Polytechnic Institute, Auburn, Alabama, April 15th, 1918

Surprised? No, we knew that all along.

The January issue of the Smithsonian magazine has an article with this headline:

New Research Dispels the Myth That Ancient Cultures Had Universally Short Lifespans

The article starts off with:

After examining the graves of over 300 people buried in Anglo Saxon English cemeteries between 475 and 625 AD, archaeologist Christine Cave of the Australian National University made a discovery that might surprise you. She found that several of the bodies in the burial grounds were over 75 years old when they died.

Yawn.

We knew this all along, and we've said this numerous times before here.

Yup, we have:

The suggestion of the letter writer was that human beings live longer than they used to. This is a common belief, people state that all the time, but it simply isn't true. People live the same number of years that they always have. That number of years varies by population and culture, but it's generally between 60 and 120 years. Extreme old age generally seems to cap out at an absolute maximum of 120 years, a span that's actually mentioned in the Old Testament, interestingly enough. The longest any human in modern times has been recorded to have live is 122 years. There are claimed examples of people living in excess of this number of years, but they lack verification and tend to be subject to serious questioning. This is not to say, of course, that anyone can live to 120 years. Far from it. Only a tiny minority of people shall ever approach that age. But instances of advance years in any one era are quite easy to find. Chief Washakie, for example, lived to be 99 or 100 years of age and was not the only Native American of that to have done so. Adams and Jefferson lived into their 80s. And so on.

And now to that list we can add some disinterred Anglo Saxons.

So the origin of the "myth".  Well, we repeat what we noted before:

So what does all this mean? Perhaps not that much, but the common modern assumption that we're living longer is simply incorrect. Things aren't killing us before we reach our natural end of life. That's what is occurring.

The US, UK and France hit Syria. Will it work?

 The Al Assad family.  Snappy dressers and head of a murderous regime.  The current dictator is in the upper row, second from the left.

And by work, I guess, I mean will it deter Assad from gassing his people in the future?

I doubt it.

Assad is essentially a species of murderous fascist propped up by a tottering theocracy and an oligarchic corruptocracy.   But for Iran and and Russia, he'd still be struggling as the leader of one faction against a host of others. The others, for their part, vary from semi quasi democratic Kurds, Not Communist but you can see it from there Kurds, Socialist, and Islamist.  None of them, except perhaps the Kurds, can get along with each other and nobody can form a government that anyone else will tolerate.

Syria is a real mix. It's home to Sunnis, Shiia, Alawites, and Christians.  And its broken.  Ruled now by the Baathists, who are basically a regional fascist party, and by Alawites who are Baathist at that, it's a house of cards and hopelessly broken for the near and middle term.  Iran, for that matter, also is.

It can't be put back together.

Preventing further gassing would be nice.  And it has to be tried.  And the raids, therefore, had to be done.  But it's not going to work.

What would replace these folks (ignoring what we'd get in their place)?  It's hard to say. But with Iranian and Russian backing, they'll be staying in place.  Iran will take care of itself, as the Iranian regime is on the guillotine reading Archie cartoons.  Russia?  Much harder to say.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: First United Methodist Church Laramie, Wyoming

Churches of the West: First United Methodist Church Laramie, Wyoming:

This is the First United Methodist Church in Laramie, Wyoming.  I know very little about this church, but the design in striking.  When I livedin Laramie I used to pass by it often on the way to school and often thought that the church resembled the keel of a ship, upturned.

Best Posts of the Week of April 8, 2018.

The Best Post of the Week of April 8, 2018.

A busy week here on the old LexA.

Orthodox Easter, 2018.

St Peter and St. Paul Orthodox Church, Salt Lake City Utah

Big Horn Hot Springs, Thermopolis, Wyoming. April 8, 1918.

This photograph was taken a century ago, today.

If it looks familiar, perhaps that's because we use it as the flagship photograph for our Railhead blog, dedicated to railroad themes. 

The Kaiserschlacht Continues. April 9, 1918. Operation Georgette

Troops to the Mexican Border?

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Election. Volume Two

The National Mid Terms, 2018

Syria. We told you so.

The dinner plate on the Home Front. When things were so tight it was a good idea to go Chinese. 雜碎

A Gun Culture that nobody worries about. Switzerland

A Gun Culture that nobody worries about. Switzerland

 Swiss Ruetli match.  Oh my. . . that guy is shooting a Stg57 semi automatic rifle that was probably truly converted from the true assault rifle version.

We've been running a lot of posts on firearms recently in reaction to the movement that has convinced itself that simply banning certain categories of them, categories which, at least mechanically, are nothing new (but see our posts on ARs), while ignoring the fact that whatever is going on is clearly societal in nature.

But ignoring societal problems, or at least making them superficial is, as we've also noted, what usually happens in such debates.  If they're addressed, responsibility rears its stern head and modern American culture, if anything, has been dedicated to avoiding personal responsibility. . . heck any kind of responsibility, at all costs, at least since the 1970s.

So its worth noting that there are plenty of other cultures that have a "gun culture", as the media likes to portray it.  Indeed, as we've also noted gun ownership is nearly universally allowed globally, although varying degrees of control vary widely.

Anyhow, Switzerland is worth looking at. Switzerland has a gun culture.  Indeed, target shooting is the national sport.  A national referendum recently to try to restrict firearms resulted in an overwhelming defeat with lots of language that Americans would easily recognize coming into play.  But Switzerland also has a very low crime rate and none of the types of problems we've seen recently in the US (which has a declining rate of violence, as we've noted before).

Time magazine looked at this awhile back with an eye towards explaining it and one of the things they came up with was this?

One of the reasons the crime rate in Switzerland is low despite the prevalence of weapons — and also why the Swiss mentality can’t be transposed to the current American reality — is the culture of responsibility and safety that is anchored in society and passed from generation to generation. Kids as young as 12 belong to gun groups in their local communities, where they learn sharpshooting. The Swiss Shooting Sports Association runs about 3,000 clubs and has 150,000 members, including a youth section. Many members keep their guns and ammunition at home, while others choose to leave them at the club. And yet, despite such easy access to pistols and rifles, “no members have ever used their guns for criminal purposes,” says Max Flueckiger, the association’s spokesperson.

“Social conditions are fundamental in deterring crime,” says Peter Squires, professor of criminology and public policy at the University of Brighton in Great Britain, who has studied gun violence in different countries and concluded that a “culture of support” rather than focus on individualism, can deter mass killings.

“If people have a responsible, disciplined and organized introduction into an activity like shooting, there will be less risk of gun violence,” he tells TIME.

Swiss youth target shooting course.  These kids are shooting .22 LR rifles

There's a lot that's telling here, including, amongst other things, that Time magazines reporter had an element of denseness in his comments, while at the same time he may have picked up on something that's quite correct.

Okay, on what's correct.  There likely is something about a generation to generation passing on of firearms "culture" that makes these sorts of violent acts unlikely in a society that does that. What Time missed is that in fact this has been  the rule in the United States, and Canada, up until very recently.

Switzerland, in spite of being a European nation, has been a nation with an agrarian culture to a large extent.  That's easy to miss, but it's true. While Switzerland has large cities, it also has the Alpine pattern of settlement in which the defining nature of the country is the numerous small villages and towns in Alpine valleys.  These are rural by their very nature.  Switzerland also has a "right to roam", as many European countries do, a strong hunting culture, and a very strong militia history and culture which made shooting the national sport for men and women.  Unlike other nations which have sought to restrict what people could have at home, Switzerland has required its men to keep their service arms at home, including true assault rifles.  Retiring militia men can opt to keep their service weapons, both rifles and pistols, after their service is done.  Purchasing semi automatic rifles, even for non Swiss citizens, is fairly easy.  Support for firearms ownership is high even amongst those who don't shoot.

This isn't all that unusual either for European nations, although Switzerland provides the most prominent example.  Shooting sports are popular in Scandinavia, which does feature greater controls by various nations, but only recently, rural Germany, Eastern Europe and the Czech Republic.  Indeed, the latter nation nearly amended its constitution last year to insert a right to keep and bear arms in it.  Iceland has a very high firearms ownership rate and almost, we might note, no homicide whatsoever.

Where the reporter was off the mark, likely as he has little experience outside of the concrete world, is that in a lot of the United States outside of the large metropolitan areas what's describe in the Time article is exactly what occurs in the US, and has occurred for eons.

 Female teenage 4H competitive shooter.

4H, the youth agricultural organization, has had a shooting sports program that goes back to the 1970s.  It's spread across the United States and exists everywhere, teaching very young shooters up to 18 year olds how to shoot on the range, including the rifle range, the pistol range, and the trap shooting range.  The Boy Scouts also have such a program (and maybe the Girl Scouts too, I'm less familiar with them).  At one time JrROTC had such a program for high school aged kids and when I went to high school they shot in a rifle range in the basement of the school with .22s.  My late office neighbor was on a regional champion JrROTC rifle team which shot the M1903 rifle, the .30-06 service rifle then in use, when he was in high school.  Now the JrROTC teams compete with air rifles, which is sort of sad, but at the same time I'd note that 4H, in addition to .22 LR also has air rifle teams.

The much maligned by the press National Rifle Association sets the disciplines used in all youth shooting in the United States, outside of the service rifle and pistol disciplines, and sponsors some of its own clubs youth teams.  So that makes at least four different youth groups that have rifle teams in the US.  Additionally, in my region, a local club sponsors a youth biathlon team.

So, what's the point?  Well, that "culture" that the Time reporter noted does in fact exist in the United States, outside of the steel and concrete nightmare that the our "modern" economy continues to rush to create. The byproduct of that corporate capitalist world seems increasingly to be an environment which has a byproduct of disorder and unhappiness.

That may very well be the real problem.

Poster Saturday. More American Reserve Power

Friday Farming News: Rhode Island directly purchases farms to preserve farming. Midwestern farmers worry about trade wars

Rhode Island farm, 1917

In an effort to preserve its farms and to allow young people to get into farming, the State of Rhode Island is buying farms that are for sale, irrespective of their inflated development value, and then reselling them to young farmers at their agricultural value with restrictive covenants on future development.

Good for Rhode Island.

The development pressure in a place like Rhode Island, one of the most densely populated states in the union, have to be intense.  But none the less there remain young people there who desire to farm.  Their farming efforts, based on the article I read about this new program, are market farms, or market gardening type farms, on very small acreages. The price of land is intense.  A real uphill battle.  I'm glad the state recognizes the value of having land preserved in this fashion and give them a lot of credit for taking this on.

Not everyone is.  One older farmer complained that "this is what the Communist did".

Nope, that's not what the Communist did at all.  

This is what those with an eye towards the future, with an agrarian eye, and a Distributist eye do in the present, in Rhode Island, and hopefully more places in the US in the future.

Driving pigs, 1916.

If politicians back east are worrying about the fortune of farming in their states, at least in one case, in the Midwest they're worrying about a trade war with China.

Well, all the way into the West, it turns out.

China in recent years has become an enormous importer of American pork and it was just set to become a major importer of American beef.  With the US set to ramp up tariffs on Chinese steel and other products China is retaliating, or threatening to, with tariffs on food imports to that country from the United States.

The wisdom of putting tariffs on food imports is really questionable, but it would hurt beef and pork producers to be sure.  All of this is a lesson on how ignoring a trade problem in its infancy, and we definitely have a long running one with China, is a really bad idea.

China is an international trade menace as it doesn't play fair and it steals information from other nations.  It should be slapped down, but that slapping should have occurred a decade ago.  We didn't do that, and as the GOP and the Democrats have been complicit in a cheap goods policy that basically encouraged the exporting of manufacturing overseas (one of the major factors that lead to the rise of Trump) they jointly had low motivation to address it.

Cheap goods, of course, are fine if you have the money to buy them from your good paying job, but once you have no jobs, that's pretty academic and that's what's happened in a lot of the American Rust Belt.  Those folks are mad, and Trump is their herald.  So we're hurtling towards a belated trade war that may very well be way too late and rather economically bloody, something that Trump should rethink and the suit and tie class, including the last couple of Presidents, ought to be berated for allowing to be set up.

A real oddity of it, however, is than it this process the American economy started to rhyme with the economy of the late 19th Century.  Not duplicate it, but mirror it.  The US was always a major agricultural producer but in the declining era of heavy manufacturing that sector of the economy has improved and become more important. . . sort of like it was prior to the 1890s.

Now, things are changing again as some manufacturing is returning to the US.  Trump has been getting credit for this, but that takes years to occur and likely reflects the cycle of manufacturing development.  So things are bouncing back in a more high tech fashion as the US has kept the lead there, a byproduct of a bunch of things but particularly of a good university system that, while it supports piles of fluff, does the important stuff really well.  Contrary to widespread "progressive" views the US is very near the top in producing university graduates. So much so that a lot of them can't find work in their chosen fields.

Anyhow, shades of the early 1890s here. . . which isn't good.  

Recall the Depression of 1893?

Control that Sugar Intake for Your Country, Darn it!

Another great post from A Hundred Years Ago.

Sugarless Sweets?? Sugar Substitutes During WWI

What the heck?  Early shades of a nanny state watching your waste-line?

Nope.

Ships.

Of course, it wasn't just ships, but also the need to conserve white sugar for the use in food that was being supplied to the military.

Take a look at the substitutes on the link, it's fascinating. All the substitutes were in fact sugars, just in other forms.  I note that as today we have a lot of sugar substitutes that aren't sugar. . .they aren't even all natural. 

The dinner plate on the Home Front. When things were so tight it was a good idea to go Chinese. 雜碎

 Early morning photograph of JS Chinese Restaurant in Casper, Wyoming.  I don't know how long a Chinese restaurant has been at this location, but it's a long time.  This location was originally something called "The Green Derby", and when I was a kid, the sign for The Green Derby was still there, but it was, none the less, a Chinese restaurant even then.

Eh? 

Or, perhaps more appropriately, 什么？

Well, let us explain.

1918 Chop Suey Recipe from the Kansas State Council of Defense

This introductory paragraph from this entry at A Hundred Years Ago explains it:

In 1918, World War I was raging. There were food shortages, and the U.S. government was shipping wheat and other foodstuffs to the troops in Europe. To help cooks on the home front use “conservation as far as possible of food which can be sent abroad,” the Kansas State Council of Defense published One-Dish Meals.

And Chop Suey turned out to be one of those dishes.

I have to say that this really surprised me as I just don't think of there being Chinese dishes in the US in 1918, let alone ones like Chop Suey.  I'm far from an expert on Chinese food, but my understanding is that Chop Suey is a Chinese American dish invented by Chinese restaurateurs in the US for the American diner.  Wikipedia, notes, however, that one E. N. Anderson, a scholar of Chinese food scholar (how come I don't have a job like that?) claims the dish descends from tsap seui (杂碎, "miscellaneous leftovers"), common in Taishan County in Guangdong province which provided many early Chinese migrants to the US.  One Dr. Li Shu-fan of Hong Kong recorded it as being on tables in Toisan in the 1890s.  So maybe it really is Chinese in origin, which would be nice.

Take that Gen. Tso.

 Zuo Zongtang, Marquess Kejing (Tso Tsung-t'ang), Chinese military leader who coordinated Qing forces to attack the Taiping rebels with support from British and French forces in the 1860s.  He lived in Hunan and had nothing to do with any chicken dishes that were subsequently named in his honor in Chinese American cuisine.

Anyhow, it obviously was well enough know by 1918 for the State of Kansas to include it in a recipe books, which means it had obviously crossed the nation.  I was, nonetheless, surprised.

But then, I was also surprised to see chili in the Army cookbook from the second half of the 19th Century, meaning the well known Mexican dish was pretty common by then, even if the recipe isn't quite what we'd expect today.

 1896 U.S. Army recipe for chili.  Is this what you'd regard as chili?

1916 recipe, with beans.  This looks quite a bit more familiar. Is anyone else surprised by some of the entrees in this Army cookbook?  Roast goose? Roast duck? Tamales also show up in the book.

By the way, the Chop Suey recipe looks pretty darned good.  I may have to try it.  Up to now, the limit of my Chinese food experimentation, in terms of my actually trying to cook it here at home, has been limited to Crispy Duck.

And for a dish that's a "time of want" dish, I have to note that the variety of ingredients is impressive.

It omits, however, wheat. And as we know from other posts here, wheat was a "fighting food" that the nation was trying to conserve.  Rice wasn't in as great of demand.

By way of a no doubt odd comment, one thing that disturbed me here is the use of the term "One-Dish Meal".  There's nothing wrong with One Dish Meals, but the term is quite similar to one used by the Nazi German government as food grew tight in World War Two, that being "One Pot Meals". The Nazis would actually send flunkies around to make sure that people were sticking to one pot meals, and hence conserving food, but that same task was also likely served the scarcity of food items in Germany as the war went on.  In looking it up, I did oddly find a reference to German One Pot Meals, for which I was hoping to find a period depiction to post, and instead found this item on a recipe page:

This is the easiest meal anyone could make! I learned how to make this from my first mother-in-law many years ago. The marriage didn't last, but the recipe did! As a young bride, I wanted to make good meals and this dish was a favorite!

 That's the only reference I found which, while it shouldn't, does make me wonder where that person's "first mother in law" learned the recipe. . .

Well, anyhow, back to Chop Suey.

Chop Suey was once such a popular dish that apparently quite a few Chinese restaurants were simply called that, according to Wikipedia.  I think I may have seen signs advertising it in San Francisco's China Town the first time I was there, in the mid 1980s, but I can only dimly recall that.  I didn't take any photos there, and should have.  Anyhow, as the dish arose in the Chinese American restaurant trade that raises the other surprising fact, to me, that there must have been sufficient Chinese restaurants in the U.S. at the time such that the dish was well known.  I don't know why that surprises me, but it does, and it makes me wonder how many other ethnic restaurant types existed in the US by that time.  Italian restaurants must have been common, at least in big cities.  I wonder what else was common?

Indeed, this is one of those areas that shows how similar, rather than dissimilar, the past is from the present, while also showing the opposite.  A familiar food item today, which we wouldn't expect, but at the same time in a setting that isn't familiar to us as well.

Anyhow, we'll conclude with Louis Armstrong's Cornet Chop Suey, which in case you wonder as to why it is titled that, is a musical mix.

o^.

Syria. We told you so.

Long time readers here will recall that we were opposed to intervening in the Syrian civil war back during President Obama's presidency.   My reasoning is that it was folly in the extreme to believe that there was a western rebel force that was going to turn Syria into a democracy.  Like it or not, the Assad regime actually is the most western force in the region, fascist though it is.

An added set of fears was that getting into the Syrian civil war in a halfway sort of way would prop up incompetent forces against less incompetent ones, prolong the war and open the Syrian government up to increased cooperation with Iran and Russia.

All of this has come true.

We would have been better off just pounding ISIL targets in Syria.  If we were going to go beyond that, we should have given massive support to the Kurds. Enough that they could bloody not only Damascus but Istanbul if need be.

Well, here we are.

Now for the second time in a year Damascus has used chemical weapons.  Last time we struck back. We're going to have to now.

And when we do, we should contemplate the extent to which a second rate power ruled by a tin pot dictator, Vladimir Putin, is responsible for this to some degree.  We opened the door, at least a bit, to the Russians coming in, and they did.  They seem to still fight, everywhere they fight, as if it's 1944, not 2018.  Military advisors are likely telling the President to make sure he doesn't hit any Russian targets in Syria.

But the Russians and Iranians went in and they're propping Assad up.

Should their interests be considered?  Should the Russian military, which is hardly the first rate power its portrayed to be, be given a pass?

And what about the Kurds.  Why aren't they entitled to a state, if we must stay in and try to sort out this mess.

112th Military Police, Col. Tom O. Crossan, commanding, Camp Sheridan, Alabama, April12, 1918

Miss Beatle, American Red Cross. April 12, 1918.

Natrona County Tribune, April 11, 1918. US troops engage Mexican raiders

Of course most of the news was on the war in Europe, where it was reported that Americans were being committed to battle in the British sector, the British and the Portuguese now being pressed, as we know, by Operation Georgette.

But the Tribune, which unlike the other Casper paper wasn't completely dominated by oil news on the cover, also reported that there had been a skirmish with Mexican forces of some sort, probably raiders, along the border.  One of the Cheyenne papers also included this on the front page, so the troubles to the south managed to reappear even in the midst of the massive 1918 German Spring Offensive.

As it turned out, this skirmish was only that, with American troops apparently repulsing an attempted raid into Texas by Mexican forces of some sort.

President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (the Fair Housing Act).

President Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act of 1968.

It was one of his hallmark achievements.

On this day, in 1968, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968 into law.  The act prohibited discrimination in housing rentals and sales based on race, religion or national origin.  

Prior to this bill such discrimination had been common.  Indeed, restrictive covenants in deeds for entire subdivisions commonly did just that.  One such example in Casper, Wyoming, which we would not normally think of in this context, prohibited the sale of houses to "Mongolians".

Montgomery Alabama., Capital grounds, flag dedication, April 11, 1918

The Military Service (No. 2) Act, 1918 attempts to extend conscription to Ireland. April 9, 1918.

And would, accordingly, prove to be a big mistake.

The Irish had volunteered in large numbers to serve in the British Army during World War One, which of course was their army as they were part of the United Kingdom.  In spite of that, this did not mean by any means that all was well with the relations between Ireland and London.  It had never been, although that relationship had improved greatly over the last couple of decades.

The improvement of that relationship lead to a movement towards home rule that would have almost certainly caused Ireland to be self governing on domestic maters, while still part of the United Kingdom, by 1915 but for the arrival of World War One.  At that point all discussion on this topic was surrendered for the duration of the war.  Parliament had been cognizant, however, that Ireland's situation was fluid and it had not extended conscription to Ireland.  The strained relationship had, of course, lead to the Easter Rebellion of 1916, but that uprising had not been supported by the majority of the Irish and indeed was unpopular at the time.

Faced with the crisis of the German Spring Offensive and a severe immediate military crisis, Parliament finally acted to extend conscription to Ireland on this date.  

That would prove to be a grave error, just as it would prove to be in Canada.

Troops to the Mexican Border?

 U.S. Army patrol along the Mexican border (in this case artillery in the field), in 1916.

I woke up to the news recently (this post was a draft for a while) that President Trump, in frustration with there being no progress on his campaign promise to build a wall along the Mexican border, has determined to patrol it with the military.

What this means wasn't exactly clear.  According to the broadcast television news, the proposal was to patrol it with, as stated, "the military".  According to the New York Times, the proposal was to patrol it with the National Guard.  We now know that the proposal is to patrol the border with 2,000 to 4,000 National Guardsmen, presumably drawn from the border states (although that isn't exactly clear).  If the Guardsmen are all drawn from the border states we can presume that we're now set up for a contest between California Governor Jerry Brown and the President Trump.

This puts a a blog like this one into sort of a unique position as we deal here with the Mexican border a lot. . . .albeit the Mexican border in in the 1910s. . . not so much the 2010s.  Anyhow, maybe we're nearly relevant . . . or not.

Before we go further, we should mention the legality aspect of it.  The military can't be used as a police force under what some people like to call the Posse Comitatus Act, mostly because that's fun to say. The original text of the act stated:

Sec. 15. From and after the passage of this act it shall not be lawful to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing the laws, except in such cases and under such circumstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress; and no money appropriated by this act shall be used to pay any of the expenses incurred in the employment of any troops in violation of this section and any person willfully violating the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction thereof shall be punished by fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars or imprisonment not exceeding two years or by both such fine and imprisonment.

In spite of this text, the US military has been active on the border numerous times since the 1878 passing of this act, which was designed to keep the Army from being used again for something like Reconstruction.  It was, basically, part of the deal the GOP made with the South to end Reconstruction, and while I'll be perfectly frank that I feel that Reconstruction didn't go anywhere far enough, and was ended too soon, I'm sympathetic with the underlying point of the act. We really don't want soldiers acting as police or in policing roles.  For that matter, I'm not too keen on the modern trend of the militarization of the police which I think has gone way too far.  Policemen are not soldiers and vice versa, and their roles shouldn't cross.

 Extremely strange allegorical print on Reconstruction from 1867.  I'll be frank that in my view Reconstruction didn't go far enough, by a long shot.  The use of the Army in Reconstruction, which was necessary, did prove to be a major issue with Southerners after they got over the fact that they'd lost the war.

Anyhow, be that as it may, the active duty and the military have both been used, even in recent years, on the border in various roles, so this isn't that much of a departure from what's occurred both in the past and in fact recently.  That doesn't make it a good idea, it just means it isn't that novel.

It might surprise folks to know that at one time the U.S. military did in fact act as the Border Patrol, more or less, legal problems to that notwithstanding.  It was one of the two policing roles done by the U.S. Army in the past that it started to pull out of, due to the creation of other agencies, in the 10s and 20s.  The other prominent one was the patrol of the National Parks, which was an Army function.  That ended in the teens with the creation of the National Park Service and that's why, FWIW, Park Service uniforms strongly recall the Army's uniform of that era.

 Mexican migrant in 1912 near Laredo, Texas, before there were any real controls at all, but just at the time concern was beginning to build due to the increase of migrants caused by the Mexican Revolution.

The story about the border is a bit different.  The Army, combined with various state police forces, and during the crisis with Mexico the National Guard and at least the Texas State Guard patrolled the border and acted basically as the Border Patrol.   The Border Patrol itself was authorized on May 28, 1924 and started operating that June.  But it didn't replace the Army completely until after World War Two.  In the latter years, including on into World War Two, cavalry patrolled the border once again, in partial fear of which way Mexico may have decided to go during the war until Mexico entered the war on the Allied side. Beyond that, however, the last of the Apache Scouts, a mere handful of men, continued to patrol the border in a role that they'd had since the late 19th Century and which crossed the military/police line, with no apparent concern regarding that. 

Authorities, likely a Border Patrol officer and a railroad detective, checking boxcars for illegal Mexican migrants in 1938.  The Great Depression caused the United States to reduce the number of legal migrants considerably and to greatly increase immigration enforcement in general.

Following World War Two that ended and only in the last couple of decades has that occasionally been reversed.  That's always accompanied by assurances that the military is being used in a "support" rather than policing role, but the distinction can get blurred and things can occur.  A couple of decades ago, for example, a U.S. Marine shot and killed a teenage goat herder along the border when the Marine was deployed on some sort of drug smuggling interdiction mission.  Ironically, both were U.S. citizens and both were Hispanic, which I suppose may provide some sort of additional message but which is truly tragic.

The National Guard has been called out by at least of the border states, Arizona, to patrol the border in what amounted to a bit of a protest during President Obama's administration.  The Texas State Guard, which of course is a State Guard not the National Guard (I've dealt with State Guards in other posts) had a long border patrol mission of some sort in the last decade which was under reported (I knew a fellow in the Texas State Guard so I knew a little about that at the time).  The Texas State Guard, readers here will recall, also patrolled the border during World War One after the National Guard had been Federalized, in a mission that supported the Army on the Mexican border.

Are these missions effective?  Well, I suppose you'd have to look at each one to know the answer.  In prior eras when the border was truly wide open they probably were more effective than not doing anything.  Now, however, what this would seem to suggest is that there's a crisis going on and the Border Patrol is understaffed.  The Border Patrol, however, has been hiring during the Trump Administration and if its understaffed, it shouldn't be for much longer.  And illegal crossings are at their lowest point since the 1970s, a trend line that started during the Obama Administration.  The Trump Administration claims that within the last month there's been a 200% increase in crossings, which may be true but would raise the question as to why that's the case.  In the immediate term, however, we now live in an era in which more Mexicans return to Mexico than enter the United States.

Who will go, from the Guard? Well, maybe nobody. The promise is to call up that number of Guardsmen, but it hasn't happened yet.  If it does, it's likely to be the Guard from the border states although a Trump spokesman says he expected the majority of Governor's to support this task and send their Guards.  The entire Guard hasn't served on the border since 1916-17, and that's not going to happen now.  Indeed, that would be a huge deployment.  But that would suggest that they'll ask for support troops in small numbers, perhaps helicopter crews or something.

Is it necessary? That's definitely debatable.  If there's a huge serge in crossings, perhaps it is, on a temporary basis.  But so far, I haven't heard the story behind the numbers.  Unfortunately, if that's correct, it's an immediate need as its occurring now, prior to the annual spring increase in illegal crossings (truly, there is such a thing), but then if that's the need, the Guard isn't likely to be able to help, as they'd have to be deployed right now, which won't happen.

The Kaiserschlacht Continues. April 9, 1918. Operation Georgette

Operation Georgette

 

 Looking at the map again, now we are looking at the Second German Drive, listed here as the Lys Offensive.  Much further to the north than the first drive on the Somme, the twenty day operation in Flanders was a German drive to the sea.  It presented a desperate situation for the British and it destroyed the Portuguese Army on the Western Front.

By April 5 the Germans were aware that Operation Michael had failed, or at least would be a failure if it wasn't resumed in some other fashion.  That became Operation Georgette.  On April 9, Operation Michael was joined by Operation Georgette, somewhat of a resumption of Michael but aimed at a new location in the British sector where the front was manned by the Portuguese.

Georgette pitted the Germans, at first, against the Portuguese as they were being replaced by troops of the BEF.  Fighting was hard and desperate. The Portuguese forces were destroyed.  Field Marshall Haig issued his famous "backs to the wall" order, stating "With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight on to the end."

Here too, logistics defeated the Germans. They advanced, but not as expected, and their renewed offensive came to a halt on April 29.  The offensive had cost the Allies about 82,000 men, and the Germans about the same number.

Here too, the Germans could not stop or the entire effort resulting in over 300,000 casualties and the destruction of many elite units was all for naught.  After a brief lull, the Germans turned their attention to the French.

Panoramic views, Camp MacArthur, Waco, Texas, April 9th, 1918

Big Horn Hot Springs, Thermopolis, Wyoming. April 8, 1918.

This photograph was taken a century ago, today.

If it looks familiar, perhaps that's because we use it as the flagship photograph for our Railhead blog, dedicated to railroad themes.

Orthodox Easter, 2018.

St Peter and St. Paul Orthodox Church, Salt Lake City Utah

National Beer Day.

 A glass of Mishap! Brewing Company's dark double IPA in a Seward Alaska Brewing Company glass. A Wyoming beer in an Alaskan glass, sort of a small scale Distributist brewing triumph on National Beer Day.

Today, as it turns out, is National Beer Day.

National Beer Day?

Yes, it's National Beer Day.  

According to Time magazine, this day came about  as it was the day when the first step out of Prohibition, the Cullen-Harrison Act, came into effect. As time notes, about that act, and the day.

National Beer Day’s origins go as far back as 1919, when Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment, prohibiting the sale, transportation, and production of alcohol in the U.S. This marked the start of the Prohibition era, which made many Americans turn to creative ways to enjoy their illicit beverages.

But 14 years later, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office, Americans were in for a change when he signed into action the Cullen-Harrison Act, which once again made selling and consuming low-alcohol beverages like beer and wine legal in the U.S.

And so, the day is celebrated on April 7, the first day you could pour a glass of amber goodness into a glass, legally, for fourteen years.

The Volstead Act and the supporting Constitutional amendment, as noted, came in during 1919, so we're almost at the centennial of that.  That certainly has its lessons, not all of them obvious, but here on National Beer Day we might note that Prohibition was arguably a byproduct of World War One, although there'd been a strong movement in that direction for decades.  The war, however, pushed Prohibition over the top for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that there was a strong fear that American troops would come back from the war exposed to all sorts of terrible things, such as death, violence, French women, and wine.  There wasn't much that could be done about death, violence and French women, but there was something that could be done about wine and everything alcoholic, so Prohibition got a bit boost.

Added to that, beer was associated, somewhat unfairly, with enemies of the Allies, most particularly the Germans, but also Irish nationalist. Everything German was really getting dumped on during the Great War, and only Irish resilience and the fact that the Irish were clearly fighting with the Allies even if some were fighting against the British kept that from occurring to them.  And the fact that the United States was going through a grain conservation mania also weighed in.  So, beer, along with every other form of alcohol, became a casualty of the war, although it was taking hits before.

But beer would be the first back, and nearly everywhere, as Prohibition started getting stepped back out following the election of Franklin Roosevelt.  Nonetheless, it was pretty wounded.  Piles of regional and local breweries died with Prohibition came in, their brews, and the jobs they'd provided to brew them, gone with the Volstead Act.  American beer, which didn't have the greatest reputation in the world anyhow, but which had developed some strong regional brews of quality, really took a pounding and when it came back out of Prohibition there was much less variety.  Indeed, American beer wouldn't be much to write about until the local micro brew boom of the 1980s, a good fifty years after it became legal to brew it once again.

Now, of course, the story is radically changed and the United States is the center of beer experimentation.  Weird brews take their place along side every variety of traditional European brews including a good many the average European has no doubt never tried.

So, here's to the revival of American beer. Better than it ever was.

German artillery commenced a barrage on the evening of this day, Sunday, April 7, 1918. . .

near the towns of Armentières and Festubert that would carry through until April 9.

German 21cm Morser being moved into position, March 1918.

Something must have been up. . . .

Lyndon B. Johnson declared the day a National Day of Morning. . .

for the loss of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on this day in 1968.

Let's admit she was just nuts. But it still conveys some lessons.

Nasim Aghdam that is.

And her veganism was part of that.

Yes, it is.  And I know that's not kind and sensitive.

And, no, I don't mean to suggest for a moment that all vegans are nuts. But veganism is a nutty diet and nutty diets lend themselves to nuts or becoming a nut.

Indeed, Nasim Aghdam is a symbol of about all that's wrong with Western Society right now.  Over urbanized, self absorbed, at war with our human natures and at war with nature itself.

Okay, let's break this down just a bit, as the entire Nasim Aghdam attack on Facebook should tell us a lot about where we are at as a society right now, and the lessons are disturbing.

Lets start with Aghdam herself.  Who, and what, was she?

Well, we don't know that much about her, but what we makes it clear that she was an absolute nut.

She was an Iranian immigrant who likely came over with her family was a child, but was old enough to have retained her Persian accent. She was a member of the Bahá'í faith, which has its origins in Iran and which has been persecuted since day one there.  She was a vegan and an animal rights activists.  She was a Vlogger.  She was a body builder.

In short, she was a mass of contradictions such that, if you didn't start off insane, after combining all of these, you likely would be.

Now, no, I don't mean to say that all Persians, bodybuilders, Bahá'í adherents, or vegans are nuts, although I'll be frank that the last one, except perhaps in some extraordinary circumstances, if flat out nutty.  

And I do mean that only a society that has become so urbanized, effete anemic and frankly safe, could produce folks of this mindset.  Other societies produce nuts, and always have, but this brand of mixed nut is uniquely western.  Had Aghdam grown up in her native Persia, she may have been a nut alright, but of a different type.  Only in the west would such a self absorbed person at war with nature have acted out against unknown individuals working for Youtube.  Frankly, while all this social media stuff is fun, most of it is pretty inconsequential, including this blog that I post this stuff on. To be so self absorbed that you would think that it does, and that low viewership would merit murder, is insane.  But its a type of insanity that's symptomatic of a bigger problem.

And for that matter, so is veganism itself and "Animal Rights" as a cause.

Now, I don't mean to suggest for a moment that all vegans are nuts. But veganism is a nutty diet and nutty diets lend themselves to nuts or becoming a nut.  It's grossly contrary to our natural diet which we are evolved to eat.  Eating outside of our evolutionary base is putting a stress of a unique type on us that will have deep implications at some point.  To counter that a person has to be extraordinarily zealous to make up the protein that a person would acquire from meat, and few will.  

And the view that animals are equal to humans is an expression of a deep hatred of the natural world. We clearly are not, and if we are close to a state of nature our relationship with other animals is quite plain.  All early humans were hunters and gatherers and all humans remain that at some level. To deny that is to despise the world. To pretend that it's out of love is to make a mockery of real love, or to at least express a lack of understanding of it at a deeply elemental level.  So right from the onset, this woman was emblematic of a sickness in our society that we've developed as we've become more and more deluded in our concrete jungle and we express more and more hatred for our condition.

Now, I noted all of her known characteristics so I should flesh that out as well.  Not only was she an animal rights activist and a vegan, but a body builder.

There's nothing wrong with body building and there's certainly nothing wrong with exercise, but anyone who has ever stumbled across the writings of really dedicated body builders can't help but be disturbed a bit.  It's one of the things that a person can simply take too far, going from health, to narcisissm.  

And that would describe much of what's out there in the Vlogger space, to say the least.

And, to maintain, as she did, that she could post on Persian culture while being a vegan is well. . . an embarrassment to Persian culture really.

Anyhow, it's interesting how far down this road, and the further we get from small towns and villages, we slip into this deep hatred of nature.  It's so bad that the people exhibiting don't even realize that they're expressing a deep hatred of the nature as it is.  And while I will not go so far as to claim that this is a fulfillment of a prophesy, this sort of thing can't help but bring to mind 1st Timothy to me, in which it was stated:

Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by giving heed to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, through the pretensions of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and enjoin abstinence from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth

1st Timothy, Chapter 4

So, at the end of the day, she was a nut.  A nut whose acts is no doubt amplified because of the conditions in which she lived, by which I mean, modern society, which tolerates and even celebrates the sort of wacky conduct and ideas gave rise to her dementia.

So, what lesson can we draw.  More gun control, right?

Not hardly.

This attack stands as an example that just living in a state with lots of gun control and thinking good thoughts will protect a person from the acts of random nuts.  It won't. And this provides an example of where the Second Amendment afforded protection but it apparently wasn't taken up.

Youtube can be nifty, but it's also a reservoir of everything disturbing in the world that there is.  It isn't just a place for cute cat videos.

Not hardly.

Every disturbing belief in the world finds expression there. Every nut who feels the world needs to hear from him, and most nuts hold that view to some extent.  And every narcissistic fool with a view.

And for that reason, you'd think Youtube would have known that it was a target for the very sort of deranged people that it promotes.  Protecting itself would have been in order.

Best Post of the Week of April 1, 2018

Where I attended Easter Mass, 1987

Statistics, if presented without scrubbing, are simply the presentation of facts. Some about Gun Control

Progressive Patrician Arrogance, or perhaps Cluelessness, and Blindness. John Paul Stevens and the Second Amendment.

Martin Luther King's Last Speech: "I've Been To The Mountaintop". April 3, 1968

Is there a need for a Right To Keep And Bear Arms?

Remington Arms Manufacturing Company's bankruptcy. A Distributist Economic Lesson and a National Tragedy. And Chrysler Too.

Let's admit she was just nuts. But it still conveys some lessons.

Orthodox Easter, 1918.

 

 Holy Transfiguration of Our Lord Church in Ninilchik Alaska

But likely not a very happy one, given the rise of Bolshevism in Russia, the captivity of the Czar, and all sorts of violence in Turkey including the disaster that had befallen Armenia.

Lex Anteinternet: The Kaiserschlacht Stalls. Operation Michael Ends

It wouldn't be obvious, if you read the newspapers for this day, April 6, 1918, but Operation Michael was over.  Called off yesterday after the failure of a final big German push near Ancre.

Lex Anteinternet: The Kaiserschlacht Commences. March 21, 1918. Ope...:

The initial German advance had been significant, but equally significant is that the  Germans had failed to take any of their objectives and by April 5 they were halted.

The German plan had failed to achieve any of its objections and had suffered absolutely massive casualties.

But the German high command wasn't prepared to give up on the Kaiserschlacht.  Perhaps, really, it couldn't. . .

Robert "Lil' Bobby" Hutton killed in Black Panther Raid, April 6, 1968.

On this day in 1968 the Black Panthers staged a twelve man nighttime raid on the Oakland Police. The raid was in ostensible retaliation for the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who of course would not have approved of the same.  The raid turned into a siege and after about 90 minutes the besieged Panthers, led by Eldridge Cleaver, surrendered.

What happened from there isn't clear.  Cleaver claimed that the police shot Hutton during the surrender.  The police claimed that 17 year old Hutton attempted to escape and was shot as a result of that.

Cleaver, for his part, went on to have a very unlikely biography before dying at age 62 of pneumonia.  Fleeing for a time to Algeria due his activities and a pending murder charge, he later became a born again Christian and attempted to revive the codpiece in the form of his "virility pants" he called "the Cleavers".   He'd ultimately come back to the United States, go through a series of religious conversions before converting to Mormonism, and politically becoming a conservative Republican.

116th Field Artillery, Major E.L. Anderson, commanding, Camp Wheeler, Ga., Ap. 6th, 1918

Eighth Field Artillery, Major C. L. Corbin, commanding, Camp Wheeler, Ga., April 6th, 1918

Martin Luther King Jr. Assassinated in Memphis. April 4, 1968.

On this day in the pivotal and tragic year of 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by James Earl Ray.

Martin Luther King Memorial, Washington DC.

From a poor and highly troubled background Ray had fallen into increasingly racist views in the years prior to the assassination. Following his murderous act he fled to Canada and then to Europe, using false names, before being arrested in the United Kingdom in June.  He admitted guilt for the crime.

Dr. King's assassination in some ways punctuated the increasingly violent nature of the times, with his emphasis on non violence then being challenged by more radical individuals.  A central figure in the Civil Rights Movement, his death left it in some ways without a central figure to complete the process of desegregation that had commenced in the second half of the 1940s.  His speech of the prior day in some eerie way almost seems to have predicted what followed on this day in 1968.

 

Remington Arms Manufacturing Company's bankruptcy. A Distributist Economic Lesson and a National Tragedy. And Chrysler Too.

Remington Arms Manufacturing Company filed for bankruptcy the Sunday before last.*

It's a national tragedy, truly.  The fact that some will rejoice in this shows how effete and pathetic the society has become, indeed to such an extent that its truly a crisis in our own society.

There's a lot of analysis out on this right now, some of which is correct, but much of which is quite shallow. The common commentary, correct in so far as it goes, is that Remington is a victim of the Trump Slump.  An irony of the recent history of firearms sales in the US is that Barack Obama was the, as wags had it, the greatest gun salesman in the nation's history, and indeed, starting with Hillary Clinton's first run against Obama in the primaries there was an over eight year boom in firearms sales.  A lot of those sales were of things that people thought would soon be banned, but it was nonetheless simply amazing in extent.  Ammunition cleared the shelves out of fear that laws restricting ammunition sales would come in make ammo hard to get.  Sales of AR type rifles when through the roof.  The NRA, which of course is the primary organization that campaigns to protect the rights of gun owners, frankly grossly overplayed their hand, to the long term determent of companies like Remington, by keeping up an eight year panic educing campaign against President Obama when in fact he did nothing at all in regard to firearms for almost the entire eight years.

 Remington's advertising has always focused on Remington being a manufacturer of sporting, primarily hunting arms. This stands in contrast with some other companies, such as Colt, who emphasized other roles of their arms.  Even today Remington strives to set apart its AR type sporting rifles from those manufactured by other companies on this basis, if they are sold under the Remington name.

But after Trump won the sales slumped, and indeed to some degree went into a tailspin.  People haven't been afraid that there would be bans.  Trump was endorsed by the NRA in a way that no other President ever has been, further alleviating the fears of gun owners.  Indeed, even with all the recent talk of gun control, including some suggestions by Trump that he'd support some of it, there hasn't been a huge national reaction on the part of gun owners, although there has apparently been a bit of a one on the demand side that has a national impact.

This, we are told, hurt Remington as Remington is a major manufacturer of AR type rifles, and indeed it is.  Remington has manufactured M4 carbines for the military, starting in 2012, but it also owns Bushmaster, one of the better manufacturers of AR type rifles including some really fine competition versions of the rifle in the M16A4/A5 style.  At any rate, Remington was heavily into the AR platform and now, the story goes, is really suffering for it.

And that's partially correct.

But only partially.

What Remington is also suffering from, in a major way, is corporate conglomeration.  Remington could frankly benefit from some Distributism, but then, so could the entire nation for that matter.  Too bad that this hasn't been a recent policy of the United States such that what happened to Remington, would not have.

 Remington has made a semi automatic sporting rifle since 1908.  It's had a sporting semi automatic rifle almost continually since then, but its association with Bushmaster ended up causing Remington to fully adopt the AR type rifle into its lineup, in the guise of being a modern hunting rifle, and that in turn meant that Remington was competing against itself.

Remington has been in existence since 1816.  It was founded Eliphalet Remington in that year (indeed the "ERA" on World War One Eddystone M1917 Remington stands for E. Remington Arms, not Eddystone).  It's had its up and downs.  It almost went bankrupt in fact, immediately after World War One.  Remington was a major manufacturer of Mosin Nagant Rifles for the Imperial Russian Army, P14 rifles for the British Army and M1917 rifles for the U.S. Army during the Great War, dedicating two plants to that latter task (Winchester also had one).   The collapse of Imperial Russia put it under severe stress, but that was relieved when the United States purchased the existing stocks of Russian rifles, which it did in turn use for the American commitment to Russia during the war. Remington switched its P14 production over to M1917 production, the two rifles being the same design distinguished only by cartridge, shortly after the US declared war and found itself short of M1903 Springfields. 

When the war suddenly ended in November 1918, the contracts were cancelled virtually overnight.  That nearly drove Remington under, although it struggled by and picked up the pieces, literally, converting them into the fine sporting rifle, the Remington Model 30.  Even at that, the company struggled. The lesson was so stout that when World War Two Remington was very reluctant to enter into military contracts, although it did, ultimately producing the M1903s that were used by the Army during the Second World War, albeit on equipment that had come form the government itself.  It also manufactured other weapons during Second World War and was positioned, unlike Winchester, to exploit that in the post war economy, which unlike the post Great War economy, did not slump.

Nonetheless following World War Two Remington, as an independent company, did not seek nor desire military sales.  It didn't seek to make M1 Garands during World War Two or the Korean War.  When the service sought outside suppliers, early on, for some components of the M14, it didn't seek to acquire those contracts.  It didn't introduce a 5.56 rifle for consideration even though it was the company that had developed the round, for sporting use (the 5.56 is the .223 which was developed from the .222 Remington) , that was basically under consideration even though its manufacturing was every bit as advanced as Armalites.  It didn't seek to acquire M16 contracts during the 60s, 70s, and 80s when many such contracts were entered into.  It never sought foreign military sales.  The only military rifle it offered for decades was the sniper variant of the Remington Model 700 hunting rifle, which is something that was only made in small numbers and which, by its very nature, said a lot more about Remington as a supplier of sporting rifles than it did anything else.

Indeed, while its counter-intuitive, firearms manufacturers do best when not basing their sales on military contracts, and at least to an extent the civilian versions of them.  Colt's heavy dependence on the M16 for sales came at a time when it was having real problems and it can be argued that its reliance on the AR to carry it through in fact failed.  Going all the way back to the immediate post Civil War period, manufacturers that heavily depended on military sales, such as Spencer, tended to fail when the crisis was over even if they tried to translate those sales into a civilian market.  The big exception to the rule is in handguns, but the oddity of that is that handgun manufacturers have tended to lead military designs by years, and so when the service purchases a new handgun, it is frequently acquiring something that was already developed or partially developed for the civilian market, in the United States.

 Colt is a real exception to the rule in traditional American firearms manufacturing advertising.  While it is not the only example, Colt advertised on the basis of its military contracts on occasion, such as here.  Colt also emphasized that its handguns provided solid protection, anticipating (but not wholly uniquely) the modern carry movement.  In contrast, nearly every longarm manufacturer, Remington included, completely avoided military themes in their advertising and relied instead on depicting their sporting and hunting uses.

So Remington survived two centuries without going bankrupt.

And then entered Cerberus.  Cerberus Capital Management, L.P. is a private equity firm, specializing in "distressed investing".  If the name sounds familiar to you and you aren't a student of economics, that may be because you recall the hideous three headed dog that haunts Hell in various works, such as Dante's Divine Comedy, where he eats the tortured souls of gluttons.

Now, to be fair, Remington ceased to be a family owned company in 1888, when the Remington family sold it to a holding company that also owned, at that time, Winchester, ironically enough.  During the Great Depression it was purchased, along with United Metallic Cartridge, by Dupont, the gunpowder manufacturing company.  Real disaster started to set in, however, in 1993, when Dupont sold it to the investment firm of Clayton, Dubilier & Rice.  In June 2007 Cerberus Capital Management bought the company from Clayton, Dubilier & Rice for $370,000,000 and thereby acquired $252,000,000 in assumed debt.  

Prior to Cerberus purchasing Remington, it had already purchased Bushmaster and put it into a moronically named entity it called "Freedom Group", which was formed as a firearm's manufacturing holding company.  The founder of Bushmaster, which as noted simply specialized in AR platform rifles, took $70,000,000 in that 2006 sale.

Cerberus folded Remington also into Freedom  Group, but since that time that dumb ass name has been changed to Remington Arms Company, with Cerberus thereby choosing to keep the name of the most well known entity as the name of the holding group..  Somewhere along the way, since Cerberus took over, Remington picked up Advanced Armament (silencers), Marlin Firearms  (which already owned H&R Firearms) and Para USA, a Canadian company, originally, that specializes in M1911 pistols.  Para USA has ceased to exist entirely with its M1911s being made under the Remington name.  H&R has ceased to exist entirely.

And hence the current disaster. 

Due to Cerberus' swallowing up of assets what had been five firearms manufacturing companies, all occupying separate and distinct niches, and of which only two competed against each other (Marlin and Remington) has become effectively one, with three major brand names.  Marlin, which had a distinct product line, continues to.  H&R is dead.  Para Ordinance, which became Para USA, is now fully absorbed by Remington, in a move that absorbed its product line into Remington but which may not have absorbed its fan base at the same time and, because M1911s are past any patent restrictions, only gave Remington a minor advantage, if any at all, through the acquisition.  Bushmaster, which Cerberus claimed it was going to divest itself of, still is owned by Remington and Remington has gone whole hog into the AR product line including having secured, as noted, a contract for M4 carbines.

All of which suggest that Cerberus knew nothing about the firearms industry and nothing about the companies it was acquiring.

So what is Cerberus?

Well something can be discerned about it simply because its named for the three headed hound that in mythology guards the gates of Hades. It's an acquisition company, which virtually by definition, and filtered through my cynicism, exists to acquire, and divest when necessary or advantageous, companies.  It owns or has owned the following, or has acted in concert with the following:

• Cerberus entered into a financing deal with satellite imagery company GeoEye to the tune of $215,000,000 in March 2010.
• That same month Cerberus acquired an ownership stake in Panavision as part of a debt restructuring agreement with shareholder MacAndrews & Forbes.
• Also that same month Cerberus agreed to buy Caritas Christi Health Care, now Steward Health Care for $830,000,000. Caritas Christi was rebranded Steward Health Care^.
• In April 12, 2010 Cerberus acquired private government services contractor DynCorp International for approximately $1,000,000,000 and the assumption of $500,000,000 million of debt.
• In November 19, 2010, Cerberus and Drago Capital acquired a a real estate portfolio consisting of 97 bank branches from Spain’s Caja Madrid in a 25-year lease back transaction.
• On March 17, 2011, Cerberus acquired the senior bank debt and completed a debt restructuring of Maxim Office Park, a one million square foot office and logistics complex in Scotland
• On March 31, 2011, Cerberus acquired a real estate portfolio of 45 Metro Cash & Carry properties in Germany^.
  
• On May 16, 2011, Cerberus completed the acquisition of Silverleaf Resorts^.
• On May 16, 2011, an affiliate of Cerberus agreed to acquire the U.S.-based global billing and payments unit of 3i Infotech Ltd. for $137,000,000
• On October 4, 2011, Cerberus and Garanti Securities formed a joint initiative to pursue investments in Turkey with an initial commitment of $400,000,000
• On October 19, 2011, Cerberus chose J.P. Morgan Worldwide Securities Services to provide fund administration and related securities services for Cerberus investment funds.
• On October 27, 2011 Cerberus and Chatham Lodging Trust purchaseed Innkeepers USA Trust for $1,002,000,000. Innkeepers operates various hotel,s including the Marriott, Hyatt, and Hilton
• On December 22, 2011, Covis Pharma, a specialty pharmaceutical company owned by affiliates of Cerberus, aquired full commercial rights for Fortaz (ceftazidime), Zinacef (cefuroxime), Lanoxin (digoxin), Parnate (tranylcypromine sulfate), and Zantac Injection (ranitidine hydrochloride) in the United States and Puerto Rico from GlaxoSmithKline.
• On March 8, 2012, an affiliate of Cerberus acquired a controlling interest in AT&T Advertising Solutions and AT&T Interactive, which were then combined into a new entity YP Holdings LLC. AT&T received approximately $750,000,000 million in cash, a $200 million note and a 47-percent equity interest in YP Holdings LLC.
• In January 2013, Cerberus acquired 877 stores in the Albertson's, Acme, Jewel-Osco, Shaw's, and Star Market chains from SuperValu for $100,000,000 and the assumption of $3,200,000,000 of SuperValu debt.  On March 6, 2014, Cerberus followed by announcin a Definitive Merger Agreement with already owned Albertsons and Safeway.
• On December 17, 2015, Cerberus Capital Management announced a $605,000,000 strategic partnership with Avon Products, Inc. in which Cerberus acquired 80% of Avon North America and a nearly 17% stake in Avon Products, Inc.
• On January 26, 2016, Cerberus owned Keane, a well completion services company agreed to acquire the majority of Canada-based Trican Well Services Ltd.’s (TSX: TWC) U.S. assets for $247,000,000
• On June 23, 2016, Cerberus aqcuired, GE Money Bank, to an affiliate of Cerberus Capital Management^.
• On July 1, 2016, Cerberus Capital Management acquired ABC Group
• In February 2018, Cerberus acquired HSH Nordbank.

And this isn't all.  Cerberus has its hands, or paws, in everything.  It bought Bayer's plasma products business.  It acquired a paper business and Georgia Pacific's distribution and building products division.  It has an interest in Portuguese airlines.  It's a large government services contractor to the U.S. government. As noted above, its in the grocery business..

And its It's in the transportation industry.

In fact, and instructive in this story, it and 100 other investors purchased an 80% interest in Chrysler in 2007 for $7,400,000,000.  Of course, Chrysler, along with General Motors, went bankrupt in 2009.  As part of that bankruptcy, Cerberus, in exchange for the government buyout that then occurred, gave up its interest in Chrysler.  Don't cry for them, however, they ultimately recovered nearly all they had invested in the company through various financial arrangements.

So what do these things have to do with Remington?

Well, quite a lot in my view.

A quite a lot with the American economy as well.

Cerberus doesn't make anything, in a definitive sense.  It buys and sells other entities that make things.  Cerberus has no interest in the firearms industry, or the automobile industry, in a concrete fashion. They're interested in the money those entities make and they buy them in hopes of maximizing on that, or sell them for the same reason.

And that's wrong.

Cerberus is a type of entity that really shouldn't exist. They don't exist in order to manufacture anything, they exist in the hopes that what they buy will do well and they'll make money that way, or they hope to sell when its advantageous. They're all about money.

And they're into everything that seems likely to make money. The three headed dog is at the grocery store and in the sporting goods store.

And that's the problem with what the American economy has become.  It's all about making money.

Oh, John Sherman, where are you now?

John Sherman, author of the Sherman Anti Trust Act and lesser known brother of William Tecumseh Sherman.

John Sherman?  

Yes, John Sherman, who gave the country the Sherman Anti Trust Act.   A powerful bill that seems to have fallen into disuse recently and which, in my view, ought to be sued to chop two of Cerberus' three heads off and pull all the teeth out of the remaining one.

Oh my.  How anti business.

No, not so much. Pro business really.

Now making money is fine. But the truth of the matters is that, except for a really sick person, making money to make money isn't very satisfying.  Being poor is bad, but all the data suggest that being really rich doesn't make a person that much happier after a certain point is reached in the Middle Class.  Being free from want is one thing. Being obsessed with money is quite another. And an outfit like Cerberus is about nothing but money.

But companies actually tend to be about something else.

Remington Firearms was about sporting arms for the most part.  Yes, it made military arms, but that was never its focus and it sometimes actually avoided making them. But in the hands of those who lost sight of that it lost its way.  By acquiring Bushmaster and folding Bushmaster into it, a specialty AR manufacturer took over and started to taint Remington.  Remington began to incorporate AR type rifles into its sporting line and thereby actually compete against itself and damage its own product line. By picking up Para Ordinance it entered the field of pistol production with a pistol that was already widely manufactures (just like the AR was) by other competitors.  By picking up Marlin it acquired a manufacturer whose reputation, which was very good, was based in no small part on a rifle whose design had long been in the public domain and which they could have made without acquiring Marlin, if they really needed. All adding Marlin really did was to give it another production line to compete against itself in a certain area of centerfire hunting rifle and also against itself in the .22 LR product line.

So the story is, it would seem, that once companies become nothing more than trinkets for investment holding companies, they are doomed.  

Or at least they are doomed if they occupy a distinct place in the economy.

And what are these holding companies anyhow?  It's perfectly obvious that a company like Cerberus plays no really useful role in our economy, for the most part, and operates sort of like a pack of ravens, circling above the economic highway and coming down to feast on things that get hit there.

Or maybe an analogy to wolves would be better.

At any rate, no company can possibly have that much of an informed interest in anything, and for that reason, their role is ultimately always destructive to the larger economy in general. No economy really needs outfits like Cerberus.  An economy needs investors, but it doesn't need that kind or anything even approaching that kind. What Remington needed was ownership that knew the product.  Cerberus thought it knew the market, and it apparently thought, or allowed the management of Remington to think, that market was ARs. But it wasn't.

So, Remington is bankruptcy. Let's hope a result of that its that Cerberus has to shed Remington, but without the soft pillow that was there when it shed Chrysler.  And let's hope that Remington and Marline are separated.  Maybe even H&R can come back.  Bushmaster should continue on, but as its own company as well, just as it was back in the day.

So let's talk about Chrysler.

Eh?  I thought this was about Remington?

It is, but also about economics and outfits like Cerberus.  And so that takes  us to Chrysler.  

 Dodge Brothers trucks. Dodge didn't become part of Chrysler until 1928, after this 1920 photographs was taken.

Now, consolidation in the automobile industry is nothing new.  In the 1920s there were a zillion American automobile manufacturers.  Even during the Great Depression, which drove a lot of them out of business, there were more than there are now.  And every current automobile manufacturer is a conglomeration of several prior companies. Every single one.  

But what they were, for a long time, is a conglomeration of automobile manufacturing companies, just like I said.  Chrysler, however, has had a unique recently history.   In the 1980s and 1990s it both bought and was bought by European automobile manufacturers and it ended up being owned by Daimler, the giant German manufacturer.  Daimler, famous for Mercedes amongst other things, seemed like an ideal owners given its long history of manufacturing diesel vehicles, a Chrysler strong point, but in fact Daimler could never figure out what to do with Chrysler.  

In 2007 Daimler sold Chrysler to Cerberus, while retaining a 20% ownership in the company.  It didn't own it long, however, as the 2008 economic crisis pushed General Motors and Chrysler to the edge of bankruptcy and special bankruptcies ended up being crated for both.  Chrysler, in that process, shed a lot of its debt and emerged as a new company, free of Cerberus and Daimler.  In the process Fiat bought the company, and like Daimler, has been struggling to figure out what to do with it.  In the whole process Cerberus voluntarily gave up its share of Chrysler to the Federal government but retained its auto financing division.

Now, a person wouldn't think that was a big deal, but it really is.  Cerberus went on to sell that to another entity and made up all the money that it otherwise would have lost. They came out, therefore, okay.

Well, so what.

Well, just this.  Cerberus is good at making money, it seems, but it doesn't make anything.  Big finance is a necessary part of industry, but is this sort of finance really good for the economy?  Would lending from large banks and financial institutions make more sense?  I submit that it would.  Buying and selling these entities for profit generates that, but it doesn't necessarily generate longevity the same way that industries concerned about their industry would.

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*How odd to think that a company can file for bankruptcy on a Sunday.  You'd think that you'd have to wait until the weekday to do that.