The 1896 Mauser “Broomhandle” semi-automatic pistol fired an 86 grain bullet (a lot like today’s 90 grain 9mm Parabellums) at a much zippier 1450 fps (like a .357 magnum, just a smaller bullet). The magazine held ten rounds, and it was the most powerful handgun in the world right up until the late 1930s when the.357 Magnum came along.
Winston Churchill carried one when he charged with the 21st Lancers at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898, and it saved his bacon.
I have one, of less distinguished pedigree, myself. It’s a really neat, historical, and quite accurate gun, and plenty powerful. When you shoot it, it belches fire out the muzzle and the breech!
Back when I still lived in Connecticut, I was in the habit of test firing guns a bit in my basement. There was a second room under the north wing of the house, and against an old porch pillar standing in support I would prop up a series of 2x4s and other scrap boards with lots of layers, ink in a bullseye, and then fire into the target through the doorway from the outer basement room.
When I first fired my Broomhandle, the bullet penetrated straight through six layers of boards ricocheted off the concrete walls of the far room three times and then exited through a basement window. I was impressed, and felt really stupid and really lucky, though I did have to go and replace that glass!
Cool as my Broomhandle is, the scoped model coming up for auction soon is decidedly cooler. Unfortunately, it apparently falls into the “All the Tea in China” range of collectable value. I still enjoyed looking at the auction listing.
SCOPE & STOCK. Cal. 7.63mm. S# 834001. Seldom does one come across a truly unique special order firearm. This incredible ensemble was reportedly made in 1931 and based on a 1930 Commercial pistol. The frame was dimensionally changed, thickened in the upper portion of the right side to provide a flat surface for a scope base upon which could be mounted an OIGEE scope. The scoped pistol, attached to a standard 1930 Commercial stock, presenting an extraordinarily ensemble that may have been used as a basis for the Hollywood Han Solo blaster. This exact ensemble was sold at a major auction house in the U.S., many years ago, for over $50,000, and was profiled in great detail in the German language C96 book “GESCHICHTE & MODELLE 1923-1945, Vol 4″ on pages 135-137″. The project started using a standard M1930 Commercial having a 5.5″ bbl. w/ fixed front sight & slip-in rear sight graduated 50-1000. Short extractor, 2-lug firing pin, universal safety & sm. ring hammer. Usual Mauser address on top of chamber, Crown/”C”/”U” proof on left chamber flat. Full S# on left side of bbl. extension, disassembly showing a matching frame & an unnumbered locking block & floorplate. The special order work was largely directed to the right side of the frame where the upper portion was machined flat. A scope base was attached using 2 lg. diameter pins, then welded in place, its surface having 2 channels for the cammed levers of the mount. The mount slipped over the base & was secured by turning the levers, just as used to attach a Luger stock to its corresponding lug. Sturdy rings were used to secure an OIGEE scope, the manufacturer active from 1910-1960, marked “OIGEE/BERLIN” in 2 locations, with a magnification of 2.5x & marked “6134” under adjustment knobs. “5588” marked on top of scope, arguably representing the model. Presenting reticle is a central pointed post bracketed by 2 equally thick horizontal bars. The attaching stock is from a standard production 1930 Commercial, this one having an unmarked lug w/ squared shoulders. UNATTACHED ACCESSORIES: scope w/ attached mount & 1930 Commercial shoulder stock. CONDITION: near excellent original salt blue as applied by Mauser to their 1930 Commercial pistols w/ a tempering line just behind the chamber & another at the upper rear of the frame. Sharp edge & handling wear as one might expect from a pistol that has seen light use w/ no evidence of touch up. Bright bore w/sharp rifling. Perfect manual mechanics. Scope & mount, each w/ original finish, are in the same condition w/ scope having bright, crisp optics. Excellent shoulder stock w/a light scattering of handling dings, comparable condition hinge, lug w/ fading over its upper arm. An absolutely stunning special order ensemble. Yes, you could own the Hollywood blaster, but wouldn’t you rather have the real thing? (22-3153/LMA). CURIO. $35,000-65,000.
The month of June is recognized as (LGBTI) Pride Month. The United States respects the dignity & equality of LGBTI people & celebrates their contributions to the society. We remain committed to supporting civil rights of minorities, including LGBTI persons. #Pride2021#PrideMonthpic.twitter.com/qgKPQAPaOY
— U.S. Embassy Kabul (@USEmbassyKabul) June 2, 2021
The old cultural imperialism was supposedly greedy corporatism like Disneyland, McDonald’s, and Starbucks sprouting up worldwide to supplant local competitors.
But these businesses spread because they appealed to free-will consumer demand abroad. They were not imposed top down.
The U.S. presence in Afghanistan collapsed in August 2021 amid the greatest American military humiliation in modern history. A billion-dollar new embassy was abandoned. Hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of new infrastructure at the huge Bagram Airbase was dumped.
We still do not know how many billions of dollars of sophisticated new weapons were left to the Taliban and now are making their way through global terrorists’ marts.
Yet, in our skedaddle, the LGBTQ flag still flew high from our new Kabul embassy. A George Floyd mural was prominent on city streets.
And gender studies programs — to the tune of $787 million in American subsidies — were showcased at Kabul University, in one of the most conservative Islamic countries in the world.
Rainbow flags and Black Lives Matter banners have hung from our embassy in South Korea.
Such partisan cultural activism is a diplomatic first.
The woke left has now weaponized the country’s diplomatic missions abroad to advance highly partisan and controversial agendas that can offend their hosts, and do not represent the majority of American voters at home.
American foreign policy toward other nations seems now to hinge on their positions on transgender people, LGBTQ promotion, abortion, climate change, and an array of woke issues from using multiple pronouns on passports to showcasing transgender ambassadors.
The Biden Administration in January 2022 stopped the EastMed pipeline. That joint effort of our allies Cyprus, Greece, and Israel sought to bring much needed clean-burning Mediterranean natural gas to southern Europe.
Apparently, our diplomats felt it violated our own New Green Deal orthodoxies. So we imperialists interfered to destroy a vital project of our closest allies.
The White House manifesto called the “National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality” offers a blueprint for how to massage nations abroad to accept our values that are increasingly at odds with much of the world’s.
Do Americans really believe that embracing drag-queen shows at military bases, abortion to the moment of birth, transgender men competing in women’s sports, and the promised effort to ban the internal combustion engine are effective ways to ensure good relations with the United States?
No wonder the Biden Administration’s new cultural imperialism is proving disastrous for a variety of reasons.
One, these imperialistic and chauvinistic agendas are pushed abroad at the very time the respect for the U.S. military is at an all-time low. It was humiliated in Afghanistan. It is now unable to recruit sufficient qualified soldiers. Its stocks of critical weapons are depleted.
The Pentagon leadership of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, along with Joe Biden, do not radiate competence.
But they do exude woke pieties.
While we offend Middle East oil exporters and Central Europeans, China allies with Russia and Iran. India and Turkey triangulate away from the United States. Sanctimonious hectoring while appearing weak is a bad combination.
Two, these warped standards are incoherent. Is an abortion-on-demand, totalitarian China therefore an ally? How could we damn supposedly non-woke Saudi Arabia as we begged it to pump more of its non-green oil before the 2022 midterms?
The adoption by Poland of a Liberal Constitution so alarmed the despotisms of its neighboring empires that they invaded and punished Poland with the Second Partition of 1793. The actual document was seized and carried off and locked away in the Kremlin in Moscow, in a trunk tightly chained, as if it constituted a kind of weapon of mass destruction, which to autocracy and despotism perhaps it did.
The old Roman road approaching the Borgo Pass today.
The action of Bram Stoker’s Dracula commences on May 3rd, and you can follow the daily events of the novel on this Substack.
JONATHAN HARKER’S JOURNAL
(Kept in shorthand.)
3 May. Bistritz — Left Munich at 8:35 P. M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late. Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got of it from the train and the little I could walk through the streets. I feared to go very far from the station, as we had arrived late and would start as near the correct time as possible. The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East; the most western of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions of Turkish rule.
We left in pretty good time, and came after nightfall to Klausenburgh. Here I stopped for the night at the Hotel Royale. I had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good but thirsty. (Mem., get recipe for Mina.) I asked the waiter, and he said it was called “paprika hendl,” and that, as it was a national dish, I should be able to get it anywhere along the Carpathians. I found my smattering of German very useful here; indeed, I don’t know how I should be able to get on without it.
Having had some time at my disposal when in London, I had visited the British Museum, and made search among the books and maps in the library regarding Transylvania; it had struck me that some foreknowledge of the country could hardly fail to have some importance in dealing with a nobleman of that country. I find that the district he named is in the extreme east of the country, just on the borders of three states, Transylvania, Moldavia and Bukovina, in the midst of the Carpathian mountains; one of the wildest and least known portions of Europe. I was not able to light on any map or work giving the exact locality of the Castle Dracula, as there are no maps of this country as yet to compare with our own Ordnance Survey maps; but I found that Bistritz, the post town named by Count Dracula, is a fairly well-known place. I shall enter here some of my notes, as they may refresh my memory when I talk over my travels with Mina.
In the population of Transylvania there are four distinct nationalities: Saxons in the South, and mixed with them the Wallachs, who are the descendants of the Dacians; Magyars in the West, and Szekelys in the East and North. I am going among the latter, who claim to be descended from Attila and the Huns. This may be so, for when the Magyars conquered the country in the eleventh century they found the Huns settled in it. I read that every known superstition in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool; if so my stay may be very interesting. (Mem., I must ask the Count all about them.) Read the rest of this entry »
While [Mr. & Mrs. David Geimer] were in Paris, David took a photo of his wife and Polanski. They are all smiles.
Geimer told [a] French magazine:
“Let me be very clear: what happened with Polanski was never a big problem for me. I didn’t even know it was illegal, that someone could be arrested for it. I was fine, I’m still fine. The fact that we’ve made this [a big deal] weighs on me terribly. To have to constantly repeat that it wasn’t a big deal, it’s a terrible burden.
“The extradition attempt, the fact that Roman was arrested like that, it was so unfair and so in opposition to justice,” Geimer also said in the Le Pointe interview. “Everyone should know by now that Roman has served his sentence. Which was… long, if you want my opinion. From my side, nobody wanted him to go to jail, but he did and it was enough. He paid his debt to society. There, end of story. He did everything that was asked of him until the situation went berserk he had no other choice but to flee. Anyone who thinks that he deserves to be in prison is wrong. It isn’t the case today and it wasn’t the case yesterday.”
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I commented at length, back in 2009, during the outbreak of national hysteria in which journalists on both political sides climbed up on portable pulpits and howled for Polanski to be extradited from Europe and flung into prison for sleeping with an underage young lady more than 30 years earlier.
Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor’d mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way;
Yet simple nature to his hope has giv’n,
Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler Heav’n,
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the wat’ry waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
–Alexander Pope
Pope’s sentimental poem prompted Americans of the 18th and 19th centuries to refer mockingly to the prototypical alleged Amerindian underdog as “Lo, the poor Indian.”
Pekka Hämäläinen is a Finnish academic who has made a very successful career by treating various Stone Age North American tribes as “Empires,” equal to and effectively competitive with their European adversaries. He now occupies a chair in American History at Oxford.
Christopher J. Ferguson, in Quillette, does a nice job of debunking his latest, Indigenous Continent, in which Hämäläinen expands his grandiose appraisal of the magnificence of the Comanches to include other North American Superpowers, like the Sioux.
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American indians
The violent migration of Europeans to the New World was very much like violent migrations throughout history and across cultures, most likely including successive waves of North American Indians (though the history there is murky). Yet instead of understanding these events in the context of larger historical patterns, the Indian Wars are cast as a morality tale in the manner of Howard Zinn, in which the actions of the European settlers are represented as uniquely reprehensible. This fantasy may be an inversion of past jingoistic and racist caricatures of American Indians as “savages,” but it is not more historically accurate.
I thought about this a lot as I read Pekka Hämäläinen’s fascinating and controversial new history of North American Indians, Indigenous Continent. Told largely from the perspective of the natives, Hämäläinen covers the centuries from the arrival of Europeans in North America through to the final subjugation of the last tribes in the late 19th century. It’s a gripping history, but watching the author attempt to come to terms with the history he is telling also makes for fascinating psychological analysis.
Hämäläinen is clearly sympathetic to the Indians. Indeed, the Europeans in his story tend to be portrayed as dirty, bumbling idiots who are repeatedly outwitted until, well, they’re not. Hämäläinen leans into this interpretation a bit much, and as a psychologist, I was as intrigued by how he grapples with history as much as the historical evidence. His sympathy for the Indians is evidently in tension with his unwillingness to distort the facts. For this, I admire him, since history is often distorted to suit the needs of political and academic elites of any given period. But the author’s attempts to square the historical facts with the moral lessons he hopes to impart leads him into contradiction and incoherence.
On one page, Hämäläinen assures the reader that Indians were egalitarian, only to follow that assurance with numerous examples of how that was not true. This inconsistency surfaces early in the book, when Hämäläinen informs us that the Taino Indians encountered by Columbus were “hierarchical” and “stratified.” Elsewhere, we are told that Native Americans were generally respectful of women (the word “matrilineal” is asked to do some heavy lifting here), but we are also provided with specific examples of tribes keeping women as sex slaves, some of whom were brutally abused by tribe members.
Indeed, although the word “captive” makes a lot of appearances in the book, it is selectively employed. When Europeans take people unwillingly to harsh work environments, or to be sold to others, these victims are called “slaves.” But when American Indians do the same thing, Hämäläinen euphemistically describes those victims as “captives.” In fact, a number of tribes were energetic participants in the trade of other indigenous people, selling slaves to other tribes and to Europeans. Although Hämäläinen shows an admirable willingness to discuss such practices, his discomfort is palpable.
Rather than revealing the cultural chasm between indigenous people and Europeans, the historical record teaches us just how similar they were. Each vied for status and power, kept slaves, engaged in genocide against neighboring groups, mistreated women, indulged ethnocentrism, and so on. Tribes or confederations such as the Iroquois, Sioux, or Comanche were violent warrior cultures that recall the Spartans. This observation isn’t intended to denigrate Native Americans, it is simply evidence of our shared (if profoundly flawed) humanity.
Juan Jose, Pueblo (Santa Clara), 1898. Photo by Boston Public Library on Unsplash
What Europeans did to American Indians was often terrible, but Indians gave as good as they got, both to Europeans and each other. These stories are similar to those the world over—we are all equally capable of great horrors and cruelty and history provides few examples of morally unambiguous heroes. Embracing this universalist truth can help us to move past the morality tales so often told in the guise of history and discard a misbegotten and ultimately selfish indulgence in self-flagellation.
This has always been the problem with the Howard Zinn school of history. Zinn’s history of the US resembles a biography written by a bitter former spouse. In lieu of a nuanced and accurate historical account it offers a deliberate slander of our own culture. The result is at once self-indulgent and self-pitying. A balanced account must not flinch from examining our historical mistakes and misdeeds and those of others, but the modern approach to history has too often become a neurotic wallowing in half-truths of our own failures. The corresponding utopian fantasies of other cultures more closely resemble the morality play of a Tolkien novel than the more complex experiences of people who actually lived on Earth.
Notoriously liberal West Hollywood had the brilliant idea of replacing police officers with unarmed “safety ambassadors.” Let’s take a peek at how that’s worked out during an assault in progress… pic.twitter.com/Qa48aZ8z4o
Specific Scottish Clan tartans are really a romantic early Victorian invention. But generic tartan patterns go back much farther historically. An example dated to the 1500s, preserved in a bog, is apparently the oldest surviving true example of a tartan pattern.
New research suggests a piece of fabric found in the Scottish Highlands in the early 1980s is the oldest surviving tartan, likely dating to the 16th century.
A patterned cloth featuring interlocking stripes, tartan is traditionally associated with Scottish kinship groups known as clans. The newly analyzed example—known as the Glen Affric tartan after the village where it was found—survived because it was buried in a peat bog with a low-oxygen environment.
“In Scotland, surviving examples of old textiles are rare as the soil is not conducive to their survival,” says Peter MacDonald, head of research and collections at the Scottish Tartans Authority (STA), a charity dedicated to the promotion and preservation of tartans, in a statement.
To determine the age of the Glen Affric tartan, the STA commissioned a dye analysis and radiocarbon testing. Researchers studying the four colors used to dye the tartan (green and brown and possibly red and yellow) found no traces of artificial or semi-synthetic materials, indicating the cloth predated the 1750s. Carbon dating further pinpointed the tartan’s creation to between 1500 and 1655, with a most probable range of 1500 to 1600. At the time, the Stuart monarchs—including Mary, Queen of Scots, and her father, James V—were on the Scottish throne.
Given the “more rustic nature of the cloth,” the tartan “is not something you would associate with a king or someone of high status,” MacDonald says. “It is more likely to be an outdoor working garment.”
As Sally Tuckett, an art historian at the University of Glasgow, tells CBC Radio’s Jason Vermes, “Any cloth or clothing from the 16th century that is not from royalty or nobility is pretty rare, and so to have this piece which predates the clan tartan mania of the 19th century, worn or used by an ordinary person, is pretty incredible.”
The so-called Falkirk tartan, a scrap of cloth found in a pot containing almost 2,000 Roman coins in 1933, dates to the third century and is often hailed as Scotland’s oldest surviving tartan. But the fragment, which features a simpler checkered pattern woven with undyed yarn, isn’t a “true tartan” like the Glen Affric one, which boasts “several colors with multiple stripes of different sizes,” according to MacDonald.
Daniel Weidmann, owner and Managing Director of VTR Customs, and Marcel Brauchli, who was significantly involved in the motorcycle’s construction, are competing for BMW Motorrad with a water-cooled R 1200 R conversion. Daniel’s hobby of flying provided the inspiration for the design of “Spitfire.” He flies a 1938 Royal Air Force fighter plane, and turned the BMW R 1200 R into a torpedo-like monster sheathed in aluminum, reminiscent of an old aircraft.
The very deep line (height approx. 90 cm) invited technical challenges. The front frame was extended by 20cm, the head tube shortened and all electronics repositioned. The engine and frame were taken from “Eddie 21,” the VTR Race Crew’s competition from the 2017 ESSENZA Sprint Series with Amelie Mooseder as factory driver. The drive swing arm has also remained unmodified.
The Swiss style of customizing is colored by precision and attention to detail. For maximum authenticity, original Spitfire cockpit instruments from the Second World War were used, an aircraft start switch integrated and – as with “Eddie 21” – a breathtaking “Amy Gimmick” the cherry on top. The result will be presented for the first time to the public and the driver in Monza. When all is said and done, the “Spitfire” will shoot spectacular flames from its exhaust pipe.
Two hoards of Viking hacksilver and coins dating to the late 10th century have been unearthed under a cornfield near Bramslev in northern Jutland. The two treasures were discovered less than 165 feet apart and are very similar in content. They were originally even closer, but later agricultural activity disturbed the deposits, intermingling the coins and other silver objects.
The first pieces were discovered last fall by Jane Foged-Mønster, a member of a local metal detecting association, Nordjysk Detektorforening, during a rally on a farmed field. She spotted a piece of silver which turned out to be a clipped Arabic dirham coin, then another fragment, this time a decorated silver ball from a ring buckle. The group, which works closely with museum archaeologists, recognized this was a treasure find and alerted experts from the North Jutland Museum.
Archaeologists followed up quickly with a rescue excavation of the site. Because it was actively in use for agriculture, anything else that might have been part of the hoard remaining in the plow layer was at imminent risk of being scattered or even destroyed. Jane Foged-Mønster and two of her co-discoverers from the metal detecting group aided in the excavation.
The archaeological team and volunteers spent a week digging at the site. They unearthed 300 finds, from small clippings of silver to jewelry and coins. The decorated ball terminal on a silver rod that Jane Foged-Mønster found has a pair. They both weigh about 70 grams (2.5 oz) and originally were part of the same piece of jewelry, likely a very large ring brooch. This type of jewel was worn by high-status men of Viking Ireland. Something this large and heavy and ornately decorated would have belonged to someone at the highest echelons of society like a bishop or even a king. It was likely looted by Danes in a raid and cut up for its silver weight.
Among the 300 finds are 50 coins, most of them Danish, but also German and Arabic. Some of the Danish coins are extremely rare cross coins struck in the reign of Harald “Bluetooth” Blåtand in the 970s and 980s. The crosses on the coins are believed to be connected to his King Harald’s conversion to Christianity and his aim of Christianizing the Danes. The ring fort of Fyrkat, built by King Harald Bluetooth around the same time the coins were struck, is just five miles away from the hoard site.
It’s all over the news today. Not surprising. It’s a big deal.
We get no explanation. Was he blamed for reckless accusations against Dominion and Smartmatic that have already cost Fox News $787.5 million and will cost more to come?
Is Fox changing sides from Right to Left the way Drudge Report, Little Green Footballs, Balloon Juice did?
He can’t really have left because of a better television offer. There is nowhere but Fox for him to go. I suppose he could move to AM Radio and try to take the place previously occupied by Rush Limbaugh, but Tucker Carlson would probably feel that moving to radio would be a waste of his boyish good looks and preppy attire.
