Last edition:
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Friday, June 5, 2026
Wednesday, June 3, 2026
Monday, June 3, 1901. 9th Infantry arrives in Manila, Boers attack Willowmore.
Elements of the 9th Infantry Regiment arrived in Manila after being withdrawn from China.
German troop commander Count Alfred von Waldersee departed Beijing with a huge ceremony.
Boer commandos under Commandant Scheeper attacked Willowmore, Cape Colony, but were driven back after an all day battle.
Last edition:
Sunday, June 2, 1901. Frederick Russell Burnham.
Saturday, May 30, 2026
Thursday, May 30, 1946. First post war Indianapolis 500.
The Indianapolis 500 was run for the first time since 1941. George Robson, took the race.
Robson was killed in a racing accident that September.
Over 90 passengers were killed in a railway accident at Hengyang, China.
The day prior the Senate had defeated a really badly thought out plan by Truman to draft striking rail workers.
Last edition:
Saturday, May 25, 1946. Jordanian independence, Railroad strike ends.
Labels: 1940s, 1946, Harry S. Truman, Jordan, Labor unrest, Monarchy, Railroads, Strike Wave of 1945-1946, Unions
Friday, May 22, 2026
Una más, por favor. An illegal war with Cuba, 1.ª Edición.
21 de mayo de 2026
Having not really completed anything meaningful with Venezuela, other than having tasted blood and developing fondness for it, and having gotten us into an endless war with Iran we're losing, King Donny the Mad is about to launch a war against Cuba, starting with a claim that Raul Castro, age 94, must be brought to justice over a US civilian aircraft that was shot down by the Cubans in 1996.
Oh horse poop.
Some in Demented Donnie's administration have been drooling over a chance to attack Cuba since the easily manipulated narcissist illegitimately moved back into the Oval Office. Military action against Cuba has been a desire of displaced Cubans and their descendants in the US since 1959. If the US attacked the island and removed the government, Lil' Marco would claim it as a victory attributable to him, one way or another, in the 2028 Presidential campaign he's clearly running in.
That's part of the problem. Influential "Republicans" (there are no real Republicans left anymore) like Marco and the Robot Ted Cruz would do anything for a Cuba Libre other than actually live in Cuba.
Of course, with this administrations lust for territorial acquisition, as desire expressed by some imperialist Republicans going into the Spanish American War, the annexation of Cuba with the goal of making it a state, would be the more likely goal in the short term. If Trump, or Marco, pulled that off, the irony would be that it would be solidly Democratic and admitting Puerto Rico as a state would happen immediately thereafter.
Probably the only thing that's really been holding this up has been the commitment of forces to Iran, where Iran is deploying Muhammed Ali's old "rope a dope" strategy and refusing to surrender even though King Donny assures us he won and the war is over. Actually defeating Iran will require a ground invasion that even Donny, who can choke down killing schoolgirls, can't seem to muster up the will for and which the American public doesn't want. The war itself has already achieved a level of unpopularity matched by that of the Vietnam War after Tet.
But, the thought is, this will go better. . . or at least Cuban Americans will like the result.
The threats against Castro started a couple of days ago. Within the last twenty four hours China, which Trump went to and acted like a orphaned puppy, has warned the US to knock it off.
May 22, 2026
The future of Cuba belongs to the people of Cuba is terms of how they're governed, what the system looks like and so forth, but the national security threat, that's 100% something we're going to focus on because that's about America.
Marco Rubio.
What crap.
Cuba has been a Communist country since 1959 when Fidel Castro overthrow the authoritarian government there (it wasn't obvious he was Communist at first).
They have not attacked us since then.
We have, however, effectively attacked them, landing Cuban contras there in 1961.
Rubio knows this, however. His parents were immigrants from Cuba who came over before the 1959 revolution, and who actually planned on returning to the country before the Communist nature of the revolution became apparent.
And that's part of the problem here. Cuban Americans are never going back to Cuba, but they imagine Cuba Libre with the same zeal as Irish Americans imagined a Republican Ireland. In the latter case, that unthinking zeal helped contribute to decades of strife in Ireland, and here it's contributed to decades of misery in Cuba.
Efforts to force a political change in Cuba should have ceased in 1961 when John F. Kennedy withdrew air support for the Cuban contras. There was no good reason at all other than anger not to normalize economic relations with Cuba at least by the early 1980s. That's what we should do now.
Ho Chi Minh wouldn't recognize Communism in Vietnam today and, if transported from wherever his soul went to, he's be convinced that South Vietnam had won the war and reformed itself. If we weren't keeping Cuba on the trophy shelf of failures, the same would be true for Cuba.
But we live in a dangerous age. Donald Trump is desperately searching for something for Americans to remember him by (and we certainly have plenty to recall right now). Marco Rubio has the misplaced child of immigrants probable loyalty to an imaginary paradise or imaginary would be paradise.
We're cruising right back into Havana's harbor where every American military adventure to date has been a disaster.
Remember the Maine.
Tuesday, May 19, 2026
Wednesday, May 19, 1926. Bad coinage idea.
The first and only US coin, so far, to feature a sitting President, the United States Sesquicentennial Half Dollar was issued.
Hopefully this break in tradition will never be repeated.
Zhang Renjie became the first Chairman of the Kuomintang. His influence would later decline and he immigrated to the United States in 1937.
The French Air Force bombed Damascus.
Last edition:
Saturday, May 15, 1926.
Monday, May 18, 2026
Saturday, May 16, 2026
The Manchurian Candidate. It's like Donald Trump and MAGA really are the Reds.
The hammer and cycle in red. . . it might as well be the symbol of the Trump presidency.
We've remarked before on how the GOP has adopted the color red, the color of the far left, as it's own. That's beginning to seem more appropriate than ever.
Our dim illegitimate chief executive has gone to China and returned. In the process, it seems clear that he's getting ready to abandon Taiwan.
Trump's entire trip to China was a complete and utter humiliation for the United States. An embarrassment of the highest order. But it fits a pattern.
Trump loves Russia's Putin. He's super impressed with Xi. He's kind of a bit of a fan boy to Kim Jong Un. He loved Orban who was a Putin ally.
If our adversaries from former Communist states had conspired to place into office a man to act as a sleeper agent, they could not have succeeded more wildly than Donald Trump has done without being one. . . presumably. He's brought a US that was already in trouble down from a world power to a second rate collapsing nation. It's utterly incredible.
Friday, May 15, 2026
China is Closing In on Taiwan.
With China having just been visited by our extraordinarily weak, and increasingly demented chief executive, this really bears watching.
Trump's illegal war on Iran has depleted US weapons reserves massively and wasted them on hard ground targets, something military analysts know is ineffective. We have less of an ability to counter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan now than at any point since. . . well. . . probably 1947.
The likelihood of it happening his high.
The likelihood of Trump doing utterly nothing if it does happen is also high.
In 1949, when mainland China fell to the Communists, Republicans howled over "who lost China?" In 2026 or 2027 when Taiwan falls, they'll probably just kneel to their beloved, Donald Trump.
The question will be, why?
Monday, April 27, 2026
CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 130th Edition. Narratives
The things they've said.
The attempted assassination at the White House Correspondence Dinner has spawned some interesting events and narratives.
One thing is that apparently Trump called several prominent reporters who were at the event that night, and expressed concern for their well being. That's outright remarkable given his generally abusive self centered public persona.
He also made a statement about needing to come together.
That's true, but at least one politician interviewed about it had a very difficult time not expressing skepticism.
Already, I'd note, Trump fans have yelled out about how Democratic and left wing rhetoric cased this. Well, bull.
There is a lot of hostile verbiage directed at Trump, and much of it is due to the horrible things he says all the time. Just a few weeks ago he noted how he was glad a public figure was dead.
Trump brought American political rhetoric into new territory when he very first started to run for the Oval Office. Republicans who complain about the language directed at him, and some of it is vile, need to look in the mirror.
Ballroom fixation
Amongst comments made by Trump were those stating this is proof we need his expensive ballroom, which is tied up in litigation.
The logic of that would be that the ballroom, if built, will have expensive security features. Where it fails in logic is that the dinner event was a private one, not a state function. Unless everything a President accepts an invitation to is held in the ballroom, things like this would not be prevented.
But here's another, and frankly radical, thing to consider.
Maybe Presidents need less protection, not more.
At one time there was a tradition that members of the public could wait in line at the White House to shake the President's hand on New Years. That ended in 1932. Now it would be unthinkable.
The only thing that's changed since 1932 is us. If the President's under constant threat, and of course there were three Presidents that were assassinated prior to 1932, that's because of us or some other factor.
One thing that's clearly changed is that the President is treated much more like a king now than he was in '32. Air Force One is the very symbol of that.
These trappings ought to be stripped away. If a President needs to fly somewhere, on official business, the Air Force has airplanes. There doesn't need to be a designated special one. Nor does there need to be a Marine Corps helicopter dedicated for the President. If he's just flying to a resort to golf, he can by a commercial airline ticket.
Maybe part of the overall problem is that they're given too much and separated from the people they are supposed to serve.
A big dumb ballroom emphasizes that.
It actually is true that prior Presidents lamented their being a lack of entertainment space. Well, too darned bad. Rent a hotel room.
And I'm not in favor of a giant bunker on the White House grounds either.
Maybe if a person is more like everyone else, they'll think twice about things that harm people. I don't want them exposed to violence, but making things so they can inflict it video game style is not a good thing, and elevating the President above the people isn't either.
And now you know. . .
how thousands of other people live every day. With one exception, when I listed to interviews of people from the press who had been at the event, things were not too surprisingly focused on themselves. The one exception was somebody who pointed out that they had excellent security but that most people don't, and that a lot of people live in fear of their family members, including children, being killed every day.
That's an excellent point.
Trump said something about this being just part of the price of holding office, which is easy to say for somebody who has a taxpayer funded security team. It shouldn't be part of the price of holding office, and exposure to violent death shouldn't be something you have to endure just because you live in this country.
Anti Christian?
When I went to Mass yesterday there was a Sheriff's truck parked in front of the Church. That's not a parking spot. When I went in, there was a uniformed sheriff's officer in complete kit. That's unusual.
I wondered if something was going on. Maybe not. He went to Communion like everyone else, so maybe he was just on his way to work.
Trump claimed that the shooter had been a Christian than apostatized and that was part of his motivation. We'll see. If so, it's ironic, as there's no visible evidence of Trump taking Christianity seriously.
What our enemies must be thinking.
It's been long believed that Iran has sleeper cells in the US. If they do, they haven't activated them in the current war. They either don't really have them, or they're holding back as it provides them with an advantage.
I can see where the latter might be the case. The old joke, dating back to World War Two, was that Hitler was the best general the Allies had, and that same may apply to Trump. He might be the best general the Iranians had.
That we went into the war with Iran with no clue what we were doing, and what our enemy was actually like, is to plain to excuse away. We have no idea whatsoever what we're doing and have no way out of the war. It's going to wreck the global economy. At this point, and we're at the sixty day mark, Trump legally has to submit the question of continuing the war to Congress, which will have to determine, as a practical matter, if we're going to engage in a full scale ground invasion of the country or surrender and leave Iran stronger than it was.
The Iranians maybe gambling on the latter, and it'd probably be a good gamble.
Anyhow, assuming they have sleeper cells, they've really shown restraint. Yesterday proved that a dedicated group of men could have breached security and completely decapitated the American government. We participated in doing that, which is beyond the Pale in war normally, in this war. On the basis of turnabout is fair play, it's amazing they haven't tried it. Maybe they just didn't think it'd work.
They know now it would have, although presumably the administration won't be dumb enough again to put the complete administration together in one room.
The others who must be looking are Russia and China, China in particular. But not at that, but at the war itself.
We've pretty much burned through our war reserve of missiles. If war came with China, we couldn't fight it.
Tone Deaf
Once a week now we get identical sized flyers from Chuck Gray and Reid Rasner promising to support the demented octogenarian that put us a war that's going to completely wreck the economy, and whose wrecking a lot of other things.
Maybe that still works in Wyoming. Trump has a lot of fans here. But as prices get higher and higher, and we sluff into a summer that's going to be hot and dry, with a tourist industry that's going to fall flat on its face, I wonder.
For the first time, actually, I got a sort of nervous "what do you make of the assassination" from somebody whose a huge Trump supporter and knows I'm not. I think he was looking for reassurance of some sort. I gave analysis. That probably isn't what he was looking for.
Proof of Devine Providence?
Franklin Graham was quick to come out with what I was sure would occur. Trump's survived three assassination attempts and that is, he suggested, proof that God wants him in power.
Adolf Hitler survived over 40 assassination attempts. There are five known plots on Stalin's life.
A person should never dismiss something being the Hand of God, but we shouldn't presume to know the mind of God either. Nor should we ignore, as the examples above show, the Problem of Evil.
On that, we can presume that God allows an evil to occur, but does not cause it, in order to bring a greater good out of it. While foreseeing the future is always risking, I could see that being the case here.
In spite of what Trump/Gray/Hageman/Barrasso/Rasner and others believe, or claim to believe, the ongoing use of fossil fuels is harming the world. This may actually accelerate their end.
Let me restate that, it is accelerating their end.
Countries all around the globe, including China, are rapidly phasing out fossil fuels for power generation. China is leaping into electric vehicles big time. Europe has, I believe, 2030 as the date for the end of the import of Russian oil.
The war is freeing the globe of US influence, something we'll regret and with it our steadfast refusal to look at reality. We're being put in our place, and the era of fossil fuels is coming to a rapid end.
The other thing, it seems to me, that Trump is brining about is the discrediting of American Evangelicalism. I.e., people like Graham.
Evangelical churches are particularly an American thing. They're strong in the US in a way they aren't anywhere else. Where they evangelize outside the US its nearly always where Catholics have made it safe for them to go. The latching on to Trump by them in a very public manner is hurting Christianity in general, but them in particular. Catholicism is already growing world wide and, while the story is only now being noticed, it's growing in the US. I suspect Trump is accidentally helping bring hte latter about.
On firearms.
On assassinations, one thing worth noting, although I won't detail it, is that so far the only assassin/would be assassin who seems to have had a clue what he was doing was the guy who shot Charlie Kirk, although even there it's clear that the shot being lethal was essentially accidental. There's very free access to firearms in the US, although I suspect that this will start being curbed back due to Trump, but that free access doesn't mean competence.
People who are really familiar with firearms are unlikely to go out and try to kill somebody. This is true of "military style" firearms. There's a group of firearms aficionados who like military style firearms, but aren't very likely to use them in any lethal fashion.
This may simply be because people know and like firearms know what they'll do, and are unlikely to be people who use them in that fashion. It's the people who buy them just because they're worked up about politics, on the right or the left, or who have an exaggerated fear of being attacked, who are the problem here. Fortunately, they're not all that likely to actually know how to use them.
Last edition:
CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 129th Edition. An unfortunate observation of our times.
Friday, March 20, 2026
Two Weapons stories as the US heads towards ground troops deploying, again, in the middle east.
The Marine Corps, which insists on avoiding equipment adopted first by the Army, looked at the M7,and said, nah. . .
M7 Rifle.
Marines not interested in switching from M27 to Army’s M7 anytime soon
Chances are good, I'd rate them as overwhelming, that the USMC will be using M27s within a week or two in Iran. This will be the modified HK416's first major combat use, maybe its first use at all.
M27 Automatic Rifle.
Marines in China with M1895 Navy Lee, at the time at which the Army was using the Krag. They didn't use it long.
And there's now drone killing ammunition:
U.S. Military Unveils "Drone Killer" Rifle Cartridges | An Official Journal Of The NRA
The pelletized ammunition sort of resembles "snake shot" for pistols used by outdoorsmen in the summer months. It was developed by the Navy.
Monday, March 16, 2026
The end of the American Century and planning for what comes next.
Donald Trump is systematically accelerating American decline making what might have happened over a two or more decades, had the existing trends remained and the U.S. not corrected itself, take place over a matter of months.
By the end of the Trump presidency, even if that end happens this year with him being taken out of the White House in a straight jacket, the US will not be the world's dominant economic power. China will be, followed by the European Union. The US will not be the leader of the free world, that's already ceased to be the case. The EU is. The US won't even be the moral leader of North America. Canada is.
And thanks to the war with Iran, the US is rapidly ceasing to be the military power it once was. Traditionally declining global powers lose that status last, and I suppose that's what's happening to us, but in a matter of months rather than decades, as is the norm. We are, right now, losing a war with a third rate power and we don't even know why we are fighting it, other than that Bibi Netanyahu wanted it fought while he had somebody he could coax in the White House. Right now, nations that looked to us since 1939 for help are quitting that, or have quit. Maybe only a few remain in the Pacific, but that will end within a matter of months.
Had Trump not pushed this all into high gear, it might have happened over a long period of time anyhow. The US hasn't been in control of its budget for decades and that was going to cause this to occur no matter what. We might have been able to arrest that with a major effort, but that would have required most of the current members of Congress to get new jobs. Now, however, things are so accelerated much of this is just going to happen all on its own.
Americans had better get used to it quickly and, for that matter, they'd better start planning for a post Trump world where we dance to the tune called by others, not to the one we called.
While we can lament this in many ways, not all of it will be bad. We will have to start rebuilding coalitions, but we're going to have to accept that we'll be regarded as a junior, and stupid, member of them. We deserve that. We're going to start building green energy and the like as people are going to tell us to and we're going to like it. People like Chuck Gray who run around screaming "not on my watch" will be looking at green power in California by the end of 2027.
We're going to have to look at reforming our tax and economic structure. A lot of the giant moneybucks people like Musk will be leaving anyhow. They love money, not the country, and the money will be leaving. We're going to have to pay for what we buying, and what the Baby Boomer and their parents bought, in terms of a government. Foreign countries are going to give us no choice. We're not going to be the world's banker within the next two years.
People who worried about "forever wars" and the like, after the war against Iran is over, won't have to so much anymore. They'll get what they wanted, just not the way they wanted it. We'll crawl back to our alliances, but we'll be a comparative minor member in many ways. As we can't pay for the huge military we have, we likely won't have it. I'll look at that in another post.
Nothing lasts forever and you don't appreciate the good things, in many cases, while you have them. Trump hasn't done the United States one single favor in either of his administrations. He'll go down in history as the worst President in American history. His legacy will be the acceleration of the end of the American Century.
Sunday, March 15, 2026
Monday, March 15, 1926. Boxer Rebellion Echoes, Manhunt ends, National Guard Cavalry Inspection.
The signatories to the Boxer Protocol gave China an ultimatum for the commanders of the Taku Forts, who had just fired on the Japanese, to remove all mines placed at the mouth of the Pei River and to end their blockade of Tianjin by noon on Friday, March 19.
At least 12 ships from the U.S. Navy, the Royal Navy, the Imperial Japanese Navy, France and Italy were blocked from traveling into the Pei River to Tianjin. They were authorized to end the blockade by force if necessary.
A manhunt came to an end:
Of interest to us here, an inspection of National Guard cavalry was taking place in what was a unit that comprised Idaho and Wyoming National Guardsmen. I knew that had happened later (the joint command), but I wasn't aware of it being so early, well before the 115th Cavalry Regiment came into existence.
Last edition:
Sunday, March 14, 1926. Reddy Kilowatt introduced. Manhunt in Natrona County.
Thursday, March 12, 2026
Friday, March 12, 1926. The Savoy opens.
The Savoy opened in Harlem, and would remain open until 1958.
Japanese destroyers were fired upon by the Chinese from the Taku Forts.
Last edition:
Thursday, March 11, 1926. Governments and labor.
Sunday, February 8, 2026
Friday, February 8, 1946. Kim Il Sung's rise. Viola Faber, accused of murdering her stepson, gives birth.
Kim Il Sung was elected Chairman of the Interim People's Committee in the Soviet occupied portion of Korea. Originally, the Soviets preferred Cho Man-sik to lead a "popular front" government but Cho, to his credit, refused to support a Soviet-backed entity. Red Army General Terentii Shtykov supported Kim over Pak Hon-yong to lead the Provisional People's Committee for North Korea, and therefore Kim was selected on this date.
He remained subordinate to General Shtykov until the Chinese intervention in the Korean War.
More strike problems on the front page of The Rocky Mountain News.
A person had to read deeper into the News to see the story on Viola Elliot. Page 5, where you need to go, is set out below.
She was accused of the beating death of her stepson, Robert. She denied it, but she was convicted of second degree murder. Her 8 year old son by a previous marriage was a witness for the prosecution at the trial and Mrs. Elliot admitted at the time of arrest that she had hit and kicked the child on the occasion of his death. She later changed her story and claimed he'd tripped on his pajamas.
Her parents and husband said they'd stand by her at the time of her arrest, but I wonder if that was still the case later on. At her sentencing, she stated that Leslie was just as responsible for the death and the judge agreed. Leslie had already been arraigned for assault and battery and assessory after the fact. In April she petitioned the County to make her children wards of the County, to which her husband objected. They were noted to be "estranged" by that time.
Viola was 27 years old and on her second marriage at the time. She would have had her first child, if her son who testified was the first at age 19 in 1937 or 1938. The paper mentioned that there were three children, including the murdered boy. Interestingly, I can find one other reference to a "Miss Viola Elliot" from 1937 indicating that Viola Elliot was employed as an arts and crafts teacher. A 1943 edition mentions a Viola Elliott as being just back in town after visiting her husband in Tennessee, who was probably in the service.
Viola received 15 to 20 years for the murder.
Leslie would receive six months for assault and battery.
Her mother, Alice Faber, testified at the trial, as did her father. Alice died in 1966 and is buried in Denver. Her obituary listed Viola as still living, still with the last name Elliot, and in Denver. The Fabers also had a son named Wilmer, who was alive at the time. The boy who testified at the trial was living in California.
Her father died in 1961.
Arguments were occuring on the Bomb.
A resort was being planned near Fort Logan.
An impressive imposter story was reported.
Last edition:
Thursday, February 7, 1946. France attacks in Bến Tre Province, Truman speaks. Bikinis appear in the press. Strike controls. Army shoes on the market.
Sunday, December 21, 2025
Friday, December 21, 1945. Patton dies.
George S. Patton died at age 60, the result of injuries sustained in an automobile accident several days earlier.
The general's daughter woke up in the United States and saw him standing, in full uniform, at the foot of her bed, where he smiled. His daughter Beatrice received a phone call in which he asked "Little Bee, are you alright?'” An attempt to confirm the call in the morning ended up in the information that no oversees call had been placed.
Such incidents are not uncommon. A fairly large number of people experience post death visitations of people they knew, with it most commonly being the case that they happen very soon after the person's death. Indeed, in ancient times, Jews believed that the spirits of the dead were not aware of their deaths for a three day period, and the Irish custom of a wake stems from a desire to stay awake with the recently departed to help them know that they had died.
Patton was one of the most controversial American generals of the Second World War. A member of the cavalry branch, he's famously recalled as an armor general. Almost all of the really effective armor generals in the U.S. Army from the Second World War were cavalrymen. While now hugely admired, during the war the two slapping incidents he was involved in nearly cost him his career.
Patton, although he died due to an accident, fits into a fairly large collection of senior military officers that died right after the war.
The Battle of Shaobo in China ended in a Communist victory. It was another one of the battles in which Chiang Kai Shek pitted Chinese collaborationist units that had rejoined the Nationalist against the Communists.
From the same newspaper as above:
Casper received news that the Texas Refinery was going to expand.
It's now closed.
Ethiopian Airlines was founded.
Last edition:
Thursday, December 20, 1945. Tires.
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