Donate
Browse by category
Recent Comments
Browse archives
- December 2024
- November 2024
- October 2024
- September 2024
- August 2024
- July 2024
- June 2024
- May 2024
- April 2024
- March 2024
- February 2024
- January 2024
- December 2023
- November 2023
- October 2023
- September 2023
- August 2023
- July 2023
- June 2023
- May 2023
- April 2023
- March 2023
- February 2023
- January 2023
- December 2022
- November 2022
- October 2022
- September 2022
- August 2022
- July 2022
- June 2022
- May 2022
- April 2022
- March 2022
- February 2022
- January 2022
- December 2021
- November 2021
- October 2021
- September 2021
- August 2021
- July 2021
- June 2021
- May 2021
- April 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- October 2019
- September 2019
- August 2019
- July 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- April 2019
- March 2019
- February 2019
- January 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
- August 2005
- July 2005
RSS
- The drones over New Jersey
- The Langley Aerodrome Experience… at Stafford Airport
- “Romanian Court Annuls Presidential Election, Throws Process Into Chaos”
- What’s next?
- “SDF deploys to Deir ez-Zor city after Syrian army withdrawal”
- “Yes, But….” By Walrus.
- SITUATION IN SYRIA: UKRAINE AND ISRAEL STAND TOGETHER
- South Korea president declares emergency martial law, warns of “communist forces”
- Trump threatens BRICS nations with 100 percent tariffs
- Syrian rebels take control of most of Aleppo city
Meta
Open Thread 19 September 2019
This entry was posted in Open Thread. Bookmark the permalink.
An interesting observation in David Gilmour’s biography of Kipling. It’s suggested that Kipling was not necessarily accurate when reproducing the attitudes and idioms of serving officers and men in India at the time – but that soon afterwards those attitudes and idioms changed to match Kipling’s.
“General Sir George Younghusband had served in India for many years without hearing the words or expressions used by the fictional men; puzzled, he asked his brother officers, who confirmed that they too were ignorant of the diction. But a few years later he discovered that ‘the soldiers thought, and talked, and expressed themselves exactly like Rudyard Kipling had taught them in his stories … Kipling made the modern soldier.'” (Younghusaband, A Soldier’s Memories, p. 187)
And Somerset Maugham, on his travels decades later, observed that those he met out there talked and even thought straight Kipling, idioms and stereotypes and all.
Didn’t the same happen with John le Carre? His world, he confesses, was largely fictional and some of the ‘tradecraft’ terms invented by him. Yet he discovered later that his invented terms had been taken into common usage in the real Intelligence world.
Life always imitates art. The grim heroes of earlier times might not have been that inclined to fight to the last man to revenge their hlaford, or die defiant in the burning ruins of their fortress. Yet they’d been instructed in the proper manner of conducting themselves by countless Anglo Saxon epics or Norse Sagas so what else would they think to do? These epics did not so much relate what men had done. They taught men what they ought to do.
Obvious enough. But Kipling and Le Carre went further than that, it’s suggested, and actually invented the idioms and technical terms that then became common usage. Has this also happened in more recent times? Do the armies and Intelligence forces of today use military or Intelligence terms invented, not in some office or training ground, but in the writer’s study?
Larry, Colonel,
It appears that the WAPO is at again with allegations against Trump ‘leaking’ to foreign leaders. The story is driven by [IMO dribbling idiot] Rep. Schiff (D-Calif) House Intel Cmte Chairman. Seems that Schiff has his panties in a knot and wants access to a purported complaint from an Intel whistle-blower regarding Trump’s interactions with a foreign leader. If Schiff doesn’t get what he wants, he’s threatening legal action:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-disputes-report-that-his-interaction-with-foreign-leader-prompted-whistleblower-complaint/2019/09/19/3f9f654e-daed-11e9-bfb1-849887369476_story.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caWfGJRNrHI
trailer for Official Secrets movie
I thought it was well done
Are my eyes playing tricks on me it appears the wreckage the Saudis trotted out shows munitions made for NATO, not Iranian munitions. Blink blink.
Houthi military spokesman Brigadier YahYa Saree claims various kinds of combat drones were used in what he calls the
Second Deterrent Balance Operation
in the strike on the Saudi oil facilities. Says they were launched from three different locations according to their flight endurance and designated targets.
Says “each of the new drones can carry four precision-guided bombs with fissionable heads every time, and can monitor and hit their targets from several angles.” Not sure what he means by fissionable but probably nothing nuclear related, something must have been lost in translation.
He also claimed that the strike drones flew under the flight path of
“other aircraft”
to mask their flight. I assume he meant another Houthi drone and NOT a Saudi aircraft returning to base. Also says they jammed Saudi radars during the attack.
He threatened the glass towers in Abu Dhabi and Dubai too. I had thought that the Emiratis had pulled troops out of Yemen in July. But apparently they still have control of Yemen’s Socotra Island, and still back militias in or near the Port of Hodeidah.
https://www.yemenpress.org/yemen/saudi-oil-strikes-perfect-example-of-yemeni-forces-military-capabilities-army-spox/
I do remember once reading somewhere (sorry I couldn’t track down a link) that some gangster–I think it was John Gotti–talked about how when The Godfather came out, it changed the way the real-life gangsters talked and how they started acting like characters from the movie. He thought it was funny!
Anyone here come across a book by john stockwell a former cia station chief called “in search of enemies”.he served in vietnam and angola in the 70’s
Sea levels are rising – Pakistan’s fertile rice-producing coastline is flooded, salt water contaminating ground water.
In Southern Africa (Namibia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Mozambique etc) there is a severe drought.
What of an “ancient Egyptian” solution?
A huge coastline network of desalination plants (instead of the Nile…:)) + extensive irrigation systems to cover as much of Africa as feasible.
Time to act before the locals in the affected areas forget their agricultural know-how, busy migrating to urban ghettos in Africa and Europe
India and Pakistan military take part in a joint anti-terrorist exercise with 6 other countries this week. 100 other countries are there as observers with access to an exhibition of Russian and Chinese weaponry.
One can easily guess the host
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-attack-drones-idUSKBN1W40NW
“A U.S. drone strike intended to hit an Islamic State (IS) hideout in Afghanistan killed at least 30 civilians resting after a day’s labor in the fields, officials said on Thursday.”
Not only American, but Russian mobsters loved The Godfather movies and saw them as a primer on how mafiosi were supposed to talk and act.
The irony is that this time, Trump is accused of “colluding” with the rabid russophobes of Ukraine and offering weapons to be used on Russians as consideration.
Sorry about the weird formatting. I had thought that the html for underlining was ul, i obviously messed it up.
I see the press is reporting “urgent concerns” over the business owned by the VP’s son , the secretary of state’s son and others getting a big assist from President Trump.
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/436816-joe-bidens-2020-ukrainian-nightmare-a-closed-probe-is-revived
Whoops, wrong scandal. Apparently that pay for play was AOK, but talking about investigating corrpuption in Ukraine with Ukrainian government officials is only ok if you are not named Donald J Trump. Big O, still scandal free. Thanks goodness. Imagine if Donald Trump Jr. was on the board of a Ukranian oil and gas company. Now that would be a scandal worth reporting on.
Yes, I have it and read into it a while back. You can get the book on Amazon. There are also some reviews. Stockwell has a Wikipedia entry. He actually ran the CIA operation in Angola and became disenchanted. He has had a remarkable career, though part of it has been in principled and costly (to him) opposition. The government went after him legally and made his life hell, I would guess, till finally, I think he had to go into bankruptcy.
This is now a sad and awful history. I can’t help remarking here that Patrice Lumumba was murdered by the Belgians–Belgian military officers were involved–in January of 1961, and Dag Hammarskjold’s plane was shot down in September,1961, in a crash that investigators have continued to look into over the years. Many conclude that it was surely an assassination. Belgian mining interests seem to assembled a small mercenary army in the Congo in those years (see the film ‘Africa Addio’) and they were out of control. The Belgian government has acknowledged its part in the murder of Lumumba. Eisenhower had ordered a CIA assassination plot, and funds were allocated, but the Belgians moved faster. I think American intelligence agents were present at the firing squads’ execution site –there were three sites for the three black African leaders to be shot–and Stockwell {who knew him well) said that the CIA station chief at, I think, Stanleyville, had Lumumba’s body in the back of his car immediately after the executions and was in a predicament for a while. This grisly and sad anecdote also raises a lot of questions, if you ask me. Why, if the Belgians were doing the honors? Lumumba was a good man and is now a national hero in that part of Africa (where things will fall apart worse than we could ever imagine in the next ten years. Kinshasa, a city of seventeen million with no garbage collection system.)
But Lumumba shouldn’t have made overtures to the Soviet Union and should have toned down his rhetoric. I don’t think he was a communist. I think is needs to be noted that the uranium for the first two American atomic bombs came from the Congo, Katanga, I assume.
It’s going to be very bad in Africa, very soon. Worse than this ever was.
the pilot who shot down Hammarskjöld’s plane has written about it
suggest you read that
it puts an end to speculation
Congo and what used to be called Central African Republic has reverting back to the situation obtaining around 1800s in as much as there is no state present on that vast territory.
France’s standard of living is directly related to plunder of Africa. Without that, her GDP ranking would have been 12th in the world. Is it any wonder that Senegalese leave for France?
Babak
You cannot demonstrate that France’s standard of living has anything to do with Africa.
I cannot, but I believe that Italian officials who made that comment a few months back.
Remember the one and only mercanary mike hoare.He was a legend in south africa
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Mike_Hoare.
Here is a good link worth reading
https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/12/annals-of-wars-we-dont-know-about-the-south-african-border-war-of-1966-1989/
One NEOCON out the door (Bolton), now it appears that another NEOCON (Haley) is being shown the door. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley announced her resignation last Tuesday, and will leave her post at the end of the year.
On another note, the Russian Deputy Defense Minister Colonel General Alexander Fomin said Thursday at a meeting in Beijing, accused the U.S. of carrying out a 13 Drone attack against Russia’s Hmeymim airbase in Syria. He said that the Drones were controlled by a U.S. Navy’s P-8 that was on patrol in the Med, and when the Russians cranked up their ECM against the Drones, the Drones went to manual mode control from the P-8 and then to space systems control, the Drones were then destroyed by the Russians.
Russia is now conducting drone trials on their OSNOD [which is their multi-platform combined data, nav, and id comm system] SU-57 variant. Russian company ROSTEC is working to make the Drone fitting to the SU-57s equipped with enhanced encryption and ECM systems. OSNOD can be installed on a variety of platforms, from ground (mobile and stationary], to naval, to aircraft.
J
Babak,
Just what proof do you have for that statement?
J,
Haley left a year ago and joined the board of Boeing shortly thereafter.
Putin is saying “No Excuses!” to the Russian Defense Industry. Putin wants the Russian Defense Industry TOTALLY Self-Sufficient and Import Free. These were the words that Putin spoke yesterday on the Defense Industry’s ‘Professional Holiday’. Gunsmith day is held in Izhevsk where they produce 10% of all global small arms. In Izhevsk on display were the Osa and Tor Defense Systems, which are produced at the local Kupol plant. Kalashnikov small arms range testing ground, where new models of their small arms are tested. As each Kalashnikov is put through production, there are quality control checks to ensure that every piece meets quality standards.
Hundreds of heads of the Russian Defense Industry from all over the country gathered in Izhevsk. The Gunsmith Forum marked the 100th Anniversary of Mikhail Kalashnikov’s birthday. At the Forum, Putin praised Kalashnikov as a true patriot of his fatherland.
Russia’s defense industry today comprises over 1,300 enterprises, roughly 2 Million workers, that include engineers, designers, and technical all come togeather to develop Russia’s new weapons systems. The Russian Government creates youth techno parks like the Kalashnikov Academy that was created in Izhevsk. Robotics, IT, Mechanical, design all come together instructing the future leaders of the Russian Defense Industry. Next year they’ll be adding aerial design. Putin held a meeting of Russia’s Military Industrial Commission where they discussed problems in their defense industry. Problems like debt load, difficulties associated with import substitutions. Putin stressed that it wasn’t just a celebration but a working conference where issues of concern were brought up.
Last year (2018) Russia had to delay several state defense orders due to performance errors.
J
The economic minister of Itlay in the government that just resigned. They know.
Tidewater
Re Kinshasa and its 17 million souls. A forecast for 2075 has it as the most populous city on earth with over 58 million. Mind boggling. I think it equally likely the population could be zero and that by then it will have been subsumed into the Saharan continental desert.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth#Population_projections_of_the_101_largest_metropolitan_areas_in_the_21st_century
Am I in a time loop? Aw sheez, gaw! Ok, it’s her moving back to the South Carolina thang. She was asleep at the switch as U.N. Ambassador.
Thanks Fred for pulling me back to the present. 🙂
J
Sir,
First of all, I am inclined to think that overall the argument could be made that the association of France with Africa is a good thing, regardless. Particularly given the dangerous direction of things in Africa. It seems that there has been a small diplomatic row between Italy and France over migration to Europe. The remarks were made by Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio and under the title ‘Is France Still Exploiting Africa’ by Giorgio Spagnol, with a publication date of 10/2/19, an article about the allegations has been published in something called IERI.
Interestingly, the French leadership has been pretty straightforward about the French need for a very close alignment and involvement with Africa. Spagnol writes: “In March 2008, former French President Jacques Chirac said: ‘Without Africa, France will slide down into the rank of a third world power.'” Mitterand said something very similar in 1957 about French national interests in Africa.
If post-colonial arrangements were that 14 western and central African countries were required to have their national reserves held by France in France’s Central Bank, and this is estimated to be as much as $500 billion, couldn’t it be argued that this was a prudent move? Compare the looting of Nigeria’s oil wealth by Sani Abacha, with the tutelage of Gilbert Chagoury and agency of Marc Rich, Glencore, and Swiss banks.
I just finished an intriguing and subtle book on the Amanda Knox case called ‘The Fatal Gift of Beauty–The Trials of Amanda Knox’ by Nina Burleigh. It is now very clear that the killer of Meredith Kercher was an African, Rudy Guede, whose whole background and psychiatric condition is as strange as anything I have ever heard of. The Italian police, prosecution, and judiciary failed in this case completely and totally. It is astounding. But that is not what I am talking about here. I think there is a growing race problem in Italy with foreigners in general and with black Africans in particular. Burleigh is very clear about this. At some point there is going to be a backlash. I think that this has something to do with Di Maio’s remarks. And I think his remarks are probably mostly irrelevant and at best are highly debatable, though to me interesting in the historical context, and I can remember some of my Celine. So the question of France and Africa is sorta er au courant.
I got your back. It’s cool.
Thank you for having my back.
The comments of Chirac reminds me of the abalogous comments of Mussolini about North Africa. Does not France bear major responsibility for Genocide in Rwanda as well? And I am not goi g to say anything about their possible role in AIDS.
Africans in Italy are men without wome, which makes things worse. Intermarriage is the best long term solution but a central assumption of the Western Diocletian Civilization, viz that any one could become a Diocletian is going to be shown to be invalid long before that time.
Libya has become the gateway. Italy is the closest destination. Europe is already facing one of the great migrations in human history. But what is happening now is nothing as to what is coming in a few years. For these poor people it is not about making a better life for oneself. It’s simply survival. Already there must be a million displaced people in Libya and other points of North Africa–Ceuta?–trying to make the crossing. There is going to have to be an armed military frontier with thousands of European garrison troops, drone bases, naval units and coast guard patrols to keep the desperate people fleeing from the collapsing, dying climate of the Equatorial Mid Earth and Sud out. That’s why Britain has voted for Brexit. Britain has the Channel. The British want nothing to do with fortifying and policing North Africa.
How many million auslanders will be allowed in to the Diocletian civilization? Or rather, how many CAN be allowed in?
Oh come on. You seem to be implying that France had some sort of role in the spread of AIDs? What on earth are you saying?
Back to the Roman History and the barbarian pressure and eventual destruction of the Classical Civilization, eh?
Russia’s Spetsgruppa A, aka Alpha Group, aka Alpha, one of the first commanders of Alpha celebrated his 85 birthday recently, General Gennady Zaitsev.
Alpha was created by the former KGB in 1974, and has seen action in different forms since. During the former Soviet Union’s campaign in Afghanistan, Zaitsev led Alpha in the storming of Kabul’s Presidential Palace to rescue hostages.
Another one of Russia’s special units is their Directorate “V” (Vympel), which is officially tasked with protecting Russia’s strategic installations. V has been seen operating in Syria.
No. Climate change leading to climate collapse. Leading to migration.
At the battle of the Teutoburg forest the barbarians were led by the Roman equivalent of a West Pointer and had at least a comparable army that he put into a winning position by brilliant leadership. It was a decisive battle, a world changing event. Climate change is also world changing. I do not see how one can compare these desperate people who are already dying in the desert and at sea with those who finally broke the Watch on the Rhine. I think the new Frontier Force of the Europeans will be the ones who are the new barbarians. But matters will be arranged so that the home folks will never know. Twice I have had conversations with men who were in Algeria. The one, a Spaniard, just laughed at the killing they had done. The other, a Frenchman giving me a lift when I was hitch-hiking from Turin across the mountains into Nice was genuinely remorseful.
Isn’t it time that you acknowledged climate change? Recently I read about what is occuring in Iranian Baluchistan. There must be at least a hundred villages there that have lost their water supply. They now must depend on water trucks. Agriculture seems to be finished there. The Hamun marshes have dried up, and that is at least, in part, the fault of the Taliban, is it not? Without knowing a great deal about it, I think it’s accurate to say that the dam builders of the Eisenhower years did get dams like the Kajacki dam built, and then filled, and after that there was a flow of water still into Iran, was there not, and it went on for years until the Taliban shut down the water flow? But there seems to be an underlying problem that something quite serious is going on with the climate in this region, as elsewhere. Chabahar must depend on desalination, now, isn’t that correct? And that one hundred and twenty day wind in Baluchistan which is so dangerous to the lungs because of ‘particulate matter’
now goes on for one hundred and eighty days?
I don’t think we need to worry about classical civilization anymore.
tidewater
Just to be clear, West Point is an undergraduate college of no great accomplishment where the students study CIVILIAN subjects.. I was a professor there. Get it? The students have all fees and costs paid and receive a salary while students. They wear uniforms and go to parade but receive no more actual military schooling or training than some guy who goes to a state college and has an ROTC scholarship. Spare me the institutional propaganda.
Considering three decades of oppression in Libya, the Rape of Eritrea and Somalia Italiana, and the widespread use of poison gas in Ethiopia; the Italians would would surely know a bit about the ‘plunder of Africa’.
Babak,
To Italy’s great good fortune the soon to be reopened borders will bring the diversity that is our strength to both Italy, France and the rest of Europe;and rightfully so since the Africans were deprived by all that exploration. I wonder how long it will take the best and brightest of Brussels to figure out Africa needs diversity in Africa? Why just look at the demographics of the continent….
J,
She’s a second rate politician and as slippery as they come. I hope South Carolinians don’t reelect her to anything.
The perception among Iranians is that US built that damn in Afghanistan and thus destroyed agriculture in the Hamun Lake basin into the 1950s. That when Sistanis migrated from there to Moghan area in Azerbaijan. No one knows the climate history of the Iranian plateau and no one can attribute the current drought period to inevitable astronomically caused global warming, in my opinion.
Iranian government has been selling water to farmers at 19% of cost, encouraging waste and sloth. The drought has been a great teacher. Iraians, in my opinion, can deal with these problems, they have knowledge and experience and respurces. Chabahar situation is not any different than San Diego in the need for desalination plants. Afghanistan is where the real crisis will be or is.
Babak,
Rawanda – “The machette made me do it, I didn’t realize butchering my fellow man was murder” has been supersceded by “France made me do it”? Doesn’t anyone there have agency?
Tidewater
I fear you may be right about the future focus of our worries, we are perhaps in the minority here. The petty squabbles which occupy so much of our attention today will soon be put into perspective I think.
Have you by any chance read any of James Lovelock’s books? I recently finished The Ages of Gaia and in it Lovelock explains why he thinks Gaia’s ‘desirable’ state is today what we currently consider aberrant, that is; an ice age. Interglacial periods (the latest of which saw the flourishing of our own species) now represent a pathology in our planet’s self regulatory system, so this thinking goes. He cites the evolution 10MYA or so of C4 plants (e.g. grasses) which thrive at the lower end of the atmospheric CO2 range (around 180ppm) present during a glaciation, as evidence of this. The rise of Man and our impact on Gaia’s ability to perform its function, during an already pathological warm state, is unfortunate. Lovelock thinks a hot state, perhaps not seen for aeons, is where we are headed.
Some people choose not to acknowledge news that a flood is underway until the water is lapping at their ankles. The Politicization of Everything does not help.
Lovelock is wrong; Earth was going to warm up regardless of human activity. This is all well known.
What is not agreed upon is the measure of human contribution to this astronomically-driven process.
The climate has been around for 3 billion years, it does not require our cuddling.
https://youtu.be/TQFFwfU7Dd4
Unsurprisingly it has gone quiet on Epstein but Ari Ben Menashe has been interviewed about him. Says he was introduced to him in the eighties by Robert Maxwell, was already an item with Ghislaine, that both were Mossad and that as he spent several months in the MCC prison he knows it is impossible to commit suicide there.
I pray you are right Babak.
Does not France bear major responsibility for Genocide in Rwanda as well?
Curious idea. How about Belgium and Germany … maybe others pulling strings, considering root causes?
Germany without other special national interests may surely help more to classify ethnic DNA with genocidal root causes? No?
Thus, why not leave it there?
Some number smaller than 0.
Tidewater,
“At the battle of the Teutoburg…”
Arminius was a Roman ally with years of experience serving the legions. His betrayal was completely unexpected by Varus.
Arminius was a Roman knight! That’s why this is such a fascinating story. At the moment I am relying strictly on Wikipedia. Arminius-Wikipedia. or: wiki>Arminius”>https://en.wikipedia.org>wiki>Arminius
She’s also a Zionist pawn.
“What is not agreed upon is the measure of human contribution to this astronomically-driven process.”
Please see: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. August 15, 2019. Article by Dana Nuccitelli. ‘Millions of times later, 97 per cent climate consensus still faces denial.’
https://thebulletin.org/2019/08/millions-of-times-later
Sir,
I didn’t intend any institutional propaganda. Back in the seventies I once heard a speculative discussion among some young naval academy officers about the harm the academy training could have done to them. It was explained to me that they felt that the confidence in themselves in going forward with decisive, aggressive leadership action in a difficult situation had been perhaps somewhat curtailed. Actually, I did think that there would be some military courses such as map reading at West Point. And it’s true, there is some kind of mystique about West Point. But that was sloppy writing on my part. I could just have sketched in rapidly what we can surmise about the career of Arminius.
From being the hostage son of a German chief to a brilliant career in the Roman army, which must have begun when he was barely in his teens, he first earned Roman citizenship, then became a Knight, served with distinction in Illyricum–hmmm, Bosnia (interesting the trouble that has come out of the Balkans)–and then at 26 or so, was sent back to Germania as a field grade Roman officer. At 27, he destroyed three Roman legions, some 18,000 soldiers. The Emperor Augustus was alleged to have been seen beating his head against a marble wall, shouting: “Give me back my legions!” I suspect that any true Empire relishes its defeats as well as its victories, since it assumes it will win in the end.
By the way, I just reread Hemingway’s ‘Across the River and Into the Trees’. That is a very fine book. That opening in the Torcello marshes Did you know that the protagonist of that novel, Colonel Cantwell, went to VMI?
Have you heard of a book by Mike Davis called ‘Planet of Slums’?
There was a time when I did pay some attention to James Lovelock. I have not read his books, but I looked at his blog. He was one of the first scientists to speak out back in 1970. Do you know the entertaining story about how he detected chlorofluorocarbon off his vacation home in western Ireland? Google– ‘The Tip of the Iceberg.’
article>ozone-depletion-02″>https://undsci.berkeley.edu>article>ozone-depletion-02
I’ve read about this over the years and double-checked what the latest poop is. If you mean that the Fouga pilot who shot down the DC-6 was Jan Van Risseghem, then that is not correct. Van Risseghem had been arrested on 28 August, 1961, at Elisabethville, and repatriated from Kamina to Brussels on 7 September, 1961.
This did not end Van Risseghem’s employment as a mercenary by the Katanga Government of Moise Tshombe. Two separate government agencies found that he was still in Belgium on September 16. As I seem to recall from a quick reading (on Sunday!) of the UN report, Van Risseghem signed a document on Sept 16 in a bank in Brussels which was related to having his salary from the Tshombe government either paid out in future upon request to someone else, perhaps an allotment to a family member, or was simply to get him some travel cash. This may have been signed on September 17, by one account; but certainly was signed in Brussels on the 16th. The UN plane was shot down on the night of the September 17,1961. Van Risseghem was thought to have left Brussels on the 16th–but it is not known whether he then went to Paris for a flight back to Katanga or not. Nevertheless, he was in transit.
The UN report on the investigation that began in 2015 and was signed off on, in 2017, by M.C. Othman, Chief Justice of Tanzania, concluded that Van Risseghem did not have time to get back to Africa to be the pilot who made any suspected attack–an attack that remains unproven — on the UN secretary general’s plane at Ndola. He was excluded as a suspect.
This makes me happy, by the way. We knew some RAF Jolly boat sailors, we raced against at Langley, Va., and later I knew some retirees in Spain, and they are, famously, totally cool guys. And it is interesting that official information has Van Risseghem reporting back in for duty on the 20 of September.
I don’t understand that.
Tidewater
I am then a dissenter with the climate consensus.
You asked: “How many million auslanders will be allowed in to the Diocletian civilization? Or rather, how many CAN be allowed in?”
I gave a mathematical reply.
Yes, the instrument he made was able to detect CFC’s in concentrations of parts per trillion IIRC. I would recommend the original Gaia as an introduction to his theory of the climate being regulated by and for life (the biota).
I confess to being a big fan and I think history will recognize Lovelock as a great thinker. Like all great scientists he upset a lot of the scientific establishment with his heresy. He deserves a Nobel prize, but of course the whole point of his ground-breaking idea is that it cuts across multiple siloed disciplines. He recently publish a book on the dangers of AI and is still going strong at 100.
Thanks. I have gone off in too many directions.
Interesting, if you think about it, that the peoples of North Africa have the same problem. How many immigrants, displaced persons from the Middle-East and western Asia, how many black African people of the sub-Sahara, can Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, be expected to take care of, deal with or absorb without becoming destabilized? Will there have to be large holding camps? Bases again? Will the frontier line have to be drawn across the Sahel, much deeper into Africa, well away from the civilizations of the Mediterranean Coast? It already looks like an emergency. One of the great questions of our time, but one that could also be mooted if there is a blue ocean event(BOE) in the Arctic.
Definitely worth noting that the Washington Nationals baseball team advanced beyond the first round of the Major League Baseball playoffs FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER! (link)
Their previous four trips to the playoffs (2012, 2014, 2016, 2017) ended in the first round, the National League Division Series. (link)
The fifth time was a charm 🙂