Category Archives: History

The Gaza Strip: a brief history

Posted on June 5, 2024 by odeboyz

The British Mandate, 1920-48 Palestine was a British quasi-colony after receiving a mandate from the League of Nations. The League expected Britain to train Palestinians for government before the mandate ended in 1948. The plan was for transition to self-governing … Continue reading →

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Pre-historic golf

Posted on April 27, 2024 by odeboyz
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Isaac Newton and Other Failures

Posted on April 17, 2024 by odeboyz

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”Winston Churchill People who triumph over failure are the stuff of legends. Seemingly they possess a recipe: “If you do as I do then good things will be yours!” … Continue reading →

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Joe Biden in 1982: pro-Israeli warrior

Posted on April 3, 2024 by odeboyz

In 1982, shortly before Reagan bluntly ordered Begin to cease his ‘holocaust’ in Lebanon, a young US senator who revered Elie Wiesel as his great teacher met the Israeli prime minister. In Begin’s own stunned account of the meeting, the senator commended … Continue reading →

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Roman Roads: Built to last

Posted on March 30, 2024 by odeboyz
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Book Review: Robert Harris ~ Archangel (1998)

Posted on March 27, 2024 by odeboyz

The wonderful thing about Harris is that he’s reliable. He isn’t a book-a-year author featuring drunken, music-loving Detective Inspectors, or psychopathic vigilantes as the principal character. He writes *proper* novels. His stories are carefully plotted. Brilliantly well-written, researched and with … Continue reading →

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The CIA’s 2024 Annual Threat Assessment: Intelligence Community Assessment

Posted on March 20, 2024 by odeboyz

The CIA isn’t interested in the rights and wrongs of international conflicts. Their focus is their impact on the USA. The Gaza Conflict is interesting in this respect. It is facile to think it is tightly located there. “Conflicts, particularly … Continue reading →

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Germany’s New Army, 1955

Posted on February 27, 2024 by odeboyz

In the first two years, the Bundeswehr accepted 125,000 veteran soldiers and 37,000 officers. Thirty-one of its thirty-eight generals had served on Hitlers general staff. Eighty per cent of all commanding officers in 1961 had been decorated with the Iron … Continue reading →

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Stalin’s Patriotism

Posted on February 7, 2024 by odeboyz

Having learned they had captured Joseph Stalin’s son, the Nazis had an idea: exchange the boy – artillery Lt. Yakov Dzhugashvili – for Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus, the commander who surrendered Stalingrad.  Stalin’s answer….All Soviet prisoners, he said, are … Continue reading →

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The End of Nazi Germany

Posted on January 21, 2024 by odeboyz

The toll of the final struggle was immense, for Germans as well as for their victims and the Allies. Of the 5.3 million German soldiers killed in the war, half died in the final ten months. The Nazis threw Hitler … Continue reading →

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