity, one gathers from Habib’s account, were rather frequent in the Mughal realms. The “territories around Agra, Bayana and Delhi”, for example, were ravaged by a famine from 1554 to 56. Agra itself, the then capital of the Empire, was left “desolated with only some houses remaining.” “Severe scarcity” was the lot of Gujarat “some time (sic.) during the 1560s.” An “acute famine” broke out around Sirhind “in or about 1572-73.” Again, in 1574-75, there was a “serious famine” in Gujarat. Another great famine affected Gujarat and “most of the Dakhin” from 1630 to 1632. In 1636-37, “famine and scarcity” prevailed in Punjab. Then, a “prolonged period of scarcity” commenced in the North, very likely due to the depredations caused by the war of succession between Dara Shikoh and Aurangzeb.  It lasted into the first “four or five years” of Aurangzeb’s reign. In 1671, an “acute famine ravaged the territory extending from the west of Banaras to Rajmahal.”

The land revenue levied in the Mughal Empire was very steep. Habib writes that, as per the instructions in the “revenue literature” of Aurangzeb’s reign, as also “the orders passed in certain cases”, the land revenue had to “everywhere amount to half the produce”. It appears that this extraordinarily high revenue demand was motivated “by a formal regard for the Shariat (Muslim law), which prescribes this as the maximum for kharaj(land tax).” Though “strength giving”, or taqavi, loans were advanced to the peasants to encourage cultivation, this very debilitating revenue demand must have generated some rural misery. In comparison, the revenue demand in ancient India was a lot more humane. For instance, the customary royal share of the produce in the Gupta Empire, termed bhaga, was “usually fixed at the rate of one-sixth”.

Why was the revenue demand so high under Mughal rule? This was because it was levied by two sets of people, both invested in exploiting the peasantry to the maximum – the jagirdars and the imperial authorities. All jagirdarsin the Mughal Empire were also mansab, or military rank, holders and were required to maintain a certain number of troopers from the revenues of their land assignments, or jagirs. The tendency of the jagirdars was to “set the revenue demand so high as to secure the greatest military strength of the empire.” It seems that they sought to extract the maximum from the peasants so as to have the financial resources to equip their troopers as best as possible. On the other hand, the imperial authorities’ revenue assessments approximated the surplus produce, “leaving the peasant just the barest minimum needed for subsistence.” Habib candidly admits that “It was this appropriation of the surplus produce that created the great wealth of the Mughal ruling class.” To make matters worse, since the jagirdars were periodically transferred and did not hold a land assignment for more than three or four years, they never followed “a far-sighted policy of agricultural development.” The jagirdar would, thus, resort to “any act of oppression that conferred an immediate benefit upon him.”  Frequently, we are told by Habib, “peasants were compelled to sell their women, children and cattle in order to meet the revenue demand.” Another desperate measure that the peasants resorted to was flight – sometimes, they simply abandoned their lands and ran away, unable to bear the revenue burden. This phenomenon was “growing in momentum with the passage of years.” Equally commonly, peasants turned rebellious and defiant, refusing to pay the exorbitant revenue. There were even specific terms used in Mughal administration to describe the villages which “went into rebellion or refused to pay taxes” – these were called mawasor zor talab.

Overall, it ought to be apparent by now, the agrarian economy of the Mughal realms was not really in a flourishing state. As Bernier had observed, the ground was “seldom tilled otherwise than by compulsion.” And this was because a peasant in the Mughal Empire could not

“avoid asking himself this question: ‘Why should I toil for a tyrant who may come to-morrow (sic.) and lay his rapacious hands upon all I possess and value, without leaving me, if such should be his humour, the means to drag on my miserable existence?’”

Commodity Consumption in Mughal India

In the middle of the seventeenth century, when the Mughal Empire presented a glittering façade to the world, a significant development was afoot in Northwestern Europe. Commodity consumption was undergoing a spurt in that part of the world and diffusing through the social body. In simpler language, we see the beginnings over there of what we today term ‘consumerism’. In the Netherlands, for example, ever larger numbers of people were buying pocket watches, better quality furniture, chinaware, and paintings. This was on account of a concomitant rise in household incomes. These phenomena have been documented and examined in detail by Jan de Vries in a very interesting monograph titled The Industrious Revolution.

Do we see anything similar happening in contemporary Mughal ruled India? Like in the Netherlands, was commodity consumption turning into a broad-based phenomenon in our country back then? No, not at all. Kenneth Pomeranz, for example, points out that “there was a significant increase in luxury consumption in Mughal India”, but there was no emergent ““fashion system” with broad participation from many classes….” In simple language, he is saying that commodity consumption in the Mughal Empire was heavily skewed – the purchase of high-end goods was rising, but one does not notice a diversity of classes making their own distinct consumption choices. Pomeranz is thus unsure if one can“speak of rising popular consumption in India as comparable to that in” contemporary China, Japan, and Western Europe. And this was because the broad masses were just too impoverished for that. Disparities in the Mughal Empire, as revealed by the estimates of Pomeranz, were simply monstrous. He writes that in the year 1647 only “445 families received 61.5 percent of all revenues, which were about 50 percent of gross agricultural output….” No doubt, Europeans in India could not help but notice “its extremes of wealth and poverty.”

Conclusion

I shall keep this part very brief and precise – overall, it seems very erroneous to term Mughal India ‘rich’. In terms of living standards, India was already falling behind the better off parts of Europe. Mughal rule was characterized by the ruthless exploitation of the primary producers, namely, the artisans and the peasants. And there is scant evidence of ‘popular consumption’ in Mughal ruled India. Commodity consumption in the Mughal Empire was skewed in favor of the luxuries due to the poverty of the common masses. No, Mughal India was not ‘rich’, only the Mughal royalty and nobility were.

Inside Hitler’s Plan To Build The “Capital Of The World”

 

https://allthatsinteresting.com/welthauptstadt-germania

On Amazon’s alternative history thriller, The Man in the High Castle, viewers are taken into a CGI-world of a new Berlin that has grown in scale and grandeur to reflect its place as the center of a Thousand Year Reich that now covers most of the globe.

But rather than springing from the mind of filmmakers, this Nazi super-city is based on real plans conceived by Adolf Hitler and Albert Speer, the “General Building Inspector for the Reich Capital.” The project was started in 1937. A massive scale model was made, sections of Berlin were cleared, and its construction sites may have even initiated the Holocaust.

Hitler was determined this vision of a Nazi dystopia called Welthauptstadt Germania (World Capital Germania) would be finished by 1950. Speer had impressed Hitler with his work on buildings at Nuremberg, which were deliberate reinterpretations of classical architecture into massive, distinctly austere Nazi architecture designed to intimidate and overwhelm.

This aligned with Hitler’s vision to make Welthauptstadt Germania the grandest city of them all by taking the best monuments Europe had to offer and to super-size them. Most of these monuments would be placed along a seven-kilometer (4.3 miles) Boulevard of Splendours to create an overall narrative describing Nazi Germany’s superiority to citizens and visitors alike. At the south end of the boulevard, would sit the Triumphal Arch, designed to dwarf Paris’ Arc de Triomphe, which could fit inside Hitler’s planned arch six times. At the north end, the boulevard would open up into a parade ground featuring a colossal Fuhrer’s Palace, the Reich Chancellery, and the ridiculously massive Grand Hall.

Only a handful of buildings were constructed. Hitler’s Reich Chancellery was one, with its Long Hall twice as long as Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors, which inspired it. Unfortunately, it was destroyed in the bombing of Berlin in 1945. Another building was the stadium for the 1936 Berlin Olympics, built five miles from Berlin’s center. It was the largest in Europe, modeled off the Roman Colosseum, but 200 meters longer. After the game’s success, Hitler decided he needed a more massive arena, which, was it planned, would house every Olympic Games hence. It was only partially built.

The rest of Welthauptstadt Germania would be new ring roads, autobahns, tunnels and living areas. The environment would have been hostile to citizens. Traffic lights and tramways would be a thing of the past, forcing pedestrians underground into a system of tunnels just to cross the roads and negotiate the complex roadways.

The architecture would literally and metaphorically oppress its people.

Areas of residential Berlin were marked for development. Speer and his cronies had 60,000 apartments bulldozed and 100,000 Germans became homeless. The real suffering was once again directed at the Jews. There would be no place for them in this new city, so 25,000 apartments were seized from Jews. Evicted, they were sent to ghettos, then concentration camps, while homeless Germans were crammed into their apartments.

The Jews became the laborers. Speer apparently remarked: “The Yids got used to making bricks while in captivity in Egypt.”

Many believe the “Night of Broken Glass” in Nov. 1938 was the beginning of the Holocaust but it started months earlier with Germania’s construction.Gross-Rosen, Buchenwald, and Mauthausen concentration camps were built near quarries, while Sachsenhausen was built near a brickworks. Speer signed a contract with the SS to have all bricks shipped to Germania’s construction sites. Sachsenhausen was 35 kilometers from Berlin’s center, so canals ferried the quarried stone to the Welthauptstadt Germania construction sites. These brickworks proved the harshest labor in all camps. Literally, tens of thousands were worked to death.

The workforce of 130,000 included not only Jews but POWs. Then in June 1938, police started rounding up tramps, gypsies, homosexuals, and beggars off the streets to make up the labor force.

Hitler’s project was not without its critics. Speer’s number two, Hans Stefan drew a series of caricatures which parodied the overbearing nature of the Germania project in secret. Several drawings poke fun at the ridiculous size of the Grand Hall. One depicts Berlin’s largest building, the Reichstag, being accidentally moved by a crane during construction of the impossibly large Grand Hall.

Stefan does not hold back in criticising the changes to Berlin, which he sees as tampering with German history and culture. Hitler had the Victory Column relocated. Stefan’s response was to show the Goddess Victory, unhappy with Hitler’s decision, escaping via parachute from her fixture at the top of the column.

Construction on Welthauptstadt Germania finally ground to a halt as the Second World War progressed. Speer believed that Nazi victory was imminent and remarked that Allied air strikes on Berlin had helped to level the old city to pave way for Germania. They hadn’t.

Though Hitler committed suicide Albert Speer was luckier. At the Nuremberg Trials he charmed the court, and despite his heavy use of concentration camp labor, he denied knowledge of the Holocaust. Spared execution, he spent the next twenty years in Spandau prison.

Just finished watching At Close Range (1986) and Baby It's You (1983)...

 

Now listening to Power Windows by Rush and Veckatimest by Grizzly Bear...

 

A Chrono Trigger Review for the Modern Gamer – OTAQUEST

 

https://www.otaquest.com/chrono-trigger-review/

Dig into the overgrown weeds of any old JRPG discussion thread on a gaming forum, or just peak at the manic diatribes game players scrawl onto Twitter today, and you’ll largely be told by people who’ve been dedicated to their controllers for decades that you need to play Chrono Trigger.

Going off mass critical reputation, Chrono Trigger probably ranks just under Final Fantasy 7, and the oldest of these Video Game Sages will tell you why Trigger‘s actually better than Final Fantasy 7, even if you didn’t ask!

Ultimately, this Chrono Trigger review wasn’t written to determine where it ranks in the imaginary pantheon of Japanese Role Playing Games any ‘real gamer has to play’. Unlike the overbearing chiding for not playing it yet delivered to you in a string of tweets by ‘SuperSaiyanCloud’, we’d like to point out this Hall of Famer is still perfectly playable and every bit as charming today.

There is no need for the nostalgia goggles.

The one-off Chrono Trigger came about after Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakeguchi and Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii went on a research trip together in 1992 to study the newest developments in the world of computer graphics. We should mention some rando named Akira Toriyama who created some random cartoon called Dragon Ball had accompanied them, and they felt the spark to create something unique.

Development would begin the following year, with fellow heavyweight Nobuo Uematsu and future legends scriptwriter Masato Kato and composer Yasunori Mitsuda getting drafted along the way. The game’s original Super Nintendo release would manifest in early 1995 to instant acclaim. The game was essentially crafted by the JRPG supergroup to end all JRPG supergroups, and their combined talent, expertise, and artistic sensibilities still thoroughly shine when playing the game even now.

Being the diehards for these cretors that we are, we just had to write our own Chrono Trigger review.

Chrono Trigger launches quickly into what might be the most delightful introductory hour to any JRPG, using its colorful and since-iconic medieval festival setting to tease the player of the whimsy to come in their adventure. Like any Ye Olden Times town-wide celebratory affair, you’ve got your merry-making-men and your carnival games, but also giant fightable Neko Robots and a time machine that goes amok.

Immediately, a comic sense derived from Chrono Trigger’s joyful Dragon Quest lineage makes itself apparent, keeping the game light and refreshing, perfect for playing in hand-held bursts.

That haywire time machine, by the way, blasts Crono, our protagonist, and these other primo Toriyama cut-ups all throughout time. Cavemen times and Mad-Maxian futures alike are lovingly depicted via distinct pixel artwork that’s still quite stunning to eyes when you spend some time with it. The Jukebox’s worth of playful tunes from Nobuo Uematsu and Yoshinori Kitase fit these backdrops like a glove, and evoke a unique sense of place and time to each local you visit, often drawing from Final Fantasy’s unique Sci-Fi fantasy blend.

To be perfectly clear, with Chrono Trigger being a JRPG released in 1995, you’re going to have to stomach that oh so dreadful turn-based gameplay that Final Fantasy dropped after its first PS2 outing. This Chrono Trigger review can’t convince you to like that style of play if you don’t.

If you do like turn-based gameplay, or you are at least open to the idea after realizing you spent days fighting a giant monkey in Sekiro, the good news is that Chrono Trigger‘s one of the most approachable out there. Its real-timeturn-based system brings an active action bar to the game. That means that during a battle, the longer you take, the more turns the enemy will receive. If you now prefer a more relaxed approach, there is also the Wait mode, where if you’re in a command menu (like choosing an item or tech to use) time effectively stops.

The game also drops random battles entirely and instead incorporates fixed places for enemy locations on the map; your character levels will naturally progress as you travel through time. In other words, there is no need to grind.

Lots of the bosses have fun gimmicks that aren’t too difficult to figure out, which simulates some variety in your base JRPG gameplay. Honestly, if you enjoy Pokémon battles, you’ll be at home here.

Compared to a mainline Final Fantasy game, Chrono Trigger’s a little light on the story, less likely to jerk on your tears. However, you can actually beat this game in under 30 hours (if you don’t care about spending countless hours on discovering all twelve endings), with no time being wasted on grinding or nonsensical JRPG melodramatic convolution. Each minute in this relatively short adventure’s tight, every step through time precisely planned and impeccably designed.

Though you might not cry over what happens to party-friends Frog, Magus, and Ayla, you’ll come to treasure their peculiar company. They are much more lively than most SQUARE fare.

Many call Chrono Trigger a flawless game, and this 202X Century Chrono Trigger review doesn’t disagree with that assertion. It may be more limited in scope than its Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy cousins, but this concentrated bit of excellence feels especially fresh in today’s sequel- and remake-filled game climate.

You can play Chrono Trigger on PC and mobile, but we recommend hunting a DS copy if that’s an option for you.

Just finished watching Posse (1975) and Lincoln (2012)...

 

Now reading The Western Experience by Mortimer Chambers, Barbara Hanawalt, Theodore Rabb, Isser Woloch, Raymond Grew, Lisa Tiersten...

 

The Myth of “Totalitarianism”

 

https://theredphoenixapl.org/2009/09/10/the-myth-of-totalitarianism/

One doesn’t need to search for long to discover that words like “totalitarian,” “fascist” and “political extremist” are all the rage nowadays. Most often they serve as little more than personal attacks, rather than accurate descriptions of the forces at play. To call an opponent a “fascist” is one of the most groan-inducing clichés of the modern times. While much can be said about each of these words, and what they actually mean, it is worth noting that while “fascist” has a very particular political and historical meaning, and the phrase “political extremism” is extremely relative, the word “totalitarian” literally has no meaning at all.

One could say that, like “fascist,” it has become a meaningless buzzword, but that would be incorrect, since unlike fascism it was always a meaningless buzzword meant to smear any system that doesn’t follow the liberal capitalist viewpoint, as we shall see below.

Where Does the Word Come From?

The word “totalitarianism” was brought into the popular consciousness by scholar and author Hannah Arendt in her first major work, the 1951 volume The Origins of Totalitarianism. The idea behind this book was that communism and fascism were both somehow connected, and formed the same sort of society, which was called the “totalitarian” society.

In Arendt’s hands, the major differences between the USSR and Nazi Germany disappeared. Her theory suggested that two completely different political and social ideologies can be considered fundamentally the same when compared with the author’s own—in this case, liberal capitalism, which is the only ideology put forward as not “totalitarian.”

Since then, media puppets, right-wing intellectuals and the ruling class in general have made great play with the word “totalitarianism,” a word that one hears blaring from every television.

The Theory of “Totalitarianism” is Unrealistic & Unscientific

Essentially, the term “totalitarianism” is not a scientific term, but simply a tool. Its place in history was on the side of capitalism when it sought to find a way to equate the USSR with Nazi Germany.

In fact, Arendt’s theory of “totalitarianism” has never measured up in the real world. There has never been a so-called “totalitarian” society, not even under the fascist dictatorships of Hitler and Mussolini, nor could one ever realistically exist.

It is quite odd to read Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism, because she has no understanding of how socialism and fascism work and grossly distorts them both.

For example, she offers literally no explanation as to why the USSR and Nazi Germany were on opposite sides during World War II, nor why Nazi Germany invaded the USSR, nor why the USSR entered the conflict even before the United States, or why 22-27 million Soviet soldiers and civilians lost their lives at the hands of the Nazis.

From the way she describes it, the Nazis and the Soviets should have been on the same side against the capitalist and liberal nations, putting aside for a moment the fact that fascism is actually a form of capitalism—a fact that, of course, she also ignores.

Did World War II, the single greatest conflict in all of human history, merely happen as a result of personality conflicts on the part of Stalin and Hitler? The fact that communists and fascists were on opposite sides and bitterly fighting against each other—all this is nowhere in the “totalitarian” analysis. All that it seen is a chauvinist attempt to mush everything together.

The Theory of “Totalitarianism” is Hypocritical

The word “totalitarian” is used often in place of, or as a supplement to, the word “dictatorship,” which actually does have a meaning. A dictatorship, or a rule by a single class unrestricted by any laws, can exist, such as the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is called “totalitarian.” However, liberal democracies are dictatorships of the bourgeoisie, and they are not called totalitarian.

The criteria often given by those that have a definition of “totalitarian” are:

- All facets of society are controlled directly by the dictator and the government through force; the dictator dominates all areas of life without exception.
- A highly militaristic society which glorifies the military and the police, as well as other armed forces of the dictator and the ruling government.
- There is no separation of powers; judiciaries, legislative and executive are all controlled by the dictator or the ruling party.
- The dictator or the party controls the thinking of the masses.
- There is no freedom of speech or religion, no freedom of the arts and no freedom of the press except that which glorifies the dictator.
- Political repression is practiced on those that dissent from the dictator or ruling party.
- Torture of incarcerated persons and political prisoners.
- Forced or compulsory military conscription.
- Subordination of the individual in favor of the dictator and the ruling government.

What is notable about these above criteria? All of them also apply to liberal democracies. One only has to replace “dictator” with “capital” and “the government” with “capitalism.”

The last point here is the most controversial, since most loose definitions of totalitarianism come from the idea of the individual being subordinated to the collective. Individuals within capitalism are subordinate to money and the means by which it is made, in this case, by work. What a person can do within those societies depends on his or her ability to pay money and to work. Do scholars call capitalist countries totalitarian? No. It is word which serves no useful purpose except in propaganda.

Why Is Our Society Not Considered “Totalitarian?”

Money, profit and capital rule our society absolutely. Every aspect of our lives is subject to the will of capital. There can be no freedom of speech or religion, no freedom of the arts, and no freedom of the press insofar as capital exists. You can say anything you want, but without capital no one will hear you, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what will happen when you say something that becomes a threat to the existence of the ruling class. Take a look at what happened to the Black Panthers.

Take a look at what happened to Fred Hampton, George Jackson and Anna Mae Aquash. Take a look at Kent State, where the National Guard murdered unarmed student protesters.

You can worship whatever god you want, but does your religion actually free you from capital? You can draw, paint, sing, and create whatever you want, but if it doesn’t make a profit, how will you continue, and how often will you be able to do it? And if it is not in the interests of capital, how will you get an audience, and how big will that audience be? If the ruling class doesn’t like what you have to say, you will be silenced or more likely, never heard at all.

If art is not in the interests of capital, it will not be published, especially if it goes against those interests. And the press is, by and large, owned by capital itself.

The whole definition put forward of both totalitarianism and “political extremism” only has value within the camp of capitalist ideology. The concept is simply an invention of reactionary intellectuals in the NATO bloc.