Tim Worstall

From Britain With Love.

A lovely little piece on the GI brides, those British women who married American servicemen during and just after WWII. One great aunt was one, marrying a GI who went ashore on D-Day. From Dundrum to St Petersburg, Florida, via a number of US military places like West Point and so on. Quite a journey.

The Baby Gap

Slightly odd statement here, commenting upon the IPPR report into the demographics of the nation:

Women have not turned against becoming mothers and, if they could have the number of children they actually wanted, more than 90,000 extra babies a year would be born, according to calculations by the respected think-tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research.

Historically, desired fertility has always been above actual. Every survey done, in every country at every time has shown exactly the same thing. That women, on average, would like to have had more children than they actually do. Some obvious reasons are that some women (or couples perhaps) are infertile and would like not to be.  Some mothers would like to have another baby but aren’t so sure about another child (odd but you know what I mean). There are also the resource constraints on raising a larger family which is what this report concentrates on.

But the idea that they’ve spotted something new in this "women want more babies than they are having" is simply wrong. Well known already.

As to their larger point, that women lose money by having children. Well, yes, no one ever said that winning Darwin’s competition was costless.

That 70’s Feeling.

Lessee. Tired Labour Government. Check. Economy going to pot. Check. Rip roaring deficits. Check. NHS screwed. Again. Check. Leo Sayer at Number One. Check.

If I see a bright orange Austin Marina then I’ll know that someone has invented a time machine.

What History Should be Taught?

Something of a ding dong in The Guardian. Monbiot:

These are just two examples of at least 20 such atrocities overseen and organised by the British government or British colonial settlers; they include, for example, the Tasmanian genocide, the use of collective punishment in Malaya, the bombing of villages in Oman, the dirty war in North Yemen, the evacuation of Diego Garcia. Some of them might trigger a vague, brainstem memory in a few thousand readers, but most people would have no idea what I'm talking about. Max Hastings, on the opposite page, laments our "relative lack of interest" in Stalin and Mao's crimes. But at least we are aware that they happened.

Max Hastings:

It should not be difficult to broaden the agenda for pupils who want to specialise in modern tyranny. They might, for instance, undertake comparative studies of Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot, the 20th century's great mass murderers.

Stalin and Mao command less interest than Hitler because no pictures exist of their crimes comparable with movie images of the Holocaust. In an age dominated by visual images, many find it hard to acknowledge any reality unless they see it on screen. There may be a second reason for this relative lack of interest. More than a few academics harbour a visceral reluctance to acknowledge that what was done in the name of communism should be judged by the same standard as the deeds of fascism.

Here’s a radical thought. Why not actually teach what happened? In the round? Yes, parts of the story of the Empire, as Georges tells us, were indeed foul (and I’m aware of all of the stories he uses although have slightly diferent interpretations of some of them). As were most of the stories of both communism and fascism. When people are educated like that (as I pretty much assume all of you darling readers are, aware of all of these things) then perhaps they’d be able to spot what is wrong with this phrase:

(Compare this to Mike Davis's central finding, that "there was no increase in India's per capita income from 1757 to 1947",....

Students of economic history will know that that is the normal state of matters. Per capita income has been, over most of the globe for most of history, static. It’s really only since the Industrial Revolution that this has not been true everywhere. But then acknowledgement of that would destroy one of the Moonbat’s basic beliefs, that that is exactly where we went wrong.

John Tierney: That First Thanksgiving.

John Tierney makes the point about what the Americas were like in the 1600s. The Native Indian populations were suffering horribly from the introduction of various European diseases a century earlier. Smallpox for one (landed with a slave from Cuba in 1502 apparenty) and others just as deadly to a population with no resistance (quite probably measles, mumps and TB).

I do like this though:

The Indians on Cape Cod,.... were appalled by their unhealthy, scraggly and dirty visitors.

Appalled perhaps but that’s a fairly common reaction to the arrival of a random group of Englishmen.

Tag john tierney

Depending on when and where you went to grade school, you've probably heard one of these versions of the first Thanksgiving:

1. After a kindly Indian named Squanto taught the Pilgrims to grow corn, the Pilgrims invited the Indians to a meal to celebrate their friendship and mutual desire to live in harmony.

2. The Pilgrims held a feast to thank God, the real hero of Thanksgiving, who had earlier arranged for Squanto to be kidnapped, brought to Europe, taught Christianity and then miraculously returned just in time to help the Pilgrims.

3. The Indians, vicious barbarians awed by the Europeans' technology, sought an alliance with the Pilgrims to get access to their steel tools and enjoy the protection of their guns.

4. The Native Americans, a peaceable people who practiced sustainable agriculture and lived as one with nature, innocently befriended the Pilgrims without realizing these imperialists would destroy their lands and wage genocidal wars.

The problem with all of these versions, even the last one about the saintly Native American proto-environmentalists, is that they don't do justice to the Pilgrims' guests. One way or another, the Indians come off as primitive patsies embracing the powerful invaders.

These stories all suffer from a warped view of Indians as naifs that afflicted the first settlers and persisted for centuries among historians. It's the fallacy dubbed ''Holmberg's Mistake'' by Charles Mann in his new book, ''1491,'' an intriguing revisionist history.

Holmberg's Mistake is named after an anthropologist in the 1940's who concluded that the Bolivian Amazon had long been a primeval wilderness inhabited by a few Stone Age tribes. But as later researchers found, that landscape had been transformed by a large, prosperous society that dug canals, raised earthworks and cleared forests to plant crops and build cities.

The Indians who greeted European colonists may have seemed like barbarians -- or, in later mythology, like Noble Savages -- but that was only because their societies had been decimated by epidemics brought by earlier Europeans. Before then, the Americas may well have been more populous than Europe, and in some ways more advanced.

The Indians on Cape Cod, who had more productive farm fields and ate more calories per capita than the typical person in Europe, were appalled by their unhealthy, scraggly and dirty visitors. The English guns were frightening at first, but the Indians quickly saw that the weapons were inaccurate and could be defeated by bows and arrows.

The Northeastern Indians did covet some of the European goods, like knives and beads, especially since they could get them by exchanging the cheap furs they used as blankets. As Mann writes, ''It was like happening upon a dingy kiosk that would swap fancy electronic goods for customers' used socks -- almost anyone would be willing to overlook the shopkeeper's peculiarities.''

But that didn't mean inviting these foreigners to stick around. Tisquantum (the full name of Squanto) came from the Wampanoag confederation, which had long traded with the Europeans while forcibly preventing them from settling on Cape Cod. Their leader, Massasoit, welcomed the Pilgrims only because so many Wampanoag Indians had died from European diseases that they were in danger of being conquered by other Indians.

This shrewd politician probably sought the alliance not so much for the Pilgrims' guns, Mann writes, but because his enemies would be reluctant to attack a group of whites for fear that it would complicate their own relationships with white traders. And his emissary, Tisquantum, far from a simple, kindly Indian, had his own plan for using the Pilgrims to become leader himself. Shortly after that first Thanksgiving, he tried unsuccessfully to trick the Pilgrims into attacking Massasoit.

''Tisquantum was to the Pilgrims what Ahmad Chalabi was to the Americans in Iraq,'' Mann said. ''At a time when the Pilgrims were really clueless, he introduced them to his society and provided valuable information, but he definitely had his own agenda.'' Some Pilgrims remained clueless, attributing their survival to God and their guns, but others were more savvy.

''The Pilgrims figured out within a year they were dealing with a complex, fractured society they had to understand in order to survive abroad,'' Mann said. Some of their descendants in Washington aren't such quick studies.

Historically PC.

Gary Younge today:

'If there is no struggle, there is no progress," said the African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

Does political correctness really reach back into history? Douglass would have (and did) proudly described himself as Negro.

This also got me:

Even as the French politicians talked tough, the state was suing for peace with the offer of greater social justice. The government unrolled a package of measures that would give career guidance and work placements to all unemployed people under 25 in some of the poorest suburbs; there would be tax breaks for companies who set up on sink estates; a €1,000 (£675) lump sum for jobless people who returned to work as well as €150 a month for a year; 5,000 extra teachers and educational assistants; 10,000 scholarships to encourage academic achievers to stay at school; and 10 boarding schools for those who want to leave their estates to study.

Look at what he describes as "social justice". A few more handouts from the central State. No ideathat it might actually be the constrictions imposed by that central State that lead to the alienation and social exclusion. What’s needed a little more is markets for they are colour blind.

Here’s a Surprise!

On the laws for successsion to the Japanese throne:

Even more controversially, the prince suggested male members of the royal family could once again take concubines to ensure a supply of sons.

"I'm all for it but this might be a little difficult considering social climate in and outside the country," he wrote.

Stunning news really. Prince Tomohito, 59, the emperor's cousin and fifth in line to the throne,is in favour of middle aged men in line to the throne taking concubines. Who’d a’ thunk it?

Then and Now.

From a report on prostitution in WWII.

In Piccadilly Circus one encountered the "lower type, quite indiscriminate", and in Glasshouse Street "similar to Piccadilly - perhaps a slightly better class". Old Compton Street in Soho gloried in "the lowest type of all drabs".

Not a lot’s changed then.

Guy Fawkes

As we all know Guy Fawkes had something of the right idea, we all see stories and have days where we wish for the destruction of the ruling mafiosi of the country. As a TV program has worked out he was, umm, a little heavy handed in his application of the gunpowder:

The civil engineering firm Arup concluded that the blast would have propelled the timber floor upwards so fast that everyone in the chamber would have been killed.

Anyone who did manage to survive would have been finished off by the subsequent fireball, flying timber fragments or the impact of falling back to the ground.

The Battle of Trafalgar: 200th Anniversary.

Yes, here it is at last, the day that all of us from Naval families have been waiting for for years. The 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar. As For Battle put it rather neatly:

The day when Horatio Nelson and the English Navy beat the snot out of the combined French and Spanish fleets off Cape Trafalgar.

Although perhaps we should note that it was the Royal Navy, not the English one.

The Monarchist is running a great series of letters from Nelson, Emma Hamilton and, quite wonderfully, the signals sent out during the run up to the battle which appear to be posting in real (although 200 years delayed) time.

Diamond Geezer has a guide and full photo set of Trafalgar Square where we Brits commemorated the event....including that new statue of Alison Lapper which is a great opportunity to remind you of Laban Tall’s comment on it:

Ms Lapper, who was born with shortened legs and no arms because of a congenital disorder, has travelled to London for the ceremony. "I’m very excited about it. This is history in the making," she said.

"Never before has someone with a disability - let alone someone with a disability who is naked and eight months pregnant - been put in such a public place and portrayed in such a positive way."

Tragically Ms Lapper appears to be not only disabled, but blind. Or ignorant. Or both.

It's easy to miss, I know. But Trafalgar Square is dominated by a 180-foot column.

With an 18-foot statue on the top.

Of a man missing an eye and half an arm.

Silent Running starts with this:

200 years ago a small man about the size of an average 11 year old midshipman who had one good eye, one arm and an ego the size of planet commanded a British fleet into battle and they kicked the crap out of a combined French and Spanish fleet off Cape Trafalgar.

And of course there are hundreds more blog entries to be found via Google and Technorati.

From the Wikipedia entry the famous signal, "Ëngland Expects That Every Man Will Do His Duty":

 The Times tells us how the celebrations will go in the UK:

As for Admiral Lord Nelson, he will be saluted in the Great Cabin on board his flagship tonight in the presence of the Queen, 200 years to the day after Trafalgar.

The grand dinner for 24 people, the most that can fit in the cabin will be a strictly naval affair, with no government ministers present. The Queen, who has the title of Lord High Admiral, approved the guest list.

There will be six admirals of the fleet, headed by the Duke of Edinburgh. Others include Sir Henry Leach, the former First Sea Lord who convinced Margaret Thatcher in 1982 that a Royal Navy task force could be dispatched to the Falkland Islands. Admiral Sir Alan West, the present First Sea Lord, will host the dinner.

It is seen as the greatest honour for the Royal Navy: the Queen has never dined in the Great Cabin on Trafalgar night.

There is also the tale of HMS Pickles and the arrival of Admiral Collingwood’s account of the battle:

The day after the battle Collingwood retired to his cabin on his flag ship The Euryalus, to pen the Trafalgar Dispatch. Collingwood’s own ship, The Royal Sovereign, had lost her masts in the engagement, and Collingwood’s heart, he said, was “rent” by the death of his friend, Admiral Nelson. But his dispatch was as fine a piece of journalism as exists: brief and to the point, but poignant and stirring. “The attack on them was irresistible, and it pleased the Almighty Disposer of all events to grant his majesty’s arms a complete and glorious victory.”

A severe storm delayed the news and it was not until Saturday October 26, five days after the battle, that Lieutenant John Lapenotiere, captain of the schooner Pickle, set off with the precious dispatch, as well as another describing the effects of the storm, and two general orders addressed to the fleet. Lapenotiere crowded sail, and reached Falmouth by November 4.

From the sea port, he set off by “post chaise and four” on a non-stop dash to London that can be precisely reconstructed from the lieutenant’s meticulous expenses claims. Thirty-seven hours later, after 21 changes of horse and the expenditure of 46 pounds, 19 shillings, and one penny, Lapenotiere finally arrived in London in the early hours.

The full version of that dispatch is being given away in replica with today’s Times and can be seen here.

There’ll be beacons lit across the country tonight, every man and boy (an, of course, woman in these more enlightened times) who has ever had anything at all to do with the Royal Navy will be puffed up with pride tonight, celebrating and remembering the greatest victory that they or their forbears ever achieved.

But isn’t this all a little over the top? Was it really such a battle? Playing "what if" is a wonderful game and the immediate effects of a French victory would have been a successful invasion of Britain. That would have meant no British Empire in the 19th century, nor the Pax Britannica, and there are plenty who would think that not a bad idea. It would also have meant no 1812 war with the US, nor the Peninsular Wars nor, perhaps, Napoleon’s march on Moscow.

It’s also true that it would have (at the very least) delayed the end of the slave trade, even slavery itself.

But to get an idea of quite how much this means to some, a small personal tale. My father (who at one point held one of Nelson’s old jobs, Commodore of Naples) has taken me aboard HMS Victory and reminded me that this is still a ship in service, still commissioned, Captains are still piped aboard, well, that’s done in many places, is it not? USS Constitution for example? A much smaller tale. Wandering through Bath (my home town) one day with him he asked if I knew a pub called The Crystal Palace and I assured him that I did (my knowing almost all of the pubs in town). So we went in and I asked why here, why this place?

"Oh, this is where Nelson recuperated after losing his arm. Important to come here and remember."

And so I do remember.

Technorati tag Trafalgar.

Update: And do read this account of the celebrations in Nelson’s home village. Very, very English. Even a reference to Ted Hughes in there.

Napoleonic Europe 1805

The Guardian has a little interactive thing on Trafalgar. Go to the second page. Spain and Portugal are listed as being French controlled in 1805. Now I know that the Spanish were in alliance with France at the time but I don’t think the Portuguese were. And the invasion of Spain and Portugal didn’t start until 1807 (at least according to Wikipedia).

So is it really true to say that Spain and Portugal were "French controlled"? Or is the Groan being a little free with its interpretation of history?

Matthew Yglesias on Why Jews are Different.

There’s a simple explanation for the (perceived or actual?) difference in intelligence between Ashkenazi Jews and other similar populations. Sorry, I can’t remember where I heard it but it does appeal to me. Matt Yglesias looks at things like educational levels and so on in the US but this I think, if this little theory is correct, is an effect not a cause.

Think back to the period 500 AD to 1500 AD. Standard practice in the Christian world was that the brightest, (those capable of reading and writing etc) would go into the Church. Which was (although with many lapses) celibate.

Amongst those we now identify as Ashkenazi Jews the situation was rather different. The brightest and best were indeed encouraged into religion, but as Rabbis. And the trainee Rabbi was seen as the greatest catch in that society as the marriage partner of either the bright or rich daughter. And most definitely encouraged to have many children.

The nett effect is that for 1,000 years (some 30-40 "grandfathers" as Terry Pratchett suggests we measure generations) the Jewish population of Europe were breeding for intelligence while the Christians were actually (although unaware of it of course) selecting against it in the next generation.

I’m not really sure what IQ measures (other than IQ of course, but what that is is a more complex matter) nor how genetics influence it. But that 1,000 year experiment would be an interesting starting point for explaining whatever perceived differences there are today.

Impale Him on His Blue Pencil!

A Royal Mail stamps launched to commemorate the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo


Naughty proof reader, naughty!

History Professors.

Just a thought here:

The most important question for our times is: are some humans more human than others? In practice, both abroad and at home, the British response has been a resounding "yes". Our civilising mission in the empire resulted in the violent deaths of millions of people. At home, we turned a blind eye to torture and blatant miscarriages of justice.

Not that I really accept her description but how does the assertion that we were bloodthirsty bastards at home and abroad show that we were discriminatory?

Martin Jacques on Colonialism.

Martin Jacques tells us al about how the end of colonialism was the most important thing in the 20th century. Hhhm, well, maybe, but look at this:

....it writes off several decades of postwar history when both these countries made serious economic advances, which helped to lay the basis for their more recent accelerated growth rates; this is certainly true of China, for example, between 1949 and 1978.

The Great Leap Forward, The Cultural Revolution, Maoism, mass starvation, economic idiocy and represssion. Yes, these were the things that he thinks laid the basis for future growth. Sorry, any analysis based on such fatuity simply isn’t worth the time to read it.

Gutting the Law.

Another piece of absurdity from this crowd of know-nothings.

Killers should serve longer in prison if their victims' relatives can persuade judges to increase their sentences, a government minister said yesterday.

Harriet Harman, the constitutional affairs minister, was proposing that relatives of murder or manslaughter victims should have the opportunity to make a verbal statement in court after conviction, but before sentence.

She revealed that relatives might face cross-examination on their statements by defence counsel if the facts were disputed.

In a consultation paper published yesterday, the Government avoided the question of what effect a relative's comments might have on the sentence passed in a manslaughter case, or the minimum period to be served by a murderer.

But asked directly whether the statement could or should affect the length of time an offender spent in prison, Miss Harman admitted: "It might do".

What is this? Adding the principles of Sharia law to the Common Law? So if the husband of the murdered woman says "Well, I forgive him, I was going to leave her anyway, saved me a lot in alimony, actually" then he gets off?

As Jarndyce wrote some months back:

Well, not quite. Because it seems that this remarkably efficient self-publicist speaks for me, or at least people like me. I have a right to a say in the sentence handed down, apparently, and maybe if NuLabour are re-elected that right will become law. My 'feelings' as a parent of the victim ought to be considered when the punishment is handed down by the court.

To which the only appropriate response is: complete bollocks. This isn't fucking Sharia law, or any other form of populist LCD 'justice'. We have a legal system based on sound principles which deals with this sort of thing. The only way to ensure an equitable outcome is for judges and juries to take a dispassionate view. Otherwise what you are left with isn't justice, but institutionalized and sentimentalized state vengeance. As with ID cards, detention without trial and double jeopardy, Labour seem unable or unwilling to grasp basic law. They might have jettisoned their own principles without a second thought, but they shouldn't be allowed to dump society's so thoughtlessly. It's up to us on May 5th.

Quite. And as Ms. Harriman says:

While admitting that she was "proposing a big change in the way courts work"

So why are you doing it? Pandering to the crowd? But you’re the Constitutional Affairs Minister! You’re supposed to protect things like the Majesty of the Law from interference from bone headed populists, not encourage them!

There are days when I think Guy Fawkes had the right idea.

American Gothic

Piece in the Telegraph about the house that inspired American Gothic. The Victorian houses and buildings of the American mid-west are simply rotting away, for two reasons. They’re expensive to maintain (and heat too, no doubt) as compared to a modern mobile home and, obviously, who the hell wants to live in rural Iowa anyway? Even a 5 bed house for $250 a month.

Not Quite Georges.

Monbiot is very good today on the subject of evolution and Intelligent Design. One tiny correction:

We lose far more than that. Darwinian evolution tells us that we are incipient compost: assemblages of complex molecules that - for no greater purpose than to secure sources of energy against competing claims - have developed the ability to speculate. After a few score years, the molecules disaggregate and return whence they came. Period.

Not quite. At that level of reductionism we are driven by something more than just securing sources of energy. By the struggle to replicate and create new assemblages which will go on to continue that struggle after we’ve lost it.

The Guardian and History.

Groan leader today celebrating the 70 th anniversary of the drinks can. They may well be right about the drinks can but they’re all over the place on the history of canning.

The Professor’s Odd View of History.

Slightly odd piece here in the NY Times. He’s worried that a volunteer military is too cut off from the rest of society, that there should be, perhaps via a lottery or some other form of compulsion, a duty to serve across the wider society.

The life of a robust democratic society should be strenuous; it should make demands on its citizens when they are asked to engage with issues of life and death. The "revolution in military affairs" has made obsolete the kind of huge army that fought World War II, but a universal duty to service - perhaps in the form of a lottery, or of compulsory national service with military duty as one option among several - would at least ensure that the civilian and military sectors do not become dangerously separate spheres. War is too important to be left either to the generals or the politicians. It must be the people's business.

Well, yes, I understand what he’s saying, see his point, although I don’t agree with it. What puzzles me is the historical background he uses to build the case.

Since the time of the ancient Greeks through the American Revolutionary War and well into the 20th century, the obligation to bear arms and the privileges of citizenship have been intimately linked.

Really? I mean, yes, I’ve heard about the Spartans but they were the exception were they not? He seems to be saying that citizen soldiers, militias, the requirement to serve, have been the norm, and that when there were professional (or volunteer) armies, things got bad. But the Italian City States did almost all their fighting with mercenaries. Conscription (after feudal times) only happened in the UK in WWI and II. He points:

It is, among other things, a standing invitation to the kind of military adventurism that the founders correctly feared was the greatest danger of standing armies - a danger made manifest in their day by the career of Napoleon Bonaparte, whom Jefferson described as having "transferred the destinies of the republic from the civil to the military arm."

But, but, Napoleon had conscription! All of his examples of terrible outcomes appear to be when there was a forced duty to serve, when the desires and rights of the individual were over ridden by the desires of the State. And his solution is that the desires and rights of the individual should be over ridden by the desires of the State!

I dunno, maybe I’ve missed something here but it does sound like a very odd proposition to me.

Churchill on Terrorism.

Piece in The Times today wondering what Churchill’s attitude to terrorism would be.

It is reasonable to ask what Churchill, a man so acutely aware of his own historical legacy, might have made of the worst terrorist attack on British soil.

What makes it slightly odd is that it doesn’t mention that we already know what Churchill did about terrorism, for we have the example of the Sidney Street Seige.

In essence, his reaction was surrender so we can hang you or burn to death.

Bob Herbert and History.

No, I don’t claim to be an expert on American political history but this does jar a little from Bob Herbert:

The Southern strategy meant much, much more than some members of the G.O.P. simply giving up on African-American votes. Put into play by Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon in the mid- to late 1960's, it fed like a starving beast on the resentment of whites who were scornful of blacks and furious about the demise of segregation and other civil rights advances. The idea was to snatch the white racist vote away from the Democratic Party, which had committed such unpardonable sins as enacting the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and enforcing desegregation statutes.

Umm, yes, the national democratic party was behind such things. As, indeed, I think large parts of the congressional republican party was. But from a rather dim memory, wasn’t it the southern democrats, the Byrds, Wallaces, Thurmonds, who were against it? Who was running the filibusters that delayed these changes?

Actually, it’s there in what he says:

The idea was to snatch the white racist vote away from the Democratic Party,

Yeah, that’s how I remember it, the racists in the south were all voting democrat. Naughty republicans for stealing the core vote of the party you support, eh Bob?

American History

A plan to preserver the site of one of the POW camps of the Revolutionary War. I have to admit I’m all for it, for, as is said:

"How can you turn your back on a piece of American history?"

Well, yes, quite, they don’t actually have very much of it, do they, the poor little lambs, so they ought to try and preserve what they do have.

Felt and Deep Throat.

Kevin Myers is both amusing and contrary is his discussion of the revelation that Felt was indeed Deep Throat.

So it was an FBI man after all, Mark Felt, then effective head of the Bureau, who as "Deep Throat" assisted the famous Washington Post investigation into the Watergate break-in in 1972. This revelation really puts the efforts of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein into perspective. After all, if a chief of the largest domestic intelligence agency in the free world decides to be your primary source, you'd have to be a pretty dopey journalist not to come up with the odd scoop or ten.

There is a certain amount of truth to this, of course.

Now, naturally, liberals applauded the role of Deep Throat because they despised Nixon, and indeed, there was much to despise. But would they have been so enthusiastic about the role of Deep Throat if he had been briefing against an equally corrupt and dishonest but liberal president such as Clinton?

Well, from memory, those who exposed Whitewater, the cattle futures trading, the White House travel office, MonicaGate, the various purported assualts and rape allegation (note purported and allegation please) have not been showered with the plaudits of the profession, given Pulitzers et al.

Furthermore, how right is it for a public servant to betray his office, his organisation and the government to which he has sworn an oath of allegiance, while continuing to draw a salary, as Felt did? For if such a powerful man so utterly disapproved of the Watergate cover-up, he could have resigned as a matter of principle and publicly denounced the President. This would have had the desired effect of exposing wrong-doing. But it would not, of course, have saved Felt's career or pension.

A very good question indeed. Why didn’t Felt do that?

The League of Nations.

Noted this comment at Democracy Arsenal:

the 0 th law of things the UN does well:

It continues to exist and is still a viable conduit of International, multlateral communication. As a contrary proof: consider world history after the demise of the League of Nations.

Hhhmm. Via Wikipedia:

At a meeting of the Assembly in 1946, the League dissolved itself and its services, mandates, and property were transferred to the UN.

Hhhmm. Demise of the League of Nations equals the beginning of the good times. Odd that, really.

Very Weird.

Peter Watson seems to be saying that we’ve invented and innovated nothing interesting in recent years, things changed so much more in the past. It’s a very weird idea to me, not just for the surface absurdity of it. He talks about Ehrich’s 1905 treatment for syphilis (one of the first successful treatments for a bacterial disease)  and completely disregards the anti-virals of the past  couple of decades, the very first treatments for viruses.

The real strangeness is that he’s obviously got 20/20 hindsight and yet fails to note that the things he is celebrating as examples of past innovation largely got lost in the noise of those times. It’s only decades, even centuries, later, that we can actually see what were the defining innovations of a time. So his entire premise seems to me to be weird...we’ll know what were the great inventions of our age around 2050. 

Aircraftman Shaw.

Nice piece about TE Lawrence today.

Late in the morning on May 13, 1935, a middle-aged motorcyclist swerved to avoid two cyclists in a leafy Dorset lane. He lost control, flew over his handlebars and hit the road headfirst. Six days later - 70 years ago today - he died, having never regained consciousness. The motorcyclist was T E Lawrence, the hero of the Arab Revolt, the causes and consequences of which have an ongoing significance today.

I bring it up simply to add a little factoid, during his time as Aircraftman Shaw (he joined the RAF under an assumed name) grandfather Worstall was, I believe, his commanding officer for a time.

The Aquatic Ape Theory.

Further evidence for the aquatic ape theory:

Early modern humans in East Africa initially survived on an inland diet based on big game but by 70,000 years ago, archaeological finds suggest their diet had changed to a coastal one consisting largely of shellfish.

However, climate change seems likely to have reduced the Red Sea's shellfish stocks, driving them to seek better fishing grounds.

Now I’m not a biologist by any means, but I’ve always been intruiged by the various bits and bobs of evidence that show how, at some point along the line, humans and seashores interacted. The pattern of hair on our bodies, the way new born babies can swim, these sorts of things. I certainly don’t claim that this news proves any of it,  just find it interesting, that’s all.

The international project shows - contrary to previous thinking - that early modern humans spread across the Red Sea from the Horn of Africa, along the tropical coast of the Indian Ocean towards the Pacific in just a few thousand years.

This also ties in with something Jared Diamond said in Guns Germs and Steel, that the Clovis people could have reached Chile/Patagonia only 1,000 years after crossing the Bering Strait (at that time a land bridge). It’s only a few miles a year of movement, nothing exceptional for hunter gatherers. It might also have implications for Kenneth Windschuttle’s (spelling?) work on Negritos as well. Be fun to see how the research all pans out.

Anyone who has further links to this sort of stuff, please do leave them in the comments.

Let’s Only Check Franco’s Victims, Eh?

Nice little piece of hypocrisy happening just over the border in Spain. Let’s go back to the Civil War and afterwards and look at pardoning those who were condemned to death. Might be a good idea, might not be, but of course, only those condemned and executed by the evil Fascists will be looked at again. Those shot by the Republicans (and all those variations of, including Stalin’s involvement in clearing out the anarchists etc) will  be ignored.

Spain's socialists have outraged the country's Right by starting a controversial process that could pardon tens of thousands condemned to death by military courts under Franco.

The government move to begin reversing sentences against Franco's opponents has angered sections of the military and conservatives afraid it could reopen wounds of the Spanish Civil War and destroy what is known as the "pact of silence" about the nation's past.

A committee of ministers will be set up to consider the fate of "those who found themselves submitted to criminal cases that clearly did not meet the minimum rules for a fair trial'', a senior government figure said.

The generalisimo, who seized power after staging the coup that sparked the 1936-39 Civil War, favoured a barbaric but very Spanish method of execution: strangulation by garrotte.

One of the state's priorities is to secure the pardon of Salvador Puig Antich, the last man sentenced to death by Franco in 1974. Puig Antich, a 25-year-old anarchist found guilty of murdering a policeman, was one of those sentenced to death by garrotting.

The Right is angered by the fact that victims of the "people's courts" run by Republican militias, which condemned thousands to death with equally spurious legitimacy, will not be subject to the same review.

A couple of minor points. The garrotte (at least when correctly used) did not strangle the condemned, but broke their neck, as in an efficient hanging. And I’m not sure about tens of thousands either. If those during the Civil War years are included, then perhaps so, but that just makes the case for examining Republican behaviour stronger. A list of Spanish executions since 1812 shows nothing like that number outside those years.

Update. Sorry, don’t know how that ad got in there, it’s not even on the original page. Hmm.

More Genghis Khan.

Genghis really does seem to be tweaking the news antennae today:

But does Genghis really deserve his conservative reputation? After all, he had pretty radical ideas about social reform. When he conquered a new tribe, it was his custom to liquidate the aristocracy and assimilate the lower orders: "providing opportunities for the many and not the few", as it were.

That liquidation of the aristocracy can be both explained and updated. What he was really doing was removing the extant power structure so that it would not serve as a resevoir of resentment to his new one. Of course, nowadays it is politicians not the aristocracy that hold power. So in this election season we could usefully remember his example. Kill all the politicians.

Genghis Khan

So the BBC has a new show coming out on Genghis. We will have to completely change our views of history, of course:

"Genghis Khan is right up there with the likes of Hitler and Attila the Hun as one of the bogeymen of history," said Ed Bazalgette, the programme's producer.

"We hear the phrase 'somewhere to the Right of Genghis Khan'. Everyone has heard the name yet few people know much about his story.

"It is one of the great untold stories of history and we wanted to get behind the myths. No one is suggesting that he was a benign individual but his history was written by those he defeated."

Now that this new and stunning fact has been revealed we know what to do. The next time the Beeb digs up some unsavoury character from the past, claims we have him all wrong and justifies the re-working with the phrase "As you know, history is written by the winners", we then get to shoot the scriptwriter.

Surely Not!

Well, the alternative interpretation – that he’s just pig-ignorant of history – isn’t very plausible, is it?

Mr S&M on Tony Blair.

Don’t Mention The War!

Quite.

Were the Caribs Cannibals?

Disney has a few protestors complaining about how the Carib Indians are being portrayed in the upcoming sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean. Now I don’t actually know whether they were cannibals or not but I have always been told that they were, eating their way through the Arawaks who had lived there before them.

It wouldn’t surprise me all that much if they had been...remember that before Columbus there were no horses, cattle, pigs (nor even chickens I think) in the Americas. Buffalo in N America, llamas and similar in South, but no other domesticated animals other than the dog (which was certainly a source of meat). The only other meat animal that is known to have made it to the islands was the cuy or guinea pig (Mr. Snuffles, do not take that all expenses paid trip to the islands.). Corn (maize to use Europeans) is protein light, beans being the major source in the S American diet. No, it really wouldn’t surprise me (and I emphasise that I have no evidence either way) if the Caribs were, in such a protein light environment, cannibals....I have no idea how much they fished, for example, which would be an alternative source.

Anyway, all that’s by the way of an intro to what I thought was the most fun part of the report about the upcoming movie:

Work on the film, which will see Johnny Depp reprise his role as a pirate along with a guest appearance by the Rolling Stone Keith Richards as his father,

Stick him in the for’castle with  a guitar and there’s  your soundtrack right there.

A L Kennedy.

It would appear that A L Kennedy is a little lacking in historical knowledge:

I would use the word presidency if George Junior had even once been genuinely elected by a majority of the American people, but dynasty seems more appropriate, suggesting, as it does, the passing on of hereditary rule from father to son.

I realise it was all of 49 months ago but where is  Slick Willie in this story?

Princess Diana.

Chasing Waterfalls has the good sense to link here....good sense not for the linking to me, of course, but because it means I am now aware of his place and the quality of his writing. You might like this on Princess Diana:

During my tenure at Angus Ogg, Princess Di smacked into a Parisian underpass and became Princess Di-ed. And there was great wailing and nashing of teeth among the servile regophiles that infest London. The day after Diana got mashed into pulp, this moonbat manager came to me with tears in his eyes and said, "xj, you're clever, explain it to me: you go all your life believing in God and then something like this happens. How is this possible?"

Just so we're clear: this wasn't some overpromoted kid. This was a mature man, a father of children, an executive of a large corporation. He had presumably heard about the genocides in Rwanda and Cambodia and Stalin's gulags and the whole two world wars thing, and probably at some point somebody had brought up the fact that there were these guys called the Nazis that had murdered, oh, six, seven million people in cold blood, and yet the only thing that had ever caused this moonbat to doubt his faith in a benevolent God was a car wreck involving a dumb, useless ditz whose only achievement in life was to marry a big-eared hippy who had the hots for another woman, cheat on him with, and give birth to a dork with a swastika fetish.

Diana? To coin a phrase, "Screw her".

Or perhaps this:

It turned out that Byeck suspected the woman living in the apartment above him of being a hooker, and had got her number somehow. Then he had decided that, rather than cut into his busy schedule of... whatever, he was going to get the newbie to do it.

He told me he wasn't surprised that the woman had turned out to be a hooker because only three types of people could afford to live in central London: foreign exchange traders (like him), libel lawyers, and prostitutes.

Y'know, if a young person were to come to me for career advice, I think I'd have to plump for prostitution, as I suspect it would be significantly less psychologically damaging than foreign exchange trading. (Of course, nobody with any morals what so ever would become an, excuse the expression, libel lawyer).

Turns out that the writer is looking for a new job or career....writing don’t pay much but he’s obviously way too good at it not to do it at least part time.

Prince Harry and the Swastika.

The Chair of the African American Studies Department at Yale explains Harry and his uniform, swastika and all, in the most compelling manner possible.

These explanations are insufficient. To leave interpretation of his conduct on that level would be to miss an opportunity to understand something fundamental about the cultural life of a post-colonial country that has never dealt with the consequences of its loss of empire.

Indeed, I too find that I have not wept enough for those days when we led the dusky heathen towards the benefits of Empire, and every time I consider this lack of mourning, find myself  dressing as an Obersturmbanfuhrer, on days when I fully understand the manner in which I have not come to terms with my inability to get a job as a District Commissioner, as Eva Braun.

Thomas, Lord Cochrane.

News today that the Catalan town of Roses is to honour Thomas, Lord Cochrane. Who I hear you ask?  While Nelson gets the glamour vote Cochrane was arguably the greater hero (except that he did not die gloriously at sea) and was the inspiration for both Hornblower and Aubrey in the O’Brien novels. Yes, that Russell Crowe character in Master and Commander.

Several of the key episodes  in the series of novels are taken directly from Cochrane’s life, the original capture of the Spanish frigate, the later Stock Exchange scandal. A brief of his life is here.
If you enjoyed either set of novels (Hornblower or Aubrey) or the other series set in the same timespan (Richard Bolitho is the main character), the Sharpe novels (which are quite obviously a land based version of the same) or the movie, Master and Commander, then I strongly recommend that you go here, to the Gutenberg Project. There you can download one of the most gung-ho, enjoyable autobiographies, that of Thomas Cochrane. I’ll admit it’s a few years since I read it but I think that at one point he served before the mast (ie as a seaman, not an officer), was flogged for some offense, and in the end, after commanding the Chilean, Brazilian and Greek navies, was Admiral of the Fleet. Quite a life and worth the reading.

Oh, and he was a redhead, which makes it all the better.

Why do Southpaws Exist?

Interesting little piece of research. We know that being left-handed is a signifier for a number of problems, low weights, heights, immune system problems, we also know it is genetically determined. So why does is exist? Must be some balancing advantage, right? Lefties, simply by being different, do better in fights, for righties face them more rarely. So, the more violent the society (over generations of course) the more we would expect to see leties....at least until the become so prevalent that righties are not confused by them and the advantage goes away. Looking at societies of varying levels of physical violence this is exactly what the researchers find.
Good, OK, science.
What it also brings to mind is Jared Diamond’s comment about hunter gatherer societies. They are not just egalitarian but violently so. All those hippie-dippie types who insist that there was some golden age, some Eden, when men hunted wisely, gathered the fruits and berries and lived lightly upon the land, they forget that it was an extremely violent culture. The leading cause of death for men was murder, as it is in those few such societies that still exist. Murder over access to women usually. Me, I rather prefer civilisation.

Some Help Needed.

Here’s a little thing that people might like to help with. I see that a new book has been published which has at the back the following:

Its final pages, along with God save the King (sic), Jerusalem and Rule Britannia, include the countries of the British Empire and the Imperial Territories in 1920.

Now, here’s where I need the help. Does anyone know of a list of all the territories that were ever part of the Empire? And I mean through all it’s incarnations from 1066 onwards. So that would include Normandy (the Queen is still, as you no doubt know, Duke of Normandy), Burgundy (I think), the Angevin Empire, the 13 states of the US, plus Oregon and Washington, Hawaii, various islands that went back and forth (Madagascar? Mauritius certainly, Minorca I think) plus all those places that were part of the 1920 list.....did the US take over German Micronesia after WWI or did we?
Anyone got a pointer to a complete list?

Winston Churchill Memorial.

I agree that old Winnie was an important man, did most things in his life, saved the nation and all, but, well, this new memorial in St Paul’s   

   

UK NEWS

Was he really a darts player? I can offer you nothing but sweat, blood, tears and one hunnerd and eighteee?

Aspirational Culture.

From the obit of Arthur Hailey:

Arthur Hailey was born on April 5 1920 at Luton, the son of George Hailey, a factory worker who earned £3 a week, and his wife Elsie, who had left school at the age of 10 to become a maid. It was she who insisted that young Arthur learn typing and shorthand, in the hope that he might land a job as a clerk, rather than end up labouring on an assembly line.
Young Arthur began writing early, producing poems, plays, short stories and "incredibly pompous" letters to the Luton News from his improvised study beneath the staircase in his family's terraced house.After his first success, a letter to the paper advocating Sunday opening of the local baths, Arthur's mother allowed him the use of the front parlour for his scribblings.

Leave aside the Potteresque study under the staircase and think about the aspiration. For a child to do indoor work, no heavy lifting, that was an aspiration back then, not a near certainty as it is now. We have all got so much damn richer that we forget what poverty really was, both in the physical sense and in that of aspirations.
Of course, if those 8 million leeches on the taxpayers teat were to actually do something useful then we might find that life was even better.

Where Do They Get These People: Mary-Anne Sieghart

Now that the Murdoch press is available to us expats again I find myelf asking where do they get their columnists from. I mean, for example, what depth of ignorance must you have, as Mary-Anne Sieghart displays today, to ask this question:

SO THE Bill to ban fox hunting has finally been passed. And one of the most bizarre aspects of its passage is that it ended up being opposed by both main party leaders.
Can anyone think of another piece of Government legislation that went through without the support of either the Labour or the Conservative leader? I can’t.

Just off the top of my head, a random plucking from the past, anything passed by the Governments of Gladstone?
Shocking as it may seem there was actually a time before the Labour Party. One hopes to live long enough to see the time when there one is no longer, of course.

Bad News for the Irish.

According to Georges Moonbat GWB is Oliver Cromwell:

Of course, the Puritans differed from Bush's people in that they worshipped production but not consumption. But this is just a different symptom of the same disease. Tawney characterises the late Puritans as people who believed that "the world exists not to be enjoyed, but to be conquered. Only its conqueror deserves the name of Christian."
There were some, such as the Levellers and the Diggers, who remained true to the original spirit of the Reformation, but they were violently suppressed. The pursuit of adulterers and sodomites provided an ideal distraction for the increasingly impoverished lower classes.
Ronan Bennett's excellent new novel, Havoc in its Third Year, about a Puritan revolution in the 1630s, has the force of a parable. An obsession with terrorists (in this case Irish and Jesuit), homosexuality and sexual licence, the vicious chastisement of moral deviance, the disparagement of public support for the poor: swap the black suits for grey ones, and the characters could have walked out of Bush's America.
So why has this ideology resurfaced in 2004? Because it has to. The enrichment of the elite and impoverishment of the lower classes requires a justifying ideology if it is to be sustained. In the US this ideology has to be a religious one. Bush's government is forced back to the doctrines of Puritanism as an historical necessity. If we are to understand what it's up to, we must look not to the 1930s, but to the 1630s.

I don't quite think so somehow but perhaps Drogheda and Wexford are off the list of places for the upcoming move.

Muslims Are the New Catholics?

Um, no, not really:

Britain's Muslim communities are increasingly seen as pariahs. Their reputation has begun to resemble that of Catholics in 17th-century England.

Note:

In the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot came new anti-Catholic legislation. Catholics were forbidden to appear at Court, despite the fact that the Queen, Anne of Denmark, had recently converted to Catholicism. They were also banned from coming within ten miles of the City of London, and had to remain within five miles of their homes, unless granted a special licence. They were excluded from many professions, including medicine and the law. All holders of public office were now required to take Communion annually according to the Anglican rite. And the penalties for secret Catholic baptisms were increased by an additional £100 fine (= £6,800 today).

An incident in 1630 gives an insight into the problems faced by Catholics when it came to burying their dead. Clandestine baptisms and weddings were relatively easy to arrange, but with funerals there was always the problem of what to do with the body. Any Catholic who died without being admitted or reconciled to the Church of England could be refused burial.

Charles I surrendered in the spring of 1646. He was executed in 1649, the monarchy being replaced with a republican Commonwealth.
During the following year Parliament repealed the act requiring compulsory attendance at Anglican services. This was intended to undermine the Church of England, rather than help the Catholics. The Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy were abandoned in favour of an Oath of Abjuration, even more offensive to Catholics.

In 1672 Charles issued a Declaration of Indulgence. This suspended 'all penal laws in matters ecclesiastical, against whatsoever sort of non-conformists, or, recusants ...' At long last it looked as if England had been granted something resembling religious liberty. However, in the following year Parliament countered the Declaration by passing the Test Act. This prevented the suspension of anti-Catholic laws and actually worsened the position of Catholics. Now all holders of public office had to take Communion according to the Anglican rite, swear the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, and formally deny the Catholic doctrine concerning the nature of Holy Communion.

In 1678 a second Test Act was passed. This removed Catholics from the House of Lords. They had been expelled from the Commons 115 years earlier. Parliament now became increasingly anti-Catholic.

Titus Oates, who died a Baptist, was later convicted of perjury. However, at the time of the allegations Parliament and the Protestant public were prepared to believe almost anything, and Catholics suffered badly as a result. More than a quarter of the Catholic peers were imprisoned for alleged treason. One was executed and another died in the Tower of London. About a sixth of the Catholic clergy were arrested. Seventeen were executed and twenty-three died in prison.

Fr Richard Prince was sent to Flanders to escape the persecution following the Oates Plot. He returned after only five months - too soon - and was arrested at Dover. Oxford born, he was in his late twenties and a member of the Catholic yeoman family of the Clifton Hampden district.
After his arrest he was put in Newgate prison, where the Central Criminal Court now stands. His cell was filthy and very narrow. Not surprisingly during five months in prison without medical attention he contracted jail fever. Having been condemned to death, he was allowed a visit on the eve of his execution from Fr Edward Petre. Fr Prince died in Fr Petre's arms and thus escaped the gallows.

In 1689 William of Orange and his wife Mary, daughter of James II and his Catholic convert wife Anne Hyde, were recognised by Parliament as joint monarchs. The penal laws against Catholics were harshly re-enforced and Catholic landowners were again badly hit.

1692 saw the imposition of double land tax on Catholics. That same year Maryland, established as a North American refuge for English Catholics, was transformed into an Anglican colony with anti-Catholic legislation.

And so the century ended. Having set out to establish a religious freedom in which Catholicism enjoyed favoured status, James II had lost the Crown and left a legacy of anti-Catholicism that took centuries to dispel. His Dutch son-in-law had given a solemn assurance that Catholics would be 'put out of fear of being persecuted on account of their religion'. Yet by the end of the seventeenth century their lot was, in many ways, worse than ever.
The days of martyrdom and glory were over and the expectation of the re-establishment of Catholicism as the national religion had gone. From now on all that Catholics could expect was financial ruin, exclusion from public life and deprivation of civil rights; a subtle form of internal exile.

I have a prize, consisting of a loud raspberry, for today's most ludicrous comparison and have no hesitation in awarding it to Shamit Saggar.

Pot, Kettle, Black.

There's a move afoot to change the Nov 7 holiday in Russia, commemorating the Bolshevik Revolution, to Nov 4. Well, whatever, but this comment was interesting:

The Communist Party leader, Gennady Zyuganov, told supporters at a rally near the Kremlin: "If the State Duma approves the decision to shift the holiday it will be an enormous injustice. No one has ever succeeded in changing our history."

Well, maybe never succeeded but certainly tried hard enough. Airbrushing of photographs was not, for example, unknown. When Beria fell and was executed he became an unperson, owners of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia being sent new pages with a long entry on the Bering Strait. They were instructed to cut out the pages with Beria's entry and insert the new ones. Now then Gennady, who was it who did that? Ah yes, the Communists wasn't it.
Pot, Kettle, Black methinks.

Lame Revisionist History

Trafalgar 'was a moral victory for the Spanish'

The Authentic Voice of England.

You really do want to read Tim's piece over at An Englishman's Castle. No, no excerpts, it's a piece that stands together as a whole. Just read.

Toynbee on Hunting.

Polly Toynbee manages to get most things right about the Hunting Bill today in the Guardian. It is an illiberal measure, class warfare, nothing to do with animal rights and the use of the Parliament Act is a shocking misuse of a possibly unconstitutional law. However, Polly being Polly she can't let a fact get in the way of good rhetoric:

Except they lost the day yesterday: hunting was banned.

Last time I looked at the way the UK was governed the constitutional authority was the "Sovereign in Parliament". That means that Commons, Lords and then the Monarch's signature are all required for something to become law. So we may be on the way to a banning of hunting, but to state that it is already banned is absurd. As, indeed, her complaints about the use of the Parliament Act show.

A Small History Lesson Needed Perhaps?

Stephen Green takes one of his commenters to task. Quite rightly so as he appears to be a bit of a dingbat. I do think that a little perusal of the history books might be worth Stephen's while:

Except, you know, for the Napoleonic Wars, which ended the ideology of the divine right of kings. Or the American Civil War, which ended the ideology of southern slavery and (eventually, and not yet quite completely) the ideology of racial inferiority. Or the Second World War, which ridded the world of two ideologies – that of Nazism and the notion that Japan's emperor was a god. Or the Cold War, which ridded the world of any competent form of Communism.
Or, going further back in time, the Islamic waves, which ridded the Middle East and North Africa of Christian thought. And Iran of Zoroastrianism. And Asia Minor of the Greek Orthodox Church. Or the Christian crusades in Spain, which eliminated Islam from Andalusia so thoroughly that nobody even calls the Iberian peninsula that anymore. Or the Northern Crusades, which cleared Lithuania and the Baltic region of paganism.

The basic point, that force can and does trump ideology is fair enough. It's just the examples used which I question.
1) Divine Right of Kings, well, in the English history books we tend to think that this was settled in the English Civil Wars with the final settlement coming in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 (what little part of the English Constitution that is actually written dates from then). The French Revolution only removed the French similar Divine Right for a few decades: Louis Phillipe was arguably as bad as Louis 16 and 17. The Tsars maintained it at least to 1905, if not 1917. So I think it would be difficult to use the Napoleonic Wars as the event which ended the ideology of the Divine Right of Kings,
2) The Second World War did indeed rid the world of Nazism yet if we take that foul ideology as a subset of Fascism (not unreasonable) we might note that Spain and Portugal remained fascist until 1975 and 1974 respectively, and the various Latim American offshoots such as Peronism, Pinochet in Chile, perhaps Rios Montt in Guatemala, Somoza in Nicaragua survived well into the 1980s, even 1990s in a case or two.
3) A very minor point that while the peninsula is no longer called Andalusia the largest and southern most Spanish region still is.
4) The notion that the Cold War ridded the world of any competent form of communism rather obscures the truth. For it assumes that there ever has been a competent form of communism, not a proposition I would want to defend nor one I would expect to see Mr Green advancing.
Well, that's me done being persniketty and trivial for the day. It being only 9 a.m. this leaves me at a loss with what to do with the rest of it.

Aeroplane Terrorism.

It's usually thought that terrorism against passenger aircraft was invented by various Palestinian supporting groups in the late 1960's/early 1970's with the culmination coming on 9/11. An interesting snippet from the Telegraph today shows that this is not quite true. In the obituary of Captain Ian Harvey we see the following:

Captain Ian Harvey, who has died aged 83, was awarded a George Medal for saving the lives of 27 passengers when he made a masterly landing after a bomb had exploded in the rear of his airliner.
Harvey was the pilot of a British European Airways (BEA) Vickers Viking airliner which took off from Northolt for a flight to Paris on April 13 1950. Over the English Channel, there was a loud explosion in the rear of the aircraft, which the flight crew initially thought had been caused by a lightning strike. On investigation, the second pilot, Frank Miller, found the stewardess seriously injured; large holes had been torn in the rear fuselage of the aircraft.

So it appears that it all started back in 1950. We don't know who planted the bomb:

The report of the official inquiry confirmed that a bomb had exploded in the lavatory, but no evidence of detonators or bomb fragments was found. The police investigation apparently failed to disclose either the motives for the attack or the person responsible. The material relating to the incident in the Public Records Office is not due for release for some years.

It would appear that Abu Nidal, The Red Army Faction and all the rest were simply picking up on an earlier technique.

UNDP Rankings.

From Gawain comes an interesting point. Referring to the UNDP 2004 Human Development Index he asks:

What is it that unites seven in the top ten, all the first six? Then 12 in the first twenty?

Don't know?
Take a guess?

Constitutional Monarchy.
I might add that four of the top twenty have our very own QE II as their Monarch. Nice work Your Majesty.

1895 8 th Grade Test.

I note that this little test is doing the rounds again. It purports to be the 8th grade test at a High School from 1895. Snopes has a good rundown of why that may not be true. Googling around you see that this little piece has been used innumerable times as evidence of the dumbing down of the US education system over the last century and a bit. That it may not have been an 8 th grade exam, or the Snopes criticisms, would appear to put the kibosh on that idea.
However, whatever the provenance of the test I think I can now show you that, at least in part, there has been a fall in standards. Take this question:

7. Name all the republics of Europe and give capital of each.

Via the answers page at the University of Houston we get:
7. Name all the republics of Europe and give the capitals of each.
Examples include:
* Britain (London)
* Finland (Helsinki)
* France (Paris)
* Germany (Berlin)
* Italy (Rome)
* Netherlands (Hague)
* Sweden (Stockholm)

Really? Now don't forget, these answers are provided by a pretty major league university's history department, as part of:

This Web site was designed and developed to support the teaching of American History in K-12 schools and colleges and is supported by the Department of History and the College of Education at the University of Houston.

So how come, in their list of the Republics of Europe in 1895, they have one Republic, a Grand Duchy, two Empires and three Kingdoms? ( Ok, OK, one can be picky and say one Empire and four Kingdoms.)
It actually gets worse as "Britain" is not a country, one could argue for United Kingdom, England and Wales, Scotland, (I think at the time it was the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland) but not for "Britain". Similarly, it is the United Kingdom of Holland and the Netherlands (not sure about the United, definitely the rest though). Finland was not independent.
Now I'm not claiming that I have the categorical truth here as I'm running on memory, but the two Republics (and their capitals) in Europe in 1895 were France (Paris) and Switzerland (Berne). Everywhere else was a Kingdom, Duchy (sometimes a Grand one) or part of the various Empires.
Now, I don't expect everyone to know the above, but I certainly expect historians to do so. How can you explain WWI without looking at the interaction between the Kaiser (Germany) Tsar (Finland was a semi-independent Grand Duchy of his Empire) UK (Kingdom or Empire, your choice) etc etc etc.
Now, the original test might be suspect in its provenance but who can deny that the University of Houston's history department has suffered a little bit of dumbing down?

The Romanovs and DNA Identification.

Looks like someone is questioning the DNA identification of the Tsar's and Tsarina's bones via DNA tests. I have a soft spot for Dr Pavel Ivanov who brought the bones to the UK for testing as I visited his lab back in 1991 when all of this was going on. They didn't have DNA testing capability, they worked with a computer system that built up a face from the skull, then compared it to photographs of who they thought it was. As far as they were concerned this was the Tsarina (at least, that's what they purported to show me) and the DNA tests were simply confirmation of what they already knew. My opinion of all this is meaningless of course as I have no expertise in this area. So as I say, just a soft spot for the guys.
One moment that stands out was asking for an ashtray and being given a human skull. Not a royal one of course.
If the computer technique above sounds vaguely familiar to novel readers you're right, it was based on the work of the guy who helps solve the crime in "Gorky Park". Martin Cruz Smith used a lot of very realistic background and historical people to build up the scenes across which his characters acted. (We used to live right next door to Petrovka tritsit voceim [38] where Arkady's office was.)

The Real King Arthur

The Llamas give us a pretty good roundup of what is known about the historical King Arthur. Or course, being colonials they seem to have a gap in their reference library, to whit A.H Burne's "Battlefields of Britain". In this they would have seen that Mount Badon was actually Badbury, on the Marlborough Downs just south of Swindon. Not too much of a surprise actually, as it is on the Ridgeway. Also:

The paramount king of Britain was Ambrosius Aurelianus, "The Last of the Romans", but he was now an old man and he had long before deputed the command of all the troops in the field to his nephew Arthur.

Otherwise their round up is top notch.

More Duke of Devonshire

A small memoir from this week's Spectator:

Aristocratic hauteur and bullying manners such as Palmerston’s make Jacobins of us all. But the politesse of a true nobleman — call me a creep — spreads happiness like nothing else. When I was a very young man at Oxford I remember an English faculty party in which the retiring Goldsmiths’ professor, David Cecil, unobtrusively spoke to every person present. Afterwards everyone felt happier. His nephew Andrew Devonshire had this gift. One of his more absurd ways of spreading happiness was to come up to you at a party and say, ‘What a relief! I don’t know anyone else here.’ Even when he said this to me, a mere friendly acquaintance, at a party given by himself at Pratt’s Club (which he owned), surrounded by members of his family and friends, it gave me pleasure. One did not believe it but — as with Anglicanism — one ‘believed’ it. That is enough.

Ring a Ring o' Roses

Telegraph | Opinion | Notebook

Why do we say "Bless you!" to people who sneeze, but not those who cough? The cough may indicate tuberculosis, pneumonic plague, lung cancer and all manner of terrifying pulmonary necroses. Are there any fatal diseases marked by sneezing?

From Sam Leith in, again, today's Telegraph.
Don't know whether this is urban myth or not, haven't checked out www.snopes.com. But the story goes that as no breathing equates to death, then breath and the soul are intertwined. So when one sneezes, one is not only expelling breath, but also a part of the soul, and so we say " Bless you " to raise soulfulness to the appropriate level.
And any diseases connected with sneezing ? Again, supposedly Black Death. The children's nursery rhyme, Ring a Roses ( again, not checking snopes, don't want to spoil a good story ) is an ur memory, part of the racial unconscious, of those times :
Ring a Ring o' Roses
A pocket full of Posies
Atishoo Atishoo
We all fall down.

One more detailed explanation of the rhyme points to a specific village ( sorry, this is memory dredging here, can't remember which one ) at the time of the plague where the parson convinced the villagers not to flee, thus carrying the disease with them, and that while they all died, that village marks the furthest north that the plague went. The village was in either Lancashire or Yorkshire, which is where the roses come in, both counties having a rose ( white or red ) as their emblem. Such roses also giving us the " War of the Roses " but then that's getting way to far into the interconnectedness of all things.