Some call it "setting the record straight". Some call it "telling the REAL TRUTH™". Some call it "Revisionist history". Some just ask, "Why?"
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A bomber pilot from World War II says he was shot down while being escorted by Tuskegee Airmen, an account that supports a recent report by two historians that the famed black fighter group, contrary to legend, did lose at least a few bombers to fire from enemy aircraft.
Warren Ludlum, who lives in Old Tappan, N.J., said that his B-24 bomber was shot down by enemy planes over Linz, Austria, in July 1944, while he was being escorted by P-51 fighters piloted by the Tuskegee Airmen.
The 83-year-old Ludlum, in a telephone interview Thursday, made clear that he has great respect for the Tuskegee Airmen and liked being escorted by them because of their aggressiveness. He said he knew he was being escorted by the Tuskegee Airmen on the day he was shot down because one of them, Starling B. Penn, was shot down at the same time and ended up in the same German prison camp as Ludlum.
Ludlum's story supports the research of William F. Holton, historian for Tuskegee Airmen Inc., who said recently that the legend of the all-black fighter squadron never losing a bomber to enemy fighters was incorrect, according to Air Force records.
Ludlum's "information jibes with my preliminary look at the data I have here," Holton said.
The historian verified that Penn was a Tuskegee Airman, that he was shot down at about the same time as Ludlum and that they were apparently in the same German prison camp. Penn died in 1999.
I fall into the category of asking "Why?" What is the purpose here? The Tuskegee Airmen will be now known as the squadron that lost very, very, very few bombers as opposed to none? That makes a difference how exactly? Forget the fact that the evidence being touted in the article would not stand in a court of law. Why is this important? Why is this necessary?
To take away another hero?
So sayeth Time Magazine in naming the Person of the Year for 2006. If you use a computer or create online content, you are one of the designated important people who really matter.
The annual honor for 2006 went to each and every one of us, as Time cited the shift from institutions to individuals — citizens of the new digital democracy, as the magazine put it. The winners this year were anyone using or creating content online.
"If you choose an individual, you have to justify how that person affected millions of people," said Richard Stengel, who took over as Time's managing editor earlier this year. "But if you choose millions of people, you don't have to justify it to anyone."
Well, obviously, anyone reading these words I wrote is an above average, intelligent and downright good-looking person. As is, modestly, your humble host. But seriously, there has been a huge change in the world due to the internet. The repercussions of that change have yet to be fully understood. I think Time, while dodging a tricky call that would have brought them some serious abuse (see the link), may be on to something whether they meant it to be so or not. The world is changing. One pixel at a time.
Let's all hope it changes in the best possible way, sooner rather than later.
UPDATE: Time Magazine article here. Ed Morrisey is not impressed by the selection. I'm not sure if that means his readers aren't as good looking as mine, though.
UPDATE: Hah! Ed fell for my clever trap! Since, by definition, anyone reading this is darned good-looking, anyone coming over from Captain's Quarters falls into that category! I have succeeded in stealing all of Ed's best looking readers! (But do take a look around while you're visiting). Also, Blog PI actually predicted this pick by Time Magazine two months ago. They have either a) the deluxe crystal ball or b) an incredible ability to call the predictable. They attribute it to b).
Things you learn while making fun of other things you learn. It seems that
Junkscience.com named the "sightings" of Ivory Billed Woodpeckers one of its top ten junk science stories of 2006. I first got clued to this by a link from the
Ivory Bill Skeptic. Then I have been hit repeatedly with searches today about this from other sources. There are more people posting about this like
The Birdchaser and
Stix Blog. Since the "sightings" began occurring when some environmentalists wanted to block a Corps of Engineers irrigation project, the Cornell Lab is risking its credibility. If it turns out they have been engaging in wishful thinking "science" they hurt themselves. But heck, carry on. I need the
Photoshop experience. Er, I mean significant scientific discoveries. Yeah, that's the ticket.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes about the recent Holocaust denial festival that just concluded in Iran. She points out something that the West really needs to grasp here. To most Muslims in the Middle East, the Holocaust never happened. Because it is not taught in schools. At all. Ever.
She was not saying anything new. As a child growing up in Saudi Arabia, I remember my teachers, my mom and our neighbors telling us practically on a daily basis that Jews are evil, the sworn enemies of Muslims, and that their only goal was to destroy Islam. We were never informed about the Holocaust.
Later, as a teenager in Kenya, when Saudi and other Persian Gulf philanthropy reached us, I remember that the building of mosques and donations to hospitals and the poor went hand in hand with the cursing of Jews. Jews were said to be responsible for the deaths of babies and for epidemics such as AIDS, and they were believed to be the cause of wars. They were greedy and would do absolutely anything to kill us Muslims. If we ever wanted to know peace and stability, and if we didn't want to be wiped out, we would have to destroy the Jews. For those of us who were not in a position to take up arms against them, it was enough for us to cup our hands, raise our eyes heavenward and pray to Allah to destroy them.
Western leaders today who say they are shocked by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's conference this week denying the Holocaust need to wake up to that reality. For the majority of Muslims in the world, the Holocaust is not a major historical event that they deny. We simply do not know it ever happened because we were never informed of it.
The total number of Jews in the world today is estimated to be about 15 million, certainly no more than 20 million. On the other hand, the world's Muslim population is estimated to be between 1.2 billion and 1.5 billion. And not only is this population rapidly growing, it is also very young.
This is the problem that voices like Hirsi Ali, Oriana Fallaci and Mark Steyn have been trying to point out. There is a demographic problem here. And the cynical scapegoating and systematic dehumanizing of the Jews is happening again. "Polite society" is just helping to pave the road right now. By turning a blind eye to this hate and by actually encouraging it with their own rhetoric. It would be a good thing to recall this poem:
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Pastor Martin Niemöller
I choose to speak out. How about you?
All too often, history repeats itself. It seems to be repeating at a faster rate now, though. Those of us who remember 1968 the first time around can feel an eerie similarity to what is happening right now in a lot of events. That's not saying everything is exactly the same, just starting to feel familiar. I just caught this item from The Astute Bloggers that has that 1968 "rage in the streets" feel all over again. They even mention 1968 in the post.
If you stick to the mass media you may hear about this tomorrow - but TAB thinks you might want to know today:
Approximately 300 rioters have been arrested after street battles with the Police in and around Norrebro. Danish media is referring to it as a war zone. But wait a minute - it's not a battle with immigrant youths a la the Paris Intifada. No - this time it is a skirmish between Law and Order and Left-wing anarchist holdovers from 1968 ( more likely their children).
Background: The
Youth House, was first occupied 29 October 1982 to be a place for teenagers to have for themselves, was sold by Copenhagen Commune to a private Christian group -
Father House. The anarchists -
Autonome - who spring from a violent anti-authoritarian movement called the BZ'ers - challenged the sale in court, lost, appealed and lost again.
The courts decided the house should be vacated 14 December - but the Mayor, and Police Chief said they would not do anything until after Christmas. The youth house staged protests - some less violent than others - and invited activists from Europe to come and support them.
Well, tonight they held a protest outside the building - and a few hundred had masks covering their faces/identities - which had been made illegal in Denmark a few years ago - which gave the police the grounds to act. Then the proverbial sh*t hit the fan. The results - including looting and vandalizing the neighborhood - are far more extensive than anticipated.
You have to see the video they linked. It looks exactly like the "student protests" that swept across Europe and America in 1968. It is all too familiar.
Washington Post coverage is here.
Officials from Malaysia's environmental ministry have officially announced that Bigfoot does not exist. All of those stories, sightings, rumors and speculation add up to nothing whatsoever.
The ministry's parliamentary secretary, Sazmi Miah, said Saturday that no firm evidence such as droppings or hair from the creature had ever been found in the 40 years state authorities had monitored the jungles.
Cameras set up in the jungles a few years back to monitor the movements of animals had also failed to pick up traces of the creature, he was reported as saying in the New Straits Times.
"If there's truly a Bigfoot, there would have been firm evidence of its existence or the cameras would have captured its image or movements," he told the newspaper.
Sazmi said the buzz over Bigfoot was a hoax, dismissing evidence of large footprints cited as proof of the creature's existence and saying that eyewitnesses had probably spotted apes or bears instead.
"To date, the evidence has been a so-called footprint," he said. "Don't tell me that that creature walked on one leg? That's not possible."
We here at Blue Crab Boulevard have discovered that this conclusion by the Malaysian government was not simply arrived at by guesswork. In fact, there was a blue ribbon commission of very famous and distinguished people appointed to look into the matter. They concluded that Bigfoot is a complete myth. Our incredibly talented operatives from the Magic 8-Ball Photography and Septic Service, Ltd., actually obtained this picture of the blue-ribboned committee delivering their blue ribbon conclusions. In blue ribbon fashion of course. We understand that they are now looking into Ivory Billed Woodpeckers.
Iran has announced it will cheerfully transfer nuclear technology to all takers in the Middle East. While such transfers are not illegal under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty provided certain conditions are met. Since Iran is itself out of compliance with the terms of the treaty (hiding parts of its program from IAEA inspection), it is highly questionable that the transfer would meet the conditions. Off to the races, folks.
The television said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a top Kuwaiti envoy he welcomed the decision by the Islamic republic's Arab neighbors to pursue peaceful nuclear technology.
"The Islamic Republic of Iran is prepared to transfer to regional states its valuable experience and achievements in the field of peaceful nuclear technology as a clean energy source and as a replacement for oil," the state quoted Ahmadinejad as telling Mohammed Zefollah Shirar, a top adviser to Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah.
Such a technological transfer would be legal as long as it is between signatory states to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and as long as the International Atomic Energy Agency that monitors the treaty was informed of the transfer.
Iran is at odds with the United States and its European allies, who accuse Iran of seeking nuclear weapons. Iran insists its nuclear program is aimed solely at the peaceful production of nuclear energy.
Edgar Vasquez, a State Department spokesman, told the AP on Saturday that Iran's continued defiance of international nuclear safeguards represents "a serious threat" to maintaining peace and stability in the region.
"We expect Iran to comply with international obligations under the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) and its safeguards agreement with the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency)," Vasquez said.
James Baker wants the US to talk to these guys. That'll work well. Unless something concrete is done soon about Iran there will be a regional arms race and eventually a very, very nasty war. This is a regime emboldened by the West's bumbling responses to Iranian aggression. "Polite society" is making war inevitable with the paving job they are doing.
Even if they are a funny color.
It survived storms and a steep drop in temperature on its 5,000-mile journey across the Atlantic.
The Columbus crab also managed to avoid predators such as gulls, sharks and cod on its voyage - no mean feat when you're bright orange. In fact, the crab is the first of its kind to be seen in Britain for 100 years after washing up on the South Coast. It had clung to barnacles on a buoy for three months all the way from its tropical home to the beach in Bournemouth.
Crab solidarity!
Like the folks at Cornell University's Lab of Ornithology, we set out to prove with absolute certainty that a certain bird species long thought extinct was alive and well. We searched high and low, our rusty camera in hand (we dropped it in the water the last time we went bird watching). Unlike the folks at the lab, we were able to actually obtain photographic evidence, of not one, but two specimens! We expect the world of ornithology to grovel at the awesomeness of the Crabitat. Send cash. Thanks.
Bret Stephens, writing in the Opinion Journal, points out some things that helped pave the way to the recently concluded Holocaust denial festival in Tehran.
Moral denunciation is what reasonable people do–what they must do–when a regime that avows the future extermination of six million Jews in Israel denies the past extermination of six million Jews in Europe. But let's be frank: Global polite society has been blazing its own merry trail toward this occasion for decades.
The Australian Financial Review is not the Journal of Historical Review, the Holocaust-denying "scholarly" vehicle of some of the Tehran conferees. But in 2002 the AFR thought it fit to print the following by Joseph Wakim, at one point the country's multicultural affairs commissioner: "Sharon's war is not a war," he wrote. "Genocide would be a more accurate description." In Ireland Tom McGurk, a columnist in the very mainstream Sunday Business Post, noted that "the scenes at Jenin last week looked uncannily like the attack on the Warsaw Jewish ghetto in 1944." Jose Saramago, Portugal's Nobel Laureate in Literature, observed after a visit to Ramallah that the Israeli incursion into the city "is a crime that may be compared to Auschwitz."
Never mind that the total number of Jews "dealt with" in the Warsaw ghetto, according to Nazi commandant Jürgen Stroop, was 56,065, whereas the number of Palestinians killed in Jenin was no more than 60. Never mind that at the time Mr. Saramago visited Ramallah a total of about 1,500 Palestinians had been killed in the Intifada, whereas Jews were murdered at Auschwitz at a rate of about 2,000 a day. Let's concede that, for the sake of moral truth, strained comparisons may still serve useful rhetorical purposes. (Jews and Israelis also often make inapt Holocaust and Nazi comparisons.) Let's concede, too, that the comments cited above amount to criticisms of Israeli policy, nothing more.
The emptiness of moral equivalency is on full display in the examples Stephens cites. And there are a lot more of them from a lot of influential people. There is a concerted effort to dehumanize Israel going on from all over "polite society". There is raging anti-Semitism masquerading behind the label "anti-Zionist". And those voices calling out the loudest on this helped stage the recent hate-fest Ahmadinejad threw for a small collection of cretins. Though few in actual number, the attendees made a lot of headlines all over the world. And polite society helped make it all possible.
Parts of "polite society" are also bringing war and real genocide much, much closer. Politely, of course. Paving the way with good intentions.
Even the Washington Post is forced to admit that the Iraq Study Group's recommendations bear no actual resemblance to conditions on the ground in the Middle East. They even realize that discussion with Iran and Syria right now is foolish.
IRANIAN President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad presided over a convention of Holocaust deniers in Tehran this week, rousing them with yet another speech predicting the extinction of Israel. In Lebanon, the pro-Western government of Fouad Siniora hung by a thread, literally besieged in the center of Beirut by the extremist Hezbollah movement — whose attempted coup has been egged on by Syria's dictator, Bashar al-Assad. In Gaza, attempts by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to reopen the peace process with Israel continued to be blocked by the most militant leaders of Hamas — who happen to be harbored in Damascus — and by a Hamas prime minister who just returned from Tehran.
Meanwhile, here in Washington, the Bush administration was bombarded by demands that it open unconditional negotiations with Mr. Assad and Mr. Ahmadinejad. Democratic senators are tripping over each other to have an audience with Syria's chief gangster. A parallel clamor continued for a "grand bargain" with Iran's mullahs. The disconnect between the debate over the Middle East in Washington and actual events in the region could hardly be greater.
Assad and Ahmadinejad believe they are winning. The parade of Senators trooping over to stage photo opportunities with dictators is not helping disabuse them of that notion. The reality is that unless and until concrete steps are taken to show Iran and Syria that there are real consequences to their destabilization of the entire region they will continue to behave in the way they have up until now. The "realists" of the Baker school are making a war more, not less, likely.
Today is the 233rd anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.
In 1773, Britain's East India Company was sitting on large stocks of tea that it could not sell in England. It was on the verge of bankruptcy. In an effort to save it, the government passed the Tea Act of 1773, which gave the company the right to export its merchandise directly to the colonies without paying any of the regular taxes that were imposed on the colonial merchants, who had traditionally served as the middlemen in such transactions. With these privileges, the company could undersell American merchants and monopolize the colonial tea trade. The act proved inflammatory for several reasons. First, it angered influential colonial merchants, who feared being replaced and bankrupted by a powerful monopoly. The East India Company's decision to grant franchises to certain American merchants for the sale of their tea created further resentments among those excluded from this lucrative trade. More important, however, the Tea Act revived American passions about the issue of taxation without representation. The law provided no new tax on tea. Lord North assumed that most colonists would welcome the new law because it would reduce the price of tea to consumers by removing the middlemen. But the colonists responded by boycotting tea. Unlike earlier protests, this boycott mobilized large segments of the population. It also helped link the colonies together in a common experience of mass popular protest. Particularly important to the movement were the activities of colonial women, who were one of the principal consumers of tea and now became the leaders of the effort to the boycott.
….
Various colonies made plans to prevent the East India Company from landing its cargoes in colonial ports. In ports other than Boston, agents of the company were "persuaded" to resign, and new shipments of tea were either returned to England or warehoused. In Boston, the agents refused to resign and, with the support of the royal governor, preparations were made to land incoming cargoes regardless of opposition. After failing to turn back the three ships in the harbor, local patriots led by Samuel Adams staged a spectacular drama. On the evening of December 16, 1773, three companies of fifty men each, masquerading as Mohawk Indians, passed through a tremendous crowd of spectators, went aboard the three ships, broke open the tea chests, and heaved them into the harbor.As the electrifying news of the Boston "tea party" spread, other seaports followed the example and staged similar acts of resistance of their own.'
Some 16 months later, war would break out at Lexington and Concord.
A herd of about 140 wild horses is literally eating itself out of house and home. Many people are aware of the Assateague Island wild horses because of the annual Chincoteague pony penning. Each year, the horses on the part of the island that belongs to Virginia are rounded up and part of the herd is sold off. But on the Maryland side of the island, there is no such event and the horses are destroying the island.
ASSATEAGUE ISLAND, Md. — What do you do when one of your natural treasures starts eating all the others?
That's the National Park Service's dilemma on this storied barrier island. Proof of its problem can be found on a spongy stretch of salt marsh, where one section is fenced off by barbed wire.
Inside the fence, the island's native smooth cordgrass is growing thickly, a foot tall. Outside it, the grass is cropped nearly to the roots.
"Inside. Outside. A lot different," said Mark Sturm, a Park Service ecologist, gesturing at the denuded muck. The culprit is obvious: There's only one animal on Assateague that can't get through the fence.
"This is all horses," Sturm said.
Yes. Those horses. About 140 wild ponies live on the Maryland half of the island — less famous than their cousins in Virginia, who star in the annual Chincoteague pony penning, but still a major part of the Assateague mystique.
Now, Park Service officials say, the horse population is eating away at the plants that underpin rare coastal ecosystems here. They're considering a radical solution: selling or relocating as much as a third of the Maryland herd.
"There is no doubt in my mind," Sturm said, "that in the absence of action, things are only going to get worse."
There is the mandatory reflexive argument from the animal rights folks about getting the horse herd under control. The problem is that without the grass, there is nothing to hold the sand. Without the sand, the island will simply disappear. What's more important? They have a program to use contraceptives on the horses, but that has had the unintended consequence of allowing the female horses to live longer.
Thank heavens that the unsubstantiated reports keep filtering in. It keeps the press writing articles about Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers as if they actually existed!
On the typical day, someone somewhere reports that they've seen the rare bird, believed extinct until a Hot Springs kayaker said he spotted one along the Cache River near Brinkley in 2004.
Davis, the city planner for McCrory, and Robison, who works for the Arkansas Department of Economic Development, said Friday they were driving near Cotton Plant when a female ivory-billed swooped in the sky behind an oncoming truck.
"I saw something come off the tree, like the truck has spooked it," Davis said in a telephone interview from his office in McCrory. "It came by again and it had its wing span out and it just kind of glided back into the woods, and I said 'Is that what I think it is?'"
Davis, who has attended workshops about identifying an ivory-billed woodpecker, said he and Robison believe it was a female because the bird had a black head and body with white wing-tipped feathers, but no red. The male ivory-billed has a red crest.
Connie Bruce, a spokeswoman for Cornell University's Lab of Ornithology, which is researching the possible re-appearance of the ivory-billed woodpecker, said the search continues despite no evidence being turned up last winter.
"The search is on," Bruce said. "This is very important to us. We all want to locate this bird."
And get your names in the paper, apparently. We here at Blue Crab Boulevard would hold a workshop on spotting these imaginary birds, too, but we are a bit cramped over here at the moment. So we'll just pass along the handy dandy instructions via the Algore Memorial Interwebby Tubes™®©¥:
Turn left when you reach Elvis and proceed until you see the Bigfoot.
UPDATE: Ivory Bill, Schmivory Bill. We got the real goods.
A group of US legislators has made a trip to Cuba with the stated intention of opening dialog with the police state Fidel Castro built.
HAVANA (Reuters) - The largest delegation from the U.S. Congress to visit Cuba since 1959 arrived in Havana on Friday seeking to open a dialogue with the communist government of acting President Raul Castro despite White House opposition to such contacts.
The stepping aside of ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who has not appeared in public for four months, has set the stage for ending political hostility dating from the start of the Cold War, they said.
"We sense this is an important time and we hope to meet with officials and hopefully launch a new era in U.S.-Cuba relations," said Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican.
The six Democrats and four Republicans hope to meet with Raul Castro, who took over July 31 after his brother underwent emergency surgery for an undisclosed illness.
This sort of thing has been happening more and more frequently where Congressmen and Senators have taken it upon themselves to push their way into foreign policy. Regardless of political party, this is wrong. Whether the legislators agree with the policy or not, American policy toward Cuba has been pretty much the same since John Kennedy occupied the White House. It is not their place to circumvent that policy in this manner. If they want to change the policy, there is a well established method for doing so. It is called "passing a bill" and it is not rocket surgery.
Additionally, foreign policy is the bailiwick of the Executive Branch. They know that, but have chosen this route of going around the institutions, limits and constitutional requirements of the government anyway. Stunts like this are disrespectful of the system of government they represent and to their constituents. This undermines the entire government, all branches. It also sends a bad signal to the world about how the United States operates. Go home, people and stop disrespecting the office you hold and the nation you represent.
Personal Thoughts | Gaius Saturday, 16 December , 2006 | 
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