History part 4 the Russia

History, part 4 out of 3 The Russians, why are they such massive..oh wait I said that already but seriously, why are they such massive assholes?
So Russia is seen as a massive European/Asian power with a population of crude, Jew hating Alcoholics, run by a ruthless dictatorship that enjoys secret police and purges, as well as being absurdly stubborn/totally incompetent The Russia of 1914 is pretty much exactly the same, only slightly bigger. Russia is the second largest empire in the world at the time (And third largest Empire in history, second only to Mongolian and British).
That’s just massive. 300 million people making it the most populated nation in the world at the time (Ahead of even China and India then), seriously, this is huge, it includes the modern day nation of Russia (single largest nation today), as well as the modern day Kazakhstan (eight largest nation today) Turkistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Belarus, the Ukraine, Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Manchuria, Mongolia, and Georgia. Seriously its surreal how big this nation is, I mean…FUCK. Due to the size of Russia, its also famous for being hopelessly inept nation of all of Europe (which is some pretty stiff competition), and such a terrible place that you can only laugh. Despite abundant natural resources, its technologically primitive, not quite able to compete with the industrial powers of Western Europe. many areas don't have electricity, guns are in short supply, capitalism hasn't quite caught on yet, railroads suck, and serfdom is still around. Almost every time Russia has invaded a smaller nation in modern times they have lost or won at a humiliating cost. Russia was a ruthless autocratic dictatorship, lead by an Emperor known as the Czar/Tsar (Russian for Caesar), who ruled the nation with a an iron fist, if a really rusty badly made iron fist. Most of the nation was in intense poverty, with any political dissidence punished either by death or being sent to Siberia, (northeast Russia), which is the coldest part of Russia. Only the nobility had any real power, which was a problem because most of them were, inept corrupt, and so conservative that they refused any new ideas. Now Russia still had the serf system from the middle ages. Yes, that does mean that Russia has been trapped in the middle ages. Serfdom (slavery) means that the majority of the population was tied to their land, not allowed to leave, vote, or hold any office outside. The problem is Serfdom doesn't benefit a nation, as 200 million farmers<20>

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It happened here

I could see it honestly

There is something really attractive about WWII for history majors. I think its because most history buffs are massive anti social nerds, I mean, we are people who get really into things, and care about things. History is a story, the ultimate drama you might say, and as of such people who get really into history (cough, me, cough) often can feel disconnected by the tedium of everyday life, espically if your a teenager and your in a quagmire of apathy and small picture thinking (no I'm not bitter thank you very much). And World War II is the ultimate example of extremes, where the people who think about ethics on a regular basis are finally confronted with a real evil, and forcing the people who just want to get on with their lives to be forced to confront "real issues". There is a great quote from "Last King of Scotland", wonderful movie, where Ida Amin says
"You think you can to Africa to play white man with the natives, but you don't understand Nicolas, we are real. this room is real. And you dying here is the most real thing you've ever done". basically he is confronting the White upper class doctor Nicolas, who has been in Africa mostly for pleasure, that he is stuck in this hellish situation for real and he has just been trying to ignore it in a sort of void. And there is a sort of satisfaction for hte Audience, who has been in on the situation the whole time, when he is finally forced to confront his selfish pettiness. so WWI is a sort of a mental power trip, because people like me can picture apathetic people suddenly being confronted by "the real world". The people are Germany find themselves in a machine they can't stop, the Soviets find themselves in a War that just boggles the mind, the oh so civilied French and British are right against the facist hoard, and normal people are forced to stand up for what they believe in, or submit to the dictatorships. Its very..empowering to those who actually feel like they know how people act under desperate circumstances and being able to say mentally "Hey, if this was 1940's you'd totally be a collaberator"
Wow this introduction has really gotten out of hand. Anyways, the greatest problem with learning history is that we can't really know what it was like. When we read about it, its tedious dates, when we watch most movies, we are following heroes. If you believe Saving Private Ryan, its a way to be a hero (yeah, if only that mattered compared to the Eastern Front...), and if you watch Schindler's list you feel like a good man who did the right thing. But where it really strikes home is well...the home front. In England and America, the nations in WWII that we actually you know...care about, the home front has this image of patriotic unity, as everybody does their part to fight the Nazi threat, with lost of comradely and helping the cause and stuff that you know is too idealized to be true. But its really in France, or Poland, or Germany where the real challenge is presented, what would you do if the Fascists took over your nation, and were slowly taking away the "unclean". what would you do, and beyond the dramatic "I'll fight them to the death", but seriously, what would we do?
And that brings us to one of the best movies I've seen all year, It happened here, an alternate history where the Nazis take over in 1940. It was made in the mid 1950’s, and took eight years to make, entirely with volunteers. And of course, it got into a lot of trouble by the British, cause it took the idea of British resistance and made them like the French, IE a bunch of Nazi collaborators.

What makes this movie great is that it is clearly very smart, and was made by people who can think. The film main theme about collaboration. In most film’s about the Nazis, collaborators are either complete pansies, or selfish opportunists who are totally out for themselves. However in real life, whole nations allied with the Nazis during the war. The movie empathizes that most of the common people don’t want war or instability, with one women saying something to the effect “remember just after the war when we didn’t have any food or heat. At least the Germans brought back a degree of stability, lets just work with them until we are able to get back on our feet again.” There is a very British phrase when somebody says “I hated the chaos, I’m glad they made things orderly again. When you have troops in your nation, especially when they are more than willing to slaughter you and your family, working with them is only natural, if not excusable. Not to mention the fact that Fascist movements got rather powerful in England, as the Germans had been trying very hard to appeal to the English, thinking themselves the same race. Its like watching Vichy France but its in English, so we can actually. The film shown some chillingly authentic looking propaganda reels about how the British and Germans are the same people and need to work together for the sake of National Europe, especially with the focus on the fight against communism. Germany and England are somewhat similar culturally anyways, a fact exploited in WWII as Hitler, who never wanted to fight England and tried to make it an ally. The Nazi video inside the film shows the famous Soccer match in Flanders Field on the WWI Christmas Truce, where German and British troops almost ended the war on their own, and twists it to talk about the “natural bond between Germans and British”, much as the Nazis were subvert anything if they could make it serve their message. Even the

The main character is really normal. She isn’t a political in the least, she just wants to get by and not get involved. And in doing so, she become an unwilling compatriot of the fascists, because that the way radical groups take power. They assume, often rightly, that the majority of the populace just wants to get by, or be content with their bread and circuses. Thus, when the Nazis take power, people just let them go by without protest, because they don’t really understand this stuff always. This is the danger of apathy, because nobody asks questions or challenges the regime, which lets it pick up momentum, as it takes more effort to look up stuff to contradict its claims than to just go along with it. And when she finally sees the darker side of the regime, IE the euthanasia, its too late. The regime doesn’t do anything all at once, it slowly draws the people into its fold and by the time they discover the true nature of the Nazis they can’t turn back.

Also the resistance isn’t totally good. The main character is rather passive towards the Nazis, but hates the partisans because they kill some of her friends in the beginning of the film. And we see the resistance in the end act remarkably like the people they are fighting, slaughtering one of the British SS units after they have surrendered. You know, just like the allies did in real life. This film does not pull punches, as it also makes an effort to show the Fascists perspective. On one hand we have the British SS man who says “Lets get the country back on its feet, then we will worry about Germans”. And we even have the British Black-coats, and the film gives two real life British Neo Nazis six and a half mins of explaining their beliefs, even when they argue with each other over how to treat the Jews (Banishment vs. Final Solution, real life German argument).

This film is brilliant, and it really doesn’t pull its punches. There is no Hollywood attempts to color events, this is basically neorealism with Nazis. No other film really explores how occupation works in such depth, making this one of the few films that I’d recommend all history teachers showing in class. Check it out, it’s a B-Movie, but worth the quality fail. Also i like how even with taking England, the Soviets still defeat the Germans, it just takes much longer

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Call of Duty 4 mordern warfare

Hey guys. Now college apps are draining my free time, so sparse posting for another say......three weeks? Then i'll be back in action. But this is my school newspaper review of COD 4 enjoy
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Call of Duty 4

Remember the days when playing video games would make you nerdy and unpopular. In those days, when a girl asked her friends what she should get her boyfriend, her friends would sarcastically suggest a football or a knife or something equally overly macho. Now its just “Call of duty 4’ cause pretending you’re Special Forces is the manly way to spend your time, and in the same way GI Joes aren’t dolls, CoD is apparently not a video game apparently. Call of Duty, for those of you who have been frozen for years and recently unearthed, is a video game series until recently about World War II. In contrast to its rival series, Medal of Honor, Call of Duty has pretentious to realism, and tries to avoid American jingoism, traditionally having you play as the allies during the WWII games, since Russia really won the war. But I digress. Call of Duty 4 is a departure from their normal format, and is about modern warfare. Now of course, this is a departure from pretentious to fact into near fiction, but you know what, that’s alright, they are trying something new. One of the reason why most video games like to show WWII however is because it avoids controversy, nobody objects to killing Nazis because they went so far out of their way to make themselves evil that even the Soviets come off as good guys. Not to say that the allies didn’t do horrible things in the war, its just easier to get away by showing the conflict in black and white terms, which is harder with modern warfare, because modern wars tend to not be far. America tends to have the best weapons, best training and most advanced tactics, while their enemies are people in small third war countries using outdated rifles and machetes and guns given to them by us, which isn’t good drama. You can’t exactly have a game where you walk around in an Iraqi city for weeks trying to figure out which civilian secretly wants to kill you before being killed by a car bomb. Also modern warfare is sticky, its full of awkwardness, like if invading a sovereign nation to install a puppet government is morally justified, or the tricky issue of civilians causalities. One of the advantages of video game warfare that your enemies have the good nature to never surrender and all of their bases/cities are fun by robots rather than people so you never have the problem of accidentally shooting a innocent laborer or dramatically breaking down a door to find a group of children looking at you with terrified expressions. Also, your enemies die in a very dignified manner, falling down babbling in some foreign language that only a few people playing the game could understanding. You never have to deal with men lying on the ground, crying out for their mothers, sobbing for mercy, and lamenting there families who will suffer without them. Modern Warfare makes this even more awkward because the Special Forces are renown for having a very loose understanding of morals. CoD4 tries to address some of these issues, by not having you fight in any wars but instead fighting rebels in Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Call of Duty 4 is a good game. The graphics are astounding, the guns are all accurate, the fighting is clever and the combat gives me the wonderful feeling of being awesome. But it doesn’t really invent anything, it just re-masters the First Person Shoot format (the games where you are basically a walking gun). I still can get shot three times, hid behind a table, and then be totally fine, I can still use my comrades as human shields and avoid any actual death, I can still use a machine gun without any throwback while running down a cliff. I’ll admit, this game does it better than most, people die fairly easily, and charging a tank or machine gun will cause you to die, but I’m still able to kill at least twenty guys with guns with a pistol, and I can shoot a man in the stomach only stuns him, so there still is a lot of silliness. Also my comrades make things too easy for me, at no point do I have any real feeling of “ok what do I do now” and have to use my own initiative. Now some of you are asking, “Um, why do you want such realism” and I respond, firstly it is so much more challenging. There is a level where I have to defend a village form a bunch of Eastern Europeans because they are...Russian and stuff, and I thought it would be cool, like the last scene from Saving Private Ryan, I’d have to be clever. But instead, my comrades essentially just escort me from house to house, preventing me from being hurt but also from actually feeling like I’m making a difference and the lack of actual dying makes it very unsatisfying. And secondly, realistic combat is what actual Special Forces have to go through.

Now the final issue of CoD4, what is it trying to say? You play as the US Marines fighting some generic Arab rebels, and the British SAS fighting generic Russian rebels, but both allies are show doing so many horrible things that I wonder if the game is trying to make a statement about our foreign policy. When you die in this game, little quotes appear about your death, and almost half of them are anti war quotes. So is it trying to make as statement about the irony of preventing war with guns? There are some pretty cool moments like when (Spoiler that has already been spoiled to you a million times) the American team is totally wiped out by a nuke that goes off, and you play your character as you crawl around in the ruble of a destroyed city before dying alone and forgotten (oh and Snap kills Mr. D). But despite that, at no point do I really feel like I’m fighting a real modern war and I have to face the consequences of that. Like you know, the actual implication of ordering an air strike on a city full of civilians? Or why these guys are rebelling other than “Duh, evil foreign people”. In short, it’s a good game, but doesn’t bring anything new to the industry.