Monday, March 4, 1974. Suez.

Israel completed the first phase of its withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula 24 hours ahead of schedule. This gave Egypt control of both sides of the Suez Canal for the first time since 1967.

Last prior:

Sunday, February 24, 1974. Advent of Fireforce, getting mad at Confucious.

Monday, January 28, 1974. End of the Siege of Suez.

The Israeli siege of the Egyptian city of Suez ended at noon.  The IDF withdrew and the 20,000 encircled Egyptians were able to withdraw across the Suez Canal.

Suez.

Both Time and Newsweek's covers dealt with the Nixon tape. U.S. News & World Report's cover was on inflation.  

Sports Illustrated had a cheesecake photo, although it hadn't crossed over into pornography on the cover yet, for its swimsuit issue. Ann Simonton was the cover model, who was actually relatively covered.

Indonesian President Suharto took control of the country's internal security agency.

Bolivia was declared to be in a state of siege following a peasant uprising at Cochambamba.

Mohammed Ali and Joe Frazier fought for a second time in a non-title fight.  Ali won.

George Foreman was the heavyweight champion at the time.

Not to be flippant, but October just sucks in the Middle East.

 

29 October 1956

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: Is that ship still stuck?

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: Is that ship still stuck?:   Is that ship still stuck?

The answer now is:

NO!

No doubt everyone involved is sighing a huge sigh of relief.

Blog Mirror: Is that ship still stuck?

 

Is that ship still stuck?

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part 11. Ever Given, Debates, Jeopardy!, Mary Tyler Moore's death reported, Money and Higher Education.

Ever Given

Oops

How did a giant ship get stuck in the Suez Canal?

It's a huge container ship, stuck sideways in the Suez Canal.

There has to be a moment, when  you are piloting something like this, in this situation, when you think "oh pooh".

The owner of the ship has apologized.  But, while no doubt sincere, there's something odd about that.

Perhaps my neighbor down the street who routinely abandons a car in snow days will learn some lesson about this.

The stuck ship has been the subject of an endless number of memes and jokes, but it actually is impacting world commerce.  10% of the globes trade goes through it, and there are now concerns about toilet paper and coffee prices.

A debate on arms

M231 Port Firing Weapon, a fairly short lived machinegun variant of the M16 that was designed for firing from ports of armored personnel carriers.  The concept was short lived, although some are still retained for Bradly AFV crews.  The layout is closer to the AR 556 than to any common M16 or AR15.

I thought about not commenting about this at all, and when I started this most recent edition to this thread it wasn't here, as that was prior to an insane man's assault on a grocery store in Colorado. But as this is now prominent in the Zeitgeist, the history of this blog would provide for commenting in some form, so I'll do it here.

First, the rush to conclusion.

At the point at which I'm typing this out, we still don't know much about the assault other than its tragic consequences.  Both sides in the gun control debate are rushing to conclusions, which means the conclusions will largely be pre made ones rather than any which are the product of analysis.  What we do know is this.

The killer was insane and had a history of violence.  He was short tempered and paranoid.  His condition appears to be progressive, and while he was violent in high school, he wasn't constantly so.

He was born in Syria, but brought to the country as an infant, so he can't really be considered to be a Syrian migrant in the conventional sense.  This is somewhat relevant, however, in that neighbors of his household report that the family lived in a style that's more familiar to immigrants of earlier eras in that it was multigenerational, something common in many places but odd to Americans. This isn't particularly relevant to anything other than that, according to one report, living next to the family was a bit of a nightmare in some ways as they sort of spilled out into the street in an unruly fashion.  So, basically, he lived in a large and somewhat unruly setting.  To the extent that matters, if it does, it would be because living in his family would make a person an outsider simply because of the very non American style of life in an otherwise middle class neighborhood.

He is Muslim but this can't be said to have an obvious tie to Islamic extremism.

Indeed, he simply seems to have gone progressively insane.  Members of his family who have been interviewed noted this.

He was convicted of third degree assault in 2018 and sentenced to 48 hours of community service.

All this should serve to diffuse any suggestion that this has anything to do with his ethnicity, although I'm sure on some quarters of the net, it's not viewed that way.

On this, while the press reports have concluded that his purchase of firearms was legal, it's not immediately apparent that this is in fact the case.  It would depend on the nature of the conviction, but frankly I'd lean towards his purchase actually having been illegal.  If this is the case, the background check system failed to reveal the conviction.  Having said that, I'm not firmly attached to that position. This may be such a "simple assault", i.e., fighting, that it wouldn't register.  If that's the case, the background system didn't fail.  We should assume here it didn't fail.

The firearm used in the event was a Ruger AR-556 pistol.

The AR-556 "pistol" is one of a series of arms produced to dodge the National Firearms Act on short barreled rifles.  There's no doubt about this and while somebody no doubt will eventually log in to state otherwise, this recent trend serves no other purpose. This has allowed for the manufacture of very short barreled rifles, marketed pretextually as pistols, and also semi automatic replicas of submachineguns which would otherwise be illegal under US law.  This is part of the trend we've noted here before of the AR lead militarization and pseudo militarization (tacti-cool) that has become so prominent in the US.

Indeed, the problem with weapons like the AR-556 pistol is that they make it exceedingly difficult for defenders of firearms to do just that.  While fans of the AR15 in general can point to legitimate sporting use for the rifle, finding a real sporting use for a pistol variant of it is extremely difficult to do.  Everyone knows that the configuration is simply a dodge around the law.  A fan of pistols would be better off with a real pistol, a person who wanted a semi automatic carbine variant of the AR can find one easily.  The "pistol" configuration really appeals to a limited market that is buying it mostly based on appearance.  This is all less true for collectors who want something like a firing replica of something like the MP40 in semiautomatic, but even there, because the MP40 is a purely military arm, it gets difficult to really make the argument.  That puts defenders of the Second Amendment in a difficult position as even the defense argument that can be made has to really yield to an offensive argument.  I.e., you can't easily argue you need a AR-556 for self defense.  You can argue it, but you'll always be faced with an argument about a conventional pistol being a better choice.

As added factor that's been discussed is that Boulder recently attempted to ban "assault" weapons, but the ban was struck down as unconstitutional.

So what does that immediately tell us?

1.  The killer is almost certainly insane.

2.  He lived with his family, so not institutionalization occurred that would have alerted anyone.

3.  The firearm was purchased legally.

4. The firearm is a type that's principal appeal is simply its strange looks.  While the description will not doubt be "military style", in fact it is not, unless the briefly manufactured armored vehicle port guns are considered, which did pretty closely resemble this sort of weapon.

So what can we draw from that?

Perhaps not much.

Democrats are crying for the passage of gun control bills that will make it through the House, but they won't make it through the Senate.  The bill with the broadest support, expanding background check to include all firearms, would not have impacted this whatsoever.  This purchased passed the background check and would have passed the proposed expanded one.

More radical measures, such as banning "assault weapons" would have precluded the sale of the AR556 in question.  That can be noted.  Having said that, there's no reason to believe that a man in this mental condition wouldn't have simply switched to something else.  Indeed, no matter how expansive you make such a "ban", it would fail to ban everything that somebody like this would employ.  So that would do nothing.

Having said that, in the case of these "pistols" that are now in this category, here actually is something that those who are wondering what can be done by way of Executive Order fits that bill.  This is only a "pistol" by regulatory interpretation, and its a strained one at that.  The ATF could be directed to reclassify these as long guns as they have features which are overwhelming only appropriate for long guns. That would subject them all to the NFA overnight, which would make the simple retail of them nearly impossible and subject future transfers of them to the NFA.  Indeed, it 'd make the current owning of them subject to NFA requirements.

That would address the arm, but it also wouldn't address the killing.

And frankly, in this particular case, only a massively expanded mental healthy system in the US which reincorporated compulsory institutionalization, and indeed expanded it beyond any scope it ever had, would have prevented this.   That isn't going to happen either and it certainly isn't going to happen in an era in which there's a Democratic Congress.

Which means, once again, probably the only real solution, and its imperfect in the case of the insane, is societal.  Not all evil can be prevented.

Indeed, what this might tell us is something simply about ignoring evil and the violent, but we've always tended to do that.  We constantly read of criminals who commit some horrific act who have a past history of violence, or of people who have no major criminal past but a distinct demonstrated attraction to it.  It's clear the mental health treatment available in the US is lacking, but at the same time even if it were much more extensive, we'd likely not catch something like this.  We'd have to have a much more stable, and probably agrarian, society in order to address much of that, and even then, we wouldn't catch it all.

And that would, I suppose, involve a society that prayed for not being lead into temptation, and to be delivered from evil, but I don't see that coming on any time soon.

Poor Joe Manchin

Joe Manchin, one of the few conservative Democrats left on the planet, is suddenly constantly in the spotlight.

The reason that his is, is because as a conservative Democrat, he's suddenly a power broker simply by occupying a position on the political map that used to be one that was crowded, the middle ground.  Democrats can't really get things through the Senate unless he supports it.

This came up in the context of gun control, as Manchin doesn't support any of the two bills that have passed the House. This called left wing brat, Rachel Maddow, whose style is mostly 100% pure snark to lambast him and accuse him of falling down in front of the "nearly dissolved" NRA.

The NRA is in bankruptcy, but it's far from nearly dissolved. What will happen to it remains to be seen, but the widespread assumption that its now powerless is pretty presumptive.  It's goals are still shared by large number of voters and as a practical matter its influence in the past has been so extensive that it may outlast its current decrepit leadership that needs to go.

Be that as it may, Manchin is actually a supporter of some gun control and recently sponsored his own background check bill.  He has a "D" rating from the NRA.

Maddow, the loudmouthed smart aleck kid in the junior high class we all remember from those days, probably didn't know that.

This is part of the problem with debates such as this, for the reason noted in our first entry.  Arguing that gun control that could realistically be imposed in the US would have prevented this is a lot like arguing that Hitler wouldn't have committed mass atrocities if only more people had bought his art.  The logic train is derailed on it.

And then there's the states

The Flight, Frederic Remington.

At the same time that the Democratic Congress and Administration is seeking to impose gun control, state legislatures all over are attempting to do the opposite, including going so far as to pass obviously unconstitutional statutes.

Wyoming is taking a run at one which, even though its been taken to the weed whacker to the extent that its original drafter, the alt right Wyoming Senator Anthony Bouchard, no longer supports it, pretty clearly violates the Supremacy Clause.  Lots of these statutes do. The only one I've seen that may not is one that has been suggested in, I think, South Carolina which simply proposes to make all the residents of the state members of the militia.

Indeed, that's the cleverest approach I've seen so far.  I haven't read the bill, but there's some logic to a bill that makes everyone a member of the militia and all their arms part of their militia service.  It's grounded in the U.S. Constitution, rather than giving it the middle finger salute like so many of these other bills do.

Irrespective of that, the really interesting thing is that the national legislature is going one way while state ones are going another. That tells us this really is a coastal issue, with some lefty islands dominated by urban areas.  That makes any action on this that those on the left, and even the center left, imagine, pretty much impossible.

But it's not only that. We're not only politically polarized. We're now geographically polarized.  And heavily.

The Intelligent quarter riots.

 

Dr. Oz faces backlash ahead of 'Jeopardy' gig, called a 'disgrace' to Alex Trebek's legacy

So read a headline in the net entertainment news, which I read even though I normally don't, having followed the link from Twitter.

I'm among those who find having Dr. Oz on Jeopardy irritating.  He claims to have been a friend of the late Alex Trebek, which he may have been, but he's also a quack.

Will Jenny McCarthy be next?

As a total aside, maybe we can hope for Kate Upton.  I'm serious on that. She's photogenic, as was Trebek, and by all accounts is highly intelligence, and doesn't sell snake oil.  She's also sort of disappeared off of the cheesecake circuit now that she's a married woman  and a mother.

Anyway you look at it the fact that Jeopardy fans are upset by Oz is a good thing and shows that even in some quarters of the vast wasteland, there are reservoirs of intelligence.

Breaking news

The late Mary Tyler Moore in 1978.

The BBC reported on March 25 that Mary Tyler Moore had died.  It was due to a technical glitch.

Which is correct, she died in 2017.

Money and universities

Isaac Royall, Jr., one of the founders of Harvard law and a man with connections to slavery.

Jeffrey Epstein, it turns out, had connections to several universities.  One professor has now lost his position due to this, as he basically facilitated the Epstein connection.

Well, whatever Epstein's connection with universities may have been, it was probably just money.  That doesn't tell us much other than that universities need money, and that universities are particularly prone to retroactive self righteousness.  They have the money, he's dead, they ought to just leave it at that, absent some suggestion of actual impropriety by members of their staff or that he somehow influenced their work.

If anything, what this ought to tell us is something about money and universities.  Within the past couple of years we've had the "scandals" about bribed admissions, more or less, into well regarded schools by entertainment figures for their children. This is no surprise to anyone really familiar with universities.  And then there's been the flap on the East Coast about the early founders of universities having made lots of money on slavery, which is indeed bad, but they're all dead now.  

Absent all universities being government funded, which has its own problems, this sort of thing will occur.  University funding is a big topic in the US right now, but nobody is really close to figuring it out and the left wing "make it all free" solution wouldn't address this and would devalue university educations further.  Mostly what this is an example of is societal hypocrisy.  We know that universities take money from donors, this isn't new.  The money is already spent, leave it at that.

Is the Ever Given still stuck?

 Check here, and find out.

How did a giant ship get stuck in the Suez Canal?

March 6, 1941. Water and the war.

The Battle for the Atlantic had been going on since 1939, when Germany commenced submarine warfare against the Allies, and principally against the United Kingdom.  This period of the war, however, eighty years ago, was the German U-boot "Happy Time". During this period the British were struggling against massive U-boot losses.

On this day, therefore, Winston Churchill issued his Battle of the Atlantic Directive.  You can read it here:

The ‘Battle of the Atlantic’ begins

The British were actually getting ahead of the problem by this period and the Happy Time was about to end.

The Luftwaffe was expanding its operations against Allied shipping on this day, conducting aerial mining against the Suez Canal, which you can read about here:

Today in World War II History—March 6, 1941

As the item above notes, famed sculptor Gutzon Borglum, best remembered for Mount Rushmore, died at age 73 on this day.

Going around the Horn.

The price of oil has now fallen so low shippers are now choosing to go around the Horn of Africa, and burn the extra fuel, rather than go through the Suez Canal and pay the fees for doing so.

Incredible.