April 30, 1970. The Incursion into Cambodia

Well remembered, but not well remembered accurately, on this day in 1970 President Richard Nixon announced that Republic of Vietnam and the United States were sending forces into Cambodia.

South Vietnamese M113 Armored Personnel Carries in Cambodia in 1970.

Recalled now most as the "U.S. entering the Parrot's Beak" region of Cambodia, in fact events had been building in this direction for weeks, months and years.

Cambodia was part of French Indochina, along with Vietnam and Laos, coming into French control due to a long struggle between Thailand and Vietnam for control of the country, which left it in Vietnamese hands at the time that Vietnam was colonized by the French.  Like Loas, it became an independent kingdom with the collapse of the French regime, achieving that status in 1953 prior to the French departure from Vietnam.  The establishment of the independent kingdom demonstrated  to a degree how the French envisioned post colonial Indochina, with it being made up of French aligned independent states with a government of a highly traditional model.  Indeed, the installed regent, Prince Sihanouk, was a French choice and installed much like the last Vietnamese emperor was in neighboring South Vietnam.  In Sihanouk, however, the French had chosen a much stronger personality who soon demonstrated that he could not be controlled.

Indeed King Sihanouk resigned his position in 1955 to become a politician in the newly independent kingdom, which made his father the king.  However, upon his father's 1960 death, he resumed the position of monarch, but limited his title to Prince. 

Right from the onset Cambodia, like the other regions of Indochina, contained left wing radicals who had come up during the colonial period, something that isn't really surprising in light of the fact that France also had left wing radicals itself.  And as with South Vietnam, the established government was not sympathetic to democratic elements.  Differing from Vietnam, however, Cambodia's monarchy survived its early independence and went on to form the government, whereas a similar effort in the Republic of Vietnam had left to a rapid downfall of the monarch.  Sihanouk had no small role in navigating this course.

Things were always accordingly troubled in the country but the ongoing wars in its Indochinese neighbors made things particularly difficult for Cambodia.  Prince Sihanouk attempted to place the country in the nonaligned camp, which was understandable under the circumstances but frankly naive given the enormous nature of the local conflict and the overarching global one.  

U.S. Air Force UH-1 helicopters over Cambodia.

On the other hand, the Prince correctly believed that the Communists would ultimately prevail in the Vietnamese War and believed that he had to be capable of dealing with that reality if Cambodia was to remain an independent state.  Perhaps realistically assessing the strength of his own armed forces as too weak to oppose the North Vietnamese, his government allowed the NVA to establish sanctuaries within the country starting in the mid 1960s, although as early as 1967 he commented to an American reporter that he would not oppose American air strikes in the country as long as they did not hard Cambodians, which of course was an impossible limitation.

In contrast right wing elements in the country increasingly wanted to take it in the opposite direction and found the Vietnamese presence humiliating.  Cambodia had its own culture and ethnicity and had long suffered from Vietnamese incursions into the country.  Indeed, large number of ethnic Cambodians lived in the Mekong are of Vietnam which itself was a sore point to the Cambodians that would continue right on into the Communist Pol Pot era.

  

In 1967 things changed for the worst when a spontaneous Communist rebellion took place in a region of the country which was followed by a more planned one in 1968.  In the same year Sihanouk openly revoked his prior comments about allowing US air strikes in the country, which given the increasing deterioration of his government's situation was probably a logical position for him to take.  By that time, however, the war in Vietnam was now highly developed.

With Richard Nixon's election in 1968 the US began to increasingly look towards action in Cambodia aimed at North Vietnamese enclaves there, something comparable to other frontier battles of other eras in which the US sought to address safe harbors across a border.  Following the Tet Offensive and Nixon's election, moreover, the US began to look for ways to withdraw from Vietnam which ironically meant occasional increases in the level of violence in the war.  In January 1969 Prince Sihanouk indicated to the US that Cambodia would not oppose ARVN and US forces that entered Cambodia in "hot pursuit" of retreating NVA forces provided that no Cambodians were harmed.  The US went one step further however and started targeting B-52 air strikes on NVA enclaves in the country, something the US later claimed that Sihanouk agreed to but which he most likely did not.  The events demonstrated the impossibility of the Cambodian position, however, as an allowance of one thing is practically an allowance of another, in war, and at the same time it was becoming increasingly impossible for the US to abstain from action in Cambodia.

In March, 1970 Sihanouk was deposed in a military coup which was supported by most of the educated urban population.  The kingdom was brought to an end and the Khmer Republic established.  A massacre of Vietnamese residents of Cambodia ensued in which thousands lost their lives and which was condemned by both North and South Vietnam.  By that time there were 40, 000 North Vietnamese troops in the country.  The new republican regime demanded that the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong withdraw but instead they commenced attacks on the Cambodian state.  Prince Sihanouk, moreover, would not give up and encouraged his supporters to restore him to power. All of this fueled the native communist insurgency and the situation degraded into a civil war.  During the same period the NVA attacks became a full scale invasion and the NVA began to overrun and defeat Cambodian army positions.  Not really well known into the 1990s, the North Vietnamese in the period sound to completely overrun the country, which likely was regarded by them as a strategic necessity.  They scored significant successes in the early months of 1970 in attempting this but, remarkably, the Khmer government did not completely collapse and in fact its armed opposition to the NVA and the Khmer Rouge continued throughout the period, although they were losing ground.

The South Vietnamese and American incursion of 1970 was designed to defeat the North Vietnamese in their safe harbor.  South Vietnamese preparatory actions commenced on April 14.  Perhaps ironically President Nixon announced the withdrawal of 150,000 U.S. troops from South Vietnam on April 20.  Nonetheless plans for the action continued, and indeed they may be seen as related to some degree.  On April 30 the South Vietnamese invasion began in earnest and President Nixon announced to the nation that U.S. troops would be entering Cambodia on a temporary basis, which they commenced to do the following day, May 1.

U.S. M48s in Cambodia.

The North Vietnamese were surprised by the invasion and proved to be incapable of resisting it. They nonetheless proved adept at avoiding having their forces destroyed.  American leadership regarded the invasion as a success and US and ARVN forces would withdraw from the eastern portions of the country they occupied in July.  The expansion of the war at the very time that the Administration was committed to withdrawing, while not actually strategically inconsistent, appeared to be and it increased opposition to the war in the United States.  The Cambodian government, in contrast, welcomed the incursion and hoped that US forces would remain in the country, an act which they believed would have helped them combat the native Khmer Rouge insurgency and which they also hoped would lead to the permanent expulsion of the North Vietnamese Army from the country.  Indeed, a remaining American presence was practically a necessity for the Khmer Republic's survival.

Newspaper reading American soldier in Cambodia.

To some degree the action is a tribute to the late Vietnam War American Army and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam.  The ARVN were much more fully formed and combat ready by this point in the war than they had been earlier, although they'd also become completely dependant upon American air support, which was enormous in the invasion.  The American Army, in contrast, was severely strained and suffering gigantic moral and discipline problems by this point, so the fact that they were able to effectively rally for a major offensive action is impressive.  It's also impressive, however, that the North Vietnamese were able to react to the invasion and avoid complete destruction.

There are those who want to attribute the ultimate collapse of the Khmer Republic, followed by the horror of Communist Pol Pot's regime, to this series of 1970s events, but the claim is frankly strained.  As noted, the Cambodian government of the time was becoming increasingly right wing and hostile to Communism inside the country and it was actively seeking to destroy it, albeit unsuccessfully.  A more realistic assessment would be that the results in neighboring South Vietnam were always set to dictate what happened in the smaller Indochinese neighbor.  The same political forces that had existed in South Vietnam since 1954 were present in Cambodia since 1953 except, ironically, right wing elements that wished to actively oppose Communism were significantly stronger in Cambodia.

Cambodian civilians dividing captured North Vietnamese Army rice.

At any rate, the Cambodian tragedy, in some ways, has always been strongly linked to being a small country between two larger neighbors.  Vietnam's civil war had spilled into it and now it was raging within its borders.  It's fate would now follow a strongly parallel, but more tragic and bloody course.

Pondering the 1918/1919 Influenza Pandemic

The 1918 Flu: A Pandemic Sweeps Wyoming

We've posted this once before, but as I'm going to refer to it again on the site I'm posting it again.  It's an excellent article.

Part of the reason I'm posting this is that this article has been getting a lot of renewed attention due to the COVID 19 pandemic.  Like everything by Roberts, it deserves the attention its getting.  I was going t repost it about a week or so ago, but as I'd posted it before, I didn't at that time.  however, as I'm referring to it in an answer to a question that's been posted yesterday, I thought I'd note it again.

I'll also note that the 18/19 Flu is getting a lot of attention in the press due to current events, and one of the things that is locally drawing attention is the steps taken to combat it.  The Wyoming Tribune Eagle (which occasionally quotes our This Day book), recently ran an article stating, about quaratines that first appeared in Kemmerer:

As precautionary measures, the health officials sanctioned the cancellation of all parties and the closure of churches, movie houses and theaters – anywhere that large groups of people congregated together. 

Most people took these sanctions to heart, but there was no penalty for not doing so. It wouldn’t be until the crisis got worse that the recommendations would become orders.

In the meantime, doctors made recommendations that might sound familiar: If you are sick, stay home in bed, stay at least five feet from people, cover your nose and mouth when coughing or sneezing, and stay away from people who are noticeably ill. Droplets from coughing, sneezing, talking and laughing were the source of the disease’s spread. There was an immediate effort to ban public spitting on sidewalks, stairs and streetcars.
Some folk wisdom crept into the papers as well: Refrain from wearing tight clothes and shoes, keep cool while walking and warm while sleeping. These had little effect on the disease, but some, such as warnings not to use public towels or drinking cups, seem like common sense today. One thing neither professionals nor good Samaritans mentioned was to wash your hands, especially after caring for a sick family member. 

On Oct. 8, the Spanish Flu arrived in Cheyenne. At first, only 10 people were stricken with the disease. Not taking any chances, Superintendent A.L. Jessup followed health officials’ recommendations and closed the city’s schools Oct. 9. He asked parents to keep their children close to home and not let them loiter in the neighborhoods, something parents were reluctant to do. Pool halls and saloons remained open, although loitering in the depot lobby was banned. 

On Oct. 10, the cases in Cheyenne sprang up to 50 persons. In response, all libraries and club reading rooms closed. Civic organizations cancelled meetings. To prevent loitering, cigar stores were ordered to pull their seats or box them up. Soda fountains had to remove their chairs and stools. On Oct. 11, Gov. Frank Houx ordered all saloons, pool halls, Red Cross work rooms and night schools across the state closed. By public order, all funerals would be private family affairs. 

By Oct. 15, the increasing count of flu cases jumped by 100 in less than 48 hours. Police chased children off the streets, while doctors pleaded with restaurants to change the worst of their habits.

County 10 News had an interesting article regarding events in Fremont County (hence "County 10", it's license plate number), in which it noted that the local newspaper was complaining about orders put in place by that county's health official in October, 1918.  None the less, local quaranties there soon expanded, as it reports:

 A little more than a week later, Dr. Thomas Maghee, the doctor serving at the State Training School was appointed the health officer of Lander. He issued a quarantine order that read as follows: 

A quarantine, with all its objectionable features, is imposed for the object, to stamp out and terminate an epidemic, thus preventing much suffering and even loss of life. 

The prime necessity is to PREVENT CONTACT of infected persons with those who are well. Therefore, a person will not be permitted to assemble on the street corners, in places of amusement or in business houses. 

TWO PERSONS are an assemblage under the law. 

Persons who have symptoms of the Influenza or who have recently had it, must remain at home or suffer arrest. 

Visiting between families and acquaintances must cease at once. Ladies with children must remain at home and keep their children with them. 

Children are absolutely forbidden to be on the streets or to visit neighbors. Special arrangements will be made by the authorities when necessary to use a child to send on errands. Children found on the street, without a permit will be arrested. 

Hotels are permitted to allow only the guests from out of town to remain about the lobbies. And the people of the town must not congregate there. 

Merchants will deliver supplies to the quarantined houses when requested.
Crowds assembling at the newsstand, the depot or post office will no longer be permitted. Until further orders, one person ONLY at ANY ONE TIME will be permitted to enter or remain in a saloon as long as it is necessary to get a drink, nor can persons frequent cigar or candy stand except under the same circumstances.

The Powell Tribune also recently looked back at the 1918/19 flu in this context, noting:

There was good news with the end of World War I hostilities a week later, but no end to the flu quarantine. In fact, the Powell Tribune of Nov. 22 recorded even stricter quarantine rules issued by the town council. The post office lobby was closed for two hours at mid-day. Stores could remain open for business, but it became unlawful for anyone to be in a store except to transact business. And children were required to stay home. 

The town council stated flatly “an emergency exists.” 

Quarantine regulations made it unlawful for parents to allow their children “to congregate or play with other children in this town, or allow or permit them to congregate or play on the streets or property within town except on the premises where they live.” 

As November drew to a close, the Powell Tribune still expressed hope the quarantine was doing its job. 

“According to the report of our local health authorities this morning, there are now only about a dozen cases of influenza in Powell, and as none of the patients are seriously ill, it is taken as a hopeful sign that the situation is improving,” the Tribune reported on Nov. 29. 

But it was not to be. Nor would there be public festivities for Christmas. For many Powell homes there was profound grief and gloom during the Christmas season. According to research by Park County Archives Curator Brian Beauvais, 187 cases of the flu were reported in Powell that December, on the heels of 89 cases in November.

 Elsewhere events caused advertisements to appear that are reminiscent of what we're seeing now, in our own era.  Hard hit in 1918/19, and hard hit again in 2020, Teton County's paper of a century ago had merchants noting business restrictions as follows:

Yes, a century ago we're seeing curbside due to quarantines. . .  just like we've been seeing this past month.

Things went further:

So what to take away from all of this?

Well, even though the 1918/19 Flu is something we posted on here well before we started daily entries on events 100 years past here, we've done a really poor job of what it was really like. We just rolled right over the news of the era, noting it, but not really digging deep into it.  World War One was our focus. But for people enduring the 18/19 Flu, it was more than something playing in the background, it was the major daily event of their lives.

And those lives were hugely disrupted by it, then as now.  Quarantines were put in effect all over the state.  Then, like now, there were some in some places that objected to the restrictions when they first came in.  According to at least one Wyoming newspaper, relaxing things too soon caused the disease to advance, although with a titanic viral wave of the type faced at that time, before there was any vaccine, that's pretty debatable.

It's common in these retrospectives to note, if a lesson is supposed to be drawn, that "we've been through this before", but most of us really haven't.  Therefore, we can't really claim that we should be encouraged by the suffering endured in 1918/1919.  Indeed, I've heard some pretty bad attempts at that including one just the other day by somebody who noted that in his family they'd kept on keeping on, but entire family groups had died.  That's not exactly something that encourages us now.  If anything, should comfort at all, it's the long pause that's given by the fact that to some extent such events are the human norm, the species will get through it, and we're all just passing through anyhow, something that gives few people comfort.

But for historians and fans of history, there's something else here.  And that is this. We're living through history right now.  The current pandemic dominates our thinking and the news right now, and soon a major recession will, and is already starting to.  Locally, the absolute crash in oil prices is on a lot of our minds.

So are cancelled high school graduations and weddings, birthdays for children that are on Zoom, and a gloom that settles over everything we do.  It must have been like that during the winter of 1918/1919 as well.  We look back and think of the Spring Offensive of 1918, the Battle of Belleau Wood, the end of the German and Austrian Empires, and the like. But for people living at the time, there was a lot going on, and a lot of it was pretty bad.  Maybe there's some odd comfort in that, and maybe that's a lesson on taking in our sense of history a little less compartmentalized than we tend to do.

Blog Mirror: The Dumbest Blog Ever; The Burden of Proof.

One of the new blog links added here recently is The Dumbest Blog Ever which in fact isn't the dumbest blog ever.  Far from it, it's brilliantly written and usually exhibits a Saki like sense of the ironic.  It's basically a series of daily short stories.

Every once and awhile the blogger steps out from his persona and writes seriously, as he did here.

The Burden of Proof

We've commented a lot here on the Coronavirus and we've accepted the strategy employed in the U.S. to date including the strategy employed by our own state.  But this blogger presents the counter argument, or suggests it, in a different, and indeed jurisprudential, manner.  It's short and worth reading (most things on our own blog being long and likely now worth reading).

An aspect of this that we're going to have to increasingly consider as a society, fwiw, is that at some point the economy has to be opened up.  It's a hard, hard thing to be willing to consider and some aren't.  But most people don't live in a world where they can't work, and frankly the resources of the entire nation can't indefinitely be tied up in the creation of fictional money to tied the economy over.  It won't work indefinitely. That inevitably leads to the point that those who are noting this are arguing to kill people for economic reasons.

That's not really what most people mean. There are those of course who completely argue to throw all caution to the wind and just open everything back up, or who argued never to close things down in the first place, but they're few. What most people mean is that at the point where it seems we've flattened the curve we have to cautiously open things back up.  It won't be instant but so far nobody is arguing that it take six months to fully reopen.

Lurking in the background of all of this is the big unknown question. What if SARS-CoV-2 comes roaring back as things lift?

There's a lot of negative speculation in the press and country right now which inevitably brings out the least likely worst possibility as the probable.  I frankly think, and I'm not ignorant on viruses in general, that a general revival of the pandemic next Fall is overwhelmingly probable.  My overall prediction is that a vaccine will come quicker than predicted, given the resources going into it, and antivirals that are not yet developed for this disease may be able to alleviate things by Fall (note, there's no proof whatsoever that anything currently out there as a medicine does anything on this bug).  So I think the current course of opening things up as we head from Spring to Summer makes sense, although I also think the pace at which we do it is critical.

But note also that all this does is "flatten the curve".  The real idea is that we flatten it flat enough that most of us or a lot of us get "herd immunity" via vaccines.  Also, by flattening it, we hope to avoid swamping emergency services, and it seems we've largely done that except in big cities.

Of course, big cities are where the disease is really prevalent in a desperate sort of way, or in other areas where there are dense crowded conditions.  That all says something about living conditions, but we'll save that for some other day.

We are also really hoping, as a society, and a species, that we'll flatten the curve out of existence.  While herd immunity is the acknowledged goal, a secondary hope, and not a completely unrealistic one, is we flatten the disease down to completely manageable.  We've done that with other viruses and there's sort of an unspoken hope that's the case here.  It seems to be the hope of the Chinese, whose population is so vast that they can't possibly avoid new spikes if that can't be achieved and their economy can't possibly endure that.  That will destroy their economy no matter what the Chinese attempt to do to address it. And it is the nearly spoken hope that the Prime Minister of New Zealand expressed the other day and seems to be their now acknowledged strategy.

But what if the doctor who spoke on Meet The Press this past week is correct.  I quoted that item here:

Well, first of all, let's just take the numbers. At most, 5-15% of the United States has been infected to date. With all the experience we have had so far, this virus is going to keep transmitting. It's going to keep trying to find humans to do what it does until we get at least 60% or 70% of the people infected. That is what it will take to get herd immunity. You know, Chuck, we are in the very earliest days of this situation right now. You know, if I could just briefly say one story here. Right after 9/11, I spent a number of days up at your studios doing filing around the issue of what was happening. The predecessor here, the late Tim Russert, used to say to me all the time, "Hi, Doc. How're you doing? Is the big one here yet?" And I would always say, "No, Tim, it is not." If he asked me today, "Is the big one here? Is it coming?" I would say, "Tim, this is the big one." And it is going to be here for the next 16 to 18 months. And people do not get that yet. We are just on the very first stages. When I hear New York talking about the fact they are down the backside of the mountain, I know they have been through hell. And that is an important statement. But they have to understand that’s not the mountain. That is the foothills. They have mountains to go yet. We have a lot of people to get infected before this is over.

In other words, Dr. Osterholm's view is that this is going to be with us until we get herd immunity, one way or another.  Elaborating on how that will occur, he stated:

Well, herd immunity is clearly going to happen if we do not have a vaccine. I do think that we have a better chance of a vaccine than some. The statement that came out yesterday from the World Health Organization suggesting there may not be immunity was misinterpreted to mean that we do not have evidence today that you are protected from humans. But we have actually animal model data, monkeys that have been infected intentionally and then rechallenged, that were protected. We have a new study on Friday that said vaccine protected them. So I think we are going to have it. I just do not think it is going to be soon. And we are on virus time right now, not human time. And so what we can get done in the next 16 to 18 months, that is great. But if we do not, we will not have a vaccine in time to protect most of the people in the world.

Then what?

I frankly don't know.  I guess our economy could be shut down again in the Fall and probably would be, and I guess that can be justified, and maybe is moreover mandatory from an ethical prospective.

But it literally cannot be done indefinitely.

Or can it?

Shutting things down was basically what was done for the 18/19 Flu, to the extent that they could be.  World War One, of course, kept things from shutting completely down.  But there were repeated local quarantines again and again.  And at least into 1920, as we've seen from our 1920 entries here.

Maybe that's the new normal.

The Aerodrome: Due to a large drop in flights the FAA has announced that it's cutting Tower hours by 50% at the Natrona County International Airport . . .

The Aerodrome: Due to a large drop in flights the FAA has announc...:

Due to a large drop in flights the FAA has announced that it's cutting Tower hours by 50% at the Natrona County International Airport . . .

which means that the tower will now be manned for 8  hours rather than 16.

P51 in foreground, NIA Tower in background.

The airport is open 24 hours a day, but it only has tower personnel now for 16 of those hours.  While this is due to the drop in flights caused by the Coronavirus Pandemic, there's concern that the 8 hour subtraction will become permanent as that's the history of such things.

The Natrona County International Airport is the largest airport in Wyoming and has major infrastructure.  Indeed its so large that, sadly, some of its original runways are closed.  They unnecessary but they've also fallen into disrepair.  Something like this doesn't help keep the airport be what it is, let alone help it obtain what it should be.

Additionally, while the news article I read didn't go into it, this seems odd as the only major cost savings associated with reducing hours by 50% would be to reduce tower personnel by 50% as well.  But didn't the government want employers to keep everyone on the payroll that they could?

Panoramic Photograph Equipment?

We have a category here called "The Big Picture" that features panoramic photographs and, for that matter, panoramic photos are also a separate category item here.  We like them.

Camp Kearney Remount Station, California.  December 1917.

Indeed, we like them so much we've used in them for our various blogs for header or footer photographs.

Big Horn Springs, Thermopolis Wyoming.  April 8, 1918. This is our header photograph for our Railhead blog.

But in spite of that, there's some things we don't know about them.

Laramie, Wyoming.  October 1908.  This is the header for our Painted Bricks blog.

And one of the principal things we don't know is what the photographic equipment used to make these photographs was.

Panoramics were enormously popular from the late 19th Century up through World War Two.  After that, for some reason, they really faded from the scene, and even though you'll occasionally see them today, and you can in fact make them with your Iphone, they aren't what they once were.

How were they done? The camera equipment was obviously special for them, but I can't really find out anything about it.  A search on the topic reveals very little in the way of information.

Advertisement for early panoramic camera.  I have no idea in general what panoramic cameras were like.

If you know, comment below.  We'd like to know how these were done.

Not even $12/BBL when I posted this.

West Texas Crude.

Brent was $20.13.  OPEC Basket $14.31.

Price at the pump the other day was $1.55 for gasoline.

Lex Anteinternet: Trouble in the Red Hermit Kingdom. A Viral Explanation?

We posted this a couple of days ago about Kim Jong-un, the Communist monarch of North Korea:

Lex Anteinternet: Trouble in the Red Hermit Kingdom: Kim I, the first Communist King of North Korea. We've made some snarky comments about Kim Jong-un  here from time to time but most ...

But what is going on?

Nobody knows.

China reportedly sent a special medical team to him.  Twitter has declared him dead and his sister in charge.

South Korea says he's fine.

South Korea no doubt has better sources than about anyone else and certainly better than Twitter.  If they say he's fine, and for that matter the North Korean press reported recently that he'd visited workers somewhere, he probably is.

And his train has been spotted as a compound of his.

My theory is this.

COVID 19 is in North Korea and Kim Jong-un is terrified of getting it.  He's "self quarantining".

Blog Mirror: Death at Mrs. Cooney’s Hotel: When an influenza epidemic devastated a small town in Alaska

Death at Mrs. Cooney’s Hotel: When an influenza epidemic devastated a small town in Alaska

Trains, Planes and Automobiles. . . and the Coronavirus Pandemic

Unless you have a special interest in them, you probably haven't been thinking much about means of transportation lately.

Indeed, you probably haven't been going anywhere much, for that matter.

But because we have a special interest in the topic, and have dedicated blogs on two of the three title items here, we've been thinking about them a little, and we're seeing some interesting things going on.

Burlington Northern Train in Wyoming.

Let's take the oldest topic first, trains.  We have a companion blog that's just dedicated to that topic.  Have the railroad been impacted by the COVID 19 Pandemic? We'll, here's a recent industry magazine headline on what's going on.

US rail traffic falls off a cliff

AAR information shows Intermodal traffic dropped 20% and carloads plunged more than 23% for the week ended April 11

So indeed, it would appear so.

Regionally, at least one of the railroads has been furloughing employees.  Coal is collapsing, there isn't really anywhere near as much oil shipped by rail as there once was and oil is down anyway, and we're entering what appears to be a pretty deep recession.

Not a cheery scenario for the railroads right now at all.

So what about air then?

Denver International Airport B Concourse.

Not looking super either.

Air travel has decreased 96% due to COVID 19.  That's a whopping  huge decrease to say the least.

96%.

Flights locally have been reduced 50%.  No need for all of the old ones, and it's not like they were flying out of here every few minutes as it was.  Cheyenne cancelled a run to Dallas it had (until they cancelled it, I didn't know that they even had one).  

As a minor plus, Cody's airport is going to receive $18,000,000 in the form of a grant, which was a surprise to them, but that is fairly minor in comparison to what's otherwise going on.

Well, all this shouldn't impact automobiles, that old standby, right?

Pontiac Super Chief

Well there'd certainly be good reason to suspect it wouldn't.  Oil is below $20bbl and now at an all time historic low.  Prices at the pump have been dropping.  Should be great for cars, right?

Nope.  Sales of automobiles have crashed.  People just aren't going out and buying, and in a lot of places, of course, they can't.  And they likely don't want to either.

Hired automobile rides, such as Uber, are also down, not surprisingly.

Interesting times.

Why didn't you @#$@##$ close?

Or so seems the reaction in Wyoming to Wyoming's failure to issue a "shelter in place order".

Which shows, I think, how little people in one state grasp about what's going on in another.

Yes, we don't have a shelter in place order in effect here as it was the state's conclusion that issuing it really would't be any different than what had already been done.  We're kind of like Ireland in World War Two that way.  Yes, Ireland didn't declare war, but a mid war study by the Irish military concluded that declaring war would do nothing anyway.  All the military aged men were already in the British military.

Same here. What's left open under our current order?

Essential businesses, basically.  To the extent we didn't, most closed up anyway. And those that were left open, were left with so many restrictions that they were mostly curbside in some ways or pretty restricted in others.

So, before you in New York, or wherever, scream that we didn't close. We did.  Or at least we did in the same spirit as those of you who kept your liquor stores and head shops open.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Latter Day Saints, Farson Wyoming.

Churches of the West: Latter Day Saints, Farson Wyoming.:

Latter Day Saints, Farson Wyoming.

These photographs are of the Mormon church in Farson Wyoming.  I was stopped to take a photograph of something else at the time, which explains the unusual camera angle of these photos.

Best Post Of The Week Of April 19, 2020

The best post of the week of April 19, 2020

Sunday Morning Scene: Orthodox Easter (Old Calendar)

Moving stuff around. The Pandemic

The 2020 Election, Part 7

The USS Theodore Roosevelt. What happened, why it matters, and why the press dropped the ball.

A Disaster In Oil

Earth Day, 2020

"Never let a crisis go to waste"

Pandemic

Still there.

Trouble in the Red Hermit Kingdom

Coal, Uranium & Oil

"Japan has a low violence rate and we should copy their example. . . "

April 25, 1920. Settlements that didn't settle.

Attendees at the San Remo Conference on this date in 1920.  Matsui, Lloyd George, Curzon, Berthelot, Millerand, Scialoja and Nitti.

This was the last day of the San Remo Conference in which the victors of the Great War, absent the United States, met to determine the fate of various territories left in their hands or at least believed to be left in their hands.  On this day, the issued the San Remo Resoution, which stated,

It was agreed –

(a) To accept the terms of the Mandates Article as given below with reference to Palestine, on the understanding that there was inserted in the proces-verbal an undertaking by the Mandatory Power that this would not involve the surrender of the rights hitherto enjoyed by the non-Jewish communities in Palestine; this undertaking not to refer to the question of the religious protectorate of France, which had been settled earlier in the previous afternoon by the undertaking given by the French Government that they recognized this protectorate as being at an end.

(b) that the terms of the Mandates Article should be as follows:

The High Contracting Parties agree that Syria and Mesopotamia shall, in accordance with the fourth paragraph of Article 22, Part I (Covenant of the League of Nations), be provisionally recognized as independent States, subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The boundaries of the said States will be determined, and the selection of the Mandatories made, by the Principal Allied Powers.

The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust, by application of the provisions of Article 22, the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory, to be selected by the said Powers. The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 8, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

La Puissance mandataire s’engage a nommer dans le plus bref delai une Commission speciale pour etudier toute question et toute reclamation concernant les differentes communautes religieuses et en etablir le reglement. Il sera tenu compte dans la composition de cette Commission des interets religieux en jeu. Le President de la Commission sera nomme par le Conseil de la Societe des Nations.

The terms of the mandates in respect of the above territories will be formulated by the Principal Allied Powers and submitted to the Council of the League of Nations for approval.

Turkey hereby undertakes, in accordance with the provisions of Article [132 of the Treaty of Sevres] to accept any decisions which may be taken in this connection.

(c) Les mandataires choisis par les principales Puissances allies sont: la France pour la Syrie, et la Grand Bretagne pour la Mesopotamie, et la Palestine.

In reference to the above decision the Supreme Council took note of the following reservation of the Italian Delegation:

La Delegation Italienne en consideration des grands interets economiques que l’Italie en tant que puissance exclusivement mediterraneenne possede en Asie Mineure, reserve son approbation a la presente resolution, jusqu’au reglement des interets italiens en Turquie d’Asia.

As noted, above, the Italian delegation reserved its assent given that the conference hadn't reached a resolution on its interests in Asia Minor.

The results of the conference were momentous and continue to play out today  The British took Palestine as a mandate and the French Syria.  The borders of these mandates were not determined.  The Turkish delegation purported to accept the decisions made at the conference.  The conference also, although not reflected in this resolution, accepted the independence of Armenia and set the monetary amount of annual German reparation payments.

While the US was not there, it continued to exhibit an influence, as the conference also accepted Wilson's proposal on Fiume, even if the Italians really didn't.

As the Cheyenne paper made plain, scandals that are more commonly associated with later eras in fact occurred in earlier ones. And Texas said no to Carranza.

In just a few short months the French would sustain a military defeat against insurgent Syrians and the British would accordingly rush to draw the borders of Transjordan, which is Jordan today, out of concern that the rebellion would spill into territory it was administering. That would set the borders for Palestine.  An insurgency already underway in Turkey would cause the decisions of any Turkish delegation to be questionable, but it did not act in any fashion to attempt to assert any claim to Mesopotamia (Iraq), or its former colonies to the south.  It would not accept, however, the independence of Armenia, which the conference had separately recognized, or the Greek role in Anatolia, which had been assured by the conference.  And Carranza's bid to control who became his successor was turning disastrous for him.

World War One's results were playing out in a different fashion at the Battle of Koziatyn, Ukraine in which a Polish cavalry division penetrated deep behind the Soviet lines.  Over two days it would envelop Soviet forces and destroy two Red Army divisions.

Elsewhere movies with rural settings were being released, both dramatic and comedic.

"Japan has a low violence rate and we should copy their example. . . "

Japanese family, 1950s.

I hear that argument a lot.  The basic gist is that if we copied the Japanese in regard to gun control, we'd achieve the same results.

Which leads to this, which I've touched on before briefly.  But I'm touching on it again here, as I happened to look at this for another reason.  But that made it obvious, really. 

You can't look at a country's laws and their results without considering a country's culture.

Japan does indeed have a low murder rate in general.  It has a high suicide rate, however, which is another topic.

Setting aside self murder, which we really ought not to do as it figures into any realistic analysis of violence and Japan, what else might contribute to that low Japanese murder rate?*

Japan's out of wedlock birth rate is darned near 0.

98% of the Japanese births are legitimate, a word we hardly even use anymore in a society where 30% to 60% are not.

Why does that matter?

Well it matters as Japanese children are raised inside of highly stable family environments.

Indeed, they are stable.  There are 1.68 divorces per 1,000 people in Japan.  The rate in the United States is double that, at 3.2 per 1000.  And in the US that doesn't include the number of couples that would have been regarded as having common law marriages in earlier eras.  I.e, our divorce rate doesn't include couples that aren't married but which cohabitate and then "split up" even though such couples often have children.

Indeed, the contrast between Japan and the United States here is monumental.  The Japanese do not have examples of men living with women in which there are children of prior relationships.  They don't even have very many examples of "blended families" in which there's been more than one marriage and children by more than one marriage in a household.  Where that occurs it tends to be because a prior spouse died.

To add to that, and remember this is a thread on what's going on in Japan,  not an argument that we adopt everything Japanese, being a single parent in Japan really sucks.

The Japanese don't approve of children being born out of wedlock and they don't approve of the women who find themselves in that situation. They don't even really approve of the children.

Given all of this, in spite of statistics you may see on other things, the Japanese get married and stay married, and have their kids when they're married.  In the rare instances of the opposite, and they are extremely rare, the mother and child are reduced to poverty.

Japanese marriage, moreover, is really traditional in terms of structure.  This has evolved enormously over the years as, ironically in this context, the Japanese moved towards "Western" marriage in the 20th Century. After World War Two, Western marriage really took off greatly in Japan. This has evolved to such an extent that the majority of Japanese today are married in Christian ceremonies even though less than 1% of the Japanese are Christians.  This has actually resulted in a phrase in Japan of being "born Shinto, married Christian, and dying Buddhist".  That's a joke, of course, but like a lot of jokes, it has a big element of truth to it.

Part of that evolution towards Westernism in marriage has been a real cementing of the traditional Western marriage in Japan in terms of its structure.  Japanese culture places a strong emphasis on the domestic role of women and women's role in that regard is seen as central.  Women in Japanese society are the primary managers of home economics in the true economic and even Greek original meaning of the word in a fashion that's similar to that of some Mediterranean cultures traditionally.

Japanese women do work outside of the home, but after they are married that number declines enormously.  Most married women in Japan do not work.  Most women who work in Japan are intentionally doing so only until they are married.  Japanese women earn around 40% less than men. The workforce is strongly, by culture, divided into male and female roles, recent examples to the contrary notwithstanding.  You may see a cute video of a Japanese female tank commander, but there aren't very darned many of them.

Prior to the Meji period, Japanese marriages were arranged and economic.  During the Meji period this was attacked at a high level in order to try to Westernize the culture, but certain aspects of the old practices remained for a very long time.  Included in that was that Japan had a strict expectation that married women were to be chaste but had no such expectation of the same for men.  This lead to the dual explotivie Japanese occupations of the geisha and the prostitute, which are not at all the same.  Professional prostitution was widespread and highly tolerated.**  As a female profession it was common up until after World War Two when its ongoing nature was frowned upon and seen, moreover, as non Western.

While that's gone, it has left remnants in that men are strongly dominant in society outside of the household, where the opposite is absolutely the case.  Women rule in the household.  Indeed, marriages between the Japanese and non Japanese are very rare and rarely successful in part for this reason.***  Japanese women have really strong expectations of husbands and expect to absolutely rule in the home. Western men who have come to accept the "partnership" concept are accordingly in for a rough surprise with a Japanese spouse.  Conversely, Western men just don't live up to the expectations of Japanese women.

Be that as it may, as noted, men are strongly dominant outside of the home where women's are regarded as a temporary presence and are treated that way.  Beyond that, while the Japanese as a culture are really admirably chaste, the old history of concubinage and male dominance in the society has caused Japan to have a really massive post World War Two pornography industry which is openly tolerated in ways it never would be in Western society and which goes beyond exploitation of women.  Indeed, not only has this found expression in all the conventional mediums in Japan, but in others that are somewhat rarer in the West.  For example, while the "superhero" genre of cartoon in the United States is wildly male and juvenile, including in its portrayal of women, a popular cartoon in Japan, at least at one time, was "Rape Man", who committed that act upon women with an attitude.  The popular Japanese genres of cartoons today are moreover wildly pornorgraphic in thier depictiosn of women and even in the milder forms common in the West they feature grossly exaggerated female forms for obvious reasons.  Therefore, an aspects of Japanese society is a male attitude that's condescending and explotivie to women outside of marriage in an abstract way.  They don't act that way in their personal moral conduct, but they're obviously focused on it otherwise.  While pornography and pornification of Western culture has become vast, it isn't at the really creepy Japanese level (creepiness being relative in this example).

Along with this, the Japanese are what some like to call homogeneous and others like to call xenophobic or even racist in the extreme.   The Japanese regard their own culture as superior to others and they don't want it mixing with yours.****  They want Japan for the Japanese and they don't want you marrying into a Japanese family.  The one American male I know who did that found that his Japanese in laws flat out disowned their daughter as a result of such a marriage.  The Japanese are, therefore, related to each other by a blood in a way that Americans are not and can't even conceive of.  Outside of Hokkaido in the far north, and Okinawa to the south, the Japanese are effectively cousins in a way that very few cultures in the world are.*****

So there you have the Japanese example, for good and ill.

And note we stated for good and, not or, ill.  There are parts of this, including the racist and xenophobic elements that would cause most of us to rightly recoil.

Notably in all of it, the Japanese have copied a major Western, Christian, cultural feature, monogamous life time marriages with a Christian view of sexual morality in marriage and a blisteringly traditional view of people's roles in that marriage.  That singular cultural adoption probably explains more than anything else why Japan has a low, low homicide rate.  All of Japan's children, almost, are raised by their mother and father.  Almost every Japanse marriage survives until the death of one member of the couple.  Every husband is expected to work outside of the home.  Every wife is expected to rule the household and have that be her primary focus.  Everyone marries somebody who is from the same culture and has the same expectations.

Not all of this picture is pretty, in our view from the West.  Japanese men are dominant in the workplace in way that they aren't here and haven't been for decades.  Japanese women rule in the household in a way that most Westerners and Northern Europeans would find shocking.  The Japanese are really admirably chaste in conduct but have an extremely objectified view of women outside of the home, even if it is very rarely acted upon.

All of which may be besides the point, as to us, or maybe, in part, not.

And the part that might not be is the core of the family example.  The Japanese have tight families and, frankly, are sort of a tight family.   There's a lesson in that, and it doesn't have anything to do with laws or regulations.  We aren't going to copy all of that example by any means, but the part of it that they copied from us is perhaps something that we ought to ponder to some degree.

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*Indeed, this seems to completely escape those who cite Japan as an example of low rates of violent death.  Japan has a lot of violent death, its just that it tends to be self directed, which isn't any better of societal result than a lot of murders.

**The expectation that rules didn't apply to men was such that the Imperial Japanese Army enslaved large numbers of women as "comfort women" to act as involuntary prostitutes for Japanese soldiers during World War Two.  Only very recently has there been acknowledgement of wrongdoing by Japan for this act.

Notably here, "comfort women" were not Japanese.  To the extent they were Japanese subjects, they tended to be Koreans, whom the Japanese looked down upon as a lesser race.  They weren't limited to Koreans, however, and included women forced into prostitution in other areas that the Japanese conquered during World War Two.

***The only era in which significant numbers of Japanese women married non Japanese men was after World War Two when it was briefly common.  There's a cultural aspect of this that has gone unexplained but at least one historian has theorized that this occurred as a form of Japanese female protest at men having let the culture down by losing the war.

****Japan's culture is, moreover, unique.  Americans tend to view all Asian cultures as more or less the same, but Japan's is distinctly different and has been isolated for  the most part for over a millenia.  There have been cultural insertions in the form of religious and philosophical thought, such as in the form of Buddhism and Confucianism early on, which managed to come in from China, along with Chinese written characters (but not language), and more recently many Western cultural elements, but overall Japan retains a unique Japanese character.

*****There are a few others, of course.  In European terms, the Finns and the Icelanders also are in this category, and the Icelanders, which are a very small nationality, even more so.

April 24, 1920 The return.

Law enforcement legend William E. Johnson returned to Westerville, Ohio.  I don't know what his connection with Westerville was, but Johnson was a legendary prohibitionist and undercover policeman.

Coal, Uranium & Oil

Add bentonite to that, something used for drilling mud and kitty litter, and you have three of the big extractive substances of the state.

Yesterday, citing SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) downturns, coal mines in Campbell County laid off 300 workers.

That may sound like a pretext, but it isn't. The Burlington Northern is now several years deep into furloughs now due to the Pandemic and it looks like it's getting worse.  There's been a giant downturn in demand for coal as people aren't buying and they aren't working. 

As the shelter in place orders extend into the Summer that might actually change, if they do. Or it might just change either way.  If people go back to work in the next month or so, the demand for energy may go up.  If they stay home, the demand for energy may also go up as Americans can't live without air conditioning anymore. 

No sweaty rear windows, like in Rear Window.

Anyhow, coal demand actually has gone up in the summer in recent years, the opposite of what it used to do.  At one time the Government, in times of crisis, urged people to buy their coal early for the winter.  Now it doesn't do anything like that at all, as its power plants, and not individual people, who normally buy coal, but the demand goes up in the summer.

World War One vintage poster urging homeowners to buy coal early for the winter.

We'll see what happens, but right now, reeling Campbell County has been given an additional blow.  Three Hundred layoffs in a county that already was hurting, on top of COVID 19 shut ins, and a slow down in the oil and gas industry is a giant blow.

Coal, as we've noted before, has been on a long slow decline for many years.  Over a century in fact, but with events like this, a person has to wonder at what point things simply become fatal for Wyoming's coal mining industry.  Once some things close (and that speculation can extend a lot further than just on coal mining and Wyoming) they don't open back up.

One thing that isn't going back up, at least very quickly, is oil.

West Texas oil opened today at around $17 bbl.  People who take a rosy view of situation have been stating that we ought not to worry, it'll rebound.  Indeed, they were saying that it would rebound significantly this week.  

It hasn't.

Now, it will sooner or later, to be sure. But it isn't quickly and if the economy slumps into a deep recession, and there's real reason to fear it will, it won't for months.

Added to that, as we've also noted before, it seems that consumption of petroleum entered a new phases some years ago.  The original problem was the high price combined with a seemingly insatiable American demand.  However, technology allowed the US to become an energy exporter again (which is now threatened by these developments) while, at the same time, Americans seem to have broken up with the car.  While breaking up with the car, they also developed an interest in electric vehicles and that hasn't gone away and isn't going to. While a drop in the price of oil would seem to threaten to change that, it doesn't look like it will.

Even Jeep, on Earth Day, came out with the news it was introducing an electric Jeep.  Jeep drivers, of which I'm one, are the most bound to tradition drivers in the world, but it looks like they're ready to accept an electric version, massive "you can't do that and it won't work" reaction aside.

So, this might not only take a long time to turn around, it might take a very long time.

As we earlier noted here, what should be going on right now is a massive buy up of the cheap foreign oil as a strategic reserve by the U.S. government, but it doesn't appear that will occur. The government is buying some, but not at the level it really needs to in order to address the situation.

It does want to buy Uranium, however.

If there's a bright spot for Wyoming in this economic picture, that's it.  The Federal Government is wanting to buy Uranium for a strategic stock piles.

The American Uranium industry has been really hurt, like oil is being right now, by cheap foreign supplies.  It's also being hurt by an absolutely misplaced fear of nuclear energy which Greens ought to be ardently embracing.  We'll deal with that some other time, but the price of Uranium is low and the once vibrant Wyoming mines are mostly gone  At least one lingers on and a Federal program to stockpile, if it occurs, will aid that sector at least a bit.

All in all, however, it's really a perfect storm.

Trouble in the Red Hermit Kingdom

Kim I, the first Communist King of North Korea.

We've made some snarky comments about Kim Jong-un  here from time to time but most recently mentioned him in connection with the USS Roosevelt, noting that the Stalinist head of North Korea has a habit of creating global problems when the world is otherwise distracted, seemingly constantly wanting the spotlight on himself, and for the wrong reasons.

Well, that spotlight has been trying to focus recently, although not for anything that he's done, but for what he seems to be enduring.

You don't have to be a physician to look at photos of Kim and know that he's not a model of healthy living.  Now there are reports that the murderous dictator may have undergone serious surgery and may not be doing well.

Indeed, that he'd undergo surgery now, at a time at which Coronavirus is stalking the Korean Peninsula, suggests that this procedure wasn't planned.  It's likely an emergency.  And like a lot of emergency procedures, the outcomes are always a bit clouded prior to their known. Clouding the news on this one is that getting anything out of the news black hole that is North Korea is difficult.

So he may be pretty sick.

He might not be sick at all.

We really don't know.

What we also don't know is what happens in the Red Hermit Kingdom if he dies, or rather when he dies.

That North Korea is not a naturally Marxist state is evident from the fact that rule of the country is vested in the descendants of his grandfather, Kim Jon Il-sung.  That despicable Kim was a Soviet protege who arrived back in his own country after a prolonged absence as an essentially Soviet creation.  Indeed, his own command of the Korean language was horrible.  The USSR needed somebody, and Kim had Marxist street cred due to his support of the USSR as a Communist expat with service in the Communist cause in China and an early member of a Communist movement in Korea.  Upon his death in 1994 his position was inherited by his son, Kim Jong-il, setting the state for the ironic creation of a Communist monarchy.

Kim Jong-il ran the country from 1994 until his death, monarch style in 2011.  Upon his death his position was inherited by Kim Jong-un.

That positions are inherited in this fashion is telling.  As the old cliche would have it, blood is thicker than water and the North Korean Communist rulers are apparently so paranoid about passing the leadership baton on that they can only pass it on to their family members, much like monarchs of old did with their leadership, or like Mafia families have always done.  If there's some collective leadership, the thought must be, next thing you know you have Boris Yeltsin leading a charge on the palace.

Of course, the ultimate hypocrisy here would be that a "workers' state" would presumably be lead by workers, which in the antiquated economy of North Korea, shouldn't be too hard to find.  Instead power is completely vested in the hands of a family that not only inherits the position like monarchy, but lives like monarchs as well.  They don't call themselves kings, of course, but they are.

So who inherits the thrown if Kim Jong-un passes untimely passes on?

Nobody really knows but there's wide speculation that it would be his sister Kim Yo-jong.

Kim Jong-un does have children, although the country is so secretive that their number is unknown.  He was married sometime during the prior decade to Ri Sol-ju, about whom nearly nothing is known and whom is believed to be in her early 30s, making her slightly younger than her spouse.  The marriage appears to have been conducted hastily as his father appeared to be near death, once again recalling the habit of monarchy and the regimes need to have heirs.  The couple has had somewhere between one to three children, and it seems the first one was a boy.  Still, even at that, next to nothing, including his name, and if he remains alive, is known about him.  If he is alive, that boy would now be ten years old.  Too young to inherit the throne, at least without a regent.

That regent might be Kim Yo-jong, who is close to her brother.  She could rule until the oldest male in the line of the grandfather is ready to inherit the throne on his own.

Or she could simply take the throne, Saudi style, in the fashion of thrones passing to blood relatives but not necessarily to the next in line. Indeed, this was common for early Medieval monarchs.

But then so was the throne passing to others than the immediate family of the monarch.

All we can really tell for sure is that since 1945 the Communist Party has become incredibly insular and the ruling class works just like that of old style monarchies.  Marriages are almost always within the immediate power circle of real loyalist to the throne and close blood ties have come to exist in the ruling class.  None of the immediate blood relatives of Kim Jong-un will have married outside of the Communist noble circle and everyone at the helm has a deeply vested interest in maintaining the monarchical rule.

All of which means that the system is a house of cards at some point.  But nobody knows where that point really is.