Saturday, October 28, 2017
Best Posts of the Week of October 22, 2017
Best posts of the week of October 22, 2017
Sidebar Synchronicity
Some time late last night, this blog went over
You can't fly there from here.
Friday, October 27, 2017
Tools of the trade. . .
Fountain pen innk, computer screen, speaker hooked to computer, on a secretary desk that's well over a century old.
What I look at most of the time, most days.
Blog Mirror. A Hundred Years Ago: Keep Coffee Warm with a Thermos
I would never have guessed that the Thermos was over 100 years old.Keep Coffee Warm with a Thermos
A household hints column in a 1917 issue of Good Housekeeping invited readers . . .
Thursday, October 26, 2017
Second Passchendaele, October 26, 1917
Today is the anniversary of the commencement of the Second Battle of Passchendaele.
Canadian stretcher bearers at Passchendaele.
The battle of was the final stage of the Third Battle of Ypres. The first Passchendale, discussed here on its recent anniversary, had resulted in limited British Empire gains, but had also resulted in the bloodiest day in the history of the New Zealand army, for which it is still remembered.
Like the first battle, the second one was plagued by mud, but it did result in British advances (as had the first). And like the first battle, this one relied heavily on Dominion troops, although in this case the primary burden fell to the Canadian Army (although Australian, British, French and Belgian troops all had a role in the battle).
Canadian machine gun company holding defensive positions after advancing.
The battle resulted in a British Empire victory, but a limited one, and partially for an odd reason. The British forces were already stretched to maximum capacity in the war but were forced, due to the Italian defeat at Corporetto on October 24 to transfer men to the Italian front. Gains had been made, but the transfer of troops brought the battle to a halt short of its original goals. The gains, as well as the resistance by the Germans, resulted in large casualty figures for all sides.
Wednesday, October 25, 2017
Liberty Loan Festivities, New York City, October 25, 1917
On this day in New York City festivities were held to promote the purchase of Liberty Loans.
Dignitaries turned out in force.
A parade was held.
Exotic weapons of war were displayed.
Albert H. Wiggin, president of Chase Manhattan Bank; financier
J.P. Morgan, and Walter E. Frew, president of the Corn Exchange Bank at
the Liberty Loan Parade in New York City on October 25, 1917.
Liberty Loan Committee members Thomas William Lamont, Jr.; William Woodward, president Hanover
National Bank; Charles H. Sabin, president Guaranty Trust Company;
Martin Vogel, assistant treasurer United States; Gates W. McGarrah,
president Mechanics and Metals Bank; James S. Alexander, president
National Bank of Commerce; M. Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb & Co.; Allen B.
Forbes of Harris, Forbes & Co.; Seward Prosser, president Bankers'
Trust Company; Albert H. Wiggins, president Chase National Bank; J.P.
Morgan; ; Walter E. Frew, president Corn Exchange Bank; James N.
Wallace, president Central Trust Company; Charles V. Rich, vice
president National City Bank; ; Jacob H. Schiff, Kuhn, Loeb & Co. attending the Liberty Loan
Parade in New York City on October 25, 1917.
A parade was held.
Exotic weapons of war were displayed.
The captured German UC-5 Type UC I minelayer submarine which was displayed as part of the Liberty Loan drive and renamed
U-Buy-a-Bond. She sank 29 ships sunk for a total of 36,288 tons in 29 patrols. On August 21, 1915 the UC-5 became the first submarine minelayer to penetrate into the English Channel, laying 12 mines off Boulogne, one of which sank the steamship William Dawson. She ran aground while on patrol April 26, 1916 at and was scuttled but recovered by the British.
British Mark IV Tank "Britannia" which was brought to New York
City and renamed the Liberty and put on exhibit to help sell
war bonds. It is
currently is located at the U.S. Army Ordnance Museum at Aberdeen
Proving Ground, Maryland.
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
Some time late last night, this blog went over
500,000 Views!
Well cool.
We went over 500,000 views today. You probably noticed the raucous celebrations.
In context, this doesn't actually mean all that much. For one thing, readership here is declining.
This blog has been around since May, 2009, although in 09, we posted only 16 times, not very much, that first year. Readership eventually hit the point where there were about 3,000 to 4,000 views per month, which we frankly thought pretty decent. It stayed read at that rate for a really long time, but then March 2015 hit and we began to post a lot, indeed in daily, century delayed, real time, on the Punitive Expedition, which has always been a major focus of the blog. While we were doing that we discovered Reddit's 100 Year Ago subreddit and started posting some items, well. . . quite a few items, that were going up here daily over on that site. Not all of these were on the Punitive Expedition by any means, many were just things 100 years old, which served in our mind to set the background to our Punitive Expedition focus.
Just posting on the Punitive Expedition alone jumped readership here appreciably. Daily hits went from 3,000, to 4,000 per month up to about a consistent 4,000 to 5,000. And when things began to be cross posted on Reddit readership shot up. Things peaked in March of this year with the monthly total, that month, being 56,000 views.
But we stopped the daily entries right about then as well, as the US withdrew from Mexico in February 1917. Some thing trailed on of course, which is why we peaked in March. And since we stopped, readership has really really dropped off. It declined steadily and fell to 10,000 views in June of this year, and then climbed back up to 15,000 for August, but has since steadily declined again. Last month we were down to 12,000 views. As of this post, for this month, we're at 8,541 and I doubt we'll make 12,000. I can't even tell if we're going to stabilize at the 10,000 mark or go lower. Most days right now we tend to get between 200 and 250 views, it seems to me. Some days are a lot more, one day last week we shot back up to over 2,000 in a single day, but many are much less, down around 150.
Oh well, the blog isn't a popularity contest. I would welcome more comments however.
Oddly, I will note, things have really changed the past few months on where people come from who view this blog. Originally it was almost exclusively from the United States. I'd have thought that I'd get Canadian viewers a fair amount, but I haven't until very recently (I am now). Indeed, in the English speaking world, the only nation that shows up with appreciable daily views (save for Canada, which now appears in the stats almost daily), and only on odd occasion, is Australia. But we get a lot of foreign views. For a long time the second place position went to Russia, but earlier this year we got a lot of daily views from France. Some days we had more French viewers than America ones. Recently we've been getting a lot of hits from Italy. I have no idea why this is true. When we started posting on the Vietnam War, not surprisingly, we started to get a few daily hits from Vietnam. At least that make sense.
Oddly, I will note, things have really changed the past few months on where people come from who view this blog. Originally it was almost exclusively from the United States. I'd have thought that I'd get Canadian viewers a fair amount, but I haven't until very recently (I am now). Indeed, in the English speaking world, the only nation that shows up with appreciable daily views (save for Canada, which now appears in the stats almost daily), and only on odd occasion, is Australia. But we get a lot of foreign views. For a long time the second place position went to Russia, but earlier this year we got a lot of daily views from France. Some days we had more French viewers than America ones. Recently we've been getting a lot of hits from Italy. I have no idea why this is true. When we started posting on the Vietnam War, not surprisingly, we started to get a few daily hits from Vietnam. At least that make sense.
Supposedly now that we've hit 500,000 views, according to some, things change somehow with search engines so we should show up more on searches. Maybe, maybe not. It doesn't really matter that much. Indeed, I sometimes think that I ought to stop blogging entirely, which I've done from time to time in the past. This blog is in fact the third version of what it is, although the first two started off sort of like what this one has evolved into. This was a pure specialty blog with very limited focus at first. Anyhow, on that, if I"d kept those blogs up, rather than kill them off when I stopped blogging, this one would have passed 500,000 views sometime ago. Beyond, that, and to the point of this paragraph, if I don't determine to simply quit blogging, which I likely will not do, I also ponder backing this one down much more to its original focus, in which case I'd certainly blog a lot less.
But then, I seem to have a compulsion to write. Nearly ever entry here his written with a lot less effort than it might seem, and takes up a lot less time than you might suppose. There's something about writing. I've always done it. And I likely always will.
Thanks for reading!
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Monday, October 23, 2017
The Dome Reconstruction
Our Capitol Dome is getting a little repair.
This project has been oddly unpopular in some quarters.
But, he who would let his history fall into disrepair will soon have none.
Monday at the Bar: Today In Wyoming's History: October 20. The Senften Murder and Justice in World War One.
From: Today In Wyoming's History: October 20:
1917 Louis Senften was murdered near Leo. This resulted in his neighbor, John Leibig, who was the only one to witness the death, being accused of murder.The accusations against Leibig seem to have been motivated, at least in part, by his being of German origin. Senften had just purchased his ranch after a long effort to do so but there were details concerning that purchased that may have caused Leibig's neighbors to wish him gone. Be that as it may, he was acquitted of murder but was also held on an additional eleven counts of espionage, a fairly absurd accusation against somebody who lived in such a remote location. Leibig, perhaps wanting to simply get past the matter, entered a guilty plea to those charges as part of a plea bargain. He was accordingly sentenced to a year and a half in a Federal Penitentiary, but President Wilson commuted the sentence to one year. The short length of the sentence would suggest that both the Court and the President doubted the espionage claims' veracity.Wyoming's U.S. Attorney continued Quixotic efforts to strip Leibig of his citizenship until 1922, although he had in fact lost it by operation of his sentence. He ultimately would relocate to Colorado after being released from the Federal Penitentiary at Ft. Leavenworth Kansas.
This sort of thing, the miscarriage of justice directed at foreign nationals from the Central Powers, or even just from the more exotic regions of Europe, was unfortunately quite common during World War One. Germans or Austrians who expressed doubts about the war were exposed to such an extent that many regions of the country that were strongly German in heritage made an effort to disguise that during the war. This succeeded so well that many such areas never revived German heritage events and German practices after the war's end.
Sunday, October 22, 2017
Sidebar Synchronicity
I have, like most blogs, a series of sidebars off to the right that link here and there to things and places I find of general interest.
Just because I link to them doesn't mean that I agree with them 100% of the time by any means. Indeed, if you find yourself agreeing with 100% of most websites you like, well. . . . you maybe want to rethink your approach to things a bit.
Anyhow, every now and then you can catch glimpses of synchronicity. It's always interesting when that happens.
One of the sites I link into is dedicated the English writer and philosopher Hillaire Belloc. The current entry from that site provides the following
CULTURES spring from religions; ultimately the vital force which maintains any culture is its philosophy, its attitude toward the universe; the decay of a religion involves the decay of the culture corresponding to it—we see that most clearly in the breakdown of Christendom today. The bad work begun at the Reformation is bearing its final fruit in the dissolution of our ancestral doctrines—the very structure of our society is dissolving.Just below it is my link to the National Archives Tumblr blog where we learned, yesterday, that this is LGBT History Month. In the Tribune I read an editorial in regards to the current Administration and those in the "LGBTQ" "community". I don't know if National Archives is shunning the "Q" or just got confused on the expanding list of letters of the alphabet in this imagined category, but its entry provided:
In honor of LGBT History Month, we would like to share with you a federal court case from 1955 that led to a landmark Supreme Court case regarding the right of free speech, in which the Court held that speech in favor of homosexuals is not inherently obscene.
Tintern Abbey, Wales. This abbey passed from the Church into private
hands in 1540 and the lead was immediately stripped from the roof.
Recently I listed to a BBC History Podcast in which the speaker was speaking on the Reformation. The speaker noted that he was not religious at all, quite the contrary, which in some weird way, as an English historian, may have allowed him to overcome the baggage that English historians usually carry on the Reformation. Having said that, a couple of English historians recently have come out with works that take a refreshing view on this topic. This fellow, to my huge surprise, pretty much condemned Martin Luther and then went on to condemn King Henry VIII, quite a departure from the usually propaganda of the Reformation view that English historians usually have (this is not, I'll note, a post on The Reformation or most certainly not on Martin Luther). One of the points this fellow disturbingly raised is that he was of the opinion that huge historical change, and disastrous change, can happen overnight.
Valle Crucis Abbey, Wales. It was closed by King Henry VII in 1537 and
leased to a private owner. It's now protected by the Welsh government
I think he's right.
And I think we're living in a time that recalls that.
One of the great myths if history, or at least one of the great American erroneous beliefs about history, is that all history is progressive. We're always advancing towards some shining city on a hill. But as English history teaches us that is far from true (and we won't even dare to comment on what Russian history might teach us). At best we might be able to say that history is progressive over a very long time, but not necessarily during any one person's lifetime or even over a period of centuries in many cases. So, if a person is comforted by the thought that history must be advancing, they should be discomforted by the fact that it might not be advancing for you. No, not by any means. And true disasters and radical changes can and do happen nearly overnight.
Let's take the example of the English Reformation, and no I don't mean to pick on Protestants in general and those in the Anglican Communion in particular. Rather, I think the history of what occurred, particularly to average people and their culture, is extremely important and we can take our lead from the English historian noted above who, I might add, was a self declared atheist. As an earlier English historian who has written a book on the English Reformation has recently noted, up until Henry VIII's break with Rome, England was radically Catholic and defined its existence as a Catholic state with a Catholic monarch. When Henry could not obtain an annulment (not a divorce, Henry never obtained a divorce from anyone, contrary to the common opposite assertion) he determined that he, not the Pope, was the head of the Church in England, a view that the Anglican Communion today would regard as fairly absurd (and interestingly at least a few High Anglicans maintain today that, no, the Pope is the head of the Catholic Church of which they view themselves to be part of). So Henry acted to create what was then probably a schism but soon developed into more. Henry never attacked the Mass, but he destroyed the monasteries and soon after his death England was thrown into a state of religious strife that lasted basically until 1660 when the English Restoration occurred. During that century plus period the English lived in a state constantly on the edge of revolution with its social culture completely destroyed and a sort of terror frequently in place that would rival, to some degree, that of the more famous French model that would come a century after that. Catholic Priests were murdered. Peasants rose up in rebellion. Anglicans were suppressed by Calvinists. Anglicans suppressed Calvinists and Catholics. It was horrific.
Glastonbury Abbey, England.
For the average person in the 1530s, life in England became a sort of nightmare and this would continue on for decades. The overall result was that when England finally emerged from the era of endless strife much of its preexisting "Englishness" had vanished and would never return. When Episcopal parishes today look about and wonder why they are generally hurting in the United States (where a huge percentage of the population has English roots) and in England, part, but not all, of that answer lies with King Henry VIII's bedroom driving decisions of the 1530s. Indeed, a large portion of that lies there.
Again, this isn't a history of the Reformation in England, but the point is that Henry VIII destroyed the English culture in significant ways in just a few years. Prior to the 1530s there were Englishmen who held dissenting religious views to be sure, but after Henry VIII nobody could be secure in their views for long. Men and women in the pews went, by law, to their old churches week after week and attended services not knowing if they were Catholics or something else, served by a Priest who couldn't be sure if he was in schism or not, and an overarching terror existing for anyone who dared dissent, which many in fact did. Things to some degree would grow even worse when the same people were told that they were not to attend a Mass at all and that Christmas (along with sports) were being abolished in the name of religion, something that must have been distressing in the extreme. Largely powerless, although at least one major rebellion was attempted, most just went along with it no doubt feeling a constant feeling of distress.
Lincluden Abbey, Scotland. Still a ruin today.
We're undergoing something like that now, but not with religion, but rather human biology, although like the Anglicans to the Catholics, and then the Puritans to everyone, fundamental religious beliefs, along with fundamental scientific truths and also philosophical beliefs are being shunned so that the dissenters, recently the majority and maybe still the majority, play along.
We know more about biology than at any time in our prior history, and yet we are at war as a culture, or at least cultural leaders are, with our actual human nature, a nature which is fallen and far from perfect for anyone which gives rise to problems in everyone. We're a mammal, as we ought to know, with a high level of sexual dimorphism. That is, the two genders, and there are only two, are radically different in human beings. Humans, as a species, are extremely complicated and part of that extreme complication is due to our extremely high level of evolution. That evolution, in turn, has created a situation in which the two genders in human beings show more disparity between themselves than nearly (or perhaps) any other mammal. So great is the disparity that if human samples were viewed in a vacuum with no other knowledge about them a typical scientists would doing a Linnean classification would risk defining them as two separate species. Even our closest relatives in the primate family of animals are nowhere near as dimorphous as we are. And that uniqueness is not only merely in our appearance but it goes right into our core. The psychology of male and female humans is simply different and is different across cultures. Positive and negative human behavior, from a social point of view, repeats in predictable form across cultures and religions with perfect predictability by gender everywhere and throughout time.
We're now pretending that's otherwise, and like the agents of the King in the 1530s, we have actually reached the point where official and semi official organs of government and society require the populous, which held no such beliefs just a few years ago, and in which many doubt them now, to comply. The media insist that Bruce Jenner is a woman, and that his name is now Caitlan, even if only skillful surgery and drugs can create and maintain that appearance. The courts have determined that every American must agree that marriage can be contracted between members of the same sex, which has never been the case in our own history or the history of any other people until suddenly it arrived upon us via Justice Kennedy and his fellow travelers in an area of the law, marriage, that traditionally the Court rarely entered. As a result of that radical departure from the universal past and historical global norm, a baker from Colorado finds himself at the Supreme Court this term for running afoul of a Colorado commission that seeks to require him, against his will, to bake cakes for same sex wedding ceremonies. An American organization that's dedicated to promoting traditional views on marriage found itself without the ability to process credit card donations as its processor, a Wells Fargo entity (not exactly otherwise on the morally clean list recently) bumped them when another group defined them as a "hate group" for taking that view. The Boy Scouts have decided that girls can be "boy" scouts too. The military has determined that an occupation limited pretty much to men since men first picked up a rock and killed a member of another tribe, and which is clearly part of their psychological makeup, must be opened to women even if the NFL basically isn't. The same military has decided that maybe those who are confused about their gender and who seek to change it can somehow also serve in an occupation in which you fight other cultures who have no such confusion and who won't be sympathetic to the confused or their unique medical needs.
This will all have a bad end. It's not possible to take views contrary to nature over the long term. But it is perfectly possible to disrupt, and even destroy, a culture in the short term.
Iona Abbey, Scotland. This site has been partially rebuilt in recent years by the Church of Scotland.
Saturday, October 21, 2017
Poster Saturday: Second Liberty Loan Poster
The Second Liberty Loan was in full swing a century ago.
Best Posts of the Week of October 15, 2017
Another busy week here on Lex Anteinternet, but with out the spike in views that last week saw.
I don't know who Dr. Faria is, but his look at the statistics, and behind them, was very well done and very worth reading. Statistics tell the truth, or lie, depending. . . .Blog Mirror: Gun statistics — Should they be tortured or gently cross-examined? by Miguel A. Faria, MD | Hacienda Publishing
Yes, we have a thing for hats here. . . it's pretty clear.My. . . that is a lot of hats. Second Liberty Load Drive, October 19, 1917. New York City.
Enough hats to make a hat vender cry.
Vietnam: Could we have avoided it?
We hear all the time that "we shouldn't have gone into Vietnam", but like a lot of things that "shouldn't" have happened, would it really have been possible to avoid?
The Army considers a new uniform fabric made out of that super high tech substance. . . .
wool.
Baaaa . . .
A Mid Week At Work Query: What is the meaning of your job, (or does it have one)?
Disturbingly, nobody came in and repoted the meaning of their occupation.
No place for boys. . .
or at least no officially sanctioned ones, anyway. There will still be groups of boys organized without girls, probably largely self organized, and that's a problem.
The radical campaign against masculinity extends down to the Boy Scouts. . . and I wonder if it will end them?
And so our prize for splitting the GOP vote in the primaries last Fall. . . .
We elected, really due to the first past the post system, a Virginian to Congress last election and now the carpet bags are being packed. . . .
Why Learning and Teaching History, Real History, is Really Important
In which we're visited by the adherents of the Lost Cause.
Let the lawsuits begin.An example of what's wrong with American tort law. The Las Vegas Shooting. . .let the tort cases begin.
Perhaps the only really significant post of the past week.Lex Anteinternet: The Miracle of the Sun, October 13, 1917.
Blog Mirror: George F. Will: Democrats are the real abortion extremists
George F. Will: Democrats are the real abortion extremists
From this very good op-ed, a surprising set of facts:
Well worth reading.
This entire topic, I'd note, is disturbing in the extreme. Will goes into the nature of the United States Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which nearly anyone who actually reads it is generally horrified by, given its lack of real cogent analysis on what its opining on, but at least in 1973 science had not advanced to the point where a debate on whether a fetus was really a human being hadn't reached the point of completely lacking credibility. It has now for quite some time. The Democratic Party's antiquated death grip, quite literally, on this issue, lead by antiquated Democrats, has really reached the point where its a sort of bloody, inhumane, farce.
Blog Mirror: Gun statistics — Should they be tortured or gently cross-examined? by Miguel A. Faria, MD | Hacienda Publishing
An interesting article that I saw linked in on a news website.
Gun statistics — Should they be tortured or gently cross-examined? by Miguel A. Faria, MD | Hacienda Publishing
Frankly, I know nothing about this site, but it points out some really interesting things that, if the author is correct, and he seems to be, are very much worth noting. Some of these items are, I'd note, rather grim and a person ought to keep that in mind. They're still worth reading.
So, for example, consider the topic of suicide. The author notes:
Hmmmm. . . . .
Here's another statistic discussed that I saw recently and I was really wondering about:
Frankly, I think the statistic that holds that slightly under half of all American homes own firearms is way off the mark and its likely way up over 50%. Indeed, I've met people who claim that they aren't gun owners when in fact they'll one one or more firearms. They way they figure it, if they inherited or bought it and rarely shot it, they aren't gun owners. It works the same way that my not figuring I'm a Mopar fan works, when there are three Chrysler's out in front of the house. Or the people who claim not to like cats but feed stray cats every day.
Indeed, I've known people who claimed to disdain private firearms ownership and yet owned firearms themselves. They just don't quite acknowledge it, to themselves. And then there are those who keep firearms, sometimes in surprising places (on themselves, in their offices, etc.) but just never say anything about it as that's their nature.
Here's another one that's well handled:
Additionally American culture is much more rootless than nearly any other culture in the world, and that plays an undoubted role in all of this, which makes for another reason statistics of this type are a bit shallow.
Finally, the point about the author being a Hispanic brings up something that I've often noticed which is that the media seems to feel every gun owner is a rural white male. Far from true. In this region of the country Mexican immigrants make up an enthusiastic section of the firearms owning demographic, at least based upon the numerous times I've encountered them at sporting goods stores. Metallic Silhouette target shooting is, in fact, a Mexican sport in terms of its origin that spread to the United States. Blacks in the West are just as likely to own firearms as whites and indeed the Second Amendment history of the country is strongly associated with blacks as firearms ownership took on a deep personal protective meaning to black Southerners following the Civil War, when a rifle or pistol was often the only thing between them and a lynching. Over the past year, in fact, I've noticed that white liberals like to circulate Facebook comments about "I wonder what the NRA will say about this" when blacks are shot by white policemen. Well, if you look you'll find that the NRA pretty consistently urges American blacks to consider carrying concealed firearms if they need protection and it always has.
In part I think the concept that the US is uniquely afflicted in this matter is because mass violence is treated as an act of war in other nations and by the American press when it occurs in those nations, but not here. Indeed, I've often wondered about British statistics on murder and whether or not they included Ulster over the years, as there were certainly years when Ulster had a lot of "gun violence". To bring the example a bit more current, massive attacks in France, Belgium and Spain over the past few years are always treated by the American press as "terrorist attacks" while, at the same time, the nightclub shooting in Florida, and the Canadian Parliament attack in Ottawa, were treated as acts of some random sick man. Those were, dear reader, terrorist attacks, and attacks in aid of the same violent cause. Treating them as weird criminal activities lacking motivation is way off the mark.
There's more there, and the article, by a physician, is well worth reading.
Gun statistics — Should they be tortured or gently cross-examined? by Miguel A. Faria, MD | Hacienda Publishing
Frankly, I know nothing about this site, but it points out some really interesting things that, if the author is correct, and he seems to be, are very much worth noting. Some of these items are, I'd note, rather grim and a person ought to keep that in mind. They're still worth reading.
So, for example, consider the topic of suicide. The author notes:
The CNN article therefore further stated, “Gun-related suicides are eight times higher in the US than in other high-income nations.” But why select gun suicides? Why not compare the U.S. with other nations as to international suicide rates by all means? Fortunately, Mr. Frayne also mentioned Japan, which makes this lesson even more instructive. The latest figures (2016) show that Japan ranks 26th in International Suicide Rates; the Japanese commit suicide via hanging, suffocation, jumping in front of trains, and Hara-kiri at a rate of 19.7 per 100,000, much higher than the United States. Americans rank 48th and the rate is 14.3 per 100,000. Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Hungary, and many other European countries have higher rates of suicide than the U.S., and all of them have stricter gun laws. So obviously, worldwide, people use different cultural methods, guns, or whatever means they have available, to commit suicide, and they do so frequently at a higher rate than the U.S. But the liberal media chooses to cherry pick and compare the U.S. homicide and suicide “gun” rates with other countries to make America look bad. But one is just as dead from a gunshot as by a machete chop!I've wondered about that. To read the news, you'd think that nations with strict gun control have no suicides, but obviously that isn't true. As it turns out, we're fairly far down the list on what is mostly a Western nation (and for purposes of this analysis I'd include Japan in that category) problem. And, as we can see, two countries that are often cited as types of paradise, Norway and Sweden, beat us on that list.
Hmmmm. . . . .
Here's another statistic discussed that I saw recently and I was really wondering about:
As for the assertion, “Half of the 265 million guns in the U.S. are owned by 3 percent of U.S. adults.That’s an average of 17 guns each for individuals in this group.” If the statement is correct, all it means is that 3% of Americans are serious gun collectors. If they were criminals we would not know about their possession. And as to gun ownership, even good citizens, with good reason, lie about their guns. They are afraid of common thieves as well as confiscation by legal predators. Researchers have found that gun surveys underestimate gun possession and gun usage by approximately 36%, which means, for example, that one-third of gun owners will deny gun ownership and even beneficial gun usage in surveys and polls.I've suspected as much about the last comment, and the point about the 3% figure is one that wouldn't have occurred to me.
Frankly, I think the statistic that holds that slightly under half of all American homes own firearms is way off the mark and its likely way up over 50%. Indeed, I've met people who claim that they aren't gun owners when in fact they'll one one or more firearms. They way they figure it, if they inherited or bought it and rarely shot it, they aren't gun owners. It works the same way that my not figuring I'm a Mopar fan works, when there are three Chrysler's out in front of the house. Or the people who claim not to like cats but feed stray cats every day.
Indeed, I've known people who claimed to disdain private firearms ownership and yet owned firearms themselves. They just don't quite acknowledge it, to themselves. And then there are those who keep firearms, sometimes in surprising places (on themselves, in their offices, etc.) but just never say anything about it as that's their nature.
Here's another one that's well handled:
Lastly, echoing CNN, Mr. Frayne asserts, “The gun homicide rate in the U.S. is 25.2 times higher than other high-income countries.” Notice the caveats, “gun homicides” and “high-income countries.” With gun homicides, the liberal media eliminate the competition from other countries where murders are committed, as with suicides, by whatever means available, from beating to death barehanded to swinging machetes, knifing, and whatever the murderous mind may conceive. “High income countries” means that most of the world doesn’t count. I must suppose that only the lives of wealthy (“high-income”) Europeans count and are worth comparing to the U.S. Why? Most of Africa, including North Africa; Latin America, including our next-door neighbor, Mexico and most of the Caribbean and Central America; and the Eurasian landmass, including Russia and Kazakhstan — have higher rates of homicides than the U.S. In Rwanda, the genocide of Tutsis by Hutus was mostly done with machetes. Liberals can get away with anything, but as a Hispanic I have for years resented this neglect of most of the world by the progressive gun-grabbers, and it is time that ethnic and geopolitical discrimination stops. All lives count, particularly when it comes to homicides — with or without guns — and the U.S. is nowhere near the top.This is an excellent point. The way the press cites homicide statistics echoes the attitudes expressed in The White Man's Burden in some odd, odd way. The US isn't near the global top by any means, and additionally our national situation, in which we have a very high immigration rate compared to other European nations. That may sound wrong, but it plays a role in that immigrant populations tend to be more clannish and more impoverished than other demographics and, have over time, this has contributed to American violence in any one era. For example, there have been Irish, Jewish, and Italian criminal gangs in the past, just as today there are gangs made up of other impoverished ethnic groups.
Additionally American culture is much more rootless than nearly any other culture in the world, and that plays an undoubted role in all of this, which makes for another reason statistics of this type are a bit shallow.
Finally, the point about the author being a Hispanic brings up something that I've often noticed which is that the media seems to feel every gun owner is a rural white male. Far from true. In this region of the country Mexican immigrants make up an enthusiastic section of the firearms owning demographic, at least based upon the numerous times I've encountered them at sporting goods stores. Metallic Silhouette target shooting is, in fact, a Mexican sport in terms of its origin that spread to the United States. Blacks in the West are just as likely to own firearms as whites and indeed the Second Amendment history of the country is strongly associated with blacks as firearms ownership took on a deep personal protective meaning to black Southerners following the Civil War, when a rifle or pistol was often the only thing between them and a lynching. Over the past year, in fact, I've noticed that white liberals like to circulate Facebook comments about "I wonder what the NRA will say about this" when blacks are shot by white policemen. Well, if you look you'll find that the NRA pretty consistently urges American blacks to consider carrying concealed firearms if they need protection and it always has.
The CNN article claimed erroneously, “When it comes to gun massacres, the US is an anomaly. There are more public mass shootings in America than in any other country in the world.” Well, I have debunked those assertions elsewhere. As Gun Owners of America (GOA) has reported, France had more mass shootings in 2015 than there were mass shootings in America in all of Obama’s two terms. Besides, mass shootings account for less than 1 percent of murders in the U.S.I haven't read the authors other article (which is linked in on that site) but here too, I've wondered.
In part I think the concept that the US is uniquely afflicted in this matter is because mass violence is treated as an act of war in other nations and by the American press when it occurs in those nations, but not here. Indeed, I've often wondered about British statistics on murder and whether or not they included Ulster over the years, as there were certainly years when Ulster had a lot of "gun violence". To bring the example a bit more current, massive attacks in France, Belgium and Spain over the past few years are always treated by the American press as "terrorist attacks" while, at the same time, the nightclub shooting in Florida, and the Canadian Parliament attack in Ottawa, were treated as acts of some random sick man. Those were, dear reader, terrorist attacks, and attacks in aid of the same violent cause. Treating them as weird criminal activities lacking motivation is way off the mark.
There's more there, and the article, by a physician, is well worth reading.
Friday, October 20, 2017
Camp Funston, adjacent to Ft. Riley, October 20, 1917.
Camp Funston on October 20, 1917. At least according to one theory, Camp Funston was the origin point for the The 1918-1919 Influenza Epidemic that killed millions.
Thursday, October 19, 2017
My. . . that is a lot of hats. Second Liberty Load Drive, October 19, 1917. New York City.
Vietnam: Could we have avoided it?
Map showing respective areas of French and Viet Minh control, and contested ground, in 1954. Purple is the zone controlled by the French. Looking at this, it's really hard to see why anyone would have wanted to follow the French into Vietnam. map of first Indochina war 1954.
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- File:First Indochina War map 1954 de.svg
- Created: 10 October 2014
Let's look at a question that seems to have a presumed answer, but which might be a harder question to actually answer.
Could we have avoided entering the war entirely?
The answer to this question often seems a simple presumed "yes". I know that was my mother's opinion, "we shouldn't have gone there". And she certainly isn't alone in that view. Quite a few people hold that as an opinion of fact, perhaps even the majority of Americans.
But avoiding wars is often more difficult than it seems and the path around the conflict only apparent, in some cases, after the war's over. Once you choose to walk down certain streets, it''s hard to run back down them. So we should look at this seriously. Maybe the Vietnam War was a disaster, but an unavoidable one.
Japanese troops entering Saigon in 1941. French Indochina acquiesced to Japanese presence as after the fall of France in 1940 it was isolated and had little choice. This lead to a French war with Thailand in 1940 in one of the more surreal moments of the war in which French naval forces defeated Thai forces but were forced to accept a resolution with Thailand over territory that basically amounted to a Thai victory. In March of 1945, in an example of flagrant self delusion, the Japanese sponsored a coup in Vietnam and established it as a pupped empire which was not long to exist.
We showed up in Vietnam for the first time during World War Two in the form of an OSS mission. That we surely could have avoided and its impact on the war overall was no doubt extremely negligible. That may have had an impact on the Vietnamese indigenous effort against the Japanese, but I'm not terribly familiar with that story and I frankly doubt that it did. What it seems to have done is to have raised Viet Minh hopes that the United States would recognize the Viet Minh as the legitimate government of Vietnam and help keep out the French. The hope was not irrational.
The OSS was the predecessor to the CIA, as is well know, but it was not the same hardcore anti Communist organization that the CIA was. Indeed, the freewheeling OSS had a fair number of Communist and Communist sympathizers in it, including, perhaps, at least one, Lt. Col. Duncan Chaplin Lee (a descendant of Moss Robert) who were very high placed in the organization.* Donovan, much like Frankly Roosevelt, was basically blind to the dangers that Communism posted and the OSS only half heartedly complied with instructions to make sure that its operatives were not Communists. This isn't to say that they were all Communist by any means, but in those early days during the Roosevelt Administration Communists were basically assumed to be sort of extremely left wing Democrats and weren't taken very seriously. Additionally, Roosevelt was highly anti Colonial in his views and the OSS reflected this view very strongly. British secret service agents complained to their superiors repeatedly that they felt that they were in a constant struggle with the OSS and the OSS in the field was pretty open that they indeed were at that.
So, in context, that the United States would send OSS agents into occupied French Indochina, and that the indigenous guerilla organization there, a nationalist anti French and anti Japanese movement with strong Communist elements would receive our support is hardly surprising. But did that make much of a difference to anything? Probably not.
British sailors accepting the surrender of Japanese arms in Vietnam. The British, not the French, were the first European power to return to Vietnam albeit on a temporary basis until the country could be stabilized and returned to the French. Ironically, they had to rearm Japanese troops in order to fulfill that mission.
The US left as the French came back in, really having nothing further to do. The US wouldn't return in any fashion until the French effort to restore their colony was badly failing.
In the interval between the Japanese surrender in 1945 and the increasing disaster of the French effort in the mid 1950s a lot had occurred, all of which we've already discussed. The Cold War was now on. So here we have the first thing to consider.
Should we have simply refused to aid the French in any fashion in Vietnam? That would have kept us away from the country, maybe.
Well, that would have been very hard to do. Colonial power that it was, and anti colonial power that the United States was and is, both countries were western democracies. Moreover, France was one of our World War Two allies but a highly unstable one. Prior to the war French democracy had teetered on the brink occasionally as the European right slid into fascism. France had surrendered under a massive German assault in 1940, as is well known (and contrary to what armchair generals may think, there was no realistic way that the French could have stopped the 1940 German invasion). France thereafter legally became a neutral and the Free French forces that fought with the British and the the British and the Americans up through Operation Torch. Vichy basically fell after Operation Torch which saw French forces defect, after some period of doubt, to the Allied cause, and the Germans thereafter marched into southern France. Vichy as a real sovereign, therefore, only existed until November 1942, having therefore existed only a little over two years, but Vichy officials continued to exercise civil authority, unwisely, thereafter, fleeing to Germany after the Allied landings in France in 1944.
The Cross Lorraine, the Christina symbol that DeGaulle chose for the French resistance movement. The hammer and sickle wold have been a more appropriate symbol for many French Maquis.
French maquis with a British Sten gun, an American lieutenant with a M1911 pistol, and French police and a disinterested American soldier in the background. Hopefully this was a staged photographs as otherwise the Frenchman is basically serving as cover for the lieutenant.
Following the war the French had many wartime ghosts to contend with as well as major political problems to immediately deal with. This necessitated a dedicated an effort, in their view, to restore their colonial empire and to defeat Communism wherever it was, just as at home Communist remained a major actor on the French political scene. That the reconstituted French military would be highly anti Communist and pro empire is not surprising.
Nor could the United States in anyway ignore France. The US had to do what it could to support France's return to the European scene as a functioning, free, European state. And that meant supporting France, at least to some degree, where she elsewhere was.
The United States was never very keen on that, but looking back its difficult to see what choice the US had. The US was partially rearming France (France was also partially rearming itself). The US needed a free France as a European ally. That in and of itself meant that the French military was receiving US aid and part of that aid was being used in Indochina. When the Korean War came France contributed to forces on the Korean peninsula and those forces were equipped and trained to fight in the logistically rich American way with American equipment. Those same units later went directly from Korean to Indochina. The US was supporting the war in Indochina whether it meant to or not.
French marines disembark from a formerly American landing craft in Vietnam.
That in turn lead to growing reluctant direct support to the French effort in the war. But not, in the end, to direct involvement in spite of that nearly coming to pass. In the end, the US backed down from intervening in the French fall in Indochina and instead it let the French fall. This decision was probably the wise one, and so the US did in fact avoid Vietnam, at first.
But it stopped doing that as the negotiations to end the French Indochinese War commenced. The US took a very direct role in that. And here's where our real involvement in Vietnam began.
The French Indochinese War was resolved after nearly a decade of fighting through a conference that was held in Geneva. The war in Indochina wasn't the only topic, and the conference was somewhat of a mess. The situation in Korea was also on the table.. The then current members of the United Nations Security Council were the participants, those being the USSR, the US, the UK, France and the People's Republic of China, plus those countries and parties that had a role in the two pending conflicts.
No resolution was reached on the topics that pertained to Korea. The resolution, in the case of Indochina, occurred, but was far from perfect.
Concerning Vietnam, which had only just acquired that name, the conference reached what was called the Geneva Accords. Prior to that the concept of a united Vietnam was in some ways oddly introduced by way of the combined effort of the Viet Minh, which was fighting for it, and Emperor Bảo Đại, who had managed to go from being the Emperor of the Nguyen Dynasty under French protection, in Annam (Emperor of Annam), to being the Japanese sponsored Emperor of Vietnam, to being the Head of State of Vietnam. In short, he was a survivor, and by that time was living mostly in France, which would prove to be wise. Bảo Đại appointed Ngô Đình Diệm, whom we have already discussed, as the Prime Minister of the country. He'd soon depose the Emperor and declare the nation a republic.
As a republic, under the Geneva Accords, he found himself President, with dubious democratic credentials of only that part of the country below the 17th Parallel. The accords split the country in two with the concept that an election would soon follow, but the entire process, including who would monitor an election that would obviously be subject to fraud, was subject to debate and the American proposal that the UN monitor the election ultimately failed. The resulting agreement was not agreed to at all by what would become South Vietnam and the United States and none of the parties on the ground adhered to its tenants. The North did not withdraw its forces and the South, which wasn't really part of the agreement anyway, did not hold an election.
By the time the agreement was reached the United States was heavily involved in efforts concerning Vietnam. It was just sort of increasingly sucked in. But that event made some sense. Being a strategic coastal region of the Asian continent, having been heavily involved in Korea, and being the major democratic power in the world, there was no realistic way that the United States could sit it out. In the end, it didn't sign the agreement, but by the time it was reached it was heavily involved in the diplomatic developments.
It seems impossible that anything else could have occurred.
That brings us to the period from 1955 to 1963 in which South Vietnam fought against increasing odds against North Vietnam. We've already discussed that. Having allied with Diem, who was anti Communist and anti French, the United States necessarily became South Vietnam's military supplier and military backer. Again, it's hard to imagine any other result occurring. So the period of increasing military involvement, from 1955 to 1963, seems more or less inevitable.
What was not inevitable, by any measure, was the 1963 coup that deposed Diem. That was extraordinary and the United States was complicit in it. There's little excuse for that, although a person can question whether or not that coup would have occurred anyhow, perhaps in 1964 or, if the country had managed to hang on that long, 1965. By that time, at any event, the Untied States was increasingly involved in the Republic of Vietnam's war against the Viet Cong and not always in a way that the RVN appreciated. But here too, it's difficult to imagine this occurring otherwise.
Indeed, today the United States is likewise involved in odd wars all over the world. Just this path month we've seen an example of American troops being involved in combat in Niger, a country that few Americans know anything about, and we're told that the US is waging a drone war against Al Shabob in Somalia. All told, the US is involved in greater or lesser efforts in Iraq, Niger, Somalia, Afghanistan and likely other places, often on a small scale. At the height of the Cold War, U.S. involvement in South Vietnam's struggles in the 1955 to 1963 time frame do not seem possible to have avoided. The coup, however, could have been avoided in 1963.
The 1963 coup did nothing to arrest the slide that the South was under and in 1964 and 1965 US involvement increased considerably. Here's where we have to really question if the US was getting in too far, but even in those years the steps were small enough that you can see how they occurred. In 1965 the US established an air base at Da Nang and soon thereafter was patrolling in the area to protect it. U.S. involvement increased steadily from there.
I've twice mentioned that the Australians could have come in deeper when they were asking for the US to prior to 1965. That's true, but it didn't happen, therefore we won't reconsider that scenario. The real breaking point is the 1965 commitment of air power to Vietnam. Did we have to do that?
Looking back it's easy to say no. But it was, after all, just air power. . . at first. Its hard, once again, to see how that limited increase in our involvement would inevitably mean 400,000 men on the ground soon thereafter, if viewed from the prospective of 1965. Looking back, it seems inevitable.
And hence the point.
The war was hard to avoid.
But it stopped doing that as the negotiations to end the French Indochinese War commenced. The US took a very direct role in that. And here's where our real involvement in Vietnam began.
The French Indochinese War was resolved after nearly a decade of fighting through a conference that was held in Geneva. The war in Indochina wasn't the only topic, and the conference was somewhat of a mess. The situation in Korea was also on the table.. The then current members of the United Nations Security Council were the participants, those being the USSR, the US, the UK, France and the People's Republic of China, plus those countries and parties that had a role in the two pending conflicts.
No resolution was reached on the topics that pertained to Korea. The resolution, in the case of Indochina, occurred, but was far from perfect.
Bảo Đại, Emperor of Annam, Emperor of Vietnam, Head of State of Vietnam and then exile in France.
Concerning Vietnam, which had only just acquired that name, the conference reached what was called the Geneva Accords. Prior to that the concept of a united Vietnam was in some ways oddly introduced by way of the combined effort of the Viet Minh, which was fighting for it, and Emperor Bảo Đại, who had managed to go from being the Emperor of the Nguyen Dynasty under French protection, in Annam (Emperor of Annam), to being the Japanese sponsored Emperor of Vietnam, to being the Head of State of Vietnam. In short, he was a survivor, and by that time was living mostly in France, which would prove to be wise. Bảo Đại appointed Ngô Đình Diệm, whom we have already discussed, as the Prime Minister of the country. He'd soon depose the Emperor and declare the nation a republic.
As a republic, under the Geneva Accords, he found himself President, with dubious democratic credentials of only that part of the country below the 17th Parallel. The accords split the country in two with the concept that an election would soon follow, but the entire process, including who would monitor an election that would obviously be subject to fraud, was subject to debate and the American proposal that the UN monitor the election ultimately failed. The resulting agreement was not agreed to at all by what would become South Vietnam and the United States and none of the parties on the ground adhered to its tenants. The North did not withdraw its forces and the South, which wasn't really part of the agreement anyway, did not hold an election.
By the time the agreement was reached the United States was heavily involved in efforts concerning Vietnam. It was just sort of increasingly sucked in. But that event made some sense. Being a strategic coastal region of the Asian continent, having been heavily involved in Korea, and being the major democratic power in the world, there was no realistic way that the United States could sit it out. In the end, it didn't sign the agreement, but by the time it was reached it was heavily involved in the diplomatic developments.
It seems impossible that anything else could have occurred.
That brings us to the period from 1955 to 1963 in which South Vietnam fought against increasing odds against North Vietnam. We've already discussed that. Having allied with Diem, who was anti Communist and anti French, the United States necessarily became South Vietnam's military supplier and military backer. Again, it's hard to imagine any other result occurring. So the period of increasing military involvement, from 1955 to 1963, seems more or less inevitable.
What was not inevitable, by any measure, was the 1963 coup that deposed Diem. That was extraordinary and the United States was complicit in it. There's little excuse for that, although a person can question whether or not that coup would have occurred anyhow, perhaps in 1964 or, if the country had managed to hang on that long, 1965. By that time, at any event, the Untied States was increasingly involved in the Republic of Vietnam's war against the Viet Cong and not always in a way that the RVN appreciated. But here too, it's difficult to imagine this occurring otherwise.
Indeed, today the United States is likewise involved in odd wars all over the world. Just this path month we've seen an example of American troops being involved in combat in Niger, a country that few Americans know anything about, and we're told that the US is waging a drone war against Al Shabob in Somalia. All told, the US is involved in greater or lesser efforts in Iraq, Niger, Somalia, Afghanistan and likely other places, often on a small scale. At the height of the Cold War, U.S. involvement in South Vietnam's struggles in the 1955 to 1963 time frame do not seem possible to have avoided. The coup, however, could have been avoided in 1963.
The 1963 coup did nothing to arrest the slide that the South was under and in 1964 and 1965 US involvement increased considerably. Here's where we have to really question if the US was getting in too far, but even in those years the steps were small enough that you can see how they occurred. In 1965 the US established an air base at Da Nang and soon thereafter was patrolling in the area to protect it. U.S. involvement increased steadily from there.
I've twice mentioned that the Australians could have come in deeper when they were asking for the US to prior to 1965. That's true, but it didn't happen, therefore we won't reconsider that scenario. The real breaking point is the 1965 commitment of air power to Vietnam. Did we have to do that?
Looking back it's easy to say no. But it was, after all, just air power. . . at first. Its hard, once again, to see how that limited increase in our involvement would inevitably mean 400,000 men on the ground soon thereafter, if viewed from the prospective of 1965. Looking back, it seems inevitable.
And hence the point.
The war was hard to avoid.
_________________________________________________________________________________
*Lt. Col. Lee was a confidential assistant ot Wild Bill Donovan, the head of the organization. His status as a supplier of information to the Soviets is not proven beyond a doubt, but he was named by Elizabeth Benchley as a supplier of information and is associated with a second Soviet spy, Mary Price, with whom he was having an affair. Benchley's accusation lead to hsi downfall in the American military but he went on to be a successful lawyer thereafter and moved to Canada with his wife, who was a Canadian, in his retirement in the 1970s.
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