The "Greatest Generation". Admiring the generation while disliking that monkier.

WESTMORELAND. O that we now had here
    But one ten thousand of those men in England
    That do no work to-day!
 
KING. What's he that wishes so?
    My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin;
    If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
    To do our country loss; and if to live,
    The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
    God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
    By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
    Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
    It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
    Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
    But if it be a sin to covet honour,
    I am the most offending soul alive.
    No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
    God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
    As one man more methinks would share from me
    For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
    Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
    That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
    Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
    And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
    We would not die in that man's company
    That fears his fellowship to die with us.
    This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
    He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
    Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
    And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
    He that shall live this day, and see old age,
    Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
    And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
    Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
    And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'
    Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
    But he'll remember, with advantages,
    What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
    Familiar in his mouth as household words-
    Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
    Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
    Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
    This story shall the good man teach his son;
    And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
    From this day to the ending of the world,
    But we in it shall be remembered-
    We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
    For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
    Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
    This day shall gentle his condition;
    And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
    Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
    And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
    That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

 From Henry V.

 Members of the 4442nd Regimental Combat Team in action in Italy. The 4442nd's enlisted ranks were entirely made up of Japanese Americans, largely recruited from internment camps.  It is the most decorated unit in the American Army of World War Two.

The recent anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy, which commenced on June 6, 1944, and which started the nine month period in which the Allies in the west marched towards Germany, and into it (while of course the Soviets marched  in from the east at the same time) has caused a lot of public recollection of the nation's World War Two veterans. And that's a good thing.  But one of the things we hear a lot in such recollections, not by the veterans themselves, but by those recalling them, is the term applied to them by Tom Brokaw in his book about their generations; i.e., "The Greatest Generation".

It may be a minor thing, but the term has long bothered me to a certain extent.  I was surprised recently when author Rick Atkinson, who wrote the phenomenal three volume series on  the American Army in the ETO during World War Two, The Liberation Trilogy, stated the same thing, in much blunter terms, in an interview on the occasion of the release of his third volume, The Guns At Last Light.  He flatly stated that they aren't the "greatest" generation and was slightly condescending regarding the term.

I don't mean to suggest that the American generation that fought World War Two isn't highly admirable, I think they were, but I am glad to hear at least Atkinson make that comment.  Here's why.

For those with long memories, or perhaps just for those who grew up in the 60s and 70s, "the war" meant World War Two.  We all knew a lot of World War Two veterans.  So, "the war" was World War Two.  Even when Korean War veterans like my father spoke of "the war", they meant World War Two.

A soldier comforts a comrade grieving over the death of a wounded comrade.  Fought using a mix of new and World War Two weapons, the Korean War caught the American Army off guard when it featured conventional combat recalling World War Two and World War One.  It never achieved the status in the public's mind that World War Two had, and it quickly seemed to be forgotten by the nation during the booming 1950s.

Unless people were speaking in the present tense.  In that case, the "war" was the Vietnam War, which the country fought actively from 1965 to 1973, and which came to its final end the year before the nation's bicentennial, in 1975.

 

American soldiers in Vietnam during the Vietnam War.  Fairly significantly younger on average than their World War Two counterparts, they were also better educated and more ethnically diverse.  In spite of the common myths about them, they had volunteered for service in Southeast Asia in fairly significant numbers and their desertion rate was one of the absolute lowest of all time for a U.S. War (the Mexican War has the highest) up until the wars following 1990.

It's important to remember that life went on for the survivors of World War Two, who remained active in public life well into the 1980s, and in many instances well into the 1990s.  And they resumed, or in many instances sort of started their lives, after World War Two.  Indeed, one of the greatest films of all time, for those who like to follow movies, is 1946's The Best Years Of Our Lives, which dealt with the subject of restarting a life while that topic was still a bleeding wound in American society.  It's stunning, watching it, to realize the war had just ended when the film was made.

When I was a young, it was common to call this generation "The Depression Era Generation", and in some ways that term is a better one than "The Greatest Generation", as it includes the larger population of men and women  and it stretches the generation out a bit on both ends, including people whose age or occupation exempted them from service in World War Two, or who were a little to young to serve in it.  Be that as it may, a feature of this generation is that they'd grown up in an era of economic strain and deprivation that's nearly unimaginable now and went on to fight a war that was so Titanic we frankly can't imagine it now.

Food line, 1937.

None of that is  news, nor is it news that a "baby boom" followed the war as that generation returned home and made up for nearly 15 years of lost time.  

It's Holscher's Fourth Law of History that "war changes everything." and this is certainly true of World War Two and the generation that fought it as enlisted men (it's often forgotten that the oldest American commander in the war had been in the Army during the Spanish American War, and that there were plenty of old soldiers in World War Two in every army).  The war opened up education and opportunity, following the war, for the survivors of it in a way that had not existed before. Very often missed by current commentators, the war and the Depression produced a political outlook in that generation that was quite Liberal in political orientation, while remaining socially conservative.  That expressed itself in a definite comfort with the Federal government being active in funding and expanding education, with education otherwise remaining traditional in its structure.

The net result was that the fortunes of those who fought World War Two were fairly good following the war, although for a variety of reasons, and by the 1950s this was expressing itself to even a greater extent in the fortunes of that generation's children, who were reaching university age.  For the first time in American history a university education went on from being a privileged to a middle class expectation.

And its here were, I think, we return to the term "The Greatest Generation."  The Depression Era Generation was a great one, and suffered and rebuilt in ways we can hardly imagine, but pretty early on, as a generational characteristic, that was lost on their children.

This is a broad statement, of course, and nothing that can be said about any one generation is true of everyone in the generations, which is extremely important to remember. But it is also the case that people grow up in an environment and accustom themselves to it, unless they are aware its abnormal.  The Depression Era Generation regarded the Depression and World War Two as abnormal, which it certainly was, and they reminded their children of that quite a bit.  Their children grew up in a time of economic plenty and educational opportunity, and regarded that as normal.

In our society, we're accustomed to speak of youthful rebellion as a norm, and something that repeats itself every generation.  But there's no good evidence of that whatsoever. By and large, that doesn't occur, and quite often the difference between one generation and another is thin indeed.  But the difference between the youth of the Boomers and the lives of their parents was vastly different.  And this seems to have at least contributed to the massive social upheaval in the western world in the 1960s and 1970s.

During that period, it was pretty common for those in their early adulthood to hold the World War Two generation in contempt, and those holding that contempt were their children's generation.  Individuals certainly admired the lives of their individual parents, but there was a pretty widespread contempt as a generational aspect.  Frequently the World War Two or Depression Era generations were regarded as "squares" or the like, with their children probably not even grasping the extent to which their parents lives had been transformational.  Contempt tends to be returned, and to some extent in this case it was, but with not much of an effect.  A person can't take this too far, of course, but that it was a feature of the climate of that times can't be really denied.

This really began to change in the 1990s.  By that time the aging Boomers had abandoned revolution themselves and were looking back to an imagined more conservative time for  guidance.  In doing that, the generation began to redress some things had felt guilty about from its youth.  In regards to the Vietnam War, it's interesting how the Boomers who fought that war, and who had been vilified to some extent for doing so, were suddenly regarded as heroes.  And shortly thereafter, the same generation rediscovered their parents and were awestruck by the ordeals that their parents had endured.  With a short view of history, they went from regarding their parents as squares to their being "The Greatest Generation".

But are they?  Well, that's a pretty long claim, and a person has to look at it pretty carefully. For one thing, if that claim is a valid one, does it apply to those in that generation form any of the Allied nations of World War Two?  The Great Depression, for example, was even worse in Canada than the United States, and Canada entered the war in 1939.  Shouldn't the term apply to them as well?  And certainly it must to the generation of British youth who served in the war.

 

The Winnipeg  Rifles land in Normandy, June 6, 1944.  Up until late war, Canadian solders serving overseas, including my Uncle Terry who participated in Operation Overlord, were all volunteers for overseas service.

Those British youth, it should be noted, if university educated (which only a tiny minority were) had infamously declared in the early 1930s that they'd never serve in another war, turning their back on the sacrifices of the UK during World War One. But when the time came, they more than rose to the occasion.

What about Soviet youth?  No European nation had suffered more in the first half of the 20th Century than the Russians, although often at their own hands. Those who fought as young men in the Red Army had grown up in a period of horrifying oppression and deprivation, and they died in droves during World War Two.  Over 80% of all German battlefield deaths were due to the Red Army, and yet at the same time, but at the same time the Red Army served a political leadership that was as evil as any that the world has ever produced.

Taking it out further, however, is The Greatest Generation greater than the generation that fought the Civil War?  That seems a pretty tall order.  Or what about the generation that fought in the Revolution?  For those men, who signed up to fight on the side of the Continental Congress, they were taking a step which arguably made them criminals for a crime punishable by death. And even if the British did not take that view, at the time they engaged to serve the new nation, the volunteers did not know that and could not be assured that the view of Parliament would not change. 

Union cavalry, Civil War.  By the second year of the Civil War those entering the service had no illusions about winning quickly, but they showed up anyhow.

And what of the generation that fought World War One?  Recently I've heard a couple of interviews of authors who wrote on that generation of Americans and their findings are shocking by modern standards.  That generations seemed to have regarded the war as one more hard bad thing in a hard life, not expecting much going in, and not expecting much going out.  If they aren't perceived as great it might be because they expected nothing much out of life other than hard work, and World War One was just one more example of it.

First Division Victory Parade, Washington D. C.  The sign nearby is still urging the public to "Save Food".

Sometimes the term The Greatest Generation is used ironically by those now in the Boomer generation to castigate the youth of today.  No doubt the world and our nation has changed enormously since 1945, but much of the change that commentators now complain about came about due to the "revolution" that that very generation brought about.  If the youth of today do not seem to have the values and views of the generation that fought World War Two, and which we now so admire, perhaps the generation that brought so many changes about and created the world that the youth of today are living in should take stock of that, and no doubt many do.

But also, that just sells the youth of today short.  There are plenty of reasons to worry about things, including culture and society, but to assume that people would not rise to the occasion is to assume a lot without much evidence.  What we have seen is that today's youth has volunteered to fight in three wars in 25 years and it has done so without compulsion.  No draft exists today, as it had for every American War since the Spanish American War leading up to the first Gulf War. Indeed, the war in Afghanistan is the first American war that has ever been fought in which the combatants were 100% free of some sort of compulsory service at some point.  There has not been a draft since 1973, but the last soldier brought into the Army via conscription retired only last year, that being a long serving NCO who had first come into the Army as a conscript.  Up until 1865 every American male had some sort of compulsory militia duty and there were still men who had entered service in that fashion, or through Civil War conscription, serving as late as the Spanish American War. This current generation of servicemen is therefore really unique.

Solder of the 1st Infantry Division, with M14 rifle, in Afghanistan.

All that goes to say, I suppose, that some generations rise to their times, and some sink.  The World War Two generation certainly rose to theirs, but then the one that immediately followed and served in Korea did as well. The one that had fought World War One also had, and certainly the Civil War generation did as well. The current generation lives in the richest times the country has ever known, in spite of a widespread assumption to the contrary, and while it faces a lot of challenges, those challenges aren't of its making.  All in all, they're doing well. 

Epilog

Recently the Federal Court interviewed some of the seventy (that's right, seventy) World War Two veterans who are still serving on the Federal Bench.  I'll comment on that elsewhere, but one of the questions the interviewer asked is whether they thought they were the Greatest Generation.  The answers were interesting.

Federal Judge Tom Stagg, a Nixon appointee who plans on serving on the bench until he dies, sure thought so:

Q. Do you consider yourself to be part of a “Greatest Generation”?
A. Compared to what I see today, yes. I think you get duty pounded into you, or did in those days, and you learn it as boy, as a Boy Scout, as a member of a military unit. You have assigned duty and you have to do it. You even want to do it. I would no more have stayed home during World War II. I can’t imagine doing that. This is my country. I’m proud of it.

They didn't all feel that way, however.  Here's the quote from another serving Federal Judge who is a World War Two veteran:

Q. Do you like the phrase “the Greatest Generation”?
A. I don’t like it. I think it glosses over the imperfections of the American society in that time. They forget that we were terribly racially biased in the Army. Black troops were treated miserably. … This is part of the Greatest Generation that isn’t mentioned, and I’ve seen terrible things that the military did. That inevitably will happen. I think it’s overblowing the character of the people who were in the Army, were in the Navy, in the Air Force. Which is not to diminish what they did, or in any way detract from their contributions, but I think to blow up any particular generation as the Greatest Generation is a mistake.

Judge Leonard Wexler, however, also agreed with the Greatest Genreation tag:

Q. Do you like the phrase “the Greatest generation”?
A. Yes, I like it. I think it fits. We were the greatest generation. I mean, everybody was united. Everybody stood together. I’ll give you an example. When I got home and I would take the train, a Brooklyn kid, I had a cane, everybody would stand up to give me a seat. Everybody was so nice. I really felt good that we were a great country at one time, united.

Judge Jack Weinstein sure didn't, however:

Q. Do you like the phrase “the Greatest Generation”?
A. It’s nonsensical. Every generation is great. We responded to difficulties of the depression and the war, and people I see today are responding to other problems. Every generation has greatness, and it has despair and has things that it should be ashamed of doing. For us, it was no different. I remember seeing things that were absolutely disgraceful—the way African Americans were treated and the way women were treated. Ours was not the greatest generation.

Judge Arthur Spatt agreed with the term, but had a more nuanced view:

Q. Do you feel you were part of a “Greatest Generation”?
I think the greatest generation was this country as a whole. It was united. Everybody worked toward one goal, whether it was giving up your food, rationing, or becoming an air raid warden on the block to make sure the lights were out at night. Everybody participated, with a full heart and no dissent. So, when in the history of this country does this ever happen?

Stress may be killing law students' brain cells, law prof says

Stress may be killing law students' brain cells, law prof says



Oh my.

In The Making Of Megafarms, A Mixture Of Pride And Pain : The Salt : NPR

In The Making Of Megafarms, A Mixture Of Pride And Pain : The Salt : NPR

Friday Farming: Alfalfa Field, Las Vegas Nevada, 1910

I'll often pass on commenting on these photos, but I can't help but comment on this one.  Sometimes when I post these I wonder "what does that look like today?"  I suspect some of these places don't look much different, some quite a bit different.  I've posted photographs before, for example, of urban San Francisco, and I can recognize a lot of what I'm seeing from the couple of times I've been there.

Well, here's one where we can be sure that the photo doesn't depict a current scene.  Las Vegas before gambling interest and the mafia converted the town into a giant gambling playground.

Life On a Kansas Cattle Ranch: Top 10 most dangerous jobs in America---farming is #10!

Life On a Kansas Cattle Ranch: Top 10 most dangerous jobs in America---farming is #10!

Not news really.  Agriculture has always been a pretty dangerous job.  According to at least one statistic I've seen, male deaths in agriculture were sufficiently high such that children being raised by a single mother in the late 19th Century was as common as it is today, but for a different reason.

Another one that people sometimes are surprised by is commercial fishing.  It's quite dangerous.  And Taxi driver is also very dangerous.

WWII Profile: Leonard D. Wexler | United States Courts

WWII Profile: Leonard D. Wexler | United States Courts

WWII Profile: Jack B. Weinstein | United States Courts

WWII Profile: Jack B. Weinstein | United States Courts

WWII Profile: Tom Stagg | United States Courts

WWII Profile: Tom Stagg | United States Courts

WWII Profile: S. Arthur Spiegel | United States Courts

WWII Profile: S. Arthur Spiegel | United States Courts

WWII Profile: I. Leo Glasser | United States Courts

WWII Profile: I. Leo Glasser | United States Courts

WWII Profile: Arthur D. Spatt | United States Courts

WWII Profile: Arthur D. Spatt | United States Courts

WWII Profile: Dickinson R. Debevoise | United States Courts

WWII Profile: Dickinson R. Debevoise | United States Courts

WWII Profile: Arthur L. Alarcon | United States Courts

WWII Profile: Arthur L. Alarcon | United States Courts

Still Serving Their Country: Nearly 70 WWII Veterans Remain on Federal Bench | United States Courts

Still Serving Their Country: Nearly 70 WWII Veterans Remain on Federal Bench | United States Courts

USDA Blog » Agriculture Remains the Backbone of West Virginia

USDA Blog » Agriculture Remains the Backbone of West Virginia

Saudi America? North America faces challenges on path to energy independence - Energy & Resources | The Irish Times - Mon, Apr 28, 2014

Saudi America? North America faces challenges on path to energy independence - Energy & Resources | The Irish Times - Mon, Apr 28, 2014

Some of you may have missed this article in the Irish Times. . . .okay, everyone missed it in the Irish Times.

Interesting view from the Old Country, so to speak.

And what a remarkable change we've seen.  The US was an oil exporting country up through the Second World War, but an importing one by the 1960s. We were desperately dependent on Middle Easter oil by the early 1970s.

Now, we're a net energy exporter (which is different from just considering oil alone)  and there's a move to open up the export ban on oil.  This all brought about, really, by technology in the oil patch.  At the same time, American fuel consumption has gone flat, something was never really expected, and may actually start to decline.

Cameras

 

Pentax digital DSLR K-x Camera, and Pentax 35 mm ZX-M film camera below.  The K-x has a Vivitar 200 mm zoom lens afixed to it, which was originally for a Pentax M-X 35 mm film camera.  It's stock zoom lens is next to it.

I really like cameras. Anyone who has looked around any of my blogs knows that.  Our Holscher's Hub blog is pretty much nothing other than photographs, with rare exception.  And we have dedicated blogs to photographic topics alone.   

Churches of the West is a blog that we do just based on photos of churches we run into traveling about.

 

 St. Mary's Cathedral in Cheyenne, on Churches of the West.

  

Courthouses of the West does the same for courthouses.  

 

 Lahaina Banyan Courthouse on Courthouses of the West.

Painted Bricks was our very first blog, and it was originally dedicated solely to the painted sides of Casper Wyoming buildings, although it has since branched out to include buildings that interest us that way anywhere. 

 

 Mural of the Virgin Mary in downtown Salt Lake City.

Railhead addresses solely things associated with railroads, a blog I started as I thought the old station in Newcastle Wyoming was interesting.  

 

Some Gave All features mostly war memorials, although a few other memorials are also included.

 

Fetterman battleground monument.

So, we clearly like to take photos. And, while we make no pretensions to being the greatest photographers of all time, or any time, or anywhere, we like cameras a lot too.

Cameras are something that I like and use all the time that have undergone a stunning change in recent years.  I suppose they've been continually evolving for a long time, but I didn't really appreciate it until the digital camera evolution.  

I learned to take photographs in a junior high school class with a 35 mm  Argus C3 camera.  This model of camera was amazingly common, and we had one at home from my father's youth.  It says something that a camera my father had before he went into the Air Force was still a basic introductory camera later.  It says even more when you realize that the C3 was a camera that was introduced in 1939.  The camera itself was made into the 1950s, but it kept on being used as an introductory film camera for at least twenty years thereafter.

Argus C3.

Soon thereafter I went to a Pentax M-V 35mm SLR camera.  I knew very well that "single lens reflex" cameras were superior to rangefinder cameras, and my father usually shot film with a Zeiss Contaflex SLR that he obtained while in the USAF.  I always thought that camera a super camera, but it really wasn't as user friendly as the Pentax.  In that era, Pentax cameras were everywhere, and my introduction to them was really accidental as my father got me the camera as a gift.  It was an entry level SLR, but it was such a good camera that it held its own for about 20 years until it was damaged when I forgot that it was on the gun wall of my pickup truck and drove off.  It still works, but it has never been quite the same thereafter.

The M-V featured an automatic light sensor, which was a really nice addition to the camera as opposed to the C-3 or Contaflex.  With those older cameras, you needed a light meter to really set the camera accurately, although my father was so good with the Contaflex that he often didn't bother with the light meter, as he knew the light ranges and camera settings by heart.  I'd learned how to use a light meter in school, but I frankly forgot how pretty quickly once I had the M-V, as I really didn't need it.  Otherwise, however, with the M-V the photographer set the lens settings manually.  The camera came with a stock 50mm lens, but as Pentax's used, and still use, the revolutionary Pentax bayonet mount, switching to another lens just took (and takes) seconds to accomplish.  With screw mounts on other cameras the process was much more cumbersome.

My wife replaced that camera after I damaged it with a second Pentax 35mm film camera, a newer Pentax ZX-M with many automatic features.  Sticking with Pentax was important to me as I had a really nice Vivitar telephoto lens for the first Pentax, and of course one lens will fit any other with the same mount.  That camera also came with a really nice telephoto lens of its own.  And the new automatic settings were shockingly automatic, as it chose nearly ever setting, and focused, all on is own unless a person chose manual settings, which you could do.  I loved the camera (and I still like it).  However, soon thereafter the digital revolution was upon us.

Digital cameras came into our house with a compact Canon that my wife wanted.  While only a compact camera, it was soon doing yeoman's work as a camera and being used for more photos than anything else.  Soon I found myself borrowing it, where formally I would have taken by Pentax 35mm.  That old Canon compact digital camera is now fairly long in the tooth, but I still carry it with me on trips. As its compact, and still works, I can pack it easily while traveling for work, and I very frequently do.  As it doesn't work perfectly anymore, however, we've replaced it for my wife with a Canon SX-230 compact, which for a compact camera is an absolutely super camera.  I'd prefer a Pentax compact as they make a nice all weather one (which may be flagged under the Ricoh name now) but the Canon SX-230 is a heck of a compact camera.

Well, anyhow, because of the first Canon, I finally yielded to a digital camera, but only because Pentax introduced its digital DSLR.  

It seems that everywhere you go, of course, you see Canons, which have managed to take over the SLR world now that digital cameras dominate. But Pentax's are unique in a couple of ways and retain my loyalty, in spite of the massive decline in their market share in the US. For one thing, Pentax's will still take the old lens.  

That's right.  Unlike a Canon, I can still mount my old telephoto lens.  Indeed, any Pentax digital SLR will take any lens made for a Pentax bayonet mount.  Any. And they all work with them.

You do have to know how to use them on a digital camera..  If they're really old, with no internal automatic features, you have to set the camera and camera lens setting to manual, and know how to set the lens settings. But you had to do the same thing with the lens of that vintage on the 35mms of that era, you just do it differently.  They will, however, work.  The one throwback to the old era, if you do that, that you must adjust to is that you theoretically are back to the era in which you had to use a light meter, and I have downloaded a light meter on my cell phone that takes care of that.  Having said that, to my surprise, like my father, I've gotten to where I really don't use the light meter much, as you pretty much have the settings memorized anyhow.

Cow elk, photograph taken with a Vivitar 200mm lens on a Pentax K-x DSLR.  This lens was made in an era when nobody even dreamed of a digital camera and the elk was so far off it was barely visible without the lens.

When using a later film lens, such as the 80mm zoom lens my second Pentax film camera came with, you can use more of the automatic settings but you have to focus the lens manually, which is no big deal.

 

Indoor photograph with a 80mm zoom lens, taken without flash, with a Pentax K-x digital camera. The lens was made for a late Pentax 35mm film SLR.

Of course, with the fully automatic lens it came with, and a really good film card, it takes spectacular photographs.

 

Haleakalā, Maui, Hawaii.  Pentax K-x with standard lens.

A second feature of the Pentax is that its an all weather camera.  That's a big plus to an outdoor photographer.  They're as tough as nails and they don't care about rain or snow.  This isn't true of every DSLR.  That matters to me.

Having a really good photo card turns out to be a must, as at first I was actually a bit disappointed with the quality of the photos the camera took at first, with a standard computer card.  My son repeatedly told me to get a better card, and when I finally did, I was stunned.  The colors are so vivid, it reminds me of the reaction people had to Kodachrome in that they may be more vivid than real life.

Lions, photographed through glass, at the Denver Zoo.  Shoot, this was sort of late winter, early spring. Were the colors really that vivid?

 Kodacolor 35 mm slide photograph of Wake Island, from about 1954 or so, taken with a Zeiss.  Vivid images, but you were limited to a roll of about 24 photos.

But I can live with that.

But what a change in photograph this revolution has brought.  For one thing, the former need to load film every 24 or 35 shots is gone.  That's was a stunning development at first, and for a long time about every 24 shots it would dawn on me.  Indeed, I've had one singular occasion when I nearly filled up the photo card, but on that occasion I'd taken hundreds and hundreds of photographs over a period of days, including some video images.  I bought a second card, but I never loaded it.  I have no idea how many photos I actually had, but it was a pile of photos.

A byproduct, of that, is that you can take a lot of bad photos. That may sound odd, but with film, you really picked your shots.  You took a lot fewer photos, but you made sure they counted.  I've found that my photographic skills have actually declined somewhat since I started shooting digital, because I can waste shots.  I've recently undertake to address that, but it's hard to avoid in some ways.

Something that is increasingly hard for users of digital cameras to appreciate is that all film cameras, good or bad, were slaves of film and therefore of film development.  Generally, with a 35mm camera, you took about 24 shots and then loaded a new role of film. At that point, you had two options, those being to have the film developed (by far the most common option) or to develop it yourself, if you had the equipment.

When I was learning how to use a 35mm camera I also learned how to develop black and white film, which isn't all that hard.  Still, it wasn't instant.  Developing film involved unloading the film, in a dark room, into a developing canister and filling the canister with developing solution.  After the solution was in the canister for the appropriate amount of time, you washed the film with distilled water, took it out of the canister, and let it dry.  Thereafter you put the negatives in a devise that was essentially a projector and projected the image onto photo paper, which was essentially another type of film.  You then washed that image in another solution, and hung it to dry.

Depending upon how skilled a person was at this, there was actually a lot that could be done to the film in the developing stage. Beyond that, there was a lot that could be done at the point where you printed an image onto the paper, including choosing different types of paper. All this went into deciding what sort of image you would ultimately produce.

Of course, part of what determined what sort of image you produced depended upon what sort of film you had chosen, which also varied.  Not only was there a choice between black and white, but between different grades of light sensitivity of the film.  Generally, the less light sensitive it was, the "grainer" it was.  The finer the grain, the more light sensitive.  With black and white film, you could go all the way down to 60 ASA, fairly easily, which was a film that was not very light sensitive and good for any brightness, although fairly rarely used.  100 ASA was more common.  For mixed indoor and outdoor, 400 ASA was common, but not anything much higher than that.  Once you got up to high ASA film, like 600 or 1000 ASA, you were probably limiting yourself to indoor photography.

 
Photograph of NCHS football player, 1980 Oil Bowl, probably taken with 300 ASA film and developed and printed by author.

This described the process for black and white film. For color film, which I've never developed myself, the process was similar, if somewhat more complicated.

Most people didn't develop their own film of course, they took it to a place that developed film. When I was young, this meant that the film here was shipped to Denver and came back in about a week.  Later, we had a selection of one hour film developers.  Knowing how film was developed, the one hour concept always bothered me a bit, but generally it was pretty good.  Later, places like Walmart and Walgreen's had developing centers, and at least here the Walgreen's still does. Still, unlike digital photography, you ended up with a set of prints or slides.  Now, in contrast, you can view your images instantly, but you still can't handle them instantly.  If you are going to handle them, you still have to print them somehow.

This all presumes, of course, that you weren't shooting a Polaroid Land Camera.  Polaroids dispensed with the film developing step by using a special sort of photo paper that was loaded directly into the camera, and which only took a few minutes to develop after the photo was taken, and the paper removed from the camera. The process changed over the years, but for many years the photographer held the paper tight between a couple of steel plates for a few minutes and then the photo was ready to view.  This allowed the photo to be viewed immediately, but the process sacrificed quality for speed.  Now, I know that some will maintain that some really fine photos could be taken with a Polaroid, and while I know doubt would agree that a few eccentric people probably developed the talent for taking really nice photos with Polaroids, they'd be a distinct minority as the camera was really marketed for snap shots, which was generally fine with the user.  Probably more home photos and photos of children were taken with Polaroids then anything else.  Sadly, the Polaroid photo tends to fade very rapidly, so many of those photos are fading away.  My mother had a Polaroid camera for many years.

Another aspect of the digital revolution is that now digital cameras are simply everywhere, including in our phones.  Some of them take amazingly good photos, and they're all capable of taking some good photos.  I was very skeptical of this at first, and indeed, didn't want to believe it, but its true, to a degree.  This means that everything is getting photographed all the time, and quite a few things are getting photographed that shouldn't, and a lot of really bad photography is going on all the time.  In some ways, things are a bit over familiar.

 

Cathedral of the Madeline, Salt Lake City.  Photo taken with folding cell phone camera.

Included in this, in my view, is a trend to video every single deposition that a party takes, which some lawyers now do.  I haven't really addressed video cameras here, as I like still frame cameras better, but the distinction between the two is blurred now as most "photograph" cameras will not take video, and probably most video cameras will take photos, should the user be so inclined.  Anyhow, some lawyers, principally plaintiff's lawyers, now video every single deposition they take.  The usability of such videos in courts is questionable, if that's the goal, and presumably it really isn't.  It's probably a trial preparation tool, really, but a questionable one in my view as most witnesses do not really present the same way in front of a judge or jury as they do in a courtroom setting.   Anyhow, the smallest of these cameras are now so small, they have the appearance of cell phones.

Anyhow, what a change in photography.  Early in the 20th Century professional cameras were massive affairs, but the Brownie camera, an amateur, low cost, film camera had come in.

Serious professional camera, early 20th Century.

There were a wide variety of 35 mm cameras by the 1920s, and popular personal photograph got an enormous boost with the 1939 introduction of the Argus C3.  Through the lens reflex cameras made their appearance in the 1920s, but it wasn't until 1949 that the prismatic SLR was introduced, sparking a revolution amongst photography enthusiasts.  Nearly every serious camera maker soon introduced one, and they dominated in the serious photography market until the end of the film era.  My father bought a really good SLR Zeiss camera while serving in the Air Force, and the camea was so good that he used it hte rest of his life.

 Zeiss Contraflex.

Lens barrel for Contrafex, which fixed the existing lens on an extension for a telephoto effect.  I never actually saw this in use, and it does strike me as difficult to use.

My father also had a Yashica 120 mm camera. These cameras used big film for a finer detailed photograph, much the way "full frame" digital cameras due today (while most people don't use full frame digital cameras, the lack of one is a source of ongoing angst for Pentax fans, as Pentax does not make a full frame DSLR, just their regular DSLR).  It was a nice, if cumbersome, camera and my father used it less over the years, probably due to that.  And film became very difficult to obtain.

 Yashicaflex with lens caps on and viewer closed.

 Viewer cover opened.

Top of camera, with viewer opened.  You viewed the object through the top of the camera and saw the image reversed.

Digital photography seemed likely to put a big dent in SLR cameras, and it did at first, but now they've revived, particularly in the form of Canon cameras in the US.  But most of the old SLR manufacturers, save for Zeiss and Leica, which dropped out of the SLR market, still make one, and a couple of makers have entered the field who did not make film cameras.  But, just as I suppose more photos were taken with Kodak disposable and compact 35mms back in the day, more now are probably taken by cell phones.

Still, what a revolution in photography, even if things remain familiar.

Originally published on June 17, 2014.

Updated on June 18, 2014.

Mid Week at Work: Female mechanic in UK, World War One.

It will kill you. . .but it's good for you. . no, wait, it'll kill you . . .

I don't pay very much attention to health related news.  Perhaps I should, but I largely do not.  There's probably a variety of reasons for that, but one of them is that as I have an undergraduate degree in one of the sciences, I tend to be skeptical about the theory de jure to some degree.  I'm not a skeptic of the sciences, but I'm aware that at any one time a previously barely vetted theory is likely to be problematic.  Also, as that science was geology, which tends to take the long view of things, I tend to be skeptical of any health related news, particularly dietary news, that doesn't.

Also, I guess, I'm lucky to not have a lot of the food related problems that inspire theories designed to some degree to be unconventional or easy fixes.  In my middle age, I'm heavier than I have been at any prior point in my life, but I'm not overweight and was really much too think when I was still in my early 20s.  I don't each much for breakfast or dinner as a rule, so a lot of the concerns people have there basically don't apply to me.  So I guess I can afford to be skeptical.

But, given the way health news whips around, I'm amazed everyone isn't skeptical.

Take some items that have been in the news recently, that is in recent years.  Let's take, for example, coffee.

I like coffee (and have blogged on the topic previously) and I drink several cups every morning, typically while waiting to take my daughter to school.  At one time I used to drink it at work as well.

 

World War One YMCA poster showing one of their volunteer women workers who handed out books and, as you can see, coffee, for which I would have been most grateful.

When I was a kid you use to hear the canard that coffee would stunt your growth.  I have no idea where that fable came from, but my folks never believed it and I started drinking coffee in the morning when I was in high school. About that time, in the 1970s, you'd sometimes hear some snarky remarks about coffee containing an addictive drug, caffeine, which of course it does but as an addictive drug its in the category of ones that human beings are probably evolved to handle and its pretty darned harmless for the most part.

In college I was a confirmed coffee drinker.  I've been drinking coffee every morning now for decades.

I did cut back at work and no longer drink it there.  The reasons were self evident, however.  I was just drinking too darned much and it was making me jittery and messing up my sleep.  One Lent I gave it up entirely and when Lent was over I never went back to drinking it at work.

Several years ago, all of a sudden, some newstory came out that coffee might ward off Parkinson's Disease.  Hurrah if true!  Not a reason that I'm going to keep drinking it however.  Some time after that, however, some story came out that at a certain level it was bad for your heart.  Boo.  Still, not going to change my morning habits.  This past week I read that it might help stave off Alzheimer's.  Hurrah again.

Well, what about coffee's traditional rival, tea?

 YMCA poster supposedly showing a volunteer pouring a cup of tea, according to the Library of Congress, but my guess is that's coffee.

Given as its apparently the caffeine in coffee that has alleged benefits, presumably the benefits and risks, if any, of coffee, apply to tea as well.  But I'm not going to take it up, as I'm not really keen on tea.  My son likes it for some reason, and my daughter likes a custom tea drink called a London Fog.  I have no idea what a London Fog actually is.

Anyhow, awhile back there was a rage over Green Tea.  As I like Ice Tea, I bought a bottle figuring tea was tea.

Green tea is vile.

Supposedly green tea contains antioxidants, meaning if you drink it, you will not rust.

No, actually antioxidants are supposedly good for your heart.  I don't know why, but they are.  Well, as good as they may be, I'm not going to drink green tea as it is truly icky.

And my heart is apparently in pretty good shape.  I know that as a year ago I had one of those "stress tests."  This came about as I was having chest pains, although they were not of the type that a person typically assumes come from a heart problem.  Better safe than sorry, they gave me the test.

It was an odd experience, as in a stress test they elevate your heart rate by having you walk an incline plane.  A rising treadmill, as it were.  They told me that they were going to raise my heart rate to a certain level in order to do that.  As it went along, they kept raising and raising it, but my heart wasn't getting there.

"Do you run?'

No.

"Hmmmmm. . . . . ., do you work out a lot?"

No.

"Hmmmmm. . . . we'll raise it a bit more."

By the end, I was walking ain incline plain approximating the difficult face of the Matterhorn.  My heart made it to the appropriate rate and they proclaimed "no problem."

 The Matterhorn.  Apparently my heart is so solid that I could jog up it without ill effect.

Which means that my problem was probably a hiatul hernia or probably true indigestion, for which I am grateful.

This conversation is one that I repeat, on an occasional basis, with my physician, who routinely asks me a series of set questions which are probably designed to encourage folks to exercise, which no doubt is a good idea.  I'm sure that I don't get enough exercise.  Anyhow, what I'll get is "So are you getting any exercise?"  "Um, not really."  "Just ranch work and stress eh?"  "Yeah."

Stress, and not of the stress test variety, does kill, I'll concede.  It's an occupational hazard in my office line of work, which brings me to my next topic, smoking.  Before I do I'll note that awhile back I read that being employed in an occupation, like law, that requires a lot of mental activity can stave of dementia, although I've known of a couple of lawyers who suffered from that.  I'm not sure, however, that stress has any physical benefits.

Anyhow, I don't smoke and never have.  But couple of the lawyers I know at one time smoked cigars during moments of high stress.

Some time ago I read something that claimed that the occasional cigar, like caffeine, might stave off Parkinsons.  Obviously this opinion is suspect, as the occasional cigar would have to be extremely occasional as the risk of cancer would obviously override any benefit that tobacco might conceivable have.  How an opinion like this even gets generated leads a person to wonder about some of these efforts.

If smoking is the topic of such studies, than surely drinking must be as well, and indeed it has been.

This probably isn't too surprising, as alcohol is a poison (which it actually is) that humans beings are acclimated to, to a degree, such that its evidence that humans started ingesting alcohol, for some legitimate reason, in vast antiquity.  Indeed, it's known that beer is not only the single most consumed manufactured beverage on earth but that its one of the oldest.  Maybe the oldest.  Recipes for beer date back to Mesopotamia, and pretty much every culture on Earth has brewed it.

Speculation is that beer was originally brewed as it was a form of liquid food. Bread, basically, that would keep.  At some point it became safer to drink than water out of streams or rivers.  The same is true of wine.  To some degree, the alcoholic beverages of the ancient world to the Medieval one were based on region rather than purely taste, although qualitative differences in both go back into antiquity.  Suffice it to say, both drinks were the normal drinks for many people on a daily basis for much of human history.

Which does not mean, of course, that they were uniformly safe up until modern times. The danger of excessive drinking has always been there.  And just as records of drinking as a common practice go back into vast antiquity, the dangers of drinking too much have been noted back that far as well.

Americans, it should be noted, have a weird panicky relationship with their food and always have.  Alcoholic beverages are no exception to this.  The founding of the nation itself was tied up with alcohol a bit, but a strong anti alcohol streak developed relatively early in the nation's history, leading ultimately to the Prohibition movement after the Civil War.  Given as the early 19th Century was truly sodden, perhaps that's not a surprise.

Prohibition is often recalled today as a morals based campaign, but a concern for drinkers' health was a strong aspect of it.  Nonetheless, it was World War One, and the resultant concern that U.S. Doughboys, after having been exposed to French wine and French women would return as reprobates pushed it over the top.

Busting beer barrels in Prohibition.

One of the remarkable features of Prohibition in the US is that it not only was brief, 1919 to 1933, but it also immediately spawned efforts to repeal it.  No sooner had the country decided to ban alcohol in the name of morals and health, than people were buying it illegally and arguing for Prohibition to be repealed.  The health concerns seemingly forgotten.

Women were prominent in the temperance movement, and in the repeal movement as well.

The Great Depression followed by World War Two effectively put an end to temperance in the US for a long time, in spite of some county's remaining dry. By the early 1970s some states had dropped the drinking age down to the teens, such as Wyoming which had a drinking age of 19.

Following that, people became concerned once again about the health and social costs of drinking.  The Federal government sponsored an effort to get the states to raise the age up to 21, which all subsequently did, although highway safety was the main concern there. Still, the danger of excess consumption became increasingly known.

Then, starting at some point in the 1980s, the health news started to announce that may some drinking wasn't bad for you, in moderation.  Nobody seems to be able to define moderation, but it was noted that it seemed to be the butter consuming French had low heart disease rates.  So then it came to be asserted that perhaps a glass of red wine per day wasn't bad for you.  Ultimately it came to be asserted that perhaps a drink of about any alcoholic beverage per day wasn't bad.

Following that, however, was the inevitable counter.  In the UK the government really started to discourage drinking, in a nation that had a beer culture.  And this week, coming out of the UK, is the news that perhaps just two drinks per day, in the middle aged, would accelerate mental decline.  That amount, in men, is the same amount which previously had been in the safe category which you could consume per day out of a concern for your heart.

And all of this is, of course, just the major or popular stories of this type. At any one time, in the US, the latest fad diets are circulating around. Eat this, don't eat that, wait, don't eat this, eat that.  People leap on these things as the latest fad, whether their scientific based, or just slickly hawked.  It doesn't seem to dawn on a lot of people that they're eating a very unnatural diet that may be bad for them, and that countering with an extremely unnatural diet is likely not a very good idea.

Set in other terms, eating three meals a day out of boxes is probably a poor idea.  For that matter, three big meals a day may make sense for farmers and ranchers, but probably not for office workers.  Nonetheless, that's what a lot of people do. And then, when that has an inevitable impact, they go for some diet that might make sense for an ill rabbit, but not a human being.  If you are eating a series of meals that you prepare in a blender, you've lost sight of the fact that your forebearors were hunter gatherers, and biologically, so are you.

In its most extreme form, we have the think blanch, mostly white and urban, folks who have decided to go to war with nature and become vegans, a diet which ironically only a heavily industrialized society can support.  In a "self sustaining" natural environment, you'd be dead in about two weeks on that diet, as it requires industrial support to even exist.  Be that as it may, in that environment most people would come to their senses and be out slaughtering a buffalo in less than a week.  Still, it's interesting that we now have some people who are so afraid of the nature of their food, and of real nature, that they'd rather eat in a wholly fake manner.

At the same time, in the typical American fashion, we now have television channels dedicated to nothing but food.  And some that food would blimp you up in a big hurry.  Hosts go out to diners and survey the heaviest duty, most caloric, stuff imaginable.  And folks watch them do it.  Odd.

Truth be known, of course, nobody lives forever.  And sitting around in an office all day isn't really very good for you.  We no doubt have some dietary concerns, and nobody can realistically maintain that there's any benefit to some things, like smoking.  Don't go overboard on anything seems about as solid advice as anyone could really hope for.

Postscript

Something related to this, to chew the fat on.

Postscript II

Well, the current issue of Time has butter on the cover, with the words "Eat Butter".

I haven't read the article yet, but liking butter, and having never given it up, I'm pleased.

Understanding Iraq

The first thing a person looking at the civil war in Iraq needs to understand is that it isn't a real country.

 King Faisal of Iraq.  Born in Mecca in 1885, elected to the Ottoman parliament in 1913, practical leader of the Arab Revolt in the field during World War One, King of Syria in 1920 until French interest prevailed, and then King of Iraq.

Iraq is a creation of the British Empire.  That doesn't make it good, or bad, but it isn't a nation state.  A nation state, of course is a country (i.e., "state") where everyone in the country is part of the same nationality.  Not all countries are nation states. The US isn't.  Canada isn't. Australia isn't. But most are.  Germany is, for example, or France, Italy or Spain.

Imperial nations didn't draw borders, usually, based upon nationality, but upon convenience.  And that's how Iraq basically came about.

This is not to say that the region does not have an ancient history.  It certainly does.  It goes back to vast antiquity, and the region has played a part in every major event in the Middle East for all of recorded history.

But modern Iraq came about as a result of World War One.  The British took a region of the fallen Ottoman Empire that fell outside of Syria (which went to France) and outside of Transjordan (now Jordan), and out of that region administered by Saudi Arabia of the Emirs of Kuwait, and made a country out of it, with the capitol of that country being Baghdad. Over it, it placed a Hashamite king, a sort of consolation prize to the Hashamites who came from Mecca, but who lost the Arabian peninsula to the House of Saud, which the British Indian government backed while the British government, operating out of Cairo, backed the Hashamites. The Saudis, who spent most of World War One consolidating their their power, ended up with that instead, while the Hashamites, who were a family that stemmed from Mecca, ended up with what the British would give them, which turned out to be Transjordan and Iraq.  They'd wanted Syria, and briefly had it, but the French took that, based on a historical association with Syria.  The boundaries of the country were mostly unnatural, with perhaps the only natural one being the eastern boundary where the Arab population yielded to the Persian. The Persians and the Arabs generally dislike one another, even though the territory of what is now Iraq had given rise to the Shiite branch of Islam, the branch to which most Iranians adhere, but to which most Arabs do not.

King Faisal on left, dressed in a fashion we do not imagine for him, with his brother, the Emir of Transjordan.  Jordan remains a Hashamite kingdom to this day.

The Hashamite rule of Iraq was not a success, and in no small part this was because the country made little sense.  The north was one of the four countries which the stateless nation of the Kurds fell into. An ancient people with a strong central identity, they wanted no part of any country other than one they hoped to have themselves, a national aspiration opposed by Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Persia.  Shiites, who formed the majority in the Euphrates valley, did not share a religious identity with the Sunnis, who inhabit the desert west, as the two variants of Islam have very deep divides between the two.  The Sunnis inhabited the balance of the country, which just as easily could have been part of Syria, Jordan or Saudi Arabia, with the inhabitants of those regions being no more or less loyal to any of those other regions.  In the north the country also had remaining populations of Assyrians, the founders of Syria who were and are a declining minority everywhere they are found.  An ancient population of Catholic Arabs are also found in the country.

It was British presence in one form or another that kept the country together.  Somewhat independent starting in 1932, the country actually appeared to tilt towards the Axis early in World War Two until the British invaded it.  After the war the monarchy fell to the fascistic Baath party in a coup in 1958.  The British in turn granted Kuwait Independence in 1961, forming a bone of contention with Baathist Iraq.  Kuwait was no more a real nation that Iraq, but it was ethnically homogeneous, making it more stable in any event.

Under the Baath Party regional differences in Iraq were violently suppressed, but as memorialized here as Holscher's Third Law of History, those differences never went away.  Indeed, during Saddam Hussein's reign there were uprising of various groups.  The Kurds never ceased striving for independence.  The "Marsh Arabs", Shiites of the Euphrates valley, also attempted an uprising following our defeat of Iraq in the first Gulf War, when they acted upon the belief, which we did not discourage, that we'd come to their aid against Saddam Hussein.

The lid came off of all of this upon our invasion of Iraq following 9/11. The entire invasion was premised on the thesis that Iraq retained weapons of "mass destruction", a term coined in that era which oddly lumped generally nasty but ineffectual chemical weapons with truly horrific nuclear weapons, but the government was slow to disassociate Iraq with the Al Queda attack on the US, which Iraq was not responsible for..  By WMD, we meant chemical weapons, which Iraq was not to retain after its defeat in the first Guilf War.  It turned out, of course, that they didn't have any, or at least none could be found following our defeat of Iraq in the second Gulf War.  And as an added irony, the Sunni fundamentalist Al Queda regarded Hussein as a Communist, which he was not, and they therefore were opposed to him.

The invasion of Iraq, tremblingly done without an American declaration of war, left us in control of the country just as the internecine feuds were flamed by foreign Jihadist who entered the country to fight the US.  Often confused as one long war, the second Gulf War was actually two wars, a conventional war which we won against the Baathist regime, and a second one against irregular Islamic Jihadist. We won that one too, and then left the country a fragile, Shiite dominated, democracy.  That democracy did not want us there, and now it faces a rebellion it is ill prepared to put down.

Now a civil war has erupted, with the Sunni minority threatening to defeat the government of the Shiite majority.  It has every promise of turning into a true bloodbath as ancient rivalries and fears revive.  Its difficult at best to see how any democratic government can rule the country, and like King Faisal II, the best observation may be that "nobody can govern this country".  But do we dare ignore it?  The Sunni rebellion has close connections to a fanatic Sunni militia fighting in Syria for the recreation of a Sunni Caliphate, a sort of Islamic law empire.  It will not succeed in that goal, but that it's willing to struggle for it is something we cannot ignore.  Nor can we ignore that the present Iraqi government is not unfriendly to Iran, which as its own goals that do not squire with ours.

At the end of the day, we have to wonder if the best solution for Iraq wold be a world were there isn't one.  The country is a legal fiction, and in the north the Kurds are entitled to their own country, a result the Turks, Syrians and Iranians would not like.  In the west, the population would make as much sense being part of Syria, Jordan or Saudi Arabia, if we felt comfortable with that result, which we have good reason not to be.  In the east, the country would likely remain, but how viable it would be is questionable.  And how much we are willing to invest to achieve that result, and how much we have already invested in the country, is a sobering thought.

Related Threads:

Understanding Syria.

The dreaded air conditioning season has arrived.

The time of year when the indoor temperature, because of the outdoor temperature, is refrigerated to the level at which I put a coat on when I'm outdoors, the rest of the year, has arrived.

The early summer cold, the result of going from -85F to 85F by stepping outdoors, can't be far behind.

The messed up legacy of colonialism.

It's really easy to dump on colonialism from our vantage in 2014, and not really fair either.  Americans in particular like to imagine themselves as an anti colonial power, not without quite a bit of justification, but we had our moments as well, and of course the entire westward expansion of the country was a type of internal colonialism, which we tend to forget.  So, I don't intend this to be one of those snotty "oh, how bad the Europeans were" type of posts.

 Iraqi army officers gathered to celebrate Iraq's entry into the League of Nations in 1932.

And, on that, I frankly don't know that it's possible to envision a world history that doesn't feature colonialism, and European colonialism in particular.  Consider the Scramble for Africa, the last great era of colonialism.  Is it really possible to imagine all the European powers sitting that one out?  And if even one was in it, didn't all the other activity make it inevitable?  So, in short, I don't want to be excessively critical.

I also don't want to be excessively sanctimonious about it either.  Most western nations that have colonial legacies have entered the "oh, how horrible we were" state of mind, but that isn't really a very useful or accurate record.  On the ground, in a lot of former colonial areas the influence of the colonial power is often mixed, and sometimes not really all that badly recalled.  In some very stable areas of the globe areas that were once colonies are now incredibly heavily influenced by lessons learned from the former colonial power and are in some instances better carriers of western values than countries in the west now are.  And in some areas, to our surprise, the former colonial period is looked back as a golden age.  A friend of mine with experience in Morocco once related to me how high in the Atlas mountains he was enthusiastically greeted by villagers who thought he was the advanced guard of a French colonial administration, decades after the French had left, and the French were hoping for their return.  And, as horrific as the early administration of King Leopold was early on, at least one National Geographic expedition in that country found villagers rushing out enthusiastically yelling "The Belgians are back!"  Things can get confusing out there.

What brings this up, however, is the mess sometimes created when former colonial powers tried population transfers (such as the Chinese are still doing now) or drew boundaries very badly.

In recent weeks we've seen the struggle in Ukraine over territory, as Russian ethnics attempt to take parts of that country out of Ukraine and back into Russia. This is all a legacy of the Russians populating some areas of their empire with ethnic Russians and also redrawing the maps after World War Two.  This left a demographic mess that can't get sorted out well. Ukraine has to try to keep what it has, and Russia, never having gotten over its having been an imperial nation, supports its fellow ethnic Russians in their efforts to get out, if indeed it doesn't hope for domination of Ukraine.  The Tartars, in Crimea, find themselves outnumbered by everyone in their native lands.  This can't be sorted out well by any means, other than perhaps telling the ethnic Russians they'll just have to get used to it.  An interesting aspect of this, however, is that there's current combat between two distinct peoples based upon lines drawn in colonial times by one, and by cultural differences that might appear to be slight from the casual observer, but in fact which are very deep.*

Ukranian girl in a former concentration camp, in Austria, May, 1945.

A worse situation is brewing in Iraq, which in the past several days has slipped into a religious and ethnic civil war.  Making the situation all the worse, Iraq isn't a real nation to start with, but  British creation.  In some ways, Iraq was what was left over of the Ottoman Empire after you ran it out to the East.  The deserty part in the west of the country was thinly populated (and still is) and was Sunni, falling into the Bedouin cultural region.  The agricultural part to the East was Shiite, indeed it's critical to the Shiia world view for historical reasons, but still Arab (i.e., not Persian).  The north is Kurdish.

 Youthful Iraqi fascists gather, in 1932, so celebrate Iraq's entry into the League of Nations.  An unfortunate aspect of Middle Eastern history is that secular movements, which have occasionally have been very strong, have also been anti democratic.  Communist and Baathist have both been strong at various points in Iraq's history, making up about the only non religious sectarian political parties in the country, a common feature of politics in the region.

The gulf between the Sunnis and the Shiias is vast, and in terms of religious differences it doesn't do them justice, really, to lump them all in as Moslems.  Their views are considerably different on some critical matters, and it's nearly impossible for them to regard each other charitably.  The northern part of the country isn't culturally Arab at all, a the Kurds are a separate people who really deserve their own country.

Iraq, of course, is disintegrating before our eyes.  As we fought a war to depose a strongman who kept the country together, by suppressing Islam in general and any individual national impulses as well, it's now our responsibility to some degree.  But the country really isn't.  In an ideal world, letting the Kurds set up their own nation, and separating the two competing branches of Islam into separate states, would occur, but that probably can't without dire implications.  Of course, the implications of whatever occurs, at this point, are dire.

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*.Ukraine is a Slavic nation that's traditionally looked west, like Poland to which it has a close ethnic connection.  More European that Russians, they are also grouped into two separate Eastern churches in terms of religion, one being the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the other being the Ukrainian Catholic Church, neither of which, of course, is the Russian Orthodox Church.  World War One presented them with an opportunity to leave Russia, which they did, but resulting strife with Poland and Russian resulted into its reincorporation and a subsequent heavy handed Soviet repressive period which included mass starvation as a tool.  A second chance at independence was seized by some Ukrainians during World War Two during which they viewed the Germans as an ally of convenience.  A guerrilla war that followed the reappearance of the Red Army lasted into the late 1940s.

Iraq

The Big Picture: The Olympics