Showing posts with label 1910. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1910. Show all posts

Monday, February 19, 2024

Seats for female employees.

§ 5815. Failure to provide seats for female employees.  

Every person or corporation employing females in any manufacturing , mechanical or mercantile establishment in the state of Wyoming shall provide suitable seats for females so employed, and shall permit the use of such seats by them when they are not necessarily engaged in the active duties for which they are employed. Any person or corporation who shall violate the provisions of this section, shall upon conviction thereof, be considered guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be punished by a fine of not less than ten dollars, nor more than thirty dollars for each and every offense . [ L. 1901 , ch . 33 , §§ 1 , 2. ] 

Wyoming Statutes, 1910. 

Sunday, February 18, 2024

OROZCO by SK GUNS and Pascual Orozco himself.


Wow, that's a wild commemorative.

Pascual Orozco was a Mexican Revolutionary who originally supported Madero before falling out with him.  He was of immediate Basque descent, something we tend not to think about in regard to Mexico, which is in fact more ethnically diverse than we commonly imagine.  He was an early recruit to Madero's 1910 revolution, and was a natural military leader, and could be rather morbid.  After his January 2, 1911, victory at Cañón del Mal Paso he ordered the dead Federal soldiers stripped and sent the uniforms to Presidente Díaz with a note that read, "Ahí te van las hojas, mándame más tamales" ("Here are the wrappers, send me more tamales.").


On May 10, 1911 Orozco and Pancho Villa seized Ciudad Juárez, against Madero's orders, a victory which caused Díaz to briefly resign the presidency.  Madero would naively choose to negotiate with the regime, which resulted in The Treaty of Ciudad Juárez allowing for the resignations of Díaz and his vice president, allowing them to go into exile, establishing an Interim Presidency under Francisco León de la Barra, and keeping the Federal Army intact.

Like Zapata, he went into rebellion against the Madero government, which he felt had betrayed the revolution.  He openly declared revolt on March 3, 1912, financing it with his own money and confiscated livestock sold in Texas.  His forces were known as the Orozquistas and the Colorados (the Reds). They defeated Federal troops in Chihuahua under José González Salas. Madero in turn sent Victoriano Huerta against him, who in turn were more successful.  A wounded Orozco fled to the US. After Madero was assassinated and Huerta installed, Orozco promised to support him if reforms were made, and he was installed as the Supreme Commander of the Mexican Federal forces.  As such he defeated the Constitutionalist at Ciudad Camargo, Mapula, Santa Rosalía, Zacatecas, and Torreón, causing his former revolutionary confederates to regard him, not without justification, as a traitor.

He refused to recognize the government of Carvajal after Huerta's fall and was driven into exile again.  He traveled in the US in opposition to Carranza along with Huerta.  In 1915, he was arrested in the US, but escaped.  An unclear incident at the Dick Love ranch in Texas led to claims that he and other like-minded combatants had stolen horses from the ranch, which in turn resulted in a small party of the 13th Cavalry, Texas Rangers, and local deputies pursing the supposed horse thieve with Orozco being killed once the party was holed up.  What exactly occured is not clear.

His body interred in the Masonic Holding Vault at the Concordia Cemetery in El Paso by his wife, dressed in the uniform of a Mexican general, at a service attended by a very larger gathering of admirers.  In 1925 his remains were retuned to Chihuahua.

Why the commemorative?  I have no idea.  He is not an obscure figure in the Mexican Revolution, but not a well known one like Villa or Zapata.  I can't see where he's associated with the M1911 either, a weapon that was brand new at the time the Revolution broken out.  The .38 Super, which is apparently popular in Mexico, wasn't intruduced by Colt until 1929.

Friday, June 2, 2023

Saturday, June 2, 1923. Criqui v. Kilbane

Eugène Criqui knocked out Johnny Kilbane in the sixth round at the Polo Grounds in New York City to take the World Featherweight Title.  Babe Ruth, who had hurried over from a Yankee's game, was in attendance.

Cirqui.

Cirqui had been a professional boxer since 1910, although his career was interrupted by World War One during which he was shot in the jaw by a German sniper.  His jaw had been reconstructed with wire, the bone of a goat and silver.

He died at age 83 in 1977.

Kilbane.

Kilbane was from Ohio and from a classically difficult childhood.  He'd been boxing since 1907.  He served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army during World War One and retired shortly after losing this fight.  He died at age 68 in 1957.

The Kaufman Act passed, requiring the electrification of all New York City railroads by the beginning of 1926.

The Federal Government wasn't taking New York's no to Prohibition lightly.




Sunday, October 30, 2022

Sunday Morning Scene. Churches of the West: St. Patrick Misson Church, Denver Colorado.

Churches of the West: St. Patrick Misson Church, Denver Colorado.

St. Patrick Misson Church, Denver Colorado.


This Catholic Church in North Denver is St. Patrick Mission Church.  The Mission Architecture Church was built from 1907 to 1910, and served the Denver Highlands.  Its architectural style is unusual for Denver.

This Church is also called St. Patrick's Oratory, and has a presence by the Capuchin Poor Clare Sisters.

There's more to this church than I have here, I just don't know what it is, but it may be explained by the Capuchin sisters. The church as a bit of a campus, and therefore as a mission, it might strongly reflect their presence.

Wednesday, October 26, 2022

Industrial History: Coors Brewery in Golden, CO

Industrial History: Coors Brewery in Golden, CO: ( 3D Satellite ) Historic Denver posted Coors Brewery in Golden, CO. (1910) [The Banquet brand is still brewed in just Golden and is shipped...

Tuesday, September 20, 2022

If



If you can keep your head when all about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
    And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same:
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    ⁠And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    ⁠Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
    ⁠And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!

Sunday, July 11, 2021

Monday. June 11, 1921. The truce between Ireland and the United Kingdom ends the Anglo Irish War.

The flag of Ireland.

Hannah Carey, a 48 year old waitress in Killarney, was killed by a shot fired from a Royal Irish Constabulary truck.  She was likely not a victim of murder, but of an accident, as the RIC was reacting to an IRA attack upon a British Army unit just minutes prior.

She was the last causality of the Anglo Irish War.

On this day in 1921 the Anglo Irish War came to an end under an agreement between the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the President of the putative Irish Republic. The agreement had not only included an agreement to end the fighting, but also to engage in talks that would obviously outline the formalities, and there were indeed many to work out, of the existence between the two countries.   The Irish delegation would leave for London on July 12, the following day.

The history of the English presence in Ireland is a complicated and not really subject to easy summation.  England was a more powerful nation, comparatively, to Ireland dating back to the early days of the English kingdoms and as England's rule began to consolidate in a single king, that king often made claims of authority over Ireland even though they really were incapable of being enforced.

In 1169 the Normans, who were then into a century of their rule over England, having conquered the English thrown in 1066, invaded Ireland.  The invasion started in the form of an Anglo Norman mercenary intervention on behalf of one of the Irish kings but grew in scale until the English crown intervened against both the Irish kings and the Anglo Norman mercenaries.  The Crown then preceded over a period of years to consolidate its power in Ireland.

It is therefore commonly claimed that the Anglo Norman Invasion brought about "800 years of English rule" but it is not really true.  Even after the invasion, direct English rule was somewhat weak and grew weaker. The Anglo Normans assimilated surprisingly rapidly and by the 15th Century English rule was mostly titular with Ireland ruled by its own parliament and the Crown largely ignored.

The Reformation, however, rapidly changes this and in 1542 King Henry VIII, not content with all of the other destructive things he was doing, proclaimed himself the King of Ireland.  This was backed up by English military might and the contest took on a religious aspect given the English separation from Rome.  Indeed, the British effectively chose to fight out some of their contests for power on Irish ground.  Real British rule in Ireland, therefore, really dates to 1542.

In 1801 Parliament consolidate the rule with an Act of Union, making Ireland part of the United Kingdom. This was a political development that had been ongoing in Great Britain and had already brought about the union between Scotland and Wales that still exists.  This union was more problematic in Ireland, however, given that Ireland's population was overwhelmingly Catholic and Catholics were repressed in the United Kingdom.  The union was never really accepted by the Irish and a series of moves towards regaining independence occurred in following years.

Prior to World War One a strong move towards "home rule", which would have essentially granted Ireland regained independence in association with the Crown, leaving the British Parliament with authority on foreign policy, gained grown. These moves were strongly supported and strongly opposed.  They were gaining enough strength prior to the Great War that, had the war not broken out, Ireland would have obtained home rule prior to 1920, and the following Irish history would likely have developed differently.

As it was, moves towards an open civil war were already afoot prior to World War One and indeed they caused an infamous mutiny within the ranks of the British Army in Ireland which looked as if it would oppose any sort of Irish political freedom.  The British were still dealing with the aftermath of this mutiny when the Great War broke out, and the war quickly set all of these issues aside.

As we've been dealing here, the one group that didn't put them aside were Irish republicans, which struck during the late stages of the war itself in open rebellion.  This move was very unpopular inside of Ireland whose sons were fighting in France, but it did gain international attention. At the same time, the republicans took the wise course of action of forming their own putative representative government, setting up rival institutions to the official British ones where they could, and declaring themselves to be the legitimate government of the nation.

Following the Great War the British government was wise enough to see the handwriting on the wall, even though surrendering one of the major portions of the United Kingdom was a gigantic concession.  To some degree, much of recent UK history has stemmed from this, as the UK has slowly devolved rule to the other nations that remain in the United Kingdom.

This was of interest, to say the least, to the Irish American community in the United States.  An article on how this was reported on can be read here:

American reporting of truce in Ireland, July 1921

Former President and current Supreme Court Justice William Howards Taft was sworn in as the Chief Justice.

On the same day, President Harding signed a new Naval Appropriations bill that reduced spending for the Navy by $80,000,000 for the upcoming year.

In fairness, the US was still winding down from World War One and now had a gigantic surplus of ships.  The American people, for their part, were growing into disillusionment about their recent role in the Great War and the thesis that it was all a big plot by industrialist was starting to gain steam.

Perhaps related, or not, the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor concluded a meeting with a call for global disarmament by 1923.

The Bogd Khan was restored to titular head of Mongolia by Mongolian revolutionaries.


He was a Buddhist monk whose claim to power, or perhaps burden of it, was similar to that of the Dali Lama's and in fact he'd been born in Tibet and proclaimed the Bogd Khan in the presence of the Dali Lama and the Panchen Lama.  He had ruled the country as its theocratic head since the onset of the Chinese revolution in 1911, but his powers were limited due to his religious position.  During his first reign he'd been the subject of a propaganda campaign lead by the Chinese who wished to remove him and install a communist government.

In 1919 he was removed by the Chinese government as the crisis on the border with the infant Soviet Union developed.  Showing his position in the country's people, he was reinstalled, ironically, by the communist revolutionaries on this day in 1921 and would retain his position, being the last to occupy it, until his death in 1924.

Saturday, December 26, 2020

Poster Saturday. Some posters we saved to put up, and then didn't get around to it, in 2020

One of our "trailing threads" here are posters, which we like, and which we typically post on Saturdays, if we get around to it, which more often than not, we do not.

As the computer files on which the posters were saved are about to go, as there's a lot of them, and we're going into a new year, I thought I'd put some of those that were saved to post, but which weren't posted, up.  

More often than not, I don't comment on the posters. Some of them deserve comment, however, so its here.  Comment yourself if  you feel like it, and if feel like, please comment.


The poster is an old Hires Root Beer advertisement.

In a year in which Mia, the Native American woman on the cover of Land O Lake dairy products, was sent packing as culturally insensitive, this old poster no doubt also is.  Indeed, she reminds me of the Navajo Trucking of a blue eyed ostensibly Native American woman still on the doors of their trucking fleet. Still, this blog chronicles the century old and the poster is visually attractive.  

What role does birch bark play in Root Beer?

1920 was a banner year for women and we've posted a lot of magazine covers that dealt with that.  We missed the one above from July, 1920, however.

Magazine illustrations of the period, we'd note, were really art. That's something that's really been lost in the past century.

We also saved a lot of World War Two related posters that never went up.   Some of them are below.










The poster above is interesting in that the printing style retained the World War One appearance, even though its a World War Two vintage poster.  Which is a nice way to note that we also saved a few World War One era posters we didn't get around to putting up, in part because our century retrospectives dealt with the 1920, and not 1914 through 1918.


Cigarettes actually became a big deal during World War One. They weren't nearly as popular before the Great War.  The results would be disaterous.

The thought of Liberty calling on an old style rotary dial phone is a bit odd.  Not one of the better posters of the Great War.

1920 was a tragic year in the Russian Civil War; seeing the Whites driven out of Crimea and into exile, if they survived to make it into exile.  We covered that a bit this past year.  Surprisingly, given the conditions in which it was fought, it generated a lot of poster art, including this White poster from below.


1940, like 2020, was a census year.  The Federal Government according issued this poster hoping to get the populace to be counted.

2020 turned out to be an oddly controversial year this way, having to do ultimately with the counting of illegal residents in the country.  The topic of who to count is an oddly old one in American history going all the way back to the adoption of the Constitution which saw a compromise that slaves and Indians would be counted as less than a full person.  As the count determines representation in the House of Representatives, how people who cannot vote are counted has accordingly been a very long lasting feature of American politics.



Monday, September 7, 2020

Labor. 1920, and now.

 

Jewelry workers, 1920.

A Labor Day post.

It can be difficult to take the necessary wrenching steps to prepare for the future, but looking back at the past may help us to see how important these steps are. The graphic below depicts how occupational employment has changed in America since 1920. Students entering the workforce today face a dramatically different landscape of jobs than their parents did in the 1980s or their grandparents in the 1950s. And the work world that their great-grandparents entered in the 1920s is almost unrecognizable.

Back then, about 25 percent of jobs were in agriculture and 40 percent were in manufacturing and other blue collar fields. Today, fewer than one percent of jobs are agricultural and only about 20 percent are blue collar.

In the 1920s, only about 5 percent of workers held professional jobs. This has exploded over the last 90 years and today about 35 percent of workers have professional jobs. Rapidly advancing technology has not only automated and eliminated many jobs that once provided manufacturing, blue collar,  and agricultural employment for millions of Americans, but it has also increased demand for professionals who create, manage, and explain this technology, many of them working in occupations that were unimaginable 90 years ago.

From:  StatChat, University of Virginia.

Looking back a few years earlier, to 1915, reveals this interesting information:

Labor force participation. The 1915 annual average civilian labor force participation rate is estimated at 56.3 percent. This percentage isn’t strictly comparable to the 2015 annual average of 62.7 percent, because of differences in survey coverage and definitions.17 However, despite the similarity in overall labor force participation, the participation rates of men and women were very different from each other 100 years ago. The 1920 census shows that, among people ages 14 and older, the proportion of the population that was in the total labor force was 85 percent for men and 23 percent for women in January of that year. (Civilian labor force data by gender are not available for 1915.) In contrast, the Current Population Survey shows a 2015 annual average civilian labor force participation rate for people ages 16 and older of about 69 percent for men and nearly 57 percent for women. Table 1 points out that young boys were much more likely to be in the labor force in 1920 than now. Not surprisingly, women of all ages are much more likely to be in the labor force now than in 1920. Half of all boys ages 14 to 19 were in the labor force in 1920; nowadays, about one-third of boys age 16 to 19 are in the labor force. Labor force participation among girls those ages hasn’t shown as much change.

From:  Bureau of Labor Statistics.  And also from the BLS, this interesting statistic which we've discussed as a topic here before.

Education. A century ago, most jobs required little formal schooling, and most of the population had not gone beyond elementary or grammar school. In fact, high school graduates were a rarity: in 1915, only an estimated 18 percent of the population ages 25 and older had completed high school, and only about 14 percent of people ages 14–17 were in high school. Royal Meeker, appointed Commissioner of Labor Statistics by President Woodrow Wilson in 1913, had recently written a New York Times article advocating compulsory public education through the intermediate grades. He noted, “Boys and girls drop out of school at all stages of the educational process, but fail to drop smoothly into any part of our economic system.”18 While failure to graduate remains a concern, more than 86 percent of the U.S. population age 25 in 2010–14 had completed high school or more. The average length of the public school term was about 160 days a century ago, compared with 180 days now, and the average number of days attended in 1915 was only 121.19 Many young girls and boys worked instead of being enrolled in school. In fact, New York City’s State Factory Investigating Commission in 1914 reported that “nearly 75 percent of factory women studied had left school before the eighth grade, as had nearly 40 percent of the female store employees interviewed.”20 The legal age for leaving school was generally 14, compared with 16–18 today.

And this interesting set of figures, related to the "everything was cheaper back then" claim that people so often hear:

Of course, most prices of food in 1915 were much different from those in 2015, and several staple items are substantially more affordable today. Here are some examples of 1915 and 2015 prices (using data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics):

Item1915 price1915 price in 2015 dollars2015 price
Bread (1-lb loaf)$0.07$1.65$1.42
Butter (lb).368.483.18
Eggs (dozen).348.012.81
Ground coffee (lb).307.064.61
Potatoes (10 lbs).153.536.55

Interestingly, in that chart, the only thing that's really climbed in adjustered prices is the price of potatoes, which is nearly double the current (or the 2015) prices.   The only thing that has near parity with its century old price is bread.




Monday, July 20, 2020

Blog Mirror. The Weekly Postcard No. 59. The girl I left behind me.

The Weekly Postcard No. 59


Postcards of a singular them from the Great War, expressing an age old sentiment.

As does this song, traced back to 1758, and which saw very widespread use in English speaking militaries in a prior era which was considerably more violent, but perhaps more grounded and realistic as well.

Thursday, May 21, 2020

The Mexican Revolution. . . where we're at in terms of century delayed time.

Yesterday we ran this item:

Lex Anteinternet: Venustiano Carranza assassinated . . .: .

Venustiano Carranza assassinated . . .

on this day in 1920, by officers who had betrayed him, pretending to offer him a safe lodging for the night in the town of Tlaxcalantongo.  Sometime during the night, their forces surrounded the house and then opened fire into ito.  Oddly, the assassins then telegramed Obregon to inform him that "we are at your service" but also asked for permission to bring Carranza's body to Mexico City for burial.  Obregon replied with the comment "It is very strange that a group of officers who vouched their loyalty and honor should have permitted him to be assassinated instead of complying with your duty."


And it goes on from there.

So, where are we at on this story that we've been following for years and for which there are now 306 entries on this blog.

The story starts with the revolution against Porifirio Diaz in 1911

Well, not really.  Diaz, who had been a lieutenant of Mexican revolutionary and then president Benito Juarez, served as President of Mexico three times with his last period of dictatorial service running form 1884 until May 21, 1911.  An odd statement to an American reporter about being willing to hold elections in 1908 lead to one and ultimately he proved unwilling not to run, as he'd promised, with his running meaning an assured reelection..  That lead to the rebellion in 1910 we now call The Mexican Revolution, lead at first by the improbable Francisco Modero.

Diaz at age 77.

On this date in 1920, Diaz had been dead five years.  He'd died of natural causes at age 85 in France.

In 1911 he took to his exile and was succeeded by Francisco León de la Barra y Quijano, whom Mexican conservatives called the "white president" due to his purity.  He only served until November.

León.

During his short administration León had to attempt to deal with the growing revolution against him and the growing right wing extremism in his army.  He wouldn't succeeded, but he did succeed in outliving the revolution  He was still living in 1920 and had a career as a diplomat ahead of him.  He ultimately retired to Spain, but even there was used unofficially in this capacity as a go between between France and Spain.  He died in 1939 of natural causes.

Modero.

León's successor was Modero who was a weak president from November 1911 until he was killed in a military coup on February 19, 1913.  His death threw the country back into civil war.

The fallen Huerta.

His successor was the successful head of the coup, Victoriano Huerta.  Huerta was able to topple Modero, but he couldn't quell the revolution, and he went into exile in July 1914.  Going first to Europe and then the United States, he died an alcoholic in 1916.

His successor, Francisco Sebastián Carvajal y Gual, served for only a month before also going into exile, a victim of Huerta's failed effort to reclaim Diaz's position in Mexico.  His story was happier, however, as he met his wife in exile in the United States and he ultimately returned to Mexico in 1922 to resume his legal practice, which he occupied until his death by natural causes in 1932.

And then came Carranza.

So, so far we've seen the assassination of two of the real revolutionary presidents of Mexico, the odd but admirable Modero and the determined and not so admirable Carranza.  And we've seen the exile of three of the right wing pretenders, two of whom had died by natural causes.

Not dying by natural causes up to this point were thousands of Mexican soldiers who had fought on both sides of the Mexican Revolution, and in some cases literally on both sides.  Included in that number was Emiliano Zapata, the greatest of the Mexican revolutionaries, who was its best post Modero hope.

And the revolution was getting increasingly extreme. Having gone from a hope for democracy with Modero it was coming to increasingly reflect the extreme left wing politics of revolutions of its age, something that would have ill consequences for Mexico in coming years.

Indeed, a real oddity of Mexico's post Maximillian politics in general, up to this point, is how radical it was even when seemingly combined with conservative elements.  If Diaz sometimes dressed like Napoleon, his politics, he in some ways was like him.  He was a political liberal but one who did not trust the democratic process.  Ultimately he governed as a moderate liberal with a focus on stability.  Even today he is credited with having laid the foundations for modern Mexico.  His real fault was in not trusting democracy and running for reelection in 1910, when he promised not to.

Had Diaz held to his initial promise, Modero would have been elected in 1910.   Whether Diaz stepping away from politics voluntarily would have necessarily resulted in a Mexican army that would have accepted the election is another question, and one we will never know the answer to.  Had that occured, Mexico would have stepped into being a true democracy in 1910, something that would take another century to occur.  Diaz's failure to trust his own people lead to a revolution in which propelled radicals to the top.  One of those radicals was Carranza, who ended up sharing that lack of trust with Diaz.  He sought to dictate the results of the upcoming 1920 Mexican election, which in turn lead to his bloody end in May, 1920.  That put Obregon in the position of being the assured ultimate next president of the country, with extreme radicals rising up right behind him.

Monday, February 3, 2020

Takeaways from Super Bowl LIV

The Akron Pros, the 1920 Champions.

1.  The Roman numerals for 54 are LIV.

When it gets to the big Roman numerals, I always get confused.

2.  I'm older than the Super Bowl, although not by much.

The National Football League completed its 100th Season, which means that the NFL started in 1919.

Except it didn't. The NFL was founded on August 20, 1920.  It hasn't started its 100th Season. This is the second year in a row that they've claimed 1919 as their foundational date, but it isn't.

3.  The halftime show was weird.

And I do mean weird.  I'm not sure what was up with it.  Shakira's singing was lackluster and her dancing was both embarrassing and odd.  Jennifer Lopez was effectively nude. 

The whole thing was much like a cabaret scene out of Godfather II, which is supposed to demonstrate the fallen nature of pre revolution Cuba.

4. Why does a football game require a big halftime show?

I still don't get why this is.  The entire thing was not only weird, but really overblown.

5.  Electric cars are set to replace gasoline engined cards quicker than I supposed.

I had thought it would be a decade.  The full scale electric car advertisements by major automobile manufacturers would strongly suggest that it'll be quicker than that.  More on that tomorrow.

6.  Virtue signalling works better in the abstract.

A few liberal media outlets spent some time hand wringing over the Kansas City Chiefs and their traditions, with the dying New Republic taking time out from advertising its trip to Cuba this year (maybe to see the cabaret?) to really dive off into the shallow end of this pool.

It's probably because my interest in sports is so small that I don't really worry much about this, but at any rate everyone seemed to get over it for the game.

7.  It was the Women's Year in advertising, sort of, if not in the halftime show.

A few companies spent some time really attempting to show that they back women and women's causes, even showing some in football uniforms, even though actual physical size and strength requirements make football solidly a male game.  To watch them, we'd nearly suppose that there was a campaign to require female admittance into the NFL, when in fact women are free to enter the NFL if they can play the game.  Biology generally prevents that, although I'd be surprised if the day doesn't arrive when there's a female kicker (there was, fwiw, a female professional baseball player as early as 1922).  That's not the point.

The point is that its really odd to see the advertisements in the same year that featured a blatantly sexist halftime show.  Perhaps a person isn't supposed to say that, as both performers are Latina performers and much of the performance was in Spanish, but a pole dancing Jennifer Lopez isn't intrinsically different from a pole dancer at a strip club, particularly as Lopez started off wearing less than strippers probably wear when they start their act. 

It's weird how in an era when we're having a trial of Harvey Weinstein for being a creeper we're parading Shakira and Lopez around nearly nude on stage.

Something is wrong with that.

8.  The NFL has no pre war heroes?

Or so it would seem.

Professional football really wasn't a big deal until after World War Two, but you would think that in listing its fifty great players for its pre game celebration of its centennial it'd have found at least a few of them who played the game before 1945.

What about Jim Thorpe, for example?

9.  Mr. Peanut is back.

Thank goodness.


Sunday, January 5, 2020

January 5, 1920. The first Monday of the year. Ice, Raids, Long and Bobbed Hair, and Fighting the Reds

It was the first Monday of the New Year, and the New Decade, the date, being the first of a full work week, when the new year really begins, at least for adults.  

So how did it start off?

Joseph and Thomas Leiter skating on the basin, Joseph takes a fall.  Washington D. C., 1/5/20.

Washington D.C. was apparently having a cold snap, as the Tidal Basin was frozen and children were taking advantage of it for ice skating.

 Miss Betty Baker, daughter of the Secty. of War and Miss Annie Kittleson skating on the Tidal Basin, Washington D. C., 1/5/20.

Admiral Jellicoe was still making the rounds.

Admiral Jellicoe photographed in Secty. Daniels office at the Navy Dept.  1/5/20.

The Supreme Court upheld the Volstead Act thereby wiping out booze for good, or so it would seem, right down to the ultra light beer level.


At the same time, things were developing and heating up in Ireland, where separatists Republicans were fighting the British in their effort to form a separate republic.  A familiar map was beginning to take place there.

Closer to home the Palmer Raids were still being celebrated and a new effort was underway for a sedition act designed to take on home grown Reds, described by the Casper headline writer as "long haired men and short cropped women". That headline actually did catch a hair style trend in radical women, albeit on that was about to spread.  As described by Whitaker Chambers in Witness, radical women of the time bobbed their hair.  Soon, that style, perhaps boosted by the daring radicalism, would spread to the female population in general.

By 1924, bobbed hair would be a flapper thing.  In 1920, it was a Red thing.

Reds and their opponents were at it tooth and nail elsewhere.

In Poland the Battle of Daugavpils concluded with the Soviets retreating into Latvia and being taken into custody there. That was possible as Poland and Latvia, which had been fighting, had concluded an armistice in the struggle between them and had asked the Poles for help. The anti Red forces were approximately half Pole and half Latvian, and fought successfully under Polish command.

Mustered Polish armor in the form of French tanks at Daugavpils.

Tuesday, October 8, 2019

"shortsighted and irresponsible."

So says Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Donald Trump's stoutest defenders, about Trump's decision to betray the Kurds and leave them to the mercy of the Turks.

And it is an outrage.

To be clear, I opposed the United States intervening in Syria militarily.  This isn't because I think the Baathist regime there is nice. Rather, I was, I think realistic about the nature of the combatants there.

When the civil war broke out in Syria, the United States, both its population and its government, Americanized it in their minds.  To us, all revolutions against are by the good guys against the bad guys.  Indeed, it's summarized that way in the 1960s movie The Professionals, with the follow up line by Burt Lancaster's explosive expert characters adding; "the question is who are the good guys and who are the bad guys."

Well, it's not that simple.

In Syria there was one main westernized force set for overall control of the nation, realistically, and then there were Islamist theocrats.  One or the other was going to be the one that prevailed.  Trouble was, the westernized force their was the government, and the western ideology it had adopted was fascism.  Fascism is a western creation, and the Baath Party are fascists.  Indeed, the Middle Easter fascist party, the Baath Party, is the most successful fascist party of them all by some measures as its been in power far longer in various places, principally Iraq (formerly) and Syria, than any other fascist party was anywhere else.

The prime opponents of the Syrian government were Islamic radicals who sought to impose a theocracy. Oh, sure, there were other forces, but they were disorganized and inept.

Really effectively intervening in that situation would have required creating a Syrian rebel force out of something while also wiping out the Islamic elements.  That would have required the commitment of thousands of troops, probably 20,000 or more.  And it would have required a long occupation.

We weren't going to do that and it was obvious from the first.

Instead, over time, when we realized what was going on there we supported efforts to quash ISIL and support regional rebel forces where possible. In the meantime, Russian backed Syrian forces with quite a bit of support from actual Russian troops of one kind or another (not officially Russian, but clearly supported by the Russians and made up of Russian military men) crushed the rebellion.  Overall, our small scale intervention was much more effective than I would have supposed, although the winner overall is the Syrian regime which is now closer to Russia than ever.

And then there are the Kurds.

The Kurds are claimed to be the largest ethnicity in the world with a distinct territory that lacks a state. Their territory is spread over Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran. All of those nations have suppressed the Kurds. Right now, probably ironically, the Kurds are best off in Syira and Iraq.

That's about to end in Syria.

The Kurds deserve a country. They've long demonstrated that and they're fairly politically adept and cohesive.  By and large, politically, the Kurds would make most American politicians wince as they're on the Marxist end of the scale without being full blown Communists.  They're basically what we hoped the Castro lead Cuban revolutionaries would be and what we still like to pretend the Spanish leftist combatants, who were really Communist, in the Spanish Civil War were.  They've been fighting for political independence for decades.

Now they're running a quasi state in northern Syria where they successfully threw off the Syrian government and defeated ISIL.

Let me note that again, they defeated ISIL.

Central Intelligence Agency map of Kurdish regions.

And they're running their own state, uneasily and quasi officially, within the Iraqi state.

The number of American servicemen in norther Syria, supporting the Kurds, is quite small.  The exact numbers are likely unknown publicly, but President Trump claims its only fifty men.  Maybe, but at least as of a couple of years ago there were at least 4,000 Special Forces troops in Syria and additionally there was a small contingent of U.S. Marine artillerymen. Indeed, at one point American troops and unofficial Russian troops engaged each other with the Russian unit being utterly destroyed.  And this doesn't include the air contingent.

If its small, does it matter?

It certainly does. The map tells the reason why, as well as the history of the region.

American troops in the Kurdish region keep the Turks from going into that area.  The Turks would, and now will, as the Kurds are there.

Turkey is a patch quilt country created in part by ethnic cleansing.  The Turks invaded Anatolia during the 15th Century, completing their conquest of the Greek Byzantine Empire in 1453.  Coming out of Asia Minor, where many of the Turkish culture remain, the Ottoman Turks ruled from Constantinople until the Empire fell under the stress of the Great War.  At its height it threatened Europe before being contained by efforts in the 1500s which coincided with the Reformation and which constituted the one thing that fractured Christianity could agree upon.

The Ottoman Empire was just that, an empire, a conglomeration of peoples and nations which, in its case, were ruled by one nation, the Ottoman Turks.  The Empire was vast, stretching into Europe and over North Africa, but unable to spread into Asia Minor, ironically, where the Turks had their ethnic base.  Even on Anatolia the population was far from uniformly Turkish, but included substantial populations of Greeks, Armenians and Kurds.  World War One changed that.

During the war the Turks slaughtered gigantic numbers of Armenians in what may be legitimately be regarded as the first ethnic holocaust of the 20th Century.  Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the surrender of the Ottoman state to the Allies, the Greeks intervened in Anatolia and proved to have a grasp that exceeded their reach. In the areas of Anatolia that they occupied, atrocities occurred against the Turkish population, often the majority in these areas, that were both horrific and inexcusable, and which are now largely forgotten. This caused the Turks, who beat the Greeks in the Greco Turkish War, to do the same to the Greeks in the areas that they came back into control of, as they did so, and in the peace the Greeks were basically expelled.

The Kurds and the Armenians remain, and the Kurds have been fighting for their own country ever since.  The Turks want no part of that for the reason that the map makes plain.  If the Kurds secure their own country, Turkey will be considerably smaller.

Well, so be it, and the same for Iran, Syrian and Iraq.  Putting aside all old rights and wrongs, the Kurdish part of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran is Kurdish. A Kurdish state should be there.

But we're pulling out, and the Turks are coming in.

And by coming, let's be clear. They intend to invade northern Syria to deal with our allies the Kurds.

That is what Graham had to say:
Lindsey Graham
@LindseyGrahamSC
Replying to @LindseyGrahamSC
The most probable outcome of this impulsive decision is to ensure Iran’s domination of Syria.

The U.S. now has no leverage and Syria will eventually become a nightmare for Israel.
Lindsey Graham
@LindseyGrahamSC
I feel very bad for the Americans and allies who have sacrificed to destroy the ISIS Caliphate because this decision virtually reassures the reemergence of ISIS. So sad. So dangerous.

President Trump may be tired of fighting radical Islam. They are NOT tired of fighting us.
1,284
7:49 AM - Oct 7, 2019
Exactly right.

The Kurds have been our allies and now we're betraying them.

Flat out betraying them.  We're literally stepping aside so that an enemy of theirs, Turkey, can put them down.

And in doing so, we're doing that by way of what appears to have come about in a telephone call between President Trump and President Endrogan.

In fairness to Trump, he signaled a desire to pull out of Syria earlier, and was backed down by opposition within the GOP and his own administration.  He apparently returned to his earlier views in his phone call with the Turkish president.

And that president, Endrogan, is an Islamist himself, the first one to really rule Turkey since the fall of the Ottomans (and they weren't terribly Islamist in their final years, even though the Turkish Emperor claimed the title of Caliph).  Those following Turkey have been nervous ever since Endrogan came to power as he's sidelined his opponents and seems from time to time set to take Turkey in a non democratic, Islamist, directly, and away from the strongly secular government it had featured (not always democratic by any means) since 1919.

That's not a direction the Kurds would go in.

And beyond that, while I didn't think we should go into Syria, once you do, you have an obligation to the people who you are allied to, and who are allied to you.  Graham, who has been a strong supporter of Trump, is exactly correct.  We're abandoning our allies.

We have a history of doing that. We set the South Vietnamese up for betrayal with horrific results.  Our messing around in Cambodia lead to a Cambodian disaster in a country we never intended to become directly involved in.

Now we're doing that in Syria.

That's disturbing in and of itself, but the President's reply is disturbing as well.
Lex AnteinternetTweet text


First of all, let's deal with the blistering absurdity of the proposition we'll punish the Turks if their invasion gets out of hand.

What the crud would that mean? An armed invasion is out of hand in the first place.  When you send in an army it's not the same thing as a local church coming to your door and asking you to convert or something.

Secondly, we haven't ever "obliterated" the economy of Turkey.  If that's a reference to Iran, well we've badly damaged the Iranian economy, but the regime there is still keeping on keeping on and probably diligently working on acquiring an atomic bomb. The economy of North Korea is a rampaging mess and has been for a long time, but it's Stalinist court is still in power and they have the bomb.

And using the phrase "great and unmatched wisdom" is amazingly inept for a man who must know that there are those who seriously question his mental stability.  That this came about by way of a phone call, where the individual in question is already in trouble due to a phone call, is stunning.

Of course this may mean nothing more than Trump has returned to his isolationist view of the world, one in which the consequences do not so much matter as long as U.S. troops are involved.

If that's so, or in any event, this decision is flat out wrong.