In May 1915, Canadian designers Alphonse Huot and Joseph Prefontaine applied for a patent for their new machine gun design. The aim of the Huot-Prefontaine Machine Gun, the designers claimed, was to “provide a compact, durable and efficient machine gun which can be operated either mechanically or manually and can be quickly produced in large numbers…
Dose of Truth: 6 Questions Obama Should Have Asked Castro
President Barack Obama is to be commended for raising the issues of civil liberties and free elections with Raúl Castro on his Cuban trip, saying, for example, that Cubans should be free to speak their minds and protest against their government without fear of “arbitrary detentions.” It must have been difficult for someone raised and…
Espionage Files: After Brussels Attack EU Wants Their Own Intel Agency
As if adding another agency to the already crowded inept bureaucracy of the EU will solve anything. Besides, what good would an integrated intelligence agency do when the countries do not communicate or cooperate in the first place (Kind of like the FBI and CIA still)? The liberal and PC Politics of Europe will be…
Military News: After 95 Years, the USS Conestoga Has Been Found
The USS Conestoga left the Navy yard at Mare Island, Calif., on Good Friday, 1921, bound for Pearl Harbor, with a complement of 56 sailors. It cleared the Golden Gate at 3:25 p.m. and steamed into the Gulf of the Farallones in heavy seas. The Conestoga was a rugged oceangoing tug that had once hauled coal…
Crusader Corner: It’s Official, Released Terrorist Have and Are Killing Americans
Pentagon Confirms Guantanamo Transfers Have Killed Americans A senior Defense Department official told U.S. lawmakers Wednesday that Americans have been killed by detainees who were released from the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Paul Lewis, the Pentagon’s special envoy for closing the facility, declined to provide details, including whether the incidents occurred during the administration…
Tune Out the Noise and Tune in To Your Priorities
By Hammerhead The world is becoming louder and “noisier” than ever before. This year seems like one of the noisiest ever simply because it is an election year, and that by default means you are going to have a whole lot of people talking but a majority of them not really saying anything worth remembering….
Cold War Files: Some Obscure Cold War History (In Comics)
The World’s Highest War … in Comics ‘Siachen: The Cold War’ depicts a pointless conflict In 1984, India and Pakistan went to war over the Siachen Glacier. A 2003 ceasefire halted most of the fighting, but troops from both sides are still facing off and losing more soldiers every year to the climate, altitude and…
Military History: “Stalingrad on the Yangtze”, The Battle of Shanghai 1937
Today Shanghai is a hub of international trade and culture and one of the world’s great cities. But in 1937, it was a battlefield. Imperial Japanese troops fought the Chinese Nationalist army in the seaside metropolis in one of history’s most terrible battles. Westerners watched from their neighborhoods as two ancient rivals fought a new…
Cold War and Espionage Files: The Last Casualty of the Cold War
Cold War Memories: The Last Casualty In March of ’85 I had a chance to go hang out in Copenhagen for a week with some friends. Buffoonery was the only thing on the agenda and my travel partner and I were masters of it. It had been months since either of us had been…
Modern Crime: The Case of the Gucci Heels and 66 Pounds of Cocaine
A flight attendant ditched her designer heels and fled the Los Angeles International Airport on Friday night, leaving behind two bags stuffed with 66 pounds of cocaine and many questions about her apparent role in a large-scale drug smuggling operation. The flight attendant, who has not been publicly identified, was still on the lam as…