Mid Week At Work: New Zealand Foresters in France, World War One.

The new economic normal?

I started this post off about a week ago, and then let it set as I was traveling for work.  In the meantime OPEC had their meeting, and I've just posted on that. This post came back to mind at that time.  According to the Tribune, Wyoming's economy is now flat.  With the OPEC failure to put in place caps, I'm worried that it won't remain flat for long, however, which is what I had originally addressed here (i.e., a flat economy, although I thought that analysis somewhat flawed even prior to the OPEC story).

Founder of the House of Saud. Who would have guessed that the Saudi kingdom would prove so critical to the economy of a Rocky Mountain state?

Unemployment isn't increasing, and employment isn't increasing in the state either.  A state employee terms it the "new normal".

Except, it's flat in part because of construction jobs.

And those jobs have been a largely fueled by school construction.

 

 A series of major school construction projects has been keeping the state's unemployment figures from rising.  They won't go on forever.

Which is provided for by coal severance taxes, a dropping revenue.

And by tourism. Tourism is apparently up.  Which isn't surprising really, as with fuel prices in the basement, we should see more traveling, although apparently there  hasn't been much of an increase in fuel consumption nationally.  However, with gasoline now down below $2.00/gallon, we'll see if that holds.

$2.00 per gallon, by the way, is something I was frankly stunned to see.

Now, in the week or so that I've delayed on this story, I've actually seen gasoline at $1.87.  It'd dropping like a rock.

And I'm going on record right now that its my prediction that we'll see it go as low as $1.00 in the next two years.

Even as it is, right now, in real terms, it has to be as low as its ever been, and I'd think that should make air travel and ground travel much cheaper. We oddly haven't been seeing an increase in fuel consumption as the price first stabilized, and then fell, but I'm guess that we will now somewhat.  Or at least it'll begin to have a nationwide deflationary effect which will make the American dollar much stronger and create a real rise in earning power in everyone's bank accounts.  Unless, of course, you were working in a state, like I am, where we depend on the coal and petroleum industries for our economy.

Anyhow, this news time line is very familiar to those of us who lived through the early 1980s here. As before, there was denial, as in "this is only temporary", which ultimately yields to "oh, it won't be that bad", and followed by where we now are, which is "tourism will save us".

Tourism is important to the local economy, but it has problems as a n economic sector, not the least of which is that the wages it generates tend to be low. An added problem, rarely addressed, is that tourism and the mineral industry can be at odds which each other, at least to some degree. And the fact that the mineral industry is the high paying end of the economy makes quite a difference in the local impact of the various types of employment.

 

World War Two era poster discouraging vacation travel.  We're in the opposite position.

That the boom would end was something that those with a sense of history always knew.  A belief was out there that it was going to last decades, but that has never proven to be the case. What is unusual, however, is that the end of this boom was caused by a pricing determination from overseas, with Saudi Arabia seeking to keep its market share.  A boom had been fueled by OPEC oil policies in the past, but never a bust.  Whether the Saudi gamble will pay off for them isn't yet know, so the ultimately impact on the local economy isn't either.  But it is scary.

Petroleum and coal, it should be noted, have been part of the state's economic engine since the 1890s, but agriculture was the main sector of the economy for over half the 20th Century.  Petroleum only took that place in the 1960s.  This is significant as agriculture has actually lead the economic boom in some US states, and its proven to be an industry that not only has remarkable staying power, but staying power in a modern economy.  But it's really dwindled as a sector of the Wyoming economy in recent decades, all while remaining the romantic sector of the state's image.  In some ways, agriculture is really the reason for our tourism industry, whether that's realized or not, as range cattle production is the reason for the range being what it is.  That's something that the state should remember, and perhaps taking a second look at agriculture and what it can, and does, for the state, should be done.  It certainly can play a bigger role than it currently does, and its proven to have real staying power.

 

The cow, fabled in our cultural story, but often undersold in the post World War Two economic story of the state. Time to consider agriculture's position once again?

Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Pennington County Courthouse, Rapid City, South Dakota

Courthouses of the West: Pennington County Courthouse, Rapid City, South Dakota

Blog Mirror: Lansing State Journal: Uncovering the history of Army Jeep #1

Lansing State Journal:  Seventy-five years after it wowed the U.S. Army, the oldest known Jeep is getting its due as a symbol of the Greatest Generation’s fight and Detroit’s role in what President Franklin D. Roosevelt called “the Arsenal of Democracy” — the manufacturing might that helped the Allies win World War II.

And the oil price war goes nuclear. . . or maybe solar.

Given that so much attention has been focused on other things, many may have missed that Friday OPEC, lead by Saudi Arabia, failed to set caps on oil production by it members.

We are now in an uncontrolled oil market for the first time since the early 1970s, and the production trend is up. I wrote earlier on the Saudi boost on production, and what it might be about, but what seems fairly clear now is that part of it was designed to put a stop to increased US and Russian production.  The Saudi effort did at least slow the upward US trend but it didn't return Saudi market share to the pre US boom level and US production, if not exploration, has remained surprisingly high.  The Saudis may simply have missed their chance to achieve their goal without it taking a long time, and without it ultimately being pretty costly. 

 Prices have been going down, and given this development, they're going to keep going down. My guess is that they could go down quite a bit.  I saw gasoline for sale for $1.87 today for the first time in years. It's hard to imagine. This has to start having some sort of deflationary effect on prices in general at some point.  And its  hard to imagine that it doesn't result in an increase in domestic consumption, although this doesn't really seem to be occurring.

Indeed, the question would seem to be now if we are about to enter a deflationary period. We haven't, but with this particular cost going down, some impact has to occur.  It will not stand to be a disastrous one, like the deflationary period of the Great Depression, and in fact it would appear that except for the US energy sector, it will likely be a positive one for most of the world's economy, assuming that the price continues to go down or that it stabilizes.  It will be hard, however, on the US energy industry, although the irony is that with so much new production in North America having done on line, the US now has the ability basically to absorb increases in price which in turn might keep the Saudis from allowing that to occur.

Some energy analysts have been claiming that we're now in a new environment in terms of oil production. This seems to be becoming very much the case.  The Saudis are maintaining a dedicated effort to keep their share of the world market, but at a great loss to themselves.  Global production has reached the point where they don't have much choice, if that's what they want to do.

Playing Games with Names and Burying Heads in the Sand. Mischaracterizing violence and ignoring its nature at the same time.

Quite some time ago I published this thread, and then later came in to update it:

Lex Anteinternet: Peculiarized violence and American society. Looki...: Because of the horrific senseless tragedy in Newton Connecticut, every pundit and commentator in the US is writing on the topic of what cau...

In light of the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and in San Bernadino California it seems time to update this to speak about something else.  One being the characterization of criminal acts in a misleading fashion, the second ignoring a real and very worrisome phenomenon. 

The first item has to deal with "mass shooting".  The press, somehow, has decided that a mass shooting is one in that results in four deaths. That's absurd.

The reason that's its absurd is that a shooting involving that many people, while horrific in every fashion is a different type of crime, and probably more than one different type of crime, entirely.  Quite a few family crimes of passion, again, horrific, involve four deaths.  So do a lot of robberies, and so do a lot of inter-criminal warfare killings.

This isn't to say that these should be ignored, but they are different in character from true mass shootings.  A family that erupts in violence has something totally different going on than some other types of killings.  Likewise, a gang assassination is quite a bit different from nearly any other kind as well.  Pretending that there's a one size fits all solution to these different types of homicides is absurd.  Murders by gangs, for instance, aren't done by the mentally ill nor is any type of prohibition in implements going to prevent them.

The second, and truly bizarre, item is the absolute refusal on the part of some to recognize that what happened in Paris not only can happen here, it has been happening here.  Nobody seems ready to admit it, but we not only are subject to attacks by radicalized Islamic terrorists, including homegrown ones, but we have been enduring this for years now.  We just keep pretending that this doesn't happen, and except in rare instances, when they do, we pretend that's not what occurred.

By all objective standards, the killings in California earlier this week were perpetrated by Islamic terrorists.   Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Mali were just that.  Maybe they had mental problems as well and maybe Farook hated his employer or co-workers for some reason, but then maybe the attackers in Paris weren't mentally balanced either and maybe they hated crappy American music and Muslims who deigned to be fans of it.  The critical element of it is the adherence to the Islamic State view of things.  In other words, just because Heinrich Himmler was a creep who makes your skin crawl doesn't mean that he wasn't a Nazi official who authorized killings for Nazi aims.  

This isn't the first such event by any means.  Obviously the attack by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev in Boston fits this definition, but probably only the fact that they didn't use firearms but instead chose a bomb kept the analysis on that point from being really baffled by their motivations.  We should note that Farook and Mali also had bombs, they apparently just didn't get around to using them.The attack by Major Nidal Hasan at Ft. Hood, officially characterized by the government as an instance of "workplace violence" was also a terrorist attack of this character.  Thirteen people died, not because he was a deranged discontent, but rather because he was motivated by his faith to carry out an act of war.  The attack by Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez upon a Marine Corps recruiting station, resulting in four Marine Corps deaths, earlier this year also fits this mold.  Perhaps even the attack by Michael Zehaf-Bibeau upon the  Canadian parliament had elements of this, although more than the rest also seems to have been mentally ill.  Having said that, mental illness and terrorist attacks are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and a person can be motivated by a belief and mental illness simultaneously, with the primarily motivation perhaps sometimes being a bit of a sliding scale.

Why is this so hard to understand for us?  Probably because we haven't thought of domestic terrorism much, in spite of Oklahoma City, since the 1970s, when we had left wing domestic terrorism about which we've completely forgot.  But we shouldn't have forgotten it.  In the 70s we had the Weathermen. The English had the Irish Republican Army and the Provisional Irish Republican Army and had them for decades.  The Spanish have had violent Basque Separatists, the French dealt with Algerian terrorist, and had their own counter terrorist, in their war in Algeria.  So such things are hardly knew, and aren't even to us, although we just don't want to believe it.

We are now in a war, and this is going to be a feature of it for a long time.  Just as all Irishmen in Ulster (or anywhere else) weren't members of the IRA, and all Basque aren't members of ETA, and all Algerians weren't adherent to the FLN, it's the case that not all Muslims in the United States, or elsewhere in the Western world, are terrorist.  Not even close.   But combating these sorts of killings requires acknowledging that some members of some demographics will be attracted to radical movements within their demographic and we can't really pretend that this doesn't occur.  It's just a fact.  Some will in fact be unbalanced as well, which leads them to don the mantle of a movement to rationalize their violence, but not all of them will be by any means.  Merely being a terrorists doesn't make a person a nut.  And indeed people are often attracted to such extreme actions for reasons that are pretty idealistic, even if wholly wrong.

So, then, what of all of this?

Well, for one thing the Press, including the international press, does a pathetic job of this.  The BBC the other day came out with a semi snarky article on this which general blames the event on American laws on firearms ownership.  But it would not have done the same thing a few years back when violence by the Provisional IRA was common, regarding its own laws.  European gun restrictions didn't keep the attacks in Paris from occurring either.  All the press, and indeed the American public and leadership in general, seems to completely fail to grasp that we are in a war, and its a type of war that we haven't been in ever before.  They are at war with us, and we are at war with them (if you are dropping bombs in some region, you are at war).  A guerrilla war involves war with guerrillas, and sometimes those guerrillas are in your own country.  

We need to recognize also that in such guerrilla wars, the number of guerrillas is infinitesimally small.  Part of the reason guerrillas fight in this fashion is that their small numbers require it, but part is also because the fact that they will be identified with a demographic causes that entire demographic to become suspect, and tends therefore to result in prejudice and push it towards the extremist as a result.  That needs to be kept in mind too.

But so to does it need to be kept in mind that the current war is between hard core Islamist views and everything else.  The demographic, therefore, where recruits come from is in fact somewhat identifiable, if less  and less so due to the recruiting ability of the Internet.

And we need to keep in mind that just because four or more people are killed in a singular event doesn't mean all of their deaths were equally motivated, and therefore addressing that doesn't mean that there's one single social avenue to do so. A politically motivated killing is not the same as one motivated by mental illness, nor is it the same as a criminal killing, or one that's some sort of terrible crime of passion.

All of this means that singular solutions, such as "we ought to do something about guns" or "everyone ought to carry a gun" really don't address this situation in any meaningful fashion.  This post isn't really on either of those topics, but that's a simple fact.  This years' big mass killings, it should be noted, have been terrorist acts in France (assuming we exclude the same in the Middle East, which we probably ought not to).  And fairly strict gun control laws did nothing to prevent those from occurring, nor should we think that they would.  On the other hand, given that we're dealing with warfare, the fact that individuals on the no fly list for  being terrorist are not prevented from obtaining firearms is strange.  The point is, however, that those who seem to think that this has a simplistic legal solution should rethink it.  We've never been able to simply outlaw certain types of killings anywhere, just because we wish they didn't occur, and if simply passing a law would address people motivated by a cause to stop, the South Vietnamese would have won the Vietnam War.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Oregon Trail State Veteran's Cemetary Chapel, Natrona County, Wyoming

Churches of the West: Oregon Trail State Veteran's Cemetary Chapel, Natrona County, Wyoming

This is the chapel at the Oregon Trail Veteran's Cemetery in Natrona County, Wyoming.

WHEELS THAT WON THE WEST®: Authenticity In Early Western Vehicles

WHEELS THAT WON THE WEST®: Authenticity In Early Western Vehicles: Earlier this year , I addressed the term “all-original” as it’s sometimes applied to early wagons and western vehicles.  This week, we’ll c...

Friday Farming: Lex Anteinternet: The Poster Gallery: Posters from World War Two.

Lex Anteinternet: The Poster Gallery: Posters from World War Two.:

 

British poster, World War Two.

Mid Week at Work: Uncle Sam needs that extra shovelful.

The Kitchen Stove

Moravian kitchen stove, late 20th Century

Ranch kitchen stove, 1940s.

Cow flop fueled kitchen stove, Montana, 1937.

Kitchen stove, Vermont, 1939.

Gas stove, Arizona, 1940.

Gas stove, Texas. 1940.

Minnesota, 1940.

North Dakota, 1940.

Girl reading by kitchen stove, New Mexico, winter 1943.

Colorado, 1938.

Gas stove, 1924.

Electric stove, California farm, 1944.

SEMA 2015: Classic Restoration Pickups Photo Gallery - PickupTrucks.com News

SEMA 2015: Classic Restoration Pickups Photo Gallery - PickupTrucks.com News

Age and filing homestead claims

Offhand, does anyone know the youngest age a person could file a homestead claim, back in the day?

21?  18?

Eh? Oh Cyber Monday

I'd forgotten that Black Friday is followed by Cyber Monday.

As I don't pay much attention to such things, I'd sort of dimly recalled that there was a computer sales hootenanny, but I didn't remember when. I sort of thought it was Saturday.

It's today, Monday, as people return to work, and shop with their work computers. Seriously.  Makes sense, I guess.

So there you have it.  Thanksgiving, with Black Friday creeping into Thursday night of Thanksgiving.  Black Friday.  Then Small Business Saturday, followed by Cyber Monday.  Black Friday seems to have been a disappointment, I guess, and so there's big hopes pinned on Cyber Monday.  I guess it's the equivalent of what catalogs were, with much more ease of purchase, back when I was young.

Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Washakie County Courthouse, Worland Wyoming

Courthouses of the West: Washakie County Courthouse, Worland Wyoming:

 

This is the Washakie County Courthouse in Worland, Wyoming.  The Courthouse dates from the early 1950s (1954, I think).  It's a classically styled courthouse, with a single large courtroom.  I've tried one case in this courthouse, some years ago.

 Entrance to the adjoining jail, which is a substantial structure, mostly from the same era, itself.

  

A somewhat visually jarring feature of this courthouse is the small Chamber of Commerce building on the corner.  That structure oddly has the appearance of a 1950s vintage drive in restaurant, and its my suspicion that it was.  I wonder if it might have predated the building of the courthouse which, together with the jail, takes up the entire block.

 Large American Indian monument, carved from a substantial block of Douglas fir, on courthouse grounds.

Sunday Morning Scene: The Last General Absolution of the Munsters

The Last General Absolution of the Munsters

The famous painting by Fortunino Matania which commemorated the granting of general absolution on May 9, 1915, to the Muster Fusiliers by Father Francis Gleeson.  The Irish unit of the British Army would suffer devastating casualties on that day, having lost over 50% of is strength.

Bass Pro Shop to gobble Cabelas? I hope not

And following, not entirely appropriately, on this being National Small Business Saturday, there's news floating about that Bass Pro Shops may buy out its competitor Cabela'ss.

I really hope not.

Cabela's is an excellent store, and it's really a model of local enterprise. Based in the small town of Sidney Nebraska, it built a small local store into a giant via its catalog.  It isn't that its' cheaper than its competitors.  It often is not.  But it has a fanstastic assortment of items, and better yet, for somebody from this region, it's a regional store and has things that apply to this region.

I first went to the Sidney store so long ago that it was actually still in downtown Sidney, and not all that big. That store, in my view, had more charm than than the giant store by the Interstate Highway.  And I wasn't all that happy, even way back when, when the store began to build additional physical stores in other localities, although I've been to three of them (Billings, Denver and Rapid City).  I usually stop in the Denver store when I drive by it.

I've never been in a Bass Pro Shop but I have received their cataglogs from time to time, which has never inspired me to buy anything from one. They strike me as defined by their name, in some ways, that being "Bass".  There aren't any bass here and a store that defines bass as a significant game species is unlikely to interest me much.  If it had "trout", or even "salmon", in the name, it'd interest me a bit more.

But the big reason I hope that this doesn't go through is that this sort of conglomeration in these specialized industries, and in retail in general, just doesn't seem to have a good result.  At some point it's already the case that the big outfits crowd out the smaller ones.  From time to time, for example, its been rumored that a Cabelas would come in here, and people will sometimes pose it in "I wish a Cabela's would come in here".  I don't.  I like the Wyoming regional store, Rocky Mountain Discount Sports and I trust the people who work there.  I don't want to have to force them to compete with a Cabela's.  

Indeed, I wasn't super happy when Sportsman's Warehouse came in, but so far it hasn't been much of a threat, in so far as I can see, to the regional Rocky Mountain, even though its a multi state (and indeed multi national, as it's also in Canada) chain.  Quite a few people will go to Rocky Mountain over Sportsman's if they feel Rocky Mountain has an item.  And for that same reason I also worried when Dick's Sporting Goods came in, but again I've found Dick's to be pretty disappointing in the outdoor items department, save for kayaks, so my worry was perhaps misplaced.  Cabela's, on the other hand, might crush them all, assuming that Bass doesn't gobble Cabela's and then crush everyone.

Just recently a fellow opened a new, locally owned, sporting goods store catering to outdoorsmen, that being a store called Wagner's.  I hope it does well.  I've only been in it once, but it did have an assortment of interesting things and it went into the location of a small sporting goods store that had managed to hold on for decades.  I like the fact that an enterprising man can still open one and I hope the best for it.  By opening it, we sort of retain the historical norm here in that there's always been a local store catering to outdoorsmen (Dean's Sporting Goods, Timberline) and a somewhat larger semi chain store (Coast to Coast, Rocky Mountain).  They respond to us locals, stocking stuff that we use, and avoiding things we don't (bass lures, tree stands).  Cabela's had become a giant example of the regional store, and while it has been threatening to become much more than that, it's a great store.  I hope that Bass Pro Shops doesn't take over it.

Lex Anteinternet: Distributist of the world unite! National Small Business Saturday

This year, Small Business Saturday is November 28, today.

This is an event that's sponsored by American Express, hardly a small business, but still, it should draw our attention to small businessees, I hope.  Last year, I ran this post on the day: Lex Anteinternet: Distributist of the world unite! National Small Business Saturday

Distributist of the world unite! National Small Business Saturday.

Repeating what I wrote there would be, of course, pointless, so I'll forgo that. But I wonder, how many folks followed American Expresses' suggestion, because they made it, and what sort of impact that had. And if this is a growing movement at all.

And are you going to visit some small businesses this Holiday Season yourself?

Music, like tastes in other things, is truly individual.

The other day, President Obama bestowed a series of Presidential Medals of Freedom. The medal is supposed to honor the following: 

Section 1. Medal established

The Medal of Freedom is hereby reestablished as the Presidential Medal of Freedom, with accompanying ribbons and appurtenances. The Presidential Medal of Freedom, hereinafter referred to as the Medal, shall be in two degrees. 

Sec. 2. Award of the Medal.

(a) The Medal may be awarded by the President as provided in this order to any person who has made an especially meritorious contribution to (1), the security or national interests of the United States, or (2) world peace, or (3) cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.

(b) The President may select for award of the Medal any person nominated by the Board referred to in Section 3(a) of this Order, any person otherwise recommended to the President for award of the Medal, or any person selected by the President upon his own initiative.

(c) The principal announcement of awards of the Medal shall normally be made annually, on or about July 4 of each year; but such awards may be made at other times, as the President may deem appropriate.

(d) Subject to the provisions of this Order, the Medal may be awarded posthumously. 

Originally it was for the following.

By virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States and as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, it is hereby ordered as follows:

1. There is hereby established a medal to be known as the Medal of Freedom with accompanying ribbons and appurtenances for award to any person, not hereinafter specifically excluded, who, on or after December 7, 1941, has performed a meritorious act or service which has aided the United States in the prosecution of a war against an enemy or enemies and for which an award of another United States medal or decoration is considered inappropriate.
2. The Medal of Freedom may also be awarded to any person, not hereinafter specifically excluded, who, on or after December 7, 1941, has similarly aided any nation engaged with the United States in the prosecution of a war against a common enemy or enemies.
3. The Medal of Freedom shall not be awarded to a citizen of the United States for any act or service performed within the continental limits of the United States or to a member of the armed forces of the United States.
4. The Medal of Freedom and appurtenances thereto shall be of appropriate design, approved by the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, and the Secretary of the Navy, and may be awarded by the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, or the Secretary of the Navy, or by such officers as the said Secretaries may respectively designate. Awards shall be made under such regulations as the said Secretaries shall severally prescribe and such regulations shall, insofar as practicable, be of uniform application.
5. No more than one Medal of Freedom shall be awarded to any one person, but for a subsequent act or service justifying such an award a suitable device may be awarded to be worn with the medal.
6. The Medal of Freedom may be awarded posthumously.

I don't have a problem with the medal, which is basically a high civilian honorific, but I sometimes and a bit surprised by the winners, which is not to criticize them.

One winner this year was James Taylor.

Taylor is a musician I don't think much about, as he bores the stuffing out of me.  After he won, I was discussing him with my son, who knows a lot about music, and is a good musician himself, but he had  never heard of him.  Probably not something a younger generation follows much.  Indeed, he strikes me as part of the music scene of the 1970s, and that being the part that I myself prefer not to ponder.

So, I found him on you tube.

My gosh, the comments on his videos are just gushing.

One comment, and I can't find it now, was something like "How can anyone not love this music?"

Well, I don't. 

I can't stand Taylor's music. It's really dull in my view.  I frankly can't get through one of his songs if it comes on the radio, I just move on.

Am I right?  Probably not, as a lot of people do love him.  But I find his music insufferably dull.  When he was here in town a while back a lot of people I knew went to hear him, and they all commented on how great he was.  I didn't go. I"d have been napping and checking my watch.

Oh well, tastes in music, likely beauty, or even more so, truly are in the eye, or in this case the ear, of the listener.

Oh, why did he win?  Well, the President's statement provided:

 As a recording and touring artist, James Taylor has touched people with his warm baritone voice and distinctive style of guitar-playing for more than 40 years, while setting a precedent to which countless young musicians have aspired.  Over the course of his celebrated songwriting and performing career, Taylor has sold more than 100 million albums, earning gold, platinum and multi-platinum awards for classics ranging from Sweet Baby James in 1970 to October Road in 2002.  In 2015 Taylor released Before This World, his first new studio album in thirteen years, which earned him his first ever #1 album.  He has won multiple Grammy awards and has been inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the prestigious Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Eh?  You get a medal for that?

Oh well.  I'm sure all those statements are very true.

Australian Government nixes sale of largest cattle ranch to foreign investors

Of note to some here, the Australian government said no to the sale of the nation's largest cattle ranch, called in Australia a "station", to foreign bidders.

Not really an act of Distributism, the sale was apparently given the no go as part of the ranch includes the world's largest missile range.  So it was more of a matter of national defense considerations as opposed to anything else.

Still, it's interesting.  If it had been an American ranch, I doubt that a similar result would have occurred, or if we'd even have thought that there should be one.

Absolute freedom of land sales, or even use of land, isn't really a given, the way Americans tend to think it is.  And perhaps it shouldn't be really, in all circumstances.