A Military History of France, Resurrected

I had this webpage up between 2003 and 2007.  You can see it at http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/holybook/articles/france.html .  Then in 2007 I took it down, because the French had elected a president who likes us.  Who would have thought the day would come when we had a French president who acted American, and an American president who acted French?

Well, Nicholas Sarkozy failed, like so many other European leaders, to straighten out the continent’s economic mess, so last Sunday the French elected a socialist to replace him.  Copycats!

I can’t remember a socialist head of state who was pro-American, so I’m putting the page back up.  Read and enjoy, if you haven’t seen it on another blog already.

 

A Military History of France

 

In February 2003 the following piece started traveling the e-mail and blog circuit, claiming that the lousy French military record was the real reason why French President Jacques Chirac refused to fight terrorism. This may be true, but he also apparently liked Iraqi dinars more than US dollars, judging from how much France invested in Iraq ($60 billion before we got involved). The original author is unknown; here it is, with some corrections and additions from me:

Gallic Wars – Lost. In a war whose ending foreshadows the next 2,000 years of French history, France is conquered by, of all people, an Italian. The only two French heroes in this conflict are Vercingetorix, who won a small battle before losing the big one, and Asterix–a cartoon character! (58-51 B.C.)

(Note: In November 2005 I learned that Albert Uderzo, the author of Asterix, had declared his opposition to the US invasion of Iraq by writing a thinly disguised story against it, Asterix and the Falling Sky. Asterix has been my favorite comic strip for more than thirty years, because it’s a fun way to learn ancient history, but I don’t think I’m going to buy this book. The last time Asterix poked fun at Americans, in Asterix and the Great Crossing, the jokes were so polite that even Americans could smile at them.

Battle of Chalons – Won. Attila the Hun invades France, going farther west than any other Asiatic conqueror, before he is stopped by a coalition led by another Italian. This leads to the First Rule of French Warfare: "France’s armies are victorious only when not led by a Frenchman." (451 A.D.)

Various Wars of the Merovingian and Carolingian kings – Mostly won, but while the Frankish kingdom was based in France, the kings were really German, so this is another case of the First Rule in action. The most talked-about battle, however, was a defeat–the ambush of Roland, one of Charlemagne’s knights, by the Basques. Appropriately, the French made this a popular literature subject for the rest of the Middle Ages. (5th-9th centuries A.D.)

Viking Invasions – Lost, and lost, and lost. Finally the French buy off the Vikings by giving them Normandy to live in. This is one of the few land-for-peace deals that actually worked.(9th-10th centuries A.D.)

Norman Conquest of England – Won, mainly because the Normans were not fullblooded French but Viking-French hybrids (see the First Rule and the previous entry). (1066)

The Crusades – Mostly lost. French kings participated in four of them (the 2nd, 3rd, 7th and 8th). They walked out of the Third Crusade before the fighting started, and lost the other three.(1096-1291)

Hundred Years War – Mostly lost, saved at last by a female schizophrenic who faithfully followed the First Rule of French Warfare (see above). A few years after the war began, the French exported the Black Death to England. And they have the nerve to complain about British beef. (1337-1453)

Battle of Nicopolis – Lost. The French and Hungarians march into the Balkans to drive out the Turks, but only the Hungarians come back. France learns the hard way that while perfect observance of the code of chivalry may get minstrels to write songs and poems about you (see Roland above), it won’t help you win battles. (1396)

Burgundian-French War – Won. Swiss mercenaries save the day by killing the Duke of Burgundy. This creates the Second Rule of French Warfare: "France only wins when someone else does most of the fighting for them." (1474-1477)

Italian Wars of the Renaissance – Lost. France becomes the first and only country to lose two wars against the Italians. (1494-1559)

Wars of Religion – France goes 0-5-4 against the Huguenots (French Protestants). (late 16th-early 17th century)

Thirty Years War – France is technically not a participant, because this started out as a war between Germans, but manages to get invaded anyway. Claims a tie because her Swedish partner won. (1618-1648)

War of Devolution – Tied. Frenchmen take to wearing red flowerpots as chapeaux. (1667-1678)

The Dutch War – Tied. Dutch tulip growers turn out to be tougher than expected. (1672-1678)

War of the Grand Alliance (also called War of the Augsburg League and King William’s War) – Tied. Four ties in a row cause deluded Frogophiles to label the seventeenth century as the height of French military power. (1688-1697)

War of the Spanish Succession – Lost. The war also gave the French their first taste of a Marlborough, which they have loved ever since. (1701-1714)

War of the Quadruple Alliance – Won, with help from the British, Dutch and Austrians (remember the Second Rule). (1718-1720)

War of the Polish Succession – Tied. (1733-1735)

War of the Austrian Succession – Tied. (1740-1748)

French and Indian War (called the Seven Years War in Europe) – Lost. Britain got Canada and India in one of its most lop-sided victories ever. (1754-1763)

American Revolution – France claims a win, though the English colonists saw far more action. Later on, Americans would see the French make heavy use of the Second Rule, and call it the "de Gaulle Syndrome." (1775-1783)

French Revolution – Won, primarily due the fact that the opponent was also French. (1789-1795)

The Napoleonic Wars – Lost. Temporary victories (remember the First Rule!) due to leadership of a Corsican, who ended up being no match for a British footwear designer. (1796-1815)

Greek War of Independence – Won. France sits out most of the war, then jumps in when Britain and Russia intervene. The Second Rule of French Warfare strikes again. (1821-1829)

Crimean War – Won. Defeated the primitive Russian army, as partners of the advanced British army. Also, another Napoleon (III) was leading the French at this point, so both the First and Second Rules apply here. (1853-1856)

Second War of Italian Unification – Won, but claimed as a tie. Napoleon III defeats the Austrians twice, then decides to cut and run, leaving the Italians with only half the land he had promised them. (1859)

Mexican-French War – Lost, and the Mexicans have been celebrating Cinco de Mayo ever since. (1862-1867)

The Franco-Prussian War – Lost. Germany first plays the role of drunk frat boy to France’s ugly girl home alone on a Saturday night. (1870-1871)

Colonial Wars in Africa and Indochina – Won, primarily because France used the Foreign Legion, whose soldiers are not French. However, both the Vietnamese and the Algerians would provide a payback later on. (1858-1912)

Boxer Rebellion – Won. Together with the British, Germans, Russians, Japanese, Italians, Austrians and Americans, the French beat the sabre-wielding Chinese Boxers and Manchus. (1900)

World War I – Tied and on the way to losing, France is saved by the United States. Thousands of French women find out what it’s like to not only sleep with a winner, but one who doesn’t call her "Fraulein." Sadly, widespread use of condoms by American forces forestalls any improvement in the French bloodline. (1914-1918)

World War II – Lost. Hitler and the German army sleep soundly through the winter after conquering Poland, then arouse themselves to conquer France in six weeks. Hitler dances in front of the Eiffel Tower, while the French command staff retreats to Algeria, to institute a crash language program that teaches French soldiers how to say "I surrender" and "We surrender" in German. Four years later, the French are liberated by the United States, Canada and Britain, just as they finish learning the Horst Wessel Song. De Gaulle of it all . . . (1939-1945)

First Indochina War – Lost. French forces plead sickness, take to bed with the Dien Bien Flu. Then France passes the Vietnamese problem to the United States, proving that misery loves company. (1946-1954)

Algerian Rebellion – Lost. Loss marks the first defeat of a western army by a non-Turkic Moslem force since the Crusades, and produces the First Rule of Moslem Warfare: "We can always beat the French." This rule had already gone into the military manuals of the Italians, Japanese, Germans, English, Dutch, Mexicans, Vietnamese and Eskimos. (1954-1962)

Suez Canal Crisis – Tied. France, along with Britain and Israel, are forced to withdraw from Egypt, even though there was no military defeat. (1956)

1998 World Cup – Won. France surprises everyone by beating Brazil, the perennial favorite. This doesn’t count as a military victory, but is included to show that victory is possible. Now, about Lance Armstrong and the Tour de France . . .

War on Terror – France resents being left out of George W. Bush’s "Axis of Evil," and settles for membership in the "Axis of Weasels," along with Germany, Belgium and Russia. Then, keeping in mind its recent history, France surrenders to the Moslems just to be safe. Attempts to surrender to the Vietnamese ambassador fail after he takes refuge in a McDonald’s. (2001-)

"Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without an accordion. You just leave a lot of useless, noisy baggage behind."–Jed Babbin, former US Deputy Undersecretary of Defense

The Xenophile Historian Newsletter, #20

If you are on my e-mail list, expect to see this in your inbox very soon.

 

The Xenophile Historian Newsletter, #20
( http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/ )

Greetings once again to all my loyal readers!  Charles Kimball is here, to give you the latest news on my world history website.  Currently I’m still in Danbury, Connecticut.  Except for a visit back to my wife and home in Kentucky at Christmas, I have been here for nine and a half months.  Originally the job I’ve been working here was only supposed to last for six months, but I got the extension I was expecting last December.  Since then work has been slower — far less overtime than in 2011 — so I’m expecting to return to Kentucky when June rolls around.  And going through the winter here wasn’t too bad, either; it was an unusually mild season, with only two days when it snowed enough to require shoveling.  In the meantime my father has just moved from Florida to Kentucky, so he can spend the rest of his days near us, so life at home has gotten more interesting.

======================================

First of all, while my real life experience continues north of the Mason & Dixon Line, I am still writing about history South of the Border.  Now the third chapter in my Latin American history series is available.  Going from 1650 to 1830, this chapter covers the second half of the colonial era, culminating with the struggles in the early nineteenth century that freed Latin America from Spain and Portugal.  I uploaded it last January, but it took until now to correct some ommissions, add a footnote here and there, and make it a better overall narrative.

This history paper is divided into three parts, with the following subheadings:

Part I ( http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/latinam/la03a.html )

A Hollow Empire
The Jesuit Experiment
Caribbean Contention, Part 1
The Golden Age of Piracy
The Darien Scheme
Caribbean Contention, Part 2
The Settlement of Mexico’s Northern Frontier
The Seven Years War and the American Revolution In Latin America

Part II ( http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/latinam/la03b.html )

Growing Trouble between Spain And Her Colonies
Brazil: Movement Inland, and to the South
The Haitian Revolution
The Liberation of Latin America Begins
Bolivar and San Martin
The Haitian Monarchy

Part III ( http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/latinam/la03c.html )

Bolivar’s Campaigns
Early Paraguay: Marxism Before Marx
Over the Andes
Gran Columbia
The First Mexican Empire
Brazil: Independent By Accident
All Roads End At Ayacucho
The Falklands Dispute Begins
The Shattered Dream

======================================

Because the previous newsletter went out six months ago (a short time by a history book or website’s standards), I only have three other additions that are big enough to report here.  First, because we have not won the War on Terror by brute force alone, I wrote about using some new tactics against the terrorists, namely descrediting them through ridicule.  I also suggested draining their finances through lawsuits, because guns, bombs and knives cannot be used as a defense against that.

http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/holybook/articles/NewTactics.html

The second new page involves a book I recently read on current events, trends and demography, "How Civilizations Die: (And Why Islam Is Dying Too)," by David Goldman.  Goldman also writes under the pen name of Spengler, after Oswald Spengler, the nineteenth-century historian, and his book contained excerpts that he called "Spengler’s Laws," which are his rules on how history works.  In 2007 I posted my own theory of history, at http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/history.html#Summary , and I found Spengler’s ideas close enough to mine that I thought it is worth the effot for readers to compare them.  Therefore I have reposted Spengler’s Laws, so they can all be seen in one place.

http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/holybook/articles/Spengler.html

And finally, a recent DNA study of Madagascar’s population is revising our theories on how that island’s community got started.  In a nutshell, the first Malagasy probably came from Indonesia on only one boat, and they arrived later than we thought, around 830 A.D.  This has forced me to rewrite the section in my African hisotry series where I discussed that, and I moved it from Chapter 4 to Chapter 5.

http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/africa/af05.html#Madagascar

======================================

What will go up next?  I’m working on the next chapter of the Latin American history project, of course.  Chapter 4 is about one-third done, according to my estimates.  It will cover the first fifty-nine years after independence, 1830 to 1889.  I have also decide to expand the first section of my Russian history papers, the part about Russia before the founding of the first Russian state, into a new chapter entitled "Before the Russians."  This will include recent discoveries concerning nomadic tribes like the Scythians, Sarmatians and Khazars.  Maybe I will call this prequel "Chapter 0," so as not to mess up the numbering sequence of the chapters already there.  And there are still plans to update the older papers; hopefully I can report I did some of that next time.

======================================

And that’s the latest website-related news.  If you missed older issues of the newsletter and want to see them, they can be downloaded in a zip file from
http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/download/index.html .  And the links below go to topics I mentioned in previous issues, that are still valid.  Please visit them, if you haven’t already:

The Xenohistorian Weblog, this site’s official blog.

http://xenohistorian.wordpress.com

My world history textbook, "A Biblical Interpretation of World History."

http://www.rosedogbookstore.com/biinofwohi.html

http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/worldhis/index.html

My LegalShield (formerly Pre-Paid Legal) website:

https://www.prepaidlegal.com/hub/charlesskimball

 

Take Care and God Bless,

Charles Scott Kimball

=======================

You received this newsletter because you subscribed to my mailing list, provided by http://www.yourmailinglistprovider.com/ .  It comes out 2-3 times a year, when there have been major changes to the website.  I AM NOT in the spam business, so when you subscribed here, your address was not sent to any third parties.  If for any reason you wish to unsubscribe, or would like to subscribe a new e-mail address, go to my homepage ( http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/ ), scroll down about four fifths of the way to the bottom, enter your address where it says "Enter your e-mail address to receive the site newsletter!" and hit the "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" button.

Madagascar’s Origins Revisited

Back when I was writing my African history series, in 2004 and 2005, I included what we knew about how Madagascar got started.  Well, that has all just changed.  Yesterday I read an article that told of DNA testing being done on today’s Malagasy people.  The result is that all Malagasy are descended from only thirty Southeast Asian women, who arrived about 1,200 years ago.  This prompted me to rewrite the first section about Madagascar, and move it from Chapter 4 to Chapter 5.  Here is how it reads now; a link to the aforementioned article is included.

The Settlement of Madagascar

The human race settled the continental portion of Africa, Asia and Europe before it settled most of the world’s islands, and it is easy to understand why; you need some sort of water craft to get to the islands. Madagascar was settled relatively late in history, by the boldest sailors of the ancient world. These were the Malayo-Polynesians, who crossed the Pacific by trusting in things of nature like birds, ocean currents and stars to guide them.

Regarding how Madagascar got started, most history texts will tell you that at an uncertain date between 1 and 500 A.D., one or more outrigger canoes left Southeast Asia, crossed the Indian Ocean and landed on Madagascar. They brought with them root crops like sweet potatoes and taro, introducing them to Africa in the process. Rice, bananas, plantains, coconuts, sugar cane and spices may have come from them, too; all of these crops are Asian in origin, though widely grown in Africa today. That was all that could be said on the subject until recently, when language and DNA analysis entered the picture. We now believe these Malays launched their boats from Borneo, because the language and DNA of Borneo’s southeastern tribes most resembles that of the Malagasy. A more recent comparison of mitochrondrial DNA samples from 266 modern Malagasy indicated that they were descended from just thirty women. Because the trading vessels of Indonesian kingdoms like Srivijaya could carry up to 500 people, this means only one boatload of Indonesians was needed to colonize Madagascar. Of course the boat must have also carried men, and there could have been some women who did not have any children, but because mitochondrial DNA is inherited only from the mother, evidence for them will not show up in such tests. The tests also suggested that the settlers arrived much later than expected, most likely around 830 A.D.

With navigation being what it was in those days, it is unlikely the settlers knew where they were headed; they may have been blown off course, and decided it was safer to keep going than to try returning. Or they could have been refugees, fleeing after Srivijaya conquered their homeland. After 1000 A.D., their descendants did some trading with the mainland, and some Bantus came to Madagascar, so today’s Malagasy are half Asian and half Black African.

East Africans have legends about a tribe named the Waqwaq, which used to live on the Kenyan or Tanzanian coast. Their description of the Waqwaq sounds very much like the Malagasy, suggesting that the Malay explorers first landed on the mainland, and stayed there for a while before sailing south to Madagascar. If this is true, all they left behind on the mainland were their root vegetables.

The Malagasy themselves claim that more than 2,000 years ago, a people called the Vazimba lived on their island. They describe them as “white pygmies,” and act with extraordinary care when near a very old tomb, out of fear of what the spirits of the Vazimba might do. Unfortunately it’s not clear if the Vazimba are Madagascar’s first Malayo-Polynesian settlers, or an indigenous race that lived there until the outriggers arrived.

 

Remember the Alamo, Forget the Medina

At least that is how history has treated two battles that were crucial to the formation of Texas. Last Sunday I read a news story about how the battle of Medina had been located south of San Antonio. Mind you, I had never heard of the battle of Medina, but according to the article, it was the bloodiest battle in Texas history. Well, it turns out all a lot of other people did not remember the battle of Medina, either. Here is the article in case you want to read it yourself:

Battle of Medina Site Found, Geologist Says

in January you may remember I completed the third chapter of my Latin American history project, covering the years from 1650 to 1830. Now I am doing the research to compose Chapter 4, and in doing so I found out that I should have included more details on what was happening in Mexico between 1824 and 1830. That included an unsuccessful revolt in Texas in 1812-1813, which American settlers took part in, a full 23 years before the Alamo. Therefore I plan to write a few paragraphs, to fill in that gap in chapter 3. For the battle of Medina, I have written a new footnote already.  Here it is:

The Mexican rebellion reached Texas in 1812, when Don José Bernardo Maximiliano Gutiérrez de Lara, a lieutenant colonel in Hidalgo’s army, traveled to Washington DC and Philadelphia, to solicit US aid for an anti-Spanish revolt in Texas. The federal government refused to support the venture, but he found 150 enthusiastic recruits in Louisiana for his “Republican Army of the North”; they were led by Augustus William Magee, an army lieutenant who resigned his commission so he could join Gutierrez. The army adopted a green flag as its banner, marched into Texas, took Nacogdoches in August 1812, and Goliad in November. Then Spanish royalists arrived on the scene and besieged the rebel army in Goliad’s fort, the Presidio la Bahia, for four months. Magee died during the siege and the Spaniards unexpectedly withdrew; Magee’s successor, Samuel Kemper, pursued them to San Antonio and captured it (April 1, 1813).

By this time the Army of the North had swelled into a mixed force of 1,400 Tejanos, Yankees, Indians, and anti-royalist Spaniards. After they took San Antonio, relations between the different groups in the army broke down. The Anglos felt that the Spanish governor of San Antonio was a valiant opponent who had surrendered honorably, but instead Gutierrez proclaimed Texas an independent republic, and organized a tribunal, which found the governor, his military commander and twelve staff members guilty of treason against the Hidalgo movement, and sentenced them to death. Kemper pleaded with Gutierrez to exile or lock up the prisoners, so Gutierrez had them taken outside the city, leading the Americans to think the prisoners were being escorted out of Texas–but the guards executed them six miles beyond the city limits. Many Americans were so shocked by this act that they deserted and returned to Louisiana (some stopped at the execution site to give the bodies of the victims a Christian burial). In June 1813 Gutierrez beat off the first royalist attempt to retake San Antonio; in August he was ousted in a coup, and José Alvarez de Toledo y Dubois took his place. Toledo soon proved to be a poor military commander, for a new royalist army of 1,830 men had assembled at Laredo, and was marching on San Antonio.

Toledo chose to meet the royalists at the Medina River, twenty miles south of San Antonio, so the city wouldn’t get damaged. In the resulting battle (August 18, 1813), most of the republican army was annihilated (less than a hundred soldiers got away), while the royalists lost only 55 men. Among the dead was Peter Sides, a 63-year-old veteran of the American Revolution.  Another participant, on the Spanish side, was a nineteen-year-old soldier we’ll be hearing a lot from soon, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna; no doubt the battle encouraged him to think it was all right to mess with Texas.  After the battle the Spanish army spent several days hunting down and executing enemy troops that survived, and the first Texas republic was no more. Thus, the battle of Medina was the bloodiest battle in Texas history, but it has been mostly forgotten, because it was overshadowed by the War of 1812, the Napoleonic Wars, the Latin American Revolutions, and the far more famous battle of the Alamo, twenty-three years later. In fact, the exact site of the battle was only located recently.

The Mad Spammers Have Struck Again!

I had to close down the comment section for the message I posted on March 11, 2011, “9 Things That Will Disappear In Our Lifetime.”  It is the most popular message from 2011, and one of the most popular messages on this entire blog.  However, it also attracted spam, presumably for the same reason.  Earlier today I deleted six of the most recent comments in response to that message, because they were nothing but spam, advertising get-rich-quick schemes and online stores.  Thanks a lot, spammers!  You just ruined another part of the World Wide Web for innocent web-surfers.

Spengler’s Laws

Yesterday I completed the newest page on The Xenophile Historian.  You can see it here.

 

In the fall of 2011 I read David P. Goldman’s provocative book, How Civilizations Die: (And Why Islam Is Dying Too). The premise behind the book is that because of falling birthrates, world population will reach its peak in the middle of the twenty-first century, and then go into a long decline after that. For Europe, Russia and Japan, the decline has already begun; within a few decades, the Islamic nations will also level off, and then their communities will shrink even faster. In fact, according to Goldman’s view, the two modern nations with the healthiest birthrate are the United States and Israel, so the future is for them, if they can survive the present.

Goldman writes a column using the name of Spengler, after the nineteenth-century historian and all-around pessimist. To spice up his book, he inserts one of his rules of history from time to time, what he calls “Spengler’s Universal Laws.” Now when I wrote my own theory of history, I finished by listing the ten most important trends of world history. Spengler’s laws turned out to be very compatible with what I believe, so for your benefit, here they all are in one place:

• Spengler’s Universal Law #1: A man or a nation at the brink of death does not have a “rational self-interest.”
• Spengler’s Universal Law #2: When the nations of the world see their demise not as a distant prospect over the horizon, but as a foreseeable outcome, they perish of despair.
• Spengler’s Universal Law #3: Contrary to what you may have heard from the sociologists, the human mortality rate is still 100 percent. (Even Jesus did not get off this world alive.–CK)
• Spengler’s Universal Law #4: The history of the world is the history of mankind’s search for immortality.
• Spengler’s Universal Law #5: Humankind cannot bear mortality without the hope of immortality.
• Spengler’s Universal Law #6 (courtesy of Warren Buffett): You don’t know who’s naked until the tide goes out.
• Spengler’s Universal Law #7: Political models are like automobile models: you can’t have them unless you can pay for them.
• Spengler’s Universal Law #8: Wars are won by destroying the enemy’s will to fight. A nation is never really beaten until it sells its women.
• Spengler’s Universal Law #9: A country isn’t beaten until it sells its women, but it’s damned when its women sell themselves.
• Spengler’s Universal Law #10: There’s a world of difference between a lunatic and a lunatic who has won the lottery.
• Spengler’s Universal Law #11: At all times and in all places, the men and women of every culture deserve each other.
• Spengler’s Universal Law #12: Nothing is more dangerous than a civilization that has only just discovered it is dying.
• Spengler’s Universal Law #13: Across epochs and culture, blood has flown in inverse proportion to the hope of victory.
• Spengler’s Universal Law #14: Stick around long enough, and your civilization will turn into a theme park. (The Romans treated Greece and Egypt this way.–CK)
• Spengler’s Universal Law #15: When we worship ourselves, eventually we become the god that failed.
• Spengler’s Universal Law #16: Small civilizations perish for any number of reasons, but great civilizations die only when they no longer want to live.
• Spengler’s Universal Law #17: If you stay in the same place and do the same thing long enough, some empire eventually will overrun you.
• Spengler’s Universal Law #18: Maybe we would be better off if we never had been born, but who has such luck? Not one in a thousand. (Compare this with #3 above.–CK)
• Spengler’s Universal Law #19: Pagan faith, however powerful, turns into Stygian nihilism when disappointed.
• Spengler’s Universal Law #20: Democracy only gives people the kind of government they deserve.
• Spengler’s Universal Law #21: If you believe in yourself, you’re probably whoring after strange gods.
• Spengler’s Universal Law #22: Optimism is cowardice, at least when the subject is Muslim democracy.
• Spengler’s Universal Law #23: The best thing you can do for zombie cultures is, don’t be one of them. (I believe a “zombie culture” is the same thing as the dysfunctional cultures I talked about on this page.–CK)

Source: http://ericsjackson.blogspot.com/2011/09/spenglers-universal-laws.html

What Happened on February 29?

Happy Leap Year Day!  On The Xenophile Historian, I have a feed that reports on the historical events that happened on that particular day.  Today, however, it had no entries; I guess the hosts at Bravenet.com never planned for a leap year, which is odd because the feed has existed for more than four years.  To make up for that, I did an online search to find historical events that happened on this day, and got these results: 
 

1288 – Scotland established this day as one when a woman could propose marriage to a man! If he refused, he was required to pay a fine.

1504 – Christopher Columbus uses a lunar eclipse to frighten hostile Jamaican natives into providing his crew with food.

1528 – "Patrick Hamilton, student of Parid, Louvain, St Andrews, Marburg, Abbot of Fearn, burned at St Andrew for heresy, the first Reformation martyr in Scotland"

1692 – "Sarah Good & Tituba, an Indian servant, accused of witchcraft, Salem"

1696 – English ex-premier Earl Danby accused of corruption

1704 – The town of Deerfield, MA was raided on this date by French Canadians and Indians who were trying to retrieve their church bell that had been shipped from France. The bell was to hang in the Canadian Indian’s village church. Neither the raiders nor the residents of Deerfield were aware that the bell had been stolen from the ship. The Deerfield folks had purchased the bell from a privateer, unaware that it belonged to the Indian congregation. Although 47 people were killed in the incident, we could say that the 120 captured were saved by the bell.

1712 – "February 29 is followed by February 30 in Sweden, in a move to abolish the Swedish calendar for a return to the Old style."

1720 – "Queen Ulrika Eleonora of Sweden abdicates in favour of her husband, who becomes King Frederick I."

1784 – Marquis de Sade transferred from Vincennes fortress to the Bastille

1796 – "Jay’s Treaty proclaimed, settles some differences with England"

1816 – Dutch (King) Willem II marries Russian grand-duchess Anna Paulowna

1848 – Neufchatel declares independence of Switzerland (From who?  I thought they had been independent since 1648, and neutral since 1815.–CK)

1856 – Hostilities in the Crimean War cease

1860 – The first electric tabulating machine — the forerunner of the calculator — was invented by Herman Hollerith. We think it was unfortunate that Mr. Hollerith chose to make his invention on Leap Day, causing the machine to only calculate numbers divisible by four.

1864 – "American Civil War: Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid fails – Plans to free 15,000 Union soldiers being held near Richmond, Virginia are thwarted."

1880 – Gotthard railway tunnel between Switzerland & Italy opens

1892 – Britain & US sign treaty on seal hunting in Bering Sea.

1892 – St. Petersburg, Florida incorporated.

1904 – On this day in Washington, DC, a seven-man commission was created to hasten the construction of the Panama Canal. Work began May 4th. It’s always hard to get something going by committee; so we guess that’s why it took seven men two months to get the work going.

1908 – Dutch scientists produce solid helium

1916 – "Child labor: In South Carolina, the minimum working age for factory, mill, and mine workers is raised from twelve to fourteen years old."

1920 – Budapest, Hungary: Miklos Horthy de Nagybanya became the Regent of Hungary just six months after leading a counterrevolution. He probably gained control because everyone else was distracted while trying to pronounce his name.

1932 – Failed coup attempt by fascist Lapua Movement in Finland

1932 – "TIME magazine features eccentric American politician William ""Alfalfa"" Murray on its cover after Murray stated his intention to run for President of the United States."

1932 – Bing Crosby and the Mills Brothers teamed up to record "Shine" for Brunswick Records.

1936 – Fanny Brice brought her little girl character "Baby Snooks" to radio on "The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air" on CBS Radio. Miss Brice presented the character and later sang "My Man" on the program. She was 44 at the time, and was known as America’s "Funny Girl" long before Barbra Streisand brought her even greater fame and notoriety nearly 30 years later.

1936 – FDR signs 2nd neutrality act

1940 – Finland initiates Winter War peace negotiations

1940 – "Gone with the Wind" wins 8 Oscars.  For her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind, Hattie McDaniel becomes the first African American to win an Academy Award.

1940 – In a ceremony held in Berkeley, California, due to the war, physicist Ernest Lawrence receives his 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics from the Sweden’s Consul General in San Francisco.

1944 – 5 leaders of Indonesia Communist Party sentenced to death

1944 – The invasion of the Admiralty Islands began on this date as U.S. General Douglas MacArthur led his forces in "Operation Brewer".  Troops surged onto Los Negros, following a month of Allied advances in the Pacific.

1944 – The first woman appointed secretary of a national political party was named to the Democratic National Committee. Dorothy McElroy Vredenburgh of Alabama began her new appointment this day.

1944 – The Office of Defense Transportation, for the second year, restricted attendance at the Kentucky Derby to residents of the Louisville area to prevent a railroad traffic burden during wartime. We imagine that horses were allowed in from elsewhere, though…

1948 – "Stern-group bomb Cairo-Haifa train, 27 British soldiers died"

1952 – New York City pedestrians were told when to walk and when not to as four signs were installed at 44th Street and Broadway in Times Square. Each sign flashed "Walk" for 22 seconds, then "Don’t Walk" for ten seconds before the "Don’t Walk" turned red for 58 seconds more. We’re told that eight out of ten people obeyed the signs … not bad for New Yorkers who will walk right through one door of a car and out the other to get across the street quickly.

1952 – Dick Button wins his 5th consecutive world figure skating title

1952 – The island of Heligoland is restored to German authority.

1956 – Islamic Republic established in Pakistan

1956 – President Eisenhower announces he will seek a 2nd term

1960 – A report from the White House stated that America’s kids were getting too fat! I’ll have a cheeseburger, fries and a shake.

1960 – "An earthquake in Morocco kills over 3,000 people and nearly destroys Agadir in the southern part of the country."

1960 – Hugh Hefner opens the first Playboy Club in Chicago.

1960 – JFK makes "missile gap" a Presidential campaign issue

1964 – Dawn Fraser got her 36th world record this day. The Australian swimmer was timed at 58.9 seconds in the 100-meter freestyle in Sydney, Australia.

1964 – The United States was in the grip of Beatlemania! "I Want to Hold Your Hand", by the lads from Liverpool, was in its 5th week at #1 on the pop charts. It stayed there until March 21, when it was replaced by "She Loves You", which was replaced by "Can’t Buy Me Love",  which was finally replaced by "Hello Dolly", by Louis Armstrong, on May 9, 1964. 14 straight weeks of #1 stuff by the Beatles! Yeah, yeah, yeah…

1964 – Hang on to your racquets on this one, sports fans: A shuttlecock drive record was set by Frank Rugani this day. Mr. Rugani slammed the birdie 79-feet, 8-1/2 inches in a test at San Jose, CA. A giant leap for badminton. A little leap for all mankind.

1964 – LBJ reveals US secretly developed the A-11 jet fighter

1964 – North Carolina high school basketball teams play to 56-54 score in 13 overtime

1968 – The Beatles’ "Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band" wins a Grammy

1968 – Dr. Jocelyn Bell Burnell announces the discovery of the first pulsar (a blinking star).

1972 – Hank Aaron becomes first baseball player to sign for $200,000 a year

1972 – Columnist Jack Anderson discloses Dita Beard (ITT) memo indicating antitrust charges were dropped for $400,000 contribution to Republican Party

1972 – "Vietnamization" – South Korea withdraws 11,000 of its 48,000 troops from Vietnam.

1972 – Swimmer Mark Spitz was named the 1971 James E. Sullivan Memorial Trophy winner as the top amateur athlete in America.

1972 – Karen and Richard Carpenter received a gold record for the hit single "Hurting Each Other". When they tore the golden platter from its protective frame and plunked it on the player, they heard, "Hurt So Bad", by Little Anthony and the Imperials. They were so upset by this that they ran out to the back yard and used the record as a Frisbee for the rest of the day. (Some of the preceding is based upon actual fact.)

1980 – Gordie Howe becomes first NHL player to score 800 career goals

1980 – Michael Bracey ends 59 hours 55 minutes trapped in an elevator, England

1980 – Yigal Allon, former Israeli foreign minister and supporter of Israeli independence, dies at age 61.

1984 – Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau announces he is leaving office after serving over 15 years.

1988 – Mark Greatbatch scores 107 vs England on Test Cricket debut

1988 – Nazi document implicates Kurt Waldheim in WWII deportations

1988 – NYC Mayor Koch calls Reagan a "WIMP" in the war on drugs

1988 – South African archbishop Desmond Tutu is arrested along with 100 clergymen during a five-day anti-apartheid demonstration in Cape Town

1988 – "Day by Day", a situation comedy, premiered on this date on NBC-TV. It was one of the "yuppie sitcoms" that were all over the TV dial in the late ’80s. This particular one was about a suburban overachieving couple who dropped out and opened up a day-care center in their home to spend more quality time with their children. The quality time lasted just under five months.

1992 – Dawn Coe wins LPGA Women’s Kemper Golf Open

1992 – The Professional Spring Football League begins

1992 – Mr. Big hit it big this day, moving to #1 with, "To Be with You".  It would be the biggest hit in the U.S. for three big weeks.

1996 – A Peruvian Boeing 737 crashes in the Andes, killing all 123 people aboard.

1996 – Daniel Green is convicted of murdering the father of basketball star Michael Jordan during a 1993 holdup, and is sentenced to life in prison.

1996 – Kenya defeats West Indies (all out 93) in Cricket World Cup

1996 – Novelist Joan Collins awarded US $1 million from Random House for breach of contract.

1996 – Soyuz TM-23 lands

2000 – Six year old Dedrick Owens shoots and kills Kayla Rolland, also six years old, at Theo J. Buell Elementary School in Mount Morris Township, Michigan. Rolland is currently the youngest victim of a school shooting.

And if there isn’t something for everybody in the above list, here are some leap year birthday boys and girls.  I just know that if my birthday was on February 29, I’d be a thirteen-year-old grandfather.  How about that!
 
 
Birthday Board: February 29
 
1736 – Ann Lee (religious zealot: founder of Shakerism in U.S.)

1792 – Gioacchino Rossini (operatic composer: The Barber of Seville).  Rossini got today’s Google picture!

1876 – Theodore ‘Theo’ Hardeen (magician)

1904 – Jimmy Dorsey (bandleader: So Rare, Contrasts, June Night)

1904 – Pepper (John) Martin (baseball: St. Louis Cardinals CF)

1920 – Arthur Franz (actor: The Member of the Wedding, Dream No Evil)

1920 – Michele Morgan (Simone Roussel) (actress: The Fallen Idol, Joan of Paris, Bluebeard, Everybody’s Fine)

1920 – Howard Nemerov (Pulitzer Prize-winning poet: Collected Works [1978]; 3rd poet laureate of U.S. [1988-1990])

1924 – Al Rosen (baseball: Cleveland Indians 3rd Baseman)

1928 – Joss Ackland (actor: The Hunt for Red October, The House that                    Dripped Blood, The Sicilian, A Woman Named Jackie)

1936 – Jack Lousma (astronaut)

1936 – Henri Richard (The Pocket Rocket) (hockey player: Montreal Canadiens: 4-time All-Star, played on 11 Stanley Cup champion teams [1955 - 1975])

1940 – Gretchen Christopher (singer: group: The Fleetwoods: Mr. Blue, Come Softly to Me, Tragedy)

1944 – Steve Mingori (baseball)

1944 – John Niland (football: Dallas Cowboys Guard, Super Bowl V, VI)

1948 – Al Clark (football)

1952 – Al Autry (baseball)

1972 – Antonio Sabato, Jr. (actor: Earth 2, Beyond the Law, War of the Robots, Thundersquad)

One Night In Bangkok

My, oh my.  The most recent webpage I posted on The Xenophile Historian is not even two weeks old, but it needs to be updated already.  Did you hear the news story from last Thursday about the Iranian terrorists who tried to bomb Israeli diplomats in Thailand?  Well it turns out they didn’t do just terrorist raids in that country; it also turns out that it was a pleasure trip.  According to the news story that I just read, the Iranian terrorists also visited sex workers while they were in Bangkok.

Now that in itself is not a surprise.  After all, I remember back in the 1980s when the Philippines had a reputation for casual sex, at least around the US bases, Clark Air Force Base and Subic Bay.  However, by the time those bases closed down in the early 1990s, Thailand had replaced the Philippines as the place where any sexual experience could be had for a price.  At any rate, it adds weight to the argument that I made on my page “Unconventional Tactics for Fighting Terrorism,” that the terrorists are not moral crusaders so much as they are perverts who see women as nothing but sex objects.  You may remember how the September 11 hijackers, on the night before their mission, spent their last night not rehearsing or studying the Koran, but partying in the strip clubs of South Florida.  At any rate, this means I may have to add an additional sentence to the page in question, so expect me to rewrite the appropriate paragraph shortly.  And here’s a link to the article I read, so you can read the story for yourself in the meantime.

Thai police: Iranian Terrorists Visited Sex Workers Prior to Arrest.

Unconventional Tactics For Fighting Terrorism

Last May 29, I wrote here about switching to unconventional tactics, to win this unconventional war we are waging against Islamist terrorists.  Now I have expanded those random thoughts into a full article, which you can read here or at this link.

 

 

It has been more than ten years since 9/11. We defeated the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, making it possible to set up democracies in two countries that never had them before. On top of all that, our Navy SEALs bagged the perpetrator of 9/11, Osama bin Laden.

In a conventional war, those would be clear signs that the enemy is losing. Our government and our allies have more resources than the terrorists. We have superior technology; most of the weapons used by terrorists are not made in the countries they come from. It’s a safe bet we’re smarter; how many Americans are willing to blow themselves up to go to Paradise? We even have a better sense of humor, as Martin Bodek pointed out in this 2002 column.

So why hasn’t the other side surrendered yet? Because they have won the war of words so far. The terrorists have succeeded in portraying themselves as tough guys who do not fear death, and are morally upright compared with us. Next to guns, bombs and knives, their favorite weapon is the camera (see the above picture). They have also covered up most of their mistakes, some of which are described below. As Saul Alinsky, the favorite author of radicals and "community organizers" put it: "Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have." Finally, an unconventional war gives them a psychological advantage. Our side has to stop them every time in order to be considered successful, while they only have to get past our defenses once.

Even worse, the governments of the West have played into their hands. Every good story with a conflict also needs a villain; otherwise you get a boring round of philosophical questions about what motivates the other side, or we try to investigate cultural and political trends that can’t really be measured. Sometimes you can make a story more interesting by telling it in an unconventional way (e.g., the science fiction novel Soldier, Ask Not, by Gordon R. Dickson, won a Hugo Award because it was told from the villain’s point of view). Unfortunately, that works in better in literature than it does in real life; most of the time our leaders just paint everything in black and white, describing the heroes as all good and the villains as all bad. Thus, we see terrorist leaders cast as evil geniuses (think of Emperor Palpatine from "Star Wars," Sauron, Goldfinger, Lex Luthor or Doctor Doom), and their followers as loyal henchmen. By making our enemies larger-than-life, we (and the government) tend to over-react to terror attacks, even when they fail. Consequently we go through extensive security checks in airports, because of bumblers like the "underwear bomber." If you’re cynically minded, you could point out that the makers of safety equipment use our fears to generate more sales, and that many politicans use terrorism as an excuse to pass laws which restrict our freedoms even more.

Therefore we are going to have to try some new strategies, besides brute force. One that needs to be used more is making fun of them. Again I’ll quote Alinsky to explain why: "Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage." After all, liberals have been using ridicule against conservatives for the past few years; it is time we on the right tried it against our enemies. Consider these shortcomings the terrorists don’t want you to know:

1. Their leaders may be scary, but most are so stupid and incompetent, that they fail more often than they succeed. In Afghanistan, for example, one out of every two suicide bombers only kills himself. There have even been incidents where the suicide bombers engaged in a "group hug" before going on a mission, and they embraced each other hard enough to set off the explosives! Considering how incompetent our own government acts (e.g., the TSA), it is encouraging whenever the terrorists do something idiotic, to make the job of the authorities easier.

In 2009 the humor site Cracked.com posted a list of five terrorist plots which failed, in ways so unbelievably bad that even you could have done better. Read them and laugh. And if you want more, read Daniel Pipes’ list of stupid terrorists.

2. They aren’t really holy warriors, but hypocrites and perverts. After Osama went into hiding, he used videos to make you think he was a brave warrior holding out in a cave, when he was really living in a luxurious three-story compound in Pakistan, with three of his wives. What’s more, the compound contained marijuana plants and pornography; if Osama wasn’t using them, somebody close to him was.

It has been said that a fish rots from the head down, and Osama’s followers follow his example as well as they can. Random autopsies of the enemy dead in Afghanistan have revealed that a lot of them were opium users. And the typical terrorist is apparently sex-starved, judging from their actions during off-duty hours. Videos have been shot in Afghanistan of Taliban members having sex with cows and donkeys. The 9/11 hijackers did not spend their last night rehearsing their attack, or studying the Koran; instead they were celebrating in the strip clubs of south Florida.

Incidentally, Pakistan’s name means "Land of the Pure," but it leads the world every year in pornographic searches per person. Search engines like Google report that Pakistan produces the most searches using terms like "horse sex," "donkey sex," "rape pictures" and "child sex." Other Moslem countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE are not far behind.

3. They don’t know as much about the modern world as we do. No surprise there, considering that their ultimate goal is to bring back a society that existed in the seventh century A.D. The Israelis are second to nobody when it comes to high-tech innovations; Tel Aviv is one of the world’s top ten cities for producing new hardware and software. Therefore nobody is surprised when Israelis (or Jews from anywhere else) come up with a clever invention, or win a Nobel Prize. In the past week, I have read reports of Israeli hackers taking down Iranian government websites, and posting thousands of Iranian credit card numbers. And the Stuxnet virus, which Israel used to cripple Iran’s nuclear program, was incredibly ingenious. Can anyone imagine the Arabs or Iranians retaliating the same way?

This video shows something else the enemy has no defense against, if they want to keep using telephones.

One of the silliest examples of how terrorists can be both stupid and naive happened when some Algerians tried a cyber-attack on Israel in 2010. Cyber-terrorism doesn’t require the attacker to commit suicide (computers don’t blow up), but that doesn’t mean it is any more likely to succeed if the hacker doesn’t know what he is doing. In this case, the target they chose to attack was not the website of the Israel Defense Forces or the prime minister, but a webpage about Belvoir Fortress, a Crusader stronghold in Israel that dates back to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The webpage is meant to promote tourism to Israel’s archaeological sites, so why the terrorists chose such an irrelevant target is puzzling, even when you know that today’s Arabs are still obsessed with the Crusades. But they didn’t even get their target right; instead they mistook Belvoir Castle in England for Belvoir Fortress, and attacked the castle’s website instead. Belvoir Castle is 2,000 miles away from the Israel, and while the Royalists used it during the English Civil War of the 1640s, it hasn’t played a military role since then; nowadays the main event at the castle is an annual teddy bears’ picnic. Well, we know that Moslems are awfully touchy about teddy bears named Muhammad.

Even when doing something non-violent to help the cause, terrorists have trouble getting it right. In 2005 an Al Qaeda agent, Abu al Tayyeb, sent $35 million to an associate, Mohammad Qasim al Ghamdi, to use for fundraising in the United States. Ghamdi invested $26.7 million of it in an account with R. J. O’Brien & Associates, a brokerage house. Then when choosing which stocks, bonds, etc. to buy with the money, he made so many bad decisions that eight months later he was left with only $6.6 million.

4. When they succeed, their attacks backfire on them. Osama’s biggest mistake was thinking he could kick over the American beehive, and the bees would not try to sting him. That may be true with Canada and the European nations; these days they don’t feel any use of force is justified if they go it alone. However, the United States has a tradition of responding to surprise attacks by hitting the attacker three ways: hard, fast, and continuously. The two best examples of this are well known: the US response to the incidents involving the USS Maine and Pearl Harbor. Moreover, both of those incidents happened when the United States was less prepared for war than it was in 2001, but that did not stop the Americans from winning. It also appears that Osama didn’t pay much attention to movies about attacks on the United States, like "Red Dawn" and "Independence Day." In those stories a common theme is that the Americans fight back, even when the odds against them are hopeless.

The American response to 9/11: from the North . . .

And from the South.

After the Soviet Union pulled its troops out, the United States lost interest in Afghanistan. By 2001, the Taliban had gained control of 90 percent of the country, and it looked like it was only a matter of time before they would have the other 10 percent, too. Meanwhile, under Saddam Hussein, Iraq was the biggest threat to stability in the Middle East, but President Bush wasn’t planning to invade Iraq, either; he faced a recession when he entered the White House, so his priority was getting the United States out of that slump.

All that changed on September 11, 2001. Since then the terrorists have lost two countries that were friendly to them. And a lot them–bin Laden included–would probably be alive today if 9/11 hadn’t taken place. It’s a scandal that the Western media has carefully kept track of how many American and other coalition soldiers were killed, but neglected to ask how many terrorists were killed in return. The best estimate I have heard proposed that there are five to eight dead enemy combatants for every dead American. So if you support or sympathize with the other side, how do you like the score so far? There are more than 300 million U.S. citizens; at this rate, if you want to kill them all, you will have to sacrifice every Moslem man, woman and child to do it.

For more about the shortcomings of our enemies. I recommend you read The Case For Calling Them Nitwits.

Finally, it is possible to strike terrorist organizations in the wallet, using the modern world’s legal system to tie up their finances. An Israeli attorney, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, is having a lot of success doing just that. I bet our enemies understand this form of fighting even less than attacks using high technology. The Middle East gets the credit for inventing the law code, because of ancient kings like Hammurabi in Iraq, but when it comes to lawyers, we are light-years ahead of them. Nowadays, if you can’t beat ‘em, sue them. Former Vice President Dan Quayle once said that the United States had 70 percent of the world’s lawyers; let us put them to work on this worthy pursuit. Since it is their side that has access to almost unlimited
oil wealth, I see lawsuits against them as a well that won’t run dry during my lifetime. Follow the link below to read more about this tactic.

Art of lawfare: the woman who fights terror

© Copyright 2012 Charles Kimball

---

Chapter 3, A New World No More

After seven months of work, the third chapter in my Latin American history series is now available!  Going from 1650 to 1830, this chapter covers the second half of the colonial era, culminating with the struggles in the early nineteenth century that freed Latin America from Spain and Portugal.

This history paper is divided into three parts, with the following subheadings:

Part I

• A Hollow Empire
• The Jesuit Experiment
• Caribbean Contention, Part 1
• The Golden Age of Piracy
• The Darien Scheme
• Caribbean Contention, Part 2
• The Settlement of Mexico’s Northern Frontier
• The Seven Years War and the American Revolution In Latin America

Part II

• Growing Trouble between Spain And Her Colonies
• Brazil: Movement Inland, and to the South
• The Haitian Revolution
• The Liberation of Latin America Begins
• Bolivar and San Martin
• The Haitian Monarchy

Part III

• Bolivar’s Campaigns
• Early Paraguay: Marxism Before Marx
• Over the Andes
• Gran Columbia
• The First Mexican Empire
• Brazil: Independent By Accident
• All Roads End At Ayacucho
• The Falklands Dispute Begins
• The Shattered Dream

 

If you haven’t read the first two chapters of this series and would like to check them out, click here.  Like I have said before, read and enjoy!