Showing posts with label Islam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Islam. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Wednesday, March 5, 1924. An attempted caliphate.


Following the Turkish Assemblies abolishment of the caliphate, Hussein bin Ali, King of the Hejaz and Sharif of Mecca, was proclaimed the Caliph of all Muslims by Muslim leaders in Mesopotamia and Transjordania.  Global Muslim reaction was mostly negative and it didn't take.    This date is somewhat disputed, and it could have taken place a couple of days earlier, or later.

Last prior:

Tuesday, March 4, 1924. Waltzing Matilda.

Sunday, March 3, 2024

Monday, March 3, 1924. End of the Caliphate.

The Turkish National Assembly ended the Ottoman Caliphate.  It had been in existence for 407 years and claimed religious sovereignty over Islam.  The Assembly also ordered that Abdulmejid II and his harem were to be deported by March 15.  The official deposing of Abdulmejid would come at 2:00 a.m. on March 4.

He did not welcome the news and warned that the ending of the caliphate would cause the rise of extremism in Islam, which his role as the religion's leader of Muslims tempered.  He proved to be correct.  He lived the rest of his life in Europe, at first in Switzerland, and then in Paris, where he died in 1944.  His exile was not an easy one at first, and he was disappointed that Muslims did not demand the restoration of his office.

The Teapot Dome investigation continued.


And the local Piggly Wiggly was robbed.  That location is now a tattoo parlor.

Last prior:

Saturday, March 1, 1924. The Nixon Nitration Works Disaster.

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Wars and Rumors of War, 2024. Part I. New Year, last year's wars.

You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.

Matthew, Chapter 24.


Only the dead have seen the end of the war.

George Santayana

January 1, 2024

Russo Ukrainian War

This major war is now in its third calendar year.

Hamas Israeli War

The Prime Minister of Israel has stated that this campaign will carry on for many months.

An Israeli airstrike killed 35 in Gaza.

The U.S. Navy sunk three Houthi boats attempting to attack a merchant vessel.

Venezuela v Guyana border dispute.

Venezuela is conducting a joint arms exercise in response to the Royal Navy dispatching a ship to Guyana.

January 2, 2024

Russo Ukrainian War

A change in Norwegian law allows Norwegian arms manufacturers to sell arms directly to Ukraine.

How much of a defense industry Norway has, of course, is another matter.

January 3, 2024

Hamas Israeli War

An Israeli airstrike sent Saleh Arouri to the next world, where he will have to make an account for his actions.  An Islamic radical his entire life, he was the founder of Hamas' military wing.  

He went to his end in Beirut.

From ISW:

Israeli forces are transitioning to the third phase of their operations in the northern Gaza Strip, which will very likely enable Hamas to reconstitute itself militarily. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed that it withdrew five brigades from the northern Gaza Strip on December 31. This reduction in forces is part of what the IDF has described as its third phase in the strip, which also involves ending major combat operations, releasing reservists, transitioning to “targeted raids,” and establishing a security buffer zone within the Gaza Strip.

January 4, 2024

US/Mexico Border Crisis

The Justice Department has sued Texas on over a new law that would allow Texas police to arrest illegal immigrants on the basis of their illegality. 

My prediction is that this suit will likely fail.

Hamas Israeli War

Hezbollah leader Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah warned Israel that launching a full-scale war on Lebanon Islamist targets would be "very costly," and that the assassination of a senior Hamas leader in Beirut would not go unpunished.

Sort of in the D'uh category.

Cont:

Islamic State v. Iran

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for a bombing attack that killed 84 people in Kerman, Iran.  The attack occured during a memorial procession for Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani.  The Sunni group regards Shiites, which most Iranians are, with Iran being a Shiite theocracy, as apostates.

January 5, 2024

Russo Ukrainian War

Putin signed a decree signed speeding up citizenship for foreigners enlisting in the Russian army.

Somalian Civil War

From ISW: 

Ethiopia signed a memorandum of understanding with the de facto independent Somaliland Republic, a breakaway region of Somalia, to lease a naval port that will give it Red Sea access in exchange for formally recognizing Somaliland.

January 7, 2024

The Korean Conflict

North Korea issued one of its threatening proclamations through Communist princess Kim Yo Jong.

These are moronic, as without China, and North Korea cannot really depend on China, South Korea would be eliminated as an entity in the event of war.

South Korea may soon not be able to fill its conscript levies due to a declining population.

Russo Ukrainian War

Japan's foreign minister visited Ukraine.

Russia seems to have resumed its strategy of attempting localized offensives that degrade its own forces.

The Ukrainians have been conducting a drone offensive against targets in Crimea.

January 9, 2024

Russo Ukrainian War

News reports hold that Russia has deployed 35,000 men of the Russian National Guard, some equipped with World War Two vintage rifles, to occupied regions of Ukraine as security forces.

January 10, 2024

Hamas Israeli War

Anthony Blinken has indicated the US rejects the concept of resettling the Gazan Levantines from that area even though, of course, its an untenable ghetto. 

Iran v. The West

Iranian backed Houthis launched 50 drones at shipping today, all of which were shot down by the U.S. Navy and Royal Navy.

Iran is using the current Hamas Israeli War as a pretext to try to advance its interest in the region.

January 11, 2024

Hamas Israeli War

The US and UK hit targets with missiles inside of Yemen, from which Houthi drone strikes have been coming. A Houthi spokesman actually complained about it.

January 12, 2024

Russo Ukrainian War

From ISW:

Mexican Border Crisis.

The State of Texas, using the Texas National Guard, has seized Shelby Park in Eagle Pass in order to prevent Federal authorities from processing migrants.

January 13, 2024

Hamas Israeli War.

The US struck Houthi targets again yesterday.

Turkey v. Kurds

Turkish air raids struck Kurdish militant targets in Metina, Hakurk, Gara and Qandil in northern Iraq. This was in retaliation for a Kurdish attack on a Turkish base in Iraq.

January 16, 2024

Iran v Everyone

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards launched missile attacks in Syria and in Iraq’s Kurdistan region yesterday.

Korean Conflict

The North Korean Communist Clown state announced it is no longer pursuing reconciliation with South Korea, which actually dovetails nicely with general younger South Korean desires.

There's speculation on why this was announced, but in reality, any reunion between the countries at this point makes the ongoing Communist monarchy in North Korean irrelevant in every fashion so quickly, it isn't funny.

January 17, 2024

Hamas Israeli War/Iran v Everyone

The US is placing the Houthi's back on the terrorist list.

Iran v. Everyone

Iran conducted missile strikes on a Sunni militia site in Pakistan.

January 18, 2024

Hamas Israeli War/Iran v Everyone

The US conducted a fourth round of strikes on the Houthis.

Pakistan v. Baloch militants.

Pakistan conducted strikes inside Iran against Baloch militants.

January 20, 2024

Russo Ukrainian War

The Estonian state will not extend the residence permit of the head of the Estonian Orthodox Church (Russian Orthodox Church in Estonia) of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Yevgeniy, whose civil name is Valeri Reshetnikov, because his activities are a security threat to Estonia

Estonian government.

Cont:

The Middle East

Somebody (probably Israel) hit Iranian Revolutionary Guard figures inside of Syria.  In turn, US sites in Iraq were hit.by Iranian backed militia's.

Iran is the common thread here. 

January 21, 2024

Hamas Israeli War

Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a two state solution for Gaza.

This is widely seen as a terrible thing to have done, but frankly, Gaza isn't viable as an isolated political unit and always has depended on economic support from the outside to get by. Geographically, it should be part of Israel or Egypt, and that's a simple economic and topographic fact.  It shouldn't be part of another state.

For that matter, a Palestinian state makes little to no sense.  It would be minute.

Those are the rough, real facts to deal with.  Levantines that live within the borders of what had been pre-1948 Palestine either have to live within Israel, realistically, or be relocated in some instances to an Arab state that could host them, none of which are willing to do it.

Russo Ukrainian War

President Zylenskyy expressed concerns about remarks made by Donald Trump regarding securing peace.

Concern is warranted given Trump's admiration for dictators and his increasingly erratic if not demented behavior.

January 22, 2024

China v. Taiwan

Recent statements by GOP candidate Donald Trump have risen concerns that his commitment to Taiwan, which has been a GOP hallmark, is low.  

FWIW, Trump raised Taiwanese semiconductor production as something the US should have done something about, seemingly failing to grasp that if it falls to China, we're in a world of semiconductor hurt.

On one of the weekend shows, it was recently revealed that Trump has a gigantic exaggerated fear of nuclear war.  He also clearly has a thing for strongmen.

January 23, 2024

Hamas Israeli War

Numerous nations are lining up against Israel and demanding a Palestinian state be part of a peace package, even though such a state, if within the boundaries of the former Palestinian mandate, would not be economically viable.  

Saudi Arabia, with a large landmass and a labor deficit, has stated it will not normalize relations with Israel unless a Palestinian state is created.

British and American forces hit Houthi ones again.

Russo Ukrainian War

Ukraine conducted successful drone strikes against targets in Leningrad and Tula oblasts.

Boarder Crisis

The U.S. Supreme Court allowed Federal agents to remove razor wire on the Texas/Mexico border, but it is merely a ruling on a temporary injunction, so the actual ruling, in terms of the issues, means next to nothing whatsoever.

January 24, 2024

Russo Ukrainian War

Due to political infighting, the US is out of funding for Ukraine and the pipeline is therefore shut.

January 25, 2024

Hamas Israeli War

From ISW:

Israel proposed a two-month pause in fighting in exchange for Hamas releasing over several phases the remaining hostages held in the Gaza Strip. The first phase would have Hamas return women, men over 60 years old, and hostages in critical medical condition. Israeli media reported that the "next phases" would include the release of female IDF soldiers, civilian males under the age of 60, Israeli male soldiers, and the bodies of hostages. An anonymous Israeli official told an Israeli journalist that the proposal includes redeploying the IDF out of main population centers in the Gaza Strip to allow Palestinian civilians to return to these areas. The official added that this proposal does not include the release of all 6,000 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons.

This would be a major concession from Israel, but it doesn't seem to have generated much news.

Russo Ukrainian War

A Russian Il-76 military transporting Ukrainian POWs for an exchange crashed in Yablonovo, Belgorod Oblast. The Russians have accused Ukraine of shooting it down.

Patriarch Krill urged the Russian government to extend the draft deferment for fathers, now set at fathers with four children, down to father's with three, out of concern for the declining Russian population.

Slovakia, whose current government is close to Putin, pleadged support for the integrity of Ukraine's internationally recognized borders.

Middle East

Houthi's attempted to attack U.S. Navy escorts with ballistic missiles unsuccessfully.

US/Mexico Border

An attempt in Congress to get a bill passed to address the border is stalled with Donald Trump now entering the picture, opposing it, something that is hard not to be quite skeptical about.

This will messs up aid to Ukraine as well.

January 27, 2024

Russo Ukrainian War

US/Mexico Border

January 27, 2024

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson declared that a budget measure that the Senate did pass providing aid to Ukraine and addressing the US/Mexico border may be dead on arrival at the House.

Trump appears to wish to preserve the border issues, and a second of today's GOP opposes aid to Ukraine.  An unresolved weirdness of populist and Putin, acquired from Trump, remains unresolved.

Also:

Governor Gordon Supports Texas’ Right to Secure its Border

CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Governor Gordon has issued a statement in support of border security Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Texas’ constitutional right to defend and protect itself in the face of the crisis at the southern border.

“I remain committed to a secure border, and to supporting states struggling with the ongoing security crisis along our southern border. That’s why Wyoming has offered resources and committed them to this effort, most recently responding to Governor Greg Abbott's  Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) request for law enforcement officers. I recognize the importance of secure borders and the vulnerabilities that a lack of resolve to securing those borders has brought to our country.

Secure borders prevent criminals and deadly drugs like fentanyl from entering our country and making their way to Wyoming. Wyoming stands in solidarity with Governor Abbott and the State of Texas in utilizing every tool and strategy to secure the border and protect American citizens. We are all border states now.”

Governor Gordon was also one of 25 Governors who signed a joint statement in support of Texas Governor Abbott and Texas’ constitutional right to self-defense.

Related to this, Denver Colorado reports it has an illegal/refugee populaton of 40,000.

Middle East

The Houthi's hit and set on faire an oil tanker.

China v The West

China’s intelligence agency has warned the Chinese to beware of “exotic beauties” who they fear are opserating as honey traps.

Intersingly, honey traps were a favorite Communist tactic for gathering intelligence.

Hamas Israeli War

Numerous Western countries have suspended contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, after it was learned that twelve of its members particpated in the Hamas attacks on Israel.

January 28, 2024

Picking up where we left off yesterday:

Hamas Israeli War

Numerous Western countries have suspended contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, after it was learned that twelve of its members particpated in the Hamas attacks on Israel.

The agency's head warns that UNRWA is collapsing given that nine countries have withdrawn from it and famine looms.

This is a tragedy, but it also tells us something about the UN and th total lack of viability of the Palestinian Authority's territorial regions, although of course a war is on.

Clearly, something needs to be done. That something, requires new oversight, and some hard decisions that nobody wants to make.

January 29, 2024

The Middle East

Three American troops were killed and more injured by an Iranian backed militia drone strike on a US base in Jordan.  The base is near the border with Jordan.

I was unaware we had any bases in Jordan.

January 31, 2024

Russo Ukrainian War

The Russians have launched an offensive in the Kharkiv-Luhansk Oblast

Last Prior Edition:

Wars and Rumors of War, 2023, Part XII. γλυκύ δ᾽ἀπείρῳ πόλεμος. πεπειραμένων δέ τις ταρβεῖ προσιόντα νιν καρδία περισσῶς.

Sunday, November 5, 2023

More observations on the Hamas Israeli War. A sort of primer, war aims, and campaign aims. Part I.

War Aims.

A lot of reporting on the Hamas Israeli War, indeed nearly all of it, is devoid of discussion on war aims.  Some of it vaguely discusses Israeli campaign aims.  None of it so far that I've seen has discussed Hamas campaign aims.  Given that, a lot of the reporting is sort of naive.

Hamas, having started the campaign, will be discussed first.

Hamas was formed in 1987 (probably considerably more recently than many suppose.  Hamas controls Gaza, Fatah, the political arm of what had been the Palestinian Liberation Organization, controls the West Bank.  The two entities have actually fought each other.  Hamas started off with the goal of pushing Jews out of the boundaries of what had been the 1948 Palestinian borders, but earlier in the 2000s seemed to lessen its demands.

It seems to have returned to them.  As far as can be told, its war aims are to remove the Jews from Israel, dead or alive, and of any age, and create an Arab Palestinian, and seemingly Islamic (not all Palestinians are Muslims) state in its wake.  That's what's summed up in the phrase "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free", which like a lot of slogans is catchy but doesn't really convey the full meaning of what it seeks.

Those are the war aims.

Without abandoning them, Hamas cannot back down, and Israel cannot unilaterally realistically convert the current war into a large scale punitive action at this point.  War aims can change, but Hamas shows no desire at all to do so.  A limited raid that was not aimed at civilians could have been undertaken if it has some other goal, but it didn't.

The campaign aims are much more difficult to discern.  Perhaps it was to spark a wider war in the belief that it could be won, or perhaps it was just a gross act of terrorism in furtherance of its remote, unobtainable goal.

Of course, discerning campaign aims, is often tricky in regard to an entity like Hamas, or even large entities.  In spite of long knowledge to the contrary, they may have thought that their raid, if that is what it was intended to be, would scare Israel into submission.  Hitting civilians never does that.  The British didn't surrender after the Blitz, and the air raids on civilian populations in Germany and Japan, perhaps if we exclude the atomic bomb, didn't cause them to surrender either.  Air raids on military targets in North Vietnam which inflicted civilian deaths didn't cause North Vietnam to give up.  9/11 only made Americans mad, it didn't achieve whatever it was that Al Queda thought it would, which seems to have been a hoped for general economic collapse.

Israel's war aims are also simple.  Its goal is to destroy Hamas as it views it, correctly, as irreconcilably opposed to its existence and genocidal in nature.  Its campaign aims seem to be to occupy Gaza, or perhaps the northern portion of the Gaza Strip, trap Hamas, and destroy it and its infrastructure.

Outright destroying an underground organization, however, is very difficult to do. The US basically did it in Afghanistan, however, so it can be done.

Nobody is talking at all about what's going to become of the Palestinians.  Israel isn't addressing it. The Arabs aren't either.  Hamas is simply using their own people as human shields and for propoganda.

A cultural existential difference, or Why can't everyone get along?

Cultures play a part in wars, which people in the West are oddly inclined to forget.  Jimmy Carter famously absent-mindedly quipped that the problems between the Israeli's and Palestinians would go away if they all started acting "like good Christians", but of course neither group is predominantly Christian.

I've taken some criticism on a more stretched observation in this area recently, so I'll explain a bit what I mean.

This question posed above is really a Western one, filtered through our eyes, which are the eyes of heavy Christian influence.  As a South American atheist friend of mine once stated, culturally, "we're all Catholics", even if we often don't behave like it.  That's why we're shocked when people don't behave accordingly.  

Historically and culturally, that's not necessarily the default human norm at all, which doesn't mean that every non-Christian culture (including the two in question) default to bad behavior.   But, as Genghis Khan supposedly noted (often filtered in our culture through Conan the Barbarian in a modified form):

The greatest pleasure is to vanquish your enemies and chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth and see those dear to them bathed in tears, to ride their horses and clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.

We don't think that way, and we don't want others thinking that way.

Back to this war, the fact of the matter is that these two groups of people aren't going to get along.  The Western concept that somehow they can be made to is simply in error at this point.

It might have been true a couple of times.  One was in 1948, just before the first Arab Israeli War broke out, although that's pretty debatable. The second time was when the 1993 and 1995 Palestinian Accords were reached. The big problem is that both times, large numbers of Palestinians simply rejected a future which included Jews within the 1948 Palestinian boundaries.

The 1948 rejection was accompanied by voting with their feet by the Palestinians, a logical choice but one that was taken advantage of by Israel in that it offered the opportunity to truly make the country principally Jewish.  Nobody can fault somebody for fleeing fighting, but the fact that it occured meant that a large Arab population removed itself.  If it had not, demographics alone would have repeated what in fact occured in Lebanon, where a majority Christian population at that time is now 32% of the population.

Instead of taking that route, the Palestinians first relied on Arab hostility to take the country back for them, and then for the PLO, which ultimately compromised on that, to do so.  Now, a certain percentage are relying on Hamas.

Regarding that calculation, relying on it in the 1950s, and even into the 1960s, wasn't irrational.  After that, it really started to be. At some point, the land belongs to those who live there.  It was Zapata who stated; “The land belongs to those who work it with their own hands”, which is how it should be (and how it's increasingly ceasing to be in the United States)  That same analogy pertains to revolutions.  It instinctively makes sense for the people ruled by another people to rebel, but not so much a people that had once lived in a land where the majority of the population isn't yours, and the majority of your population wasn't born in that land.  Indeed, the fact that the initial Jewish war for independence sort of violated that tenant is part of the reason that many nations around the globe were quite hesitant about supporting Israel early on, combined with the fact that it appeared they'd lose.

Beyond that, as an essay in Minding The Campus has related:

(Professor Mordechai) Kedar, a former officer in the Israeli Defense Forces, has spent his academic life studying Islamic and Arab history and society. He explains that the animus of Palestinians, Arabs, and Islamists against the Jewish state is based on the consensus of Islamic religious thought that believes that Jews as a religion, people, or nation are never to be the equals of Muslims, and so their independent state, Israel, must be “struck down.”

While that can be debated, there's at least something to it, or there has come to be.   For the most part, since World War Two, Middle Eastern Islam, which is its cradle, has become increasingly more "conservative", if that is the correct term, and militant over the decades.  That was always there, and indeed Saudi Arabia was founded due to the Saud family's alliance with a group so conservative it was regarded as heretical.  Islam does not have a real coexistence ethos as we'd understand it towards other religions.  It's often noted that it has allowances for "People of the Book", meaning both Jews and Christians, but that tolerance is limited and provides that they are to be second class citizens.

Neither Christianity nor Judaism have something similar towards other religions, which doesn't mean that individual Christian or Jewish societies are de facto tolerant.  People tend to generally be intolerant of any group that's different from themselves.

Interestingly, early Middle Eastern governments didn't have this feature to them, or at least not to the same extent.  Turkey just celebrated its 100th founding as a modern state, and that state was founded as a secular one.  Atatürk suppressed Islam in his country.  Jordan has always been a Muslim state, but the Hashemite family that rules it, and once controlled Mecca, has tended towards moderation consistently.  The Baath movement that controls most of Syria and once controlled Iraq was a fascist movement early on that included Muslim and Christian Arabs and which sought a secular state in the Middle East.  The PLO was a secular organization that leaned heavily on Communist thought.  There was at one time a strong sense amongst Arab nationalist that Islam had to be suppressed or, if not outright suppressed, the state's had to be secular. That really began to fall way with the Iranian revolution, and there's been a good deal of retreat from it since that time.

Which takes us to the current highly conservative (again, if that is the right word) Israeli government.

The current Israeli government is the most conservative, again if that's the word, one ever.  It follows part of the global drift towards far right populism.  Prior to the Hamas attack, it was receiving a good deal of pushback from Western nations and internally, in no small part due to an effort to subordinate the Israeli supreme court to the Knesset.  In the irony that all such conflicts create, that's all been forgotten now.  At any rate, a sharp turn to the right by Israel made it pretty clear that any current Israeli desires to really find a mutual solution to the problems now being fought over just weren't there.

All of which leaves us with this.

Hamas has attacked and made it clear that it thinks it can murder its way towards achieving its goals, a sort of accelerated variant of the 1939-1945 lebensraum at this point.  Israel can't allow that to happen.

There are paths to a lasting peace here, but nobody involved, or even with influence, is going to try to bring them about, so the question is whether the warring parties, or more precisely Israel, can bring it about by force.

Tuesday, October 31, 2023

Some more Hamas Israeli War observations

1. What is "proportionality" in a war with an opponent that's genocidal?

So what, exactly, is proportional to people who will do that?

We keep hearing the response should be proportional, but proportional to what? 

How far does being proportional with homicidal forces go?

What it doesn't mean is that "you killed ten, so we get to kill ten."

What was proportional to the Holocaust, if that was the measure during World War Two?  It wasn't, of course, but was proportional to being invaded by the Nazis?

2.  Why should the response be proportional?

Mind you, I think it should, but I'm a Catholic.  Catholics developed the theory of just war. 

Most peoples don't have a theory of just war, although the Israeli's by Jewish tradition would, as the Old Testament at least tangentially discusses it.

Does Islam?  I have no idea.

Anyhow, when people say a war should be proportional, what they're implying is that the war should be fought as if it's being fought by Christians, which implies that the Christian world view is correct.  It's an entire package.  If you adopt just part of it, you reject all of it, which means, in the end, accepting that fighting war the old way is just fine.

Most non-Christian people, when they fight wars, don't worry about proportionality.  We instinctively know that. That's why we are horrified by the Germans in World War Two, but pretty much yawn about Japanese atrocities. And that's why were are justifiably horrified by My Lai in Vietnam, but don't really worry that much about the NVA in Hue.

It's probably also, at least partially, why we worry about what the IDF does in Gaza, but are pretty acceptable of Hamas being willing to kill everyone, pretty much in Israel.

We ought not to think that way.

3.  Why does Hamas get a pass with so many people and Israel does not?

What the root of that?

It's either anti-Semitism (which a lot of it is) or that we, ironically, hold Israel to a higher standard, which means that we hold Hamas to  a very low one.  We discussed that above.

The most disturbing part is that there remains a lot of people who really hate the Jews.  And it comes out, strangely, in the left in recent years, which is more closely associated with that demographic than the right. 

But perhaps we should not be surprised. The extreme left has always surfaced in the popular left, and since the early 20th Century it's always been genocidal.  It loved bloody Lenin, then Stalin, and so on. That it would love Hamas, in the same spirit that it loved the Reds, isn't really too surprising.

4.  Why do we keep saying that "Hamas doesn't represent the Palestinians?".  

There's no evidence of that, except that the last election in Gaza was quite a few years ago.  So we really don't know.  Hamas might represent the views of the majority of Palestinians.  What if that's true?

And why do the Palestinians uniquely get a pass this way.  People would shout down somebody stating that "most Germans weren't Nazi's".

Thursday, October 19, 2023

Proportionality.

Everyone has the right to defend themselves.  Even Pope Francis, who is on the rather liberal end of many things, agrees with this.


But what is proportional to an enemy who has vowed to murder the populace and demonstrated that intent with murdering babies?

And let us be honest.  The claim, "the majority of Palestinian people do not support Hamas" is pretty much equivalent to "most Germans weren't Nazi's", isn't it?  It's thin.  Indeed, maybe for those in the Middle East today, it has even less credibility.  Certainly here in the US, in spite of separation from the artificial boundaries of the legacy of the Ottoman Empire and the Great War, plenty of Palestinians and their first generation descendants have rallied to the bloody cause as so many Palestinians have in the past, demonstrating that lamenting the results of bad decisions seems to be an intergenerational habit.

Congressman Rashida Tlaib, who was quick to accuse the IDF of rocketing a Palestinian hospital that in fact Islamic Jihad, which would regard her as an abhorrent example of a woman who should be out of government, accidentally rocketed.

But does that matter?

And did it in 1945?

And let us be further honest. The concept of proportionality is a Christian one.  No other culture worries about it to the same extent that Christian ones do, and if it is now a global concept, it's' due in no small measure to Christianity.  Everyone protesting for proportionality does so in hopes that it reaches a Christian audience. The historical global norm, outside of Judaism and Christianity (and I'll confess ignorance on Islam), was for slaughter.

It's the Christian influence that's made it unacceptable.  For pagan people, and non-Abrahamic people?  Well, that was what was done.

So we are left, then, with what is proportionality?

Was destroying Berlin in 1945 proportional to the Nazi genocidal imperial regimes?  Or would it have been better to say, well, not all Germans were Nazis?  Or did that, with a threat like Nazism, not really matter that much?

Questions that have to be answered. And the namby pampy "let's condemn overreaction" have to answer them most of all.

Or does it?

Does staying a hand, display more strength than using it? Turn, as it were, the other cheek?

And can we, even with the descent into liberal secularism, which seems to solely involve what's under our Fruit of the Looms, avoid answering them, in real, bloody, terms, rather than platitudes?

I offer no solutions, or answers.

I'm only posing the questions.  With, of course, the proviso that if you answer wrong, there's blood on your hands, one away, or the other.

Tuesday, August 22, 2023

Sunday, August 22, 1943. Gertie from Berlin.

Irish army recruiting poster during World War Two.  Note the odd shade of the uniform, which was a very grass shade of green, a color unique to the Irish Army, but well suited for the island nation.  This depiction shows an Irish soldier after the adoption of the British style helmet, which came at the UK's request.  Before that the Irish had used a British Vicker's produced version of the German M1916 helmet, which was in fact a better pattern.  Ireland had a hard time staffing its Army during "the Emergency" as military aged men joined the British Army in such large numbers.

Sarah Sundin reports, on her blog:

Today in World War II History—August 22, 1943: German 10th Army is activated in southern Italy under Gen. Heinrich von Vietinghoff. 
In the Mediterranean, all fighter groups and medium bomb groups in the US Ninth Air Force are transferred to the Twelfth Air Force.

The Germans began to withdraw from Kharkiv to avoid encirclement.

Andrei Gromyko was named Ambassador to the United States, replacing Maxim Litvinov who had returned to the Soviet Union under Stalin's orders in May.  Gromyko was Belarusian.

US forces occupied islands in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands including Nukufetau and Namumea without opposition.

George S. Patton thanked the troops of his Army for their efforts in Sicily, noting:

As a result of this combined effort, you have killed or captured 113,350 enemy troops. You have destroyed 265 of his tanks, 2324 vehicles, and 1162 large guns, and, in addition, have collected a mass of military booty running into hundreds of tons.

English language German radio propagandist "Gertie from Berlin" was revealed to be Gertrude Hahn, a native of Pittsburgh who had gone to Germany in 1938 when her family returned to their native country.

The United Islamic Society of America formed in Newark, New Jersey.

Friday, July 28, 2023

Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor passes, an unfortunate icon for her times.

Sinéad O'Connor had, by the time of her death, eschewed her name and an additional one, as she traveled through a world that celebrates narcissism and which treats mental disturbance as self-expression.  

Her cause of death has not been revealed yet, but if it turns out not to be suicide, I'll be amazed.

O'Connor is going to be celebrated as a musical genius and a cultural beacon.  I've listened very little to her music, which I don't care for at all, but what she really was, was a really screwed up personality that had been crying for help in a world that instead just urges "self-expression".  In a way, although their personalities and music, etc., were very different, she's the Irish Michael Jackson, the American pop artist who went from fame to weirdness to an early death.  The public is unlikely to turn on O'Connor, however, as unlike Jackson who did a deep dive into cultural weirdness, O'Connor did a deep dive into rejecting Western Culture, and the cutting edge of Western Culture loves rejecting Western Culture, making our culture unique in that fashion.

Her name was taken from Sinéad de Valera, the wife of the Irish revolutionary leader and the mother of her attending physician.  Her parents divorced, which was unusual for Irish Catholic couples and her father, at least, remarried and moved to the United States.  That shows fairly clearly her family had fractured. She lived with her father and stepmother for a time and then returned to Ireland, by which time she'd take up shoplifting and ended up in the Magdaline Asylum, which, like most things in Ireland at the time and many things now, was run by a Catholic religious order.  She actually did very well there developing her talents, but not too surprisingly chaffed under the discipline.

A lot of O'Connor's musical career was used to turn attention on herself, which has proven in the post Madonna music world to be a good vehicle towards success.  Early on, in 1992, on Saturday Night Live, she tore up a photograph of St. Pope John Paul II ostensibly in protest of the sexual abuse scandal in the Church, but which is more symbolic of the childish Irish temper tantrums that were just then starting to really develop.  The act was so shocking at the time that even Madonna criticized it.

By that time she'd already identified as a lesbian, when that was shocking, although she later retreated from that claim. At some point in the 1990s she was ordained by the Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church, which is not in communion with Rome, an apparent "Independent Catholic Church" which is in no way in communion with Rome.  She announced at that time that she wanted to be known as Mother Bernadette Mary.

In 2018, she converted to Islam, an ironic but perhaps predictable conversion as it is somewhat shocking for somebody who claimed earlier to be retaining Catholic beliefs.  The irony, of course, is not only that she was Irish and self-proclaimed type of Catholic, but joining a religion that is generally hostile to female equality.  Following that, she became a critic of Christian and Jewish theologians and called non Muslims "disgusting", from which she also retreated.

She was married at least once, and had four children, one of whom recently committed suicide.

The problem with being shocking and in despair is that the attention you get from being shocking is pretty temporary, and so goes the relief as well.

O'Connor stands out in the end as somebody who needed help and didn't get it.  There are a lot of people in that category.  With a strong-willed personality, and her world set upside down early on, she might not have accepted the help anyway had it really been offered.  But celebrating the public descent of a tortured soul isn't really doing her a retroactive justice, and it didn't help while she lived.

She also stands, however, for something additional.  Jackson stood for a long held American negative trait of rising people to great heights based on something superficial, and then destroying them.  O'Connor, however, stands for the destruction of Western Society following World War Two, but in a time delayed way as she was Irish, and Ireland's entry into modern Western Society was delayed by at least 40 years.  Prior to the Second World War a person's departure from the culture would not have been openly celebrated even if known, and it would have been somewhat arrested so that the individual self-destruction was less likely to be so open.  And rescue from that destruction was a real possibility, with individuals such as C. S. Lewis, Oscar Wilde and Whitaker Chambers providing diverse examples of the same.  Following 1968, however, hope for rescue started to become fleeting and open attack on the culture became a liberal virtue.

Now that she has died, she'll be celebrated and her many strange paths and failings turned into personal triumphs.  In the end, however, it's clear she was grasping for the existential and metaphysical in a world that is hostile to both and would prefer to find all expression in as self-centered.  Her conversion to Islam, which is openly hostile to those concepts, probably best expressed that desperate search, as misguided as the path she took was.

That's the modern way, however.

Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, 

and let perpetual light shine upon her. 

May she rest in peace. 

Saturday, July 15, 2023

Sunday, July 15, 2023. Harding drives a golden spike.

Harding drove in a golden spike on the Alaska Railroad at Nenana, a town near Fairbanks.


Harding was really putting in the miles, and saw a great deal of Alaska during his trip, at a point in time at which it was fairly difficult to do so.

The most dangerous major airline in the world, Aeroflot, saw its birth when its predecessor, Dobrolet, began operations with a flight from Moscow to Nizhny.

Egypt banned its citizens from making the Hajj in reaction to the King of Hejaz barring an Egyptian medical mission which was part of it.  The latter was done as an assertion of sovereignty by the Kingdom, which was not long to remain.

Thursday, July 6, 2023

Western angst and spinning history.

I don't know if it was the anniversary of the raid, or what, but my Twitter feed for some reason picked up a link to a story about a large raid by the Barbary Pirates on the coast of Ireland.  In 1631 the pirates raided Baltimore, Ireland, in the County of Cork.  The town was not large, but between 100 and 300 of its inhabitants were abducted.  Only two made it back to Ireland, in part because the English government had just enacted a law which forbid paying ransom, which was often the goal of such raids.

The article that was linked in was scholarly, and noted that what would have occured is that, for the most part, children would have been separated from their parents and everyone sold into slavery when it became obvious that they would not be ransomed.  The male slavery would have been of the grueling work variety.  Women would have largely been sold as sex slaves, which the articles like to call "concubines".  

The reason that I note this here is that the author, again it was a scholarly article, felt compelled to blame the raids on the Spanish expulsion of the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula.  That process has commenced in 1492, and it was completed, effectively, in 1614.  The entire period wasn't a peaceful one, and in the Mediterranean various nations raided each other.

The final stages of the story are more complicated, in Spain, than might at first be imagined, as by the 1600s the "Moriscos" weren't actually Muslim, but rather Spanish descendants of Berbers and Arabs who were Catholic, but who retained Berber/Arab ancestry. Some claim they were "crypto Islamic", but more likely they were Catholics who retained some folk connection to their ancestor's prior religion.  Indeed, it'd be worth noting that Islam itself has a murky origin connection with Christianity, and this may have been confusing at the street level.  Anyhow, the last stages of this seem to be an ethnic spat, but it did have the effect of expelling Moriscos to North Africa, where they were absorbed ultimately into the local population, or to distribute them across Spain where the same thing occured.

Anyhow, blaming the Baltimore, and other Barbary Pirate, raids on this event is stretching it.  I suppose you could argue that the general belligerency of the Mediterranean contributed to the raiding atmosphere, and both sides did that, but that traces back to the rise of Islam in the first place, which was spread by the sword.  That this process went on, in one fashion or another, for a thousand years, and in some cases to this very day, does not mean that much except that the long arch of history and the fact that events play out over decades or centuries is the rule, and only seems to be odd to us, as we're used to everything occurring rapidly.

Anyhow, the author claimed that the children were treated with "utmost kindness".  Really?  Separating them from their parents, sending their fathers off to early grueling slave induced deaths and selling their mothers as sex slaves?  And then they'd end up slaves themselves, with boys often ending up enslaved soldiers and girls. . . sex slaves.

What BS.

The same author claimed that the women were sold into "concubinage", which is sex slavery in this context, and lived lives of "relative luxury", as if this weird image of the Playboy ethos had the women looking forward to this life of chattel status while they still retained their desirability.  The reality of it is that they had value as they were exotic, and bought for their physical attributes alone.

Why this story has to be spun in this fashion is really remarkable. We're supposed to feel some guilt for the story of the kidnappers and slavers, and even look kindly upon some of the grossest examples of slavery that are around.

None of this is to excuse Western conduct, whatever might be sought to be excused. Slavery was common amongst all Mediterranean societies, Christian and Islamic, but what played out with the Barbary pirates was not.  They engaged in slave raids, and forced sex slave status of captured women was endorsed by the Koran, although frankly probably not really in the form that was practiced here (it likely applied to women captured as a result of warfare, not that this makes it a lot better).  Putting a gloss on any kind of slavery, moreover, is bizarre.  When people attempt to do that, as many once did and a few still try to do, in regard to American slavery, we're rightly appalled.  This isn't any better.

The West has had a hard time reconciling an imperial past with its democratic values, and one way it tries to cope with it is by making Westerners always be the baddies.  The story of empire is a complicated one, but the 100 to 300 inhabitants of Baltimore didn't have much to do with it, and neither, really, did the Barbary pirates. Slavery was always bad and this sort of slavery gross.  Kidnapping people is always bad.  There are always bad people.  The Barbary Pirates don't need to be portrayed as if they're Captain Morocco, or something, in a Marvel movie.

Friday, June 16, 2023

Wednesday, June 16, 1943. Noor Inayat Khan inserted in France.

Subhas Chandra Bose met with Hideki Tojo, who promised to help India secure independence from the United Kingdom.


On the same day, Noor Inayat Khan, born in Moscow to an Indian father and American mother., was deposited by light aircraft in France as an agent of the Special Operations Executive (SOE).  She'd serve as a radio operator under the code name Madeline.

The SOE, which was heavily penetrated by German intelligence, would ultimately capture her and execute her in September 1944.

Her father was a Sufi mystic, which heavily influenced her outlook.  Raised in London and Paris, she was a poet before the war.

The Japanese raided Guadalcanal by air.

"Japanese Air Raid on Guadalcanal, June 16, 1943. USS LST-340 burning after she was hit by an enemy bomb. She was run ashore off Lunga Point after the hit, and her fires were extinguished after considerably damaging her and her cargo. Note trucks burning on deck. This photograph was taken by TSGT. H.S. Bolser, fifteen minutes after she was hit."

Probably referring to the same event depicted above, Sarah Sundon notes:
Today in World War II History—June 16, 1943: Japanese suffer their biggest aerial defeat over the Solomon Islands, losing 96 of 120 aircraft to antiaircraft fire and to Allied fighter pilots .

Charlie Chaplin married Oona O'Neill, daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill.  The father disowned the daughter as a result.  It was Chaplin's fourth and final marriage.

Oona O'Neill in 1943.

She was barely 18 years old at the time of the marriage, Chaplin having a track record for young women.

Sunday, March 19, 2023

Wednesday, March 19, 2003. The Second Gulf War Commences

F15E over Iraq.

The United States and a coalition of Allies, including its principal western allies, on this day in 2003, commenced operations against Iraq.  The war commenced with air operations.  

The causa belli of the undeclared war was Iraq's lack of cooperation with weapons inspectors.

President Bush went on the air and stated:

At this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.

Congress is just now considering a bill to deauthorize military force in Iraq, which at this point would be more symbolic than anything else.  

The initial invasion went well and swiftly, but the war yielded to a post-war, war, against Islamic insurgents that lasted until 2011.  Iraq has remained unstable, but not Baathist, and it has retained democracy, although frequently only barely.  Iran has gained influence in the country, which has a large Shiia population, which was not expected.

The war remains legally problematic in that it was a full scale invasion of a foreign power with no declaration of war, setting it apart from any post World War Two war, with perhaps the exception of the war in Afghanistan, that had that feature but lacked such a declaration.  At least arguably it was illegal for that reason.  Amongst other things, Art 1, Section 8, of the Constitution provides that Congress has the power to:

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

Presidents are the commanders in chief of the armed forces, and in Washington's day actually took to the field with it, so it would not be correct to assume that only Congress can deploy troops, even into harm's way.  But full scale wars. . . that seems pretty exclusively reserved to Congress.

The war also came while the U.S. was already fighting, albeit at a low level, in Afghanistan, and the Iraq episode would prove to be a distraction from it, leading in no small part to that first war ended, twenty years later, inconclusively.

The war redrew the political map of the Middle East, which it was intended to do, so to that extent it was at least a partial success, although it took much longer than expected.  It's effect on the national deficit, discussed this past week by NPR, is staggering and the nation still is nowhere near paying for it, something that will have very long term consequences for the nation going forward, and providing a reason, amongst others, that undeclared wars should not really be engaged in.  Congress, for its part, simply chose not to debate the topic in that context, an abrogation of its duty, although it did authorize military action in another form.

The war contributed to the rise of ISIL, which was later put down.  It increased Syrian instability, which has yet to be fully addressed.  

It also contributed to a rising tide of military worship in the US, while ironically would be part of the right wing reaction to "forever wars" that gave rise to Donald Trump.  

One of only two wars, the other being the First Gulf War, initiated by a Republican President since World War Two, the war had huge initial support from the left and the right, something that many of the same people who supported it later conveniently forgot.

Monday, January 30, 2023

Tuesday, January 30, 1923. Forced Relocation of Greeks and Turks

The treaty between Greece and Turkey which resulted in the forcible relocation more than 1.6 million people based on ethnicity and religion, 1,221,489 Turkish-born Greek Orthodox Christians and 400,000 Greek residents of Istanbul and Muslim Turks on the Greek side of the divided area of Thrace, were exempt, although many people relocated anyway.

The treaty was the first of the massive ethnic and religion based movements of peoples that would become a feature of the mid 20th Century, and which were a perversion of one of Wilson's Fourteen Points.  By the end of, and following, World War Two this would be conducted on a massive scale, particularly in Eastern Europe.

All of the imperial powers that had gone into World War One were multiethnic, at least to some degree.  The Germans, for example, had a large Polish population that was not only in what we'd regard as Poland, but also in areas which had a mixed Polish/German, population, and populations of ethnic Germans were present in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, the USSR,and elsewhere.  In what became Poland after World War One, there remained populations of Ukrainians and other peoples, and Ukraine also included populations of Poles.  Ukrainians extended out into what was then and now regarded as Russia.  Finns remained in areas that Russia retained.  And what was left to Turkey of the Ottoman Empire included not only Turks, but Armenians, Greeks and Kurds.  The concept that all nations had to be nation states, a perversion of nations getting states as envisioned by Wilson, was a direct cause of World War Two. 

Exiled Kaiser Wilhelm II visited with monarchist Germans in Nijmegen about a possible return to the German throne, but decided the time was not ripe.  It never would be.

Department of Agriculture Poultry Club.

Saturday, November 19, 2022

Sunday, November 19, 1922. The Last Ottoman Caliph

In a move that may be regarded as genuinely confusing, Abdulmejid II was elected to the office of Caliph of the Muslim people by the Turkish Grand National Assembly.


The former Crown Prince accordingly, at least if you agreed with the Grand  National Assembly's religious powers, became head of Islam in a fashion.  He'd last in that role for two years before the Grand National Assembly, apparently also confused as to why it, as a secular body, would do that, abolished the office.

The Ottoman claim to be able to appoint a Caliph was never uncontested, although as it was a large empire the position held weight, even after its expiration.  Islam was itself divided following Mohammed's death in 632 with the division arising over who would lead it.

Abdulmejid II went into exile in Europe following the abolishment of the office in 1924.

Tuesday, November 1, 2022

Wednesday, November 1, 1922. Endings

The Turkish Grand National Assembly declared the Ottoman Empire abolished.  It also ended Constantinople's status as the capital city.

Mehmed VI going into exile.

This ended Mehmed VI's status as Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, but did not his status as caliph, among other things the head of the imperial family.  He'd hold that position until November 19 when his cousin Abdulmejid Efendi was elected caliph, which he'd hold for two years, upon which time the Assembly would abolish the Caliphate.

Mehmed protested the removal of his position as caliph, effectively a claim to lead the Islamic world, which he declared he had not intended to resign.  The destruction of the Ottoman Empire during the war had effectively eliminated Turkey's claim to occupy that position as a political entity.

He'd spend his exile in Malta and then later in Italy.

Mexican General Francisco R. Murguia, age 49, was executed for attempting a rebellion against President Alvaro Obregon.  Mexican forces had captured him the day prior.

A village in Mexico is now named after him.

Thursday, February 10, 2022

Friday, February 10, 1922. Idle guns?


On this day in 1922 a photographer toured the Navy Gun Shop, no doubt for a story on armaments now deemed to be somewhat unneeded.

ON this day, President Harding, hoping to keep them unneeded, appeared in the Senate to personally appeal for the ratification of the treaties.

Of course, many of these tubes were replacement tubes for barrels that became worn in use, and therefore some would go on to use anyhow.  And indeed, battleships, the heaviest of all surface warships, would continue to be built through the end of the Second World War.   And some of these guns would go on to serve in Army coastal batteries.

One thing that was also occurring, of course, is that technology was moving on.  The recent Great War had seen the full scale deployment of submarines, whose danger was appreciated, and the introduction of aircraft carriers, whose danger was not.

And radio was coming in.  Above we see the Secretary of the Navy on this day with a radio-telephone, a new thing.

Of course, aspects of the old world hung on.

Muslim woman in India (probably Pakistan), on this day in 1922.

The Irish Republican Army attacked an Ulster Special Constabulary patrol in County Tyrone.  The civil war, and the terrorist war, was arriving.

Sunday, February 6, 2022

Friday, February 6, 1942. The USDA discusses sharing, the Graf Zeppelin is photographed by the RAF, the HMS Utmost in Holy Loch, and members of the 6 AGH.


 The USDA delivered a Friday message on sharing.

Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, arrived in Italy with Iraqi politician Rashid Ali al-Gaylani.  They had both been in Germany, and they obtained an audience with Benito Mussolini.

Both men, in this regard, were bad judges of history, although it would oddly not impact them as much as might be supposed.  They both lived out their natural lives, with Al-Hamdani even managing to avoid a death sentence via pardon, which was given to him due to a post World War Two attempts to affect a coup in Iraq.

The German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin was photographed from the air.


The German aircraft carrier was in the category of pointless resource wasting endeavors by this point, although that may not have been as obvious as it now appears.  Part of a German effort to build two carriers, which would have gone on to more, the German Navy had not anticipated the war starting in 1939. It was planning for war in 1943.  At this point, the thought probably still lingered, however, that such ships would be useful in a future anticipated offensive against the United Kingdom as the war with the Soviet Union, launched partially in the belief that the USSR could be quickly defeated and all hope would be lost to the British, still held out hopes for a German victory.  

By August, the vessel would be the target of British air raids.

The ship came into the possession of the Soviets after the war, who considered finishing it off, but who ultimately sank as a target.  Its fate was not, however, known for decades outside of the USSR.


The British submarine HMS Utmost made a port call to Holy Loch.  The happy crew's luck would run out in November when she'd be sunk off of Sicily, probably by hitting a mine, and all of these young men would perish.

Troops of the 6th Australian General Hospital were photographed.