Persistent Myths XIII: The Vietnam War Edition

The Vietnam War Edition

All wars result in myths, but in terms of recent, that is post World War Two wars, the Vietnam War has more than its fair share.

I've written here about the Vietnam War before, including my view that its more properly viewed as a campaign in the Cold War.  And I've written about it even on this thread before.  Nonetheless, and with some trepidation, I'm writing about it here again today, even though I may be upsetting a few folks by doing so.

Starting right of with the most likely to offend item, a persistent story about the Vietnam War is that of veterans returning from Asia and being spat upon at the airport. The story is extremely common, and its even repeated by veterans in documentaries.  It's also largely a myth.

I can't say its a complete myth.  B. G. Burkett, in his book Stolen Valor, reports that he could find about three or so incidents of it occurring, if I recall correctly.  But in doing so, he reports the story as a myth.  The reason for that is that such incidents were exceedingly rare.  It happened at least a few times, but only a very few times.  It was not the norm.

While on myths, although this one could apply to any American war for over a century, most US troops who served in Vietnam were not combat troops.

 

Infantrymen in the field.  Most US troops were not combat infantryman in the war, although obviously quite a few were.

The movies have left us with a persistent idea that all American troops in Vietnam were infantrymen and their experience there was something like that depicted in Platoon.  Granted, we did send a lot of combat troops to Vietnam, but most of them were not.  In some odd way, what's portrayed in a film like Good Morning Vietnam is more accurate for most U.S. servicemen who served there than Platoon.  Now, all of Vietnam was dangerous, but it isn't the case that most US troops were in the bush all the time looking for the VC.  In the later stages of the war the US effort came to be very heavily dominated by service troops as the Vietnamization program increasingly relied upon the Army of the Republic of Vietnam to do the fighting.

Another myth of the war which is widely accepted is that getting into it was an American idea and we somehow were uniquely there. That's flatly incorrect.

Most people know that the French fought in Indochina before we did.  A few are aware that the French withdrawal came amazingly close to our own first presence, but few seem to appreciate the extent to which it was an allied effort.  Numerous other nations contributed combat forces to the war, including Australia, New Zealand, and the Republic of Korea.  A variety of nations sent medical support forces, including Spain and, in a naval contribution, Canada..  Support for operations came from neighboring Thailand.  it was more international than people suppose.  Late during the war there were more South Korean troops fighting in Vietnam than there were American troops..

Even those who realize that are usually unaware that it was Australia, not the United States, that really pushed for intervention in the war early on. Australia urged the United States to intervene, with the promise to contribute, but when it appeared the United States would not, Australia indicated it might go it alone, which caused the US to take more interest.  Ironically its been a persistent myth in Australia that the US got Australia involved in the war, when in fact the early interest was stronger on the part of Australia.

There's also little appreciation that we were not defeated in the field, but rather the opposite occurred. This myth arose during the war when the American public became convinced that we were stuck in a quagmire.  In fact, the American effort in the war was amazingly successful in terms of field success, if not in terms of causing South Vietnamese political reform.  By 1968 the North Vietnamese regarded themselves as facing defeat and the Tet Offensive was launched in desperation.  It was a military failure.   The U.S. military appreciated that and Westmoreland urged for expanding the war to a defeated North  Vietnam.  Rather than do that, the decision was made to turn ground combat over to an increasingly effective South Vietnamese army. By late war the US effort was, as noted, nearly all support.  The South Vietnamese required American air support, however, and our refusal to supply it in the face of the North Vietnamese 1975 invasion doomed South Vietnam to defeat. 

Salon: "What nobody told me about small farming: I can’t make a living People say we're "rich in other ways," but that doesn't fix the ugly fact that most farms are unsustainable" ??? OH BULL. You weren't paying attention.

 

In the "you must be deaf category" is the author of this story that appears on Salon and which has been commented upon by Forbes:

What nobody told me about small farming: I can’t make a living

People say we're "rich in other ways," but that doesn't fix the ugly fact that most farms are unsustainable 

Oh really.  Where were you living?  In a box?

Anyone who has looked at this topic and not been predisposed to be completely and totally enamored with the concept of modern "homesteading" would have been well aware of the fact that these small scale agricultural enterprises are not economic in a modern economy.  I've blogged about it here:
 

The "Homestead" movement

Homesteading then and . . .not now.

For that matter, the economics are tough for people who simply want to get into agriculture, but are unrealistic about a 17th Century agrarian model of farming.  I've blogged about it here:

Lex Anteinternet: You can't do what you want

You can't do what you want

Economic viability of entering agriculture, a question.

Unsolicited Career Advice No. 5. How do you become a rancher?

Land Values and American Agriculture

And its not just me. Did she check out Kevin Ford's posts on the New Catholic Land Forum, as he slipped slowly into having to abandon his farm? What about Devin Rose's blog as he tried the same thing and also failed?  Hmmm?

Apparently not.

Let's look a little closer at this.

My farm is located in the foothills of Northern California, 40 miles east of Sacramento on 10 acres my partner, Ryan, and I lease from a land trust. In the heat of summer, my fields cover the bronzed landscape like a green quilt spread over sand. Ten acres of certified organic vegetables trace the contours of a small valley floor. Tomatoes glow crimson. Flowers bloom: zinnias, lavender, daisies. Watermelons grow fat, littering the ground like beach balls.

Ten freaking acres, and you rent it?  And you thought this was going to work?

Shoot, this isn't even the classic American homestead acreage model.

 

 19th Century Nebraska homestead. This would be a prosperous homestead.  A married couple with at least three, and probably at least four if not six children (the two adult men are possibly hands).  Nice house, and a windmill.  They've farmed right up to the house.  They're on at least 40 acres, if not more.

No, this is something like the Italian peasant model.

Italian peasants on their way to Tivoli.  They're riding a donkey.  The donkey is carrying their product. In other words, they're poor farmers, probably on a small acreage, taking their product to a big city.  They'd probably have preferred to be in the United States farming on 40 acres.

And, in the spirit of getting older and crankier, let's be blunt. By "partner" here, I'm going to assume that the author means romantic partner without the benefit of marriage.  I'm not going to lecture anyone on this, but farming is a really hard, stressful, way to make a living even in the best of times.  Ryan and Jaclyn would be better off being married partners as at some point any kind of business partnership is pretty darned stressed under in this line of work, let alone a romantic one that has no legal or formal constraints.  But this all says a lot, really.  A hip, cool, couple living the hip cool lifestyle in a hip cool location doing the hip cool organic thing. Of course this is doomed to failure.  There's a reason that farming has never been hip and cool.  It may be romantic, in the classic definition of the word, and I'll admit to feeling that way about it. But hipsters need not apply as it isn't hip.  At some point, when somebody decides its not that hip and cool to be working hard in poverty, the romance of this informal arrangement may very well wear immediately off, and that's the end of it, irrespective of the destructive consequences of that.

The point is that this occupation has been engaged in by human beings for millennia and the basic nature of it, right down to daily living, is highly defined as its been through the refiners fire.  If a person isn't aware of that, and more if they intend to reinvent major aspects of it, they better have analyzed that down to the elemental level.

As a further aside, on using terms, the author of this item says she "owns" the farm.  No you don't.  You lease it.  You are a tenant.  Don't fool yourself.  Owning is owning.  Leasing is leasing.

Wife of tenant farmer on the Texas Panhandle, and therefore a farmer herself.  This farm would appear to be considerably larger than 10 acres.

Son of tenant farmer, 1930s, Oklahoma. At this guys age he was undoubtedly in the Army a few years later, and probably never went back to being a tenant farmer.

Now, a lot of operations lease land.  But to lease 100% of your acreage, save in family operations, does not equate with "owning" anything.

So, back to the acreage.  

So you are committed to an economic outflow on land you don't own, and on an acreage that doesn't even meet the American agrarian standard of 40 acres.  Freed slaves wanted 40 acres, not 10, for a reason.  No wonder that Forbes deemed this farm to be "Medieval".  To quote from Forbes:

There’s a really delightful little essay over at Salon about the trials and tribulations of someone trying to make a living as a small scale farmer. Her point being that despite the vast amounts of labour that she and her partner throw at their 10 acres they’re not in fact able to make anything much of a living. This is entirely true of course: their income looks to be about that of a prosperous peasant farmer in the Middle Ages. And that’s the delightful part of the essay, although it’s not quite noted. Simply because the economics of all this is implacable. If you’re trying to live off the produce of 10 acres then your maximum income is going to be the value of what can be produced off 10 acres: not a lot. This is why the Middle Ages, when 90% of the population were trying to live off such plots (often a little larger, 20-30 acres was about right for an English villein) were so darn poor by our standards. This is also why other areas of the world, where people are living off such small parcels of land, are poor today.

That's about right.

 Farming, circa 1330.

Save it doesn't even rise up, or down, to that standard.

The author notes that she heard an interview of people entering this lifestyle, and I've seen quite a few recently about it myself.  I think I've linked some in here.  Here's what she noted, which related to the point immediately above.

What the reporter didn’t ask the young farmers was: Do you make a living? Can you afford rent, healthcare? Can you pay your labor a living wage? If the reporter had asked me these questions, I would have said no.

Duh!

Farm incomes have not had rough parity with urban incomes since 1919.  And that's on conventional production farms.  What does that mean? Well, what it means is that the level of income for participation in the economy has been below the average urban income since that time.  In practical terms, that means there's less money around for buying that X Box, or that new television, or healthcare. 

And with only 10 acres are you seriously suggesting you pay labor?  People farming on 10 acres don't have paid labor, and they never have.  Labor on a small farm is husband and wife, father and mother, uncle, aunt and cousins, and close friends whom you are going to help next.  Not you, "partner" and paid labor.

Now, having said that, I'll note that on actual realistic farms and ranches, people often make do around this topic as people are capable of doing and acquiring in a way that urban people are not.  More realistic agrarians, quasi agrarians, and conventional farmers are well aware of that. They fix their own machinery, do things in a manner that is cheaper than a more electronic and mechanized manner, grow much of their own food, etc.  Indeed, one of the real changes in post 1930 agriculture has been a push away from subsistence in farming and I feel that's bad.

But if you are looking at ten acres, that's something else entirely.  If you are a market farmer, you are on a market garden, not a farm.  Or, as Salon says, you are a Medieval tenant.  You aren't even a Russian pre revolution tenant, which at least had the commune to rely on.

And that means you are going to have to live like a Medieval tenant.  No income for health care?  No kidding.  You'll have to rely on yourself, your family (although given your "partner" situation, you don't have a family like they had) and your community, all of whom live in the same tiny village and go to the same small church, all of which matters to them above all else.  You don't have that social network.  They were eating what they produced, caught and killed and that alone, and therefore had a diet that varied little compared to what you are used to. They didn't think themselves hip and cool as they drank fair trade coffee as they didn't drink coffee, or tea, or soda, at all.  They drank beer, and they brewed it and consumed it in massive quantities as the water was lethal.  And they lived close to death.

 

Old Believer village in Alaska. Yes, they live on little plots (I don't know how little), and they fish as well (they don't try to be limited).  But they're not living near the big city and they're an isolated, non hip, group living an intentionally isolated life in a distinct ethnic and religious community with defined community beliefs, relationships and networks.  You, dear hip and cool neo homesteader, are not.

Now, I'll confess to agrarian leanings.  But a person has to be both aware and have some sense of history before they leave their hip coolness and try to engage in the world's oldest fixed labor.  Forbes is correct, ten acre plots haven't been viable since the Medieval period, and even then most farmers were tenants in most of Europe. There's a reason that European farmers immigrated anywhere, North America, South America, Australia, New Zealand, and even Africa, to do the exact same occupation they were doing in Europe. . . farm. And that reason was land. 

And there's a reason that all over Europe farmers, when they had a chance, wanted land reform.  The Irish didn't keep the land lords when the English went, now did they?  And up until 20 years ago farming remained the biggest business in Ireland.  The English farmers struggled for and got their land after World War One. French farmers got it after the French Revolution.  Everywhere you look, you'll see, if you look, that the thing farmers wanted was to own land, not till the landlords land on a tiny substance plot.

Sheesh.

Now, all this from a person who laments the inability of the average person to get into agriculture now, and would frankly like to see that changed.  But at a certain point, you have to look at an ill thought out endeavor and shake your head.  This isn't helping anyone, its confirming the opposite. This is going to fail and fail badly.  Indeed, most homestead in the second half of the 19th Century and early 20th Century failed, but at least they were more realistic.  Pie in the sky endeavors ignoring agriclutural history and agriculture's nature aren't helping anything.

And that's my problem with the neo homesteading movement in general.

The local story of the year, the price of oil.

I saw diesel fuel for sale here yesterday for $2.09.

$2.09.  I haven't seen it that low in years and years.  Gasoline is down to $1.70.

 

Old Skelly station in Casper Wyoming.

The Casper Star Tribune lead off today noting that the US and Wyoming petroleum production for 2015 remained steady, in spite of the drop in price.  Now, that's also remarkable.  The globe is in surplus on the product, U.S. production is not dropping, apparently it can keep pace with the decline in price. . . at least so far.  Consumption globally is not increasing.  The Saudi gambit does not appear to be working.

The Chinese economy, which some hoped would pick up the slack, is slowing.  The global economy is expected to slow in 2016.  Wyoming is down to ten working rigs. Ten.

In spite of this, I keep hearing a few "it'll pick up".  But mostly, it's now "we're hanging on", and people still employed in the industry are worried. They have good reason to be.

First successful Blood Transfusion using chilled blood: January 1, 1916

Done this day, by the Royal Army Medical Corps.

New Year's Resolutions for Other People. 2016 Edition

 Polly and Her Pals, January 4, 1919.

Yes, I know that this is rude, but I fear that if I don't do this form them, they're not going to do it for themselves. And some folks needs some resolve, let alone resolutions.  So, in spite of last year's failure of this topic, we'll try again.  Probably with an equal lack of success, but here goes.

1.  The American political system.  Hey, your broken and are not making sense.

Well, not completely broken, but the method of picking a President sure is. What's with this absurdly long period just to pick a party candidate that is, after all, the candidate for that party? It's presented like an actual national election.  Ditch it, and have a convention about eight weeks before the national election and pick the candidate then. No primaries or any of that baloney.

And while you are at it, let's admit that the two party system doesn't make natural sense either.  The Democrats are at least two parties, the GOP is at least three.  Let's admit it and get some variety rolling.  Why are Clinton and Saunders in the same party?  Why are Trump and Paul?  It doesn't make very much sense.

2.  The Upper Federal Judiciary.  Back to law school for the Federal bench, or at least the Supreme Court.

The job of the Supreme Court isn't all that hard.  It's just to interpret the law, which usually is fairly straight forward.  Don't worry about the consequences of that, but quit making stuff up when it suits some "evolving concept".  You aren't a legislature.  Last year was a bad year for you.  Try to fix what you botched up in the law this year.

While you are at it, look up "natural law".  If you don't get that, or think there isn't one, enroll in the local colleges night school classes in biology.  Really.  You may have been wearing weird obsolete judicial stuff so long that you've forgotten that there is a nature.

Speaking of obsolete judicial stuff, why are we holding on to robes?  It's strange.

Also speaking of obsolescence, even though I know it runs counter to cherished ideas, perhaps its time to seriously consider imposing a mandatory retirement age for Federal judges. This is, I know, the exact opposite of what our legislature has pondered in regards to our own judiciary in recent years, but I mean it.  Four of the current justices are in their 70s.  Sure, they may be sharp, but sooner or later we're going to get one that isn't, then what?  And beyond that, lawyers, and that's what they are, in their 70s began practicing law in the 1960s.  Most Americans were alive in the 1960s.  Experience is one thing, but time does move on, and recently they've issued an opinion trying to anticipate what they think the evolution of trends are.  People in their 70s aren't necessarily that clued in, really, to current social evolution on things.

3.  The Media.  Try focusing on real news this year. Not the photogenic stuff, but the real stuff.  Just because its photogenic doesn't make it really important.

4.  People who cite statistics routinely.  Oh, you know who you are.

Research what that stuff means, will you?  Just citing some statistic doesn't mean anything if you don't understand the background to it, and the context of it.  Quite often, you are actually boosting erroneous assumptions.

5.  The Wyoming Legislature.  Hey, take a year off on insisting that the Federal government "give back" the land that Wyoming never owned.   

6.  Politicians.  This year, let's admit that the west is in a war with Islamic fundamentalism and that's going to last a very long time.  As part of that, let's not mince words.  It's a war (most of you are finally admitting that).  The Islamic State is not insane, but grounded in a fundamental conservative, if radical, understanding of Islam.  We're going to have to get this right.

7. Saudi Arabia.  Okay, Saudi Arabia, you won't play nice on petroleum, so we don't have to play nice with you.

Saudi Arabia, like every other country in the world, should be subject to the "Mormon Missionary Standard of Civil Conduct".  Now, I'm not a Mormon, but what I mean by that is that if your country can't tolerate a clean cut kid in a white shirt and tie coming to the door to tell you about the Book of Mormon, or perhaps about the views of the Jehovah's Witnesses, it's not an adult country.

It isn't that you have to believe what they believe, but if you are so freaking insecure about your own beliefs that its illegal for Elder Jones or whomever to come to your door, you have a real problem.  Grow up.

So, Saudi Arabia, start acting civil. And, rest of the world, until there's a Christian church, no matter how small, in a Meccas suburb, quit treating these guys like they are our friends. They aren't.

8.  Muslims.  It is rude to tell a person what to believe, save as evangelization, which isn't rude even if perceived as such.  So I'm not telling you what to believe.  But what I am saying is that there's clearly a world crisis in which one branch of Islam is clearly at war with the rest of the world, and at war with less radical Muslims.

We don't hear from you faithful bystanders much, and we need to.  If you agree that the Islamic State is the new caliphate, say so and tell us why. If you don't, and particularly if you don't agree with its methods, we need to hear that.  That takes some courage either way, but we can probably agree that your faith would sanction that.

9.  Christians.  Again, it's not my position to tell people what to believe, but I will note that in recent years some of you seem to adapt to worldly social positions as if they are religious tenants.  A central message of Christ was that Christianity was going to be unpopular and might end up getting you dead at the worst, or put outside of the circle of your family and friends.  So, if the letters of St. Paul are making you squirm a bit, maybe they ought to, rather than making you look to your political party for answers.

10.  The Islamic State.  Just this week you issued instructions how how abhorrent your soldiers were allowed to go with female captives, and that's pretty darned far.

That's creepy.  Stop it.

11.  Celebrities.  Oh, just shut up.  Seriously.  We don't really need to know what you think on anything at all.

And I mean anything.

12. Wyoming drivers.  Enough is a enough on making up new rules at intersections.  The rules are all in a book put out by the DOT. Get it. Read it.  Apply it.

13.  Lawyers.  For all 25 years of my practice I've heard you lamenting about the loss of civility in the practice. And it is real.  Here's an ideal, start acting civil.  

14.  The Bar Exam Committee.  And not just the Wyoming one.  There is no "uniform" law.  All law, even uniform acts, are going to be modified locally.  You exist for your state and your state alone. Ditch the UBE.

15.  Ford Motors and General Motors.  Automatic transmissions to not belong in heavy trucks. Reintroduce the stick shift in them.

And, while you are at it, Chrysler, I like the diesel engine in the Jeep Wrangler, good idea, but with an automatic only?  Seriously?

16.  Law Schools.  We're flooded with lawyers in the  US right now.  This would be a good time to make the curriculum harder and reduce class size.  You'd be doing your students a favor.

For that matter, you'd be doing them a favor too if you went through the faculty and asked everyone if they'd practiced real law for at least ten years. Those who haven't can benefit by getting a pink slip and going out the door to practice what they've been preaching.

While speaking of law schools, perhaps we ought to consider making them a bit more erudite once again.  In recent years this seems to have declined.  Lawyers who don't have a theory of the law and a historical understanding of that theory aren't very well educated.

I'm not sure how to introduce that, but perhaps we should ponder adding a fourth year to law school to include such topics.

17. Chambers of Commerce and all you economic types.  Economic analysis of things is surprisingly shallow.  Growth is good is about all it amounts to as a rule.  Maybe its time to consider economics in an actual real world, this is what people want sort of way.  And not in the worn out Socialist manner that's getting drug back out this year.

I sort of suspect that most people most places aren't all that keen on growth, but might actually want stability more.  Might be worth pondering.

18.  Television.  Okay TV, I hit you last year, and I am again.

Enough is enough.  I don't care what "real housewives" of any place do.  If you show one more episode featuring a bunch of trashy rich women anywhere, and bill them as housewives, you ought to run a hundred about married Hispanic maids in the same communities. They, dear TV, are the real ones.

And no more shows on the Duggars. Ever.  Haven't we had enough?  Granted, maybe to somebody a show about a family with nineteen children was interesting at first, but now its been done.  And spinning it off into second generations is a bit much.

No more Cody Brown and his crew either.   Ack.

19.  Women.  Women, every year there's a story about how women have not reached economic parity with  men, and you haven't.

And then one of your sisters will make a big news splash by omitting most of her clothing, and be celebrated for that.  Don't emulate her, and let her know what you think. She's not liberating you, she's holding you down.

20.  Men.  Dudes, there's been a lot of press here and there about men being less many now days.  And that press has some merit.  Cut it out with the novel haircuts and skintight jeans and do something manly. Seriously. 

And, take a look at number 19.  Yes, that tart is sans apparel in order to sell her image to you, but you don't have to buy it. Take a look at the ossified freak who is credited with getting this debasement rolling.  You definitely don't want to be that guy.  And the current scientific evidence is that this stuff is in fact having a detrimental psychological and effect on you.

HAPPY NEW YEAR ALL!  Thanks for reading my blog.

Friday Farming: Horsepower vs Horse Power: Which Wins?

Horsepower vs Horse Power: Which Wins?When it comes to agriculture, some farmers rely on the most modern tools available to produce their crops, but there’s a growing number who are choosing draft horses over tractors to help them get the job done. Their reasons are varied, but many find that using draft animals dovetails with their desire to utilize the most sustainable methods available to produce their crops. But how does horse power really stack up against tractor horsepower?

Persistent Myths XII: The "It's all about oil" edition.

The "It's all about oil" edition.

There's a persistent belief in the US that every conflict in the Middle East is about petroleum oil, and that's because every single nation in the Middle East is swimming in petroleum oil and vastly wealthy.  If non Middle Eastern nations are tied up in the affairs, including the wars, of the Middle East, that's because they want the war.    Some even tie past actions of various nations from many decades past to a desire to control oil, such as everything the UK did during World War One in the Middle East was due to its insatiable desire for oil.

Sorry, this just doesn't match the facts.

Oh, some thing in the Middle East definitely are about oil, no doubt.  And the Western importing nations have always been more careful to pay attention to the oil exporting nations than those that didn't have a commodity to export.  But then, paying attention to a nation that produces a necessary export commodity is something all nations have done at all times.

But a lot in the Middle East happens that has nothing at all to do with oil  And a lot of the Middle East is completely devoid of oil.

That last fact alone comes as a shock to a lot of people, but it's quite true.  Indeed, twice this past week I've seen events in Syria tied to oil. Well, Syria produces only a small amount of oil, about 28,000 bbls/day.  In contrast, the US produces over 3,000,000 bbls/day, Saudi Arabia over 9,000,000 bbls/day and Russia over 10,000,000 bbls/day.  They aren't fighting over Syria's small production, and the various outside forces that back one side or another don't have oil in the forefront of their minds either.  Shoot, Russia (and Iran) have tended to back the Syrian government, and they're both awash in oil.

And Syria isn't alone.  Jordon, a nation we hear about frequently in the region, isn't really an oil producer either.  Neither is Egypt.  Indeed, much of the Middle East is pretty devoid of appreciable oil production.

And frankly, oil doesn't matter like it once did.  It mattered more before the substantial Russian production, the greatest in the world, came on line and before new technology made the United States the third largest producer in the world.  The US now produces so much oil that, combined with other fuel sources, it's now a net energy exporter and it appears that the US will reenter the petroleum exporting countries.  Beyond that, we seem to be entering a period of flat demand, due to technological rather than economic, reasons such that oil will never resume the place in the global economy it once had.

Where oil demand should really matter is with developing nations, and not all that long ago there was serious concern that China was acting to tie up future supplies. But China itself is the world's fourth largest oil producer and it appears to be on the cusp of technological changes that will reduce its need for fossil fuels.

All of this is not to say that oil isn't important, and that people don't fight on it. But the common simple response of "it's all about the oil" is simply wrong, almost always.  Indeed, some of the places we have been involved in that have oil, if we were thinking of our own economy, we'd have been better off not getting involved with.

Persistent Myths XI: The World War Two Horsey Edition.

The World War Two Horsey Edition.

Following on item VI above, its also commonly believed that the retention of horse cavalry in any army, or horses in general, during World War Two was just romantic naivete.

Actually, it wasn't.  Every single army in World War Two had some mounted forces they used in combat. Every single one.  There are no exceptions whatsoever.  The simple reason was that there were certain roles that still could be preformed in no other way.

One of the major combatants, the Germans, attempted to eliminate independent cavalry formations while retaining organic formations in infantry units and found the need so pressing that it ended up rebuilding its independent cavalry formations and incorporating irregular ones.  The United States and the United Kingdom both ended up creating "provisional" mounted formations in Italy, as they couldn't fill the reconnaissance role there in any other fashion.  One army, the Red Army, had huge numbers of cavalrymen throughout the war.

The last mounted combat by the United States, prior to Afghanistan, actually took place in the context, with a mounted charge of sorts being done in late 1944 or early 1945 by a mounted unit of the 10th Mountain Division. The last German charge was in the closing weeks of 1945, when a German cavalry unit charged across an American armored unit, in part of their (successful) effort to flea the advancing Red Army. When the last Soviet charge was I do not know, but the USSR kept mounted cavalry until 1953.

In terms of transportation, the Germans in fact were more dependent upon transport draft horses in World War Two than in World War One, which is also true for artillery horses.  Germany, the USSR, China, Japan, France, and Italy (at least) all still used horse drawn artillery to varying extents during the war.

Persistent Myths X: The Great War Edition

 The Great War Edition.

Starting with:


The Horsey World War One Edition

 U.S. Remounts, World War One.

It's commonly stated that the First World War demonstrated what any competent observer should have been able to know by simple deduction, that being that the age of the horse in war, or more particularly cavalry in war, was over.  This appears again and again in everything from films to serious academic histories.

It's also complete bunk.

In reality, cavalry served effectively on every front during the war and the Army that acted to keep its cavalry fully separate to the extent it could, rather than folding cavalry elements into infantry divisions, had the most effective cavalry, that being the British.  There are numerous examples of cavalry deployments from every front in the war in every year of the war, with some being very effective deployments indeed. Generally, properly deployed, cavalry proved to be not only still viable, but extremely effective.  And it was also shown that not only did the machinegun not render cavalry obsolete, but cavalry was less impeded by machineguns than infantry, and it was more effective at deploying light machineguns defensively than infantry was.

This doesn't even touch, of course, on the heavy reliance on horses by the artillery and transportation corps.

An excellent book on this topic can be found in Horses In No Man's Land, which addresses very effectively the British cavalry.  Less has been written on the cavalry of other armies, although a good book on the general topic was published by the U.S. Army shortly after World War One.  Nonetheless, even with what is readily at hand, its pretty plain that the role of the horse wasn't diminished in World War One.  Indeed, the Germans lost the war in 1918 as they lacked cavalry by that point in the war.

The World War One Trenches Edition

We all know that the miserable wretches in the Allied trenches stayed in them, in the Great War, until they were killed or injured, or driven mad.

Except they didn't.

Don't get me wrong.  World War One was truly horrible.  In comparison to the wars of the last half century, World War One was so awful its nearly unimaginable.

But the armies did not commit troops to the trenches until they were killed or injured. They rotated them out.

The British, for example, rotated troops out every four weeks. At any one time, a large number of troops were off the lines, and for that matter, even those at the lines were not necessarily in the foremost trench, but often in a reserve trench.

Again, this is not to say that the whole thing wasn't bad, it was. But the common idea that the soldiers were in the trenches for months on end with no relief is wrong.

For that matter, as an aside, the idea that cavalrymen were idled, in the British Army, in the rear for the whole war, except when actually deployed mounted, is wrong. They rotated them up to the front as infantry. 

The World War One Parachute Edition

It's well know that World War aviators didn't wear parachutes, but less known why.  Its sometimes stated that parachutes of the era couldn't fit in the small cockpits of the planes then in use.

Yes, they could.  World War One aviators didn't wear parachutes as their superiors forbid it on the thesis that it would encourage pilots to bail out at the first sign of trouble.  That was an absurd idea, but that's what the idea was.

Persistent Myths IX: The D-Day Edition.

The D-Day Edition.

We just passed the 70th anniversary of Operation Overload, the Allied landings in Normandy during World War Two, popularly known as D-Day.

This major World War Two event has justifiably received a lot of attention over the years.  In the US, however, so much of the focus has been on the American effort, with that focus sharply on just one beach, Omaha  Beach, that there's a common misconception that the US had the predominant role in the landings. Actual figures, however, are a bit surprising.

2/3s of the troops who landed in Operation Overlord were troops of the British Commonwealth, i.e., British or Canadian.

2/3s of the air assets used on D-Day were British.

3/4s of the naval assets were British.

Amongst the senior level overall command, more officers at the very senior level were British than American.

The US was clearly in the ascendancy amongst the western Allies by June 1944, but it wasn't until later that summer that over 50% of the ground troops committed in France were Americans.  At the time of the landings, there were still more British forces in the mix of ground troops, and as these figures show, their role in other combat resources was also still predominant. 

The landings on the British and Canadian beaches went very well, in part due to good luck as to the choice of their locations, and in part due to the extensive use by the British and Canadians of special armor, which the US had largely rejected.  For that matter, American landings at Utah Beach went very well as well, with it really being Omaha Beach that was stoutly contested for a variety of reasons.  All the Allied forces committed to Operation Overlord performed brilliantly and this posts isn't made to suggest otherwise.  However, the English Commonwealth forces deserve their just attention for June 6 in which they had more men engaged in the operation than the US did.

Persistent Myths VIII: The Spanish Civil War Edition

The Spanish Civil War Edition

That Spain fought a tooth and nail civil war in the 1930s, leading up to World War Two, is of course well known, but the version of it remembered by most people, and even by quite a few historians, is mostly bunk.

The common popular view of the war is that nasty Spanish fascist in the Spanish army launched a war against the republican democracy loving legitimate government and squashed democracy in the name of fascism.

That didn't happen.

In reality, Spain's pre civil war government was extremely weak and unstable and was very obviously rocketing towards falling into Communism.  That instability wasn't novel for the time, there were a lot of European governments that were having trouble sustaining democracy, in part because their experiment with democracy was quite young and quite a few political parties had no real concept of being more loyal to the country and the system than themselves.  The more unstable of them tended to teeter between Communism and Fascism in the 1930s, with Italy and Germany of course falling into Fascism.  Other countries rocked back and forth, like France, but survived with democracies in tact.  Others fell into other forms of totalitarianism.  Poland fell into a socialist dictatorship, Austria into a right wing dictatorship, Hungary had a Communist uprising, and so on.  In Spain, it was pretty clear that it was reaching the end of its democratic days and was going to fall into some sort of left wing radical government.

The Army did revolt against the government, that's quite true, but contrary to myth it wasn't all Francisco Franco.  Franco wasn't even the most senior of the rebels, and he wasn't in Spain, but in Morocco, when the revolt broke out.  He did rise to leadership of it, however.

But, contrary to the common myth, he wasn't a Fascist and the war wasn't one between Fascism and democracy.  It was one between the hard right/military and Communism.

Spain had a fascist party, the Falange, but Franco never joined it.  It contributed members to his various governments over the years, but at no point did it ever dominate it.  Spain also had a monarchist party, the Carlist, that Franco was quite sympathetic with, but he never joined that either.  He was basically a military dictator of the Spanish type, but he used parties that were fellow travelers with him. Those groups had nowhere else they could go, as Franco was the only game in town.

As for the Spanish Republicans, there were no doubt some democrats in that movement early on, and some officers in the Spanish army went with the Republicans. But the Republicans were radical to start with and very quickly became more radical.  And when it appeared that they would win, the Communist took the opportunity to begin to eliminate other radicals within the movement, acting as it turned out prematurely.  That was to Communist type, as the Communist always wiped out competition once they'd won, and in Spain's case, they just acted too soon.

So why all the romance about the Republican cause and the common view of the war, when in real terms the Spanish Civil War belongs more to the revolutions of the 20s and 30s and is uniquely Spanish in nature?  Well, the answer is World War Two.

Because the Italians first, and the Germans, backed the Nationalist (with the USSR backing the Republicans), and because the Republicans lost, it's been easy and inevitable to recast the war as "a dress rehearsal for World War Two."  It wasn't in any way.  But it's been commonly viewed through the thick lens of the Second World War which has allowed people to grossly simplify the war and completely misunderstand it.  It's also let foreign volunteers to the Republican side off the hook, as they've been re-imagined as armed democrats, rather than Communist dupes, as they really tended to be.

Persistent Myths VII: The Roman Edition

The Roman Edition

I was reminded today of a couple of popular myths regarding the Romans.

I suppose it would be surprising if the Romans weren't subject to all sort of myths, after all, they were a major power forever.  Given that, some baloney is going to stick to them.  Let's take a look

A. The Romans Never Lost a Battle

There's apparently a popular myth that the Romans never lost a battle.  Oh yes they did.  You can't be a military power that long and not loose a few, that's for sure, and they lost their fair share.

What's more the like it is that the Romans had really deep military pockets, so they were able recover from their losses, but loose they did.

B.  Rome Fell because it was corrupt.  

This myth is extremely persistent, but completely in error.

Students receive this myth in some classrooms today, and its no surprise as it was a thesis advanced by Gibbons, who was the first really major modern historian (1700s) who addressed the topic of Roman history.  Gibbons, however, was not free from inserting his own beliefs and agendas into his writing, and while the world owes him a debt of thanks for tackling the topic, it is burdened by his outlook.  

Gibbons was English and living in an era when the ruling class of the United Kingdom was quite anti Catholic, as was Gibbons himself.  This is significant in that it seems to have colored Gibbons views of 5th Century Rome.  It doesn't seem to answer, however, why Gibbons went on in his work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, to cover the Byzantine Empire as well, which is typically forgotten about him.

Anyhow, the popular myth is that Rome had become debauched and was reveling in vice which is why the robust Germans busted in and shut the whole thing down.  In actuality, Rome had been pretty debauched since day one and was actually living at the height of its virtue at the time it fell.  The Romans did a fairly good job of actually cleaning up its early history, in terms of what it told about itself, but in reality the town had been founded by bands of roving, fleeing ,thieves and had at first been a pretty much all male criminal enclave.  It became a real town when it acquired a female population, but it did that by taking its female population by force, not a very admirable thing to do.  In its imperial period Rome did all sorts of nasty icky things, but that didn't cause it to fall.

With Constantine the  Great, who ruled from Byzantium, the empire became Christian, but retained a large pagan population.  But its character really began to change. By the mid 400s when Rome fell its official religion was Christianity and it was at an all time high in moral behavior.

Rome really fell because of a series of odd events, which is often how such things occur.  For one thing, Rome had overextended itself, which it knew.  It had withdrawn from its most northerly advances some time prior and was working on trying to consolidate its holdings.  Its grip on Britain was slipping.  Administering the Empire from Rome had proven too difficult and the administration of the Empire had been split in two.  It had suffered from internal armed strife since the time of Caesar which continually drug it down.  And, most significantly here, Germanic peoples from Eastern Europe were being driven west by invading Slavs, which caused them to push by necessity on Rome's northern and eastern borders. They were coming in no matter what, and there was little Rome could do stop that.  Having said that, the Romans botched it specifically by ineptly handling Germans crossing the Rhine, giving unnecessary rise to invasion, and the end of the Western Empire.

C.  The Vomitorium isn't what you've heard.

As a minor one, a Vomitorium wasn't where people went to throw up, in their debauchery.  It's a big exit.  That's because it derives from   a word meaning to spew forth, as to pour out, as in to pour out a lot of people.  Think stadium exist.

Persistent Myths VI: Hindus and vegetarianism

Hindus and vegetarianism

 Hindu wedding party. Chicken was probably on the reception menu.

Americans commonly believe that Indian is a vegetarian nation, because the largest religion in India is Hinduism.

Before we go on to that, we'll note that some Americans believe all Indians are Hindus.  Not hardly.  India is a "put together" nation of the former English colony variety, and not one single "nation".  It has a wide variety of ethnic identities and religions, including a Catholic population that dates back to the Apostolic age.  Islam and Buddhism are also present in India, and India still has a pretty large Communist Party, which of course is philosophically opposed to any religion.  But Hinduism is the largest religion in India.

Well, Hindus are all vegetarians, right?

Nope.  A minority of Indian Hindus are vegetarians. 

Hindus do have dietary restrictions, to be sure. The oldest one in Hinduism appears to be a ban on eating horses, cattle, or people, although this is debated.  It is thought that the ban might actually have applied to possessed horses and cattle, and any people.

Some Hindu sects are vegetarian, and these are well represented in India. But a majority of Indian Hindus are not members of those sects, and they do eat meat.  They do not eat cattle, but other meats.

This myth is interesting in that it at one time was a reason that Hindus were looked down upon, and now its a reason that some who come from outside Central Asia will point towards Hinduism, but it's simply wrong.

Page Updates 2015

This blog has "pages", other than this, the main page. Some of the pages were former trailing threads that simply grew to be too unwieldy as they grew too large.

Formerly, when the pages that were threads were updated, they were bumped up, and several of them were amongst the most read threads on the site.  Now, of course, there's no easy way to know when they're bumped up. so this thread will serve that purpose.

Recent Updates:

They Were Lawyers.

January 1, 2015:  Mario Cuomo.

The Were Lawyers.

February 23, 2015:  G. D. Spradin.


They Were Soldiers.

February 23, 2015.  G. D. Spradin, Michael Vincente Gazzo,

They Were Soldiers

March 2, 2015.  Leonard Nimoy

March 12, 2015:  Neal McMurry, Mick McMurry.

The Poster Gallery, WWI

U.S. Coast Artillery.

The Were Soldiers

March 15, 2015:  Demond Wilson

They Were Clerics

March 15, 2015:  Demond Wilson

They Were Lawyers

August 19, 2015:  Helmuth James Graf von Moltke

The Were Soldiers

September 6, 2015: Dean Jones.

They Were Soldiers

September 15, 2015:   David Janssen, Richard Long, Martin Milner

They Were Soldiers

September 22, 2015:  Lawrence "Yogi" Berra

They Were Lawyers

September 22, 2015:  Erasmus  Corwin Gilbreath

They Were Farmers

October 2, 2015:  Robert Burns. 

They Were Soldiers

November 5, 2015:  Toshiro Mifune

November 6, 2015: George Gobel, Johnny Carson, Walther Matthau, Steve Forrest, Paul Newman, Jonathan Winters, Kirk Douglas, Dale Robertson, John Carroll, Randolph Scott, Charles Bronson, Art Carney.

November 9, 2015:  Hans Christian Blech,  Oskar Werner (Oskar Josef Bschließmayer), Hannes Messemer, Robert Graf, Sig Ruman (Siegfried Albon Rumann).

November 10, 2015:  Conrad Veid, Wayne Morris, Tony Curtis, Larry Storch, Forrest Tucker, Robert Montgomery

They Were Farmers

November 24, 2015:  Union soldiers, Confederate soldiers.

They Were Soldiers

November 24, 2015:   Olivier Jacques Marie de Germay

They Were Lawyers

December 9, 2015:   Charles White Whittlesey

December 31, 2015:  Bernard V. Rogers

Lex Anteinternet: New Year's Resolutions for Other People

So, how did they do?

This past January I published this:

Lex Anteinternet: New Year's Resolutions for Other People: Yeah, I know its rude.  But if you are in the public eye, I guess you are open for public content.  So here's some resolutions for folks who might miss these obvious ones.

 So, let's look and see if they checked in here, read the resolutions, and adopted them.

Congress.  Let's just assume that your audience is intelligent and can follow an intelligent argument.  I bet it can. And after assuming that, whether you are in the left or the right, conduct your public debates that way.  If you can't do that, you ought to not be there.

Hmmm. can't say I grew more impressed with Congress over the year.  They mostly seem just to have sort of checked out, but maybe I just quit paying as much attention to them.  Maybe they weren't paying as much attention, oncoming Presidential election and all. . .

Congressional Judiciary Committees:  Avoid appointments to the bench from Harvard or Yale for the entire year.  Not a single one. Don't we have enough of them already?  There are lawyers from other places.

For that matter, how about not appointing any sitting or retired judges to appellate benches.  Branch out.  You'll be glad you did.

And put a retirement age on the Federal Bench.  These are public jobs for the American public, not jobs for life for one single benighted generation.  Appointments for life no longer make any sense.

Well, I can't say that I paid much attention to appointments this year either.  No big ones seemed to come up.  But I can say that this was not an impressive year for the Federal Judiciary in some ways.  A knowledge of the nature of the law seemed quite lacking.  So, to the extent that this extends out to the judiciary on a Federal national level, it wasn't a good year.

Country Music.  If you aren't actually from the country, please sit this one out or admit you are a "pop artist".  It's different.

And cut out the sap, too, will you?  

Obviously, there was no progress in "Country" music at all.

ISIL  Open your minds up, at least a bit.  And get a calendar and see what century this is.

This may have proven to be the year of the Islamic State.  That's who I'd put on the cover of Time, if I was doing the "Man of the Year".  The Islamic State has been on the rise all year long, and the results have been horrific.

Kim Jong-un.  Kim, you are on your way to being remembered as a complete clown.  You could be remembered as a hero.  Take the bold move, open the borders, and announce that you intend to peacefully reunite North Korea with the South by letting the Republic of Korea take over.

You could go into comfortable retirement in Switzerland within a year, and be a hero for life.  The way you are going, you are going to be remembered as one of the all time biggest doofuses ever.

Kim obviously didn't check in here.

People with the last name Bush or Clinton.  Enough already, the country can function fine without you as President.  Sit this one out, and the next several as well, and surprise people by not running for
President.

And people named Clinton or Bush didn't check in here either.

Barack Obama.  Go outside and see where you live.  You are not a law school professor anymore.  Yapping at people doesn't equate with action, and getting mad and assigning things to the class you can't deal with isn't going to work either.  Quit studying Wilson.  Study Roosevelt, Truman, Reagan, Bush I or Clinton and see how to get some things done.

It seems the President didn't get my reading list.

New York:  Hello New York and things New Yorkish.   We still love you, but you aren't "Number One" anymore, and you haven't been for a really long time.  Just because you pass a bill or collectively think something doesn't make it the up and coming thing, it probably is viewed by the rest of us as stale and a little moldy, which is how we also view New York.  You are going to have to get over yourself.  Your resolution is to have a little humility this year.  Think of yourself as, oh. . . Labrador.

Labrador, New York.  Look it up.

The People's Republic of China.  You can only pretend to be a "people's republic" while ignoring democracy so long. Read the history of your own country, and realize that China's always only a second away from a revolution, and take the next step to open the politics of the country up.  Your excuse for not doing so is long gone.  And stop acting like a 19th Century colonial power too.

Well, no huge reform in China in 2015, but  then its a huge country. 

Pop-Tarts You know who you are, you collection of women famous only for being famous, or for your appearance alone.  Stop acting like your for sale on the street and have a little big of dignity. Spend their year dressing modestly and really shock people. Read a book. Go outdoors with some outdoorsy close on.  Just be something, for goodness sake.

Nope.  They're still at it.

Television.  Hello television, you are stupid.  Get an education and quit broadcasting crap.

This is particularly the case regarding anything billed "Entertainment", or that appears on "TLC".  Enough already.  But it applies to the rests of television as well. Time for some remedial classes.

 If anything, this has gotten worse.

So, all you listed here, get to work.  You need to do your 2015 resolutions in 2016.

Persistent Myths V: Myths about religion in the Middle East

Myths about religion in the Middle East

LeAnn   at Ramblings of a Teacher, has a series of related "mythconceptions" that she's posted about, and she justifiably asks why, on her blog, do these myths persist.  It's a good question.  Indeed, it's one I pondered without really having a good answer to, but this week I was given a partial one.  In this case, some teachers (not LeAnn) fail to do their homework, and then teach their charges myths or errors.

The reason that I can say that, and I am, is that my daughter was studying for a test on the Middle East last night, and she had with her the supposed answers to the questions she will be tested on. Some of those answers were flat out wrong.  I discussed this as part of the family conversation, but quite frankly, as its her grade, she's learned the wrong answers to the questions.

This teacher is a popular one, and the kids like the teacher.  But at least on this subject, the teacher is pretty badly misinformed.

For example, one of the questions was what three countries in the Middle East are theocracies. As we know, a theocracy is a state ruled by a religion.  There are darned few of them, actually, in history at any one point, and there aren't really any in the Middle East today. The official answer, however, was "Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.

Hmmmm.

Israel is a parliamentary democracy and always has been. It's a "Jewish state", but that doesn't make it a theocracy any more than Germany's status as a German state (like Israel, Germany has a "law of return) makes it a racial state of some sort.  Israel may have a law of return, extending citizenship by option to Jewish people who seek it, but it also grants full voting rights to its Moslem and Christian citizens, both of which it has and has always had.

Indeed, even its status as a "Jewish state" doesn't quite mean what people might suppose.  At its founding, the state of Israel had a fair number of influential secular Jewish people whom others might term as "culturally Jewish."  To be Jewish does not necessarily mean that a person is an observant person religiously, any more than to be Greek automatically makes a person a devout member of the Greek Orthodox Church.

Anyhow, Israel certainly isn't a theocracy.

But that wasn't the only error.

Well what about Saudi Arabia and Iran?  He was right there, wasn't he?

No, neither of those nations are "theocracies", although a person can make the case that Iran is a semi theocracy.

Starting with Iran, Iran calls itself an "Islamic Republic", but names do not necessarily mean all that much.  China, for example, calls itself a "People's Republic", whatever that is supposed to mean, and it isn't a liberal democracy by any means.  East Germany called itself the German Democratic Republic, with the only part of that name that was accurate being the German part.  To add to the problem, it isn't entirely clear what an Islamic Republic is even supposed to mean.

What it seems to mean is a government incorporating Sharia law, which Iran does.  And Sharia law does originate in the Koran.  Beyond that, Iran has a semi functional electoral system, which falls short of what we'd regard as a functioning democracy, but it does have some electoral process.

The country isn't actually run by mullahs, as some would assert, but its very clear that Shia mullahs have a huge, perhaps determinative, role in the governance of the country, together with the descendants of the 1970s Shia fundamentalist revolutionaries.  So what we have there is a heavily Shia influenced, less than fully democratic, quasi revolutionary state.  A person might compare it loosely with early post Mexican Revolution Mexico which had some sort of functioning deliberative body, but which only the PRI really mattered.  Or, a person might badly compare it with Imperial Germany, which had a democratically elected parliament, but the country was really governed and controlled by traditional forces outside of parliament.

Either way you look at it, it isn't truly a "theocracy", although perhaps it comes close.

Well, what about Saudi Arabia?  Not so much.

Saudi Arabia is truly one of the worlds sole surviving examples of a true monarchy.  It's a country basically owned by a single family.  Now, that family did rise to prominence in part through supporting a certain extreme Sunni group of Arabian mullahs, whose thinking is reflected in the state.  But the mullahs themselves never actually governed the country.  Indeed, as the branch of Sunni thought the Sauds espoused was so radical that it was questioned as heretical before their adoption of it and ascension to the crown (or rather creation of the crown), a person might argue that group is in debt to the Sauds.

Now, it is certainly the case that Saudi Arabia is unquestionably Sunni Moslem, and that it also applies Koranic principles to its law.  A person can criticize it, but it doesn't depart in this fashion hugely from other primitive monarchies, most of which have been associated with a religion their respective crowns adopted.  Queen Elizabeth I, for example, wasn't exactly tolerant of Catholics.  That didn't make Elizabethan England a theocracy, however.

And to be continued.

 Syrian Archbishop.  Syrian Catholics and Orthodox represent the second largest religion in the Middle East and the second oldest of the major religions in the Middle East.

Okay, well what else?

Another question asked the students to rank the three largest religions in the Middle East, with the provided answer, in order if number of followers, being Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.

Right?  Nope, that's wrong.

The second largest religion in the Middle East is Christianity. 

I guess I might give a person a bit of a pass on this one, as Middle Easter Christians are so ignored by the outside world, but they are the second oldest religion in the Middle East and they are spread throughout the Middle East.  There isn't a country in the Middle East that doesn't have some native Christians, save perhaps for the very small ones like Dubai or Kuwait.

That's right, some native Christians.

Christian populations in the Middle East range up to as many as 18,000,000 but may be as few as 16,000,000.  More than any other major faith, Christians have been targets of violence in the Middle East and they have accordingly opted for decades for emigration, if they could.  But they still outnumber adherents of Judaism by at least 10,000,000 people, if not more, and it probably is more.Some Middle Eastern countries have, or would have, extremely significant Christian populations but for their being the targets of increasing violence in recent years, making them a population that is essentially undergoing "ethnic cleansing" as we speak, with hardly anyone doing anything about it.  Populations of Catholics, Orthodox and Coptic Christians are under stress everywhere in the Middle East.

If immigrant populations in the form of temporary workers are included, some Middle Eastern countries, such as Dubai, would be regarded as having huge, mostly Catholic, populations.

Indeed, one of the myths of the Middle East, related to this story, is that Islam took the region by storm.  It didn't.  Islam didn't become the power in the region it became until Sulemon, but even at that the "Islamic" principalities he conquered often had Christian majorities.  It wasn't until tremendous force was brought upon these communities that conversions to Islam really began.  Islam wasn't even able to sweep the Arabian Peninsula without the help, ironically, of a tribe on the peninsula that was Catholic.  Christian populations hung on everywhere, in isolation, for a very long time, and in some ways what we're seeing now in regards to them has been a story that's been ongoing for over 1,000 years.

Persistent Myth IV: Being a law unto yourself.

You have a right to act like a member of the James Gang on your own property.

One I occasionally run into is the concept that a person has the right to shoot somebody on their land, if they're there without invitation.  No, there is no such right.  Never.

The point at which food paranoia crosses over the line

From NBC News on the net:

(CNN) -- There's so much to dislike about air travel. There are the long lines and the delays, and of course, there is the bad airplane food. A recent survey found that airlines have a long way to go in making their meals and snacks nutritious and low in calories.

"I don't think airlines are keeping up with the trends across the United States, the 'better for you' food trend, the organic trend," said Charles Platkin, nutrition professor at Hunter College and City University of New York. Most airlines are also failing to provide nutritional information about their menu items that would allow passengers to make the healthiest choices, he added.

Yeah, well get over it.

Shoot, people don't live on the plane.  A little "bad" food on the plane isn't going to kill you.

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Old West Shootout

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Old West Shootout: Anyone who has made a serious study of Western history knows that the middle of the street, showdown gunfight is mostly a creation of pulp ...

Mid Week at Work: Loading the plane in the rain.

The state's income increases in 2015 in spite of, and actually because of the decline of the price of oil. . .

because it raised agricultural profits.

Cheaper fuel, and high cattle prices at the start of the year, gave a big boost to agricultural income.  So the state's income actually rose.

This obviously isn't expected to last, but it's an interesting illustration of cause and effect in the economy.

The Bonnie Blue Flag?

In Moneta Wyoming?

The Big Picture: More southern Big Horns

Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: Carbon County Courthouse, Rawlins Wyoming

Courthouses of the West: Carbon County Courthouse, Rawlins Wyoming:

This is the Carbon County Courthouse in Rawlins Wyoming.  This Depression era courthouse was built by the Works Project Administration, like the former courthouse in Casper, Wyoming.  It houses the Carbon County Court and also serves Wyoming's Second Judicial District together with the courthouse in Albany County.

This courthouse is unique for a classic Wyoming courthouse in that it sits on an entire city block in the center of town.  While not visible in these photos, due to the mature trees, the courthouse is also unique in that it was built with attached substantial living quarters which served the sheriff and his family at the time of its construction. The concept was that the sheriff would need to live there, as the jail was housed in the courthouse.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: First Christian Church, Tulsa Oklahoma

Churches of the West: First Christian Church, Tulsa Oklahoma:

Lex Anteinternet: Happy Boxing Day!

Lex Anteinternet: Happy Boxing Day!: Today, December 26, is Boxing Day in most English speaking countries outside the United States. Boxing Day is a legal holiday in most Engl...

Blog Mirror: Texas World War One Centennial

Interesting looking site, Texas World War One Centennial.

Movies In History: Three Godfathers

Three Godfathers

This 1948 John Ford western is one of my favorite Christmas movies.

Indeed, I actually don't like most of the Christmas classics for one reason or another, although I've just posted on another one of my favorites, A Christmas Story. 

This movie is a classic John Ford western featuring three of the best known actors who appeared in his films.  John Wayne, Pedro Armendáriz, and Harry Carey Jr. appear as three outlaws who ride into a small western town while on the lam, and then set out to make good their escape.  While in the desert they run across a dying woman and her baby, the only survivors of misbegotten effort to cross the desert.  The woman make the men the baby's Godfathers as she passes away and they then proceed to attempt to save themselves and the child.

Very well done, what is not evident at first is that this classic Ford western is also heavily allegorical. As the movie progresses we learn that it takes place near Christmas and the three Godfathers come to stand in for the Three Wise Men as they seek to rescue the baby and make it to the town of New Jerusalem.

The film is fantastically done, with rich color tones, and well worth seeing.  As a western movie, the film is typical of films of this period and attention to material details doesn't equal that of later films.  However, this film fares better in those details than some others as no date is given for the film, so it cannot be said that any of the physical items depicted in the film are done so incorrectly.  The clothing is typical for a film of this era and is not 100% accurate, but is not badly done either.

The film is well worth seeing and stands out as one of Ford's very good western movies, as well as being a unique Christmas movie.