Muhlberger covers the war in Iraq, 2006-2011

The war in Iraq is over, at least the American part.  Who knows what turmoil, even civil wars may follow?  But almost all the American forces are gone.

This is practically a non-story in the American and international media. [Or so I thought.  See the first comment below.] Therefore I am posting a link to blog posts labelled "Iraq," which gives you access to the corpus of the renown foreign correspondent, Steve Muhlberger.

I am quite aware that the war began in 2003; that was before I started to blog. I freely admit that the closest I got to Iraq was when I flew over Turkey and Iran on my way to New Delhi in 2005.  Some of the posts with Iraq have nothing to do with the just-past war.  The very best stuff was from the Iraqi staff of Inside Iraq.  But I thought somebody should reflect back on the war, and since I am the person I have the most influence over, I am doing it myself.

Apologies for the inevitable broken links.  I am particularly sorry that so many pictures have disappeared.

My brief summing up:  this is what you got instead of Mars.  Mars, in fact, would have been cheaper.

A delicious passage from Gregory of Tours -- or rather translator Lewis Thorpe

Here's the Latin from Histories (or The History of the Franks) 7.2:

 Quibus discedentibus, coniuncti Dunenses cum reliquis Carnotenis, de vestigio subsecuntur, simile sorte eos adficientes, qua ipsi adfecti fuerant, nihil in domibus vel extra domus vel de domibus relinquentes. 

Thorpe's English:

[Raiders from Chateaudun wreaking reprisals on attackers from Blois and Orleans] meted out to them the same treatment which they themselves had received:  they left nothing inside the houses and nothing outside the houses, and they knocked the houses down.

With apologies to the long-ago victims of this violent episode, that's pretty amazing.


Image: the same action, same country, somewhat later.

The literary art of writing final examinations

On Monday I gave a final exam in my Crusade and Jihad course.   It required the students to write two short essays, which I had told the students in advance.

Chatting  with the students before the exam began, I was apprised of a curious fact:  a prof in another department, a prof also fond of requiring essay questions on finals, expected those essays to have titles and complained bitterly when they were not provided.  I was flabbergasted.  I had never had a student title a final exam essay.   Though I did of course get several from the students in this week's exam.

Question:  If you are a prof, do you expect or get titles on exam essays?  If you have written essays on exams, have you felt inspired to put titles on them?

Do math answers ever get titles, I wonder...

Image:  Sweating over the perfect title while studying for the big exam...

What is it about Toronto, anyway?

Or Ontario? Or Canada?

Phil  Paine recently wrote an essay on the theme, "Nobody [today] is likely to laud Toronto as the exemplar of anything."

 I bumped into a business traveller, recently, from the Indian State of Andhra Pradesh.  After discussing Andhra, he asked me, perplexed, why the urban infrastructure in Toronto was so backward.  I could only be embarrassed.  How could I tell him that there were no Hubbards, Harrises, or Hastingses around, and if there were, they would never be permitted to do anything. 

 He concludes by pointing directly at Toronto's mayor.  And he's quite right to do so.  Except...

He actually won the election (though by making assertions and promises that he must have known were untrue).  No one claims that the vote was rigged.  Nor is he the first of his kind.

This short-circuits the obvious question, which is where do the creepy leaders we all too  often get stuck with come from? and replaces it with the question, where do the people who elect them come from?  Canada has  many virtues, some large, some small, but it also has within its collective soul a big lump of small-minded, uncharitable hatefulness.  Don't believe in a collective Canadian soul?  You may be right.  Then where do all the people come from who do not value the Canadian virtues that I so admire?  The people who, for a small instance,  use the comment section of Globe and Mail to unendingly complain that Pierre Trudeau wrecked the country?  I am not an admirer of Trudeau, actually, but this is ludicrous.  The whole nearly 40 years I've lived in this country, it's been wrecked?  What are the values held by such people?  What process produces them?

Anyway, Phil's essay reminds us that we can do better, and have.  Take a look.

Image:  No one would build this today.

A great site for historical pictures of Toronto

Here's the link, and a couple of samples.  Thanks to Andrew.

Yonge Street in the 70s:

Chorley Park, an official residence of the Lieutenant Governor, 1910s:

Iceland's president explains -- democracy was on the line

 
In the financial crisis of 2008-, Iceland refused to saddle its citizenry with huge debts incurred by private banks, despite tremendous pressure from European governments and institutions.  Today the president of Iceland described the danger to democracy at that time on CBC Radio's Sunday Edition.

Have a listen and learn:

• How 15 demonstrators stood between police protecting the PM's office and rock-throwing protesters, preventing who knows what.
• How when all of Iceland's allies turned their backs on Iceland, or made terrible threats against it, only China (!) was willing to discuss aid and support
• How "Gordon Brown [UK PM] will be remembered in Iceland when he has been forgotten in Britain."

You will have to listen to, or skip over, some other material at the beginning of  the segment.

Image:  One of Iceland's other minor problems during the same period.

It's not cannon law, people

It's more like this...