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How Model Cars are Made (1962) | British Pathé
British Pathé

Just wow. Picked this up at The Feral Irishman.

Injustice Is Britain’s Operating Principle

Unite The Kingdom supporters gather at Trafalgar Square after the rally. ©  Andy Barton / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images

Curious take on Britain from Timofey Bordachev on RT:

The demonstrations in London earlier this month – up to 150,000 people protesting immigration and government incompetence – drew attention in Russia and abroad. Some observers even wondered if Britain might finally be approaching a breaking point. Perhaps, like Nepal or France in past years, mass anger could reshape politics.

But such hopes are misplaced. Britain will never experience revolutionary upheaval. Its culture is not one of defiance but of endurance. The United Kingdom has, over centuries, become a bastion of injustice disguised as stability, where ordinary people are conditioned to accept their powerlessness. This cultural inheritance, once an imperial advantage, now guarantees slow decline.

Britain is unique in Western Europe: it was created not through union or invitation, but through conquest. In 1066 Norman knights crushed the native English and divided the land into fiefdoms. Unlike Russia, where foreign warriors were invited to defend the realm, or Hungary, where nomads fused with locals to form a people, England’s story was one of subjugation.

That pattern hardened in 1215, when barons forced King John to sign the Magna Carta. Propaganda later elevated the charter as the foundation of English liberty. In reality it entrenched oligarchy: the power of the wealthy over crown and people alike. Where monarchs elsewhere often stood with peasants against feudal tyranny, in England the crown itself was shackled by landowners. Injustice became not an aberration but the system’s operating principle.

Geography reinforced the pattern. For centuries there was no frontier of freedom. Only in 1620 did dissenters finally flee on the Mayflower, planting English settlements in North America. By then, 600 years of endurance had shaped a national character: patient, fatalistic, and resigned.

You can read the whole thing here.

The Eagle Official Trailer #1 - (2011) HD

When we started watching The Eagle I suspected we had seen it before, but no. Centurion was the movie I was thinking about. Centurion is about the loss of Rome's 9th Legion. This movie is about the son of the commander going north of Hadrian's Wall to retrieve their standard, a gold eagle.

Centurion

Olga Kurylenko as Etain

We watched Centurion this evening and I'm pretty sure this is the second time we've seen it. There can't be two movies with Olga playing the Pict mole who leads the 9th Roman legion to their doom, can there?

This is second century AD and I'm wondering about the technology. The Romans have swords and armor, as do the Picts, but I'm pretty sure the only way the Picts got ahold of anything made of iron was because they got it from the Romans. They even manage to acquire a set of iron manacles with a chain that they use to restrain the leader of the 9th after they have captured him.

Hadrian's Wall

Hadrian's Wall makes a brief but impressive appearance, if you happen to notice it (about 10 mintues from the end of the movie). The movie is set in 117AD, but Hadrian's Wall wasn't started until five years later, but that's Hollywood for you.

As movies go, it was pretty good. Lots of action with some fairly realistic primitive tactics. But there were a number of instances that just didn't jibe with what you might expect. You know, Hollywood adding drama when no extra drama is needed. Aiming for low-brow, gut reactions I suppose.