Straining

Headline of the Day: NYT: “U.S. Strains to Stop Arms Flow.” Given that the US is by far the largest purveyor of arms in the world (a fact which makes a belated appearance in the story’s 7th paragraph), this headline produced in my mind the unfortunate image of Uncle Sam on the toilet, shitting out an unstoppable diarrhoeal flow of weaponry. Now that image is in your head too – you’re welcome.

That 7th paragraph notes that the US “has drawn criticism” for starting an arms race in the Middle East with its bounteous provision of weaponry to Israel and Saudi Arabia, “But it has also taken on a leading role as traffic cop”. But? The NYT persists in seeing a contradiction where there is none, presenting a narrative in which the US is bravely and benevolently attempting to restore sanity to the world, where in fact the massive flow of arms from the United States is part and parcel of the policy of denying to others, such as the Palestinians of Gaza, the means of defending themselves. Honestly, this is so obvious that I feel silly even having to point it out, but it does seem to have eluded the Times.

Quote of the Day

“Racism originated in the Torah.”

Today -100: December 7, 1910: Of colonies, lynchings, scapegoats, a really long State of the Union Address, and the Bathtub Trust

Secretary of War Jacob Dickinson, who recently visited the Philippines, of which he is overlord, if I understand the organizational structure of 1910 US colonialism correctly, says the desire of the Filipinos for independence is “very general,” but tough shit because they simply won’t be ready for it in the present generation. But he sees many signs of progress: 493 miles of railroads, education, less headhunting, everyone’s learning English, lepers are being sent to a leper colony, etc.

Two negroes who allegedly burned a barn are lynched near Monroeville, Alabama.

The coroner’s jury in Newark is investigating the fire that killed 25 female employees of the Wolf Muslin Undergarment Company last month. The company’s vice president testifies that the forewoman, Anna Haag, who conveniently died in the fire, was completely and entirely to blame.

Taft delivered his State of the Union Address, at 27,651 words the longest ever (a record still unbeaten), possibly because he insisted on summarizing every damn thing that happened everywhere in the world in 1910. Lots of stuff about arbitration of border disputes, tariffs, etc. Typical sentence: “All these tariff negotiations, so vital to our commerce and industry, and the duty of jealously guarding the equitable and just treatment of our products, capital, and industry abroad devolve upon the Department of State.” The reading-out of the document in Congress emptied the place out, with only a dozen congresscritters remaining to the end, and those mostly talking amongst themselves. The reading in the Senate took half the time as in the House, because of “liberal skipping.”

Taft wants the next (Democratic) Congress to give him a new banking law, federal incorporation of businesses, Panama canal fortifications, and subsidies for American shipping, especially to South America. He does not want any new legislation regulating corporations, saying “we can stop for a while” and just enforce the existing ones. He wants Alaska to be ruled by a commission appointed by himself, the same system as the US uses in the Philippines. His proposed budget for fy 1911-12 is $630,494,013.12, $52,964,887.36 less than for fy 1910-1, not counting Panama Canal expenses. A $50 million budget surplus is expected.

The US has arrested Juan Sanchez Azcona, former member of the Mexican Congress, opposition journalist, and a revolutionary leader (later Madera’s secretary) on trumped-up Mexican charges of obtaining money under false pretenses.

The Justice Dept indicts the “Bathtub Trust,” 16 companies and 32 individuals which control 85% of the enamel ironware bathtubs, sinks and lavatories made in the US.

Today -100: December 6, 1910: Of immigrants, schoolboy strikers, and Big Kaiser Wilhelm’s screws

The Immigration Commission reports to Congress, recommending restrictions on the immigration of unskilled laborers. It says that most immigrants these days have been economic immigrants, not people fleeing intolerable conditions, so Americans should stop “treat[ing] that immigration movement from the standpoint of sentiment”. It suggests several possible methods of restricting immigration: a literacy test, the exclusion of unmarried unskilled laborers, quotas on “particular races,” etc. It wants to add to the exclusions or limits on Chinese, Japanese and Korean immigrants an agreement with the British Empire to ban Indians.

800 Mexican soldiers are approaching 600 revolutionists and a battle is anticipated soon in Chihuahua. It is expected to be small and yappy.

Schoolboys in Jersey City whose current school is being closed went on “strike” to protest that they were being transferred to a crappy school rather than the good one with a swimming pool and gym. A police sergeant broke up the strike by beating them with his belt. The Times finds this hilarious

Headline of the Day -100: “Big Kaiser Wilhelm Drops Screw at Sea.” Turns out to be a German liner called Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, not the actual Kaiser Wilhelm. One of its propellers isn’t functioning. Again, that’s a ship, not the actual German head of state.

Today -100: December 5, 1910: Of Christian Scientists and duels

Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science, dies of natural causes at 89.

An actor and a critic duel with swords on the outskirts of Paris, lit by automobile lamps. The actor ran the critic through the lung.

Subject to far greater uncertainties than have been acknowledged

BP is objecting to government estimates of the Gulf oil leak, on which fines will be based, saying they “rely on incomplete or inaccurate information, rest in large part on assumptions that have not been validated, and are subject to far greater uncertainties than have been acknowledged.” So exactly like BP’s safety procedures then.

Today -100: December 4, 1910: Of docked tails, John the Baptist’s head, and women scientists

According to Episcopal Bishop Charles Brent, Filipinos don’t like Americans.

The New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals writes a letter to Kaiser Wilhelm to complain about a statue in Cologne of the kaiser on a horse with a docked tail. Er, the horse has the docked tail, not the kaiser.

Britain is also censoring Strauss’s opera Salome: the Lord Chamberlain has commanded that John the Baptist’s head not be visible.

The French Academy of Sciences is divided on whether to admit Marie Curie, who, their keen scientific observation has detected, is a woman.

In Italy, a military airplane crashes, killing an officer and a private. This is the first multiple-fatality plane crash in history.

Don’t ask. Really, just don’t.

Name of the Day: One of the witnesses at today’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell hearings: Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Roughead.

Today -100: December 2, 1910: Of senators

Massachusetts Governor-Elect Eugene Foss has embarked on a campaign to derail Senator Henry Cabot Lodge being re-elected. It’s worth spending a little time on it as a window into the rhetoric and reality of representative democracy in 1910. In those pre-17th Amendment days of indirect election of US senators, Foss’s campaign was also necessarily indirect, attempting to raise enough public ire to pressure the Legislature, but having to do so right after a new Legislature was elected, when that pressure would be least effective.

Foss gave an anti-Lodge speech to a meeting following a torchlight procession in Provincetown. He insisted that the November election which elected him and overthrew the incumbent Republican governor was also a “vote of censure” on Lodge, who should have responded by standing down. Instead, “Working in silence and secrecy he resorts to his self-constituted political machine, the machine which has dominated Massachusetts politically for years. He is seeking the counsels of those whom he serves, the privileged interests, and ignores the verdict of the people. He has never mingled with the people or worked shoulder to shoulder with them. He has never been a vital part of the industrial life of the Commonwealth.”

Foss attacks Lodge for sponsoring, early in his career, the failed Force Bill, “a measure that causes every honest man to blush.” The Force Bill was an attempt to federalize the running of elections in the South, to prevent African-American disfranchisement (and also ensure Republican dominance there). Lodge has also opposed federal income tax and favored high tariffs. “I fail to find in Sen. Lodge’s record any vote in favor of the rights of the people, or any championship of the people. So far as the people are concerned his legislative record is a blank.”

But there is no insurgent movement in the Republican Party in Massachusetts as there is in other states because “Sen. Lodge and his machine have strangled every Progressive who showed his head.” “This campaign marks the beginning of the end of Senator Lodge. I say it is the end because he cannot maintain by methods of secrecy, sinister influence, and wire-pulling the leadership of his party. The day of these things has gone by. He declines to come out into the open, and for this reason, if for no other, he is doomed. He is fighting secretly through his machine”.

A NYT editorial on NY’s selection of a senator urges Democrats to defy the attempt of Tammany’s Boss Murphy to railroad his choice through the Legislature, to make their views known by speaking or writing to their state legislators, writing letters to the editor, speaking to their neighbors, holding mass meetings, etc. What the Times doesn’t want, though, is direct primaries, calling them “a first-rate device for strengthening the hands of the bosses”, who “know how to get out their vote”. (The selection of the next New York senator ground the business of the Legislature to a halt during 2½ months of caucus fights, backroom deals that fell through, and 60 ballots of the Democratic caucus.)

The mayor of Fort Worth calls Andrew Carnegie “misguided” for building libraries, because only the rich go to libraries, forcing the poor have to pay taxes to support them. Texas, ladies and gentlemen, Texas!

A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your legislative branch

Grumpy the Clown passes literacy test, may take his seat in the Brazilian Congress.

Too... many... easy... jokes... brain... shutting... down........

Today -100: December 1, 1910: Of banned operas, choppers, and fires

First Chicago, now Cleveland: Strauss’s Salome banned. The St Louis police chief says he will have to see it for himself to judge whether it should be banned, but since only one performance is scheduled there, the opera will go on.

Thomas Edison has invented some sort of flying machine. He mentions in passing that he has an old patent, but doesn’t want to talk about it or develop it, and says he has no real interest in airplanes. The machine “consists of a basket hung on a vertical shaft, on the upper end of which revolve box kites or some other form of aeroplanes, at sufficient speed to lift the whole affair.” Er, that’s a helicopter. Edison invented the helicopter, but wasn’t interested in aviation, so he didn’t develop it.

Gov-Elect Woodrow Wilson suggests that the next president should be Ohio’s Governor Judson Harmon.

A house fire in Des Moines at midnight. An old woman appeals for someone to save her trunk. One bystander volunteers to go in. Firemen try to stop him, but he goes in anyway, and drags it to safety. That bystander: Governor Beryl Carroll, who’s probably being so brave to make up for having a girl’s name. (No, I don’t know what was in the trunk.)

Today -100: November 30, 1910: Of head scenes and polar expeditions

The Chicago Opera Company refuses to perform Strauss’s opera Salome after the police order them to censor the “offensive” features, especially the “head scene.”

Capt. Scott’s expedition starts for the Antarctic.

Camp, you say? That reminds me of something, but what? Concentrate... concentrate...

Consecutive stories in the Independent:

# Israel to build giant detention camp for migrants
# Israel tries to clean up its image abroad

Today -100: November 29, 1910: Of elections

The British Parliament is dissolved, with the second general election of the year to be held in December. It will be fought largely on the issue of the legislative veto of the (overwhelmingly Tory) House of Lords. The king has promised Prime Minister Asquith that if the Liberals win another election and the Lords remain stubborn, he will name as many new peers as are needed to pass the veto – and it could be hundreds. But Asquith is not allowed to tell the public this because of the traditional secrecy of communications between prime ministers and monarchs.

Ireland is also an important election issue, with the Liberals promising Home Rule and the Tories – most of whom call themselves Unionists precisely to highlight this – promising to continue ruling Ireland from London. We’re just beginning to see the notion of a divided Ireland emerge as a response to the imminence of Home Rule. A meeting of delegates from Ulster adopts a resolution to refuse to pay any taxes or obey any laws passed by a parliament in Dublin. It also plans to set up an Ulster militia and purchase arms. (I suspect their definition of Ulster is 9 counties, rather than the 6 that wound up being excluded from the Republic of Ireland).

Oh noez! Responsible, accountable, and open government is in trouble!

According to the White House, the latest WikiLeaks doc dump “runs counter” to the goal, which President Obama completely and entirely supports, of “responsible, accountable, and open government at home and around the world”. Huh. Must be the kind of responsible, accountable, open government that requires lots of secrets.

WikiLeaks has also “put at risk... the cause of human rights”. Um, how do you figure that?

Today -100: November 28, 1910: Of hot sweeties

The strike by the NYC vendors of hot sweet potatoes (“hot sweeties,” in the vernacular) has failed. Many of them will now sell baked apples instead.

Speaking of hot sweeties, a NYT editorial suggests that the British judge who presided over trials of suffragettes last week missed an opportunity to sentence them to something more creative than “40 shillings or a fortnight,” “which matches ill with the innovation presented to the contemplation of the world by the spectacle of a lady kicking a Cabinet Minister’s shins. ... Possibly a clue might be found in the ladies’ ambition to be treated as men. Why not grant their heart’s desire? Why not cut their hair short, for example... Since the ladies kick, why not apparel them for the pastime? That is to say, why not put brogans on them, and trouserettes? Then they might be provided with a ticket of leave good as long as they wore their new clothes.” Somehow I don’t think they’re taking the women’s suffrage movement very seriously.

Today -100: November 27, 1910: Of lumber slaves, fires, planes and cigar lighters

In France, a sailor charged with deserting his ship in Portland, Oregon proves that he had been drugged and put to work as a slave in a lumber camp in Oregon for several months.

24 women and girls are killed in a fire in a four-story building in Newark, NJ, which housed a gas lamp factory on the 3rd floor (where the fire started), a couple of paper box factories below that, and the Wolff Muslin Undergarment Company on the 4th floor, from which came most of the dead. One of the two fire escapes, all NJ law required on the 150-foot-long building, was blocked by flames. Many of the factory workers jumped as the flames reached them, only to be impaled on the spikes of a gate.

A newspaper in Virginia arranges for a plane to fly over the Virginia State Penitentiary, so the lifers can see a plane for the first time. They were suitably awe-struck.

Tourist advice: if you are traveling in France in 1910, be aware that pocket cigar lighters are illegal, because they infringe on the match monopoly, an important source of government revenue.

Good enough for Afghanistan

As of today, we have been in Afghanistan for as long as the Soviets were. USA! USA! USA! Proudly capturing Osama bin Laden for 9 years, 50 days.



David Petraeus says the goal is to ensure that Afghanistan “is never again a sanctuary to al-Qaida or other transnational extremists,” which we will do by “help[ing] Afghanistan develop the ability to secure and govern itself. Now not to the levels of Switzerland in 10 years or less, but to a level that is good enough for Afghanistan.” Dare to dream, general, dare to dream.

Today -100: November 26, 1910: Of those who have become mannish in their ways

Cardinal Gibbons (only the second Catholic cardinal from the United States) tells girl students at St Catherine’s Normal School not to follow women’s suffragists or, as he calls them, “those who have become mannish in their ways and who fight for a place in politics.” Because “The place for the woman is in...” wait for it... “the home.”

An elephant named Queen, of the Frank A. Robbins Circus, is executed with cyanide after having trampled her keeper (she also killed a little girl, but that was some years ago). Queen was supposedly 87 (that would be really old for an elephant, but not impossible).

Giving thanks

for the Tom DeLay money-laundering conviction. I’m sure the footage of the verdict being announced will be played on tv every Thanksgiving. “It’s a Tom DeLay guilty verdict, Charlie Brown!” Snoopy dance, everybody!

The White House turkeys were named Apple and Cider. CAPTION CONTEST!

“Live long and prosper”