From bronze to iron
In the last couple of years I keep picking up books attempting to explain the abrupt collapse of Bronze Age civilizations in the Near East in the first half of the 12th century B.C. This week I've been listening to a series of YouTube lectures on the subject while I do work that occupies my hands but not my ears. One used a phrase that caught my imagination. After most of the other prominent regional civilizations had crumpled under what appears to have been the onslaught of what we now call the "Sea Peoples," Egypt alone managed to put up a more robust defense. Not an entirely successful one, though; the lecturer noted drily that while official propaganda as recorded on engraved stones would never quite admit defeat, it did acknowledge that the glorious victories were occurring "closer and closer to home."
The picture I'm getting is of a very old, very stable Bronze Age system of leaders who might be called capable or despotic, depending on your perspective. Bronze-based military culture relied on large quantities of copper and small quantities of tin. Copper was available in many locations, though concentrated and therefore fairly easily controlled by local rulers. Because tin, in contrast, was terribly rare and exotic, with some of the best sources located in Britain and Afghanistan, the production of bronze required stable long-distance trade, which in turn depended on widespread law and order. Something wrecked this delicate network and precipitated an abrupt systemic collapse, perhaps some unknown social or climate catastrophe that set the half-dozen or so allied Sea Peoples on the move from the western reaches of the Mediterranean. From Mycenae to Assyria to Cyprus to Babylon, the archaelogical evidence records conflagrations and violent death, whether of entire cities (presumably by invaders) or at least of palace-temples (presumably by local revolts). Large areas were depopulated. The written history goes dark for centuries; the Greeks had to develop writing all over again, with an entirely new alphabet borrowed from the Phoenicians.
In the new world that followed, iron replaced bronze. Iron ore is much more common than copper or tin, its disadvantage being that refining it requires mastery of much hotter forges. Once the technology of sustaining enough heat was mastered and spread, however, the new ruling classes had nothing like the ability of Bronze Age rulers to monopolize the supply of raw materials for iron production. After the Bronze Age collapse, then, following an agonizing period of chaotic destruction and famine, the Near East saw a flowering of completly new cultures. This is the era of the post-Exodus Jews in Canaan, of the many rich, independent Phoenician trading centers along the coast of modern Israel and Lebanon, and of the birth of the Phoenician sea-faring trading culture that would colonize the coasts of Africa and Southern Europe and the island of the Mediterranean, including the largest and most successful city-state, Carthage. They had a good run before the next new batch of expanding empires devoured them: Babylonia, Persia, Alexander, and Rome.
“An Unusual Step”
The two lawyers handed out Molotov cocktails to the crowd, and Rahman tossed one into a police car before fleeing the scene in Mattis's van. They reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors in October 2020 that wiped out six of the seven charges against them. Those prosecutors, nonetheless, sought a maximum 10-year sentence and argued that the incident qualified for a so-called terrorism enhancement that would turbocharge sentencing…
Then, Garland and the U.S. attorney for New York's Eastern District, Breon Peace, who's handling the prosecution, took office, and you won't believe what happened next! In mid-May, the same career DOJ prosecutors who argued for that 10-year sentence were back in court withdrawing their plea deal and entering a new one that allowed the defendants to cop to the lesser charge of conspiracy. It tosses out the terrorism enhancement entirely. The new charge carries a five-year maximum sentence, but the prosecutors are urging the judge to go below that, asking for just 18 to 24 months on account of the "history and personal characteristics of the defendants" and the "aberrational nature of the defendants' conduct." Because, you know, Mattis graduated from Princeton and…
They keep acting like they expect us to treat them like a legitimate government, one to which we’d show loyalty and pay taxes.
Harsh but fair
How predictable it was that the United States fled Kabul, abandoning not just billions of dollars worth of sophisticated weapons to terrorists, but also with Pride flags flying, George Floyd murals on public walls, and gender studies initiatives being carried out in the military ranks. Ask yourself: if a general during the Afghanistan debacle had brilliantly organized a sustainable and defensible corridor around Bagram Airfield but was known to be skeptical of Pentagon efforts to address climate change and diversity would he be praised or reviled?
Swift Water
I’ll be in the river all weekend in training as a Swift Water technician. You’re on your own for a couple of days.
Addendum
I did not include this in the text of the letter because I doubt the sincerity of the politicians raising this issue, and therefore its real rhetorical force. However, I note that these 'Red Flag' laws run into the teeth of the entire Black Lives Matter / Defund the Police movement's stated goals. Some activists may really care about it, so it's worth noting separately.
These aggressive 'Red Flag' laws are going to be enforced disproportionately against the black community, because that is where policing resources are already disproportionately focused. Likewise, rural sheriffs like mine are not going to enforce these laws because they won't believe in them. It could very well be that black Americans end up being the chief victims of these midnight raids by armed agents of the state into the sanctity of their homes, when they have committed no actual crime. It may well be that the accidental police shootings that will inevitably occur from these policies will chiefly affect the black community.
And even though I assume the police won't intend to kill anyone, the risks are great. They are being dispatched to someone's home whom they've been assured is so potentially dangerous that they must go disarm him right now. They're going to be on edge, and will deploy with officer safety in mind. The chances of someone getting accidentally shot are very high.
Indeed, if these raids are conducted at night when children are home, there's a high probability that this policy will actually kill more American children than the school shootings it is meant to prevent. This is because school shootings are random acts by a tiny fraction of the population, whereas these Red Flag laws would be enforced systematically across the country by organized police forces on a daily basis. Even though the police would not be intending to kill any one, the far greater incidence of these events coupled with their high risks make it likely that more innocent lives will be lost than saved.
By night, these will sometimes include children who were sleeping at home. America will have relocated its gun violence problem from its schools to its homes, while dramatically intensifying the problem's incidence and scale.
Dear Senator
An open letter you are all free to deploy if you like.
Dear Senator:School shootings are a problem, but they are a problem that is easily resolved without violating the Bill of Rights. The solution is a single point of entry, the sort the military calls an "entry control point (ECP)," plus a school resource officer inside the building to control it. Then even if someone attempts to force entry there is a trained, armed officer immediately on the scene whose job is simply to hold the entry from a covered position until responding units arrive to catch the attacker in a pincer. This tactic uses best practices to ensure student safety while also maximizing officer safety. Do that.What you must not do, under any circumstances, is compromise one inch on the Bill of Rights. The proposals being floated violate the 2nd Amendment, certainly, but also the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th. We must not allow unconstitutional laws in a fit of emotion.That the 2nd Amendment is being violated by so-called 'assault weapon' bans should be clear from the logic of both the Heller vs. DC decision by the Supreme Court, but also the logic of the 20th century US v. Miller decision. Heller held that weapons are protected by the 2nd if they are in common use for lawful purposes. The AR-15 is the most popular rifle in America, in very common use; and rifles of all kinds put together, including the AR platform and also all other rifles, account for fewer homicides than blunt instruments. Almost all rifle use is lawful. Thus, Heller's test is satisfied.The Miller test was of a claim that the National Firearms Act unconstitutionally proscribed sawed-off shotguns. The Miller court found that it was constitutional to ban them, however, because the 2nd Amendment specifically protects weapons that are fit for militia service. That is to say that 'military style' or 'assault weapons' are precisely what the Miller court thought enjoyed 2nd Amendment protection. The AR-15 is exactly the weapon that the US military would ask citizens to provide themselves with should, for example, a situation similar to Ukraine's ever eventuate here. While semi-automatic, its mode of operation is similar enough to the military's standard rifle that every Marine or Soldier could teach citizens its accurate use and proper maintenance. Further, stocks of spare parts and ammunition are widely available and distributed across America's military stockpiles. This is the clear choice for a militia rifle in the present moment; and thus, Miller's test is also satisfied especially by this particular weapon and its class.The 4th Amendment requires probable cause for searches. All jurisprudence on this issue for centuries establishes that 'probable cause' means 'probable cause that a crime has been committed.' The 'Red Flag' laws being proposed eliminate this standard because they mean to effect seizures before any crime has been committed -- perhaps before one has even been contemplated. This is plainly unconstitutional.The 5th Amendment provides that no one's property shall be seized without due process of law. The proposed 'Red Flag' law deprives people of the due process of law that has held sway since this country's founding.The 6th Amendment requires that citizens be presented with the opportunity to confront witnesses against them. 'Red Flag' laws also dispose of this bit of due process by having the issue handled outside the normal legal processes. The 6th does apply to criminal prosecutions, which these actions could not be as no crime will yet have occurred; but the core principle that one should not be condemned by secret evidence or hidden witnesses must be preserved even here.The 8th Amendment prohibits excessive fines. Seizing valuable firearms constitutes an excessive fine given that no crime has occurred that might justify any sort of fine. So too does requiring the condemned to hire a lawyer and fight a court case to prove his innocence in order to recover his property -- especially since his actual innocence is uncontested, since even the state admits he will have committed no crime at the time of the fine being imposed.None of these are acceptable concessions. There are clear and affordable solutions that are readily available, as described in the opening paragraph of this letter. Use them, and preserve the Bill of Rights intact for we citizens and for future generations of Americans.With all Due Respect,-Etc
Let's Check in on the Department of Justice
Just a collection of news here.
Buzzfeed (BF): Secret DOJ report clears itself of political wrongdoing in Gen. Flynn unmasking
AP: Clinton lawyer cleared of wrongdoing in Durham case
Fox: Former US Attorney Brett Tolman: "There is not a single district court in this country other than Washington, D.C., where this [Clinton lawyer acquittal] would have happened."
WLTX: A Year and a Half Later, More People from the Carolinas now being arrested by DOJ in January 6th probe. "The FBI and prosecutors with the U.S. Department of Justice are not slowing down their effort to track the hundreds of people believed to be involved in the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol."
The Guardian (UK): DOJ Appears to be Investigating Donald Trump
Sword and Sorcery
An essay by Richard Fernandez.
UPDATE: Somehow I accidentally linked that originally to a YouTube performance of the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack. The link is now fixed, but I kept the Conan link here in case anyone happened to want a link to that soundtrack.
Memorial Day 2022
Women failing for no good reason
Unfortunately, when you fail for no good reason, you're likely to latch onto a dumb explanation for failure and therefore advocate fixing the wrong thing.The Wall Street Journal descended to a little pandering recently with an article about how women don't get promoted enough because they get asked to do scut work that's considered "non-promotable."It should be obvious that any corporation not run by saintly geniuses is full of people who are very good at figuring out which hapless co-workers can be conned into doing their scutwork. The ones who qualify for promotions have the good sense to decline. It does seem that men disproportionately figure this gambit out, perhaps because women are too focused on playing Nice Girl and expecting a a warm, nurturing pat on the head as they are positioned for success, and therefore miss the chance to play Competent Team Member and earn a promotion honestly. If Nice Girl is more important, fine, more power to you, but accept that a promotion isn't in the cards. Your reward will have to take another form. Luxuriate in your indifference to filthy lucre and rejection of tainted patriarchal status.The Journal cut off comments after receiving only about 55, but not before several women exposed the article's absurd premise.
Oh Dear
"'Guns should not be in the hands of the mentally unstable' says senile old man with nukes."
The Government is Worse than Useless
Parents with guns would have solved this a lot faster, and would have saved some of their children doing so. Possibly some of them might have died trying to save their children; any parent worth the name would.
Freebird
I still don't think this will make much difference at all -- and at first glance I read this as him preparing to slap the nervous bird rather than him graciously granting it freedom -- but here's hoping something comes of it.
The West Hunter blog guy (G. Cochran?) has gotten a little strange over the years. Still, he posts interesting things every couple of months. Today's post, if not entirely persuasive to the non-paranoid among us, would at least make a terrific premise for a thriller. He mentions something that most science fiction writers noticed in the 1940s, and that my father confirmed to me from his own experience, which is that people who paid attention to these things were quite aware of the likely significance of the sudden radio silence in the early 1940s in the field of nuclear fission research publication. As I recall, the U.S. authorities actually interrogated some science fiction writers and other civilians about where they were getting their ideas. They were able to point out persuasively that it was hard to miss the sudden disappearance from public life of nearly everyone in the field.
Cochran's theory is that we were naive back then. Instead of an abrupt cessation of research publication, we should have reduced the output gradually, replacing it with word salad and irreproducible results, just like . . . hmmmm.
We All Seem to Agree that Courage is Lacking today- So What Do We Do?
The subject of courage is one modern society hardly talks about- at least in traditional terms- and waters down to utter meaninglessness when it does (by design).
So how to address this? One fellow seems to have made a start at it, and it seems interesting.
I think his analysis of the problem and how it's related to "safetyism" seems to me to be on the money:
He seems well on the right track.
He also seems to understand the importance of Horsemanship in the process-
Let us hope his dream of establishing an "Academy of Chivalry" by 2030 becomes manifest. It can't happen soon enough for our society.
What he needs now are benefactors, hopefully he can find some.
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