Today -100: October 4, 1914: Were it not for German militarism, German civilization would long since have been extirpated

Oct. 4 was a Sunday, which Woodrow Wilson had designated a day of national prayer for peace, the eighth such day in US history, and the first for a war not involving the US.

Headline of the Day -100:  “European War Sure to Harm Future American Type.”  Frederic Clemson Howe, the new commissioner of immigration at the Port of New York, says the European war will reduce the moral and physical quality of immigrants to the US.  And more of them will be girls.  And the men will be more self-reliant, which is a bad thing, since many of the miners who went on strike in Colorado last year were veterans of the Balkan Wars.  Worse, the women might be made “more self-reliant and more venturesome” by their experiences of the war.

The real murderer of Mary Phagan was not Leo Frank but Jim Conley, says... Conley’s lawyer.

Gen. Lothar von Trotha, who ten years ago was in charge of the first genocide of the 20th century, that of the Herero in German South-West Africa (Namibia), is reported dead in fighting in East Prussia.  Not true, I’m afraid.

Mexico: a conference of generals rejects Carranza’s resignation as First Chief.  No civilians were allowed to speak.

King Carol of Romania is said to be really sick; most Romanians don’t believe it, but think he’s faking to end the popular agitation to join the war against the Central Powers.  Spoiler Alert: he’s not faking it.

A large women’s suffrage parade is held in Cleveland.

93 of Germany’s scientists, artists and other intellectuals sign an “Appeal to the World of Culture” that basically repeats every bit of German propaganda about the war (attacks on helpless German soldiers by vicious Belgian women and children, denial of atrocities, etc).  Mostly it’s about upholding the superior civilization of Germany against claims of barbarism: “Those who have allied themselves with Russians and Serbians, and present such a shameful scene to the world as that of inciting Mongolians and negroes against the white race, have no right whatever to call themselves upholders of civilization” [the NYT, which catches up with this a few days later, mis-translates that bit as “mongrels and niggers” – “Neger” can have that connotation, but “Mongolen” means Mongolian not mongrel, presumably a reference to troops from India).  “It is not true that the combat against our so-called militarism is not a combat against our civilization, as our enemies hypocritically pretend it is. Were it not for German militarism, German civilization would long since have been extirpated.”  The appeal is signed by no fewer than 14 past and future Nobel Prize winners including Paul Ehrlich, Engelbert Humperdinck, Max Planck (the inventor of quantum theory), Felix Klein (the inventor of the Klein bottle), Wilhelm Roentgen (the inventor of x-rays), Albert Neisser (the inventor of gonorrhea), the painter Max Liebermann, and Max Reinhardt.

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Today -100: October 3, 1914: Of advice, mines, and noses and ears

Pancho Villa executes two supporters of Felix Díaz who try to join his revolt.  A simple no would have sufficed.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Drop Advice From Air.”  German planes drop leaflets on Russian troops, “advising” them that the Russian Army has been routed by Austria and is in retreat, that there is a revolution in Moscow and a revolt in Poland and that, contrary to what they might have heard, Germany does not torture prisoners: “If this were true where could we take the huge army of tormentors and hangmen to kill and torture the hundreds and thousands of Russian prisoners already in our midst?”  In fact, Russian prisoners “are all without exception very happy and comfortable.”

Britain says it will start mining the North Sea to destroy U-boats.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100:  Germany accuses French irregulars of torturing German soldiers at a field hospital in northern France.  The Foreign Office official report: “Their noses and ears had been cut off and they were suffocated by inserting sawdust into their mouths and noses.  Correctness of the evidence taken was authenticated by two French priests.”

Congress rejects an amendment to the Philippines bill to neutralize the country after autonomy but before independence.  This would have required negotiating that neutral status with Britain, Germany, France, Russia, etc, because that worked out so well for Belgium.

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California proposition recommendations for November 3, 2014

Voter pamphlet here.

As is so often the case with California propositions, it’s the details that’ll get you. Even where the general principle of a prop is good, their authors often throw in a poison pill. Sometimes it’s distasteful enough to make me unable to vote for it. I’ve explained my logic below, see if you agree.

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Proposition 1: Jerry Brown’s water bonds.  I am opposed to bonds, all bonds, 1) on pragmatic grounds because they’re an expensive form of funding, and the interest paid on them is money just flushed down the toilet, 2) on fairness grounds because they are regressive, allowing bond purchasers undeserved tax deductions, and 3) on principled grounds because they place tax obligations on the future generations that have to pay them off, which amounts to taxation without representation.  Also, I have no way of knowing – and neither do you, admit it – if these water projects are the right water projects to be funding – are they the most effective use of the money? do they overly favor agribusiness? are all those dams bad for the environment?  No on 1.

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Proposition 2: “Rainy day” budgeting.  The idea is to put aside money in good years so that budgets aren’t cut in bad economic times when the need is greatest.  But this version of that idea seems more concerned with paying down debts than with preserving services.  The real goal seems to be, as the LA Times is quoted in the Yes argument, “to promote a culture of savings in Sacramento.”  In other words, it’s a way to impose an institutional straitjacket on the Legislature’s ability to make choices, to put in place budgetary policies for which conservatives could not get a mandate at legislative elections.  No on 2.

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Proposition 45: Regulating health insurance rates, giving the insurance commissioner the power to determine if insurance company claims about why they need to raise rates are actually true.  The only good argument against this is that it gives too much responsibility to one person, but, again, in a democracy we have elections to keep the commissioner honest.  And it’s kind of worked – the insurance companies haven’t been able to buy a commissioner election since Chuck Quackenbush was forced to resign, narrowly escaping corruption charges.  Dude thought he was going to be the next governor, wound up forced to leave the state entirely and start a new career as a cop in Florida.  No candidate for the office since then has dared to take insurance company money.  Yes on 45, insurance companies need someone in government looking over their shoulder.

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Proposition 46:  Drug testing of doctors, controlling controlled substances, malpractice suits.  The No side complains that the drug testing thing is a Trojan horse for raising pain and suffering awards in malpractice cases.  They’re right, but the motivation of the backers is irrelevant to the question of whether the prop. is any good.  The maximum pain & suffering award has been stuck at a measly $250,000 for 40 years.  Which might be all the victim gets – you don’t get compensation for lost wages, for example, if you’re six.  And the awards are now so low that decent lawyers won’t bother taking malpractice cases.  It needs to be raised (to $1.1 million, with increases matching inflation in the future) not just to properly compensate victims and survivors of bad doctoring but also to prevent malpractice in the first place.  I’m actually a little dubious (though not a lot dubious) about the drug testing provision, which only applies to doctors affiliated with hospitals and would be paid for by the doctors themselves, who could be harassed with frequent tests by administrators who don’t like them.  And the provision disproportionately affects doctors who deal with difficult cases – perform open-heart surgery on a 75-year-old who dies, pee into a cup.  Actually, as I write I'm getting more annoyed at the drug-testing provision. The third provision, having doctors prescribing addictive narcotics check to see that patients don’t already have prescriptions from other doctors, seems like something they should be doing anyway.  And that database already exists, so the worries the No side raises about data security aren't affected by 46 one way or the other.  Yes on 46.

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Proposition 47: Drug offenses and minor property crimes treated as misdemeanors rather than felonies.  And if they’d just left it at that, I’d have voted for it, happily.  But they had to keep those crimes as felonies for people with past convictions for violent or sex crimes.  What does a previous criminal history have to do with whether you should go to prison for drug possession, shoplifting or check-kiting?  Nothing, but they wrote 47 the way they did so there wouldn’t be alarmist ads from the No side about letting rapists and murderers roam our streets.  I wish they’d written a better proposition, but there’s a fairness issue here, a matter of principle: all potheads should be equal before the law.  So I’m going to have to say No on 47.

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Proposition 48: Indian gambling.  Is a slot machine really a “game,” by the way?  The ballot book doesn’t use the word “gambling” even once.  Honestly, I couldn’t care less about this, except for two things: 1) It costs the state a fair amount of money to administer a proposition, and I resent that being spent to ratify a deal between the state and two Indian tribes (one of which is called the Mono Indians – just saying), 2) The projects are exempted from California environmental laws in ways which are not explained.  Which is enough for me to say No.

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Berkeley and San Francisco voters: Remember how smug and condescending Chris Christie sounded when he said that the nurse he had quarantined for non-existent Ebola would thank him for it if she just thought about it a bit more? Picture yourself standing in the soda aisle of Safeway saying the same thing to customers who will have to pay the sugary beverages tax. Democracy does not mean that our diets are subject to a vote of the people, even if it is "for our own good."

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Elsewhere in the voter pamphlet, I notice that none of the candidates for governor or lite guv bothered to pay for candidate statements this year.  Kind of tacky, guys.

The candidate statement for the Republican candidate for insurance commissioner says he’s “been the ultimate consumer advocate for more than 30 years.”  He’s an insurance salesman.

The Republican running for District 1 of the Board of Equalization seems to think that not properly taxing the underground economy promotes human trafficking.  The R in District 2 wants you to know “I drive a pickup truck to work each day”.

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Comments, rebuttals, and lame jokes about water bonds & rainy day budgets are welcome in comments.

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Today -100: October 2, 1914: Of mines, trees, the inevitable conflict of the races, and spies

Austria apologizes for sinking Italian ships with its mines and promises not to do it again.

Villa and Carranza agree a truce.

The US consul at Chemnitz, Germany, resigns because of threats and insults made against his wife for speaking English.

The US and Russia sign a peace treaty, to replace the one abrogated by Pres. Taft because of Russian failure to honor the passports of American Jews.  The terms of this one are not yet known.

Belgium is systematically cutting down the country’s trees to reduce cover for the German occupiers.

House Minority Leader James R. Mann (R-Ill.) speaks against the bill giving eventual independence to the Philippines, because an independent Philippines “would be used against us in the inevitable conflict between the races.”

Carl Lody, a Germany traveling under a stolen American passport, is arrested by the British authorities as a spy.  He’d spent the pervious weeks traveling around harbors, taking sketches and reporting back to Germany in badly coded telegrams.  After the first telegram, MI5 blocked the rest, except for one passing on the false rumor that Russian soldiers (you know, the ones with snow on their boots) were passing through Britain on the way to the Western Front.  After writing a very polite letter of thanks to his jailors for their considerate treatment of him, he is executed by firing squad.

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Today -100: October 1, 1914: Of religious freedom, prize cattle, mines and mines, and duels

A Carranzista newspaper says that Mexicans who worked for the American occupation forces in Vera Cruz may be imprisoned or executed.

Czar Nicholas tells his new subjects in Eastern Galicia, captured from Austria, that the province will be gradually Russified in its language and laws.  There will be religious freedom but he will protect the Russian Orthodox Church from open or secret attacks, whatever that means.

Russian troops have captured Kaiser Wilhelm’s prize cattle from his East Prussian estates.  They will be distributed for breeding.

Italy protests Austria’s mining the Adriatic; one of its fishing boats just got blown up.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: The captain and officers of the Austrian steamship Radium are shot on suspicion of selling the location of mines in the Adriatic to the French Navy.

The new Mexican government will not recognize any mine titles issued by the Huerta regime.

A French newspaper claims that Romania’s King Carol tried to convince his cabinet to go to war on Germany’s side, but they would only agree to entering the war if it were against Austria.  The king then tried to get the army to back him in a coup, but that failed too.  Did I mention that all of his personal money is in German banks?  Also, he was born Karl and he’s a Hohenzollern. And he signed a secret agreement with Austria and Germany in 1883, though he only mentioned it to the Crown Council in August, and they were not impressed.

Worried about German spies and trouble-stirrers entering India, Britain will henceforth allow foreigners to enter India only through Rangoon, Calcutta and Madras.

The Cuban Congress is considering a bill for an amnesty for everyone convicted of a crime related to dueling, like, say, homicide.

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Today -100: September 30, 1914: Of sieges, free and chained men, princes, and cadets

The Germans begins a siege of Antwerp.

Gen. Louis Botha, prime minister of South Africa, gives a speech justifying loyalty to the British Empire (many Afrikaners remember German support for the Boer Republics during the Boer War).  He claims to have inside knowledge of German plans for South Africa, which would make his audience’s hairs stand on end, if only he was at liberty to divulge them.

The French government suspends former prime minister Georges Clemenceau’s newspaper L’Homme libre (The Free Man), for criticizing the army’s medical services, or for calling for mild treatment for prisoners of war from Alsace, depending on which version you believe.  Clemenceau will evade the suspension by printing his paper under the name L’Homme Enchainé (The Chained Man).

Germany’s Prince Oskar won’t be returning to the front.  Heart trouble, supposedly.  The 26-year-old prince will live until 1958.

All 53 cadets at the Philippines’ police academy are discovered to be members of a possibly revolutionary secret society.  All resign from the academy.

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Today -100: September 29, 1914: Of muzzles, pacifiers, and dead (but not really) princes

NYC Boy-Mayor Mitchel supports his health commissioner’s proposal to muzzle all dogs.

France claims to have re-occupied the bits of the Congo that it ceded to Germany in 1911 in exchange for it recognizing the French “protectorate” over Morocco.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Pacifiers Start North.”  The Pacification Commission, supposed to negotiate between Pancho Villa and Venustiano Carranza.  Villa is demanding Carranza resign as chief executive in favor of Fernando Calderon.

New York primaries: For governor, the Democrats nominate Martin Glynn to keep the job he got through the impeachment of Sulzer (who fails to win the Progressive Party nomination), and the Republicans District Attorney Charles Whitman.  For US senate, to replace the retiring Elihu Root, the D’s reject one Franklin Delano Roosevelt in favor of James Gerard – Tammany stooge, former state supreme court justice, and current ambassador to Germany – by more than 2 to 1.  The R’s pick James W. Wadsworth, Jr., a former speaker of the NY State Assembly but most recently a Texas rancher.  His wife Alice Hay Wadsworth (daughter of John Hay, Abraham Lincoln’s personal secretary and McKinley’s secretary of state) founded the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage.

The Albanian Senate elects a new prince, Burhan-Hamid, to replace Prince William, who fled a month ago (though neglecting to abdicate).  Nothing will come of this.

WHICH GERMAN PRINCE HAS SUPPOSEDLY DIED THIS TIME?  It’s Adelbert, yet again, killed by... DUM DUM DUM... a GERMAN bullet.

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Today -100: September 28, 1914: Get your popcorn, we’ve got a train crash movie

Pope Benedict is not making any public statement about the destruction of the cathedral at Rheims.

Russia bans all Germans and Austrians from the vicinity of the fortresses of Petrograd, Kronstadt, and Vigorg.  The German language is also banned in those areas.

48 Colorado coal companies respond to Pres. Wilson’s plan for a strike truce.  They reject half of the recommendations (the ones that apply to the owners rather than the miners).  They reject re-hiring all the strikers and establishing grievance committees (who needs them when there are no real grievances anyway?).  And they want the federal troops to remain in Colorado until the UMW crawls away and the miners are disarmed.

Carranza will give up the post of First Chief next week, which used to be one of Villa’s demands, although now he’s demanding that no military leader in the revolution be a candidate for the presidency for at least 6 months, which doesn’t fit in with Carranza’s plans to run for the office.

Supposedly the Austrian public are not being allowed to talk to wounded soldiers, and three wounded soldiers who spoke to their families about conditions at the front were arrested.

Germany is mad at the Netherlands for releasing the British sailors it rescued from those three ships sunk by the U-boat, instead of interning them.  Near as I can tell, neutral Holland did exactly what international law called for.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Unburied Dead Strew Lorraine.”

Vitagraph almost kills several actors while making the film “The Juggernaut” about a train crash.  Everyone watching Rose Dugan (who doesn’t even appear in the imdb credits) almost drown thought her cries for help were just acting, evidently never having heard of SILENT movies.  The movie shows a real wreck of a real train.  The engineer (in real life, I mean) set the train going and jumped off, but it went a lot faster than it was supposed to, almost taking out one of the cameramen, and did take out one of the cameras).  When the engine hit the water its boiler exploded, which was unintended.  Compared to the usual use of hilariously obvious models for such scenes (Hitchcock’s Blackmail comes to mind), this film is still pretty spectacular.  Here’s a 3-minute preview of the restored version, including the crash scene and some not very good acting:

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Today -100: September 27, 1914: Tales will long be told and songs sung of the Battle of Coco Beach

A negro is lynched near Rochelle, Georgia for killing an overseer.

The Netherlands, which is neutral in the war, declares martial law along its border with Germany in order to prevent the smuggling of food and other goods into Germany.

The Salvation Army is banned from collecting alms in Los Angeles, where charities are required to spend all their funds within the city.

In 1914 Iceland had 1,300 telephones for a population of 85,000.  OK, a bit random, but I thought it was interesting.

The US Congress is debating a bill on the Philippines.  Republicans say this is the wrong time, given the world situation, to which Rep. Finis Garrett (D-Tenn.) replies, “Why, forsooth, is it inopportune...” which leads to the question, When was the last time someone used “forsooth” in a congressional debate?

French troops have seized Coco Beach in the German colony of Kamerun in what I’d like to think is called the Battle of Coco Beach.

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Today -100: September 26, 1914: Of war revenue, POWs, and postcards

Villa and Carranza’s forces clash in Sonora State.

The US has decided to postpone evacuating its troops from Vera Cruz, supposedly because it hasn’t worked out the details of handing over the customs house.

The War Revenue Bill passes the House of Representatives 234-135.  No Republicans voted for it.

The British Admiralty publishes the reports of the surviving officers of the three ships sunk by the U-boat in the North Sea, and puts much of the blame on the captains of the second and third ship for making themselves targets by hanging around to collect the survivors of the first ship.  Orders are issued to all the ships of His Majesty’s Navy to put military considerations over humanitarian ones in the future.

In preparing for an exchange of prisoners with Russia, Germany has to admit that it holds only 50,000 Russian soldiers, not the 250,000 it’s been claiming.

Australian forces capture the town of Friedrich Wilhelm, capital of Kaiser-Wilhelmsland in German New Guinea.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Austria claims that Serbian Major Vojislav Tankosić, one of the conspirators in the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose arrest Austria demanded in its ultimatum to Serbia, is dead.  He isn’t.

The NYT reproduces the pre-written postcards provided to British soldiers:

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Today -100: September 25, 1914: Of common colds and common foes

Theodore Roosevelt is campaigning in New York for the Progressive candidate for US senate, Raymond Robins, a former coalminer, cowboy, union organizer, lawyer and Alaska gold prospector, among other professions.  His sister Elizabeth is an actress, writer and suffrage activist living in England, where she was the first English-language Hedda Gabler.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Kaiser Has a Cold.”  The poor dear caught the sniffles visiting soldiers near Verdun.  (Update: three days later the Times claims he fell into a water-logged trench.  As was the custom).

The Germans are using one of the lesser-mentioned but deadly twentieth-century military innovations: searchlights.

Emmeline Pankhurst gives a recruitment speech, saying that a war to crush militarism has the approval of suffragettes.  I can think of a few suffragettes who don’t approve the war, not least her daughter Sylvia.  Mrs P: “When the proper time comes, we shall resume that fight, but for the present we must all do our best to fight a common foe.”

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Bigger nations should not be able to bully smaller ones

Obama addressed the UN today.

“We come together at a crossroads between war and peace”. Funny, seems to me like a pretty straight road from war to warsville.

“Russian aggression in Europe recalls the days when large nations trampled small ones in pursuit of territorial ambition.” You mean it recalls every single day in human history?

“The brutality of terrorists in Syria and Iraq forces us to look into the heart of darkness.” Or at least the Cliff’s Notes.

He complains about Russia sending troops into Ukraine, because, as the UN Charter clearly states, “borders are sacrosanct unless it’s Syria or something.”

“This is a vision of the world in which might makes right -- a world in which one nation’s borders can be redrawn by another”. Er, how does he think the border of Ukraine was drawn in the first place? Especially when he’s talking about Crimea.

“We believe that right makes might -- that bigger nations should not be able to bully smaller ones, and that people should be able to choose their own future.” Which is why we’re teaming up with Saudi Arabia to bomb Syria and Iraq.

“If the world acts together, we can make sure that all of our children enjoy lives of opportunity and dignity.” Dignity? Has he SEEN our children?

“Of course, terrorism is not new. Speaking before this Assembly, President Kennedy put it well: ‘Terror is not a new weapon,’ he said.” Actually, he was speaking (in 1961) about the Russian blockade of West Berlin. not about terrorism.

“we have reaffirmed again and again that the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam.” Because it gets a big laugh every time.

“Belief in permanent religious war is the misguided refuge of extremists who cannot build or create anything”. What, has he never heard of Hobby Lobby?

“No God condones this terror. No grievance justifies these actions. There can be no reasoning -- no negotiation -- with this brand of evil. The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force.” Fortunately the US speaks jive the language of force.

“The ideology of ISIL or al Qaeda or Boko Haram will wilt and die if it is consistently exposed and confronted and refuted in the light of day.” Because if there’s one thing that stops people becoming violent militant insurgents, it’s reasoned debate.

“And here I’d like to speak directly to young people across the Muslim world. You come from a great tradition that stands for education, not ignorance; innovation, not destruction; the dignity of life, not murder. Those who call you away from this path are betraying this tradition, not defending it.” Obama really has to learn that he can’t lecture everybody on every subject. He does not get to tell Muslims what Islam is. Especially since the only options he’s allowing people born into the Muslim “tradition” is between different ways of practicing Islam. No experimenting with Zen Buddhism or deciding that atheism makes sense to you.

He mentions Ferguson, but somehow sees it as a positive example of... something: “But we welcome the scrutiny of the world -- because what you see in America is a country that has steadily worked to address our problems, to make our union more perfect, to bridge the divides that existed at the founding of this nation. America is not the same as it was 100 years ago, or 50 years ago, or even a decade ago.” Yeah, the police are better armed. “Because we hold our leaders accountable”. Unlike the police.

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Today -100: September 24, 1914: Of traitors, brutal and unholy wars, zeppelins, spies, and patents

Pancho Villa declares himself in revolt against “the traitor Carranza,” will march on the capital.

Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor, calls the European war the “most brutal and unholy war in the history of mankind.”  Well, to be fair, by definition one war does have to be the most brutal and unholy war in the history of mankind.

London has reduced its street lighting by 2/3 out of fear of zeppelin attack (which hasn’t happened yet).

Germany suspends the socialist newspaper Vorwärts for three days for, depending on which story you read, 1) unfavorably comparing the treatment of prisoners by Germany with that by Britain and France, 2) saying that a German advance was actually a retreat, or 3) printing a letter from a soldier complaining about moldy bread.

The London Times thinks the sinking of those three cruisers yesterday was caused by German spies in Britain.

The German ambassador to the US says that Russian troops are brutalizing Jews in the parts of Galicia they’re occupying.

Austria-Hungary and Britain are cancelling each other’s patents.

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The mad bomber strikes again

Today Obama made a three-minute statement to announce that he’s bombing yet another country.  Syria, if you’re keeping track at home.

“Today, the American people give thanks for the extraordinary service of our men and women in uniform...”  Extraordinary service?  Bombing Muslim countries could hardly be more ordinary

“We were joined in this action by our friends and partners -- Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Bahrain, and Qatar.”  He didn’t say which of these countries are our friends and which are our partners.

“the people and governments in the Middle East are rejecting ISIL”.  Well, the governments.  It’s not like any of those countries care what their people think, any more than Obama does.

“we will ... ramp up our effort to train and equip the Syrian opposition, who are the best counterweight to ISIL and the Assad regime.”  First, note that he refers to the Syrian opposition in the singular, like it’s one united band of brothers.  Second, note that the Manic Pixie Dream Insurgents (© Tom Tomorrow) aren’t being touted as a government-in-waiting for Syria, but as a counterweight, which I guess means their function is to keep the bloody civil war going without resolution for another few years.

“Last night, we also took strikes to disrupt plotting against the United States and our allies by seasoned al Qaeda operatives in Syria who are known as the Khorosan Group.”  ISIL, the Khorosan Group – do you ever feel like we’re being retconned?  “No, no we’ve been afraid of these guys for years, don’t know why you’ve never heard of them before, they’re like the Cardassians on Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

“I’ve spoken to leaders in Congress and I’m pleased that there is bipartisan support for the actions we are taking.”  Since there won’t be a vote, we’ll just have to take his word for it, because he’s “spoken to” leaders in Congress.  Come to think of it, he said “leaders” rather than “the leaders.”

“America is always stronger when we stand united” – and nothing says united like one man making decisions entirely by himself with no legal authority – “and that unity sends a powerful message to the world that we will do what’s necessary to defend our country.”  And quite a bit of shit that’s not necessary or advisable.  As usual.

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Today -100: September 23, 1914: I’ve been looking all morning for Armageddon

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Prince Adelbert, Kaiser Wilhelm’s third son, is reported dead, for the second time this month.

Serb and Montenegrin troops have reportedly captured Sarajevo.  (Update: No, they haven’t.)

Some naturalized Italian-American citizens who were visiting Italy are being detained for military service.  Italy doesn’t have a naturalization treaty with the US, so it doesn’t recognize their US citizenship.

The French Army is considering changing its uniforms to something less colorful (red pants!) and target-y, as rather a lot of officers are getting sniped.  I don’t know if anyone’s talking about steel helmets, which haven’t been issued to soldiers in any army yet.

The NYT says the seeming pro-Allied bias of its war reporting is due to Germany banning war reporters and only issuing curt official statements.

In occupied Brussels, anyone found by the Germans with a French or English newspaper is shot, or at least that’s what they say they’ll do.

The British armored cruisers Cressy, Aboukir, and Hogue are sunk by a German submarine in the North Sea, with 1,400 or 1,500 lost, and 837 rescued by a Dutch steamer.  The 14-year-old obsolete ships really shouldn’t have been out there.  The British are saying the attack was by five U-boats, two of which were sunk, but it was a single U-boat, which wasn’t damaged, much less sunk.

Britain denies stories that Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey called for Germany to be carved up between France and Russia and its commerce taken over by Britain.

(click to embiggen.  Caption:  Old Lady: “I’ve brought back this war map you sold me yesterday, Mr. Brown. It’s not up to date. I’ve been looking all morning for Armageddon, and can’t find it marked anywhere.”)

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Today -100: September 22, 1914: So many of the Louvains of which we now hear so much

Pope Benedict is pissed at the destruction of the Cathedral of Rheims, says he cannot “believe it possible, in such a civilized epoch as the twentieth century, to be plunged back to the time of Attila.”

Brig. Gen. Christiaan Beyers, commandant-general of the South African army, resigns over Britain’s invasion of German Southwest Africa (Namibia), saying that South Africa had no quarrel with Germany.  He discounts all the talk of German barbarity, at least compared to that of the British during the Boer War: “With very few exceptions all the [Boer] farms, not to mention many towns, were so many of the Louvains of which we now hear so much.”

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: The London Standard claims that Bavarian troops are almost on the verge of mutiny after fatal clashes in Brussels with Prussian troops who were defiling the portrait of Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, who was a Bavarian princess before marrying King Albert.

Supposedly, Austrian Field Marshal Vodinowski is executed for spying for the Russians and Field Marshal Foreich is fired after a particularly disastrous battle and shoots himself (the only Google references to Foreich refer to this incident, so I’m not convinced he actually existed).

The War Tax Bill is progressing through Congress.  It will replace the expected $100 million shortfall in import duties caused by the war with various stamp duties, taxes on brokers and museums and concert halls and theaters and bowling alleys and pool halls and tobacco dealers, and gasoline and beer and wine.  Republicans are insisting that no new taxes are needed and the $100 million could simply be cut from the budget.

Anthony Comstock files a complaint about the play “A Beautiful Adventure” (by Robert de Flers and Gaston Armand De Caillavet), which he calls “immoral, indecent, and totally improper.”  The assistant district attorney is being sent to judge for himself.  Director Charles Frohman says he’ll sue Comstock for slander.

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Joshua Narins

Josh Narins died yesterday, after a protracted, cranky battle with scleroderma. He was 42-ish.

Josh had a vast online presence, from Twitter to Reddit to
his blog – pardon me, blogs, to his website on his theories about the interrelationship between language, nationality and conflict, to his numerous comments on bulletin boards and blogs, including this one, to Facebook and to other forms of social media you or I have never even heard of, but he did. And emails. His first email to me was precisely one week shy of ten years ago, and there have been hundreds since. He embodied the intellectual equality of the cyber age, corresponding with anyone and everyone who would respond to him, from the lowliest blogger to professors, politicians and Nobel laureates.  Despite a disease that made it all but impossible to sleep or eat, he was recommending readings on Islamic thought and movies and arguing with people on Twitter just a week ago, and now he is silent.

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Today -100: September 21, 1914: The senseless Berserker fury knows no bounds

Rheims Cathedral is still on fire.  The French protest “this act of odious vandalism” and say there was no military reason to shell the cathedral.  The Germans say the French were shooting from that direction.  The London Times says “The senseless Berserker fury knows no bounds.”

Princes currently rumored to have been shot and wounded: Prince George of Serbia, Prince August Wilhelm of Germany.  Also, a Swiss official just back from Vienna says Austrian Emperor Franz Josef died a week ago but they’re keeping it secret to prevent a revolution.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: A German newspaper claims that on July 22 either British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey or the former ambassador to Germany said that the only way to avoid a civil war over Irish Home Rule was a war with Germany.

Pancho Villa declares himself Dictator of the North after a fight with Constitutionalist General Obregon, in which they barely refrain from shooting each other.

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Today -100: September 20, 1914: Of cathedrals, flanks, submarines, footballers, and horses

The Germans shell the 13th century Rheims Cathedral, setting it on fire. This will feature heavily in Allied propaganda for some time to come, as in this French cartoon



and this 1915 Irish recruiting poster.



Headline of the Day -100: “PUSHING IN GERMAN FLANKS.; Allies Fail to Budge the Invaders’ Centre, However.” War, or bad sex?

A while back, I was saying that no one is defining their war aims. Well, the London Times says the war will go on “until German militarism, its causes, and its effects are destroyed once and for all. ... Not until the German people have been compelled to perceive this struggle in its true light, as a revolt of the invincible forces of civilization against the systematized ethic of barbarism forged by German potentates and Professors, can there be a prospect of lasting peace for the world.” See, and I didn’t think there were any concrete war aims.

An Australian submarine sinks, or at any rate disappears. Probably an accident. Anyway, Australia evidently had submarines.

Mexico’s Not-Provisional-President-Because-Woodrow-Wilson-Said-He-Can’t-Call-Himself-That Carranza orders the expulsion of 400 Catholic priests and nuns from the country.

Headline of the Day -100: “English Soccer Players Go to War.”

The French Army is selling off several hundred horses captured from the Germans.  They can’t be used by the French Army, because they only speak German, so they’re being sold off to farmers (who had their horses requisitioned by the army).

Columbia, already the largest university in the country, will have its largest class ever this year, as people who’d expected to study in Europe think better of it.

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Today -100: September 19, 1914: Whoever knows the good-natured character of our troops cannot seriously pretend that they are inclined to needless or frivolous destruction

Austrian police ban the spreading of news about Austria’s war losses.

Automobiles are banned from leaving Paris except for military ambulances and the cars of officials and journalists.  Possibly to thwart the use of cars by spies, who are supposedly whizzing around Paris identifying concentrations of troops.

Headline of the Day -100:  “Von Kluck Flanked?”  That’s German Gen. Alexander Heinrich Rudolph von Kluck, the inspiration behind this British soldiers’ song, sung to the tune of Pop Goes the Weasel:

Kaiser Bill is feeling ill,
The Crown Prince, he’s gone barmy.
We don’t give a cluck for old von Fluck
And all his bleedin’ army.

Germany distributes a pamphlet in Italy, which says “With German energy we have determined to win, and we invite the Italians to win with us.”  Sure, they can bring their Italian... energy.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: a Belgian courier arrives in London with news that the Germans have mined all the public buildings and large private homes in Brussels, and filled the schools with straw, preparing to blow up and burn down the city.

Fog of War etc: Alfred Zimmermann, Germany’s assistant foreign secretary, adds a new detail to Germany’s propaganda about the Louvain massacre: the treacherous civilians included women and children who blinded wounded German soldiers.  Obviously, the “severest measures” were required, indeed were forced on the Germans, for their self-preservation.  “Whoever knows the good-natured character of our troops cannot seriously pretend that they are inclined to needless or frivolous destruction.”

Repulsive Headline of the Day -100:  “Repulse Germans 10 Times.”  My favorite bit in this dispatch from the First Battle of the Aisne: “All the next day the battle was of a ding-dong nature”.

Gen. Funston, in charge of the US occupation of Vera Cruz, wants Pres. Wilson to delay the ending of the occupation until October 10 so that all the refugees and priests and nuns can escape before the Constitutionalists inevitably slaughter them all, or something.

Evidently French youths have not been allowed to volunteer for the army before the age of 20 without permission of their father.  Now the government will allow mothers to give that permission, but only if the father is absent.

Germany is supposedly trying to conscript ethnic Germans in the parts of Russia it’s occupying, and hanging those who refuse to comply.

John Rizzo, a prisoner at Sing Sing prison who served as waiter to the warden, escapes after the warden’s dinner party.

The British Parliament suspends the £3,000/year annuity of the Dowager Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, a cousin of Queen Victoria who married a German 70-some years ago.

Turkey orders newspapers to call the renamed city of Petrograd by its old name St Petersburg.  I don’t know why.  Probably just to piss Russia off.

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