Memory Eternal

My Godfather William (Bill) reposed last night following a brief battle with pancreatic cancer. I spoke with him yesterday afternoon after receiving an email asking if I wanted his icons. I can say with absolute certainty that he was ready and at peace. In time I am sure that will provide some comfort to me. At the moment however the pain is too immediate and great. His last words to me were "I love you."

There will be no blogging until at least September 4th.

100 Years Ago

H.M. Albert I of Belgium

Germany invaded Belgium, one of the most consequential military events in history. Great Britain responded with an ultimatum and then declared war at 11 PM GMT. There are few innocent victims in the catastrophe that was the Great War, but Belgium may be the only truly blameless country. All they wanted was to be left alone. (A cautionary lesson for radical isolationists. That kind of foreign policy only works if everyone else is abiding by the rules.)

King Albert I is my favorite monarch for his heroic stand against the Germans. Given the choice between dishonor and a ruinous war that he knew Belgium could not win, he chose to fight in defense of his little country's Independence and her violated neutrality.

And now for a great human interest story

As some of you may recall one of my favorite websites linked in the sidebar, is called Shorpy. The site owner posts very large pixel, highly detailed photos of everyday life or scenes from way back in the day. It's a great place for a glimpse of a world gone by.

So the pic I have posted above is one of the more recent additions. As soon as I saw it I felt an immediate sense of who these two people were. Solid mid-Western folks that we might once have called the salt of the earth. Of course we often just don't know a lot about the people who appear in the photos posted and such seemed to be the case here. The photo is one of a set obtained off ebay and as the caption from Shorpy tells us, it's of "Howard & Rena, April 1952." Visiting Claude's farm somewhere in Minnesota." And that should be the end of it....

But it isn't.

Incredibly (do read the comments) one of the regulars managed to track down census records and got a probable ID on the couple and who they were visiting. Then he makes some phone calls and actually tracks down relatives of this couple, who I suspect must be surprised to discover Howard and Rena  now prominently featured on the internet. But the surprises keep coming...

First, and not surprisingly, Howard passed away quite a while ago (memory eternal). But Rena IS STILL ALIVE at 101! Any way...

Read it all here.

P.S. I agree with some of the comments over at Shorpy... I want that hat and tie.

100 Years Ago

H.I.M. Kaiser Willhelm II

The Imperial German Government delivered an ultimatum to Belgium, a country whose neutrality was guaranteed by treaty, demanding free passage for its army in order to attack France.

CIA Admits it Spied on Congress

CIA employees improperly searched computers used by Senate investigators involved in a multiyear probe of the agency’s use of harsh interrogation measures on terrorism suspects, according to the findings of an internal agency inquiry that prompted CIA Director John Brennan to apologize to lawmakers this week.

Ten agency employees, including two lawyers and three computer specialists, surreptitiously searched Senate Intelligence Committee files and reviewed some committee staff members’ e-mails on computers that were supposed to be exclusively for congressional investigators, according to a summary of the CIA inspector general’s report released Thursday.

The document criticizes members of the computer team for a “lack of candor about their activities” when they were questioned by investigators working for CIA Inspector General David Buckley.

Read the rest here.

A Volley of Criticism for the New York Times

Via T-19 ...
The Times is taking an online shellacking for its grossly biased coverage of a number of social and religious issues, especially relating to gay rights. See...

Here - Terry Mattingly

Here - Andrew Walker & Owen Strachan

Here - Alan Jacobs.

Here - Rod Dreher

and here - T:19

Prayers please

In your charity I beg your prayers for someone close to me who has been diagnosed with a very serious illness.

Europe steps up sanctions on Russia

LONDON — The European Union on Tuesday approved a package of expanded sanctions against Russia over the conflict in eastern Ukraine, where Moscow has been widely accused of supporting separatist rebels.

The new sanctions target Russia’s state-owned banks, and will restrict sales of arms, some kinds of technology and some equipment used by the oil industry. European diplomats also drew up a list of Russian oligarchs who will face individual sanctions.

European governments were moving in lock step with the United States on the new round of sanctions, despite concerns that they would pay an economic price for confronting the Kremlin more aggressively.

Read the rest here.

DC Gun ban is struck down

D.C. police were told Sunday not to arrest people for carrying handguns on the street in the wake of a judge’s ruling that overturned the city’s principal gun-control law.

However, the D.C. attorney general’s office said it would seek a stay of the ruling while the city decides whether to appeal.

In an order approved by Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier, police were told that District residents are permitted to carry pistols if the weapons are registered. Those who had not registered their handguns could be charged on that ground, the instruction said.

The number of registered pistols is thought to be low.

Lanier’s instructions to police also said that residents of other jurisdictions without felony records would not be charged under the ban on carrying pistols. 

Read the rest here.

100 Years Ago

The Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia.

EUROPE AT POINT OF WAR; RUSSIA BACK OF SERVIA IN RESISTING AUSTRIA

• Austria presents ultimatum to Servia [sic] requiring acceptance of demands by 6pm today
• Russia demands that Austria abandon the time limit on her ultimatum under threat of "extreme measures"
• Entry of Russia into dispute brings Germany into field under terms of Triple Alliance
• Great Britain and France work to find modus vivendi, but thus far in vain
• All offers of mediation declined by Austria and threats of intervention unheeded
• Austria's fighting force estimated at 810,000 men
• Servia's military strength is estimated at 195,000 men
• The Russian Army is in round numbers 1,500,000 strong
• Germany's peace strength is minimum 672,000 men. On a war footing the German Army is the largest in the world i.e. 2,250,000 men

100 Years ago today, and seemingly out of the blue, the end of Western Civilization is announced.

Russia: Conspiracy theories and a doubtful grip on reality

MOSCOW—Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 has already shined a spotlight on the Russian public’s somewhat, um, unique views. Russian media are running with conspiracy theories: that MH17 was shot down by NATO to spark a conflict with Russia, that MH17 wasn’t full of innocent civilians but week-old corpses, or that MH17 was shot down because it was mistaken for Vladimir Putin’s personal jet (as if anti-aircraft missiles weren’t aimed with radar but with a really large pair of binoculars). The only theory missing is the right one: that Russian-backed separatists accidentally shot down the plane when they mistook it for a Ukrainian military transport.

This may seem like the entertaining sideshow to a tragedy, but actually it’s just a window into a hugely dangerous problem. I recently moved to Moscow, and it’s hard to miss the extent to which Russian society exists in an alternate universe. Even well-educated, sophisticated people who have traveled widely in Europe and North America will frequently voice opinions that, in an American context, would place them alongside people wearing tinfoil hats. Russia is not living in the reality-based community.

Read the rest here.

The cited example of the common Russian take on Syria is unfortunate, since it is almost certainly more accurate than the naive views held by most Westerners. That said, Russia does have a long history of xenophobia and subscribing to weird versions of history or conspiracy theories to explain or refute inconvenient facts. But then again are they that different from us?

Consider the huge numbers of Americans who subscribe to bizarre conspiracy theories. 9-11 Truthers make up a much larger number than most people want to admit here, overwhelmingly from the ranks of the moonbat left. And of course there are the far right's version in the form of Birthers. Setting aside politics we still see incredible numbers of people who think FDR engineered Pearl Harbor although pretty much all reputable historians ridicule the idea. The number of people who are convinced that Jack Kennedy was murdered as part of some elaborate plot has been slowly declining, but still remains embarrassingly high, despite the mountain of evidence pointing to Oswald coupled with the complete lack of credible evidence of conspiracy, and the exposure of most of the early purveyors of these theories as cranks and con-men. Shall we discuss how many Americans think the moon-shot was faked, or that professional wrestling is real?

So, are the Russians a little overly fond of alternative realities? Yep. But that appears to be a point that we have in common.

Another Horrific Execution

Arizona executed convicted murderer Joseph R. Wood on Wednesday, a lethal injection that lasted for nearly two hours as Wood snorted and gasped, witnesses said.

The drawn-out process prompted the governor to order a review and drew renewed criticism of lethal injection, the main method of execution in the United States, just months after a high-profile botched execution in Oklahoma.

“I’ve witnessed a number of executions before and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Dale Baich, one of Wood’s attorneys, told The Washington Post in a phone call. “Nor has an execution that I observed taken this long.”

Read the rest here.

Related Story: Federal Judge calls for more  primitive, but effective methods of execution...

NY Times: Gov. Cuomo's office repeatedly interfered with anti-corruption panel

...But a three-month examination by The New York Times found that the governor’s office deeply compromised the panel’s work, objecting whenever the commission focused on groups with ties to Mr. Cuomo or on issues that might reflect poorly on him.

Ultimately, Mr. Cuomo abruptly disbanded the commission halfway through what he had indicated would be an 18-month life. And now, as the Democratic governor seeks a second term in November, federal prosecutors are investigating the roles of Mr. Cuomo and his aides in the panel’s shutdown and are pursuing its unfinished business.

Before its demise, Mr. Cuomo’s aides repeatedly pressured the commission, many of whose members and staff thought they had been given a once-in-a-career chance at cleaning up Albany. As a result, the panel’s brief existence — and the writing and editing of its sole creation, a report of its preliminary findings — was marred by infighting, arguments and accusations. Things got so bad that investigators believed a Cuomo appointee was monitoring their communications without their knowledge. Resignations further crippled the commission. In the end, the governor got the Legislature to agree to a package of ethics reforms far less ambitious than those the commission had recommended — a result Mr. Cuomo hailed as proof of the panel’s success.

Read the rest here.

Second Appeals Court Supports Obamacare

Two same day rulings appear to directly contradict one another. Details here

Appeals Court Ruling a Blow to Obamacare

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the government could not subsidize premiums for people in three dozen states that use the federal insurance exchange, a ruling that could upend President Obama’s health care law.

The 2-to-1 ruling could cut off financial assistance for more than 4.5 million people who were found eligible for subsidized insurance in the federal exchange, or marketplace.

Under the Affordable Care Act, the court said, subsidies are available only to people who obtained insurance through exchanges established by states.

Read the rest here.

The Telegraph: Life on the Eve of Calamity

A month before the outbreak of war Henley Regatta opened in “brilliant fashion”, The Daily Telegraph reported, with record crowds and “perfect” weather. It presents an image of Edwardian Britain as we fondly imagine it to have been, before the sudden cloudburst of August 1914.

Of course, the reality was far different for the 99 per cent of people who did not own land, collect rents or vacation at Biarritz and Marienbad. Most Edwardians worked in dark, noisy factories, cut hay in fields, toiled down dirty and dangerous mines; had bones bent by rickets and lungs racked by tuberculosis. Life expectancy then was 49 years for a man and 53 years for a woman, compared with 79 and 82 years today. They lived in back to back tenements or jerry-built terraces, wore cloth caps or bonnets (rather than boaters, bowlers and toppers) and they had never taken a holiday - beyond a day trip to Brighton or Blackpool - in their entire lives.

The country was a seething mass of social tension and violent confrontations. It was a land torn and dislocated by the struggle of increasingly militant suffragettes; strikes in mills, mines and on the railways; the constitutional battle between Lords and Commons; and the threat of civil war in Ireland.

Readers of the Telegraph - as a glance at the archives will reveal - were far better informed about the true state of their nation and the world than our sugary sentimental view allows us. In a dramatic scoop, the paper had published an exclusive interview with Kaiser Wilhelm II in October 1908 in which the Kaiser had expressed alarmingly frank - and hostile - views about his mother’s native land (the Kaiser’s mama, Empress Victoria, was Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter). In this interview the Kaiser accused “you English” of being “mad, mad, mad as March hares” for fearing that the construction of Germany’s High Seas Fleet was aimed at challenging the Royal Navy’s command of the world’s oceans. Implausibly, he claimed that Germany’s real target was the rising sun of Japan.

As the new year of 1914 opened, the Telegraph’s pages were dominated by stories about strikes and worries about whether Britannia could continue to rule the waves (reflected in a feature comparing the Royal Navy with its rival fleets - Germany’s above all). The biggest political story was the looming crisis over the demand for Home Rule in Ireland. It gave more coverage, at least initially, to the sinking of the liner “Empress of Ireland” in Canada’s St Lawrence seaway on June 1 than to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand at the end of the month - a “dastardly crime which has filled the whole civilised world with consternation”. On the second day after the event the Telegraph’s leader suggested that the murder would “exasperate Teutonic feeling against the Slav nationality”, but of course it got nowhere near what actually happened. What is so unnerving reading the Telegraph in those days after the assassination was the way life carried on as normal. People continued to browse dress patterns, plan weekend drives, tear out recipes and queue at cinemas, quite oblivious to what was coming. This is the life they were about to leave behind forever.

Read the rest here.

For those who might be interested in a glimpse of life on this side of the Atlantic, the complete archive of the New York Tribune up to 1922 is available free online here.

Obama issues executive order protecting gays without any religious exemption or conscience protection

Full text. More legislating by executive fiat.

RIP: James Garner

A great loss. Memory eternal.

Akathist Honoring St. Sergius of Radonezh.