Owners and Squatters

On this day:
363
Emperor Julian marches back up the Tigris and burns his fleet of supply ships. During the withdrawal, Roman forces suffered several attacks from the Persians. Did anybody ever beat these guys?
1755
French and Indian War: The French surrender Fort Beauséjour to the British, leading to the expulsion of the Acadians.
1816
Lord Byron reads Fantasmagoriana to his four house guests at the Villa Diodati, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont, and John Polidori, and inspires his challenge that each guest write a ghost story, which culminated in Mary Shelley writing the novel Frankenstein, John Polidori writing the short story The Vampyre, and Byron writing the poem Darkness.
1858
Abraham Lincoln delivers his House Divided speech in Springfield, Illinois.
1871
The University Tests Act allows students to enter the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Durham without religious tests (except for those intending to study theology).
1904
Irish author James Joyce begins a relationship with Nora Barnacle and subsequently uses the date to set the actions for his novel Ulysses; this date is now traditionally called “Bloomsday”. Barnacle. She must have been quite a woman to overcome that name with a word guy like him.
1940
World War II: Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain becomes Chief of State of Vichy France (Chef de l'État Français).
1963
Soviet Space Program: Vostok 6 Mission – Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space.

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"Some hold that Shakespeare’s plays were not written by him, but by another fellow of the same name."--Mamet

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The SpaceX IPO has resurrected the zero-sum argument of wealth, the only redistribution claim that has no mythology to enshroud its baselessness.

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The first three AI IPOs will have a value greater than the GDP of France.

***

Platner's defense seems to be he is "anti-establishment," of the Obamian "fundamental change" school. Being "anti" is a lot less demanding a position.

***

The story about the White House Attack Conspiracy is a frightening look into the future of rising technology available to smaller and smaller groups. And 22 conspirators are too many for them all to be crazy.

***

Owners and Squatters


Israel and its enemies is more complex than simple jealousy, although it plays a part. It is the worst of tribalism, expansionism, greed, unforgiving historical resentment--the Hatfields and the McCoys writ large, armed to the teeth and blinded by righteous fury over something most can't remember.


The West, horrified by the murderous WWII, tried to set aside a self-contained political and cultural entity where Jews could enrich and protect themselves. They chose a desert occupied by ill-defined, wandering nomads who had just lost a war. Losing a war has consequences, usually a lot worse than losing some desert.


But drawing borders and appointing kings have a lot to overcome. See Korea, Vietnam, the Ottoman Empire, the 100 Years' War, and much of Africa. And while the Jewish claim to the area is well documented, everything in history has a precedent. Jewish claims in the Middle East are more literate than the Irishman's claim to London, but no more valid. And how old is national sovereignty anyway? The Treaty of Westphalia? So, all borders start from 1648?


There should be a statute of limitations on national sovereignty. Everyone has some claim or other if you go back far enough. Right now, publicity and PR trump everything. But, as time goes by, big weapons in the hands of a few will trump everything. If the world thinks Gaza is a problem now, imagine what will happen when Iran has a nuclear weapon. When every basement revolutionary group has drones. How will these problems be resolved?


Israel was created out of whole cloth by a sympathetic Britain--ratified by the UN--in a land they conquered, for the benefit of a culture that had suffered horribly. Tough but historically common. (minus the kindness) And the conquered people were displaced. (unsympathically) So, which injustices will we right? Greece-Turkey? The Falklands? The defeat of the Anglo-Saxons? The defeat of a Stone Age people without the wheel or alphabet by the European People of Steam?


Do the Picts want Edinburgh back? The Chiricahua want Austin? It was said seriously by a commentator about the LA riots that California was originally Mexico's. That is, they stole it first.


Putin is a metaphor for this world: cynical, virtueless, grasping, homicidal, self-absorbed ambition. He and people like him will destroy the house to evict the squatters. But in Israel, the squatter is similarly armed. And if Israel can't keep what they were given, they will respond Sampson-like and reduce the Middle East to a smoldering, lifeless radioactive trinitite.


"If everyone lights just one little candle," also starts a zillion small fires. Not seeing the realities here and ignoring the risks is childish. And, on a global scale, life-threatening.


Even extension-level.

Catch Up on the Iranian/US Problem

On this day:

763 BC
Assyrians record a solar eclipse that is later used to fix the chronology of Mesopotamian history.
1215
King John of England puts his seal to the Magna Carta.
1389
Battle of Kosovo: The Ottoman Empire defeats Serbs and Bosnians.
1667
The first human blood transfusion is administered by Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys.
1752
Benjamin Franklin proves that lightning is electricity (traditional date, the exact date is unknown).
1775
American Revolutionary War: George Washington is appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental Army.
1785
Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, co-pilot of the first-ever manned flight (1783), and his companion, Pierre Romain, become the first-ever casualties of an air crash when their hot air balloon explodes during their attempt to cross the English Channel.
1896
The deadliest tsunami in Japan’s history kills more than 22,000 people.
1919
John Alcock and Arthur Brown complete the first nonstop transatlantic flight when they reach Clifden, County Galway, Ireland.
1985
Rembrandt’s painting Danaë is attacked by a man (later judged insane) who throws sulfuric acid on the canvas and cuts it twice with a knife.
1996
The Provisional Irish Republican Army explodes a large bomb in the middle of Manchester, England.
2002
Near-Earth asteroid 2002 MN misses the Earth by 75000 mi, about one-third of the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

***

What used to be envy has been chewed upon by unoccupied academic minds and has become a philosophy

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A new study published in the journal Current Biology recently found that octopuses can learn how to use mirrors to locate food hidden from view in an impressive feat of spatial thinking never before observed in invertebrates.

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Carolina Hurricanes captain Jordan Staal was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy for most valuable player in the Stanley Cup playoffs, becoming the oldest player to win it at age 37.

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A "Memorandum of Understanding." A "Framework." Huh?

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Catch Up on the Iranian/US Problem

It is difficult to get any informative news from the US that is not ludicrously laden with righteous bias. Here are some opinions from the BBC, which may have no more value than US news. But the beliefs are surprising and, if untrue, just more international nonsense highlighting the universal mendacity of the makers of war and opinion. But if true...

1. Israel does not want the Middle East fighting to stop, and its attacks on Lebanon are intentionally provocative and disruptive.

2. The U.S. is the country that is constantly changing the rules and discussion, not Iran.  

3. The objective of the current discussions is to open the Straits and create a nonbelligerent environment for further discussions regarding the nuclear ambitions of Iran. If agreed to, the Straits will open, and the negotiating conditions will return to the way they were before the US attacked. Nothing more. So the objective of the talks is to create the pre-attack conditions.

These ideas are certainly contrary to what is being said in the US.

Assault on the Liberty

 

On this day:

793
Vikings raid the abbey at Lindisfarne in Northumbria, commonly accepted as the beginning of the Scandinavian invasion of England.
1794
Robespierre inaugurates the French Revolution’s new state religion, the Cult of the Supreme Being, with large, organized festivals all across France.
1967
Six-Day War: The USS Liberty "incident" occurs, killing 34 and wounding 171
1972
Vietnam War: Associated Press photographer Nick Ut takes his Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of a naked 9-year-old Phan Thị Kim Phúc running down a road after being burned by napalm.

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Agroterrorism is a subdivision of bioweapons. Aside from its anti-human savagery, it is a metaphor for the power of the individual, like drones, a dark side of the Enlightenment's legacy, which emphasizes the tension between freedom and virtue.

The thoughtful well-poisoner expresses himself.

***

Improvements in aggregate tax competitiveness are positively and significantly associated with real GDP per capita growth, and this association is robust to a wide range of controls. (From a paper with a deep dive into the obvious.)

***
 

If a nation is unable to define itself, what is it?

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More than 20,000 people are currently working on AGI — artificial general intelligence — while fewer than 200 are focused specifically on AI safety.

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Ceasefire episodes broke out in the Middle East.

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How did Platner get picked for this job? Who did that? Does he really represent the Dems? Even if his deficits are ignored, can anyone be enthusiastic about him? Or has American politics become some weird parallel universe dominated by a black hole of power distribution benefiting a sliver of avaricious iconoclasts?

***

Assault on the Liberty

Every so often, the political animal shows its stripes. And national ambition will always trump friendship. Something like this story always gives a little context, although this is more than an insight into America's friendships, it is an insight into its leadership.

Most of this is from St. Clair's summary of "Assault on the Liberty," a first-hand account by James Ennes Jr. whose book of the event is a hair-raising story of betrayal by America's presumed friends and its own leadership. On this day in history, June 8, 1967.

In early June of 1967, at the onset of the Six-Day War, the Pentagon sent the USS Liberty from Spain into international waters off the coast of Gaza to monitor the progress of Israel’s attack on the Arab states. The Liberty was a lightly armed surveillance ship.

Only hours after the Liberty arrived, it was spotted by the Israeli military. The IDF sent out reconnaissance planes to identify the ship. They made eight trips over three hours. The Liberty flew a large US flag and was easily recognizable as an American vessel.

An easily identified, lightly armed American surveillance ship in international waters.

Soon, more planes came. These were Israeli Mirage III fighters. As off-duty officers sunbathed on the deck, the fighters opened fire on the defenseless ship with rockets and machine guns.

A few minutes later, a second wave of planes streaked overhead, French-built Mystere jets, which pelted the ship with gunfire and napalm bomblets, coating the deck with the flaming jelly. By now, the Liberty was on fire, and dozens were wounded and killed, excluding several of the ship’s top officers.

The Liberty’s radio team tried to issue a distress call, but discovered the frequencies had been jammed by the Israeli planes with what one communications specialist called “a buzzsaw sound.” Finally, an open channel was found, and the Liberty got out a message to the USS America, the Sixth Fleet’s large aircraft carrier, that it was under attack
Two F-4s left the carrier to come to the Liberty’s aid. Apparently, the jets were armed only with nuclear weapons. When word reached the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara became irate and ordered the jets to return. “Tell the Sixth Fleet to get those aircraft back immediately,” he barked. The planes turned around. And the attack on the Liberty continued.

After the Israeli fighter jets had emptied their arsenal of rockets, three Israeli attack boats approached the Liberty. Two torpedoes were launched at the crippled ship, one tore a 40-foot wide hole in the hull, flooding the lower compartments, and killing more than a dozen American sailors.

As the Liberty listed in the choppy seas, its deck aflame, crew members dropped life rafts into the water and prepared to scuttle the ship. Given the number of wounded, this was going to be a dangerous operation. But it soon proved impossible, as the Israeli attack boats strafed the rafts with machine gunfire. 

Strafed the life rafts.

Nobody was going to get out alive that way. 

After more than two hours of unremitting assault, the Israelis finally halted their attack. One of the torpedo boats approached the Liberty. An officer asked in English over a bullhorn: “Do you need any help?”
The wounded commander of the Liberty, Lt. William McGonagle, instructed the quartermaster to respond emphatically: “Fuck you.”
The Israeli boat turned and left.

A Soviet destroyer responded before the US Navy, even though a US submarine, on a covert mission, was apparently in the area and had monitored the attack. The Soviet ship reached the Liberty six hours before the USS Davis. The captain of the Soviet ship offered his aid, but the Liberty’s conning officer refused.

The Russians offered help first.

Finally, 16 hours after the attack, two US destroyers reached the Liberty. By that time, 34 US sailors were dead and 174 were injured, many seriously. As the wounded were being evacuated, an officer with the Office of Naval Intelligence instructed the men not to talk about their ordeal with the press.

The following morning, Israel launched a surprise invasion of Syria, breaching the new cease-fire agreement and seizing control of the Golan Heights.

Within three weeks, the Navy put out a 700-page report, exonerating the Israelis, claiming the attack had been accidental and that the Israelis had pulled back as soon as they realized their mistake. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara suggested the whole affair should be forgotten. “These errors do occur,” McNamara concluded.

The Children of Israel are never alone. But sometimes it's hard to see why.

Drones, People, and the Miniaturization of Violence

On this day:

1453
Fall of Constantinople: Ottoman armies under Sultan Mehmed II Fatih capture Constantinople after a 53-day siege, ending the Byzantine Empire. Although the date of May 29, 1453, is that of the Julian Calendar, the event is commemorated in Istanbul on this day of the present Gregorian calendar.
1660
English Restoration: Charles II is restored to the throne of Great Britain.
1780
American Revolutionary War: At the Battle of Waxhaws, Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton massacres Colonel Abraham Buford’s Continentals, allegedly after the Continentals' surrender. 113 Americans are killed.
1903
May coup d'etat: Alexander Obrenovich, King of Serbia, and Queen Draga, are assassinated in Belgrade by the Black Hand (Crna Ruka) organization.
1919
Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity is tested (later confirmed) by Arthur Eddington’s observation of a total solar eclipse in Principe and by Andrew Crommelin in Sobral, Ceará, Brazil.
1953
Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay become the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest, on Tenzing Norgay’s (adopted) 39th birthday.

***

The Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, has said the alliance is “ready to defend every inch” of its territory after a Russian drone hit an apartment building in Romania, a member state, during an overnight attack on neighbouring Ukraine.


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Robinhood launched agentic trading and an agentic credit card today, allowing AI agents to trade equities and make credit card purchases on customers' behalf.

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Russia has passed a law authorizing its central bank and other financial institutions to repel drone attacks with their own defense systems, as the country struggles to defend against Ukrainian strikes.

The law, passed by Russia’s lower house of parliament on Tuesday, will allow staff at Russia’s central bank to be armed and to operate the systems used to down unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV, or drone) attacks without the involvement of special forces.

***

In Rome, actors could not vote, hold office, or be trusted to give an oath in legal proceedings.

***

A Blue Origin rocket exploded on the launch tower in a fiery blast during a test of its engines on Thursday night, the company said.


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Boston’s Mayor Michelle Wu is fund­ing a new pro­gram that gives “queer and trans” migrants up to $500 for mas­sages, yoga classes, and 'cre­at­ive heal­ing.'


***

Drones, People, and the Miniaturization of Violence

The Uyghurs are a Turkic and predominantly Muslim ethnic minority spread across Central Asia but concentrated in China's far-western Xinjiang region. It is they who are always referenced as examples of Chinese oppression, in the U.S., called phonetically, wiː.ɡʊr.

Through circumstance and demographics, they have become the largest contingent of foreign fighters in Syria. They were responsible for the fall of Aleppo, indirectly responsible for the overthrow of Assad, and were gratefully integrated into the new Syrian military.

They have demonstrated serious military ability and hostility.

These are the same Uyghurs that the Chinese authorities have been suppressing at home, in the Xinjiang region, for years. Starting in 2017, authorities began sending hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs to "reeducation camps," where they were taught Mandarin and forced to memorize Chinese leader Xi Jinping's speeches, according to human rights organizations. Others were placed under house arrest, harassed, or subjected to extensive surveillance, or had their passports confiscated, according to prior NPR reporting and the findings of the United Nations and rights groups. In 2021, the U.S. labeled China's campaign a "genocide" aimed at eradicating Uyghur identity. (With the West's current infatuation with 'identity,' one would think they would care more.) Beijing slammed that decision and has defended the detention camps as a necessary facet of a wide-ranging de-radicalization effort in the region.

There is speculation that China is very unhappy that these people, an increasingly well-organized and disruptive group, have been welcomed in the Middle East. They also appear to hold a grudge. The belief is that China sees them as a potential destabilizing force within its own borders.

So it is in this new world where size doesn't matter, and no one is safe.

Memorial Day

 

“I want Death to find me planting my cabbages, neither worrying about it nor the unfinished gardening.”—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)

***

Scientists do not ridicule or hound those who disagree. Nor do they hold high-spirited rallies. These are particularly political and/or religious qualities. Anyone with a scientific mind would recognize such presumptuous intolerance as specifically unscientific.

***

For those of you who are low on anxiety, by 2030, according to a recent report, half of India's population — 700 million people — will lack adequate drinking water.
“If the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water,” warns Ismail Serageldin, a former executive for the World Bank.

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China launched the Shenzhou 23 spacecraft Sunday night, carrying three astronauts bound for its space station, including one set to stay in space for a year.

The spacecraft blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China. The much-anticipated launch comes as China prepares for its first crewed lunar landing by 2030.

***

Vegas Golden Knights came back from a three-goal deficit to defeat the Colorado Avalanche 5-3 in Game 3 of the Western Conference Final at T-Mobile Arena on Sunday.

The Golden Knights lead 3-0 in the best-of-7 series.

***

Memorial Day

War is man's most evil pursuit. Every single human motive morphs into something horrible and destructive; the most noble of man's qualities become misapplied. Somehow, the diffident grasshopper becomes the predatory locust. 

Yet within the world of men, some things must be done. Individuals must live and act within the admitted abomination that is war. 

In the Second War, the Germans and the Japanese were asked to fulfill their destiny and complete history. This involved destroying or subjugating everyone who was not them. The Allies' children were asked to fight for their lives. Their behavior in this gargantuan struggle should always stand as a testament to man's higher elements in the midst of man's lowest. Yet questions are always raised by some.

When Obama was in Japan and visiting Hiroshima, new discussion of the WWII atomic bombing began. An article in the LA Times asserted the bombing was cruel, gratuitous, and not a factor in the ending of the war. "Most Americans have been taught that using atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 was justified because the bombings ended the war in the Pacific, thereby averting a costly U.S. invasion of Japan. This erroneous contention finds its way into high school history texts still today," the article states. 

More, the cause of the Japanese surrender was actually the Russian invasion of Manchuria. 

The article explains: "It was not the atomic evisceration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended the Pacific war. Instead, it was the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and other Japanese colonies that began at midnight on Aug. 8, 1945 — between the two bombings." 

That is to say, after the Americans dropped the bomb, the Russians moved in; probably a coincidence. Indeed, the sentiment at least seems to be in line with current thinking; the majority of Americans in polls think the bombs should not have been dropped.

Of course, people will differ in their assessment of history. Some assessments will be more accurate--sometimes more honest--than others. And many military men did not want to use the weapons. But of all the wars in history, World War Two is the least ambiguous to analyze.

The History website has this summary:
Early on the morning of July 16, 1945, the Manhattan Project held its first successful test of an atomic device–a plutonium bomb–at the Trinity test site at Alamogordo, New Mexico.

By the time of the Trinity test, the Allied powers had already defeated Germany in Europe. Japan, however, vowed to fight to the bitter end in the Pacific, despite clear indications (as early as 1944) that they had little chance of winning. In fact, between mid-April 1945 (when President Harry Truman took office) and mid-July, Japanese forces inflicted Allied casualties totaling nearly half those suffered in three full years of war in the Pacific, proving that Japan had become even more deadly when faced with defeat. In late July, Japan’s militarist government rejected the Allied demand for surrender put forth in the Potsdam Declaration, which threatened the Japanese with “prompt and utter destruction” if they refused. (Italics added)

General Douglas MacArthur and other top military commanders favored continuing the conventional bombing of Japan already in effect and following up with a massive invasion, codenamed “Operation Downfall.” They advised Truman that such an invasion would result in U.S. casualties of up to 1 million. In order to avoid such a high casualty rate, Truman decided, over the moral reservations of Secretary of War Henry Stimson, General Dwight Eisenhower, and a number of the Manhattan Project scientists, to use the atomic bomb in the hopes of bringing the war to a quick end. Proponents of the A-bomb–such as James Byrnes, Truman’s secretary of state–believed that its devastating power would not only end the war, but also put the U.S. in a dominant position to determine the course of the postwar world. (italics added)

On August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the devastating power of “a new and most cruel bomb.”

So the Emperor cites the bomb as a factor. And the alternative was an island-by-island attack on Japan that the experts accepted would cost one million--MILLION--American lives.

The LA Times article suggests the U.S. ignored a Japanese peace approach to the U.S., requesting only that the Emperor survive. But that is not entirely true. Their proposal was to keep the Emperor and the current governing militaristic system intact, something the Allies thought nonnegotiable. Another element overlooked in the LA Times article is the continuity of events. Over 200,000 people were killed in the atomic attacks. Isolated, that is horrific. One wonders how the essayist saw those deaths in the context of the war itself. Or do they spare themselves the difficulty? China suffered between 15 and 17 million--MILLION--deaths directly related to combat--many described as "crimes against humanity." The Russians lost 25 to 27 million. MILLION. And there was Nanjing, an episode so savage that it drove its main historian, Iris Chang, crazy. And Unit 731.  

Certainly, we need kinder, gentler wars.

Nonetheless, the LA Times article was quite critical of American behavior and motives in one of the world's most easily evaluated conflicts, the American democracy vs. Nazis and Japanese imperialists. Applying morality to war is tricky and can be practiced only by our best and brightest. Fortunately, a look at the byline has the reassuring information that the LA Times article was authored by none other than Oliver Stone, the esteemed and award-winning movie director. He is certainly qualified. As a member of the exclusive self-absorbed entertainment cult and the reliable creator of the movie JFK, one of the cult's more astonishing productions of incoherent historical analysis, we can certainly rely upon his opinion.

And I'm sure he would have been willing to talk to the widows, the orphans, and the parents of those million Americans, explaining that those soldiers had to die assaulting the Japanese islands because we were true to our inner nature and did not drop the cruel bombs that could have ended the war. That was not who we are.

Democracizing Power

Vegas Golden Knights defeated the Colorado Avalanche 4-2 in Game 1 of the Western Conference Final at Ball Arena on Wednesday.

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A fossil discovery in Ethiopia shows that early Homo and a previously unknown Australopithecus species lived together around 2.6 to 2.8 million years ago.

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Vegas Golden Knights defeated the Colorado Avalanche 4-2 in Game 1 of the Western Conference Final at Ball Arena on Wednesday.

***

Democracizing Power

In the short years of the Ukrainian War, there have been remarkable advances in accurate, cheap military murder and disruptions.  We are now blessed with affordable leverage in warfare, as we have seen in the advances of terrorism in the streets.

Here is one such change, reported by Perera.

"A Chinese AI startup called MizarVision is publishing high-resolution satellite imagery of every US military base, every carrier strike group, every F-22 deployment, every THAAD battery, and every Patriot missile position in the Middle East. Labelled. Geolocated. AI-annotated. Updated in near-realtime. Shared by PLA-linked accounts and Chinese state media to an audience of billions.

The Pentagon has downplayed the releases as “open-source.” This framing misses the point entirely. The value of MizarVision’s output is not the raw satellite image. Any government can purchase commercial satellite passes. The value is the AI processing layer that converts terabytes of imagery into labelled, searchable, cross-referenced intelligence products at a speed and scale that previously required the resources of a national intelligence agency. MizarVision is democratising military surveillance and publishing the output on social media, where Iran’s 31 autonomous IRGC provincial commands can access it from a mobile phone.

The next war will not begin with a missile launch. It will begin with an AI model labelling every target from orbit."

This is a rise in the influence of the individual that no democracy ever dreamed of. Power can increasingly be opposed affordably by the narrow and precise. 

Governments will soon argue that any deviation from common dogma carries risk.

Vigilangione, Continued

 

Joyce taught English at Berlitz schools in Pula and Trieste, and is supposed to have known up to thirteen different languages.

***


Vigilangione, Continued

Order is restrictive; when does it become oppressive? It certainly is convenient. If half the people literate in English wrote from right to left, we would have no fewer literate people, but they would not be comprehensible to one another. If half of Americans decided it was right to drive on the left side of the road, car travel would stop, the car would become useless, and its convenience would be replaced. What would happen to chess if activists tried to broaden its appeal by straightening out and simplifying the knight's move?

Mormon polygamy was seen in the nineteenth century as a threat to the U.S. moral structure and was fought, legislated against, and eventually bullied away with very little legal justification. In Europe, polygamy has become a significant socio-economic problem for the growing nurturing state as dependents logrithmically outstrip underpinning arithmetical working support.

The values of the West are increasingly impractical in the modern, expanding world. In America, the values of equality and freedom have become a threat to the stability of the culture. The Americans suffer domestic disruption by people who oppose the very laws that protect their outrage, even to the point of organized street opposition to legitimate law enforcement agencies. The British now have hate-speech laws that rival any communist country. Sitting in judgment of your fellow citizens has become very disruptive, even if you're right. And Americans are telling themselves that by taking products without paying—a behavior they call "microlooting' known to the rest of us as "stealing"—they are, in fact, engaging in a quiet political protest.

Is this a trend percolating up or seeping down? What did the Americans do in Venezuela? They declared the country an outlaw — as they did with the Barbary states — and preemptively invaded it. The danger is that, in a larger view, Venezuela deserved it. American behavior in Iran is more illustrative. Iran is certainly a danger to the civilized world, and a nuclear weapon in its hands, according to its own philosophy and statements, would result in economic disruption and nuclear destruction to friends and enemies alike. That said, there is no obvious legal or moral reason Western nations should be able to control Iran's internal affairs simply because they fear the implications of its national ambitions. Nonetheless, the Americans and Israel preemptively destroyed most of Iran's military and scientific infrastructure.

Again, this was all in a good cause. The world's nonreaction even implied its tacit approval. The Americans want only stability and stable commerce. But is their action consistent with their values? Does the threat justify their extraordinary means? And, worse, what would have happened had the Americans not resorted to those extraordinary means?

So Mangioni, whoever shot Kirk, whoever attacked the Press Dinner, the gerrymanderer, Trump himself--all place their personal motives aside and, like the sin eater of ancient times, sacrifice themselves for what each knows is the greater good.

Diego Garcia

On this day:

1603
James VI of Scotland also becomes James I of England.
1603
Tokugawa Ieyasu is granted the title of shogun from Emperor Go-Yozei, and establishes the Tokugawa Shogunate in Edo, Japan.
1765
American Revolutionary War: The Kingdom of Great Britain passes the Quartering Act that requires the Thirteen Colonies to house British troops.
1832
In Hiram, Ohio a group of men beat, tar and feather Mormon leader Joseph Smith, Jr.
1882
Robert Koch announces the discovery of mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis.
1980
Archbishop Óscar Romero is killed while celebrating Mass in San Salvador.
1989
Exxon Valdez oil spill: In Prince William Sound in Alaska, the Exxon Valdez spills 240000 oilbbl of petroleum after running aground.
1998
Jonesboro massacre: Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden, aged 11 and 13 respectively, fire upon teachers and students at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas; five people are killed and ten are wounded.
2000
S&P 500 index reaches an intraday high of 1,552.87, a peak that, due to the collapse of the dot-com bubble, it will not reach again for another seven-and-a-half years.

***

"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle."--Thomas Jefferson

***

Prompt:

Can a parent limit a kid’s screen time simply by tweaking some of the settings on the smartphone? Are these services available?

GPT Thinking answer:

Yes. On both iPhone and Android, a parent can limit a kid’s screen time largely through built-in settings (no extra app required), and there are also optional third-party services.

***

Rainer Zitelmann, a German historian and sociologist, received a letter from Berlin police informing him he was under investigation for violating Germany's criminal code by using "symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organizations."

The post in question, which Zitelmann reshared, showed a side-by-side image of Adolf Hitler and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Hitler's speech bubble read, "Give me Czechoslovakia and I won't attack anyone else!" and Putin's read, "Give me Ukraine, and I won't attack anyone else!" It was not the quote that put Zitelmann in trouble with the law, but Hitler's swastika armband.

Under Section 86a of the German criminal code, it is illegal to distribute Nazi symbols and related expressions.

***


In the Jonesboro massacre, Mitchell and Golden killed four students and one teacher and wounded nine students and one teacher. All 10 injured survived. The two shooters were convicted of murder, and both were sentenced under the juvenile statutes of Arkansas. 

They were both released back among the unsuspecting public at the age of 21.

***

Diego Garcia

Before it became a pseudonym for college kids in bars all over America, Diego Garcia was, and is, part of the Chagos Archipelago, a chain of more than 60 islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean off the tip of India. The islands have been under British control since 1814, when they were ceded by France. The United States has described the Diego Garcia base as “an all but indispensable platform” for security operations in the Middle East, South Asia, and East Africa.

The four-decade conflict between the U.S. and Iran has centered around the Americans insisting that Iran is building a nuclear warfare program and Iran's insistence that they are not. The Americans fear that Iran will eventually attack its political and religious enemies with nukes, destroy the Middle East, destroy the world's petroleum industry, and make much of the Mediterranean uninhabitable for several millennia.

As proof of its good intentions, Iran has previously put a self-imposed limit on its ballistic missile program, limiting their range to 1,240 miles (2,000 kilometers).

Iran has, however, developed a space program that, theoretically, prepares it for long-range missile flight. If they have not developed a nuclear weapon, Iran would be the only nation with a space program that hasn't.

U.S. officials long have alleged Iran’s space program could allow it to build intercontinental ballistic missiles, and this month, Iran fired several missiles at Diego Garcia. At about 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) from Iran. Diego Garcia is well outside Iran's promised range of 2000Km. Other cities within that radius include Bonn, Paris, London, Rome, Moscow, and New Delhi.

Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow at the defense think tank the Royal United Services Institute, said that the attempt to hit Diego Garcia may have involved the improvised use of Iran's Simorgh space launch rocket, "which could offer greater range as a ballistic missile," though at the cost of reduced accuracy.

Mendacity, aggression, and mistrust with Extinction-Level-Weapons on an international level, controlled by suicidal lunatics and morons. 

So, how are reasonable men of good will supposed to live and raise their children in that kind of world? And what kind of responsibilities do the grownups in the room have?

  

The Democracy of Violence

On this day:

1708
James Francis Edward Stuart lands at the Firth of Forth.
1775
American Revolutionary War: Patrick Henry delivers his speech – “Give me Liberty, or give me Death!” – at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia.
1801
Tsar Paul I of Russia is struck with a sword, then strangled, and finally trampled to death in his bedroom at St. Michael’s Castle.
1806
After traveling through the Louisiana Purchase and reaching the Pacific Ocean, explorers Lewis and Clark and their “Corps of Discovery” begin their arduous journey home.
1956
Pakistan becomes the first Islamic republic in the world. (Republic Day in Pakistan)
1980
Archbishop Óscar Romero of El Salvador gives his famous speech appealing to men of the El Salvadoran armed forces to stop killing the Salvadorans.
1994
Aeroflot Flight 593 crashes in Siberia when the pilot’s fifteen-year-old son accidentally disengages the autopilot, killing all 75 people on board.

***

Several ambulances belonging to a Jewish volunteer rescue organization were set on fire outside a synagogue in a neighborhood home to London’s largest Jewish community early on Monday

***

New York City’s LaGuardia Airport was closed Monday after a passenger plane collided with an emergency vehicle on the runway, killing two pilots

***

The head of the International Energy Agency said on Monday that at least 40 energy assets across nine countries in the Middle East have been “severely or very severely” damaged since the Iran war began, raising fears of prolonged supply disruptions.

***

Gold prices resumed their slide on Monday after suffering the worst week in 15 years before paring some losses in late morning trade.
Silver, platinum, and palladium also plunged as investors retreated from precious metals amid renewed inflation fears.

***

Chicago’s tipped workers could have their hourly pay frozen at 76% of the city’s minimum wage, thanks to a City Council vote Wednesday that throws an economic bone to restaurants, but sets the stage for Mayor Brandon Johnson’s third veto.

***

James Francis Edward Stuart, the son of James 11, deposed by William in the Glorious Revolution, was the center of the Jacobite movement to restore him and Catholicism to the English throne. He made five attempts to invade the British Isles. His forces were defeated at the Boyne in Ireland, then finally and decisively at Culloden.

***

The Democracy of Violence

"God made all men, but Colt made them equal"--Samuel Colt

What started as a GPS-guided, piston-engine drone with basic inertial navigation has transformed into a platform integrating Starlink satellite connectivity, Nvidia Jetson Orin AI processors, 16-element CRPA anti-jamming antennas, and real-time video streaming. The discovery in February 2026 of a reconnaissance Geran-2 carrying a Raspberry Pi 5 microcomputer and a Windows 11 mini-PC made in China illustrates the improvised but surprisingly effective nature of Russia’s drone upgrade program — combining commercial off-the-shelf tech with military-grade components to build capability faster than Western sanctions can stop it.

A vast, unsanctionable buildout of technical destruction and death.

A new tech, cheap, with an aggressive advancement system, portable, low maintenance, satellite connected, often anonymous--this is a democratization of a murderous technology for all. Imagine this tech available to the rich drug cartels. Or a small international player with local interests. (Iran)

The raw scale of Shahed drone attacks in Ukraine in 2026 is enormous. Nearly 19,000 attack drones in a single winter campaign — from October 2025 through early March 2026 — represents an aerial bombardment campaign that has lasted, by CSIS’s reckoning, longer than the infamous London Blitz of World War II. The 810-drone single-night attack on September 6–7, 2025 set a new benchmark in drone warfare, and the cadence of attacks exceeding 500 drones per sortie across late August 2025 makes clear this was not a one-off. These figures reveal a deliberate Russian strategic posture: launch enough drones, often enough, to grind down Ukrainian air defenses, energy infrastructure, and civilian morale simultaneously.

A single Iranian drone can cost as little as $35,000 to produce, while intercepting it can cost anywhere from $500,000 to $4 million.

Ukrainian interceptor drones produced in 2025: 100,000 units

The overall interception rate is ~90%.

There are an astonishing number of sites devoted to this technology. Here are some stats in this diffuse information environment:

---Russia has scaled domestic production of the Geran/Shahed series to over 5,500 units per month at the Alabuga Special Economic Zone 

---Rather than a few thousand long-range drones, its total Shahed fleet is estimated at between 80,000 and 100,000 across all variants.

---Iran reportedly produces around 100 drones per month. This translates to approximately 3-4 drones per day.

---Shahed-136 loitering munitions cost just $20,000-$50,000 each. 

---Iran’s production facilities can manufacture up to 6,000 airframes annually,

---Iran outsourced Mohajer-6 production to Venezuela while fulfilling requests for advanced systems featuring 1,000 km range and GPS jamming capabilities. 

---The IRGC supplies Hezbollah and Syrian proxies despite Israeli strikes damaging manufacturing infrastructure.

---Tehran’s drone program generates revenue through strategic exports, with Russia becoming its primary customer since 2022.

---Modern drones now feature embedded GPS for stable positioning, Return to Home functionality, and Follow Me mode that enhances autonomous operations. These unmanned aerial vehicles enable surveillance and engagement operations while allowing Iran to reduce risk to military personnel during targeted strikes. 

---Advanced systems now integrate thermal imaging capabilities that enhance search and detection operations in challenging environments and low-visibility conditions.   

---The incorporation of 360-degree camera technology in some reconnaissance variants enables immersive real-time intelligence gathering for ground control stations. This rapid modernization timeline transformed dated assets into multi-domain strike platforms supporting sustained autonomous operations.

These changes have occurred in just a few years. They could end up in the basements of every neighborhood throughout the world--not just the West. They could put long-range destruction--or strategically focused attacks--in the hands of every nut case or hotblood or adventurer on the planet as we accelerate our return to tribalism.

The push into western Texas by the European farmers and explorers was stopped dead by the most sophisticated light cavalry in the world: the Comanche. When the Colt revolver was introduced into the stalled western expansion, the Comanche was gone.

 

 

 

Iran Musing

On this day:

241 BC
First Punic War: Battle of the Aegates Islands – The Romans sink the Carthaginian fleet, bringing the First Punic War to an end.
1629
Charles I of England dissolves the Parliament, beginning the eleven-year period known as the Personal Rule.
1762
French Huguenot Jean Calas, who had been wrongly convicted of killing his son, dies after being tortured by authorities; the event inspired Voltaire to begin a campaign for religious tolerance and legal reform.
1804
Louisiana Purchase: In St. Louis, Missouri, a formal ceremony is conducted to transfer ownership of the Louisiana Territory from France to the United States.
1814
Napoleon I of France is defeated at the Battle of Laon in France.
1831
The French Foreign Legion is established by King Louis-Philippe to support his war in Algeria.
1848
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is ratified by the United States Senate, ending the Mexican-American War.
1876
Alexander Graham Bell makes the first successful telephone call by saying “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.”
1891
Almon Strowger, an undertaker in Topeka, Kansas, patents the Strowger switch, a device which led to the automation of telephone circuit switching.
1906
The Courrières mine disaster, Europe’s worst ever, kills 1099 miners in Northern France.
1922
Mahatma Gandhi is arrested in India, tried for sedition, and sentenced to six years in prison, only to be released after nearly two years for an appendicitis operation.
1945
The U.S. Army Air Force firebombs Tokyo, and the resulting firestorm kills more than 100,000 people, mostly civilians.
1952
Fulgencio Batista leads a successful coup in Cuba and appoints himself as the “provisional president”.
1959
Tibetan uprising: Fearing an abduction attempt by China, 300,000 Tibetans surround the Dalai Lama’s palace to prevent his removal
1980
Madeira School headmistress Jean Harris shoots and kills Scarsdale diet doctor Herman Tarnower
2006
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter arrives at Mars.

***“

"It does not sound crazy to a Silicon Valley executive that maybe they could be in charge instead of you,” AI alignment researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky warned politicians. “If they actually could control superintelligence, they’d discard you like used toilet paper.”
Great. Politicians as an abused group.

***

On 13–14 October 1761, one of the Calas sons, Marc-Antoine, was found dead on the ground floor of the family's home. Rumors had it that Jean Calas had killed his son because he intended to convert to Catholicism. When interrogated, the family initially claimed that Marc-Antoine had been killed by a murderer. Then they declared that they had found Marc-Antoine dead, hanged. Because suicide was considered a heinous crime against oneself, and the dead bodies of suicides were defiled, they had arranged for their son's suicide to look like a murder. The law thought the boy had been killed because of anti-Catholic fanaticism.trial/torture description is quite grim.
French philosopher Voltaire, after initial suspicions of anti-Catholic fanaticism were dispelled by his investigations, began a campaign to get Calas's sentence overturned, claiming that Marc-Antoine had committed suicide because of gambling debts and not being able to finish his university studies due to his denomination.

Voltaire's efforts were successful, and King Louis XV received the family and had the sentence annulled in 1764.

***

Two famous brothers who worked as real estate brokers have been convicted of drugging and raping dozens of women over the course of decades.
Tal Alexander, 39, and Oren Alexander, 38, rose to prominence from their sales of luxury real-estate properties in New York and Miami. Along with a third brother Alon, 38, a jury found all three guilty of sex trafficking by a jury in New York.

***

Is European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen overreaching?

The diplomats who spoke to POLITICO argued that von der Leyen’s flurry of tweets and conversations with Gulf leaders did not formally represent EU foreign policy positions. Critics also voiced skepticism about what von der Leyen, who has no military means at her disposal and has no mandate to shape EU-wide foreign policy positions, could be offering Gulf states under missile and drone attack from Iran.

“What exactly is she promising when she says we will support them?” asked Loiseau. “Who is ‘we’? For now, the support is the Charles de Gaulle [French aircraft carrier], Rafale jets in Abu Dhabi, and defense agreements with some countries.”

“What we’re seeing is role-play with nothing behind it,” said Loiseau, who belongs to French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party. (Politico)

Ambition fills any vacuum.

***

Iran Musing

What was the impact of the B-2 bombing? Wasn't it supposed to make another attack unnecessary? What was the revelation that made this attack a next and necessary step? Have you ever heard of the "conventional-weapons-shield-of-nuclear-weapons thesis" the Americans used to justify it?

An unsubstantiated theory, i.e., out of whole cloth: Israel, for some reason (and their intel is very good), had decided to attack Iran again, and the Americans thought the appearance and power of the two together created a better public relations picture and gave them the appearance of control. America followed them in. (Warning: Made up.)

Iran had their own strange war moment. When it was clear they were getting clobbered, Iran began to attack everybody, old friends and foes alike.

There is a theory, the Sampson Theory, stating that Israel has no minor fight. Every struggle threatens their very existence. Any vulnerability was a step toward their eventual destruction. Every fight was a fight to the death. There would never be a compromise; there would never be a standing-eight count. They would never sue for peace.

And if it was clear that events had gone against them, that the tide was running in their enemy's favor, they, like Sampson, would pull the whole building down around their ears. They would put their 53 or so nukes in the air against every living target they could reach and turn the Middle East--and its oil--into a lifeless, useless husk of a place.

Perhaps that is what Iran planned too.

War on Innocents

On this day:

218 BC
Second Punic War: Battle of the Trebia – Hannibal’s Carthaginian forces defeat those of the Roman Republic.

1271
Kublai Khan renames his empire “Yuan” (ࠠ3; yuán), officially marking the start of the Yuan Dynasty of Mongolia and China
1878

John Kehoe, the last of the Molly Maguires is executed in Pennsylvania.
hina.
1912
The Piltdown Man, later discovered to be a hoax, is announced by Charles Dawson.
1916
World War I: The Battle of Verdun ends when German forces under Chief of Staff Erich Von Falkenhayn are defeated by the French, and suffer 337,000 casualties.

***

I’ve never seen an orgy of hypocrisy quite as brazen as how the exact same media corporations and journalists who spent years demanding more Big Tech censorship turned *overnight* into free speech champions: because now it’s their friends being silenced rather than their enemies.--Greenwald

***

NYC now has nearly 50,000 empty apartment units, absent from the market either because their operating costs exceed legal rents or because they require considerable renovations.

***

Kant’s middle way, tortuously explained in his magnum opus, the “Critique of Pure Reason” (1781), is that what he calls things-in-themselves—the reality of things independent of human experience—are ultimately unknowable but that does not leave us with mere subjective opinions. Experience is only made possible because it is framed by our perceptions in ways that all human beings share. So it is not a matter of opinion whether Newton’s laws are true or whether vaccines work, even though we remain ignorant of the essential nature of the universe that underpins our experiences of these facts.--wsj

***

War on Innocents

It's getting hard to be sure about the nature of murder. Our modern world now gives murder a 'context'. But some murders just look like murders.

The word 'terrorist' seems inadequate. Its origin was in the French Revolution, referring to the Jacobins and their coercion to revolutionary conformity. The British picked it up when referring to Russian violence aimed at discouraging the ruling aristocracy in Russia in the mid-1800s.

Now it implies a violent act that is part of a larger, unspoken whole, some notion, like kidnapping, where innocents are threatened for some other purpose.

There comes a moment when every child believes he is 'the best boy', when the performers on The View believe their applause signs, and the bigger picture becomes very small. Every act becomes a tiny thread in a larger tapestry, a single piece of a larger puzzle. So a father can send his daughter ticking into a crowded plaza and rushes to sacrifice his Isaac under an Australian beach umbrella.

Can one be self-indulgent with another's life? Do the collateral victims hear the war cry? Can they decipher it? Is the obtuse warning lost in translation amidst the screaming and weeping? Or is it simply disregarded, like a madman's plea for some coherence?

And will the innocents wreak a cosmic vengeance in this, the octave of Nanjing? 

The Rise and Fall of the Individual

On this day:

1497
Vasco da Gama rounds the Cape of Good Hope, the point where Bartolomeu Dias had previously turned back to Portugal.
1598
Seven Year War: Battle of Noryang Point – The final battle of the Seven Year War is fought between the China and the Korean Allied Forces and Japanese navies, resulting in a decisive Allied Forces victory.
1653
English Interregnum: The Protectorate – Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland.
1689
Convention Parliament: The Declaration of Right is embodied in the Bill of Rights.
1773
American Revolution: Boston Tea Party – Members of the Sons of Liberty disguised as Mohawks dump crates of tea into Boston harbor as a protest against the Tea Act.
1920
The Haiyuan earthquake, magnitude 8.5, rocks the Gansu province in China, killing an estimated 200,000.
1944
World War II: The Battle of the Bulge begins with the surprise offensive of three German armies through the Ardennes forest.
1950
U.S. President Harry S. Truman declares a state of emergency, after Chinese troops enter the fight with communist North Korea in the Korean War.
1986
Revolt in Kazakhstan against Communist Party of Kazakhstan, known as Zheltoksan, which becomes the first sign of ethnic strife during Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s tenure
1997
An episode of Pokémon, “Dennō Senshi Porygon”, aired in Japan induces seizures in 685 Japanese children.

***

Europe, in the year 2025, is what NPR would look like if it ran a continent.
It is time for a rant about Europe. It has, in fact, been time for quite a while, but there is always a moment at which the straw meets the camel, and, for me, that moment came when the European Union announced that it intended to extort another hundred million dollars or so out of the wildly productive American tech sector, and then the bureaucrats and politicos who staff that dreadful institution took to the very service they were in the midst of extorting to offer up generalized attacks on the United States. --Cooke from NR

***

In almost every sector of the economy, educational requirements are becoming less strenuous, according to Indeed, a jobs website. America’s professional and business services industry employs more people without a university education than it did 15 years ago, even though there are fewer such people around.

***

Top universities are financial titans, generating investment profits that mirror those of Wall Street firms. They are health care companies; the University of Pennsylvania gets half its revenue from the hospitals it runs. They commercialize the inventions that spring from their labs. They sell four-year subscriptions for rent and classes to their students and lifelong memberships in an elite club to their donors (posthumous, if the checks are big enough).

By revenue, UPenn is bigger than BNY Mellon; Columbia is as big as Coinbase. But these universities operate on profit margins thinner than those of a grocery store. In short, they make a lot of money but spend almost all of it.

***

The Rise and Fall of the Individual

Sometimes the 'larger picture' can be very small.

One murder after another forced its way onto the news cycle this weekend, each displacing another murder story. Bondi Beach. Brown University. Reiner. Two had skin-crawling Old Testament elements of father and son, Abraham and Isaac. Can you imagine recruiting your father or son for the suicidal murder of strangers?

The Bondi murders have a particular modern odor: the growing importance and insignificance of the individual. It is said to be 'terrorism', violence with a political motive geared to influence political decisions. Some certainly do. Some cause inconvenience, then repression, torture, and death, as anti-German terrorists did in the Second World War. But the impact of terrorism, where a single individual or a small group creates disproportionate harm to strangers and non-combatants, its so-called 'asymmetry', is simply a rogue act by a rogue animal. Its damage hits weak, powerless individuals with little or no influence over the political or social flow of things. It apparently hopes to influence change by awakening the better instincts of its enemy.

Yet they are mere spasms of simple human bloodlust.

As time passes, the 'asymmetric' power of the individual will increase, resulting in greater and more meaningless asymmetric victimhood among an increasing number of bewildered victims.

News flash: four terrorists have been arrested in California, building bombs in their war against capitalism, but were unsure where to send them.

Here War Is Simple

Here war is simple like a monument:
A telephone is speaking to a man;
Flags on a map assert that troops were sent;
A boy brings milk in bowls. There is a plan
For living men in terror of their lives,
Who thirst at nine who were to thirst at noon,
And can be lost and are, and miss their wives,
And, unlike an idea, can die too soon.

But ideas can be true although men die,
And we can watch a thousand faces
Made active by one lie:
And maps can really point to places
Where life is evil now:
Nanking. Dachau.

---W. H. Auden

Nanjing, 1937, and Dorian Gray

On this day:

1545
Council of Trent begins.
1577
Sir Francis Drake sets out from Plymouth, England, on his round-the-world voyage.
1643
English Civil War: The Battle of Alton takes place in Hampshire.
1862
American Civil War: At the Battle of Fredericksburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee defeats the Union Major General Ambrose E. Burnside.
1937
Nanjing Massacre. Japanese troops begin carrying out several weeks of raping and killing of civilians and suspected Chinese resistance after the fall of Nanjing.
1939
World War II: Battle of the River Plate – Captain Hans Langsdorff of the German Deutschland class cruiser (pocket battleship) Admiral Graf Spee engages with Royal Navy cruisers HMS Exeter, HMS Ajax and HMNZS Achilles.
1972
Apollo program: Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt begin the third and final Extra-vehicular activity (EVA) or “Moonwalk” of Apollo 17. To date they are the last humans to set foot on the Moon.
2003
Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is captured near his hometown of Tikrit

***

Most of the propositions I’m interested in have been kidnapped and dressed up by academic philosophy, but they are in fact the kind of proposition that would occur to any intelligent person in his bath.--Stoppard

***

According to a new investigation by Rachel Aviv in The New Yorker, many of the vivid details in Sacks's beloved case studies were fabrications — embellishments designed to make better stories. This is written with disapproval, but should it be?

***

“One day, we might even have a ministry run entirely by AI,” Prime Minister Edi Rama said at a July press conference while discussing digitalization. “That way, there would be no nepotism or conflicts of interest.”

***


Nanjing, 1937, and Dorian Gray

Japan's organized expansion into the Asin mainland began in Manchuria in 1932, but cohesive Chinese resistance did not begin until 1937. (War--the Second Sino-Japanese War, conventionally dated 1937-1945--was not declared until 1941.)

On December 13, 1937, 50,000 Japanese troops entered the city of Nanjing, the beautiful, ancient, and one-time capital of China, on the Yangtze River. Many of the city residents had fled, but refugees from the recent capitulation of Shanghai poured north into the city with thousands of defeated soldiers who had de facto surrendered and were left abandoned by their command. The Japanese had received the order to "kill all the captives, " and so began one of the modern world's strangest and most vicious events. 

In the next four days--which trailed into the next weeks--the city was put to the sword. The death rate was conservatively estimated at 270,000 and likely closer to 400,000. Rapes numbered about 80,000. The attack resembled a feeding frenzy. Torture and mutilation were the norm. Killing and maiming "games" and "competitions" developed. The local Nazi representative was so horrified, he set up an attempt at a 'safety zone.'

The average Japanese soldier had become a demon.

What they did is hard to imagine. The historian Iris Chang was said to be driven mad by her studies of it. No one was spared the innovative tortures and deaths. The horrors of war pile up--Auschwitz et al at 6 million, Stalin in Russia 40 million, 400,000 Bengali women raped by Pakistanis in 1971, Timor Lenk killed 100,000 prisoners at Delhi. The Romans killed 150,000 at Carthage. Hitler's air attacks killed 61,000 British. The Netherlands lost 242,000 civilians. Dresden's casualties numbered about 60,000. Air raids on Tokyo killed between 80,000 and 120,000. Hiroshima deaths were 140,000, Nagasaki, 70,000. But nobody killed with the concentrated ferocity of the Japanese at Nanjing.

Strangely, Nanjing and similar events are not talked about much. Churchill doesn't mention Nanjing in his history of WW11. Perhaps it's because of its common thread.

Us.

 

Pearl Harbor

On this day:

1941
World War II: Attack on Pearl Harbor – The Imperial Japanese Navy attacks the United States Pacific Fleet and its defending Army Air Forces and Marine air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, causing a declaration of war upon Japan by the United States. Japan also invades Malaya, Thailand, Hong Kong and the Philippines at the same time (December 8 in Asia).
1965
Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras simultaneously revoke mutual excommunications that had been in place since 1054.
1972
Apollo 17, the last Apollo moon mission, is launched. The crew takes the photograph known as The Blue Marble as they leave the Earth.
1987
Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771 crashes near Paso Robles, California, killing all 43 on board, after a disgruntled passenger shoots his ex-boss traveling on the flight, then shoots both pilots and himself.

***

The European conservative harbors “fondness for authority” and a “lack of understanding of economic forces.” Although not blind to the potential—nay, likely—problems that attend innovation and change, the American conservative trusts in the largely unmanaged, undirected choices of individuals and institutions of civil society and the market to produce virtue, prosperity, and flourishing better than any state or statesman ever could. American history vindicates this confidence.--Hayek

***

One of the mysteries of political life is that the opposition to Trump's questionable assumptions of power is not led by small-government conservatives but by the powerful central government Left and the totalitarian socialists.

***

The bill that passed the Senate with Vance as the tie-breaking vote will add nearly $4 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.
Yet Vance says, immigration is “the thing that will bankrupt this country more than any other policy.”

***

By as late as 1940, the federal and state governments’ investment in research amounted to only 23 percent of U.S. R&D and 10 percent of U.S. basic science, and the nature of that investment had little or no impact on rates of American economic or health growth: Defense R&D has almost no economic benefit, while the agricultural R&D was surplus to requirement.
As current criticism of Trump's research cuts shows, perhaps as a consequence of its confidence in wealth elsewhere, this country believes money equals progress.

***

Pearl Harbor

2,403 Americans were killed in the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941. The Americans then entered World War 11. One could argue that it pushed a hesitant America onto the world stage.

After Pearl Harbor, the country was terrified, especially along the West Coast. The proximity of the attack was exaggerated by the large presence of the American Japanese in California. Since there was no evidence of any Japanese-American involvement in the attack, the argument was made that the Japanese were lying low, waiting to pounce. 

Critical Race Theory Syndrome: the absence of something is proof it existed.  

Executive Order 9066, ordering the forcible removal of Americans of Japanese descent from the Pacific coast, was signed by the liberal President Roosevelt in 1942. 120,000 American citizens--Americans--were moved out of their homes into squalid camps and ancient Indian reservations.

This is another rule in politics that should caution anyone expecting the government to do the right thing: "When the going gets tough, everyone loses their principles."

Or, there are no countries, only governments.