“You dog! You speckled-shirt dog! Why did you not come on board with the boat, you son of a bitch? I will drub you, you dog, within an inch of your life, and that inch too. Ay, you dog, and I will teach you better manners.” – Pirate talk from a real pirate, quoted in [...]
It’s lurid. History’s all full of sex, intrigue, greed, passion, spectacle, treachery, quests, pursuits, color, eccentrics, weirdness, wildness, perversity, heroes and villains (mostly villains), melody, noise, incense and decay, betrayal, grandiosity, more sex, folly, and humor. And of course duels, affrays, dust-ups, murderings, backstabbings, bushwhackings, shootings, slaughterings, battles, and mayhem.
And sex. Did I mention sex?
These [...]
There’s never a bad time to learn more actual history. What better day than Memorial Day to cut through some of the propaganda we’re inundated with from birth onward?
Thanks to Sheldon Richman.
For about the last two years I’ve read “The War Nerd,” Gary Brecher’s column for the English-language Russian alternative website The eXile, religiously. While I don’t always agree with him (big surprise, since I don’t always agree with anybody, including myself), Brecher knows his military history, as well as the broad spectrum of wars, large [...]