Pocohontas and the Lesson of History

draft

Tom Sito on Facebook posted the following on the history of the Pocohontas story (which became of course a very nice Disney movie).

I made the following reply, which I sincerely believe:

If the Native Americans had killed every European as soon as they came off the boat (from a distance, preferably) and burned the bodies but studied the weapons and other technology, then maybe, just maybe, they would not have been the victims of the genocide that they were. Maybe not, also. Hard to say. But it couldn't have been worse, it seems to me.

Well, live and learn.

My Response to the Georgia Special Election of June 20, 2017

draft

The districts we have lost in special elections were always going to be long shots. But I think that the Republicans are correct to feel that they have been somewhat vindicated. Yes, they lost 20 points or so in Georgia and yes that district should not have been even close, but they did win.

Five months into the greatest disaster this country has faced since the War Between the States, and our suburban Southern friends have sent a clear message.

And the message is: racism was OK with them, we need to make sure that local police forces can control minority groups (who arent really Americans anyway), environmental concerns hurt jobs, public schools need to be defunded, the Russians are our friends whose attacks against Hillary was no big deal and gross incompetence at the top is what this country needs.

We need to murder poor women, build oil pipelines through wilderness areas (which always leak, but thats OK, I mean who the f*ck cares?), defund solar energy, defund scientists who dont do what we say, impose the harshest penalties on poor people who step out of line, and always give special tax breaks to the rich.

Trump has had significant successes. Who could not but stand up and cheer when the first thing that Gorsuch did on the Supreme Court was to go out of his way and murder a black man? Take out the revolver, put it to that black man's head and say “we don't know if you are guilty or not, but we are going to shoot you here, I am going to shoot you here because you are poor and black and that is what America stands for. “ And then Gorsuch pulled the trigger.

I don't think that they are lying to us. I think that they are sincerely interested in destroying this country. The Republicans can be proud.

The mayor of New Orleans wrote an incredibly stupid piece about the statues of Confederate leaders a month or so ago. He made claims about why destroying history was the right thing to do. It was a very Stalinist claim about who was “on the right side of history”.

So I ask my fellow Democrats, who is on the right side of history today?

Rumors of War October 2016

Lets now move beyond the grim reality of the collapse of our political system, and lighten things up around here by considering whether or not we are on the brink of another serious regional or world war. Not only is this a very reasonable time to ask such questions, it also leads into the larger blog theme of “predicting the future”. In this case, no esoteric knowledge is necessary, we can rely on our own knowledge of history and what we can see of world events.

Whenever a war happens, there are always people who say that there were clear signs that the war was obviously going to happen and that either we should have been better prepared, or should have avoided it, or that the government knew it was going to happen and wanted it to happen, or any of a number of other opinions, some of them interesting, many of them completely out-of-their-mind crazy.

Hindsight is 20/20 but in the real world there are always tensions and conflicts that could explode into a major war. But it also the case that there are a variety of “indicators” that a war may be on the horizon. Here are a few drawn from recent history: (a) a nation is pursuing what it sees to be a goal of critical national importance and another nation executes economic sanctions (war) against it, (b) a nation is executing a rearmament of their armed forces as fast as they possibly can, (c) a nation executes an intense intelligence attack on another nation with whom they are at peace of a size that is unparalled in peacetime, (d) a nation insists that it controls another nation's territory or that a formerly public right-of-way is declared to be their sovereign territory, and always has been.

Do we see any of these four situations in the world today? In fact, we see all four of these.

Russia has a centuries long relationship with Ukraine and Crimea. They see that relationship differently than we do. For them, Crimea is the ice-free port that Russia strategically requires. For them, Ukraine is a slavic territory that has been part of Russia for centuries. The very origins of Moscow and Russia can be traced to Kievan Rus in what we might now call Ukraine. The west has imposed sanctions on Russia for the events in that part of the world. Right or wrong, these sanctions are certainly hurting Russia.

Both Russia and China are extensively rearming and reconfiguring their armed forces. The Russian army, navy and air force seem to be rebuilding at a vastly increased rate. China is doing something similar.

For the last decade, China has executed a cyber-attack against the United States of unprecedented scope. The only people who do not know it at this point are people who are really not paying attention (or don't want to know). The US Government has given every indication that it knows and that it wants it to stop. We know that something has been going on in part because our country has begun an immense investment in offensive and defensive cyberwar.

China's actions in the South China Sea are about as aggressive as a nation can be in times of peace. It is a setup for a hot war, and they are arming for it. They want it, they need it, they have to have it. And if we don't like it, we have to fight for it. The problem is not what we want, the problem is what all China's neighbors want and we are in a mutual defense alliance with those neighbors. Probability of war? High, about as high as war between India and Pakistan, for example.

Oh, did I forget to mention India and Pakistan?  Or India and China?  Or Vietnam and China? Or Pakistan's financing of terrorist groups? The war in Syria and the refugee crisis? Russia's blatant cyberwar against America? N. Korea and its nuclear weapons? Russia and Chechnya (what's left of it)? Or the Congo? Or Somalia? Or Sudan? Or Libya?

So are we headed to world war? Not necessarily. After all, even a hot regional war does not imply a world war.  But if we do end up in a major world war, there will be people who say that there was plenty of evidence that it was on the horizon.

This topic continues here.

Enola Gay Smithsonian Exhibit Disaster Part 2

In this post, I review the book that historians wrote about the issues involved in the disaster of the Enola Gay exhibition at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, a disaster that was very public and very embarrassing for the historians involved. You can find this book here.  You can read a synopsis I wrote about some of the issues here.

This post is likely to be only interesting to those of you who are interested in museums, or historiography, or possibly how the history of the cold war is interpreted for the public.  The rest of you should skip this and move on to more entertaining posts.

There are four questions I had in mind when I read this book. The first was whether the accusations that veterans made about the historians during this encounter were in any way validated by this book. The second was whether the historians were disingenuous in how they presented the issues here. The third was about whether the historians gave any serious credence to what people who had been involved in the event told them. And the fourth was whether the historians involved should have realized that they were about to cause a major controversy and whether they took reasonable steps to prevent it.

1. During and after the Enola Gay exhibit controversy, which you had to be deaf not to have heard about at the time it occurred, two accusations were made by the veteran associations about the historians writing the exhibit. The first was that the historians were adamant that they were going to present revisionist conclusions about this event whatever the veterans thought and the second was that the historians involved were incredibly, unbelievably arrogant. After reading this book from the historians point of view, I can tell you that without doubt the historians involved were adamant that they were going to present their revisionist point of view and that furthermore as far as they were concerned that was the only legitimate point of view, period. And the second impression I got, dripping from every page, was exactly how superior the historians thought they were to anyone else involved. Exactly like the veterans said. No misunderstanding there, whatsoever.

2. One of the things I look for in reading arguments from one side or another of a debate, is how well they present issues that I happen to know something about. If, let us say, there are 20 issues discussed and it just so happens that I know very well what is involved in two of them, I look with special interest at those two. It lets me judge to what extent those other 18 issues are presented in good faith. This is especially useful in the situation where one side admits honestly to something that does not help their argument, but they do so anyway in the interests of fairness. This may be a lot to ask, but I do it anyway.

At one point, the argument is made that the B-29 was an uninteresting airplane technically or aeronautically (is that a word?) and in and of itself had no particular justification for being in the Air & Space Museum. They even trot out an Air Force Officer to make that comment and then leave it there in the book as being decided. The B-29 was uninteresting.

This is an astonishing misrepresentation of the facts. It is so outrageous as to call into doubt anything else the authors of the book say. The B-29 was not only an incredible technological achievement, it was an achievement that had to be reached in order for the Army Air Corps to make their argument that they deserved to be a separate service and this is all intertwined with the history of aviation and the theory of strategic bombing. The B-29 was the technology that was going to prove this principle and it was the second most expensive R&D project of the war.  In other words, it was not only technologically interesting, it was of tremendous importance to the history of how we fought the war and how we planned the future of aviation. Without doubt, this plane and the effort to create it, deserves a place in the history of aviation.  The B-29 deserves to be at the Air & Space Museum.

 It makes me wonder just who they thought was going to read this book that they would make such an outrageous misstatement.  But this behavior fits the model that says that the historians of this period live in their own world and believe what they want to believe.  

Years after this disaster, the Smithsonian restored the Enola Gay, presumably over their dead body, and exhibited it at their secondary location outside Washington.  They still have not told the amazing story of the 509th Composite Group to the best of my knowledge.

The second issue is a bit more subtle but without doubt demonstrates bad faith on the part of the historians. At one point, they talk about how much money was spent to restore the Enola Gay with the implication of “there, are you happy now” referring to, in their opinion, the childish wishes of the veterans. What the book fails to tell you, but I happened to know, is that the Enola Gay had been treated like garbage by the Smithsonian, and left to rot and rust for decades in spite of the complaints of the veterans and the Air Force. The reason it cost so much to restore was because the Smithsonian had treated this artifact with contempt. But this was not mentioned.

In other words, the historians who wrote this book were completely ok with misrepresenting the facts to try and win their argument. Lying was not a problem for them. This is a bad way to get credibility, it seems to me.

3. If there is one thing that this book makes clear, the historians involved did not give a fuck what the veterans thought. As far as the historians were concerned, the veterans were unintelligent, ignorant children relative to a brilliant academic historian. They were given no credible voice in the dialog until the veterans and the Air Force forced the issue..

4. Should the historians have realized they were walking into a touchy situation and somehow avoided it? I think that they did know that what they were saying was controversial but they thought they would come out OK for one very good reason. They assumed that everyone understood going in that there was one truth, and only one truth. And that truth is what the historians said it was. Period. There could be no other truth, no other truth had any credibility. The veterans were just children, immature children who did not want to admit, naturally, that they had murdered all those innocent Japanese for no reason. That was the only conclusion, a historian conclusion, and that was that.

So, to ask the question, were the historians involved in this disaster arrogant?

No, not arrogant. Not merely arrogant. Unbelievably arrogant.

The book was a fabulous eye opener for me. It brought doubt on the credibility of the academic field of history and of historians, at least historians of the modern period. In that sense, the book was very successful beyond its goals.   It not only explained the disaster of the Smithsonian Enola Gay exhibit, it lowered the credibility of the field of academic history in general.

Good work, guys.

How to Join the Daughters of the American Revolution

Those of you who were raised on the west coast may not be as aware of the higher forms of society that exist in this country. But those of us who grew up on the east coast and, in particular, the Commonwealth of Virginia, are certainly aware of organizations, bodies, clubs, societies, what have you, that are for people who are of better breeding than the lower classes.

First among these elite societies is the Daughters of the American Revolution which is an organization of the women who are descended from those who fought on the side of liberty in the American Revolution. To the best of my knowledge no men can be a member of this club and I am uncertain about the status of transgendered people but I doubt that they are eligible. I guess you can always apply.

Eligibility is a big deal to these women, and to be a member, you have to demonstrate “service” of an ancestor, and show a clear line of descent to that person. To that end, and to be of assistance to those who would join this worthy society, they have prepared a guide to establishing service for purposes of joining the DAR.

What surprised me, but perhaps should not have, is that the guide contains a wealth of information about the American Revolution and who fought when. Its worth a glance and I have included a few representative pages here.

The guide goes by the provocative name of “Is That Service Right?” and is available via Google Docs at the following URL:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1hYywD4eS8sODkzMTYwMzgtYzYxYi00NzI2LWE1OWEtN2U0ZThjZmU3YjA3/edit?pli=1

I have three stories/comments about the DAR which I think are amusing.

1. When FDR addressed the national society of the DAR he began his speech with “Fellow Immigrants....”. This of course annoyed the hell out of people.

2. Strom Thurmond was the senator from the state of S. Carolina for many years, first as a Democrat and then as a Republican, changing allegiance in response to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In other words, a well-known Southern racist. What everyone in DC knew, and most people in the South as well, is that Strom had fathered a child by his family's young black maid when he was a young man. He always supported the woman and her daughter and appearances were maintained until Strom passed away, at which time his daughter went public. In order to avoid embarrassing her father she waited until he had passed away before she applied for membership to the DAR. I never heard whether she became a member.

3. Until recently, I did not realize how many black Americans fought in the American Revolution. But quite a few did. I wonder how the DAR deals with this, because, in case you had not guessed, the DAR is very definitely one of those famous racist clubs that only admits whites and looks down on blacks, jews, and other types.  This must be quite a problem for them.

Strom Thurmond

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strom_Thurmond

and his lovely daughter, Essie Mae

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essie_Mae_Washington-Williams

Regional Political Correctness and the American Museum of Natural History

As part of low self esteem, I have noticed that my friends in San Francisco or Cambridge MA are by their very nature more in touch with the socially politically correct doctrines which are required for one to be accepted by certain elements of our elite society. When a friend in SF goes to the library, he goes to a union worker's library founded in the late 19th century. When he is involved in a bisexual S&M polyamorous relationship/s, I know that he is on the leading edge of socially correct behavior by his very nature. I am envious of this since I am a notorious stick-in-the-mud who does not even own a single pair of handcuffs.

This regional cultural diversity or sensitivity towards leading edge correctness has also been brought home to me by people who live in the Cambridge, MA academic circles. Their sensors are so finely tuned that they can sense an incorrect belief from hundreds of yards away and respond correctly, which is to say with the hot certainty of outrage at the presence of incorrect thought.

Other regions of the country bring other sensitivities and advantages. I noticed when I lived in NYC that I naturally had a much greater sense of what was happening in the finance community than I did living anywhere else. It was interesting, it wasn't necessarily practical information, but you just naturally heard things. You heard some anecdotes about the insurance industry after 911, and about the savings and loan crisis years before the controlled press bothered to mention it. In N. California any supermarket packer knows more about venture capital than most people in the world. In LA, we know more about what is going on in the glamourous motion picture industry and know intuitively that reward for merit and art-for-arts-sake is not part of the equation, generally speaking, but only happens more or less by accident when it happens at all.

I have an example that demonstrates this fine sensitivity to political correctness and also political incorrect blindness of these different regions of our country. In order to understand this example, I first have to explain a few things about an esteemed institution in the NYC area, the American Museum of Natural History (the AMNH).

NYers love the American Museum of Natural History. The local US Post Office Branch for Zipcode 10024 is proudly called Planetarium Station in its honor.  When I consulted for the AMNH almost every adult male I knew who grew up in the region volunteered the information that he had committed hookey (skipped a day at school) as a kid and spent the day at the AMNH and that it was very important to them that a certain exhibit (perhaps the weird marsupial third from the right) not be touched because it was their favorite. Neil deGrasse Tyson of the Hayden Planetarium was a local hero and celebrity in NYC years before the Cosmos reboot established him in the national consciousness.

Skeletons in the closet?  What do you mean?

Any institution that has been around for a while is likely to have a skeleton or two in the closet, but at the AMNH they really do have skeletons in the closet. Many closets in fact. No one inside would accuse the AMNH of perfection but NYers do not care.   The halo of their esteem protects this institution from criticism and for most NYers it can do no wrong.

At one point, I was “seeing” someone who worked in academia at MIT in Cambridge, MA. She would come visit me in NYC and of course I would take her to my local favorite institution, the AMNH. The museum earned her contempt almost immediately because so many of the exhibits there consist of a vast number of ethnicities described by a set of mannequins dressed in representative clothes and with a selection of artifacts, facts, food types, cultural descriptions and so forth. But “humans under glass” is not considered politically correct in modern museum theory, even though these older exhibits are very informative and also very low maintenance, which is a good thing. I used to direct people to our project offices at the museum by telling them to go to the Hall of the Ancient Murdered Peoples and turn left at the cold blue nomads.

But that is nothing compared to the first time she saw the front of the museum.

Teddy on his horse surrounded by his young fans in blue

At the front of the AMNH is a statue of Theodore Roosevelt which most NYers would barely even notice. Pres. Roosevelt had quite a bit to do with the history of the AMNH and had an office there when he left the White House. ¹ His statue in front of the main entrance is of him on a horse looking bravely into the far distance and being followed by a Native American and an African on foot and walking a few respectful paces behind.

My friend from Cambridge did not get closer than 100 yards of this statue before she started fuming. She was no closer than 50 yards before she started all-but-screaming in outrage at this, well, outrage. This essence of non-political correctness. This racist, imperialist, oppressive example of American narcissism and cultural arrogance. The white man leading the colorfully dressed savages into the future of white oppression.

I tried to reassure her that the Museum understood her concern and that the statue as it existed was already an improved version.  The original version of the statue had the colorfully-dressed native people carrying Roosevelt's luggage and there were three of them, not two. The third was an orthodox Jew carrying the accounting books, but the Jewish lobby in New York was able to get him removed. The original slogan for the statue was “They Will Learn To Respect the Whip" but now it says something benign.

But all my efforts were to no avail and her mood never improved.

American Museum of Natural History
www.amnh.org

Notes

1. I have been in this office and it is very nice.   

The Goddess Phoebe in Manhattan

the rewrite

The following essay does NOT contain any spoilers beyond a throw-away joke at the beginning of a play.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I used to live in NY and only went to see plays when visitors came in from out of town and forced me to go. One such occassion involved a very distant friend (1) who bought us tickets to see the play Communicating Doors (1994) by Alan Ayckbourne. This would have been about 1998.

To avoid spoilers, I must tell only a very minimum version of this joke.

An attractive young woman in an outrageous skin-tight leather outfit is invited to a hotel room in London. She is a "specialist" she says, a dominatrix, no sex. Her nickname is "Poopay" which is not an appropriate stage name for her specialization so she is looking for a more dignified name, perhaps "Severa". This name should connote the idea of a goddess and inspire awe and fear in her customers.

Our Goddess in human form from the San Francisco Production

Another character, a respectable older woman, asks her what her real name is. "Phoebe", she replies, in total disgust at the outrageous fortune that has assigned her such a wimpy first name.

The whole audience laughs.  What's so funny, I thought. Why is everybody laughing?

Then I remembered my classical mythology and realized, of course, Phoebe is the name of a Goddess. Well, OK, technically she is a Titan, one of the sets of children of Uranus and Gaia, and traditionally associated with the moon. But I think that from this distance a Titan can be considered to be goddess for all theatrical purposes.

I was entertained by the notion that the playwright would write a throw-away joke that required knowledge of Greek mythology/religion (4) and expect the audience to get it.  And of course, I thought it was amusing that in fact the audience in NY did in fact get it.  I would not expect that to be the case in most of the country, but hey, maybe I am wrong.  Maybe on the East coast this kind of knowledge of classical civilization is part of the standard kit of people who go to the theatre. 

Out here in Hollywood, I do not think we would make this kind of assumption.   No one would be assumed to know Greek religion/mythology unless it happened to be featured in a recent graphic novel. Perhaps if some underage pop star or ingenue called herself "Phoebe the Goddess" on television or the internet only then could one be expected to know this bit of cultural information.

It is this understanding and appreciation of the American audience and, by extension, the world audience, that makes American films so popular and approachable, I think.  (3) In other words, we dumb it down or in some cases, don't bother to hire writers that would know this kind of stuff to begin with.  That is the best way: ignorance is good for commerce.   

_________________________________________________

1. Bill Joy, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems.

2. By prompting I mean, there was nothing that would indicate a reference to Greek religion was about to occur. Had this been a performance of a play by Euripides, for example, then that would be a different matter.

3. How do we know for certain that American films are the best? By that one key attribute by which all American cultural works are judged: the amount of money it generates, possibly adjusted for inflation and exchange rate. That one criteria above all else condenses all the vague and subjective qualities of a creative work into a single, objective index of excellence. And it is the genius of our culture and civilization to recognize this and put all our energies and resources into this one overarching goal: make more money.

4. Greek religion was always presented to me as "mythology" which implied some sort of fictional folk belief.  Actually, what we call mythology is a form of deprecation, the Greek's thought of it as religion and were quite devout about it judging from some of the votive deposits that have been found and described in literature.   So where you see the term "mythology" applied to the Greeks, just substitute "religion" and you will be much closer to the reality.

_________________________________________________

See also:

Communicating Doors (1994)

http://communicatingdoors.alanayckbourn.net/

Review of the San Francisco Production of Communicating Doors (spoilers!)
http://www.edgesanfrancisco.com/index.php?ch=columnists&sc=Mickey%20Weems&id=124794

David McCallum's Notes on Communicating Doors

http://www.davidmccallumfansonline.com/comdors.htm

Phoebe on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebe_(mythology)

More Procrastination Ideas: The Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States

The Atlas of Historical Geography of the United States was written by Charles Paullin, a historian for the US Navy, between 1912 and 1932 and is considered a classic of the genre. The University of Richmond (yes, Richmond Virginia) has put it online for your enjoyment.

Presidential Election of 1892

You think you know American history?  You think you know where this country came from and how it has acted in the past?   Ha, I say.   Although this atlas will not reveal all the dirt, not by any means, many of the complications and contradictions that make America the great, misunderstood, and completely weird place that it is are present in this atlas, if sometimes between the lines.

There are several areas that are particularly valid for this self-study of your own nation, but lets examine two of them: the section on political elections showing who voted for whom in a presidential election, and the section on the American territories as it evolved.

These maps must be read with a nuanced eye.   Recall that we are a representative democracy, so they say, which means that we elect people to represent us in Washington indirectly, we do not elect the President directly, for example.  Although somewhat true this picture has changed over time and you may wish to review the rules by which the Senate and the POTUS (president of the United States, as it is abbreviated in certain circles) are elected.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate

Now, my fellow citizens, go to the Atlas and review the various presidential elections and who voted for whom.   Consider as you do so some of the following: the history of the so-called Blue and Red states, who or what was the Anti-Masonic party, why were there two Democratic candidates in 1860 who split the vote and elected that Republican Abraham Lincoln (yes, the man who "freed the slaves" quote end quote was a Republican, kindof hard to believe, isn't it), what was the Progressive Party and why was Roosevelt running under that Party label?

Notice how many elections the name "Roosevelt" appears.  So far as I know there were only two Roosevelt's in the history of the Presidency, yet between the two of them, Theodore and FDR, we get quite a few elections.   Bully !  Maybe what we need today is a third Roosevelt?

For your information, the "Anti Masonic" Party was our first third party in America and was devoted to exposing and removing the secret influence of "Freemasonry" on our government.  Ha. Obviously, they failed.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Masonic_Party

On a more practical level, and for those who are interested in military history, the Atlas has such gems as the state of the transportation and postal routes right before the War of the American Revolution.  Its remarkably sparse, basically a single route from north to south.

Probably the subject with the most potential for nuance (e.g. hidden crimes) involves the territorial expansion of the United States and the issues of the Native Americans. Or is it the issue of our relations with Mexico?   There are so many to choose from, I don't where to begin.   

So be sure to check out this website and keep your favorite search engine handy for research.  Its for your own good.  Trust me.

States, Territories and Cities, long ago

Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States

The University of Richmond

www.richmond.edu

The Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond

dsl.richmond.edu

Economic Terrorism and Tea Parties Past and Present

Choosing a label for something, whether a car, a novel or a political movement, is a tricky thing.   It requires inspiration to do well and sometimes it requires imagination and the ability to see the title from other points of view in order to judge how good or appropriate that title may be.   A Chevy Nova might become a humorously-labeled "No Go" in Hispanic countries.   A Tea Party might be a famous and colorful incident in a successful war of independence, or it might be an act of economic terrorism which hurts innocent people and leads to a war with vast disruption of many people's lives.

Lets look at the famous Boston Tea Party using modern terminology and a less overtly American-after-the-fact point of view.  There may be some irony in our right-wing fanatics choosing to call themselves the Tea Party, after all.

Here are a few basic statements about the Boston Tea Party which I think are quite defensible once you remove the blinders that says they were "patriots fighting against oppressors".   

1. The Boston Tea Party was a violent act of economic terrorism to attain extremist political goals.

Whoever did it, and we do not actually know who they were, deliberately broke onto three ships in the harbor and destroyed other people's property.   Where were they guards?   All ships are guarded in port.  Were they bribed ?  How many were injured?  How many might have been injured?

2. We do not know who these people were.

The Tea Party was executed by a group of anonymous fanatics who took the law into their own hands.   We know an awful lot about that period of America.  We know who spoke at a major meeting at Fanuil Hall when the terrorist act was committed, but we do not know who were in those outfits executing the criminal acts outside.  You may hear or read about the "Sons of Liberty" but that means very little in this case. Everyone called themselves the "Sons of Liberty" those days. In modern parlance, we would call it an "umbrella terrorist organization".  Who were they? What are their names? Who financed it? We do not know. 

There is speculation about who might have been involved.  I can tell you some very amusing theories which actually does implicate a radical (and famous) Freemasonry lodge. (2) Maybe John Adams knew, and maybe he didn't.  But so far as I know, all evidence is circumstantial.

3. The Boston Tea Party was a Failed "False Flag" Operation

These days you hear a lot of people throwing around intelligence community jargon as if they knew the first thing about it.  One of those terms is "false flag" which is where a country or organization mounts an operation but tries to make it look like someone else did it.  That is what the people, whoever they were, who did the Boston Tea Party tried to do.  They tried to make it look like an indian nation, the Mohawks, did the deed.  Of course no one believed them for a second.

So what we have here is a botched false flag operation executed by amateurs.

4. The terrorists clearly committed criminal acts.

One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. Massachusetts had laws. They broke them. Yes, that might have been a reaction to some taxes which were "unfair", so what?   I think lots of taxes are unfair but I do not go around blowing up the California Franchise Tax Board (even if it is a tempting thought).  They committed these crimes to provoke a reaction from the central government and they got what they wanted. Property was destroyed.  People were hurt, if not that night, then in the days and nights to come. 

5. The Result was Anarchy and War.

The situation spun out of control and we had a full-scale war and revolution on our hands. Estimates are that 15 to 20 percent of the population of the colonies were loyalists (1) and left (or were forced to leave) for what became Canada.  Of course this is the war that the terrorists wanted to provoke with their acts.

So what I want to propose to you here is that the modern Tea Party may have unintentionally chosen a very appropriate name for their organization, naming it as they did after cowardly, extremist political radicals and incompetents who violated the law and caused a war.

Good choice, guys.


Wikipedia page on Loyalists
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyalist_(American_Revolution)

___________________________________________________

1. I have heard different numbers for the percentage of the population of the 13 colonies who were loyalists, and for how many left or were forced to leave.   The 15 to 20 percent is on the low side, I think.

2. In NYC, the most important Freemason temple was refurbished and on the opening night gave a talk to the public inviting them to have a look and to hear about Freemasons in their own words.  This would have been mid-late 1990s.   The talk was very interesting and among things discussed the American Revolution because there is so much myth out there that the Revolution was sponsored and let by Freemasons.  Our speaker was quite dismissive for the most part.  Yes there were Freemasons in the Revolution, but there were many Freemasons on the British and Loyalist sides as well.  Yes, there are incidents where a Freemason was able to help a brother in distress, but there are also events where a Brother signalled distress and did not receive help.   But he said there was one intriguing story where it may have been that the Freemasons did have a genuine role in instigating the revolution, and the story is this.

Freemasonry is mostly a social and charitable organization, a so-called fraternal organization.  They meet once a week, each lodge in its own place and normally do such exciting things as plan a charitable event for a hospital, or work on initiating members, or discussing their obscure lore.  Each lodge has its own personality, and attracts its own types of members.   In the pre-revolutionary days there was a famous radical lodge outside Boston.   I forget where exactly he said it was, but apparently it is quite famous and they met in a pub, I think, and that pub is still there.   The lodges all kept books recording the minutes of their meetings and they have the log books for this lodge.   On the night of the Boston Tea Party, only 3 members of the lodge showed up.  They immediately called the meeting to order and dismissed it.   Nothing else.   The speculation is that the rest of the lodge (and maybe also those three members who showed up to formally hold the mini meeting), who were all radical citizens apparently in favor of opposing the British and in favor of separation from Britain, the speculation is that they were the people in costume and on the boats that night.  Apparently it would have been about the right number of people.   The evidence is not close to definitive, but at least it is an explanation of who they might have been, and if so, how they were organized and how they did such things as organize their costumes etc.

I consider this just an amusing story, submitted for your consideration.

The Uses of Procrastination: The Origins of Pork Barrel and Lobbying

As we stare into the darkness of the inevitable failure of our lives, what could be better than to waste a little time looking up things on the Internet? The Internet is a Bold New Paradigm (tm) and provides endless opportunity to learn a little about nearly everything, as long as what you want to learn is not complete, well-presented or, in many cases, accurate. These are details that have nothing whatsoever to do with its value as a time waster however.

Today I want to enlighten you with two important words in our uniquely American political language. The origins of one of them I have known for a long time, the other I just learned on the Internet recently. So as to give you fair warning, I am going to name those two words now and ask you to think about what they might have originally meant, or what their origin might have been.

The words are "pork barrel" and "lobbyist".

In modern parlance, the term pork barrel politics refers to a congressman arranging for his district to receive some federal project that pumps money into the local economy. This would usually take the form of construction projects, such as highways, bridges, etc. It might take the form of an Army or Navy base, or it might be in the form of a military procurement that spends some of its money in that district. By this definition, the building of the 1st six frigates for the US Navy during the Geo. Washington administration was a pork barrel project, because it began the navy tradition of spreading the work out across as many states as possible to increase congressional support for the project. In the case of the six frigates, each one was built in a different seaport, each in a different state. That is six states out of thirteen, not a bad spread. An informed discussion of this term would have the first use of the term in the congressional record, but I do not have that kind of information here. This is the Internet, after all.

The pork barrel harkens back to a time in history when salt was a major means of preservation of food. In agricultural America, various farms and homesteads would have a central place that might serve as the location of a church, a post office, and a general store. At the general store one might find a variety of goods, bulk foods, hardware, etc. One of features of your general country store would have been the "pork barrel", which was a barrel of salted pork. One would go to the county seat on the weekend, perhaps, and pick up the mail, see some friends, and pick up supplies at the store to bring home to the farm. One would select some salted pork from the barrel and pay by weight, presumably. Thus the analogy of bringing something home to one's constituents from the pork barrel that was Washington. Surely we are all allowed to bring something home from the pork barrel for our families ? That is only fair.

Apparently with the origin of the term "lobbyist" we have an example of a self-reinforcing Internet myth.  Fun but not true.   The lobby in question refers to a famous old hotel in DC which is two blocks away from the White House, the Willard Hotel. It was at one time the only hotel you could stay at in DC and still easily get to the major attractions or see all the possible people you needed to see to do business in Washington. When Grant was president, being one of our more social presidents, he liked to go out for a drink and a smoke, and he usually went to the lobby and bar of the Willard hotel.

The restored lobby of the Willard Hotel presumably without the spitoons that would have been there in Grant's day

This meant that you could hang out in the lobby of the hotel and have a good chance of just running into the president many evenings of the week, and have a few informal words with him on some topic. This became known in town as "lobbying", the people who did it were called "lobbyists", the verb was "to lobby".

Its a fun story, but I am told, just not true.  The origin of the term "to lobby" comes from England and parliament and refers to the lobbies where the members of parliament would assemble before going into the chambers to debate and vote.    The process of researching this word reminds me that the Internet is NOT a substitute for solid reference material, probably in print, next to your computer terminal.

The implication is that the term "lobbyist" is not uniquely American in the least, it is a shared term of art with our brothers in crime, Great Britain.

We hope you have been enlightened and entertained by this vital information and that we have contributed to the wastage of what little time you have left in a suitably amusing manner.

The Willard Intercontinental Washington

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_InterContinental_Washington

Some Background on the History of the 4th of July

Its the 4th of July here in Rancho Rincon del Diablo, the Devil's Place. Hell. A white, right-wing Republican stronghold that complains bitterly of the influx of Hispanics and hates Obama even when he does their bidding, as Obama indeed does most of the time.

At various times, I read in foreign journals, or hear from international friends, or read in books, that Americans can not truly relate to Europe, or understand foreign policy, or any number of things because they are too naive, their history has been too short, they are enthusiastic and youth oriented, this argument goes, but do not have the depth to really understand history and work on the world stage.   Now, it may be that Americans are so ignorant of their own history that this might be true.  In fact, I think so myself most of the time.  But I disagree that America, the United States of America, does not have enough historical depth to understand some of the complicated situations in the world.  I think that it is the case that we are merely lazy and ignorant of our own history.  And I cite as case in point some background here on the 4th of July to support my argument.  

I had believed for many years that the 4th of July was a day to remember and celebrate the American War of Independence from Great Britain. And of course, that famous artillery barrage immortalized in our national anthem: "The rockets red glare, the bombs were fucking bursting in air! Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there". In other words, communications were cut off, but we knew that the fort had not yet been destroyed or surrendered because the artillery bursts illuminated the flag flying over the fort.

Unfortunately, the battle the song commemorates did not take place during the American War of Independence, it took place during the War of 1812.

Nor does the 4th of July celebrate the Declaration of Independence per se.   The 4th of July is actually the date of something that happened before the Declaration of Independence as we know it was written, and before the war that followed it.

Here are some things to know about 4th of July with a spin from someone who grew up in Virginia.

1. The 4th of July celebrates the approval by the 2nd Continental Congress of the Resolution of Independence also known as the Lee Resolution.   This resolution was proposed by a delegate to the Continental Congress named  Richard Henry Lee from Virginia.  It was proposed on June 7, 1776.  The first clause was approved on July 2, 1776 and the other clauses approved in the following months.

Immediately after the approval of the first clause of the Lee resolution, the Continental Congress took up the matter of the text of a Declaration of Independence, which became the document we normally think of when we think of the Declaration of Independence and the 4th of July.

This is the text of the Lee Resolution.

Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved. That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances. That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation.

Its quite concise isn't it?

There is debate among historians about when the text of the resolution that we think of as our Declaration of Independence was actually written. But those dates all lie within the July 4 - August range. What we actually celebrate on July 4th is the approval of the first third of the Lee Resolution.

2. As mentioned above, the Resolution of Independence had been proposed by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia. Lee was a member of one of the leading families of Virginia and many other Virginians were involved in the both the Declaration of Independence and the War of Independence.   It goes without saying, this being America, that the delegates to the Continental Congress were white, male, and generally well off which usually meant landowners.   There were others involved in the revolution who were less well off, and were, for example, craftsmen, but I am not sure if there were any of those who were members of the Continental Congress.   

3. Less than 70 years later, within the living memory of people who were alive when the Lee Resolution was approved, Virginia again tried to escape a government that they found oppressive, whether we like that or not, or whether we understand their reasons or not, or whether those reasons were just by our standards today or not.  The result was about what you would expect for a war that was lost, you know, the usual dead men (over 10 percent of men killed), raped women, starving children, and cities burned to the ground. (3)

4. But beyond this general destruction and misery, there was also a very specific desire to personally punish the losers in order to teach them a lesson and that is where our little story continues.  In retribution against one of the leading families of Virginia, Lincoln's Secretary of War seized without due process, in other words, illegally, the ancestral home of that family in an attempt to punish and impoverish this particular family that, in Stanton's opinion, was guilty of holding true to their values of freedom. Stanton could not abide that and went out of his way to destroy them.   He did this by seizing their land and then ordering the creation of a cemetery on that land, his reasoning being that when the courts or Congress reversed his illegal seizure of property that it would do no good because there would be thousands of bodies on it and those bodies would not be exhumed. His actions were vindictive, illegal, abusive, and he got away with it without any problems.  In America, the law is for the rich and powerful, otherwise the law does not exist.  (1) 

5. In case you had not figured out the punchline of our heartwarming story of patriotism and our devotion to the law in America, the cemetery became known as Arlington National Cemetery, as Arlington had been the ancestral home of the Lee family for generations.

6. Yes, that Lee family, the descendants and members of the family of Richard Henry Lee, whose resolution of independence we celebrate this day.  (2)

_______________________________________

The Facebook Page for Arlington House
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Arlington-House-The-Robert-E-Lee-Memorial-US-National-Park-Service/172540179425529?directed_target_id=0
_______________________________________

1. Congress later voted some compensation for the illegal seizure of the land.   Whether or not that compensation was in any way just compensation for the act is debatable.   If you ever visit Arlington National Cemetery, be sure to visit the Lee / Arlington House.

2. Richard Henry Lee was the great uncle of Robert E. Lee.

3. War is hell.   Generally speaking, when a victorious army enters a civilian area, women are raped. Some armies rape more than others, some make a point of it, some try to discourage the practice.  But I doubt that there has ever been a victorious army that didn't rape the women of the defeated as they entered the territory of the enemy.  As for burning churches and schools, the answer is that they do not burn churches and schools.  They burn buildings that happen to be in the line of fire when people are fighting.  As for starving children, well, you see, when you burn the fields that means there is no food around and any food needs to be brought in.  Generally food is made available to defeated populations, eventually, when they get around to it.  As for burning cities, when a retreating army leaves, one of the last things they do is to dispose of ammunition that for one reason or another they can not take with them.  In the case of Richmond, Va. the fire at the armory got out of control and burned the city down.   Whose fault was that?  Hard to say, really.  But the point is, when the war was over, the men were dead, the cities burned, the women raped and the children starving.  As I say, war is hell.

Vast Thinking Vegetable Discovered on Mars! Scientists Attempt to Cover Up Truth!

On Oct 13, 1912, two and a half years after the approach of Halley's Comet to the earth, the Salt Lake Tribune's Sunday Section astounded the world with the announcement of a discovery on Mars of a giant thinking vegetable containing a single enormous eye.   You would think that such a discovery would have been published everywhere, but no, clearly the government in Washington wanted to suppress the truth because not only was the article not published anywhere else, but they even went so far as to issue flat denials.

Why is our government so intent on repressing news of the alien intelligent plant?  Is it perhaps because they want to hide the peaceful intent of the citizens of planet earth but co-opt the innocent plant into plots and intrigues our government has here on earth?

And why has the venal, untrustworthy scientific community not revealed this outrage against knowledge, why have they gone along with this conspiracy to repress the truth?   Perhaps they are not the selfless "searchers for truth" we thought they were.

I have reproduced this stunning article in its entirely as reported on the internet at the web link below.  Please spread the news as far as you can.  I wonder if our evil government isn't planning to spray DDT on this innocent and peace loving citizen of the galaxy?!

Original article is here:

http://zapatopi.net/blog/?post=201202207190.the_mammoth_eye_of_mars

Here is the pathetic response from some toady at the Lick Observatory trying to spread scorn on the article and so suppress the truth.

We must demand a full-disclosure of everything involved with the Giant Intelligent Vegetable from our government at once.  I hope you will join me in this crusade.  I will investigate what is involved in a FOIA request over the next few days.

Archaeology of the Cold War: Espionage and Other Compromises of National Security (1975-2008)

Espionage and spying was one of the defining characteristics of the Cold War. It is easy to be nostalgic about the Cold War, of course. It was a time when America had a functioning economy, when the political system had not been destroyed, when we could still believe in the American Dream in one form or another.

It was a time of the Berlin Tunnel, of the silent war between nuclear submarines, of Mutual Assured Destruction, defections and moles, of spy satellites and science education, of sensor nets under the ocean built at vast expense but capable of hearing a whale at 2000 kilometers, or a door opening on a submarine while submerged.

Espionage and the secret service, some think, are the purest expression of the war between civilizations, fought by a nation's elite secret service that manifest the moral codes that define the opposing civilizations. This makes the secret service the first line of defense, the avant garde of the revolution, the keepers of the faith. They are the mujadeen, the soldiers of God who are willing to die for God.

The Defense Personnel Security Research Center in Monterey, CA, set out to write a report that summarized espionage and other breaches of national security in this nation in the last 30 years. It's goal was to provide a series of case studies for educators of security personnel. It provides good summaries of the different types of espionage cases that have been found and prosecuted in the modern period. It has been regularly updated, the latest version adds 20 more recent case studies up to 2008.

If, as mentioned above, the secret service represents people who are Defenders of the Faith and of the Faithful, then many of the people whose cases are summarized in this report are the Fallen, those who by their actions have fallen from Grace with God and are damned forever.

I have selected a few pages at random for your review and the URL for the full report is listed below. You could read it in its entirety, if you were of a mind to do so, in a few hours at most.

"Espionage and Other Compromises of National Security"

http://cryptome.org/2013/02/spy-cases-1975-2008.pdf

The Fall of Man
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_fall_from_grace

Some Points to Consider Before Starting a War

[Revised 1-12-2013]

I wrote this silly essay not because I am a genius who knows everything, but because it sounds to me that people around me (and people in Washington) do not know much about this very complicated and emotional topic: what it is you should expect if you start a war.  Since I think I know a lot of what you can know about the subject from reading history, and because I keep getting irritated by some of the things I hear and read which sounds appallingly naive, I have written down a short list of things that I think everyone should know, more or less, before advocating a military solution (e.g. attacking Iran, Syria, etc).  In other words, if the things I describe below do not happen, you should be pleased.  But if they do happen, you should not be surprised.

Why can't war be fun, like on television?

1. Wars are generally easier to start than to stop.

History is filled with examples where some nation (or kingdom, whatever) was able to start a war, but having started it, discovered many reasons why it was a mistake, but could not disengage. Things had spun out of control.   

2. Wars are very expensive.

Very expensive indeed.  In all the ways we might define the term "expensive", e.g. money, lives, civic discord, etc.   Historically, nations have underestimated these costs, sometimes willfully, sometimes because they are hard to predict, and other reasons.  But at the end of the day, when a nation reviews a war after it is over, rarely do they say that it came in under budget. And these costs continue long after the fighting stops.

3. People die and get hurt in a war.

Well, golly, you may say, that's pretty obvious.  But I swear that there are people who do not know this.  They think they can have a war in Afghanistan or Iraq or wherever and somehow people won't be killed.   But that's what happens in war.  You throw a lot of munitions around and they explode and kill people. Some of those people are in uniform, and some are not in uniform, and some of the latter are civilians and some are not.     You try to mostly kill soldiers and kill as few civilians as possible. Sometimes you end up killing your own people by mistake or carelessness. It happens all the time.

4. Mistakes happen during a war.

Wars are barely controlled chaos with real opposition and all sides using what are essentially dangerous prototypes and throwing bombs at each other.   Ever watch any of those videos on youtube from aircraft talking to people on the ground?  Notice how often they are yelling?   They're not yelling to be heard (well, maybe they are yelling to be heard), but they are also yelling because it is really stressful where they are.  People make choices and make mistakes.   People go the wrong way, people get the wrong coordinates, some people did not get the word, people got excited when other people were shooting at them. Mistakes happen.

Sometimes they are not mistakes, sometimes they are only mistakes after the fact.  Oh you blew up a wedding where a lot of the bad guys were going to be?   I see.  Maybe that was an intentional mistake, or maybe it wasn't.

But nothing makes me laugh harder than the civilian quarterbacking after the fact.  Why didn't they do this?  Why didn't they do that?  That sure was stupid.  Easy for you to say.

5. The laws of war are more guidelines than laws.

Not all cultures agree with the so-called laws of war. Not all nations have signed the Geneva Conventions. Even those that have signed them have a lot of leeway on how those laws or conventions are applied on a case-by-case basis.  So don't go throwing around words like "war crimes" without spending a lot of time figuring out what it is that people mean by this today, because you will just sound like an asshole, which you may very well be. 

6. When the war is over, the war isn't over.

Win or lose, someone has to clean up the mess. And someone has to pay for it. Win or lose, if you get into a war it is likely that you will have some obligations or costs going forward however it turns out.  

7. People care passionately about what happens in war both during and afterwards.

I use the story of the Smithsonian exhibit on the Enola Gay to explain what I mean by "strong opinions".  As far as I can tell, by far most soldiers in uniform at the time the nuclear bombs were dropped believe/believed that those bombs saved their lives by causing Japan to surrender.  Now it turns out that maybe that is true and maybe that is not true.  People will be debating that for a very long time and we may never have a definitive answer that makes everyone happy.   But the people who were in uniform at the time, of which very few are still alive, have strong opinions on the topic.  And when the Smithsonian tried to do an exhibit which was so-politically-correct about whether or not the bombs caused Japan to surrender, they were torn to pieces by the veterans.   That's what I mean by "strong opinions".

Therefore do not start a war unless you are willing to have people around afterwards who have very strong opinions on the topic that you may or may not agree with.

8. Do not have a war unless it is OK with you that people will hate each other.

One of the most irritating recent issues regarding the war in Afghanistan was the investigation to find out if one of our soldiers had urinated (e.g. pissed) on a dead enemy to show his disrespect.  How could that be!  That's not very civilized!  War is not very civilized, either.  War is about killing people and being killed, about people being betrayed and dying. And about hate. Therefore do not go into a war and expect that people are going to be completely dispassionate. No offense or anything, but that would be extremely unrealistic.

9. Some people do not appreciate our good intentions.

Its hard to believe, but some people do not want Americans to come in and "show them how its done". They do not care that having a base in the desert saves us a lot of money. They don't trust us. If something happens that they don't like or don't understand, they are very likely going to think that we are doing something evil, or that we planned it, or otherwise take the worst possible point of view on the topic because, as I said, they don't trust us.

And other nations, watching what is going on somewhere else, maybe also doubt our intentions and maybe fear us because we went to war in order to "fix things" and they may wonder if they are the next to be "fixed". 

10. Some people have longer memories than you do.

America as a culture has a selective and self-serving amnesia and tends to disregard other people's history, or history in general, as unimportant.

Americans may have neither known nor cared that the French were in Vietnam before we were, but the Vietnamese certainly did.  I know many of my fellow citizens who neither know nor care that Israel exists because of events in Europe over two millennia, but the Jews who live in Israel know this very well.  Most people I know may not know or care that the Grand Army of the Republic raped, murdered and burned its way through the South (1), but the people who live in the South do. 

Other people know their history, whether or not you care to know their history.  Maybe you don't agree with that history, maybe you think they got it wrong.  That doesn't really matter, what matters is what they think their history is.

11. Do not get involved in someone else's problems without thinking twice.

I think this one should be self-explanatory but obviously not.  If you break it, you buy it.  I am not sure we were much responsible for Iraq being a nightmare of problems before we got there, but we sure are involved now.   Afghanistan is an amazingly complex, historically rich area (note, not country, area) and we did have something to do with making it what it was before 2001, but not as much as some people think (2).  But the Sunni and the Shiites in Iraq are at each other's throats, again, and that is not going to stop anytime soon.  The people who live in the place we call Afghanistan are never going to stop growing and selling opium as long as there is a demand for it. And they are never going to stop being corrupt in our eyes, because in a deep and fundamental way they don't see it as corruption or they don't care what we think.   And the rich of Kandahar will famously "keep" little boys for sex as they have for a long time and you wont stop them unless you kill them all. And I don't think we should kill them all, personally.

12. Be careful what you ask for and think about what happens next.

Saddam Hussein ruthlessly suppressed his Shiite majority in Iraq, I hear.  Those Shiites are the cousins of the Shiites that rule Iran with an oppressive, women-hating, Jew-hating, Sunni-hating theocratic dictatorship.  You get rid of Hussein, the Shiites who are a majority in Iraq come into power, and wish to ally with and maybe imitate that lovely theocratic Iran next door.  Good move, boys.

13. Wars do not always go the way you want or expect.

Many Americans are used to believing that a war will go their way, that they will be victorious in some sense of that word.   This is sheer delusion and ignorance.  First, Americans have not always won wars but many wars end with ambiguous results.   Second, you can win and lose a war at the same time.  Third, you can win every battle and still lose the war.   Fourth, wars have a life of their own, and unexpected things happen.  A small war may become a big war and a big war may become an annoying small war.   You will not know for sure going in.

Therefore and in conclusion, if a war is discretionary, and not all wars are, think real hard before you start it. All of the points above apply now and in the future. And if somehow one or two of them do not apply, then consider yourself lucky.

Now, are you really, really sure you need to start that war?

__________________________

1. Sherman's "March to the Sea".

2. Read Steven Coll's "Ghost Wars" about our involvement in Afghanistan after the Soviet Invasion.  We did support the resistance against the Soviet Union, but our involvement was always with the Pakistani's and the Saudi Arabians, and they have had much more to do with what transpired than we did, in spite of our self-image as being all powerful.   We were one of many players in that episode.
http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wars-Afghanistan-Invasion-September/dp/0143034669