Quotulatiousness

July 31, 2026

Nobody “designed” capitalism

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Education, History — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

One of Karl Marx’s cleverer notions was to come up with a label for the economic system that had slowly emerged from the feudal period in Europe. It wasn’t ever the result of some overarching plan or campaign, it was just the easiest way for producers and consumers to connect without coercion or force. It had no real name until its declared enemy named it:

Capitalism did not begin in a boardroom. Voluntary exchange, repeated across generations, built the fairs, the credit networks, the double-entry books that Luca Pacioli codified in 1494. Nobody planned this. That’s the whole point.

The story you learned in school runs backwards. You were taught that greedy factory owners exploited children until noble legislators rescued them in 1833. What actually happened: the Industrial Revolution dragged English living standards up so fast that population doubled between 1750 and 1850 because people stopped dying. Wages rose. Life expectancy rose. The factory that horrifies the modern reader was an upgrade from a life of starving on a tenant farm at the mercy of the harvest. Children worked because their families were poor, and the factory made those families less poor. The reformers arrived after the market had already done the heavy lifting, then took credit for the sunrise.

Real capitalism needs sound money, and here is where the tragedy sharpens. Between 1815 and 1914, under a classical gold standard, prices in Britain fell gently while output exploded. You could save a coin and expect it to buy more later. That world died in stages: 1914, when governments suspended gold to print [money for] war; 1933, when Roosevelt confiscated citizens’ gold at $20.67 an ounce then revalued it to $35; 1971, when Nixon closed the window entirely and handed us the pure fiat regime you live under now.

What followed was corporatism wearing capitalism’s coat. When the Federal Reserve can conjure trillions and hand them to the banks and firms closest to the spigot, you no longer have a market allocating capital. You have a cartel allocating privilege. The 2008 bailouts were a monetary system doing exactly what a monetary system built on the printing press does.

When someone blames “unfettered capitalism” for the mess around you, ask them to point to the fetters.

The answer is to let go. Less regulation, no central bank, less tax, less government. Not more!

A few days ago, Severian point out:

Title page of Das Kapital in the first German edition of Volume 1.
Wikimedia Commons.

At its broadest, “system” means something like “the appearance of rule-governed behavior”, and so yeah, “capitalism” is a “system” in that sense. The “law” of Supply and Demand is a “rule”, if you like, and we can start piling on the ACK-shullies from there. But it’s not particularly useful trying to analyze why and how it happens; the only thing we need to proceed is to acknowledge that it does.

“It” being “reification“, which you’ll recall means “treating an abstraction as if it were a real object”. Synonyms (per Wiki) include “concretism, hypostatization, or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness”, and while I personally dig “hypostatization” — it’s got that groovy Gnostic ring to it — “reification” is easier to type; plus it was very successfully repurposed by Marx and we might need that later, so “reification” it is. Calling “the natural human tendency to exchange stuff for other stuff, each party pursuing what he perceives to be his own advantage” Capitalism is a reification. It’s useful rhetorical shorthand …

… but it carries with it a tendency to mistake the map for the territory, you dig? Instead of confining yourself to “the natural human tendency to exchange stuff for other stuff, each party pursuing what he perceives to be his own advantage”, you inevitably start talking about the “rules” or “laws” of Capitalism. And from there, it’s just a short leap to our course title: the morality of Capitalism.

Because that’s what rules are for, no? To keep things fair — or equal, if you prefer. If we want to find out who’s better at tennis, let’s say, we set up a bunch of rules, to eliminate from the outcome every “inequality” but skill (and dumb luck). Both players have to agree on the scoring. Tennis, therefore, really is a system, strictly speaking. It really is a game, in the mathematical and linguistic senses.

Tennis is not a reification. When we talk about tennis, we are talking about the rules of the game, or the outcome of an individual match. That’s it.

But watch what happens when we start talking about the “rules” of Capitalism. The very word “rule” (or “law”) unavoidably contains the notion of fairness. The rule determining “out of bounds” in tennis is explicitly designed to make the game fair, because that’s what game rules are for — to make the players equal in every respect but skill. You couldn’t know who is the better tennis player if the rules were arbitrary; “out of bounds” has to be clearly defined, and universally applicable.

If you start talking about the “rules” of Capitalism, then, you might not think about “fairness”, but you can’t help but feel it.

Which the contrast with Communism makes worse. Because of course “Capitalism” and “Communism” are “dialectically constructed”. I don’t like throwing Marxist jargon around, but it’s useful in this case. Because Communism is a system, or a game, or whatever word you prefer. Communism does have rules, and they are explicitly designed — like the rules of all games — to ensure equality.

(And they do, comrades, they really do. As P.J. O’Rourke pointed out back when he was funny, Communism is as fair as it gets. We’re all equally broke, starving, and dead, but goddamn it, we’re equal).

I’m sure I don’t have to tell this crowd what a bad idea it is to let your enemies define things for you, but that’s what “Capitalism” does. Karl Marx his own self invented that term. Pick your famous “Capitalist” thinker — Adam Smith, David Ricardo, whoever. They didn’t call themselves “Capitalists”; they called themselves political economists. They weren’t devising rules for a game; they were describing phenomena they observed. It was only after Marx slapped the “Capitalism” tag on the natural human tendency to exchange stuff for other stuff, each party pursuing what he perceives to be his own advantage, that we started seeing “Capitalists”.

Cooking Kangaroo on the World War 2 Australian Home Front

Filed under: Australia, Food, History, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 3 Feb 2026

Slices of braised kangaroo with carrots, onions, parsley, and gravy

City/Region: Australia
Time Period: 1943

Rationing began in Australia in 1942, and meat was one of the foods that had the biggest difference in pre-ration and rationed amounts in the Australian diet. Out in the country, you could hunt to supplement your meat ration, which often meant wallaby and kangaroo, which had fallen out of popularity in the early 20th century, and to be honest, I can see why.

This recipe, from an Australian wartime ration cookbook, is actually for spiced beef, and if you don’t have kangaroo in the back of your freezer or are hunting to supplement your wartime ration, I’d use the beef. The texture of the kangaroo wasn’t bad, but the flavor was not my favorite. I usually like gamey meats, but this was too gamey even for me with an earthy taste that I wasn’t a fan of.

    Spiced Beef
    Method: Mix sugar, mustard, vinegar and salt together and rub over meat with the back of a wooden spoon. Place meat in a dish with bay leaves, cloves and peppercorns — leave for 12 hours. Turn occasionally. Place meat with juices, herbs, etc., sliced carrots, onion and parsley in a saucepan. Just cover with water and simmer for 2 — 3 hours. Serve hot with liquid thickened as gravy or cold with liquid thickened and served as cold sauce. If the oven is in use, cook the meat in a casserole — 2 1/2 — 3 hours in a slow oven (325°F).
    — Planning Meat Ration Meals by the Commonwealth Rationing Commission and the Commonwealth Department of Health, 1943

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QotD: Cuisine on campaign

Filed under: Britain, Food, History, Military, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

War is not a picnic. I [used to] find it difficult to cook in the proximity of squalling children; I suppose the rattle of gunfire, incendiary bombs, and the whistle of mortars might be equally distracting to the higher sort of culinary exercise. But the circumstances of a field kitchen are not wholly grim. Dried herbs and spices are very light to carry, and wherever one happens to be on a campaign, there are the fruits of that countryside. Moreover, as most old soldiers will recall, and the readers of their diaries and memoirs in their absence, most days are not that exciting. There is plenty of time to think about food. There are long periods of boredom and waiting with nothing to look at but the sky; interspersed with short periods of pant-shitting terror.

Supposing, for a moment, a bit of imagination on the part of quartermasters and cooks, and a semi-intelligent rationing authority, a war might be conducted with a bit of style. There could be rivalry between regimental kitchens, or between the galleys in Her Majesty’s fleet. Food could be made a powerful inducement in the recruitment drives.

There are some little sparks like this, in history. In the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale, that extraordinary lantern-bearing angel, procured the voluntary help of Alexis Soyer, the leading London hotel chef of the day, to advise her on the organization of field hospital kitchens. These quickly became the place to eat — almost worth getting wounded. M. Soyer applied his very broad mind to analyzing the limitations of field cookery, then turning each limitation into a strength. (I recommend his Culinary Campaign in the Crimea, 1857.)

Morale is not a small thing in the conduct of war. A hot meal served in defiance of logistics in the cold wet of a hideous trench, comes to remind us of victory, in the very face of the enemy.

David Warren, “Non-idlers”, Essays in Idleness, 2020-11-11.

July 29, 2026

The American Deep State’s biggest experimental laboratory

Filed under: Cancon, Government, History, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

On Substack, John Carter links to the latest of kulak’s fascinating-and-unsettling Anarchonomicon posts with this introduction:

Kulak’s thesis here is that English Canada generally, and Toronto specifically, is ground zero for a lot of the more insane gay race communism trends because America has been using Canada as a testing ground for psychological operations since the 1950s.

That sounds kind of nuts but he makes a plausible case. Since Canada is technically a foreign country, intelligence agencies don’t face the same limitations they do at home. Since Canada is almost culturally identical to the US, what works in Canada will generally work domestically (and all the GAE psyops are ultimately aimed at America’s domestic tax cattle).

Kulak also brings the receipts here, showing how things like MeToo and GamerGate seem to have been prefigured by similar movements in Canada a couple years before.

One thing he misses is land acknowledgements, which began spreading in Canada in 2013 or so, and have since started appearing at American and Australian universities. I don’t know for sure that they started in Canada, all I can say is that it was Canada where I first noticed them, and where they have become ubiquitous.

Multiculturalism is another Canadian export, developed here in the 60s and rapidly introduced all over the Western world. The prime ministers who introduced it were American puppets, and the ideology itself has a very broadly American “nation of immigrants” feel to it.

Anyhow, you motherfuckers, two can play this game.

On the land acknowledgements, the first time I encountered it was at my son’s university graduation ceremony, but his university had a big First Nations specialization so it didn’t seem too outlandish at the time. Since then, of course, pretty much every event in urban Canada seems to feature a land acknowledgement and they don’t appear to be optional any more.

Anyway, on to kulak’s post on “The Battle for the Mind of North America”:

The Land of Mind-Rape and Honey

Canada is/was a nice enough place to visit or grow up … several large nice cities surrounded by tons and tons of quaint and cute functional “Mainstreet USA” style quirky little towns.

The “Rape” refers to Rapeseed, the primary ingredient in Canola Oil, the unhealthy seed-oil. (they named it “Canada Oil” because “Rape Oil” might make people hesitate)

But when you scratch at the surface there’s something profoundly deeply wrong with Canada. You can feel it. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work … when you go to church … when you pay your taxes.

and the Canadians are quite pleased to tell you just what that thing is:

America.

Funnily though, when you ask what Americans have done to them or what is wrong with America, they’ll tell you things about moral degeneracy and perfidy of Americans … no different than what the American elite and the US Government expresses about its own populace.

For reference: Canada is a vassal of the US.

It has been since the 1960s when the British lost the Suez Crisis and the American Deep State backed “Multiculturalism”, an end to “God Save the Queen”, legalized sodomy, ended prayer in public schools, demilitarized Canadian education (which til the 60s included rifle practice, marching, and survival training) … and oh ya a new flag.

The Canadian flag, adopted in 1964 … which the very year should be a “red flag”. Is in fact, an American flag. It is the symbol of America’s diplomatic and espionage victories over the British Empire and its final conquest of Canada.

Canada’s entire culture, defined by being British, Imperial, warlike, frontier militiamen (Indeed Canada’s 1950s culture in many ways resembled Washington’s and Jefferson’s colonial American culture more than America did) … was ripped out in the course of a decade … quite intentionally and by design.

Indeed Canada was the testing ground for the Global American Empire’s psychological cultural program.

To get a feel for just HOW aggressively Canadian culture was purposefully ripped apart … I encourage you to flip through the various programs for “Empire day in the Schools of Ontario” up on archive to see English Canada’s actual natural culture. (I will be writing about this in more detail in another piece.)

And Please Note: The British did nothing comparable … the “Narnia” age of Canada coexisted with The Fabians, George Bernard Shaw, and the basically open communist treason of the actual British Aristocracy.

The mottoes on the posters: “Obey/ the Law/ Follow/ Duty”, “One God/ One King/ One Flag/ One Fleet”, “Love God and Honour the King”

This was immediately ripped out by State Department’s assets like Pearson and Trudeau in the 60s and 70s in favour of “Multiculturalism”.

How does the one Canada: Royalist, Militaristic, Patriotic as Can Be, defined by the three institutions of Church, Militia Armoury, and the old-style High School ruthlessly enforcing standards … More akin to Cadia from 40k than a 21st century country … How did it transform into the modern Canada within living memory?

How do you destroy the entire culture of a country and replace it with an entirely new culture in front of its population’s very eyes … without resistance and without protest?

Well that’s the problem that was solved here.

Canada was the testing ground for all of the American Government’s cultural occupational weapons it would go on to use on Europe and on its own people.

Terms like “melting pot”, “racism”, “tolerance”, “the open society” … These of course has all been coined by American Jewish and Communist activists (“Racism” specifically is a Trotskyist doctrinal term of art propagated by Trotsky’s personal pamphlets, and you should call any “Conservative” who ever uses the term a Communist traitor).

However it was in Canada that top down US foreign policy institutions first applied the current model to a country which they had conquered without a war.

Indeed when one looks into “Denazification” in Germany or the US occupations of France, Italy, or Japan you find little to no overlap between the language, structure, and even values of the “Democratic”, “antifascist”, and “Peaceful” occupational ideology and modern Globohomo.

“Monument to Multiculturalism”. Toronto. Erected 1985. (The “Monument” can be interpreted two ways … the man and doves working together to build a unified world … or the man is unwittingly cooperating in his own caging and enslavement)

Whereas in Canada the US occupational ideology EXACTLY resembles modern globohomo. From the outset.

Pierre Trudeau’s first major political moment was the 1967 decriminalization of homosexuality.

The Korean War Week 110 – The Democratic Candidate – July 28, 1952

Filed under: China, History, Media, Military, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 28 Jul 2026

In Chicago, the Democratic Party chooses Adlai Stevenson as their candidate for the Presidential election to be held November 4th; he’ll square off against Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican candidate. Also, in the US, the steelworkers strike comes to an end. In Korea, torrential rains prevent action on the ground this week, though the UN continues its summer aerial bombing campaign of the north in the skies.

The changing nature of Canadian patriotism

Filed under: Cancon, History, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Jay Currie contrasts the kind of patriotism most Canadians grew up with against the politicized version hijacked by the Liberals as a tool in their never-ending quest to re-shape Canadians in their preferred image:

Sitting out here on the southern tip of Vancouver Island overlooking the Olympic mountains across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, I am bemused by the Eastern Canadian debate on Canadian patriotism. @BenWoodfinden weighs in as does Auntie Andy @acoyne

The current version of the debate is focused on whether the Conservative Party is “patriotic enough”. In less fraught times that would translate to “love of Canada” but now it comes down to anti-American and, more importantly, anti-Trump enough.

Probably because, after twelve years of Trudeau/Carney there is very little “Canada” left to love. We’re a post-national, genocidal, nearly European entity ruled from an embattled Ottawa beset by Americans, Chinese and our own separatists.

From the Ottawa/Toronto point of view Canada’s singular attribute is our willingness to punch Trump right in the nose. And woe betide the traitors like Smith, Moe and Frechette who are not willing to get behind Captain Canada as he takes his roundhouse swings.

And the Conservative Party is failing on the patriotism front precisely because a significant part of it thinks punching the Yanks in the nose is possibly the dumbest thing they have ever heard. Why the Hell would we do that?

On the Auntie Andy/Woodfinden scale of patriotism this disqualifies the CPC from ever winning a federal election because only Canadian Patriots should be allowed to command the Ottawa ramparts eyes firmly fixed on the perfidious Yanks.

As a thought experiment try to define Canadian patriotism without reference to the US or Donald Trump. I assure you it can be done. The way you do it is begin with the ground you are on. Where is it? What is it? What can you see?

Now, think about your neighbours, the stores you go to, the pub you like, the golf course or soccer field or swimming pool you prefer, the schools you went to, the teams you played on, yes, your favourite NHL team, vacation spot, drive.

Essentially these and hundreds of other details are the ground truths of your Canada and it is that Canada where your patriotism begins. The Canadian flag, the Peace tower, your favourite version of “Oh, Canada” are all abstractions of this ground truth.

People don’t fight for “King and Country”, they fight for their children, their spouse, their parents, their neighbours. That is where the real loyalty lies. It’s acutely local and it accretes across time, across generations.

The Liberal Party project of the last half century has been to replace this hyper-localized patriotism with an synthetic, denatured, atomized Patriotism which defines itself by what it is against, not what it is for. It is a deeply unsatisfying project.

The fact the CPC is wary of this synthetic patriotism is to its credit. Looking at its messaging in the last election at least a part of the CPC understands that Canada is the ground you stand on, not an invention of Ottawa. It’s the right message.

At Without Diminishment, Carl Vallée identifies one of the structural strengths of the left that allow them to concentrate on achieving and maintaining power: unity of vision across all progressive parties.

Exit Trudeau, enter Carney.

It must be admitted that the Liberals have dominated the political landscape for much of the past century, enabling them to weave their own partisan symbols and values into the fabric of Canadian institutions.

The federal state as it exists today is a legacy of Liberal Party rule. Pierre Trudeau’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms fundamentally changed the trajectory of this country, but the ideology underpinning it had begun to take shape even before his time. Whether one considers multiculturalism, mass immigration or the red maple leaf flag, Canada is a country whose institutions naturally lean, if not lurch, to the left.

Therefore, conservatives must swim against the current, almost perpetually. Why is this? I submit that it stems from the fact that Liberals in both English Canada and Quebec are ideologically closely aligned and share a common vision of Canada. The left often looks much the same everywhere. Certainly, its values, methods and codes of communication are identical across the Western world.

In Canada, Liberals will not hesitate to weaponise the state to ensure their values endure. The alignment between Liberals in Quebec and English Canada has been critical to their electoral success.

Conversely, the right are more locally rooted and provincial, and are therefore less inclined to share a broad common vision with their compatriots across the country. This poses a challenge to both the coherence of Canadian conservatism and its electoral arithmetic.

Conservatism in Quebec is not libertarian, and here we envisage using the state to advance nationalist and conservative ends. What we conserve in Quebec is not what our friends in Western Canada or Ontario seek to conserve.

Arrayed against our alliance of local political traditions are the Liberals, who share and promote a single, pan-Canadian narrative. The inability of the right to offer a catch-all vision capable of rallying the anti-Liberal vote partially explains the electoral success of the Liberal Party over the past few decades.

Structurally, the 1982 rupture over the imposition of the Charter has made this phenomenon almost permanent, despite the efforts of prime ministers Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper to rally coalitions against the Liberals. Neither was able to prevent the Charter from entrenching itself as Canada’s new national narrative, despite the explicit opposition of Francophones, one of the country’s founding peoples.

If there is a fault, it does not lie solely with the pan-Canadian conservative movement, but also with Quebec’s bleus, who failed to invest in the Conservative Party of Canada, the only political party capable of rivalling the Liberals. As a result, the Quebec vote is split between the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois, whose voters are much less left-wing than the party’s current leadership. In the 2025 federal election, the combined Conservative and Bloc vote in Quebec actually exceeded the Liberal vote.

1960s British Army Recruitment Film | Cold War Training & Life Inside the Army

Filed under: Britain, History, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Militaria Collectors Network
Published 23 Mar 2026

Step back into the 1960s and experience how the British Army trained the soldiers of the Cold War era. This rare archival recruitment film offers a fascinating look at military life, basic training, and the wide range of technical and career opportunities available to new recruits during a time of global tension and rapid modernisation.

From infantry drills and weapons training to engineering, communications, and education programmes, this film highlights how the British Army prepared men for both combat and skilled professions. Whether you’re interested in Cold War history, military training, or vintage government films, this is a unique glimpse into a defining period of British military history.

📽️ In this film:
– 1960s British Army basic training
– Infantry tactics and weapons familiarisation
– Technical trades and career paths
– Cold War-era military strategy and preparation
– Life as a British Army recruit
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QotD: Asymmetric warfare

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, Quotations, Russia — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Asymmetric Warfare is a term used to describe warfare between two belligerents with either starkly different amounts of resources or different warfare styles or systems. It is crucial to note this term denotes something about the relationship between two belligerents, not something essential to one of them; an army or a state is not asymmetric except in relations to another (the mistake here is often to set the modern western industrialized form of warfare as the “norm” against which all other forms are somehow asymmetric). While this term has been used to describe the war in Ukraine, it is ill-suited for it: both Ukraine and Russia are attempting to make use of a similar set of equipment (including the use of artillery and airstrikes) using a uniformed soldiery; they are both, to borrow one of my earlier definitions, attempting to operate within the “third system of war“. Ukrainian efforts to have uniformed soldiers use maneuver and surprise to engage Russian logistics and rear echelon units are not “asymmetric”, but rather a standard part of both Russian and Ukrainian warfighting, albeit one that Ukraine appears more skilled at in the present moment. Likewise, both sides are attempting a parallel “political struggle” of demonstrations and information warfare; Ukrainian success here too does not make their methods asymmetric.

Bret Devereaux, “Miscellanea: A Very Short Glossary of Military Terminology”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2022-03-25.

July 28, 2026

“The gun is the most misunderstood object in Western civilization”

Filed under: Europe, History, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Krzysztof Szczawinski discusses the history of the right to bear arms from ancient Greece to modern America:

The gun is the most misunderstood object in Western civilization. Not a weapon. A technology. The technology that made the idea of equality physically real.

1. The longbow democratized warfare – a peasant could kill a knight with a stick and a string, and Agincourt proved it. The gun completed the process. The armored warrior class whose claim to social dominance rested on physical superiority became obsolete. The aristocratic monopoly on violence ended not with a philosophy but with a mechanism. The gun is the physical enforcement of the idea that all men are created equal. Which is why the American founders put it in the second amendment – not as an afterthought, but as the guarantee of everything else.

2. The Roman citizen had the right to bear arms. The Greek citizen had it. The English yeoman had it. The Swiss canton built its entire civilization on it. The disarming of the population has always been, in every civilization, in every century, the first act of the government that intends to stop being answerable to that population. Show me a disarmed population and I will show you a population that lost something else shortly after.

3. The Second Amendment is not about hunting. It is not about sport. It is about the relationship between the armed citizen and the state – the explicit constitutional acknowledgment that the citizen’s right to defend himself, his family, and his civilization against any threat, including the government itself, is not granted by the state and cannot be revoked by it. Power flows upward from the armed citizen, not downward from the armed state.

4. The gun defends the family. The woman alone with her children. The farmer on the edge of civilization. The shopkeeper in the neighborhood the police no longer patrol. The gun is the equalizer – the technology that makes the physical difference between a large man and a small woman irrelevant. Every argument for disarmament is, at its core, an argument that the state will protect you better than you can protect yourself. The evidence for this proposition is not encouraging.

5. In Europe, the disarmament is now nearly complete – and it happened precisely as the state’s ability and willingness to protect its citizens began to decline. The timing is not coincidental. A population that cannot defend itself must trust the state to defend it – which is a population that cannot effectively question whether the state is doing so. The dependency is the design.

6. The gun is a civilizational technology in the deepest sense: it requires responsibility, judgment, and the willingness to accept the consequences of your decisions. You cannot outsource it. You cannot have a committee fire it. It is the most anti-bureaucratic object ever invented – a direct, personal, consequential instrument that puts the full weight of the decision on the individual holding it. Which is precisely why the administrative state finds it intolerable. Not because it is dangerous. Because it is sovereign.

7. The family that can defend itself does not depend on the state for its most fundamental security. The civilization that can defend itself has not yet outsourced its survival to an institution that will negotiate the terms of that survival on its own behalf. The gun determines who controls violence – and therefore who controls everything that violence can threaten. Which is everything. The Sobieski who rode down the hill had a sword and sixty thousand horsemen. The equivalent today is the armed citizen who understands what he is defending and why. Every civilization that forgot this discovered it the hard way. The ones that remembered it are still here.

Adventures in Surplus! Type 38 Arisaka Carbine in World War One

Filed under: Britain, History, Japan, Military, Russia, WW1 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 4 Mar 2026

In the fall of 1914 it became apparent that the minor fracas in Serbia was going to stretch a lot longer than anyone had expected, and governments began scrambling to secure weapons production. Japan was one source of small arms for the Entente powers, and Britain purchased about 150,000 Arisaka rifles and carbines from the Japanese in late 1914 and early 1915. These were used to equip Royal Navy crews and Army raining and reserve units, but by late 1915 Enfield production had caught up and the guns were no longer needed.

In the fall of 1915, the British sent most of their Arisakas (about 128,000) to Russia, which had also been purchasing large numbers from Japan. There they were again used to arm second-line units, including troops occupying the Grand Duchy of Finland. When Finland declared its independence in December 1917, most of the Russian soldiers went home and left their weapons in Finland. As a result, the Arisaka was the second most common type of rifle available at Finland’s independence, and was used by the Civil Guard until about 1927.

This particular Type 38 Carbine was made at the Tokyo Army Arsenal in 1910, then sold to the British where it was given a set of unit marks on the stock. It was subsequently transferred to Russia, where a metal clip was added to prevent accidental magazine release. It stayed in Finland through the Finnish Civil War and afterwards, only being imported into the US recently by Postrock of Garden City, Kansas.
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July 27, 2026

The shambolic Fifth Crusade, or “Waiting for Fredot”

Filed under: Books, Europe, History, Middle East, Military, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In The Critic, Anatoly Grablevsky reviews a new book on one of the less well-known attempts to wrest control of the Holy Land from the Islamic conquerors:

By the early 13th century, the military and geopolitical situation of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem was dire. After the Third Crusade (1189-92) had failed to retake Jerusalem, the Frankish realm in the Holy Land was reduced to a thin coastal strip centred on the heavily fortified city of Acre. The rest of the Near East was in the hands of the Ayyubids, the successors of Saladin.

In response to Ayyubid encroachment, in 1213 Pope Innocent III called for a new holy war to reinforce the Kingdom of Jerusalem and reclaim the Holy City for Christendom. The bulk of the expedition was recruited in the Holy Roman Empire, whose young emperor, Frederick II, the wonder of the world himself, ostentatiously took up the cross. He was, however, in no hurry to join his countrymen in the east.

Learning from their bitter past experiences, this time around the Crusaders adopted a novel strategy. Instead of focusing their efforts on the Holy Land, the Christians targeted Egypt, the political and economic heartland of the Ayyubids.

The Crusader army’s first port of call was the coastal city of Damietta, which, after a lengthy siege, fell in 1219. This was a major victory for Christendom: Crusaders had not captured a city of Damietta’s size, wealth and strategic importance since the fall of Jerusalem in 1099.

The Ayyubid Sultan Al-Kamil, under pressure from Mongol attacks at the rear, now offered attractive peace terms that included the return of Jerusalem to the Christians. The Crusaders, overconfident and under orders from the absentee emperor, rebuffed Al-Kamil and instead decided to march on the Ayyubid capital of Cairo.

Here, the crusade took a shambolic turn. The Christians wasted precious months awaiting the arrival of Frederick II, but the emperor never bothered to show up (Smith might have called his book “Waiting for Fredot”). By the time the Crusaders finally began the march south, Al-Kamil had gathered his strength, and the Franks were quickly outmanoeuvred by the Sultan, who used his superior knowledge of the Nile’s flooding patterns to trap them against the river.

The Crusaders reacted by launching an all-out assault on their substantial wine provisions so that, when the Muslims attacked, the Christian army disintegrated in a drunken rout.

In the ensuing peace deal, Al-Kamil regained Damietta, in return for giving safe passage back to Europe to the Christian survivors.

Timeō Danaōs et dōna ferentēs

Filed under: Greece, History, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The tag in my chosen headline means roughly “beware of Greeks bearing gifts”, which anyone who has read anything about the Trojan War can understand. A huge problem for modern translators of works like The Iliad and The Odyssey is that there’s a double layer of cultural change built in before you start: the Mycenaean Greek culture of the Bronze Age — the setting of the Trojan War — is significantly different from the Greek culture of the classic era — when the oral tales were first written down (and attributed to Homer).

Classic Greek culture is often misunderstood by modern audiences through the most prominent survivals of that time: especially Greek philosophy, as the philosophers we think of as most representative of Athenian and the wider Greek culture were actually a fairly small and relatively powerless subculture at odds with the mainstream of their times.

All that said, going from a translation to an on-screen interpretation requires a lot of picking and choosing of elements to highlight and others to leave unrepresented or actively suppressed. In the most recent film of Odysseus and his extended return journey from Troy to Ithaca, director Christopher Nolan chose to portray Odysseus as a modern man in ways that may suit today’s audiences, but don’t accurately portray the Homeric interpretation or the times in which it is set:

Some viewers have described Nolan’s version of Odysseus as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. But moral injury is the more accurate term. It overlaps with PTSD, but it’s not the same thing. Moral injury occurs when a person commits, witnesses, or fails to prevent an act that violates his moral convictions. In war, moral injury can arise when a person does something that violates his own ideals, loyalties, or sense of right and wrong. The result is lasting guilt. A combat veteran comes to see himself as corrupt, unworthy, or beyond forgiveness.

In the film, Odysseus describes his guilt over the violence he witnessed during the sack of Troy. He is conscience-stricken about his Trojan Horse gambit. Odysseus took an object that appeared to be a gift of peace and used it as a weapon of deception. His stratagem allowed the Greeks to enter Troy, destroy the city, and slaughter its people.

But the Trojan Horse is Odysseus’s crowning achievement. Homer’s Odysseus is a wily trickster, and a trickster would not be tormented by the fact that his trick succeeded.

During his journey, he repeatedly deceives his own men for what he believes is the greater good, and these acts clearly trouble him. The war itself is remembered as grim and pointless. Men are drafted rather than rushing eagerly toward glory.

This is not Homer’s moral universe. In the poem, the Greeks rape, rob, enslave, and pillage without displaying anything like modern guilt. We can tolerate this when reading an ancient text. It is harder to tolerate when those acts are placed directly before us on a movie screen.

This may explain Nolan’s decision. Had he shown the violence of the original story without softening it, would the audience still have been able to sympathize with Odysseus?

Consider what happens to the enslaved women accused of consorting with the suitors after Odysseus returns home. Odysseus orders them to be killed, and Telemachus hangs them. Homer does not present the scene as morally complicated. Their punishment is part of restoring order.

Modern films sometimes allow their heroes to inhabit moral worlds very different from our own. Robert Eggers’s 2022 film The Northman asks us to sympathize with Viking characters who obey codes that most moviegoers today would find reprehensible. But The Northman was a mid-budget film. Nolan made a summer blockbuster that cost hundreds of millions of dollars. A blockbuster can’t afford to depict a hero from whom audiences recoil. Eggers could let his Viking be a Viking. Nolan needs his Greek warrior to be one of us.

Yet such individuals lived in societies that existed before Christian morality reshaped the Western understanding of guilt, mercy, and the value of every human life. The moral injury that afflicts Nolan’s Odysseus belongs more naturally to the AD world than the BC one.

In the film, Odysseus grieves for the men he lost and appears to blame himself for their deaths. But Homer presents that suffering as the result of pride, fate, divine anger, and human foolishness. The original story does not depict Odysseus as a man tormented by the fear that he has violated his own moral code.

The difference is clear in the episode of the lotus-eaters. In Nolan’s film, Odysseus eats the lotus because he seeks mental relief, a kind of ancient Greek version of using psychedelics to treat combat trauma. In the poem, Odysseus does the opposite. He refuses to eat the lotus and orders his men away from it.

The Total Erasure of Carthage | Part Four

Filed under: Africa, History, Italy — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Rest Is History
Published 12 Feb 2026

Three decades after the defeat of Hannibal, how had the Roman Empire managed to conquer vast swathes of the known world? Why did the predatory eyes of this terrifying behemoth turn once more to Carthage? And, could this mighty city defy the odds and repel Rome one last time …?

Join Tom and Dominic as they reach the climactic, final phase of the Punic Wars; the greatest military struggle of all ancient history.
(more…)

July 26, 2026

Woodworking workbenches – the earliest artistic representation

Filed under: History, Italy, Woodworking — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

On his Substack, Christopher Schwarz recounts a visit to the historical remains of the town of Herculaneum under the volcano that erupted in 79 AD, killing many thousands, but preserving a lot of the Roman town under many metres of volcanic ash:

The beginning. In the House of the Vetti, this dining room fresco is perhaps the earliest depiction of a workbench in the West. (Photo by Narayan Nayar)

The journey to the summit of Mount Vesuvius has all the romance of visiting an unlicensed reptile farm. It begins in Ercolano, Italy, a touristy village in the shadow of the volcano and home to Herculaneum, one of the towns buried by Vesuvius’s eruption in 79 C.E.

As Narayan Nayar (the photographer for the journey) and I stepped off the train from Naples we were assaulted by young, attractive Italians. Their job: Bait tourists to nearby restaurants. We glanced around and saw only one escape route from the train station’s cul-de-sac. So, we plowed through the crowd of eager human fishing lures.

We emerged from the other side a bit relieved. Then we realized we’d scurried past the bus company that was supposed to drive us up the volcano. We turned around and dove back into the swarm of too-perky people in order to catch our bus.

The twisty-turny bus ride ended 660 feet below the volcano’s summit, and we then climbed a steep trail to the volcano’s rim. The top resembles a gravel pit where one of Frank Herbert’s worms might emerge. There’s no deep hole for tossing human sacrifices – throw a virgin into Vesuvius and she’s only going to get skinned knees and a sunburn. I looked around the volcano and promptly excused the early settlers of the area for building their homes at the base of Vesuvius. The only evidence you’re on a volcano (besides the little gift shops) is the occasional tiny plume of gas and the odd rocks below your feet.

I picked up a few rocks. For rocks, they were young – likely the result of the 1944 eruption, which destroyed several villages. I looked out from our 4,200-foot perch at the buildings in every direction below, which are built on top of villages that were covered in ash from earlier eruptions. It’s a grim scene if you think about it too much – 600,000 people now live in the so-called “red zone” for a future eruption.

And yet, as I fondled the rocks in my hand I felt only gratitude for this deadly, fire-breathing mountain.

The Earliest Workbenches

The recorded history of woodworking begins with the Egyptians. But the recorded history of workbenches begins (for now) with Vesuvius. Its massive eruption in 79 C.E. buried Pompeii, Herculaneum and other sites, preserving frescoes, buildings, pottery, human remains and even wooden furniture.

At Pompeii, the ash blanketed a fresco showing a low, four-legged workbench being used for mortising by a man in Greek attire. At nearby Herculaneum, the eruption preserved a fresco showing “erotes” – what we might call “buck nekkid cupids” – sawing a board at an eight-legged low workbench. It features a holdfast and other holdfast holes. This fresco has since been destroyed, but we have engravings that were made soon after its discovery (more on both the frescoes’ stories is ahead).

These two images are the earliest representations of workbenches of which I’m aware. And they launched my interest in exploring knee-high workbenches and how to use them to build furniture, boats, storage containers and wagon wheels.

The conventional wisdom is that these low benches were used in former times for simple work and were replaced by superior modern benches, which are thigh-high or taller. But the more I studied low benches, the more I found that they never disappeared. They are still in use. Additionally, these low benches can be used for complex work, including steam bending compound shapes and lutherie.

The low bench is more than a thick plank of wood with legs. It’s also a collection of simple jigs and appliances that allow you to do remarkable work while sitting comfortably on an easy-to-build platform. For centuries, these simple jigs remained hidden in plain sight in paintings and drawings in museums. And their appliances have been proven to work, both at my low benches and by the modern craftsmen who still use them.

How to Provoke a War – Death of Democracy 25 – Q1 1939

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Military — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 25 Jul 2026

By March 1939, appeasement has failed.

Hitler’s Germany has moved from threats and persecution inside the Reich to the destruction of Czechoslovakia, the seizure of Memel, and renewed pressure on Poland. No shots have yet been fired between the great powers — but Europe is now locked on a course toward war.

In this episode of Death of Democracy, Spartacus Olsson reports from Berlin at the end of Q1 1939: the “Israel” and “Sara” decree, Schacht’s dismissal, Göring’s Central Office for Jewish Emigration, Hitler’s genocidal Reichstag threat, the launch of Bismarck, the coerced occupation of Prague, the Memel ultimatum, and Britain’s guarantee to Poland.

This is the moment when the Munich illusion collapses. Hitler is no longer pretending to unite Germans. He is dismantling states.

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