The lightbulb comes back on
A crazy thought from disappointed Democrats: maybe the Constitution has some answers for how to rein in government when we find ourselves in a minority. It turns out there's federalism, separation of powers, and all kinds of stuff we might want to look into.
Syria
A friend writes:
Events are moving quickly in Syria after Hezbollah was crushed. The Turkish terrorists have taken Hama, the Iraqi parliament has authorized troops to enter Syria, and Russia has pulled its fleet from Tartus. Because Turkey has closed the Bosporus to them, the Russians will have to sail to northwest Russia to reach a friendly port. What a mess. I blame Israel ;-).
Travels Before Yule
I’m making a final swing for business before settling down to winter on the mountain. I’ll be on the road until the 13th. Posting may be light.
What I been sayin'
Several reports of the surprising-but-not-surprising Hunter Biden pardon have mentioned that Hunter will no longer be able to plead the Fifth if called to testify in future probes of corruption on the part of his family, especially his father Joe and his uncle Jim. What that observation immediately suggested to me was that Hunter will be exposed to contempt charges if he does not testify and perjury charges if he does--assuming he won't simply tell the truth, a possibility I discount for the present. Jonathan Turley makes the same point in today's Hill article.Strangely enough, Still-Sort-of-President Biden could have avoided this trap by commuting Hunter's sentence instead of pardoning him. That was the approach followed by President Bush in the conviction of Scooter Libby. President Bush reportedly felt it was wrong to pardon a crime he actually believed had been committed, but it was reasonable to commute the sentence in light of the unfair and persecutory nature of the prosecution. That ostensibly is also Biden's explanation for the pardon.Like many, I look forward to pardons for the J6 participants, or commutation to time served at the very least, for any as to whom there may be credible evidence of violence. They've all already experienced more punishment than any rioters I can think of for the 2020-2022 period. Ditto for anyone convicted of standing around outside an abortion clinic praying.
Experimental Archeology and Notre Dame Cathedral
In 1997 an experimental archeology project was begun near Treigny, France. The project was to build a new castle, Guédelon Castle, using only the materials and methods available in the 13th century, in order to learn more about how castles were built. It took 25 years and involved hundreds of craftsmen, bringing about whole new generations of masons, carpenters, blacksmiths, etc., who had years of experience in medieval building methods. In 2019 Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris burned down and many of these craftsmen went to work on the rebuilding project.
Wikipedia article explaining the castle project -- lots of pics
Guardian article on the Guédelon Castle craftsmen going to work on Notre Dame
For anyone who is interested in 13th century castle building, I can't recommend the five episodes of the BBC series Secrets of the Castle highly enough. It seems to be available for free on YouTube. (That said, if you already know a great deal about the topic, the series was made for a popular audience and may not be all that exciting.)
Here is the Guédelon Castle website, especially useful if you plan to visit.
Women in Power
As a student of Medieval history I have read a vast number of papers by other students of such history. As the academy has grown more and more heavily female, the proportion of papers about Medieval history that are feminist has waxed larger and larger. Young women who go to college and then grad school are very likely to be feminists, and they want to study women and power-struggle issues because that's what they're interested in anyway. As a consequence, I have read variations of the following paper probably thousands of times:
As a feminist historian, I study the ways in which women were able to pursue and achieve their goals in spite of the restrictive patriarchy of the Middle Ages. In my study of X, I examined the way that she/they were able to achieve a remarkable degree of success in pursuing her/their goals. Even more surprisingly, given the strident patriarchy of the era, I found that her/their chief allies were often the men in her/their lives rather than other women.
I have read this paper many, many times -- about individual women or groups, across social classes whether nobility in Ireland or criminals in France, laity or nuns or abbesses, bakers and brewers and housewives. The conclusion of their research always comes as a surprise, an exception to the reality they assume held sway.
Except it's not an exception; all these papers find the same things, everywhere they look. Just because I have read it so often, I have long been waiting for the breakout female historian who will similarly read such papers and come to question the assumptions they brought to their initial work. Maybe we've been sold a bill of goods about how men and women related in the Middle Ages, as we were about the idea that medieval people thought the world was flat. At one time everyone 'knew' that was true, but it just wasn't the case.
The woman who makes this breakthrough -- and it will have to be a woman, because a man making that argument would never get anywhere, especially not in academia -- will one day be recognized as a historian of the first water. She will overturn the whole field of Medieval studies by showing that some of its basic assumptions are false. She will also improve her contemporary world, both by speaking the truth, but also by improving the relationship between educated men and women who are now taught to view each other as oppositional classes of beings.
While we aren't all the way there yet, historian Erika Graham-Goering has taken us a major step further. She studies especially the area of France around the early period of the Hundred Years War, sort of the height of High Medieval feudalism. What she found ought to be astonishing: she found that women held exactly as large a proportion of positions of power in Medieval France as they do today -- and more than they did after the modern revolution in France.
When historian Erika Graham-Goering checked the number of women who were in power worldwide five years ago, she was surprised. The proportion was the same as it was in France in the 14th century: one in five.
Graham-Goering’s area of expertise is power, who held it, and how it was exercised in the late Middle Ages....
Graham-Goering focuses on how society was organised. An important finding is that the exercise of power was much less authoritarian and more productive than the impression created in later times. It was about finding practical solutions to situations that arose in the moment....
“Women were somewhat more vulnerable to coups, but nonetheless, one in five of those in power were women. When Jeanne married, she remained the legitimate owner of the land.”Noblemen and women performed many of the same leadership tasks, although few women went to war. An important exception here is Joan of Arc (1412–1431), now a saint in the Catholic Church. For a period during the Hundred Years’ War, she led the French army in the war against England.“It’s a thought-provoking fact that women lost power after the French Revolution and the introduction of democracy. They could neither be elected nor vote themselves. Whereas when positions were inherited, they actually had a reasonably good chance of being at the top of the hierarchy and in power,” Graham-Goering concludes.
The rise of science in the early modern period has a similar feature: people like to think that history is the story of progress, so that the rise of science should align with a greater acceptance of women and an end to superstitions like witch-burning. In fact, we invented science when we started burning witches. The rise of science and superstition went hand in hand, accompanied with a rise in cultural misogyny.
By the way, in the US Congress it's a about one-in-four: 25 Senators plus the Vice President as a tiebreaker, 127 of 435 in the House. The fact that I didn't know that without looking it up suggests that we don't really view it as that big a deal; I know how many Republicans and Democrats there are in the Senate without having to look, for example. Among governors, it'll be 13 of 50. It's interesting that these very different times and places have settled on about the same ratio, in spite of having completely different methods of selection. That might also be worth studying, but it is not properly a question for historians.
"Rebels" Seize Aleppo
Yesterday a surprise offensive led to the fall of Aleppo, Syria's largest city. The most important question to ask yourself when trying to understand the various wars in the Middle East is, "Whose proxies are these?" The struggle for dominance and control in the region is led by different factions, and if a surprise offensive happens it means that one of them has provided clandestine support at sufficient scale to enable a breakout.
Let's see how the NY Times covers this to help its readers understand what is going on in Syria.
Headline: "Rebels Seize Control over most of Syria's Largest City."Subhead: "The rapid advance on Aleppo came just four days into a surprise opposition offensive that is the most intense escalation in years in the civil war."First paragraph: "Rebels had seized..."Second paragraph: "...antigovernment rebels..."Third paragraph: "...some rebels..."Fourth paragraph: "...surprise rebel offensive..."
By the fifth paragraph, we finally get a hint of whose side these 'antigovernment rebels' might be on, at least in the negative:
"The timing of the assault suggested that the rebels could be exploiting weaknesses across an alliance linking Iran to the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as the Assad regime in Syria and others."
So, they're not Iranian proxies. But who are they?
Sixth paragraph: "...well-armed rebel fighters... opposition forces..."
Seventh & Eighth paragraphs: "...rebels..."
Finally, in the ninth paragraph we learn that the Times knew all along who it was, and just didn't want to tell us:
"Within hours from Friday into Saturday, Syrian government soldiers, security forces and police officers fled the city, according to the war monitoring group. They were replaced by the Islamist and Turkish-backed rebels sweeping through on foot, motorbikes or on trucks mounted with machine guns."
Oh. They're Turkish and Muslim Brotherhood forces. Erdogan, who has been aligned with and backed the Muslim Brotherhood across the region, is making a play to take advantage of the recent crippling of Hezbollah by Israel to strengthen his power versus Iran. This is part of the long-running Sunni-Shia competition to dominate the Middle East, and Erdogan's personal quest to restore Turkey to the leadership position of the Islamic world. The Ottoman Turks held that position (and the title of 'caliph' of the 'caliphate,' which the Brotherhood exists to try and restore) for centuries; and while the oil and gas wealth of the Gulf states gives them power and independence from the traditional Sunni leadership in Egypt and Turkey, it's a goal of Erdogan's to reclaim that place.
Iran is the leading challenger to that traditional Sunni leadership, and it has had a good run for decades now following our deposing of Saddam and their consequent establishment of a 'Shia crescent' stretching from the gulf across Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon to the Levant and the Mediterranean. They use this to supply Hezbollah, and then Hamas and the Houthis. Their Houthi proxies at the mouth of the Red Sea have given them an ability to threaten shipping throughout the Middle East.
So what you're really seeing is an unintended consequence of Hamas' attack on Israel, which has led to the savaging of one Iranian proxy (Hamas) and the at-least-temporary crippling of another (Hezbollah). Assad is now under a push from the Turks -- these 'rebels' are actually the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army and their paramilitaries -- and Aleppo is closer to Turkey's border than it is to Damascus.
Turkey is a nominal American NATO ally, but in fact is no friend of ours; they frequently shell our own proxies, the Kurds, with whom we have SOF embedded. However, the enemy of your enemy is at least an opportunity; Turkey here is fighting another Iranian ally/proxy, and drawing off some Russian attention as well.
Recall that the Russians have also been supporting the Houthi with targeting data, without which they would far less effective as Iranian proxies. This is to punish us for supplying similar targeting support to the Ukrainian forces, who are functionally NATO proxies to bleed Russia; so too here the Turkish proxies are functionally NATO proxies in the world war we are in, even if they're really pursuing Erdogan's and the Brotherhood's agenda rather than NATO's.
Most likely Erdogan started moving the clandestine support for this play about the time Israel and Hezbollah started their clash, realizing he'd be able to expand and consolidate his zone of control in Syria in the wake of that. He has several times threatened Israel over the war in Gaza as part of asserting that claim for leadership of the Islamic world, but as you can see, he's functionally on Israel's side -- even if he's actually only on his own. His actions damage the Iran/Russia/Assad axis, and therefore are bad for Israel's enemies. Whatever he may say out loud, what he's doing advances their interests: accidentally, but actually.
UPDATE: Sure enough, Syrian “rebel” leader Abu Tow gave a statement to Israeli public broadcasting station Kann assuring that Israeli interests won’t be targeted by his forces “due to shared enemies.”
The Feast of St. Andrew
Today is the feast day of the first of Jesus’ disciples, Andrew the Apostle. Because he is the patron saint of Scotland, today is a national holiday there.
Georgia-Georgia Tech
Clean, old-fashioned hate had a banner year. Georgia beat Tech after being down 17 points at halftime, tying it up in the fourth quarter, and then going to eighth overtime to win 44-42.
Tech isn’t even ranked. Georgia has been ranked as high as #1, currently #6. This victory is not too far from Alabama losing to Vanderbilt, which they did this year.
2024 has been an interesting year.
The Renaissance of Notre-Dame Cathedral
That was back in September. Here's a much shorter video from today that shows more of the cathedral.
This would be worth going to see.
Thanksgiving Duck
I roasted a duck stuffed with apples and red onion, as well as various herbs. There are only three of us for the feast this year, so it seemed like a good time to try a small bird with different flavors.
Please accept my Thanksgiving wishes for all guests of good will. May it be a good feast and a time to celebrate many things for which you have reason to be thankful.
1924 Turkey Toss
Everyone remembers the WKRP episode, but in 1924 something similar really happened in Tulsa.
It’s something that would be hard to imagine today. Recipients had to slaughter and clean as well as cook their own adult turkey. In 1924 these skills were still very common. Today you’d have animal rights activists protesting, too.
Thanksgiving
An article James linked, deploring the commercialization of the West, notes that Europe absorbed Black Friday without Thanksgiving.
As an American, I’m not sure whether to be embarrassed or offended, since we have a splendid and relatively uncommercialized holiday just the day before that expresses the best in American civic instincts. What could be more wholesome than giving thanks? And what do Europeans import? The parasite without the host, consumption without gratitude.
A Lesson in Hebrew
Today I was talking with a Jewish friend, who was telling me about one Thanksgiving he spent in Antwerp. He wanted to buy a Kosher turkey for the holiday. He found a Kosher butcher, but that guy only spoke Flemish and Hebrew. My friend speaks Hebrew, but didn’t know the word for ‘turkey.’ It was a funny story about him mimicking gobble sounds until the guy got the idea and told him the right name.
Hebrew was revived for spoken use in the 19th century, so the ancient language doesn’t really have a word for ‘turkey,’ as it was originally spoken in the Middle East and died out before the discovery of the Americas. Thus, the name of the bird was invented after the origin of our holiday.
The name has an ambiguous translation, which can mean “rooster of India” or “chicken of thanks.” Columbus thought he’d gone to India, after all. That the same word can also mean thanking or praising is a happy coincidence.
Ceasefire
There were reports of heavy rocket fire and 'suicide drones' (really just using drones as guided missiles) by Hezbollah in the hours leading up to the ceasefire announced today; Israel, meanwhile, struck Beirut. In the wake of the announcement reports are of troop movements by the army of Lebanon to the southern regions that they had abandoned to Hezbollah at the start of the conflict.
The official Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) depends upon and intertwines more than it likes to admit with Hezbollah. The US funds and equips the LAF, which our State Department likes to pretend is a reliable stabilizing force. Since we were also funding the IDF, this meme is almost accurate:
The rockets on the right are Iranian, of course, not US-provided ones; but thanks to the Obama administration and the Biden administration, we probably bought those rockets too. Hezbollah does get other forms of war materiel from us via the LAF. The only real inaccuracy is that this a shot of rockets coming from Gaza, so those are Hamas' Iranian-provided rockets rather than Hezbollah's.
None of this implies that peace is breaking out in the Middle East quite yet, as Israel and Iran are still going at it. The war against Hamas isn't over yet either. Things are a little bit quieter, though, assuming the ceasefire holds for a while. Right now that's as good as it gets.
Thanksgiving Conversations
If you can't have sympathy for the Left this Thanksgiving, maybe a little for the Devil?
UGA Rejoins the USA
The University of Georgia, where I spent a lot of time some years ago, has decided to reaffirm support for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
NEW: The University System of Georgia has:-Banned DEI statements in hiring and admissions.-Added free expression training to student orientation.-Declared political neutrality.-Required the teaching of the Declaration, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and more.
Students often oppose free speech for their enemies while relying on it themselves. Georgia has hosted a number of pro-Hamas demonstrations that walk right up to the line of First Amendment protection by asserting support for a State Department-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization. Often it's those same students who join such protests and yet tend to support speech suppression towards their political opponents. It's not that they don't have principles, it's just that power rather than liberty tends to be behind those principles.
UGA compares well to a lot of academic institutions in that there has remained some room for sanity there. Georgia's Board of Regents are early adopters of this movement to recommit to founding principles.
Meanwhile, most of the college is much more concerned about Georgia's admission to the upcoming College Football championships. This has been the wildest college football year I can remember. Georgia whipped UMass last week by 21 points, but has lost to Alabama and Ole Miss; Alabama lost to Tennessee; Georgia beat Tennessee; Georgia also beat Texas, which it may play again in the championships if Texas beats Texas A&M, who just lost to Auburn, who usually can't beat North Korea. (Georgia beat Auburn by 23 points.) Alabama will also be admitted, in spite of losing to Tennessee, Oklahoma (who also lost to Tennessee, Texas, and Ole Miss but who beat Auburn), and, incredibly, to Vanderbilt.
Sanity, then, prevails in having more interest in the football than the politics; but sanity definitely does not prevail in determining who is going to win the championship games. You'd do as well to flip a quarter as to try to understand the stats.
First Time for Everything
Russia hits Ukraine with a ballistic missile. It’s supposed to be the first time this kind of intermediate-range missile has been employed in combat.
Is that true? I wonder. Ukraine is supposed to have struck its own airport with a ballistic missile in the opening hours of the war because it had been seized by Russia airborne and special forces. We discussed at the time the way that would redefine the tactical use of airborne to seize airheads (see comments).
It would be nice to see the escalation winding down. The good news is the provision of land mines, which suggests a hardening of the lines that will make it easier to accept the current status quo as a condition of peace. Odd to think of land mines as a humane consideration, but by setting the current boundaries as firm they satisfy Russian demands to keep what they’ve won as a condition of ending their operations. Likewise Ukraine’s concession that Crimea can only be recovered diplomatically, i.e. not at all.
The outgoing government here seems to be trying to tie the hands of the incoming administration, but it’s a dangerous game. I’ll be glad when they run out of time for it.
UPDATE: Per the Bismarck Cables, more signs of peace on the horizon: polls in both Russia and Ukraine show waning support for the war, and public desire for a negotiated peace. The exhaustion of the public coupled with the hardening of the lines suggest that there's little more for either side to gain by continuing the war.
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