Report from Syria

From Ehsani at Syria Comment.

Feel threatened by Iran?

Here's Tom Englehardt's take on the threat:

Exclusive: New Iranian Commando Team Operating Near U.S.

(Tehran, FNA) The Fars News Agency has confirmed with the Republican Guard’s North American Operations Command that a new elite Iranian commando team is operating in the U.S.-Mexican border region. The primary day-to-day mission of the team, known as the Joint Special Operations Gulf of Mexico Task Force, or JSOG-MTF, is to mentor Mexican military units in the border areas in their war with the deadly drug cartels.  The task force provides “highly trained personnel that excel in uncertain environments,” Maj. Amir Arastoo, a spokesman for Republican Guard special operations forces in North America, tells Fars, and “seeks to confront irregular threats...”

The unit began its existence in mid-2009 -- around the time that Washington rejected the Iranian leadership’s wish for a new diplomatic dialogue. But whatever the task force does about the United States -- or might do in the future -- is a sensitive subject with the Republican Guard.  “It would be inappropriate to discuss operational plans regarding any particular nation,” Arastoo says about the U.S.

Okay, so I made that up.  Sue me.  But first admit that, a line or two in, you knew it was fiction.  After all, despite the talk about American decline, we are still on a one-way imperial planet.  Yes, there is a new U.S. special operations team known as Joint Special Operations Task Force-Gulf Cooperation Council, or JSOTF-GCC, at work near Iran and, according to Wired magazine’s Danger Room blog, we really don’t quite know what it’s tasked with doing (other than helping train the forces of such allies as Bahrain and Saudi Arabia). 

And yes, the quotes are perfectly real, just out of the mouth of a U.S. “spokesman for special-operations forces in the Mideast,” not a representative of Iran’s Republican Guard.  And yes, most Americans, if they were to read about the existence of the new special ops team, wouldn’t think it strange that U.S. forces were edging up to (if not across) the Iranian border, not when our “safety” was at stake. 

Reverse the story, though, and it immediately becomes a malign, if unimaginable, fairy tale.  Of course, no Iranian elite forces will ever operate along the U.S. border.  Not in this world.  Washington wouldn’t live with it and it remains the military giant of giants on this planet.  By comparison, Iran is, in military terms, a minor power. 

I sincerely wish the war-drum beaters would cool it.  But the chosen strategy of  American politicians to blow everything except the problems of unemployment and climate change out of all proportion really worries me.

I am no fan of the scummy Iranian regime.  But as someone else said recently, it is mainly a threat to Iran.  They have got real problems but are no closer to dealing with them than...you name it.

One state in Israel/Palestine

Over at Juan Cole's Informed Comment site, the guest bloggers Yoav Peled and Horit Herman Peled argue that the two-state solution (two sovereign entities, Israel and Palestine) is now impossible.

What makes the two-state solution unachievable is the fact that since 1967 Israel has settled close to three quarters of a million Jews in the territories it captured from Jordan in 1967. About one-third of those are in the area Israel defined as Jerusalem and annexed in 1967, declaring it to be non-negotiable. Of the remaining five hundred thousand, the lowest estimate of the number that would have to be removed in order for a viable, territorially contiguous Palestinian state to be set up in the West Bank is one hundred thousand. This is a task that no Israeli government, committed as it may be to the two-state solution, would be able to carry out, politically. To this day no Israeli government has removed even one of the West Bank “outposts” that are illegal by Israeli law (all Jewish settlements in the occupied territories are illegal by international law), despite promises to the US and several decisions by Israel’s own High Court of Justice.

The declared purpose of the settlement drive in the West Bank (as in the other occupied territories) was to change demographic realities in order to make Israel’s withdrawal from those territories impossible. This purpose has been achieved. Not only are the settlers, their family members and their supporters an electoral power block that cannot be ignored, settlers and their supporters now make up a significant proportion of the command structure of Israel’s security forces, the same forces that would have to carry out a decision to remove the settlers.

To counter this argument, critics may point to the withdrawal of Jewish settlements from Gaza in 2005. That example, however, actually supports our argument. In order to remove 8,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza, an easily isolated region of no religious significance to Jews, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a military hero idolized by both the settlers and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) had to deploy the entire man and woman power of all of Israel’s security forces. Moreover, the Gaza withdrawal was not done in agreement with the Palestinians, or in order to facilitate peace with them. It was done unilaterally, in order to make Israel’s control of Gaza more efficient. Judging by this example, removing 100,000 settlers from the West Bank, in order to enable the establishment of a Palestinian state, would be an impossible task.

Of course, dealing with the realities of a single state is not going to be exactly easy.

History Club events

Hi all,

From the club officers:

This is a reminder of a few events happening this week.

There will be a meeting this Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 11:30-12:30 in room A143. ... We will be discussing clothing orders, the book sale, 4^th year pub night and the next pub night. Anyone interested in being on the executive council next year are encouraged to come out so they can learn the ropes!

This Thursday, February 2, 2012 will be our first pub night of the New Year. It will take place at the Fox and the Fiddle beginning at 8pm. The theme is symposium. Symposiums held in Ancient Greece involved wine and discussion. At our symposium you are welcome to drink whatever you chose, alcoholic or not. There will be tables set up with a political or social question placed at each table (ie. Are men and women equal always in all ways? or Should marijuana be legalized?). You are invited to come out and discuss these questions with your friends and peers. Or just come out and hang out! Hope to see you there!
Sam 

History Department Seminar Series: Michael Del Vecchio speaks on fish culture, Friday February 4

From Derek Neal:

This is how Mike himself describes his talk:
Farming Fish:
Fish-culture and Sport in the late Nineteenth Century
Over the past one hundred and fifty years the province of Ontario has stocked
over twenty billion fish. This paper seeks to understand how local, provincial,
national, and transnational influences shaped the practice and ideology of fish-
culture in Ontario in the second half of the nineteenth century. Fish-culture, also
known as pisciculture or aquaculture, has defined angling ethics, fisheries science,
and state management of freshwater ecosystems in the province since the first
fish was stocked in 1864. The technology of fish-culture has altered almost every
freshwater ecosystem in Ontario within the reach of anglers. Unique water bodies
were replaced with "techno-sportscapes" through the introduction of non-native
fish species. Fish such as Rainbow Trout, whose native range is restricted to the
Pacific Rim, and Brown Trout, imported from Europe, have become “naturalized”
species in the Great Lakes and several other bodies of water throughout Ontario
as a result of stocking efforts. A vast body of literature exists on fish-culture
published between 1850 and 1900, the majority of which was written by and to
recreational fishers. Using books and sporting journals published in England, the
United States, and Canada, I demonstrate how these watery techno-spaces were
part of an international trend which can be located at the intersection of technology
and angling. 

It's in A122 at 2:30 PM.

The cathedral of Middlesex

The pic is from the Daily Mail.  Here's why it is in the news (the Guardian):

An extraordinary medieval barn once dubbed "the cathedral of Middlesex" by Sir John Betjeman has been bought by English Heritage in a move to save it from decay, it is announced on Monday.

Just beyond today's sprawl of Heathrow, between the roaring M25 and M4 motorways and the straggling warehouses and industrial estates around the airport perimeter, the Great Barn at Harmondsworth has stood since 1426.

It has long been famous among building historians and admired by the poet and conservation campaigner Betjeman. Repair work is now being carried out – including to its huge roof – and it will open to the public regularly for the first time this spring.

"This is the best preserved medieval barn in England, probably in Europe, and the ninth largest ever built in England. For its size, and its state of preservation, it is unique," said Michael Dunn, an English Heritage historic buildings expert, of the 60 metres long, 12 metres wide and 11 metres high timber structure.

Justine Bayley, an archaeologist who lives in Harmondsworth village and secretary of the group that has acted as guardians for the barn, said: "If we had a pound for everyone who walks in here and says 'wow!' we could have re-roofed the building twice over. It's really the only appropriate response."

 Those of us who have owned or used barns, packed them with hay for the winter will say "60 METERS LONG!"

This great barn was owned by a church corporation, which had the stability of ownership and wealth to build such a thing.  Imagine the fertility of the area necessary to justify the investment.  Now, of course, Middlesex is pretty much indistinguishable from suburban sprawl anywhere.

Thanks to sharp-eyed Paul Halsall.

For scale, and for the fun of it, another pic from the Guardian:

That beautiful destrier, again

I am trying to put the finishing touches on my translation of Charny's Questions, and once again I have come up against the case of the beautiful destrier -- Tourney Question 8.  I have had real experts look at this and they are baffled, and suggest that there is a transcription error.   Therefore I am putting out this call to anyone who has access to Jean Rossbach's edition (in the Free University of Brussels library, or to the main mss., which are at Paris and Brussels.  Your help in checking the text would be much appreciated.

Anyone who has sufficient confidence in their mastery of Middle French can contact me directly and I will send you the French text and my current translation, and you too can have a go at it.

Rent, charity, First Nations, Canada

My colleague at Nipissing University, Catherine Murton Stoehr, wrote this fine piece for the Toronto Star:

Strengthening the chain between First Nations and non-aboriginal Canadians

On Tuesday, Assembly of First Nations national chief Shawn Atleo presented Governor General David Johnston a silver wampum belt symbolizing the relationship between the British people and the First Nations. He stopped short of saying what we all know to be true, that the chain is almost rusted out. One of the central reasons for this breakdown is that non-aboriginal Canadians see all money and resources given to First Nations people as charity, while people in Atleo’s world see it as rent. If you’re handing out charity, you get to set conditions like submission to unelected managers. But people paying rent don’t get to interfere in their landlords’ business.

When British officials took over the land and destroyed the hunt in northern Ontario, they promised to immediately rebuild aboriginal communities’ infrastructure and then to support that infrastructure forever. In the same way that a lease remains in effect as long as a person rents a house, the treaties remain in effect as long as non-First Nations people live in Canada. Consistently fulfilling the terms of the treaties is the minimum ethical requirement of living on the land of Canada.

Attawapiskat is covered by Treaty 9. Like all the treaties, the written promises that colonial officials made in exchange for the land were very small. Historians correctly point out that the real treaties were the agreements that colonial representatives and First Nations leaders made orally. Indeed, the written documents cut out many of the oral promises and all of the shared “spirit and intent” of the oral agreements. So when we in 2012 talk about fulfilling the written treaty documents, we are talking about a limited, achievable goal. The more difficult part will be recovering and living up to the spirit and intent of the treaties.

So what did Canadians offer in return for the right to live on First Nations land and to sell the trees, minerals, fish and furs they found there? In Treaty 9, we promised to provide teacher salaries, school buildings and educational equipment. The children of Attawapiskat have been without a safe school building since 1979 when their school was contaminated by a diesel spill that made them ill. In 2000 the community moved the children into temporary buildings. In 2008 the Canadian government refused the request of a delegation of children from Attawapiskat asking for a new school.

The worst effect of that decision was to deprive 400 children of a proper school and to lay on them all the social and economic exclusions that arise from not having education. Another more insidious effect was to poison the relationship between the ancestors of the treaty signatories. By failing to provide the promised school, our government made it impossible for Canadians in the Treaty 9 area to live up to their moral obligations.

It may be that Stephen Harper wishes to begin a radical new era of just relations with First Nations people, but when he stands up in Parliament and expresses frustration at Attawapiskat’s finances, he hurts his cause by engaging in an old tradition of political theatre. He is encouraging Canadians to continue believing that we are the generous benefactors of the First Nations people, but that is not true. They have been our benefactors since the days of the fur trade and we have become one of the wealthiest societies in human history.

The bad news is that we have been left holding the bag and the profits from a 200-year-old land heist. The good news is that there is a clear path forward. To strengthen the chain between the First Nations and non-aboriginal Canadians, we must turn our gaze from the shortcomings of First Nations people onto our own. We must restore our side of the treaty relationship, which means learning the written and oral promises made over our bit of Canada and requiring our representatives to put fulfilling them at the top of their priority list.

We must do this because we said we would and we are honest. The Canadian people are not thieves and profiteers and we will make good on the deals from which we have received one blessing after another. My generation will pay the rent in Attawapiskat.

Catherine Murton Stoehr is an instructor in the department of history at Nipissing University.

Constructed categories

Hanne Blank, being interviewed in Salon about her book Straight, is talking about gender identity, but this discussion has a more general application:

[Interviewer] I’m quite attached to my identity as a gay man — and, to be honest, I would feel a little troubled having my category taken away from me.

See, that’s the thing, no one is going to take that away from you.  No one can take that away from you. The only thing they can take away from you is the illusion that this is not something that is constructed.  And that’s very, very different.  Just because something is constructed as a social category, doesn’t mean that it’s not enormously meaningful.  It doesn’t mean that we haven’t built a whole damn civilization on it. Doesn’t mean that we don’t live our daily lives on it, doesn’t mean that we don’t use it all the time every time we’re walking down the street.  This is real.  It’s stuff that has physical manifestations in the real world. But that does not mean that it is organic. 

[Interviewer] Or innate. 

Or inevitable. 

Festival time in Harbin

Some people have not got much winter this year, and some are even complaining about it.  But in Harbin, Manchuria, they've got the snow and ice they need for their annual festival.  Click on this pic to see these Chinese girls having fun, and go to the Big Picture to see lots more.

How one gained entree into the highest circles in 6th-century Europe

This year I returned to the early Middle Ages or late Antiquity to teach a fourth-year seminar on Gregory of Tours. Gregory was a sixth century bishop of what is now western France and who wrote a massive history of his times, the Histories, or more commonly the History of the Franks.  Gregory is a lot of fun to study because he is interested in lots of things and wrote with a great deal of personality (though how much of that personality is literary artefact is hard to say).


Gregory begins his history with this statement: "I wish first of all to explain my faith, so that whoever reads me may not doubt that I am a Catholic." This is followed by about two pages of a detailed creed or declaration of faith. Fair warning about his priorities, admittedly not very surprising from a bishop who is justifying his role as a teacher to his audience, which undoubtedly included his fellow bishops and would include in the future his successors in the church at Tours.  For some people, this declaration was an essential preamble to anything else Gregory might say.. Gregory was completely in sympathy with that point of view.


Yesterday, I was reading the letters of St. Radegund in preparation for a class discussion of this famous nun who lived at the same time Gregory did.    Radegund is a very interesting figure.  Born as a Thuringian princess, she was carted off to Gaul while still a child, after the Franks had destroyed most of her family. On reaching adulthood, she was married to King Lothar of the Franks, presumably to strengthen the Frankish claim to overlordship of Thuringia. Radegund and Lothar never got along very well, and eventually she insisted on becoming a nun and establishing a convent where she could live the ascetic life surrounded by other like minded women – and some women who were also high-ranking refugees from court life. Radegund became the foremost female religious figure in Frankish Gaul, but never completely lost her royal status.  One example of her working the system through her dual status was her acquisition of a piece or pieces of the True Cross from the Byzantine emperor. We can guess that if a random, distant nun had asked for such a fantastic gift, she would not have gotten it.  Her request would never have gotten to the Emperor.


We dod not have Radegund's request for a relic, we do have something that looks like a thank you letter that she set off to Emperor Justin (II) and Empress Sophia once she had it.  And a curious letter it is.  
Here's the beginning of her letter:


To the August Justin and Sophia 
The highest glory of the father, son, and nourishing spirit, 
one god to be adored in this trinity, 
majesty, triple person, simple substance, 
equal consort and coeval with itself, 
one force remaining the same, one power in three 
(which the father begetting , the spirit enables), 
indeed distinct in persons, joined in vigor, 
of one nature, equal in strength, light, throne, 
the trinity was always with him, ruling without time, 
lacking no use nor capable by seizing. 10 
Highest glory to you, creator of things and redeemer, 
who, just, gives Justin headship in the world. 
He claims, properly, the dominant fortress over kings, 
who pleases the heavenly king by serving. 
How deservedly he rules Rome and the Roman world 
who follows what the dogma says from the cathedra of Peter, 
what Paul sang far and wide, with one trumpet to thousands, 
to heathens and the senseless he poured out salt from his mouth, 
whose four-sided axle the wheel of his tongue circled, 
cold hearts are warm from the faith of his eloquence. 20 
Highest glory to you, creator of things and redeemer, 
who, just, gives Justin headship in the world. 
Strengthened, the disturbed faith of the church shines again 
and venerable law returns to its former place. 
Give back your vows to God, since the new purple holds whatever 
the council of Chalcedon established. 
Gaul sings this to your merits, Augustus, 
the Rhone, the Rhine, the Danube, the Elbe do. 
Beneath the western axle Galicia heard the deed, 
Biscayne brought it to the nearby Basques. 30 
The pious fable runs to the farthest people of the faith 
and the British land across the ocean is favorable. 
How well, lover, do you share the care with the lord! 
You make his causes yours, he makes yours his. 
Christ gives you the power, you give Christ the honor: 
he gives the summit, you give back the faith. 
There was nothing more on earth that he might give to be ruled, 
nor more that you could give back than nourishing faith is strong. 
Fathers sent into exile for the name of Christ 
then came back, with the diadem to you. 40 
Released from prison, residing in the former seat, 
hold you to be one general good. 
Curing so many sorrows of the confessors, 
you come as a healing to innumerable people. 


Presumably Radegund had in a previous communication established that she was the kind of person who was worthy of Imperial attention -- holy woman and influential Frankish queen.  But just in case Justin and  Sophia might have second thoughts, and be tempted to think that Radegund was only a barbarian they mistakenly had been overgenerous to, Radegund spends line after line of poetry buttering them up, showing that she is quite aware of current religious conflicts, is on the right side of them, and appreciates (weak word) Justin's role in establishing theological truth and restoring unjustly persecuted bishops to their sees.  The man is a universal hero and his wife is not far behind him.  

That's the way, or one way, that one established one's right to a place in the Big Time in sixth-century Christian Europe.  Radegund may have been a Thuringian or a Frank, she was determined to show that she was no hick. One wonders if the letter had the desired effect.


Image:  Radegund imagined by the illustrator of the Nuremberg Chronicle, 15th century.

Nobody for President

Back in 1972, I was at a gathering of science fiction fans when I saw a prominent fan wearing what looked like a "Nixon for President" badge.  That was such a rare sentiment in my circles that I couldn't believe my eyes.  Sure enough, when I got closer I saw that it actually said, "Nobody for President."

It is getting to the point that this might be the official Republican motto for 2012.

Image:  The Furry Freak Brothers chiming in at a later date.

Four Wordles (word clouds) based on my translation of Charny's Questions

Wordles or word clouds are graphic arrangements of words indicating by the size of each word how often it appears in a text.  How much can you read into that?  Well, at the least it may alert you to something you might otherwise overlook.

In all of these "Charny" and "asks" are among the largest terms.  That is because each of the 130 or so questions begins "Charny asks."

Jousting questions:

Proper size:
http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4699960/Charny%27s_Questions_on_Jousting

Tourney questions:

Proper size:

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4699970/Charny%27s_Questions_on_Tournaments

War questions:

Proper size:

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/1287540/Charny%27s_Questions_on_War

All together:

Proper size:

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4699987/Charny%27s_Questions

Have fun!

Snow in Egypt

A YouTube video shows a significant amount of snow on the ground at Alexandria earlier this month:



But other videos brought up by the same search ("snow in Egypt") seem to show snow in Egypt in other recent years.

A Scandal in Belgravia

I just saw the first of this season's episodes of the BBC's Sherlock.  I think it continues to be an absolutely brilliant adaptation.   But then I really, really liked A Knight's Tale, and not just for the jousting.

Ian McKay speaks -- the annual Department of History Keynote Lecture, January 26

From Jamie Murton:

The History Department is very pleased to announce the visit to North Bay of one of the leading historians of Canada working today, Dr. Ian McKay of Queen’s University.  McKay’s recent book, Reasoning Otherwise: Leftists and the People's Enlightenment in Canada won the 2008 John A. Macdonald prize from the Canadian Historical Association for best book of the year.  His article "The Liberal Order Framework: A Prospectus for a Reconnaissance of Canadian History,” is remaking how historians understand the Canadian past.  He works on Canadian cultural history, working-class history, the history of Canadian socialism and the history of Nova Scotia.  

At Nipissing University McKay will deliver the History Department’s annual keynote lecture, “Warrior Nation: the Use and Abuse of History in Harper’s Canada,” on Thursday, Jan 26, at 7:30 pm in H106.  

As well, he will participate, along with our own Dr. Larry Patriquin, in a panel discussion “Unite the Left North Bay?  

A Community Conversation,” on Wednesday, Jan 25, at 8 pm at the WKP Kennedy Gallery, 150 Main St E, North Bay.

For more information e-mail Jamie Murton at jmurton@nipissingu.ca or Catherine Murton Stoehr at mstoehr@nipissingu.ca

After 35 years

It was about 35 years ago that I was introduced to the joys of chocolate croissants in Toronto.  I'm pretty sure they were sold in only a few places, like the P'tit Gourmet, a really neat delicatessen specializing in French food.

Finally, chocolate croissants have reached Bonfield, Ontario.  Not exactly a French-style croissant, more like a North American crescent roll.  But not bad.

And get this, city people.   It costs 75 CENTS.  The one cheap thing for sale on the entire planet.

Two pictures of Afghanistan, December 2011

From The Big Picture, two views of an undercapitalized society, a miller and a fuel scavenger.  I am heating with wood at the moment, but I have electric backup.  That picture reminds me of things I saw in India.

Click the pic for a better view.

It continues

Thanks to Arabist.net and AhramOnline.

Thoughts on revolution and politics from Egypt

Egyptians are in the middle of something very important, and so what they have to say is of particular interest.

Arabist.net has provided us with an English translation of an article by the liberal Egyptian academic Samer Soliman.  I include the following excerpt in hopes you will follow the link to the whole thing:

A critical stance in support of my colleagues in the Revolution

By Samer Soliman, al-Shurouk, 9 January 2012

The revolution’s one-year anniversary represents a chance for reassessment and self-criticism by all those who participated in it. From this standpoint, the criticism that I direct at the positions and ideas of some of my revolutionary colleagues is the criticism of a comrade and has no trace of superiority. Its aim is to improve the performance of reform and revolutionary currents and get past unnecessary divisions in order to achieve our shared goal: establishing a state based on freedom, social justice and human dignity. I have four criticisms for some of my colleagues.

First: Absolute hostility to parties and to organizing is a fatal mistake

Politics, by one definition, is the management and organization of shared and collective interests. You are responsible for managing the affairs of your own home. However, managing the affairs of the entire building is not your responsibility alone, but rather the responsibility of the union of landlords, tenants or the like. This is politics. Politics is nothing but a collective activity that aims to organize the affairs of the state and society. Consequently, whoever is hostile to organizing is unwittingly hostile to politics. If you refuse to organize yourself in a party or group, how can you engage in an activity that basically aims at organizing society and the state? If you accept being organized in small groups, but absolutely reject parties, then you are hostile to the politics that aims to run the state apparatus. As a result, you insist on marginalizing yourself on the pretext of keeping your “revolutionary purity” away from party maneuvering. Yes, politics does not depend on party organizations alone, but is also based on non-party organizations such as pressure groups. However, these pressure groups are not an alternative to parties. Environmental groups, for example, push through their demands to limit pollution by communicating with parties, and cooperating with them and offering them support to the extent that they adopt programs to protect the environment. Whoever decides to act through politics must be a member in an organization of some sort: a party that aims to reach power or participate in it; a pressure group that does not wield power directly but which exerts influence on it; a union that defends workers’ rights in a certain profession, etc. The important thing is that members of every type of organization cannot do without the other types, and that true change only comes through integration and forming alliances among different types of organization.

The article continues with sections on the following points:

Second: Revolution does not mean toppling the regime immediately, and revolution is not opposed to reformThird: The older generation is the wrong enemyFourth: Construction cannot wait for demolition to be complete, and the economy cannot wait for the revolution to be complete

It just breathes common sense.

Intellectual goodies on the Internet -- two sets of economics posts

Will McLean has a wide and serious interest in late medieval society, especially that of 14th and 15th century England.  Currently he is interested in how English noble households worked, and is investigating them through their preserved account books.  A number of people I know, and perhaps more readers whom I don't know, may find his explorations worth reading.  This looks like a good place to start; from there you might follow the "Economics" tag, backward and forward.

The very validity of the academic tradition(s) of economic thought is being debated, by economists most of all.  If at this point you are curious about what university students are actually being taught in introductory economics classes, then you might want to wander over to Brad DeLong's blog and follow the "Econ 1" postings starting, say, here.  Brad DeLong (who teaches at Berkeley) is a prominent controversialist and critic of much of what has happened in the United States in the last 10 years, so he is not a  neutral voice.  He has a lot to say on a lot of subjects, and if you follow him you will be exposed to a lot of material, including the arguments of people he disagrees with.  Some of this will be economic arguments that I find rather opaque, but others will be of wider relevance.

Image:  loafing -- and working -- around the old manse.

Catamarca province, Argentina

Just one of the amazing landscapes that the Dakar Rally, an extreme-conditions vehicle competition, went through.  This from the Big Picture, natch, and you should click on it to get a better look.

Europe?

Over at the New York Times blog site, Frank Jacobs has a long article on "Where is Europe?"

This nifty map is the least of it:

Bhaktapur, Nepal in the monsoon.

Thanks to Anuar Patjane, the Big Picture, and the National Geographic Society.

One estimate of the cost of the War with Iran

By Orrin Schwab via Gary Sick:

If there is near unanimity in the Congress to go to war with Iran I say lets go. Lets do it!  They are the duly elected representatives of the people of the United States and they have determined that war with Iran is in the best interests of the country.  We should initiate hostilities as soon as practicable.

Here are some parameters to consider for our war:

1. Iran is 1.6 million square kilometers and has approximately 80 million
    inhabitants (77-78 million plus).

2. That makes Iran four times the area of Iraq and three times the
    population of Iraq.

3. The Iraq War was completed very quickly, and very easily. But the
    occupation, i.e. the reduction of resistance lasted ten years and has
    produced a relatively weak state.

4.  In order to do things right this time, we need sufficient ground
    forces to secure a mountainous multiethnic country with more than two
    thousand years of national history. We may be welcomed as liberators
    but coalition forces ultimately met with armed resistance from
    numerous  groups many of whom practiced deadly suicide attacks.

5. We need a long term occupational force for Iran.  I think an effective
    occupation of 80 million people spread over 1.6 million square
    kilometers should require well over 1 million well trained troops for
    at least 5 years maybe 10 years if things go badly.

6. The only way we can provide this level of forces is through a return to
    the Draft. The Selective Service system needs to activated
    immediately.
    All military reserves needed to be recalled to active duty while we
    begin the process of training millions of young male and female
    draftees for service in Iran.  A five year occupation should require,
    ballpark, 5 million draftees.  Of course, we have the manpower.
    According to the CIA, the U.S. has 120 million males and females
    between the ages of 18 and 49 who are fit for military service.

7. The direct financial cost of the war should be a multiple of the Iraq
    War which was 800 billion from 2003 through 2011.  The cost of
    deploying troops to Afghanistan averages about one million dollars per
    troop.  If we plan on 1 million troops for five years that would mean
    5 trillion in direct costs financed by the U.S. Treasury through
    2016-2017 and then undetermined costs thereafter.

8. The economic benefits of this exercise in military Keynesian economics
    should be huge. Unemployment should disappear.  War related
    manufacturing should be a virtual renaissance for domestic industry.
    The financing of the war will significantly increase the public debt, anathema to     Republicans, but they are spoilsports. They reject military Keynesianism, which worked wonders for Japan and Germany in the 1930s and 1940s as well as the United States and the Soviet Union.

9. No whining about casualties. The U.S. could sustain hundreds of
    thousands or more total casualties, including deaths from combat,
    disabling wounds, and huge numbers of psychiatric losses related to
    combat and the effect of concussive injuries to the brain.

Source.

Canada has a warship sailing to the Middle East right now to fight terrorism, so this is us, too.

Endeavor over Ponte Vedra, Florida

Thanks to James Vernacotola, the Big Picture, and the National Geographic Society.  Click to see it larger.

Today's date on the Mayan calendar

More here.

From The Big Picture and the National Geographic Photo Contest, 2011

Kent Shiraishi captures the first snow at a nature spot in Hokkaido, Japan.  Don't forget to click to see a bigger version.  As usual, the bigger picture is much more impressive.

Michael Jackson is not dead

Not if Electric Guest has anything to say about it.

Louis Farrakhan and Ron Paul

An amazing column at the Atlantic by Ta-Nehisi Coates.   Read the whole thing. These excerpts may tell you why you should:

As I often do on this blog, I'd like journey back to the Crack era--the late 80s and early 90s--when the general sense was that the black youth of America had lost their minds.... What we wanted was a great messenger who would talk to us, instead of talking to white people. You see, whatever our anger, we were American (though we would have said different) and believed in our talent to reinvent ourselves and compete with the world.

The need was real. And the man who best perceived that need--Louis Farrakhan--preached bigotry, and headed a church with a history of violence, and patriarchal and homophobic views. We knew this. Some of us even endorsed it. A few of us debated about it. But, ultimately we didn't care. Farrakhan--and his cadre of clean disciplined black men and modest, chaste black women--spoke to our deep, and inward, sense that we were committing a kind of slow suicide, that--as the rappers put it--we were self-destructing. 

Throughout the late 80s and early 90s, Farrakhan's beguiled young African-Americans. At the height of his powers, Farrakhan convened a national meeting of black men on the Mall. (Forgive my vagueness. The number is beside the point. It was a grip of dudes.) The expectation, among some media, was for violence. What they got instead was a love-in. I was there. I know how to describe the feeling of walking from my apartment at 14th and Euclid, down 16th street, and seeing black women, of all ages, come out on the street and cheer. I can't explain the historical and personal force of that. It defied everything they said we were, and, during the Crack Era, so much of what we come to believe.

I think about that moment and I get warm--and then I think about Farrakhan and I go cold. The limitations of the man who'd orchestrated one of the great moments of my life were evident as soon as he took the stage and offered a bizarre treatise on numerology. The limitations became even more apparent in the coming months, as Farrakhan used the prominence he'd gained to launch a world tour in which he was feted by Sani Abacha and the slave-traders of the Sudan.

During Farrakhan's heights in the 80s and 90s, national commenters generally looked on in horror. They simply could not understand how an obvious bigot could capture the imagination of so many people....what the pundits never got was that Farrakhan promised something more--improvement, minus the need to beg from white people. Farrakhan promised improvement through self-reliance--an old tradition stretching back to our very dawn. To our minds, the political leaders of black America had fled the field. 

I've thought a lot about Farrakhan, recently, watching Ron Paul's backers twist themselves in knots to defend what they have now euphemistically label as "baggage." I don't think it makes much sense to try to rebut the charges here. No minds will changed. 

Still let us remember that we are faced with a candidate who published racism under his name, defended that publication when it was convenient, and blamed it on ghost-writers when it wasn't, whose is at home with Lost-Causers, and whose take on the Civil Rights Act is at home with segregationists. Ostensibly this is all coincidence, or if it isn't, it should be excused because Ron Paul is a lone voice speaking on the important issues that plague our nation.

I have heard this reasoning before. 

... as sure as the followers of Farrakhan deserved more than UFOs, anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories, those of us who oppose the drug-war, who oppose the Patriot Act deserve better than Ron Paul 

It is not enough to simply proffer Paul as a protest candidate.One must fully imagine the import of a Paul presidency.How, precisely, would Paul end the drug war? What, exactly, would he do about the Middle East? How, specifically,would the world look for women under a Ron Paul presidency? 

And then the dispatches must be honestly grappled with: It must be argued that a man who could not manage a newsletter, should be promoted to managing a nuclear arsenal. Failing that, it must be asserted that a man who once claimed that black people were knowingly injecting white people with HIV, who fund-raised by predicting a race-war, who handsomely profited from it all, should lead the free world. If that line falls too, we are forced to confess that  Ron Paul regularly summoned up the specters of racism for his own politically gain, and thus stands convicted of moral cowardice.

Let us stipulate that all politicians compromise. But the mayhem and death which attended the talents of Thomas Watson and George Wallace, renders their design into a school of sorcery all its own. In that light, it is fair to ask that if Ron Paul was willing to sacrifice black people to garner the support of the bigoted mob, who, and what, else might he sacrifice? 

...

The fervency for Ron Paul is rooted in the long-held hope of a reedemer, of one who will rise up and cut through the dishonest pablum of horse-races and sloganeering and speak to the people. It is a species of saviorism which hopes to deliver a prophet upon the people, who will be better than the people themselves. 

But every man is a prophet, until he faces a Congress.

Le Saint Suaire et la collégiale de Lirey (Aube) by Alain Hourseau

A forthcoming book on Charny, his family and the Shroud of Turin. If your French is weak, Google Translate works pretty well on this description.

http://alain.hourseau.free.fr/livre-7.html

More from Phil Paine on intelligent protest

More from Phil on the limitations of current forms of activism.  An excerpt:

Protests within a func­tion­ing democ­racy are fun­da­men­tally dif­fer­ent from  [the fall of the Soviet Union, the Arab Spring]. The pro­tes­tors face no sig­nif­i­cant dan­ger. This is not to say that we should turn a blind eye to cops vio­lat­ing civil rights, strong-arming peace­ful demon­stra­tors, or the kind of trea­so­nous fraud per­pe­trated by the author­i­ties that occurred dur­ing the G-20 sum­mit in Toronto. All those respon­si­ble for these crimes against my coun­try should be pun­ished severely for them, though I know that they never will be. But there is a world of dif­fer­ence between a brief stay in a local lock-up and a court appear­ance, and fac­ing a fir­ing squad or ten years dig­ging rocks with your bare hands in a mine. Pro­test­ers in Canada do not face dan­ger great enough to clas­sify their actions as exam­ples of great courage. I’m not imply­ing that they shouldn’t engage in protest. Protest is urgently needed. But it is not help­ful or hon­est to mis­rep­re­sent its nature. 

What moti­vates real protest in a democ­racy is not phys­i­cal courage, but civic virtue....This is why I do not feel any glad­ness when pro­fes­sional pseudo-revolutionaries, con­ven­tional ide­o­log­i­cal “anar­chists” or “rad­i­cals” par­tic­i­pate in such protests, or attempt to take them over. They are there pre­cisely to val­i­date the “good guy” image of the author­i­ties, and to tor­pedo the moral legit­i­macy of the protest. They per­form exactly the same debas­ing func­tion that Islamic Fun­da­men­tal­ist groups have done for the Arab Spring. 

Within a demo­c­ra­tic polity, one finds protests occur­ring all the time, pre­cisely because a free soci­ety should be open to them, and should encour­age them. But such protests dif­fer greatly in their qual­ity. Some protests tell us lit­tle more than that some­body is angry about some­thing. Since another, equally large or influ­en­tial group may be equally angry about an oppo­site state of affairs, this sel­dom has any influ­ence on either opin­ion or pol­icy. More sophis­ti­cated protest aims at influ­enc­ing pub­lic opin­ion, by 1) mak­ing clear what is wrong about some pub­lic pol­icy; 2) putting for­ward a dif­fer­ent, pre­sum­ably bet­ter pol­icy; and 3) con­vinc­ing a broad pub­lic of the wis­dom of act­ing to this end. In a democ­racy, effec­tive protest should merely be the ini­tial step in a process cul­mi­nat­ing in real polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion and action. This action must, to be gen­uinely effec­tive, trans­late into peo­ple mark­ing x’s on bal­lots in the end. If it is merely a rit­ual, an amuse­ment, or a way of blow­ing off steam, it is not progressive.

Read the rest. 

Pictures of Iraq from the Big Picture

Another excellent photo collection from the Boston.com site.

Image:  Ihab Najam, an unemployed security guard pessimistic about the future.

Favorite blog posts of 2011

It was harder to pick them this year.  In particular my selection of Arab Spring posts seems rather random even to me.  But with such a huge series of events in train it might take omniscience to make the "right" choice.

Shocker

Shock 1:  The Globe and  Mail leads off the new year (on its mobile site at least) with an op-ed on There's no way out but a new politics of fairness.
Shock 2:  It's written by Michael Ignatieff.
Shock 3:  It makes sense.

Another good Globe piece from the estimable John Allemang on the revolutions ?to come?