It turns out that much of what we think we know about one of the most studied episodes in modern history is either inaccurate or incomplete. Even more alarming, much of what Kennedy thought he knew about Soviet actions and motivations rested on flawed intelligence reports.

Far from being an example of “matchlessly calibrated” diplomacy - a term used by Camelot historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr - the missile crisis is better understood as a prime illustration of the ever-present “screwup factor” in world affairs.

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Democracy Now! | Race, Politics, Dr. King and the Primaries in South Carolina

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking right now to Kevin Alexander Gray in Columbia, South Carolina. The Republican primary is January 19th. The Democratic primary January 26th. Talk about your congressman, James Clyburn. He is the only African American congressman from South Carolina, one of the leaders in Congress. He’s overseas right now, appears to be extremely angry about what has been happening.

KEVIN ALEXANDER GRAY: Well, he hinted that he might support Obama, but I don’t think that that’s going to happen. Jim—first of all, you know, people say Jim was involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Jim was the head of the State Human Affairs Commission before he ran for Congress. And Jim has kind of been the pick of the status quo established white community for a long time. So I don’t see Jim leaving too far off of that plantation and bucking the party establishment in the state by picking somebody.

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The Democrats finally have their “Mission Accomplished” moment and boy is it good to get all that guilt off your back! In a piece that is embarrassing for not just the lack of content but also the adolescent gushing, Andrew Rosenthal writes in the New York Times:

Michelle, Maria, Caroline and Oprah on the Hustings in California - New York Times

[...]

Ms. Winfrey — finally — spoke to the most emotionally fraught aspect of this contest. “Now look at this campaign: the two front-runners are a black man and a woman,” she said. “What that says to me is we have won the struggle and we have the right to compete.”

Instead of seeing a painful choice, voters, Ms. Winfrey urged, should see a moment when they “are free from the constraints of gender and race.”

After watching the candidates struggle with the issue, painfully and awkwardly, in the past month, it was a relief to hear someone finally frame it in a way that celebrated what the Democratic Party has achieved — and then move beyond it.

[...]

And that ladies and germs, is the promise of Obama (and Hillary too, if you believe Oprah). His candidacy assuages the soft leftist’s guilt about the disparities and discrimination that surround us, offering him the opportunity to cast one small vote for himself but achieve a giant leap for humankind. Vote for Obama and you can keep your SUV and iPod and save the environment too! Vote for Obama and you can move beyond all pain and awkwardness! Free of the constraints of gender and race! This is a competition between unbounded hope and inescapable history. Is it a matter of surprise that older people, women, and those with lesser formal education, choose Clinton over Obama (though they may prefer neither)?

Note that that is the explicit core of the Obama campaign which started out frugally short on detail and gained steam while staying light on substance. As Obama and his wife point out, his campaign is not about him (a messianic Christ-like figure who thunders about “his God”) but about “you”. And if by voting for him and electing him, you have not managed to move beyond the constraints of gender and race, it cannot be your class (which we eliminated from consideration via John Edwards) or the environment you are thrown into, but as Reagan would say, perhaps its your lack of responsibility? (Obama identifies the success of Reagan with dissatisfaction with large government growth and excesses, without accountability).

If there is any further doubt that Obama’s rhetorical dictionary is an approximate facsimile of the Republican one (he has consciously but barely stopped short of calling himself the “uniter”), you can consult Princeton economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who points out repeatedly that not only is Obama’s healthcare plan to the right of Hillary, but that his tactic of criticising Hillary’s plan echoes that of conservative and insurance industry operatives in 1992.

Recently, there have been a spate of pro-Obama editorials and opinions on the online pages of the New York Times. One among the many was poignant — it quoted the words of a younger feminist parting ways with her feminist mother on the issue of Obama vs Clinton. The young feminist offered that “her [Clinton's and by extension her mother's] issues are not my issues”. In keeping with Oprah’s proclamation, I guess she felt that she was free from the constraints of gender. But her characterisation is inaccurate. Her mother’s issues will always be her issues (at least so long as she considers herself a feminist), especially if she is unaware of that!

As Gloria Steinem writes writes in the same rag, under the apt title “Women Are Never Front-Runners“:

But what worries me is that he is seen as unifying by his race while she is seen as divisive by her sex.

What worries me is that she is accused of “playing the gender card” when citing the old boys’ club, while he is seen as unifying by citing civil rights confrontations.

What worries me is that male Iowa voters were seen as gender-free when supporting their own, while female voters were seen as biased if they did and disloyal if they didn’t.

What worries me is that reporters ignore Mr. Obama’s dependence on the old — for instance, the frequent campaign comparisons to John F. Kennedy — while not challenging the slander that her progressive policies are part of the Washington status quo.

What worries me is that some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system; thus Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age.

This country can no longer afford to choose our leaders from a talent pool limited by sex, race, money, powerful fathers and paper degrees. It’s time to take equal pride in breaking all the barriers. We have to be able to say: “I’m supporting her because she’ll be a great president and because she’s a woman.”

(I would ignore the part about Clinton’s “progressive policies”)

Some very intelligent people whose opinions I respect greatly are supporting Obama today. I do not believe that they are misled by the baseless hope that Obama represents. I do not even think that they are weary of struggle and want for once to taste some victory (even at some cost). Nonetheless, I think they are on the wrong track.

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I have heard and read about the Japanese internment during WW2, but this I had not previously known:

BBC | US Mexicans haunted by repatriation

[...]

As the depression deepened, state and local governments passed laws restricting employment to native-born or naturalised citizens.

The Federal Government required all firms supplying it with goods and services to hire only US citizens.

And private companies fell in line with the prevailing anti-Mexican feeling and sacked their workers.

Francisco Balderrama, professor at California State University and co-author of Decade of Betrayal, estimates that somewhere in the region of a million people of Mexican origin were driven out of the United States during the 1930s.

Nearly two thirds of those who left were US citizens.

[...]

Around 50,000 people were formally deported in the 1930s.

[...]

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has refused to approve Senate bills that would require schools to include the repatriation in the curriculum, and to offer victims compensation.

Time to start deporting Austrians? ;-)

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Spiegel Online has a series of Kremlin Minutes posted on their web site, such as this one: The Kremlin Minutes: “We Should Demolish the Wall Ourselves”.

Visit Spiegel Online for more. I am sure we won’t see much of this in US press since as Spiegel points out (last sentence):

In the fall of 1990, as Germany celebrated reunification, an enormous tragedy was taking shape in Moscow. The historical turning point can be reconstructed from previously undisclosed minutes of Politburo meetings published in Russia this month. And Mikhail Gorbachev may finally get the historical recognition he deserves.

We wouldn’t want to give up on the myth that a B-grade actor who couldn’t differentiate between his movie roles and reality was rather The Great Communicator who single-handedly brought the “cold war” to an end.

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[via BoingBoing]

The Dead Sea Scrolls it seems contain specifications for construction of latrines:

The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Toilet evidence links Dead Sea Scrolls to sect

[...]

The Essenes are one of the few ancient groups whose toiletry practices were documented. The first century Jewish historian Josephus noted that members of the group normally went outside the city and dug a hole, where they buried their waste.

Two of the Dead Sea Scrolls note that the latrines should be situated northwest of the settlement, at a distance of 1,000 to 3,000 cubits — about 450 to 1,350 yards — and out of sight of the settlement.

Tabor and Joe Zias of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an expert on ancient latrines, went to the site and took samples.

Zias sent samples to anthropologist Stephanie Harter-Lailheugue of the CNRS Laboratory for Anthropology in Marseilles, France, who found preserved eggs and other remnants of roundworms, tapeworms and pinworms, all human intestinal parasites.

Samples from the surrounding areas contained no parasites. Had the waste been dumped on the surface, as is the practice of Bedouins in the area, the parasites quickly would have been killed by sunlight. Buried, they could persist for a year or longer, infecting anyone who walked through the soil.

The situation was made worse by the Essenes having to pass through an immersion cistern, or Miqvot, before returning to the settlement. The water would have served as a major breeding ground for the parasites.

“The graveyard at Qumran is the unhealthiest group I have ever studied in over 30 years,” Zias said. Fewer than 6 percent of the men buried there survived to age 40, he said. In contrast, cemeteries from the same period excavated at Jericho show that half the males lived beyond age 40.

What impressed me about this bit of news was that the Bedouins will probably have a hard time explaining the reasons behind their practices, but even back at the relevant time, the Essenes probably had elaborate and sophisticated explanations for the superiority of their system as compared to the illiterate practices of the nomads.

My point? There are parallels to this sort of thing in the patronising dismissal of “primitivism” by the scientistic, but often, the lack of an explanation no more disqualifies a practice than the presence of an elaborate, detailed and systematic explanation (in itself) underwrites another.

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Slashdot has a post today on the Web turning 16, which links to W3C’s history of the web page. Back in 1994 or 1995, shortly after my site was listed in a top 100 list (I think PC Computing Magazine?) some guy contacted me with a bit of interesting info: according to his records, my CERN HTTPD server was among the first 250 sites (I forget how he calculated that — perhaps based on the old Yahoo index?). Reading through the W3C history page I see:

1993

January: Around 50 known HTTP servers.
October: Over 200 known HTTP servers.

I started up my server in early February 1993 and shortly after sent information about it to the WWW mailing lists of the time. Depending on what is meant by “known” above, It seems quite possible that the guy was right about my making the first 250… maybe…

More information to supplement my previous post on French support for the American revolution:

The French Contribution to the American War of Independence

From the outbreak of armed rebellion in 1775, many in France sympathized with the colonists. Young, idealistic French officers like the Marquis de Lafayette volunteered their services and in many cases their personal wealth to help equip, train and lead the fledgling Continental army. The French government hoped to redress the balance of power that resulted from the French humiliation in the Seven Years Wars, which gave considerable economic and military advantages to Britain. While maintaining formal neutrality, France assisted in supplying arms, uniforms and other military supplies to the American colonists.

This clandestine assistance became open after the defeat of General Burgoyne at Saratoga in 1777, which demonstrated the possibility of British defeat in the conflict and led to French recognition of the colonies in February 1778. As a result of the victory of the Continental forces at Saratoga, Benjamin Franklin, who had gone to Paris as ambassador in 1776, was able to negotiate a Treaty of Amity and Commerce and a Treaty of Alliance with France. From this point, French support became increasingly significant. The French extended considerable financial support to the Congressional forces. France also supplied vital military arms and supplies, and loaned money to pay for their purchase.

French military aid was also a decisive factor in the American victory. French land and sea forces fought on the side of the American colonists against the British.

[...]

From the perspective of the American Revolution, however, the high point of French support is the landing of five battalions of French infantry and artillery in Rhode Island in 1780. In 1781, these French troops under the command of Count Rochambeau marched south to Virginia where they joined Continental forces under Washington and Lafayette. Cornwallis, encamped on the Yorktown peninsula, hoped to be rescued by the British navy. A French fleet under the command of Admiral DeGrasse intercepted and, after a fierce battle lasting several days, defeated the British fleet and forced it to withdraw. This left the French navy to land heavy siege cannon and other supplies and trapped Cornwallis on the Yorktown peninsula.

[...]

George Woodbridge summed up the Yorktown campaign in the following words: “The strategy of the campaign was Rochambeau’s; the French fleet was there as a result of his arrangements; the tactics of the battle were his; the American army was present because he had lent money to Washington; in total naval and military participants the French outnumbered the Americans between three and four to one. Yorktown was Rochambeau’s victory.

[...]

In the end, these French soldiers became the hard anvil upon which the new American nation was forged and the chains of British imperial domination were finally broken.

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There are a bunch of folks I like to think of as Ostrich Republicans (a bit unfair to Ostriches) — a group that includes naive libertarians, subconscious “End of History” believers, individualist types, and typically a combination of these traits (a hypothetical defence of the position: “Yes there were all sorts of bad things like racism, lack of women’s rights, etc. But that’s behind us now and if I do or did not believe in or participate in such things, I should be left alone and the government should get out of it”) — a textbook member is Clint Eastwood, who can strangely reconcile the slumming with bluesmen activities with his homegrown conservatism. What this leads to is the sort of schizophrenia that the following two news pieces bring out. On the one hand, he stands guilty of leaving out (and ignoring when reminded) black participation in WW2, in his new movie:

Guardian | Where have all the black soldiers gone?

Sadly, Sgt McPhatter’s experience is not mirrored in Flags of Our Fathers, Clint Eastwood’s big-budget, Oscar-tipped film of the battle for the Japanese island that opened on Friday in the US. While the film’s battle scenes show scores of young soldiers in combat, none of them are African-American. Yet almost 900 African-American troops took part in the battle of Iwo Jima, including Sgt McPhatter.

The film tells the story of the raising of the stars and stripes over Mount Suribachi at the tip of the island. The moment was captured in a photograph that became a symbol of the US war effort. Eastwood’s film follows the marines in the picture, including the Native American Ira Hayes, as they were removed from combat operations to promote the sale of government war bonds.

Mr McPhatter, who went on to serve in Vietnam and rose to the rank of lieutenant commander in the US navy, even had a part in the raising of the flag. “The man who put the first flag up on Iwo Jima got a piece of pipe from me to put the flag up on,” he says. That, too, is absent from the film.

[...]

Yvonne Latty, a New York University professor and author of We Were There: Voices of African-American Veterans (2004), wrote to Eastwood and the film’s producers pleading with them to include the experience of black soldiers. HarperCollins, the book’s publishers, sent the director a copy, but never heard back.

“It would take only a couple of extras and everyone would be happy,” she said. “No one’s asking for them to be the stars of the movies, but at least show that they were there. This is the way a new generation will think about Iwo Jima. Once again it will be that African-American people did not serve, that we were absent. It’s a lie.”

The first chapter to James Bradley’s book Flags of Our Fathers, which forms the basis of the movie, opens with a quotation from president Harry Truman. “The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.” It would provide a fitting endnote to Eastwood’s film.

On the other, we have his fellow conservatives unhappy with his historical revisionism and bleeding-heart liberalism:

The Australian: Republican ragging for bleeding heart Clint

MORE than 50 years after he first appeared in Hollywood as a bright young Republican, Clint Eastwood has been attacked by his old allies as a bleeding heart liberal for his latest film, Flags of Our Fathers.

The $US75 million ($100 million) film, which opened in 1800 cinemas in the US at the weekend, focuses not only on the World War II battle of Iwo Jima but also on the fate of a Native American soldier who, Eastwood suggests, was maltreated by the military after the war.

The Australian article ends with a quote from Unforgiven that immediately came to my mind too:

“The best I can do is quote a line from my movie Unforgiven, where one character says, ‘Deserve’s got nothing to do with it’.”

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