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Ukraine.

Saturday, August 26th, 2023

The escalation of American involvement in Ukraine continues in spite of growing questions about it. There is a whole bipartisan obsession with that country, going back to Joe Biden’s involvement and his son’s. Even before that, there was much concern about the fact that Ukraine was the site for many of the USSR’s nuclear missiles. With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR, fears about those missiles resulted in an agreement. The 1994 agreement to remove those missiles, included a promise to protect Ukraine from aggresion.

The U.S., in a burst of diplomatic energy and at a time of unmatched global influence, worked to prevent the unprecedented collapse of a nuclear superpower from leading to history’s largest proliferation of nuclear weapons.

It was at a time of immense US power and a weakened Russia.

This diplomatic activity manifested in security assurances for Ukraine embedded in what has become known as the Budapest Memorandum. With the entrance of Ukraine into the international order as a non-nuclear state, Russia, the U.S. and the U.K. pledged to “respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.” The memo reaffirmed their obligation to “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.” The signatories also reaffirmed their commitment to “seek immediate” UN Security Council action “to provide assistance to Ukraine … if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression.” These assurances upheld obligations contained in the U.N. charter and the 1975 Helsinki Final Act.

The nuclear weapons were sent to Russia to dismantle them. In 2014, sensing US weakness and indecision, Russia invaded and took possession of Crimea. Russia has a long history with Crimea.

Some argue that Putin’s annexation of Crimea is an attempt to return Russia to the glory of its pre-Soviet days, “as one of the world’s greatest civilizations.” Although Ukrainian nationalism remains strong, particularly in the eastern part of the country, Ukrainian officials and analysts report to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that significant demographic transformation is underway, with a huge influx of ethnic Russians.

This may or may not be true. Eastern Ukraine has many Russian speaking people, or had, and plebiscites have been confusing. There has been some evidence that those Russian speakers have been bombarded by Ukrainian forces for years.

In 2010, Victor Yanukovych, a pro-Russian Ukrainian was elected president.

Prior to entering national politics with his successful run for parliament in 2006, Yanukovych was the Governor of his native Donetsk Oblast from 1997 to 2002. He was simultaneously the Chairman of the oblast’s legislature from 1999 to 2001.

Yanukovych first ran for president in the 2004 election, where he advanced to the runoff and was declared the winner against former Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko. However, allegations of electoral fraud and voter intimidation caused widespread protests and Kyiv’s Independence Square was occupied in what became known as the Orange Revolution. The Ukrainian Supreme Court ultimately nullified the runoff election and ordered a rerun, which Yanukovych lost to Yushchenko. Yanukovych ran for President again in the 2010 election, this time beating Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in an election that was judged free and fair by international observers.[5][6]

Yanukovych had represented a Russian speaking portion of eastern Ukraine and was seen by the CIA as a Russian ally.
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Tags:politics, russia
Posted in corruption, elections, Europe, History, military, politics | Comments Closed

The 75th Anniversary of D Day.

Thursday, June 6th, 2019

Today is the 75th anniversary of D Day. There are ceremonies honoring the men who landed that day. Few are left but about 170 did make it to the event. The President spoke and of course the leftist press is complaining.

How small he is! Small in spirit, in valor, in dignity, in statecraft, this American president who knows nothing of history and cares still less and now bestrides Europe with his family in tow like some tin-pot dictator with a terrified entourage.

To have Donald Trump — the bone-spur evader of the Vietnam draft, the coddler of autocrats, the would-be destroyer of the European Union, the pay-up-now denigrator of NATO, the apologist for the white supremacists of Charlottesville — commemorate the boys from Kansas City and St. Paul who gave their lives for freedom is to understand the word impostor. You can’t make a sculpture from rotten wood.

You can almost feel the spittle flying.

Ignoring the ankle biters, This is what the day is about

That is my cousin, Bud Kerrison’s plane. He flew 50 missions as bombardier from North Africa.

That is Bud home on leave before heading for Africa. That is me, age about five, saluting him.

Here are the bluffs at Omaha Beach that troops had to get over somehow.

Here is the top of that bluff. A long way up.

Here is one of the German bunkers on the beach. They were angled to avoid exposure to shell hits from the ships supporting the invasion. The angle was arranged to provide the best aim at high tide, assuming that would be the time of the landing. The troops landed at low tide to better see the obstacles and that gave them a bit of shelter as the guns had trouble traversing that much. Of course the sea wall was at the zero spot.

This is the bluff at Pont du Hoc where the rangers climbed to reach gun emplacements that Were empty. The guns had been moved inland.

Utah Beach did not have the bluff to climb but there were marshlands east of the beach. The airborne landings were to seize and hold the causeways across those marshes.

Some of them landed in the town of Sante Mere Eglise and one, in particular, got his parachute caught on the church roof. The town maintains museums celebrating the events of June 6,. 1944.

Here is one of those museums. Their collection is growing as dying veterans often leave memorabilia to the museums.

These road markers are all over the area just inland from the beach. They commemorate men killed at this spot.

And then, of course, there are the cemeteries.

Posted in History, military | 1 Comment »

Trump and the impeachment of Andrew Johnson

Wednesday, May 29th, 2019

I think I see some similarities between the Democrats’ apparent efforts to try to impeach President Trump and the impeachment of Andrew Johnson in 1868.

Andrew Johnson was a “war Democrat,” meaning that he was a Democrat who supported the Union. He was Governor of the border state of Tennessee. Lincoln considered the border states critical in saving the Union.

“I hope to have God on my side,” Abraham Lincoln is reported to have said early in the war, “but I must have Kentucky.” Unlike most of his contemporaries, Lincoln hesitated to invoke divine sanction of human causes, but his wry comment unerringly acknowledged the critical importance of the border states to the Union cause. Following the attack on Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s call for troops in April 1861, public opinion in Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri was sharply divided and these states’ ultimate allegiance uncertain. The residents of the border were torn between their close cultural ties with the South, on the one hand, and their long tradition of Unionism and political moderation on the other.

In 1864, after Atlanta was taken by Sherman, Lincoln began to think about the situation after the war. He met with Sherman and Grant on March 28, 1865. He had two weeks to live. He talked to them about his plans for after the war ended. Sherman later described the conversation. Lincoln was ready for the post-war period and he told Sherman to assure the Confederate Governor of North Carolina that as soon as the army laid down its arms, all citizens would have their rights restored and the state government would resume civil measures de facto until Congress could make permanent arrangement.

In choosing Johnson as his VP in 1964, Lincoln was doing two things, he was supporting his argument that no state could secede from the Union. The radical Republicans like Stevens and Sumner had taken the position that states had “committed suicide” by seceding. There was even a movement at the Baltimore Convention to nominate someone else, like Fremont who had been the nominee in 1856. The other was allowing the Convention to choose the VP nominee. It did seat some delegations from states, like Tennessee, that were still the scene of fighting. Only South Carolina was excluded.

The Convention was actually assumed to be safe for a Hannibal Hamlin renomination. Instead it voted for Johnson by a large margin. The final ballot results were 494 for Johnson, 9 for Hamlin. Noah Brooks, a Lincoln intimate, later recounted a conversation in which Lincoln told him that there might be an advantage in having a War Democrat as VP. Others, including Ward Hill Lamon, later agreed that Lincoln preferred a border state nominee for VP.

An so, Andrew Johnson, a War Democrat, was elected to an office that no one ever considered as likely to become President. No one anticipated Lincoln’s assassination. However there was a significant segment of radical Republicans that wanted to punish the states that had seceded and those who had joined the Confederacy, contrary to Lincoln’s plans. He had intended to restore the local governments, pending Congressional action to restructure the state governments. The Convention was well before Atlanta fell to Sherman’s army and Lincoln was not convinced he would be re-elected. The War Democrat VP nominee would help with border states.

Johnson humiliated himself with his inauguration speech, at which he was suspected to be drunk. He may have been ill; Castel cited typhoid fever,[95] though Gordon-Reed notes that there is no independent evidence for that diagnosis

Six weeks later, Lincoln was assassinated. Johnson was not well prepared to assume the Presidency.

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Tags:Congress, History, politics
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The role of the Polish Guarantee in WWII.

Saturday, March 9th, 2019

The second of the issues about Churchill arises from my reading of Pat Buchanan’s book, “Churchill, Hitler and the unnecessary War.” I like Buchanan’s books but disagree with most of what he writes here. He blames Churchill and Edward Grey for WWI. This prompted me to get a biography of Edward Grey, who was Foreign Secretary from 1905 to 1916 and I think it is fair to say, he had much to do with the beginning of the war. I disagree about Churchill who did not hold a post in the Liberal administration until he became First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911. In this role he is given credit for getting the fleet ready for war. He did not have a role in the crisis of July 1914 which led to it.

In The Second World War, his role was mostly early warning about Hitler and his ambitions. He spent the 1930s warning that Britain should rearm as Germany was doing. He was ignored. His warnings were so dismissed that his columns and radio broadcasts were stopped during the height of appeasement.

There is an interesting issue that Churchill had nothing to do with. The last moment Guarantee to Poland. His statement at the time and in his book, was:

‘Here was decision at last, taken at the worst possible moment and on the least satisfactory ground, which must surely lead to the slaughter of tens of millions of people. Here was the righteous cause deliberately and with a refinement of inverted artistry committed to mortal battle after its assets and advantages had been so improvidently squandered. Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves.’

Buchanan makes fair case that, had Chamberlain not done his last minute and hopeless Polish Guarantee, Hitler might have gone on to attack Poland and then the Soviets and avoided war with France and Britain. There was no chance of avoiding war altogether once the Germans had occupied the Rhineland and been left alone. Czechoslovakia was a more difficult case. The Czechs might have been able to defeat the Germans in 1938. Perhaps Hitler would not have risked it.

By 1939 and with Poland landlocked and far away from France and Britain, there was no chance the guarantee would do anything but create a larger war. Poland, in fact, had carved off part of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and had no moral case for help. IT was a disastrous error but it was made by Chamberlain, not Churchill.

Posted in History, military | 2 Comments »

Some random thoughts on Churchill.

Saturday, March 9th, 2019

I am currently reading Andrew Roberts’ excellent biography of Churchill.

It does a better job with his early life than the other biographies I have read. I am 2/3 through it and have not yet reached Pearl Harbor so the emphasis is clear. I have reflected on a couple of items, not necessarily about Churchill but about his times.

For example, had Cecil Rhodes and the British gold miners not invaded the Transvaal would the Boer War have occurred and, if it had not occurred, would Germany have built its High Seas Fleet?

Now the Transvaal Republic might, like the Orange Free State, have simply remained as a small shut-in self-governing state without creating any disturbance. But the Transvaalers were the sons of the stalwarts who fifty years before had sought to escape from all British control. They looked upon South Africa as a Dutch not a British inheritance; they resented the limitations imposed on them by the British, and their experience had not taught them any respect for the British Empire. Their president, Paul Kruger, had himself gone on the great trek in his boyhood. It is not possible to doubt that President Kruger dreamed his own dreams of a United South Africa, but a South Africa under a Dutch flag, not under the Union Jack; though how far those dreams were shared by others is not equally clear. But whatever his ambitions outside the Transvaal, within the borders of the republic he intended to go his own way.

But then gold was discovered in Transvaal.

In 1885, however, the discovery was made of valuable goldfields within the territories of the republic; aliens, Uitlanders as they were called, for the most part British subjects, whatever their actual nationality might be, poured into the Transvaal to exploit the mines. The Boer government had no objection to the exploitation of the mines on its own terms, which did not include the concession of citizenship to the Uitlanders till after a very prolonged residence. All the burdens of citizehship were laid on the Uitlanders without its privileges. The Uitlanders began to feel that they had no security for justice, and to demand approximately the opportunities for acquiring citizenship in the Transvaal which were readily accorded to the Transvaaler who migrated into British territory.

Then came The Jameson Raid.

The Jameson Raid is one of the great mysteries of British imperial history. Launched in the early hours of the penultimate day of 1895, it has provided historians with juicy morsels to toy with ever since. Naturally, it caused enormous interest and controversy at the time, and, arguably was one of the main causes of the Boer War of 1899-1902. The Raid, led by Cecil Rhodes’ lieutenant and confidant, Dr Jameson, was a crude attempt to settle the Transvaal problem of the 1890’s by overthrowing Kruger’s republic, with the help of the English-speaking Uitlanders of Johannesburg and the Rand, and establishing a pro-British government of some sort in its place. The plan was a disastrous flop: Jameson’s troopers of Rhodes’ British South Africa Police Force were easily rounded up by the Boer Commandos, and the Uitlander uprising went off at half-cock; British policy in South Africa lay in ruins.

Germany was sympathetic to the Boers but the British Navy banned any attempt to help them.

Who were the Boers ?

The Dutch East India Company had been formed in the Dutch Republic in 1602, and the Dutch had entered keenly into the competition for the colonial and imperial trade of commerce in Southeast Asia. In 1648 one of their ships was stranded in Table Bay, and the shipwrecked crew had to forage for themselves on shore for several months. They were so impressed with the natural resources of the country that on their return to the Republic, they represented to the directors of the company the great advantages to the Dutch Eastern trade to be had from a properly provided and fortified station of call at the Cape. The result was that in 1652, a Dutch expedition led by surgeon Jan van Riebeek constructed a fort and laid out vegetable gardens at Table Bay.

Landing at Table Bay, Van Riebeek took control over Cape Town, the settlement developed during the previous 10 years. In 1671 the Dutch first purchased land from the native Khoikhoi beyond the limits of the fort built by Van Riebeek; this marked the development of the Colony proper. The earliest colonists were for the most part people of low station; but, as the result of the investigations of a 1685 commissioner, the government worked to recruit a greater variety of immigrants to develop a stable community. They formed a class of “vrijlieden”, also known as “vrijburgers” (free citizens), former Company employees who remained at the Cape after serving their contracts.[8] A large number of vrijburgers became independent farmers and applied for grants of land, as well as loans of seed and tools, from the Company administration.[8]

How did the British get involved ?

In 1795, Holland having fallen under the revolutionary government of France, a British force under General Sir James Henry Craig was sent to Cape Town to secure the colony for the Prince of Orange, a refugee in England?, from the French. The governor of Cape Town at first refused to obey the instructions from the prince; but, when the British proceeded to take forcible possession, he capitulated. His action was hastened by the fact that the Khoikhoi, deserting their former masters, flocked to the British standard. The burghers of Graaff Reinet did not surrender until a force had been sent against them; in 1799 and again in 1801 they rose in revolt. In February 1803, as a result of the peace of Amiens (February 1803), the colony was handed over to the Batavian Republic, which introduced many needed reforms, as had the British during their eight years’ rule. One of the first acts of General Craig had been to abolish torture in the administration of justice. Still the country remained essentially Dutch, and few British settlers were attracted to it. Its cost to the British exchequer during this period was £16,000,000. The Batavian Republic entertained very liberal views as to the administration of the country, but they had little opportunity for giving them effect.

When the War of the Third Coalition broke out in 1803, a British force was once more sent to the Cape. After an engagement (January 1806) on the shores of Table Bay, the Dutch garrison of Castle of Good Hope surrendered to the British under Sir David Baird, and in the 1814 Anglo-Dutch treaty the colony was ceded outright by Holland to the British crown. At that time the colony extended to the line of mountains guarding the vast central plateau, then called Bushmansland, and had an area of about 120,000 sq. m. and a population of some 60,000, of whom 27,000 were whites, 17,000 free Khoikhoi and the rest slaves, mostly imported blacks and Malays.

What about Germany and the Boer War ?

german volunteers

Germany Was sympathetic and many volunteers from Germany joined the Boers.

The relationship between the Boers and the German nation was an unusual one. During the Boer war there was great support for the Boer struggle within Germany and the Kaiser sent a telex to the Boers voicing his support for their war efforts.

The Boers were armed with weapons made by Mauser and Krupp. Although the Boer Commandoes fought in a manner foreign to European battlefields the Artillery was well trained in European methods. Major Albrecht, the officer commanding the Orange Free State artillery was a German Veteran.

A German Freikorps of Volunteers was formed who fought on the Boer side. This included German Officers and Graf Zeppelin who was killed at the battle of Elandslaagte. Another prominent European volunteer killed in action was the French colonel Villebois de Mareuil, a Foreign Legion officer serving on the Boer side.

Any attempt to provide more aid to the Boers was blocked by the Royal Navy, which threatened ships that carried contraband.

In Dec 1899 the British cabinet allowed the Royal Navy to search and impound foreign ships suspected of carrying war material to the Boers. Three German ships, the Bundesrath, Herzog and General were forced into port and searched, with negative results. These incidents certainly fanned the flames of Anglophobia in Germany, and actually allowed the German government to pass their Navy Bill of that year with minimum fuss. This bill set out plans to double the size of the German Navy, starting a European arms race that of course came to a head in 1914.

Intervention by other Great Powers in 1899 wasn’t a practical possibility though because of the Royal Navy’s overwhelming superiority.

But although foreign governments didn’t actively support the Boers, foreign anti-British volunteers most certainly did, including Germans Irish, Dutch, French, Scandinavians, Russians and Americans. Often they distinguished themselves: the Germans under Colonel Schiel at Elandslaagte, the Hollanders in Natal, the Scandinavians at Magersfontein (where a platoon was nearly wiped out when overrun by Highlanders).

The Kaiser’s frustration at this rather high handed behavior by the British was one major reason he began to build the High Seas Fleet. The rest can be read in Massie’s great history of the coming of World War I.

Posted in History, middle east, military | Comments Closed

Robert Kaplan agrees with me on Afghanistan.

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2019

Today, Robert Kaplan wrote a piece in the New York Times saying we need to get out of Afghanistan.

The decision by President Trump to withdraw 7,000 of the roughly 14,000 American troops left in Afghanistan, possibly by summer, has raised new concerns about his impulsive behavior, especially given his nearly simultaneous decision to pull out all American forces from Syria against the advice of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. But the downsizing of the Afghan mission was probably inevitable. Indeed, it may soon be time for the United States to get out of the country altogether.

Naturally, the anti-Trump lines are obligatory in the NY Times. He has the right decision and, of course, it is the one Trump announced but Trump hatred is a necessary ingredient in anything an author expects the Times to publish.

I have been saying this since 2009.

During Afghanistan’s golden age which consisted of the last king’s rule, the country consisted of a small civilized center in Kabul while the rest of the country existed much as it did in the time of Alexander the Great. I have reviewed Kilcullen’s Accidental Guerilla, which explains much of the Afghan war. He is not optimistic about it and neither am I. Aside from the fact that Obama is a reluctant, very reluctant, warrior here, Pakistan is a serious obstacle to success.

Today, Andy McCarthy calls our attention to an explosive editorial in Investors’ Business Daily on the links between the Taliban and Pakistan’s army and intelligence services.

it’s an open secret the Taliban are headquartered across the border in the city of Quetta, Pakistan, where they operate openly under the aegis of Pakistani intelligence — and the financial sponsorship of the Saudis.

Of course, Osama bin Laden was living in Pakistan and sheltered by them. Kaplan does have a few crazy ideas.

It did not have to be like this. Had the United States not become diverted from rebuilding the country by its invasion of Iraq in 2003 (which I mistakenly supported), or had different military and development policies been tried, these forces of division might have been overcome. According to the Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, there was simply too much emphasis on the electoral process in Kabul and not nearly enough on bread-and-butter nation building — in particular, bringing basic infrastructure and agriculture up to the standards that Afghans enjoyed from the 1950s until the Soviet invasion of 1979.

This is insanity. There is no “nation” to build. Afghanistan was never a nation. The King was called “The Mayor of Kabul” and had no rule outside its limits.

The CIA seems to have done no better in Afghanistan than the military.

The movie “Zero Dark Thirty” described the maneuvers of the CIA and the incident of the suicide attack.

The one reliable reporter, Michael Yon, was kicked out of the country in 2010.

Michael Yon: The disembed from McChrytal’s top staff (meaning from McChrystal himself) is a very bad sign. Sends chills that McChrystal himself thinks we are losing the war. McChrystal has a history of covering up. This causes concern that McChrystal might be misleading SecDef and President. Are they getting the facts?

McChrystal has recently been criticizing Trump. I wonder if he has political ambitions ? He is a Democrat.

The United States’ special adviser to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, is trying to broker a diplomatic solution that allows the United States to draw down its forces without the political foundation in Kabul disintegrating immediately.

That may be the real reason the United States keeps spending so heavily in Afghanistan. The Pentagon is terrified of a repeat of 1975, when panicked South Vietnamese fled Saigon as Americans pulled out and North Vietnamese forces advanced on the city. The United States military did not truly begin to recover from that humiliation until its victory in the Persian Gulf war of 1991. An abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan could conceivably provide a new symbol of the decline in American hard power.

I think Kaplan has a good point here. Evacuation from Afghanistan will have to be by air and may be chaotic, especially as the last troops leave. Pakistan is no friend. It is going to be a mess but the sooner ewe get at it, the better

Tags:Afghanistan, Pakistan, politics
Posted in History, middle east, military | Comments Closed

Is a collapse of civilization a risk now ?

Sunday, December 9th, 2018

The present political instability has given rise to several examples of pessimistic concerns about civilization, itself.

For example, The Late Bronze Age collapse is getting attention.

The Late Bronze Age collapse involved a dark-age transition period in the Near East, Asia Minor, Aegean region, North Africa, Caucasus, Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age, a transition which historians believe was violent, sudden, and culturally disruptive. The palace economy of the Aegean region and Anatolia that characterised the Late Bronze Age disintegrated, transforming into the small isolated village cultures of the Greek Dark Ages. The half-century between c.?1200 and 1150 BC saw the cultural collapse of the Mycenaean kingdoms, of the Kassite dynasty of Babylonia, o Here is one f the Hittite Empire in Anatolia and the Levant, and of the Egyptian Empire;[1] the destruction of Ugarit and the Amorite states in the Levant, the fragmentation of the Luwian states of western Asia Minor, and a period of chaos in Canaan

Why is this sort of thing getting so much interest ? Here is one opinion.

No one seems more confused about the import of the New Nationalism than the nationalists themselves. In Germany, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is a coalition brought together by anger at the Merkel government’s decision to admit well over a million Middle Eastern migrants, but otherwise has no unifying characteristic. After a brief moment in the sun that included dinner with President Trump and a star slot at America’s leading conservative conference last February, Nigel Farage has fallen off America’s radar, and his most prominent admirer in the Trump White House, Steve Bannon, has left the Administration.

Bannon is a very impressive guy. His talk at the Oxford Union, in spite of the protests and hostility of most students, is impressive.

Angelo Codevilla predicted this years ago.

As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors’ “toxic assets” was the only alternative to the U.S. economy’s “systemic collapse.” In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment of some 10 trillion nonexistent dollars in ways unprecedented in America. They explained neither the difference between the assets’ nominal and real values, nor precisely why letting the market find the latter would collapse America. The public objected immediately, by margins of three or four to one.

What’s next? France is seeing high protests by the “Deplorables.”

Why are books, and TV series, like “The Hunger Games,” so popular?

There is serious concern about collapse

One of the biggest mysteries in history is the late Bronze Age Collapse. There’s no good explanation for why an early globalized civilization should suddenly disappear at around 1177 BC. “Within a period of forty to fifty years at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the twelfth century almost every significant city in the eastern Mediterranean world was destroyed, many of them never to be occupied again.”

Modern archaeologists have advanced a number of theories to explain this catastrophe several of which will sound familiar to modern ears. Climate change — not the anthropogenic kind, since ‘fossil fuels’ had not yet been developed — might have caused drought and starvation. A technological revolution caused by the replacement of bronze with iron could have destabilized the international system. Perhaps most modern-sounding of all explanations is complexity. The interdependence fostered by trade left the linked empires open to a general systems collapse as the failure in one place unleashed a cascade of effects in others.

More important.

One mystery is why the empires never saw danger coming. What hit them seemed to come so unexpectedly they never even had a chance to take evasive action. The reason for the surprise according to the BBC article, is “what experts call nonlinearities, or sudden, unexpected changes in the world’s order, such as the 2008 economic crisis, the rise of ISIS, Brexit, or Donald Trump’s election.” The components of a crises may already be in existence unnoticed until some precipitating event connects the pieces together for the first time and makes them manifest.

The surprise outbreak of demonstrations against Emmanuel Macron are a recent example of a failure to connect the dots. Pearl Harbor, Hitler’s invasion of Russia, the fall of the USSR, 9/11, 2008, Brexit, or Hillary’s loss were alike nearly complete surprises because no one could interpret the significance of the precursor events until afterwards. The New Yorker notes that the protests now currently shaking France blindsided the press because it did not come from the usual suspects but mere motorists unable to make ends meet.

The Trump phenomenon was a Preference Cascade.

“This illustrates, in a mild way, the reason why totalitarian regimes collapse so suddenly. (Click here for a more complex analysis of this and related
issues). Such regimes have little legitimacy, but they spend a lot of effort making sure that citizens don’t realize the extent to which their fellow-citizens dislike the regime. If the secret police and the censors are doing their job, 99% of the populace can hate the regime and be ready to revolt against it – but no revolt will occur because no one realizes that everyone else feels the same way.

Is that coming ?

I’ve read two of Kurt Schlicter’s books. They are fiction and I hope they stay that way.

Tags:economy, politics
Posted in corruption, economics, History, military, politics | 2 Comments »

More Biology

Friday, November 30th, 2018

I have posted a few times on Biology and should really do more. Here is one.

In a previous post, I stated that mitochondria are not present in sperm.

The “African Eve” theory is derived from the fact that all mitochondria are inherited from the mother. There are no mitochondria in the sperm.

That was a mistake as, someone pointed out, sperm have motile flagellae and that requires Mitochondria. However, my second comment was also, perhaps, incorrect.

An astute reader pointed out that my statement above is incorrect. Actually, it is a sign of how old I am as this was the previous understanding. However, sperm do have mitochondria but they are tagged for destruction and do not survive in the egg. Why this is, is not explained although the paternal mitochondria may be harmful in some fashion.

Now, I might still have been wrong.

But new research suggests that in some cases, mitochondrial DNA can be inherited from fathers, too. A group of researchers found three unrelated families where individuals had mitochondrial DNA from both parents. A total of 17 people across these three families were affected, suggesting that mitochondria aren’t as exclusively maternal as scientists believed.

In nearly all mammals, this mitochondrial genome is inherited exclusively from the mother, and transmission of paternal mitochondria or mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has not been convincingly demonstrated in humans. In this paper, we have uncovered multiple instances of biparental inheritance of mtDNA spanning three unrelated multiple generation families, a result confirmed by independent sequencing across multiple unrelated laboratories with different methodologies. Surprisingly, this pattern of inheritance appears to be determined in an autosomal dominantlike manner. This paper profoundly alters a widespread belief about mitochondrial inheritance and potentially opens a novel field in mitochondrial medicine.

There are lots of new developments in biology, such as studies of dental specimens in archeology.

An example is the use of plants in the diet of Neanderthals.

The most popular idea is that the disappearance of the Neanderthals was caused by the greater competition of the ancestors of modern humans, Homo Sapiens, who appeared more or less at the same time as the Neanderthals disappeared from Europe, and one of the explanations as to how that happened could be their diet. The Neanderthals are thought to have had more limited diets, while our ancestors had more flexible, adaptive diets that included seafood and a variety of plants.

Yet even though archaeological science has advanced considerably over the last few decades and has come up with new theories about the diets of the Neanderthals, today we still only have a patchy image of their dietary ecology given that we lack full, environmentally representative information about how they used plants and other foods.

This new piece of research into the fragments of dental calculus or tartar shows that the use of plants was a widespread, deeply-rooted subsistence strategy of the Neanderthals.

More detail is coming as dental tartar is beginning to be analyzed.

Archaeological tooth tartar has previously been shown to preserve milk proteins, but the international study, led by researchers at the University of York and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, has proved for the first time that it can also reveal more precise information about a wider range of food proteins, including those from plants.

And

Analysing 100 archaeological samples from across Britain, as well as 14 samples from living dental patients and recently deceased individuals, the research team found that potential dietary proteins could be found in about one third of the analysed samples.

Dr Speller added: “In the teeth we look at from individuals who lived around the Victorian era we identified proteins related to plant foods, including oats, peas and vegetables in the cabbage family. Occasionally, we find evidence of milk and oats in the same mouth — I like to think it’s from eating porridge!”

We know quite a bit about the diet of “Otzi,” the Iceman found in the glacier in 1991. His remains are a unique treasure for anthropology.

More recent analysis of Ötzi’s stomach and intestines has resolved this contradiction: the contents of his intestines have revealed fragments of bones from an ibex, alongside various remains of plant origin. A detailed genetic analysis of his intestinal contents also showed that he had consumed venison. The latest study conducted on his stomach contents revealed that his last meal consisted largely of ibex and venison with a high percentage of fat. Studies have also shown that the Iceman – and, indeed, the entire population of present-day South Tyrol – had a very balanced diet. Early types of grain – such as einkorn and emmer – were probably consumed in the form of porridge or bread. The diet also included a large number of other plant products, including various vegetables, fruits and wild berries, as well as dried wild fruits.

We knew this by 1998 when I wrote my medical history book. Here is a 1998 article on his diet, which was known at the time./

But at the top of the colon, Zur Nedden made out a slight bulge, which the radiologist suspected was a clump of half-processed food. The progress of the food indicated that the Iceman had last eaten about eight hours before he died, possibly of hypothermia, on the Hauslabjoch pass, which cuts over the main Alpine ridge dividing Austria from Italy at 10,500 feet above sea level.

Not until several years after the discovery did the Innsbruck scientists finally cut a hole into the mummy, insert an endoscope, and snip out about .004 ounces from the colon. Dr. Werner Platzer, the University of Innsbruck anatomist then in charge of research on the corpse, gave .0016 ounces milligrams of the material to Oeggl, who had already been studying the rich botanical finds from the site.

Pollen provided a snapshot of the environment the Iceman was exposed to in the hours before his death
Oeggl’s sample was barely the size of his little fingernail. Under the microscope, he quickly identified the flake-like, semi-digested material that made up the bulk of the sample as einkorn, the most important wheat of the Neolithic, the period of prehistory in which people lived in semi-permanent settlements and survived by agriculture and keeping animals. The discovery of einkorn, which does not occur naturally in Europe, in the Iceman’s intestinal tract suggested that he had contact with an agricultural community. The dominance of bran in the sample led Oeggl to believe that the wheat had been finely ground into meal and made into bread, rather than eaten as a porridge, where the grains would have been eaten whole and found in larger pieces in the colon. But the bread would have been little like modern breads. In order to get bread to rise when yeast is added, the wheat grains must contain a high level of gluten, which lends the dough a durable elasticity and therefore holds the pockets of air. Einkorn has low levels of gluten, so the bread made with it was probably hard, somewhat like a cracker, and rather tough on the teeth.

That is interesting.

There are even suggestions of medical therapy in dental calculus from Neanderthals.

The international team analysed and compared dental plaque samples from four Neandertals found at the cave sites of Spy in Belgium and El Sidrón in Spain. These four samples range from 42,000 to around 50,000 years old and are the oldest dental plaque ever to be genetically analysed.

“We found that the Neandertals from Spy Cave consumed woolly rhinoceros and European wild sheep, supplemented with wild mushrooms,” says Professor Alan Cooper, Director of ACAD. “Those from El Sidrón Cave on the other hand showed no evidence for meat consumption, but appeared instead to have a largely vegetarian diet, comprising pine nuts, moss, mushrooms and tree bark — showing quite different lifestyles between the two groups.”

“One of the most surprising finds, however, was in a Neandertal from El Sidrón, who suffered from a dental abscess visible on the jawbone. The plaque showed that he also had an intestinal parasite that causes acute diarrhoea, so clearly he was quite sick. He was eating poplar, which contains the pain killer salicylic acid (the active ingredient of aspirin), and we could also detect a natural antibiotic mould (Penicillium) not seen in the other specimens.”

“Apparently, Neandertals possessed a good knowledge of medicinal plants and their various anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving properties, and seem to be self-medicating. The use of antibiotics would be very surprising, as this is more than 40,000 years before we developed penicillin. Certainly our findings contrast markedly with the rather simplistic view of our ancient relatives in popular imagination.”

The “Iceman” also had some evidence of medical treatment, although probably ineffective.

Tags:economy, medicine
Posted in History, medical history, science | Comments Closed

Remembrance Day, or Armistice Day.

Sunday, November 11th, 2018

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November 11 is the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. When I was a child, it was Armistice Day. In Britain, it is still Remembrance Day when people who respect history buy and wear paper poppies.

The story of the poppies is told here.

In the spring of 1915, shortly after losing a friend in Ypres, Canadian doctor Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae was inspired by the sight of poppies growing in battle-scarred fields to write the now famous poem In Flanders Fields.

His poem moved American teacher Moina Michael who began making and selling silk poppies to friends to raise money for the ex-service community.

Before long, poppies made their way to the UK and became the symbol of the Royal British Legion when it was formed in 1921.

The first ever ‘Poppy Appeal’ in the UK that year raised over £106,000 for war veterans. The following year, a poppy factory was set up by Major George Howson MC, giving jobs to disabled former servicemen.

The bright red poppy is regarded as a resilient flower which managed to flourish despite fields being destroyed by war.

Some people say you should wear the poppy on your left side, so it is worn over the heart. The left is also where military medals are worn. Others say only the Queen and Royal Family are allowed to wear a poppy on the right, which is an urban myth.

About ten years ago, my daughter Claire and I were visiting London and a friend, a retired Royal Army Medical Corps doctor, invited us to sit in Westminster Abbey with the RAMC on Remembrance Day. The group sits in front of the RAMC window that commemorates the medical branch of the British Army. The medical corps is “Royal” but the Army is of Parliament, so not “royal.”

In the north aisle of the nave of Westminster Abbey is a memorial tablet and stained glass window for those who died serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps in the 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 wars. The larger white marble tablet was unveiled on 13th July 1922 by the Duke of Connaught, Colonel in Chief of the Corps. It was designed by F.J. Wilcoxson. The inscription reads, below the regimental badge:ROYAL ARMY MEDICAL CORPS
In memory of 743 Officers and 6130 Warrant Officers, Non-Commissioned Officers and Men who fell in the Great War, and whose names are enrolled in a Golden Book placed in the Chapter House. “They loved not their lives unto the death”

World War I changed Europe and we live with its consequences today. Unfortunately, the study of history has lapsed largely, and is distorted by academics and politics.

In years since that visit, I have spent some time in the scenes of World War I, such as Ypres, a scene of a prolonged and expensive battle of the war. There were several battles of Ypres.

The first ended the German assault through Belgium and ended with the beginning of trench warfare that continued to the end of the war. On our visit in 2015, we saw some of the original trenches, which were preserved by a family that returned after the war to find their farm a battlefield. They elected to preserve the scene as a museum since farming would be difficult with all the residue of battle and the bodies of the dead. There children have continued the museum and it is quite an interesting visit.

There are a number of museums in the area. This is the one we visited.

After the First World War a farmer returned to reclaim his land in and around what was left of the wood he had left in 1914. A section of the original wood and the trenches in it were cleared of debris and casualties but generally the farmer left a section of a British trench system as he found it.

This site is now one of the few places on the Ypres Salient battlefields where an original trench layout can be seen in some semblance of what it might have looked like. Elsewhere the trenches were filled in and ploughed over by returning farmers leaving only the occasional chalky outline of what had once been there.

In the last decade there has been a large increase in visitors to the Ypres Salient, and many have, of course, included a visit to the trenches at Sanctuary Wood. In the 1990s the trenches were covered in grass and the whole site was overgrown with undergrowth. Interestingly, nowadays the ground around the trench line has been visited by so many pairs of feet that it is mostly bald with no grass or undergrowth. The photograph on the far right shows how the trenches looked just a few years ago.

sanctuary-wood-2003-1995-250

The changes with increased foot traffic are seen in the two photos. The left photo is the way we saw it.

Tags:Belgium., France
Posted in Europe, History, military, personal | Comments Closed

Were American POWs left behind in Vietnam and Laos in 1975 ?

Tuesday, November 6th, 2018

I remember the POW/MIA movement in the 1980s that even went so far as to make and attend movies on that theme.

Videos are still being shown on military sites.

Wikipedia has an article on the topic.

Considerable speculation and investigation has contributed to a hypothesis that a significant number of missing U.S. soldiers from the Vietnam Conflict were captured as prisoners of war by Communist forces and kept as live prisoners after U.S. involvement in the war concluded in 1973. A vocal group of POW/MIA activists maintains that there has been a concerted conspiracy by the Vietnamese and American governments since then to hide the existence of these prisoners. The U.S. government has steadfastly denied that prisoners were left behind or that any effort has been made to cover up their existence. Popular culture has reflected the “live prisoners” theory, most notably in the 1985 film Rambo: First Blood Part II. Several congressional investigations have looked into the issue, culminating with the largest and most thorough, the United States Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs of 1991–1993 led by Senators John Kerry, Bob Smith, and John McCain. It found “no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia.

Is there “no compelling evidence ?”

This is an interesting, although lengthy, discussion of the matter.

That article was written in 2008 when John McCain was the candidate for President.