Arthurian Legend for a Disenchanted Age

 From Express:

In a time of tech-bro billionaires, a meaning crisis among an anxious youth and questions surrounding national identity, where better to go than back to the old stories to have one’s heart reenchanted? That’s something poet, scholar and priest Malcolm Guite has become renowned for on his popular self-titled YouTube channel, which has 220,000 subscribers and counting. The real-life waistcoat-wearing hobbit, with wizard-like long silver hair and beard, has charmed millions around the world with his videos from the perspective of a visitor to his cosy, book-lined study. For each typical upload, Guite will settle into his wing armchair, light one of his many pipes, and usually read aloud from a chapter of JRR Tolkien or CS Lewis.

The 68-year-old author of several books, including five collections of poetry, realised that it’s been about a century since there was a proper re-telling of Britain’s great myth, the Arthurian legend. In what could well be his magnum opus, Guite has set about writing Merlin’s Isle: An Arthuriad, a four-volume epic ballad of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

Beautifully illustrated by Stephen Crotts, the first volume, Galahad and the Grail, is set in the 5th century, after the Romans have departed, leaving Britain in a chaotic mess of savage warlords before the Anglo-Saxon invasion. King Arthur seeks to unite the realm by establishing a kingdom of peace and stability, one led by his chivalric knights who are fierce in battle against the “might is right” pagans, while being gentle and kind to the weak and vulnerable they are sworn to protect. (Read more.)

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The Mystery of the ‘Real’ Milady de Winter

  

Yet another descendant of Mary Boleyn. From History Extra:

In the preface to The Three Musketeers, Dumas claims that he was researching Louis XIV in the Bibliothéque nationale de France when he happened upon the first volume of The Memoirs of M. d’Artagnan. This is not entirely true: he found the book in the public library in Marseilles, borrowed it and never returned it.

The Memoirs of M. d’Artagnan is a first-person pseudo memoir written by a former soldier, Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras, and first published in 1700. It tells the story of d’Artagnan, a young man setting out on his journey to become a musketeer. As well as d’Artagnan, Dumas discovered Athos, Porthos and Aramis, who would eventually become major characters in The Three Musketeers. He also found Milady de Winter. Courtilz never gives Milady’s name. Instead, she is referred to simply as ‘Milady’ followed by a dash or asterisks where her name should be. She is introduced as a maid of honour to Henrietta Maria, queen to the executed Charles I of England, whose exile in France Milady shares.

The daughter of an English peer, Milady has as much wit as beauty, and d’Artagnan thinks her the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. He promptly falls in love with her. There then follows a complicated sexual intrigue, one of several for Courtilz’s d’Artagnan. Once it is over, Milady is never heard from again. This is the episode that Dumas adapted for The Three Musketeers. The affair of the queen’s diamonds is absent from Courtilz, but at least part of the story as Dumas told it is supported by several contemporary memoirs. Those of Françoise Bertaut de Motteville, Pierre de La Porte and Henri-Auguste de Loménie, Comte de Brienne – all of whom served at the royal court of France – each provide an account of the Duke of Buckingham’s visit to France in 1625. Buckingham had been sent to escort Henrietta Maria, then Charles I’s new queen, to England. While in France, he ostentatiously courted the queen, Anne of Austria.

None of these memoirs, however, mention the diamonds that Anne was said to have given to the duke. For this part of the story, it is necessary to consult the memoirs of Henri-Auguste's son, an obscure publication known as Recueil A, and the memoirs of François de La Rochefoucauld. Louis-Henri de Loménie, Comte de Brienne served Louis XIV as secretary of state, a position he inherited from his father. He left a memoir, which was published in the early 19th century. Certain editions, particularly that edited by Jean François Barrière, include an account of the queen’s diamonds.

It does not form part of Brienne’s original narrative – he was not even born at the time of the alleged diamond affair. Instead, it is mentioned in an introductory essay, written by the editor, explaining the manners and customs of 17th-century France. It is then related in full in an appendix, Éclaircissements historiques, or ‘historical clarifications’. In this version, the diamond thief is named as Lady Clarik. However, the story was lifted word-for-word from Recueil A, and inserted into the memoir. Recueil A is the first volume of a large collection published in the 18th century. It comprises an assortment of documents, including extracts of memoirs, concerning the history of France. The author of the account of the diamond affair is enigmatically identified as ‘M. le M. de T’. Behind these initials, according to the anonymous editor of the Recueil, is René de Froulay, Comte de Tessé.

The Comte de Tessé was a real person. Born in 1651, he was a military man, diplomat and courtier. He did indeed leave a memoir, but the diamond affair does not appear in it. The story as found in Recueil A and later inserted into the memoir by Brienne is, therefore, unreliable. What then of La Rochefoucauld? In his memoir, the lady who stole the diamonds was not Lady Clarik but the countess of Carlisle. In fact, Lady Clarik did not exist – but Lady Carlisle certainly did. (Read more.)

 

Read about the Countess of Carlisle in my Henrietta Maria novels, HERE and HERE.

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And Do Not Split the Vote

 From Tierney's Real News:

Voting third-party (Libertarian, independent, or any other) in a tight race does nothing but help Democrats win. In America’s winner-take-all system it functions as a split of the conservative vote. Those ballots come disproportionately from voters who would otherwise support the Republican.

Those of you who have followed me for years know that I despise the Koch Libertarians and the fake influencers for this very reason. They are a greater danger to America than the Democrats. Why? Because their entire purpose is to fool conservatives into voting for 3rd party candidates in the name of Liberty. They convince good conservatives and Christians to waste a conservative vote on a Koch Libertarian or "Freedom” candidate.

What does this do? It takes votes away from Republicans so that Democrats win, every time! In most states, let’s say that roughly 51% of the population is conservative, 49% liberal. If the Koch Libertarians can convince just 3% of the population to vote Libertarian or independent - the end result looks like this: Democrats 49%, Republicans 48%, Libertarian 3%. DEMOCRATS WIN. EVERY TIME.

3rd party ringers (Libertarians & Independents) ALWAYS HELP DEMOCRATS win. That's how Bill Clinton, a Democrat, won the presidency with only 43% of the vote - because Ross Perot took HALF THE CONSERVATIVE vote and helped the Democrats win in 1992!

The Kochs saw how successful this approach was to flip the country BLUE and have been running with it ever since.

If you want conservatives to govern, vote Republican and MAGA - not third party. Otherwise you’re just helping the Democrats win. (Read more.)

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How to Re-enchant Your Life

 From Léonce:

Over time, we have done away with waiting, boredom, and much of uncertainty. We have learned to plan our routes, order food before we are hungry, know whether a restaurant is worth going to before we step inside, check the weather before we look at the sky. We can fill almost every empty minute, find an immediate answer to almost any question, see a place before we have ever set foot there. All of this is, of course, very convenient.

But I sometimes wonder whether, in removing so many small frictions and in-between moments from our lives, we have also removed, almost by accident, some of the conditions that allowed the world to surprise us. Perhaps enchantment depends on some of the very things we have spent years trying to eliminate: waiting, uselessness, mystery, slowness, surprise, imagination, attention.

There is a concept that has stayed with me since my student days: Max Weber’s idea of the “disenchantment of the world.” Very roughly put, it describes the way modernity made the world more rational, more explainable, more calculable. I would be hard-pressed now to reproduce everything I learned about it then, but the phrase itself has never quite left me.

The disenchantment of the world. (Read more.)

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Queen Victoria, the Stuarts and Scotland

Victoria and Albert as Catherine of Braganza and Charles II by Winterhalter

Gown worn by Victoria at her Stuart Ball

Tartan dress of Queen Victoria

Royal Family in Highlands

Scotch air, Scotch people, Scotch hills, Scotch rivers, Scotch woods, are all far preferable to those of any other nation in or out of this world.~Queen Victoria, ca. 1849. 

 In the mid-18th century, in an uprising known as "The 45" Prince Charles Edward Stuart tried to reconquer the thrones of England and Scotland for his father James III, known as the "Old Pretender." The thrones had been usurped by the German and Protestant House of Hanover in spite of the fact that the legal Catholic sovereign was alive and well. The Scots in particular did not take well to their rightful sovereign being disinherited because of the English preference for German Protestants. The uprising failed miserably, bringing more hardship and tragedy to the Scottish people for the remainder of the century. Meanwhile many songs, tales and legends of that time imprinted themselves upon the land and the people. Many of those tales and legends found their way into the writings of Sir Walter Scott, one of the first historical novelists, whose Waverley novels of the early 19th century brought the lost Stuart rebellions and their heroes to life for a new generation. The prince Regent, the future George IV, rebelled against his Hanoverian patrimony after reading the Scott novels, and headed for Scotland.

From Peter Harrington:

The romanticisation of Scotland can be most definitively linked in literature with the Waverley novels of Sir Walter Scott. The first of the Waverley novels was published in 1814 and was set during the Jacobite uprising which took place almost a century earlier. The novels were so popular that Scott was propelled to fame, and was invited to dine with King George IV, (then Prince Regent). When, several years later, the Scottish ‘Radical War’ of 1820, inspired by the American and French Revolutions, caused King George to plan the first royal visit to Scotland in over two hundred years in an effort to quell unrest, it was Scott he called on to carefully stage manage the visit. By now a baronet with numerous valuable connections to Scottish nobility, Scott saw the opportunity both to avert an uprising and to promote highland culture. He reasoned that, because of George’s lineage, the king could legitimately claim as much Stuart heritage as Bonnie Prince Charlie and could thus present himself as a Jacobite prince, properly accoutred Royal Stuart tartan. Kilts at this time were no longer generally worn, having been banned by the Dress Act of 1746, which made the wearing of ‘Highland dress’ illegal. Though the act was repealed in 1782, kilts had only come back into fashion with the Scottish gentry, a number of whom set up ‘Highland Societies’.... For the king to appear so attired was not only an attempt to appeal to the heritage of the Scottish people but also to gloss over old wrongs.

George’s visit sparked an interest in Scottish dress, and, in its wake, the demand for kilts grew so high that Scottish weaving mills were unable to cope with the demand. It was in this period that (contrary to the generally assumed belief that individualised tartans are a much older tradition) many of the clan tartans were designated. (Read more.)

 George IV died and was succeeded by his brother William IV, who in turn left the throne to their niece Victoria in 1837. It was the Romantic Era, and Queen Victoria also loved the Waverley novels. In general she found the Stuarts far more romantic than her own Hanoverians and decided to fill her life with tokens of the Stuart homeland of Scotland. Her beloved husband Prince Albert shared her predilection, in spite of being German himself and in the 1840's they began spending as much time as possible in their northern kingdom.

From Quartermile Blog:

The first land to capture the Queen’s heart wasn’t Scotland, but Ireland. Early in her reign, Victoria spent her holidays in. Yet after the potato famine of 1845 irreparable damage was done to the relationship between the British government and the people of Ireland. Despite Victoria’s personal donation of £5,000 to the cause (nearly £600,000 in today’s money) and her visit to the country in 1849, the relationship never recovered....Scotland fared much better in Victoria’s eyes. In fact, Victoria made frequent visits north of the border during her reign despite the fact that Scotland had only been visited twice by reigning monarchs in the previous two centuries.

Victoria and Albert’s love for Scotland drove them to take out a long-term lease on the stunning Balmoral Castle in Deeside in 1848. Later, in 1852, the royal couple permanently purchased the property for £31,500 (£4million today) and had it significantly extended. From this point on, Victoria and Albert spent a section of each summer in Balmoral, thanks to the advances in British rail travel....Victoria’s ever growing affection for Scotland didn’t just stretch to the land itself, but to the culture and fashion too. Through their experience of Scotland, Victoria and Albert both became big fans of tartan, and helped to elevate the status and reputation of the pattern south of the border.

According to accounts from the time, Victoria and Albert enthusiastically redecorated Balmoral Castle with reams of “Balmoral tartan, in red and grey” furnishings. They even included “innumerable stags’ antlers” in their décor. For Victoria, the use of tartan was an outward sign of being connected to her favourite part of the world. (Read more.)

Victoria showed that she not only loved Scotland but cherished the memory of the Stuarts, masquerading as Catherine of Braganza, consort of Charles II, at a ball. She had an Italian sculptor create a marble statue of Princess Elizabeth Stuart, the daughter of Charles I who died in prison at age thirteen, reputedly with her head on her murdered father's Bible. She passed the interest on to her children, as can be seen from a water color of Mary Queen of Scots by the Princess Royal. The Stuarts must have fulfilled Victoria's vision of a monarchy in which the kings and queens did not only reign but ruled, had adventures, tragedies, romances and died for love.

Princess Elizabeth Stuart: "Go ... And see the tomb of Charles's child wet with Victoria's tears"

Carl Haag’s "Luncheon at Cairn Lochan" depicts the royal family picnicking in Scotland.

Balmoral today with flock wallpaper ordered by Queen Victoria

Painting of Mary Queen of Scots by Queen Victoria's daughter the Princess Royal

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NO Global Government and NO Global Taxes

 From Tierney's Real News:

Today, President Trump addressed the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly and delivered a powerful message: America is back and we’re not putting up with nonsense any longer...

President Trump declared that under his leadership, America is stronger than ever — and we will use our strength to confront our enemies, protect our interests, forbid communism, combat terrorism, reject global control, make the world a safer place for all and always defend our sovereignty.

The camera focused on each of our adversaries while he warned them of his resolve and some walked out in fear and anger. I loved every minute!

Here are some highlights followed by a transcript of the entire speech. I strongly encourage you all to read or watch the entire thing. He covered two months worth of news in just 30 minutes - telling us the truth about many issues that the fake news refuses to accurately report or report at all:

• “Two and a half centuries after the cause of liberty found its home on this continent, I can report to you with pride that America is back, and our country is stronger today than ever before.” (Watch)

• “As President of the most extraordinary nation in history, I have no interest in leaving dangers to grow for another day. I do not believe in letting problems fester; they only become harder to solve. So, while others have talked, I have acted. While others have spoken of peace, I have made peace. While others have ignored threats, I have confronted them. While others have talked of courage, America has shown it. While others have promised strength, I have used it to make America the most powerful country in the world. Working with many nations in this room, we are solving decades of intractable challenges — and we are settling years of unfinished business.” (Watch)

• “There is no better example of a danger that was allowed to gather strength at the world’s peril than the number one sponsor of terror, the Islamic Republic of Iran… From the first day I entered the political arena, I have been unwavering — I will never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” (Watch)

• “In America, we just marked the 25th anniversary of the worst terror attack in history, September 11th, which killed 3,000 people just a few miles from here. In two weeks, we will mark the third anniversary of the October 7th attack in Israel, where terrorists funded by Iran tortured, mutilated, and killed 1,200 very innocent civilians, including dozens of Americans… Iran’s Supreme Leader celebrated that massacre and called it a ‘service to humanity.’ The same regime slaughtered over 72,000 of its citizens this year; recently, 10,000 were killed for protesting. Just imagine if such a vile regime were ever empowered to carry out large-scale terror attacks from behind a nuclear shield. This was the reality we had to confront — a reality that far too many preferred to ignore.” (Watch) (Read more.)

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Pygmalion’s Passion

 From The Abbey of Misrule:

Long before the digital age, artists have pondered both the promise and peril of artificial intelligence. Homer’s Iliad described automaton tripods made by Hephaistos that might be confused with Elon Musk’s dream of putting an Optimus robot in every home. Ovid’s Metamorphoses tells of Pygmalion, disappointed in his marital prospects, carving his perfect woman and bringing her to life with the help of Venus. She was the first romantic chatbot, a reflection of Pygmalion’s self-love. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein warns us what can happen when scientific hubris puts the creation of life and intelligence in its crosshairs. More recently, we have Frank Herbert’s Dune, with the maxim “thou shall not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.”

Yet we are here, crafting such a machine. Many, perhaps the majority of us, have deep reservations about AI, yet struggle to explain why. We think it could create trouble but also see the great benefits. As a result, nearly all the arguments have been around the outcomes of AI. This is the modern approach - judging something by what it can do, rather than what it is.

If artificial intelligence were a tree, then nearly every discussion we are currently seeing concerns its fruits. An AI optimist predicts a cure for cancer, where a pessimist sees the elimination of the doctor-patient relationship. Mass prosperity! Or is it mass layoffs? For every rotten apple I spot, another sees a juicy golden delicious. How can we make sense of it all?

Arguing about the fruits is problematic. First, predictions are tricky business. Remember when social media was supposed to bring people together? Second, Christianity focuses on the means, not the ends. We care more about whether eggs are getting cracked than how tasty the future omelette may be. (Read more.)

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Reforms of Louis XVI

 

Here are some of the reforms of Louis XVI, made of his own free will beginning from the moment he ascended the throne. He was considered quite the Liberal. 

  1774 Louis XVI placed Turgot in charge of finances and introduced free circulation of grain. Founded School of Medicine in Paris. 

  1775 Droits d'octroi were reduced, prison reform begun, and the death penalty for deserters was abolished. 

 1776 The king signed the six edicts of Turgot comprising the abolition of the corvée. The parlements resisted the edicts, preventing them from becoming law. In the same year he reduced his household.

  1778 More taxes reduced. 

  1779 The king abolished servitude and other reforms were made.

  1780 Further reductions in the Royal household were made, hospital reform was begun, prison reform continued, most torture was abolished. 

  1784 Relief given to Jews. 

  1786 More hospital reform, aid to the deaf, and provisions made for lost children. 

  1787 Steps taken towards the total abolition of the corvée, more reductions in royal household, civil rights accorded to Jews and Protestants. 

 1788 All forms of torture were abolished, greater freedom given to press, steps towards abolition of lettres de cachet.

 All of the above is taken from Nesta Webster's Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette during the Revolution, but it is a matter of public record as well. There are also discussions on the king's reforms in Simon Schama's Citizens and Vincent Cronin's Louis and Antoinette. Anyone who thinks Louis XVI was a lazy, sluggish, do-nothing king need only examine the six volumes of laws passed during his reign. He wanted to reform the feudal tax system, which is why he called the Estates-General. If all the nobles and wealthy clergy had been minimally taxed, there would have been no deficit. The enemies of the king were determined his plans were not to succeed. They had been planning for years. As Marie-Antoinette wrote to her brother Leopold II in August 1790 about the society she had once thought to be innocuous:

Be well on your guard where you are with regard to all associations of Freemasons. You must already have been warned that it is by this means that all the monsters here count on attaining the same end in every country. Oh, God, preserve my fatherland and you from such misfortunes.

(Image: Louis XVI rendant la liberté aux serfs de son royaume. Dessin de Charles de Wailly, 1783.) Share

AI Training as ‘Astonishing Theft'

 From Bo Snerdley:

OpenAI’s head of ChatGPT Nick Turley wrote that the company’s products “are largely substitutive, period” and will become even more so as the technology improves, according to a brief The New York Times and other news publishers made public Thursday in their Manhattan copyright case against the tech companies. Microsoft Director of Applied Science Brent Hecht warned that “millions of people around the world will soon consider large models ‘hoovering up’ all their work to be an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions,” the brief stated in part.

The Department of Justice previously told a federal judge that AI training is fair use because models learn patterns from text rather than duplicate it, an argument the companies’ internal messages seemingly undercut.

Turley also wrote that publishers face an “existential threat” from those products, according to the brief.

The brief also cites a document describing the practice as potentially the “largest theft of labor in human history,” and says Hecht recognized that a fair use win for the companies would arguably “make a complete mockery of the idea of ‘fair use.’” (Read more.)

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Europe’s Last Neanderthals

 From EcoNews:

Ancient DNA from Belgium and France challenges the idea that Neanderthals faded away as isolated, increasingly inbred groups. Researchers found signs of connected populations in northwestern Europe, without evidence of an increasing burden of harmful genetic variants.

Neanderthals disappeared roughly 40,000 years ago, but the findings do not explain why. Instead, they challenge a simple story of biological decline, suggesting that the final chapter of Neanderthal life differed across regions rather than following one inevitable genetic downward spiral.

The research examined ancient remains from present-day Belgium and France dating to less than about 52,500 years ago. Nature’s press summary describes 27 remains representing at least 11 distinct individuals, an important distinction because several bone fragments can belong to the same person. (Read more.)

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Christianity in the Disembodied Age

 

From Hilary White at The Sacred Images Project:

When reading the New Testament through our usual theological lens of a grand cosmic drama, it’s easy to miss the significance of the kind of work done by most of the named protagonists. The first Apostles, Peter, Andrew, James and John are all fishermen. And Thomas, Bartholomew and Philip probably were too. Paul of Tarsus - a highly educated Pharisee and Roman citizen - is described as a tentmaker, though the Greek skēnopoios may mean something closer to a general leatherworker or maker of canvas goods, and his friends Aquila and Priscilla practised the same trade. Tabitha (also called Dorcas) was a seamstress.

There were a few representatives of what we might today call the “middle class”1. Lydia was a successful cloth merchant who specialised in the famous purple cloth of the region. Luke was a physician (and painter), Matthew and Zaccheus were both publicans (tax collectors for the Romans) a profession despised by the Jews, of course, though lucrative. Cornelius and Julius were centurions in the Roman army. Zenas (Titus 3:13) is identified as a lawyer.

Later the movement attracted members of the upper echelons, including Erastus, who is identified by Paul as the city of Corinth’s director of public works2. The wealthy, slave-owning convert Philemon was an upper-class patrician, probably a Romanised Greek and landowning civic politician in the city of Colossae. Very interestingly, Paul refers to Philemon3 as a “dear friend and fellow worker” in his letter about the escaped slave Onesimus.

But we get the general tone from Paul of how deeply work, and often manual work, was morally incorporated into early Christian thinking. “We labour, working with our own hands, (1 Corinthians). “We worked night and day,” ( 1st Thessalonians) and “if anyone will not work, neither shall he eat,” (2 Thessalonians).

In fact it would never have occurred to any person of that time that work - an occupation of some kind, whether manual or domestic labour, artisan craft or mercantile trade, or even senatorial-rank political involvement - was something embarrassing to be escaped in favour of a life of pure leisure and entertainment. On the contrary, Christians taught that whatever work you did it should be ordered to the Christian goals of salvation. (Obviously this meant there were some trades and professions you could not enter, like prostitution, gladiatorial combat, making idols for the temples, etc.) (Read more.)

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The Democrats Have a Serious Socialism Problem

 From Chronicles:

“Resolved, That the House of Representatives condemns and denounces socialism in all its forms, including the Democratic Socialists of America, and opposes the implementation of socialist policies in the United States,” a congressional resolution passed on Sept. 1 boldly declares. The resolution further states that the House recommits itself to upholding the Constitution, supports “fair, free, and secure elections” in which participation is reserved for “American citizens only,” and calls for Congress to pass the SAVE Act “to ensure election security, increase public confidence in America’s voting system, and close loopholes in order to prevent noncitizens from voting in elections.”

In a healthy democracy—or even in an ailing democracy run by a complacent and self-serving uniparty—one might expect that none of the elements of this resolution would be controversial. Who, after all, would oppose upholding the Constitution, object to elections that are fair, free, and secure, favor allowing noncitizens to vote, and actively want to worsen public confidence in our nation’s voting system?

In our current climate, one would expect opposition to come primarily from the radical left and its leading official organization, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Indeed, the resolution recognizes this, opening with “the condemnation and denouncement of socialism in all its forms” and continuing its preamble stating that “the DSA’s ideology and socialism, in any form, are incompatible with American values and the United States Constitution.” The DSA appears to agree with that assessment, as it has claimed (as the resolution’s preamble further observes) that “the United States never was a democracy.”

But DSA members are not the only or even the primary votes in opposition to this resolution. The resolution passed by a relatively narrow margin of 220 votes to 192, with all Republicans and only eight Democrats voting in favor of it. That is to say that 192 Democrats—the vast majority of the congressional delegation of that party—voted against it. (Read more.)

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Possible Hidden Chambers Beyond Tutankhamun’s Tomb

 From Heritage Daily:

A new investigation of the famous tomb (KV62) in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings has revealed underground anomalies which researchers say may be a hidden complex of rooms and passageways.

The results are not conclusive, however — and independent experts have cautioned until more detailed data (or physical evidence) is available.

Researchers used ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and microgravity measurements to investigate the tomb and surrounding ground. The latter detects tiny changes in Earth’s gravitational field which scientists can use to identify differences in the density of material below the surface.

The team says the combined evidence points towards structures that could pre-date the burial of Tutankhamun.

Mamdouh Eldamaty, an archaeologist at Ain Shams University in Cairo and Egypt’s former antiquities minister, said the findings “suggest a possible hidden complex of corridors and rooms”.

One of the most interesting things they found is evidence of what they believe could be a two metre wide corridor filled with rubble extending away from Tutankhamun’s burial chamber.

Structural engineer and geophysics specialist George Ballard who analysed the survey results alongside data from earlier surveys says that earlier surveys might have missed it because they were looking for a large empty chamber immediately behind the tomb wall. (Read more.)

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Louis XVI's Last Meeting with His Family

From Vive la Reine:

At half-past eight the door opened; the queen appeared first, holding her son by the hand; then Madame Royale and Madame Élisabeth; they ran to the arms of the king. A gloomy silence reigned for several minutes, interrupted only by sobs.
… The king sat down, the queen on his left, Madame Élisabeth on his right, Madame Royale nearly opposite to him, and the little prince between his knees.
All were bending towards him and held him half embraced. This scene of sorrow lasted seven quarters of an hour, during which it was impossible to hear anything; we could see only that after each sentence of the king the sobs of the princesses redoubled, lasting some minutes; then the king would resume what he was saying.—the journal of Jean-Baptiste Cléry

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Aslana: Queering the King

 From The Logres Institute:

Thursday 9/17 Empire Magazine released their exclusive first look at Greta Gerwig’s Magician’s Nephew film, confirming early rumors that Meryl Streep will indeed voice Aslan, the Great Lion of Narnia. Moreover, Gerwig’s "rock'n'roll" Aslan has “heterochromatic eyes” inspired by David Bowie, feathered eyes, dragon-like skin, a lipstick red nose, and rainbow whiskers. Everything about Gerwig's visualization of Aslan speaks to breaking the gender binary and the celebration of transgressive identities. Though the move to queer Aslan is hardly surprising given Gerwig's politics and history of feminist filmmaking, the idea of a queerily feminine Aslan is important to address. By casting a woman as the voice of Aslan, Gerwig twists an icon of Christ into a different form.

We love our favorite stories because they provide a frame through which we can understand who we are and the world we live in. We love C.S. Lewis and his Chronicles of Narnia for the cosmic vision they give us—a re-enchanted way to imagine the world as filled with divine presence, crammed with meaning, and bursting with goodness, truth, and beauty. Lewis could write such a world because his imagination was deeply sacramental. He understood that created things like wardrobes, lamp posts, and lions are formed with intrinsic meaning. (Read more.)

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1918 and the End of Christendom

 From The Maistre Institute:

The charter of the modern state was signed at Westphalia in 1648 by exhausted men who wanted the killing to stop and were prepared to pay almost anything for it. What they agreed was that the religion of a territory would follow the conscience of its prince, and that no authority whatsoever stood above the sovereign to adjudicate the question. We remember this as the birth of toleration. It was also, and more consequentially, the moment the universal Church was subordinated to the territorial ruler as a matter of public law. Innocent X saw exactly what had been done and declared the settlement null and void insofar as it prejudiced the Catholic religion. Nobody listened. A pope proposing terms of peace would be disregarded again in 1917, on the same reasoning and by the same sort of men, though by then the disregard was so habitual that hardly anyone thought to remark on it.

After Westphalia the sovereign state acknowledged no superior on earth. Christendom, which had always meant something standing above the princes rather than beside them, survived mainly as a family inheritance maintained by one dynasty out of stubbornness and piety in roughly equal measure.

The Revolution then took what Westphalia had built and knocked out the last support. Sovereignty no longer descended from God to the prince. It rose from below, from the people, and it needed no warrant from heaven at all. Napoleon abolished the Holy Roman Empire outright in 1806, the title simply lapsing after eight hundred years, and the Habsburgs withdrew to the merely Austrian crown. Then came the nationalisms, lyrical in their poetry and homicidal in their politics, each teaching a people that its destiny required a state of its own. Then 1848. By the time Princip fired in Sarajevo the intellectual demolition was finished and had been for some while. Only the building was still standing, and buildings come down fast once the footings are gone. (Read more.)

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Marie-Thérèse Viewing a Portrait of Her Family at the Temple

Notice how her husband Louis-Antoine is very attentive. He knew how such things upset her.  Berry stands alone off to the side on the left. And then there are Artois and Louis XVIII on the right. One wonders what passed through their minds when seeing their doomed brother and his family. Via Vive la Reine. Share

Charlie Manson and MKUltra

 From Chronicles:

Long-dead Charlie Manson is back in the news, thanks to a congressional investigation into the Central Intelligence Agency’s MKUltra program. One of those testifying before Congress was Tom O’Neill, who spent 20 years of his life trying to follow an occasionally obvious and sometimes obscure trail of documents describing the CIA’s mind-control experiments, which often involved the use of the hallucinatory drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). In his book Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, O’Neill suggests Manson and his cult of followers were possibly a CIA experiment gone bad. Another testifying to the evil of MKUltra was Stephen Kinzer, author of Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control.

That O’Neill, Kinzer, and others were able to piece together a history of MKUltra is a testament to their skills as researchers, because in 1973 CIA Director Richard Helms had all MKUltra files destroyed. However, thanks to typical bureaucratic ineptitude, it was later discovered through FOIA requests that thousands of MKUltra documents had been improperly stored elsewhere and were not destroyed. O’Neill and Kinzer made other discoveries in personal records and correspondence of those involved in MKUltra.

MKUltra was formally launched in April 1953 in response to North Korean, Chinese, and Soviet attempts to “brainwash” captured Americans during the Korean War. Sidney Gottlieb, the Bronx-born son of Jewish immigrants from Hungary, led this CIA project. Gottlieb received an undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1940 and a doctorate in biochemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1943. 

By the summer of 1951, Gottlieb was working for the CIA as chief of the Chemical Division of the Technical Services Staff. He thought that through experimentation with various drugs he could find ways to alter brain chemistry and achieve mind control. He tried using the active agent of marijuana, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), cocaine, heroin, and mescaline, before settling on LSD as the most promising drug to alter the thinking and perceptions of the experiment’s subjects. (Read more.)

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How to Create a French Cheese Board

From Léonce:

This is usually how I compose a board. I begin with the cheese I most want to eat, or one I am curious to discover, then choose the others in relation to it. For a full board, I like five cheeses. It is enough to create variety without making the meal feel exhaustive. One can be familiar, another unexpected; one soft, another firm; one gentle and another with more character.

You might look for something creamy, something aged, something fresh or tangy, something aromatic and a blue. But this is only a starting point. A board of mountain cheeses may contain several firm cow’s milk cheeses, while a Loire selection may be almost entirely devoted to goat’s cheese. What matters is that the cheeses feel different enough to make tasting them together interesting.

I try not to choose several with almost the same texture and intensity simply because I like each one individually. They should have something to say to one another. (Read more.)

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Charity of the Dauphine

Before becoming Queen of France, Marie-Antoinette was known for her mercy and sweetness. From Vive la Reine:

Mme la Dauphine, who had returned, got out of her carriage, ran toward the woman, and held out some perfume to her nose, which made her come out of her faint. Mme la Dauphine gave her all the money she had with her, but what was even more admirable was the kind and consoling way in which HRH talked to the poor woman. Finally, Mme l'Archiduchesse, who was touched, shed tears and, at that moment, caused more than a hundred spectators to do the same….

Then, having called for her carriage, Mme la Dauphine gave orders that the peasant woman be taken in it back to her cottage which was in a neighboring hamlet.* Her Royal Highness waited right there for her carriage to return; she asked about the care of the wounded man … I cannot describe to Your Majesty the greatness or intensity of the sensation caused by the event, not only among the courtiers, but even more among the people of Fontainebleau….

The public in Paris [seems very moved;] whenever Mme la Dauphine’s name comes up, it evokes a universal cry of joy and admiration.
–Ambassador Mercy to Maria Theresa, 12 November 1773
(Read more.)

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China’s New Defense Mobilization Law Prepares Chinese Civilians And Companies For War

 From WLT Report:

It appears China is preparing for war. A new law enacted by China that will take effect in October will allow the Chinese government to easily transition into a wartime economy during a military conflict. The new law will essentially allow the Chinese Armed Forces to have unfettered access to all companies and civilian resources in the time of a war.

The Military Times reported more on the move by China:

China’s armed forces will get every possible resource from the home front if needed during a war, according to a change in the law to take effect in October.

And its militarily less endowed neighbors such as Taiwan and the Philippines would bear the brunt of a fully kitted People’s Liberation Army, which the updated National Defense Mobilization Law says may draw from deep within the civilian population for resources, analysts say.

Australia, Japan and the United States also would note Beijing’s revised law as they’re most likely to become involved in any Taiwan “contingency” or conflict in the South China Sea, said Carl Thayer, an Asia specialist and emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

Australia, India and the United States have their own issues with Beijing, he added.

(Read more.)

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The De-Christianization of France

 From The War on Beauty:

France has been in a process of de-Christianization since the Revolution in 1789 when Catholicism was outlawed and replaced with a new atheistic cult called ‘The Cult of Reason.’ A lot of people were surprised by the recent mockery of the Last Supper at the Olympic Games, but this isn’t the first time there has been an outright assault on the Catholic Church in France, nor is this the worst instance (shockingly).

After the Catholic monarchs and Ancien Régime were violently couped in 1789, a new anti-religious, and clearly satanic totalitarian government came to power and immediately severed all ties with the Church. Along with the persecution of the aristocracy, normal French people/ peasants, including thousands of clergy were martyred for not renouncing their Catholic beliefs.

This was the first big move in shifting France away from a faith-based society to one that worships reason, science, and man’s own ‘intelligence’ as the new God. The new regime went so far as to remove all crosses and religious symbols in the country including from graveyards, ceased all Catholic schooling, and not only closed all churches but forcibly confiscated them from the diocese to fund the new government. (Read more.)

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Heavenly Earth: Images of Saint Francis at La Verna

A 2018 exhibition. Today is the feast of the stigmata of St. Francis. From The Leaven:

WASHINGTON (CNS) — St. Francis of Assisi’s reception of the stigmata, the wounds of Christ, at La Verna in Italy and its depiction by artists beginning in the 15th century is the focus of a National Gallery of Art exhibit. “Heavenly Earth: Images of Saint Francis at La Verna” includes 30 pieces of Franciscan art centered on the miraculous 13th-century event. The exhibit was to open Feb. 25. Ginger Hammer, an assistant curator at the museum in Washington, said the display focuses on an “unprecedented event in Western spirituality.” No one in recorded history had experience such an occurrence before St. Francis did in 1224.

It happened while St. Francis was meditating on the passion of Christ during one of his regular retreats in the mountain wilderness. “He wanted to understand the very suffering that Christ endured. The result of his prayers reportedly is that a seraph, or six-winged angel, approached him enfolding the image of Christ on the cross. When the seraph departed, the actual wounds of Christ’s passion were transferred to the body of Francis,” Hammer told Catholic News Service Feb. 20 during a media preview. “That had never happened before and it was quite remarkable that through his own endeavors something mystical of this magnitude could happen to a human being,” she said.

A Franciscan sanctuary and museum complex mark the La Verna site today and continues to welcome pilgrims. The event was so extraordinary that artists over the centuries have tried to capture it to share with others. The exhibit focuses on work in various media from the 15th through 18th centuries. (Read more.)

More information at the National Gallery of Art website, HERE. Share

Trump Took Iran at Its Word — History Will Reward Him

 From Tierney's Real News:

The leaking and finger-pointing on Iran by MAGA disloyalists have begun. The Wall Street Journal reports that in February, then-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard warned President Donald Trump that if he attacked, “Tehran would rush to close the Strait of Hormuz, destabilizing the global energy market.” Her admonition “echoed warnings Trump was receiving from all corners,” the Journal wrote, including from top military leaders who expressed “concerns about the weapons stockpile and readiness problems for an overstretched force” and from Vice President JD Vance, who “promoted a more cautious approach” focused on negotiations that would be “less costly than a war with unwieldy consequences.”

The message of the leakers is clear: Had Trump only listened to us, we would not be in this mess.

In fact, these self-serving leaks actually show the opposite — by demonstrating what a courageous decision Trump made. Virtually alone, surrounded by naysayers, Trump acted to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

Indeed, Trump not only ignored the words of the naysayers; he did something few presidents before him have ever done: He listened to the words of the enemy.

The most tragic mistake that world leaders made over the past century was the failure to take the words of the monsters of history seriously. These tyrants repeatedly stated precisely what they intended to do, but their ideas were assumed to be too foolish, or too fantastic, to be serious.

In the early 1900s, Vladimir Lenin published a pamphlet called “What Is To Be Done?,” in which he laid out his plans to overthrow the Russian czar and establish a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” The world didn’t take his words seriously, and the totalitarian empire he founded spawned communist revolution across the globe that killed an estimated 100 million people and brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation.

In the 1920s, Adolf Hitler published “Mein Kampf,” in which he laid out his plan to establish a thousand-year Reich in Germany and eradicate the Jews. The world didn’t take his words seriously, and his Nazi regime built gas chambers, set the world aflame and killed 17 million people.

In the late 1990s, Osama bin Laden issued a fatwa declaring war on the West, calling on all Muslims to wage “jihad against the enemies of God, your enemies the Israelis and Americans.” The world didn’t take his words seriously, and on Sept. 11, 2001, his followers flew airplanes into the Pentagon and World Trade Center.

In 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin published a 7,000 word manifesto explaining that Ukraine had been stolen from Russia, its “historical motherland,” and promising to reunite them. The world didn’t take his words seriously, and a few months later he launched the largest land invasion in Europe since World War II — a war that has resulted in more than 2 million dead and wounded among military personnel and civilians so far. (Read more.)

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The Cost of John Dee’s Sorcery

 While Catholic practices were banned in England as being superstitious, Queen Elizabeth I consulted a wizard. From Sebastian Morello:

There is at present an entire revisionist historiography being developed which explains Henry VIII’s break from Rome not by reference to his desire for a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, but to his failure to secure for himself the Imperial throne of the Holy Roman Empire at the election in 1519. Instead, Charles Habsburg was elected, becoming Emperor Charles V, and Henry was intensely bitter about it. He thought he should be Emperor of Christendom, especially as he had demonstrated that he was a most loyal son of the Church amid the rise of Protestantism, even receiving from the pope the title ‘Defender of the Faith’. When he broke with Rome fifteen years later, he was already talking about his kingdom not as a region of a wider civilisation called Christendom, but as its own island empire over which he was both supreme temporal and spiritual lord.

It took the courtier, spy, and wizard John Dee to explain to Henry’s daughter, Queen Elizabeth I, that having broken with that great empire of Christendom, the Kingdom of England (which also included Wales and Ireland) had before it two possible futures: it could fizzle out into obscurity, or it could expand across the seas and make for itself its own empire, a counter-empire if you will. This counter-empire would expand across the whole world. It would be based not on the baptism of nations in fulfilment of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19), but rather on the demands of Mammon. Dee came up with a name which would be lasting: he coined the term ‘the British Empire’.

Dee and the warlock, scryer, and speaker of the secret Enochian language Edward Kelly travelled through Europe. Together they stayed for considerable lengths of time at the Imperial court and other royal courts, uncovering the spiritual and temporal sources of the empire with which Dee’s future creation would compete.

Kelly claimed—and I have no reason to disbelieve him—to have been led by what he described as a ‘spiritual creature’ to a container of red powder hidden in the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey. From this powder, he made a tincture which gave him power to alchemically transmutate base metal into gold without any need of the Philosopher’s Stone. Kelly demonstrated the potency of this tincture on numerous occasions, and by it he deeply impressed Dee. (Read more.)

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Chloridia

  

From Tony Riches: "Time travel back to the court of King Charles I with a glimpse of my research - the fascinating full text of Chloridia : rites to Chloris and her nymphs, a Shrovetide masque performed by the queen at Whitehall Palace." (Complete text HERE.)

Costume sketch for masque by Inigo Jones for Henrietta Maria

More on masques, HERE.

Queen Henrietta Maria

 

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What We Fail to Teach, Someone Else Will

 From Elizabeth Johnston:

Last Friday marked 25 years since the September 11 terrorist attacks. A growing number of Americans were not alive when the attacks occurred, and even more were too young to remember them.

Last week, the New York City Council approved a resolution calling upon New York State to incorporate September 11 instruction into schools. The Council also approved the commemorative naming of 26 streets and public places in honor of people who were killed and families affected by the attacks. The Council said the purpose is to pass the lessons of that day to generations who never experienced it.

But that should not be the responsibility of schools alone.

Our children need to understand the evil that occurred that morning, but they also need to hear about the courage that followed it. Tell them about the firefighters who climbed the stairs while everyone else was running down. Tell them about the passengers of Flight 93 who knew they might die but chose to protect others. Tell them about neighbors helping strangers, churches opening their doors, and Americans praying together.

History is more than dates children memorize for a test. It is the inherited memory of a people. When one generation stops telling the truth about what happened, the next generation becomes vulnerable to those who would rewrite it.

Sit down with your children this week and ask what they know about September 11. Show them age-appropriate accounts of the day. Pray for the families who still carry that grief. Talk about courage, sacrifice, evil, patriotism, and the value of every human life.

“Never forget” is not a slogan. It is an assignment passed from one generation to the next. (Read more.)

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A Simple (French) Way of Eating

 From Léonce:

What was passed down to me, first. And then what I learned over time, through experience, curiosity, and a conscious return to common sense. When I really thought about it, I realised that my way of eating rests on three very simple principles.

1. I cook almost everything I eat, using mostly whole or minimally processed ingredients.
2. I very rarely buy ultra-processed foods.
3. And when I feel like eating something sweet, I make it myself.

My kitchen is therefore built around basic ingredients: seasonal fruits and vegetables (organic when possible) whole bread, cheeses, plain yogurts, eggs, butter, flour, sugar, milk (often plant-based, oat milk for instance), pasta, fish, carefully chosen meat, spices, herbs, garlic, onions, shallots, and always a good dark chocolate for homemade cakes. With very little, you can do a great deal. Endless variations, countless meals.

I believe this way of eating comes from my mother, who has always cooked a lot, and from my grandmother before her. When we were children, industrial biscuits were rarely allowed at home. Instead, there was almost always a homemade cake: a chocolate cake, an apple tart, chocolate mousse, pastries made for no particular reason. My father grew a vegetable garden. Seasonal fruits and vegetables were simply part of daily life. I grew up this way, without it ever being framed as a rule or a restriction. It was simply normal.

Even today, my meals follow a fairly traditional structure. Two to three meals a day, depending on the day, my mood, the rhythm of the week. I sometimes skip breakfast if I am not hungry. Other days, especially on weekends, I take my time: pastries from the day before, French toast, waffles, crêpes, chocolate cookies, always homemade. There is something deeply reassuring in these gestures: the anticipation of flavours, even before tasting them, the smell of warm butter in the kitchen, a cake left to cool on the counter while the house slowly grows quiet.

During the week, lunch is often simple, sometimes eaten quickly. In the evenings and on weekends, I like to cook more. Since my years living and working in London, I have lost the very French habit of long lunch breaks, but dinner remains an important moment. The one thing I very rarely do is snack between meals. I was always taught that eating between meals dulls the appetite for the next one. I kept this habit. If I am hungry earlier than expected, I simply eat earlier. (Read more.)

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Guichette

Anna Gibson posts on the eldest child and only daughter of the Royal Governess Madame de Polignac. She was Aglaé de Polignac, the Duchesse de Guiche, whom Marie-Antoinette nicknamed "Guichette." To quote:

Aglaé Louise Françoise Gabrielle de Polignac (7 May 1768 - 30 March 1803) was the first child and only daughter of Yolande Martine Gabrielle de Polastron and Jules de Polignac. In 1780, she was married to the Antoine Louis Marie de Gramont, duc de Guiche. They had three children.

In 1784, the talented Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun painted the 16 year old Aglaé in a simple, pastoral dress that was popularized in the 1780s by the rise of country and hamlet inspired fashions. (Read more.)

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Trump Unveils Plan to Make It ‘Legally Impossible’ for the Next President to Reopen the Border

 From The Daily BS:

Donald Trump says closing the border isn’t enough.

He wants to make it much harder for the next president to open it again.

Trump unveiled a proposed “No Invasion of Our Country Act” during his address to the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, arguing that his border policies need to be protected from being dismantled by a future administration.

“We will make it legally impossible for any future president to destroy our country by having the right to open the border again,” Trump told the crowd.

“We will pass a No Invasion of Our Country Act.”

The announcement takes direct aim at one of the biggest vulnerabilities of presidential immigration policy: What one president does through executive authority, another president can often undo.

That is precisely what happened after Trump’s first term.

President Joe Biden reversed a number of Trump’s immigration and border policies after entering office in 2021. Trump, upon returning to the White House in January 2025, moved aggressively in the opposite direction again.

Now Trump wants Congress involved.

Putting border restrictions into federal statute could make them substantially more difficult for a future president to reverse simply by signing a new executive order.

But Trump’s promise that the legislation would make it “legally impossible” for another president to reopen the border is considerably more sweeping than what is currently known about the proposal.

A future Congress can amend or repeal federal law, and presidents retain constitutional and statutory authority over immigration enforcement. The precise effect would depend upon the actual legislative language — and that language has not yet been publicly fleshed out in detail. (Read more.)

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The Secrets of Elegance

One must subscribe to read the entire article but what is available is quite interesting. From The Habsburg Way:

It is a common error among the ambitious, or the self-conscious, to confuse elegance for luxury.

To assume that what looks expensive must look good, and conclude therefore that in order to look good, we must spend extravagantly. On the other hand, there are those who are fearful of their own status, and exaggerate roughness through language or clothing to signal that they are ‘one of the people’.

We all know tackiness or scruffiness when we see it, but how can we avoid both and actually embody elegance?

For the answer, we must turn to one of the most popular writers of 19th century France, who achieved the rare feat of being highly conservative, highly eccentric and highly charismatic all at once. In 1830, Honoré de Balzac indeed began his Treatise On Elegant Living to both lampoon the tackiness of post-revolutionary France’s new elites, while also reflecting on why they were getting this so wrong.

So, here is how to stop trying to look elegant, and start being elegant, from the father of ‘elegantology’ itself…(Read more.)

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Henrietta Maria and Her Mother, Marie de’ Medici

 

 My guest post for Tony Riches.

First of all, I would like to thank Tony Riches for opening his popular blog to other historical writers so that we may share our research. I am the author of a biography of Marie-Antoinette as well as six historical novels. The latest two novels are about Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I and they are entitled My Queen, My Love and Generalissima. They are part of an unfinished trilogy; the third installment Avalon will be out sometime in 2027 or 28. 

In my readings about Henrietta of France, I have found that her mother Marie de’ Medici played an enormous role not only in her upbringing but in her ongoing political decisions, as well as shaping her faith, her love of the arts, of music, theater, and architecture. Queen Marie has ended up playing a much larger role in my novels than I originally would ever have imagined, due to the sheer force of her personality as much as to her real adventures, which included leading rebellions against her son, climbing out of windows to escape the royal guards, and hiding with her entourage of dwarves in a German brewery. All of this followed a glittering career of being Queen Mother Regent of France. Most of the Queen’s life is captured in the spectacular series of twenty-four huge paintings by Rubens, now at the Louvre. (Read more.)

 

Books available HERE.

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No Winged Hussars This Time

From Unlicensed Punditry:

It is 2026 and the Ottoman Empire is still at the gates, only now, there are people who don’t care because they have no concept of what living in an Ottoman civilization (or under the Taliban’s interpretation of sharia law) looks like.

We should not believe it wasn’t this way before 9/11 because there have always been haters of this nation, not because it didn’t give them of its bounty, but because, in their opinion, it didn’t give them enough.

9/11 changed that – albeit temporarily.

For a while, the bitchers, whiners and anti-Americans were too afraid to be exposed as making common cause with 7^th Century savages who figured out how to use the very freedoms against us that the anti-Americans take for granted. They saw the anger that average Americans rightly focused on Islamic terrorists – and they also saw the fear in those who were not confident enough in America’s goodness to stand up.

That soon faded and America’s ADHD returned. Not only did the anger wane, it became tiresome, but the fear subsided as well. Twenty-five years ago, there were no marches to “free Palestine”, a state and a people who do not exist and protest featuring open hatred of Israel, a state and people who do exist.

Over the span of just a few years, we not only forgot who the enemy was, we hold seminars to protect Muslims from “Islamophobia” and openly import them while actively denying Islam’s role in the murder of thousands of people here in America and abroad. We even elect the radical among them to office.

The tolerance we have for Mamdani, Omar, El Sayed, Rashida Tlaib, and other agitators has eclipsed our outrage that we were attacked on our home soil on 9/11, that outrage has become performative. (Read more.)

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Habsburg Royal Jewels on Display in Canada

 From The Royal Watcher:

Last year, Archduke Karl von Habsburg revealed that the legendary Florentine Diamond and fifteen other historic Jewels of the House of Habsburg long thought sold, stolen or lost had been hidden for decades in a Bank Vault in Canada since the Second World War. Now, the legendary Jewels of the House of Habsburg have gone on display at the Musée National des Beaux-Arts in Quebec City.

Starting September 4, 2026, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ) will be displaying prestigious jewels associated with the Habsburg family for the first time in Hidden Treasure: A Century of Mystery, revealing a story with a strong Québec connection.

After a century, the last Austrian Emperor´s family has announced plans to publicly display its personal jewelry, a collection that has been considered lost for decades. During their escape from persecution by the Nazi regime at the outbreak of the Second World War, members of the Habsburg family, one of the most influential and enduring dynasties of European history, managed to save important pieces of the family’s private jewelry and bring them to safety in Québec, Canada, in 1940. The items have been kept safe in the country ever since.

(Read more.)

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