Ruminatrix
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Thursday, May 01, 2003
Let's Make a Deal
This week marks the two-hundredth anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the United States. The LP deal (background to the negotiations here) covered all land from the Mississippi to the Rockies except for the Red River Basin (acquired 1818) and the Texas Territory (annexed 1845). The price: 828,000 square miles for a mere $15 million.
The French were weakened first by defeat of their Navy at the hands of the Royal Navy, then by the uprising of Toussaint L'Ouverture against the sugar planters in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Vast fortunes were lost in this revolution, among the planters and the traders of the French Atlantic ports of Nantes, La Rochelle and Bordeaux -- as a child I saw quaint watercolours of the Haiti plantations in La Rochelle's "Museum of the New World."
This bloody war was to grind on until 1804 at a frightful cost on both sides, with tens of thousands dying either in punitive massacres or of yellow fever. Only 7,000 French troops of an army of 60,000 led by Napoleon's brother-in-law General Leclerc survived to surrender in 1804 (Leclerc died of the fever). Among the casualties were 4,000 members of the 5,000-strong volunteer Polish Legion, who must have wondered why the hell they had been to repress the values of Liberte, Fraternite, Egalite in this faraway island.
So France had to sell sooner or later and preferred to get something rather than lose sovereignty altogether, as happened to Spain in 1898. Was the LP more significant than the much cheaper Seward's Folly of 1867 ($7m to Russia for the 598,000 square miles of Alaska)? Sure. For better or worse -- and for the Indian tribes things were about to get irreversibly worse -- without LP the great expansion westward under Andrew Jackson would be unimaginable. We won't see that sort of population influx into Alaska any time soon.
But France also sold because Napoleon, still titular "First Consul" of a quasi-Republic, was planning to invade Britain and to attack other European powers. Although France was at peace in 1803, the future Emperor sold the Louisiana Territory to finance these wars. Despite the defeat at Trafalgar, at first Napoleon was spectacularly successful, defeating Austria (1805) Prussia (1806) and Russia (1807) in turn. Then came the long slow haemorrage of Spain and the catastrophic Russian campaign of 1812.
Military campaigns cost money, wars are very expensive to fight. And the debts which fund them can lead to the fall of empires.
And a happy May Day to one and all...
Tuesday, Apr 29, 2003
Flogging Frogs
Monaco attacks Nice in exchange for a jump-seat on the Security Council?
"American, British and Monaco forces land in France," the front-page headline screams. "Chirac calls for resistance and disappears ... Pro-American uprising on Left Bank in Paris."More here.
Among the 16 pages of reports are some on American troops seizing the Louvre museum, mistaking it for the nearby City Hall, while Kurds proclaim an autonomous state in eastern Paris.
According to The Monde, President Bush dubbed the operation "Big Spanking," much to the delight of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, but Secretary of State Colin Powell blocked its use out of concern for world reaction....
...At the invasion's start, the paper depicts a groggy and unshaven Chirac delivering a rambling television address to the nation before fleeing to an underground tunnel. "It's our duty to fiercely resist our American friends," he says.
Al Udeid
The announcement that the US military's Central Command will move its air operations center out of Saudi Arabia to Qatar means probable reductions in US personnel in Saudi Arabia, one of the key demands made on the US by Osama bin Laden.
American military commanders, especially Air Force officials, have long favored moving the air command post to Al Udeid from Saudi Arabia. United States commanders have chafed at restrictions the Saudis have placed on the American-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Senior Bush administration officials sought to emphasize that shifting the location of the command center should not be interpreted as an indication that the United States was ending its military relationship with Saudi Arabia, which has involved efforts to train Saudi forces, as well as the use of Saudi air bases.
"We are not leaving Saudi Arabia," a senior administration official said today.
I say we are, quietly, after a decent interval.
Laibach and Think of Lublajana
This week's New Yorker has a profile of Slavoj Zizek, but it's not (yet?) available on their site. I first heard of him when my sister emailed me Welcome to the Desert of the Real a few days after its publication in 2001. Its irreverent tone was like a slap in the face back then, but it still has some weight to its analysis of America's own shock and awe. A fuller bibliography shows Zizek's much wider interests, including pop culture. He's a philosopher-theoretician who ran for the Presidency of Slovenia and lost, who was offered a cabinet position but refused to consider anything but Minister of the Interior or Chief of the Secret Police. He (a Lacanian) says that:
The great battle in Slovenian politics is between the Lacanians, who run the civil service, and the Heideggerians, who dominate the military.Maybe Slovenia won't be such a bad place to live when Americans all live in permanent anticipation of terror alerts.
Sunday, Apr 27, 2003
Political or Personal?
(title suggested by Theo, who wants me to stop now so we can go cycling)
Being out of the loop this week, I got to the lively dmt thread about what's appropriate weblog material way too late to have anything useful to contribute. Yes, it's important to record our personal experiences, not just to pass along news or "meta-news" analysis, but the two don't have to be mutually exclusive.
I'm acutely aware of how easy it is to become dependent on a narrow range of sources for information (especially during a geopolitical crisis) -- even if that problem existed way before the Internet. And I know of the limited value of linking to sites such as the NY Times, which charges to read any article over one month old. Its policy offends my sense of how a "newspaper of record" should handle its archives, particularly since the storage costs of electronic material are so small compared to paper. Does that mean one shouldn't link to NYT? I don't think that's a logical conclusion. But that's another topic.
But as for this site: It looks like we've got room enough here for poetry and wordplay and sensory explorations and art and aesthetics and foodtalk and politics and technical expertise and stream of consciousness and much else besides, so let's each get on with what we like to do, or want to do or just do best.
I'd like to see more input from more contributors, and with a little less testosterone quotient in the mix too. In any case, some feedback helps keep us from isolation while we get stuff made -- be it art or writing or anything else. It makes life a little easier, a little livelier.
Marking time
J and I were married ten years ago today. Theo, almost a month old then, was at the event and she slept soundly through the five minute ceremony at Staten Island Borough Hall and the small champagne party at the River Cafe afterwards. A week later -- it was Mother's Day 1993 -- she had one drop of Corton Charlemagne placed on her lips and she smiled.
Today I'm sitting here teaching her how to solve simple algebraic equations. Her love of math must come from her mother's side. When she's done we'll go play catch or maybe ride bikes. How time does fly oh my oh my.
However now I can use reserved entities in my posts like this <Yowza!> Thanks, Jim! © I really appreciate all you do for all of us.
Thursday, Apr 24, 2003
Life Gets in the Way Sometimes
Interruptions galore prevent posting: I got a job offer out of the blue. It involves wine sales and there's a lot of backgound research to do. That and other real-world commitments have sharply reduced the time left for posting and reading alike -- it's usually late when I get home. Plus my internal doctor ordered a break from mideast coverage. My hunch is no war with Syria but President Chavez of Venezuela may want to stay on his toes.
I do need to write, so I'll get back to looking outside my window once the film company's giant tractor-trailers move out of the parking lot outside and give me back the view of the five-storey brick wall that lies behind.Then I'll try to keep up with the changing seasons.
Reading Gunter Grass' Crabwalk late at night. The plot has a web hook: revanchist youths post coded messages online, while the real-life holocaust denier Ernst Zundel stirs the pot. But it's the wry Grass humor that keeps me reading, his endless tragi-comedy of the Pomeranian coast. At its heart is the torpedoing of a refugee-laden German liner in January 1945 by a Russian sub. It was by far the worst maritime disaster ever (with over 9000 dead in the ice-cold Baltic). Due to poorly designed life-preservers, corpses floated upside down, an image that haunts one of the few survivors. Yet as a character observes "it still seems as though nothing can top the Titanic, as if the Wilhelm Gustloff had never existed, as if there were no room for another maritime disaster..." Ah, the sweet Godardian victory of Hollywood over history.
Gotta go work. Will lurk even when I can't post.
Friday, Apr 18, 2003
Mistakes Were Made
An government investigation in Northern Ireland into the murders of two Catholics, one a well-known lawyer, has shown collusion between "security forces" and Protestant death squads.
The latest report, called Stevens Three, found that members of the RUC and Army colluded with the largest loyalist paramilitary group, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), to murder Catholics. Its key findings were:Criminal prosecutions may follow, or not. The war against terror covers a multitude of sins.
Actions or omissions by security forces led to deaths of innocent people
Murders of solicitor Pat Finucane and student Adam Lambert could have been prevented.
Collusion in both murders of Pat Finucane and Adam Lambert
Government minister was compromised in House of Commons
Three official inquiries wilfully obstructed and misled...
...The Stevens' investigating teams found obstruction and even harassment from both the Army and elements of the RUC's Special Branch. Sir John said a fire at their offices in 1990 was arson and that throughout their inquiries, they were spied on and betrayed by police and Army colleagues."
Wednesday, Apr 16, 2003
Count the Dead
"Burial of the dead must be carried out individually if possible and must be preceded by a careful examination in order to confirm death and establish identity. The burials should be honorable and, if possible, according to the rites of the religion to which the deceased belonged. Graves must be properly maintained, with adequate record keeping, so that they may be found later. (Convention I, Art. 17)Hmm "...adequate record keeping" suggests a full reckoning. But note that there's no mention of the civilian dead. So do combatant powers have to account for enemy casualties? In Ezekiel 39:12 the Israelites spend seven months counting the dead of Gog and Magog. Then again, there are many things a victorious power is not required obliged to do: protecting cultural assets from looters comes to mind.
The above guidelines also apply to dead prisoners of war (Convention III, Art. 120) and dead internees. (Convention IV, 130)
I'm perplexed by the Pentagon's refusal to count the Iraqi dead. I mean, I know the reason given: in Vietnam daily "body counts" proved to be wildly overstated, so now they would rather refuse to give any number than be later proved wrong. And yes, it is hard to tell apart civilians, guerillas and soldiers.
But that's not a reason, that's more like squeamishness, or pique. Anyway, overestimating "kills" happens all the time in wartime: we can deal with it. For instance, RAF fighter pilots claimed many more Luftwaffe planes shot down than were flying during the Battle of Britain. But historians have been able to get pretty accurate counts nevertheless.
And of course, proper respect for the enemy dead long precedes the Hague and Geneva Conventions: Achilles was punished by the gods for his abusive treatment of the body of Hector.
So maybe it counting them up would be a good thing to do, even if the rules of war don't spell it out for us.
Tuesday, Apr 15, 2003
Next Time We Buy Airbus
An new FBI spy scandal -- call it the Leung Affair -- has been bubbling under the headlines over the past week. Now comes paydirt:
The National Security Agency, the supersecret eavesdropping agency, working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other intelligence organizations, led an operation to plant bugs in a Boeing 767 used by the president of China while it was in the United States for refitting, officials said. The listening devices were quickly discovered, and the Chinese government disclosed the incident early last year.
United States officials have never previously acknowledged the bugging operation, and the Bush administration still publicly declines to comment.
Intelligence officials say they are trying to determine whether the Chinese found out about the operation as a result of an F.B.I. security breach that was disclosed last week with the arrest of Katrina Leung, who officials described as a Chinese double agent, and James J. Smith, a former F.B.I. agent in Los Angeles who was her contact at the bureau.