Thanks to World of Tanks for sponsoring this episode. Download the game on PC and use the invite code CHECKPOINTC to claim your $15 starter pack https://tanks.ly/2NoVfjx.
The Berlin Wall has become a symbol of the Cold War. It encircled West Berlin, separating it from the Soviet-controlled East Berlin, placed to try and stop the flood of skilled professionals leaving to the West. Multiple US presidents had penned speeches about tearing down the wall, to no effect. But the Wall did fall. As the USSR underwent massive reforms and the Velvet Revolution was underway, East Germany was undergoing its own reform. And one clerical oversight in a press conference will destroy the Wall for good.
Update: Austin Bay linked to a column he wrote in 2009 on the 20th anniversary of these events.
Many in the West, including the U.S., believed that the communists had history on their side. The wry debate reply from the defeatist lefties favoring unilateral U.S. nuclear disarmament was “better Red than dead.” For decades — I repeat, decades — this crowd had a media pulpit from which its self-proclaimed intelligentsia preached the moral equivalency of the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and at times dropped the all pretense and fingered the U.S. as the “fascist state” and global oppressor.
In the language of the defeatist left, the U.S. was the jailer, the warmonger, the threat to world peace.
The Berlin Wall’s collapse exposed that Big Lie, as did the documented moral, political, economic and ecological wretchedness of the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, we still hear echoes of this “blame America” cant lacing al-Qaida propaganda and the lectures of hard-left reactionaries like Bill Ayers. The great anti-American lies of the Cold War are recast as the great anti-American lies of the War on Terror.
Breaching the wall in 1989 was bloodless, but the Cold War certainly wasn’t. World War III did not break out along the intra-German border and produce a nuclear conflagration, but the Cold War’s battles on the periphery (e.g., Greece, Korea, Vietnam, El Salvador, Angola, Afghanistan) were expensive, fatiguing and deadly.
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In the latest edition of the Libertarian Enterprise, L. Neil Smith points to what he thinks will be Donald Trump’s signature achievement: the United States Space Force.
The biggest nuclear weapon ever detonated on Earth, Tsar Bomba, was 50MT. The Chicxulub impact was, at these numbers, 2 million times as powerful as Tsar Bomba. Image and caption from Stephanie Osborn’s “Incoming: The Chicxulub Impactor, Part 3 — The Impactor & Effects” at https://accordingtohoyt.com/2019/10/31/incoming-the-chicxulub-impactor-part-3-%e2%80%95-the-impactor-effects-by-stephanie-osborn/
Many thoughtful observers believe that the most significant thing that Donald Trump has accomplished so far is his appointment of dozens of federal judges who share his philosophy of governance and I, amateur historian that I am, am inclined to agree with them — with one exception, that is, a little item that just might prove to be a thousand times, a million times, a billion times more important than anything else the Donald — or anybody else, for that matter — has ever done.
Most of us have become aware of the way that a relatively small piece of rock — an asteroid approximately the size of Manhattan Island or the Matterhorn — changed the course of life-history on this planet. It struck the Earth at 40,000 miles and hour, hitting what is now the northern coast of the Yucatan, generating a titanic explosion that ignited every plant standing above the ground, raising a tidal wave that swept over most of North America, and opening a chain of deadly volcanoes on the other side of the world, near India. The esteemed Bob Bakker to the contrary, the late, lamented dinosaurs, I believe, died from smoke inhalation.
Three quarters of all life on this planet, plant and animal, land and sea, was brutally exterminated by this “Cretaceous-Tertiary Event”, and apparently not for the first time. There was a much worse die-off between the Permian and the Triassic eras. The important fact, for you and me, is that there are thousands, if not millions of other lethal asteroids still out there, with which our vulnerable little blue marble is still playing a murderous game of roulette. It is only a matter of time before another “extinction-level event” occurs, possibly wiping out every last living entity on Earth. We can see plenty of evidence of that kind of phenomenon, that magnitude of destruction, elsewhere in the Solar System.
Take your precious carbon footprints and stuff them where the sun don’t shine, Greta. It is Donald Trump who has made the historic first move to prevent this very real cataclysm, and probably to extend the life of the human species indefinitely (an idea environmentalists hate), by calling for the organization of a United States Space Force. At this moment it still isn’t clear exactly what methods will work best to destroy or divert asteroids that threaten our home-world (I mention possibilities in my 2010 Ngu Family Saga novel Ceres), but it is something that must be done, sooner or later, probably by manned spacecraft.
The other important task for which we need a Space Force is to clean up the tens of millions of items of orbital debris that NASA and other agencies have very sloppily left circling over our heads. Remember when the Gemini astronauts simply threw those expensive Hasselblad cameras out the door? These objects range in size from particles of dust to cast-off booster stages which endanger satellites and spacecraft. A hunk of junk the size and shape of a small screw can damage solar panels, pressurized living and working spaces, as well as helmeted individuals in spacesuits, to whom that flying screw would be like a bullet through the head.
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A Remembrance Day slideshow using Mark Knopfler’s wonderful “Remembrance Day” song from the album Get Lucky (2009). The early part of the song conveys many British images, but I have added some very Canadian images also which fit with many of the lyrics. The theme and message is universal… ‘we will remember them’.
A simple recognition of some of our family members who served in the First and Second World Wars:
The Great War
Private William Penman, Scots Guards, died 16 May, 1915 at Le Touret, age 25
(Elizabeth’s great uncle)
Private Archibald Turner Mulholland, Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, mortally wounded 25 September, 1915 at Loos, age 27
(Elizabeth’s great uncle)
Private David Buller, Highland Light Infantry, died 21 October, 1915 at Loos, age 35
(Elizabeth’s great grandfather)
Private Harold Edgar Brand, East Yorkshire Regiment. died 4 June, 1917 at Tournai.
(My first cousin, three times removed)
Private Walter Porteous, Durham Light Infantry, died 4 October, 1917 at Passchendaele, age 18
(my great uncle)
Corporal John Mulholland, Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, wounded 2 September, 1914 (shortly before the First Battle of the Aisne), wounded again 29 June, 1918, lived through the war.
(Elizabeth’s great uncle)
The Second World War
Flying Officer Richard Porteous, RAF, survived the defeat in Malaya and lived through the war
(my great uncle)
Able Seaman John Penman, RN, served in the Defensively Equipped Merchant fleet on the Murmansk Run (and other convoy routes), lived through the war
(Elizabeth’s father)
Private Archie Black (commissioned after the war and retired as a Major), Gordon Highlanders, captured at Singapore (aged 15) and survived a Japanese POW camp
(Elizabeth’s uncle)
Elizabeth Buller, “Lumberjill” in the Women’s Land Army in Scotland through the war. (Elizabeth’s mother)
Trooper Leslie Taplan Russon, 3rd Royal Tank Regiment, died at Tobruk, 19 December, 1942 (aged 23). Leslie was my father’s first cousin, once removed (and therefore my first cousin, twice removed).
For the curious, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission the Royal British Legion, and the Library and Archives Canada WW1 and WW2 records site provide search engines you can use to look up your family name. The RBL’s Every One Remembered site shows you everyone who died in the Great War in British or Empire service (Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans and other Imperial countries). The CWGC site also includes those who died in the Second World War.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD Canadian Army Medical Corps (1872-1918)
The story of the Austen submachine gun did not end when the Mk I guns were pulled from combat service in 1944. The manufacturer continued to work on an improved version, which would be ready in 1946, after the end of World War Two. Only 200 were made total, and they were both adopted and declared obsolete in August of 1946.
The changes made to the MkII Austen mostly involved increasing the use of die cast components, which fit the manufacturer’s tooling and experience. The front grip and magazine well casting was enlarged, and the whole rear assembly was made into a second cast part integrating the rear sight, stock mounting and latch, and fire control group. The one significant internal change was to remove the firing pin from the telescoping recoil spring assembly and make it an integral feature of the bolt face.
Many thanks to the Royal Armouries for allowing me to film this very rare artifact! The NFC collection there – perhaps the best military small arms collection in Western Europe – is available by appointment to researchers:
Before WW1 the army was optimised primarily as a colonial police force, coupled with a small expeditionary force of regular soldiers intended to deploy to the continent to work alongside the French or other allies in the event of war. WW1 was an event that really constituted three armies – the small regular/territorial force of barely 300,000 soldiers that mobilised in 1914 and was wiped out to buy time. The interim force of Territorials and Reservists that held the line in 1915-1916 while the army reconstituted, and the civilian volunteer/conscript force from 1916 onwards that saw the army grow to over 4 million men by 1918.
Rapid demobilisation followed, followed by regeneration in the 1920s and 30s to become the most mechanised army in the world by 1939, comprising some 224,000 regulars. It is often forgotten that the British army of 1940 had many more tanks and vehicles than the German Army – history is not kind to the losers. The army in WW2 grew to a citizen force of roughly 3.5 million men, before shrinking post war.
The continuation of National Service, the war in Korea and the end of empire saw the army stay at roughly 330,000 soldiers for much of the 1950s, causing significant damage to the national economy due to the cost and lack of manpower for rebuilding. By 1957 the army estimated that its regular strength was roughly 80,000 personnel (only a quarter of the whole force), many of whom were tied up training two-year National Servicemen. A major factor in the 1957 Sandys Defence White Paper was the need to reduce manpower costs and free people up for other economically important tasks.
The Sandys Review led to a reduction to 165,000 troops most of whom were focused on either colonial policing actions (it is often forgotten that in the early 1960s there were over 100,000 UK service personnel in the Far East) or deployed in Germany as part of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR). The withdrawal from empire saw the army shrink to a strength of approximately 150,000 by the 1980s, where its role was primarily to provide a corps of four divisions in Germany in the event of general war, supported by mobilisation units from the UK which would provide further divisions to augment BAOR and conduct home defence roles.
The end of the Cold War saw the first deployment of a divisional-sized force, with an armoured division sent to the Gulf in 1990 for Operation Desert Storm. This happened just as the Options for Change review cut BAOR and reduced the army to approximately 120,000. Further deployments to Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s followed by the deployment of an armoured division to Iraq in 2003. Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2003-2014 saw the army struggle to sustain itself on two fronts without heavy support from the RN and RAF providing extra manpower and resources.
The 2010 SDSR initially preserved the army at just under 100,000 personnel, although later reviews cut this down to 82,000 regulars supported by a target of approximately 30,000 reservists working in a far more integrated manner. Today the army is struggling to sustain itself at 82,000, with recent manpower figures showing a total of roughly 78,000 troops.
On Sunday night — in prime time, Minnesota Vikings’ quarterback Kirk Cousins’ least successful time to play — the 6-3 Vikings visited Dallas to play the 5-3 Cowboys. Both teams depend on their star running backs — Minnesota’s league-leading Dalvin Cook and Ezekiel Elliot for the Cowboys — to help move the chains and open up passing opportunities by forcing the defence to focus on stopping the run. The team that managed to force the issue was likely to end up on the winning side of the equation, and that team turned out to be the Vikings. Dalvin Cook was bottled up for a while, but ended up with 97 yards on the ground and 86 receiving yards. Elliot was held to 47 yards rushing and 16 yards in the air.
Cowboys Stadium (now AT&T Stadium) on 1 October, 2009. Photo by bobbyh_80 via Wikimedia Commons.
Coming into the game, both teams were facing reputations for “not beating anyone” despite their respective records. While the Vikings have struggled against teams with a winning record (and Kirk Cousins had a 1-6 record against the Cowboys from his time in Washington), the same could be said of Dallas:
In 2019, Dallas started the season 3-0, and the NFL torches came out right behind them. The Cowboys are always good for business.
This team hadn’t been 3-0 to start a season in over a decade. The Dallas Star Telegram even printed a history of the Cowboys Super Bowl victories after starting so quickly.
It was on again in Texas.
In reality, those three wins came against the now 2-7 New York Giants, the 1-8 Washington Redskins, and the 1-7 Miami Dolphins, a three-pack of tin cans if ever were packaged.
A month later, the again ascendant Cowboys, “America’s Team” refortified, were merely a .500 squad, having lost to the NFC South-leading New Orleans Saints, the NFC North-leading Green Bay Packers, and the AFC East bottom-dwelling New York Jets.
Yes, I said the New York Jets – a team with the now 31st-ranked offense and 25th defense in the league.
After that embarrassing loss in New York, the 3-3 Cowboys then took a bye week to prepare for a game against division rival Philadelphia Eagles in Dallas, licking their wounds and out of the fickle view of the press.
The Cowboys then bounced back – in pure tomato can fashion – by handing the Eagles their fourth loss in six games in AT&T Stadium and then traveling back to New York to give the lowly Giants their fifth consecutive defeat.
In short, both teams came into Sunday’s game needing a win to change “the narrative”.
In the early going, it looked like Minnesota was going to run away with the game, getting out to a 14-0 lead before Dallas could put together a scoring drive. Both first half touchdowns were passes to tight end Kyle Rudolph after solid running by both Dalvin Cook and Alexander Mattison. The first TD looked more like Cousins was just trying to throw the ball out of the end zone, but Rudolph made an amazing one-handed catch with both feet inbound for the score.
The second quarter wasn’t as picture-perfect for the Vikings, as Dallas scored twice to tie things up and Minnesota could only muster a field goal on the last possession of the half to go into the locker room at 17-14.
After the break, the Vikings got the ball first, but again were only able to get a Dan Bailey field goal to make the score 20-14, and the Cowboys did better with their next possession scoring a TD to take the lead for the first time in the game. On the Vikings next drive, Cook and Mattison again provided most of the yards, with Mattison almost scoring a rushing TD, but he was marked down inside the 1-yard line after review. Dalvin Cook did manage to get in from there, and then the Vikings elected for a two-point conversion attempt with Cousins getting the ball to Kyle Rudolph to put the Vikings ahead by 7.
In the fourth quarter, neither team could get a sustained drive going, and the only scoring was a Dallas field goal. In the last few minutes, the Cowboys got dangerously close to the Vikings end zone, but stalled out inside the 10-yard line and turned the ball over on downs. The Vikings final possession wasn’t pretty, but it forced the Cowboys to use all their time-outs before getting the ball back for a final chance. The game ended on a failed Hail Mary pass that was intercepted in the end zone by Jayron Kearse.
Update: Andy Carlson wraps up the game’s winners and losers on his post-game podcast:
I might quibble with a few of his choices, but I think he’s right that Mike “The Cornerback Whisperer” Zimmer needs to get his bag of magic tricks out and fix the secondary. The Cowboys should not have converted all those third-and-forever passes in the direction of Mike Hughes and Xavier Rhodes. Every team we face for the rest of the season will be dialling up plays to take advantage of our corners because they can’t seem to stop anyone.
Chris Tomasson compliments Kirk Cousins on getting the “can’t win in prime time” monkey off his back:
Say what you want about Kirk Cousins not being able to win big games on a national stage. He got one Sunday night.
The Vikings quarterback had a stellar showing in a 28-24 win over Dallas in a nationally televised game at AT&T Stadium.
It was easily Minnesota’s biggest win of the season. And it followed road losses earlier in the season at Green Bay, at Chicago (when the Bears were still good) and at Kansas City.
Cousins, in the second year of a three-year, $84 million contract, has had his share of struggles in prime-time games. He entered Sunday 1-7 in his career in such games against winning teams.
“I think I’ve played well in prime time,” Cousins said. “Have we won them all? No. But to get this one was a great step in the right direction. Hopefully, we can get a few more here. We need to get a few more before the season ends.”
Cousins completed 23 of 32 passes for 220 yards and two touchdowns. He bounced back from the previous week, when he completed 19 of 38 passes in the 26-23 loss to the Chiefs, just the third time in first 82 career starts he had not completed more than 50 percent of his passes.
“I thought he played great,” said Vikings coach Mike Zimmer. “I thought he put the ball in the right place. He made some really good throws.”
Mike Hughes and the rest of the secondary. Amari Cooper and Randall Cobb (really, Randall Cobb??) made some great plays tonight, especially the 64 toe tap catches Cooper had. But … yeesh. The Cowboys carved up the Vikings secondary all night, as Dak Prescott had 397 yards passing, and both Cooper and Cobb went over 100 yards receiving. The Vikes did a great job of getting the Cowboys in third and long, but the Cowboys had four 3rd and 8 or longer plays in this game, and they converted all four of them. Minnesota had a good first quarter defensively, but couldn’t find an answer to what Dallas was dialing up for the rest of the night.
Buy/Sell
Buy: The Vikings first quarter. The Vikings started the game exactly the way they needed to. The defense stopped Dallas, and their first drive ended with Brett Maher missing a 57 yard field goal attempt. Minnesota answered by going 53 yards in five plays, and it was culminated by that crazy Rudolph catch to go up 7-0. After Dallas punted on their second drive, the Vikings went 90 yards in 13 plays, and once again Cousins found Rudolph for another one yard TD to go up 14-0.
Sell: The Vikings second quarter. But all of that slipped away in the second quarter. Minnesota’s offense stalled early in the quarter, and the Cowboys offense came to life. They scored two touchdowns, and evened the score at 14-14 with just under two minutes remaining in the half.
Buy: The two minute drive to end the half. But to Minnesota’s credit, they took the ball with 1:57 left in the half, drove the field, and stunted the momentum Dallas had built up with those two second quarter scoring drives. They took the ball down the field, in one of the better two minute drives the Vikings have had in recent years, and kicked a field goal to take the lead at 17-14 going in to the locker room.
Sell: Throwing to Irv Smith in the middle of the field with 10 seconds left in the first half. But it feels like the Vikes might have left points on the field before halftime. With 10 seconds left and the ball on the Dallas 15 with one timeout, Kirk Cousins threw a short pass over the middle to Irv Smith, Jr., for seven yards. It seemed inexplicable at the time, at least to me. The Vikes had one timeout, so it felt like there was time for two shots into the end zone, as it was second down. It seemed really important to get a touchdown there to thwart Dallas momentum, but it felt like the VIkings were content to settle for a field goal.
Buy: Opening up the second half with a scoring drive. Still, though, the Vikes took that scoring drive to end the first half and built on it coming out of the locker room. They took the opening kickoff and went 66 yards in 12 plays, culminated by a Dan Bailey field goal to take a 20-14 lead.
Sell: Giving up a scoring drive to lose the lead right after that scoring drive. But the Vikings defense couldn’t build on that. At that moment in the game, it really felt like if the Vikings defense could force a three and out they could blow the game open. The Dallas defense had been on the field for 12 plays, and a quick three and out would have put a tired defense back on the field, having to face a RB tandem in Cook and Alexander Mattison that seemed to be finding a bit of a groove. Dallas went 75 yards on five plays, and it culminated with a ridiculous Amari Cooper toe tap touchdown that gave Dallas a 21-20 lead.
Buy: Stonewalling Ezekiel Elliott. Minnesota came in to this game intent on not letting THE Ohio State legend Ezekiel Elliott beat them. And they succeeded in that. Zeke ended up with just 47 yards on 20 carries, couldn’t get untracked all night, and his longest run of the evening was only six yards.
Sell: Dak Prescott carving up the Vikings secondary like Dexter. But Zeke not being able to run didn’t really matter, as Dak Prescott had a whale of a game. He made some flat out sick throws to Amari Cooper, Randall Cobb, and Michael Gallup, who ended up with 76 yards and a TD. The Vikes had no answer for what the Cowboys were doing through the air, and the only time it seemed like the came up with a stop in the second half was the Jayron Kearse interception to end the game.
Buy: Football in the state of Minnesota this weekend. It was a great weekend for football in the state of Minnesota. On Saturday, the Golden Gophers upset fourth ranked Penn state and broke the top 10 for the first time since 1962. They control their own destiny to win the Big Ten West and advance to the Big Ten Championship game, and P.J. Fleck has made the Gophers relevant for one of the few times in my life. The Vikes beat Dallas on the road, advanced to 7-3, and have a really great shot to go to 8-3 heading into the bye. They have a lot of football left to play, and are still very much in the hunt for the NFC North title.
Sell: The season is over. For as good as this weekend was, neither the Vikings or Gophers have accomplished anything. Both teams have a lot of football left to play, and if they don’t stay focused, what could be special seasons for both could be rendered meaningless if they don’t keep their eye on the prize. Skol U mah, and let’s keep it going. Beat Iowa and bring Floyd home, and beat Denver.
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The Battle of Britain is finished, but the war is far from over. New German plans are being made for the Balkans and Greece, where the Italian offensive is not as successful as planned.
Written and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Produced and Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Map animations: Eastory
Sources:
– Money and factory icons by Adrien Coquet, ship icon by Edward Boatman, all: from the Noun Project
– IWM: HU 1915, ZZZ 1811C, IND 3595, E 1227, E 1107, E 1242, E 1239
– San Demetrio crew by Arranj on Wikimedia Commons
– Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
From the comments:
World War Two
2 days ago (edited)
Now that the new Greek offensive has been launched a week ago, more troops are moving and more terrain is changing hands. We are very lucky to have Eastory make maps for our episodes, allowing us to visualize movements and geographicial locations. Furthermore, Eastory is a historian who is very skilled in researching the exact locations and movements of fighting units. For these episodes, he has had some help from our loyal community member Avalantis. This really shows how much this channel is a team effort and how important our community is to us and our videos. If you want to contribute as well, you can start with supporting us on https://www.patreon.com/timeghosthistory or https://timeghost.tv. Every dollar counts!
Cheers, the TimeGhost team
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If I could have a conversation with any person in History, it’s Machiavelli. Easy. And I wouldn’t even have to do anything, I’d just say “So, tell me about Rome” and watch the fireworks. In the meantime, I’ll settle for playing Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood and liberating Roma with my boy Niccolò.
The recent antics of Extinction Rebellion activists in London encouraged Theodore Dalrymple to do a bit of reading on the psychology of such cults and their followers:
Man is the only creature, as far as we know, that enjoys the contemplation of its own disappearance from the face of the earth. We find the prospect of our annihilation by disease, famine, war, asteroid, or climate change deeply satisfying. We feel, somehow, that we deserve it and that the world would be a better planet without us.
When to this strange source of satisfaction is conjoined a license to behave badly in the name of salvation from earthly perdition, we can expect a mass movement that approaches insanity. So it is with the Extinction Rebellion, whose fanatical members have brought chaos to London recently by blocking streets, occupying crossroads, gluing themselves to public buildings and railings, and standing atop underground trains, to the fury of thousands of rush-hour commuters who don’t want to save the world but only get to work.
In order to try to understand their state of mind, I recently read a book by three psychologists, Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, first published in 1956, called When Prophecy Fails. It recounts the reaction of a small doomsday sect in America founded by a housewife, who believed that most of North America was soon to be inundated by a great flood. When this failed to happen on the predicted date, members did not immediately conclude that the absurd grounds upon which their belief was based were false, but became even more convinced of their truth. When there is a contradiction between what we want to be the case and what is the case, our desire to believe often triumphs, at least for a time.
The beginning of the book gives a brief and selective history of sects that have predicted Man’s total annihilation in the near future, among them that of the Millerites in the 1840s in the United States. Reading the account of this sect, I could not help but think of the Extinction Rebellion that is now gripping London, to the growing fury of the rest of the population.
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When World War Two began, Australia saw little threat of invasion from Germany (obviously), and sent a substantial number of firearms to Britain to help arm the Home Guard there, which was seriously concerned about the possibility of a German invasion. When Japan and Australia declared war in December 1941, the situation immediately became much more serious for Australia, and the government began looking for arms.
At the start of the war, there were effectively no submachine guns at all on the continent — just a couple examples. These included an MP38 somehow confiscated by Australian customs, which would take on a significant role. Australia looked to Britain for arms, and they were sent a technical data package to produce the Sten MkII — but found the design pretty underwhelming. Australian manufacturers decided to make their own improvements to it, using elements of the MP38 — specifically the sealed telescoping recoil spring system and underflowing stock. They also gave the gun a pair of pistol grips for improved handling.
The Owen SMG was going into production at this time, and had been in development for a while under private civilian supervision. The Australian Sten, called the Austen, lacked that developmental track record and it went into production without passing proper trials. It faced significant manufacturing delays and reliability problems, and was not well liked by troops — in contrast to the excellent Owen. The Austen was ultimately made in smaller numbers than the Owen (19,914 of the MkI guns) and pulled from combat use in August of 1944.
Many thanks to the Royal Armouries for allowing me to film this rare artifact! The NFC collection there — perhaps the best military small arms collection in Western Europe — is available by appointment to researchers:
So, someone in a Facebook discussion brought up the usual “wOrKs fOr mE” nonsense to rationalize his love for an objectively awful pistol and when called on it, used every gun forum bubba trope you can think of to double down.
A friend mentioned that it was ignorant bro stuff like this that was causing him to seek out other hobbies, to which I ruefully commented that every hobby has its equivalent; guns and shooting aren’t unique.
And then someone else dropped the bomb:
“[Name Redacted], if you don’t recognize this behavior in other hobbies, it’s because you’re the one doing it.”
Ouch.
But the First Rule of Dunning-Kruger Club is “You don’t know that you’re in Dunning-Kruger Club.”
Start your Warframe journey now and prepare to face your personal nemesis, the Kuva Lich — an enemy that only grows stronger with every defeat. Take down this deadly foe, then get ready to take flight in Empyrean! Coming soon! http://bit.ly/EHWarframe
As the Renaissance breathes new life into Europe, Copernicus develops mathematical proofs for the sun resting in the center of the universe. And from his works, a new world is born. The scientific world gets faster and faster. Revolutions of all kinds begin to set off chains of events that reshape human history. And as science improves, so do the tools of war. Both will be necessary to propel humanity to the stars. Join us on this race through the scientific works between the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution.
Copernicus’ publishing really came down to the wire! Legend has it that he was given the final printed pages on his death bed. When they presented him with the book, he awoke from a coma, saw his life’s work and finally passed away in peace. Or so the story goes.
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Europe had grown weary of war by the summer of 1648 and after much deliberation, peace talks in Westphalia had reached their final stages. Warlords across the entire continent were preparing for peace but not all of them agreed. The exceptionally ruthless German-Swedish General Königsmarck advanced into Bohemia to lay siege to Prague.
Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard and Wieke Kapteijns
Produced by: Pär Sundström, Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Broden, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Maps by: Eastory
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Sound Editing by: Marek Kaminski
Sources:
– Thumbnail image: Petri Krohn, CC BY-SA 3.0.
– Les misères et les malheurs de la guerre – The British Museum
– “Germania: dos mil años de historia alemana” series from Fondo Antiguo de la Biblioteca de la Universidad de Sevilla
– The peace of Munster painting courtesy of Amsterdam Museum
– RijksMuseum
An OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.
Sabaton History
2 days ago
This episode about “1648” is about peace and about a devastating and deadly siege to Prague. We enjoy doing these episodes as we usually only make episodes about more modern topics. Now, we have to do without film and photo material, and be creative with paintings and sketches. Kudos to the editor Iryna who makes that work brilliantly! If you agree and want to support our work, you can do so by going to our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistory
Cheers, the Sabaton History team.
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Chris Selley believes that introducing the notion of “sin” as an appropriate thing to discuss with a politician will be a very bad idea for Canadian politics:
Andrew Scheer, paid tool of Big Dairy, chugs some milk during a Press Gallery speech in 2017. I’ve called him the “Milk Dud” ever since. Screencapture from a CTV video uploaded to YouTube.
At a Wednesday press conference in Ottawa, a Globe and Mail reporter asked Andrew Scheer if he believes homosexuality is a “sin.” He didn’t answer, as has become his trademark on this file; instead he pledged, for the umpteenth time, simply to stand up for gay rights in all their forms.
It has been maddening to watch: Despite literally dozens of opportunities, he could never bring himself to explicitly support equal marriage. Bringing “sin” into the question is a novelty, though, and it’s one of which we need to be exceedingly leery.
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The question of “sin” takes us into new and dangerous territory, however. There is what politicians do, and then there is what they think, and then — buried way down under many layers of irrelevance — there is their personal relationship, if any, with higher powers and their associated scriptures; there is the question of what they think that higher power would make of other people’s behaviour; there is what they believe will happen to those people’s immortal souls.
These are not topics the secular media should be concerning themselves with, and nor should the average voter. No one would approve of someone they like being put through such an inquisition. Liberals would be aghast if their avowedly Catholic leader were asked if his faith played a role in his government not eliminating restrictions on gay and bisexual men donating blood, for example. Liberals often speak glowingly of the days when politicians set aside religion and pursued the greater good — politicians like Pierre Trudeau, a devout Catholic who famously said “what goes on in private between two consulting adults is their own private business,” but who somewhat less famously spoke of “separating the idea of sin and the idea of crime.”
Trudeau Sr. was absolutely right that the state should have no dominion over sin, in any sense of the word. That should go for politics, too. Politicians of known faiths and devoutness have advanced many of progressive Canadians’ most cherished causes — public health care, most notably — and politicians of unknown faiths and devoutness have taken us down dark alleys. And vice versa. There is nothing we can do with information about a politician’s personal metaphysical views except raise new barriers to entry into a politics that needs fewer.
Private William Penman, Scots Guards, died 16 May, 1915 at 
On Sunday night — in prime time, Minnesota Vikings’ quarterback Kirk Cousins’ least successful time to play — the 6-3 Vikings visited Dallas to play the 5-3 Cowboys. Both teams depend on their star running backs — Minnesota’s league-leading Dalvin Cook and Ezekiel Elliot for the Cowboys — to help move the chains and open up passing opportunities by forcing the defence to focus on stopping the run. The team that managed to force the issue was likely to end up on the winning side of the equation, and that team turned out to be the Vikings. Dalvin Cook was bottled up for a while, but ended up with 97 yards on the ground and 86 receiving yards. Elliot was held to 47 yards rushing and 16 yards in the air.
