Health, Life, Joy, Peace, Good Cheer, Hope

Υγεία, Ζωή, Χαρά, Ειρήνη, Ευθυμία, Ελπίς

Health, Life, Joy, Peace, Good Cheer, Hope

From a 4th-century mosaic from Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum) at the British Museum 

Click to enlarge.

The NYT tried but . . .

Some in depth reporting from The New York Times on the October 7th War in Israel.  All reporting of conflict is wrong in the beginning and gets clarified and corrected over time.  Such will surely be the case here as well.  But kudos for at least doing some original reporting for a change, right, wrong or indifferent.

From Where Was the Israeli Military? by Adam Goldman, Ronen Bergman, Mark Mazzetti, Natan Odenheimer, Alexander Cardia, Ainara Tiefenthäler and Sheera Frenkel.  The subheading is A Times investigation found that troops were disorganized, out of position and relied on social media to choose targets. Behind the failure: Israel had no battle plan for a massive Hamas invasion.

The focus is very much on finding who in the Israeli military was to blame for the unpreparedness against the Hamas onslaught on October 7th.  

The reporting is frustrating to a degree because it lacks historical context, ignores fundamentals of war and normal military issues (including the fog of war), fails to acknowledge or take into account not dissimilar issues in Israel's own past, fails to acknowledge constraints on Israel and most critically fails to acknowledge what is always true for all militaries at all times - the need to make risk-adjusted trade-off decisions in an uncertain environment.

The NYT attempts to place the onus of failure on the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and in particular the NYT emphasizes that there was no pre-established defense plan for the scenario of a regiment sized invasion from Gaza.  

Maybe they are right.  We'll discover later.  The war is ongoing, the most senior people have not weighed in, access to deep information will still have been incomplete or restricted because - well, because there is a major war underway and that is the obvious priority.

This does seem to have been an intelligence coup for Hamas as it so far seems as if all parties were caught unawares.  Not only Israel and the US (those with the greatest intelligence capabilities in the region), but also Hamas' sponsors and allies.  Both Hezbollah and Iran seem to have been caught unawares of the timing and scope of the attack.

While acknowledging the NYT's investment in the reporting, I have grave concerns about the accuracy of some of their conclusions.  The NYT appears not to have much sourcing in the IDF and the government.  Which is not surprising given the war going on.

Every major surprise attack or battlefield surprise involves frontline people deriving their own conclusions about things they can't actually know about.  The tactical level view is always as limited as that of the strategic level view.  Both have insight and blindspots.  For a newspaper with only access to tactical level information, their view and interpretation are necessarily limited.

I am surprised that the NYT article has absolutely no reference to any of the earlier Middle East wars where surprise was an element, in particular the 1973 Yom Kippur War in which Israel was completely blindsided by Egypt and Syria.  The Six Day War in 1967 (involving Egypt, Syria and Jordan) is also instructive because of the intelligence aspect.  Israel launched with a surprise attack on the Egyptian Air Force in the Sinai, primarily owing to the repeated and escalating bellicose announcements and military movements principally of Egypt and Sinai.  Israel was overwhelmed with evidence of Egyptian and Syrian preparations for war but had not yet been attacked.  When is preemption justified?  That is usually the central issue for Israel, surrounded as it is both hostile governments and even more hostile non-state actors.

The other missing consideration from the NYT article are the analogs with Britains war with the IRA in the 1970s.  On October 12, 1984, the IRA exploded a bomb at the Brighton hotel where the Conservative Party conference was being held and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was speaking.  Five people were killed and 31 injured.  

After their failed assassination attempt, the IRA issued a statement which has always incapsulated the challenge of fanatic fringe terrorist groups to established states.

Mrs. Thatcher will now realise that Britain cannot occupy our country and torture our prisoners and shoot our people in their own streets and get away with it. Today we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always. Give Ireland peace and there will be no more war.

For Israel, with an always evolving list of perhaps a dozen state and non-state enemies at any given time, they have to be lucky always.  Especially given the topographical and geographical constraints of the country.  There is simply no margin of error as past wars have demonstrated.  Every attack on any front at any time is potentially an existential threat.

That leads to the third oversight of the article with its simplistic accusations of ill-preparedness.  There is an economic cost to civil defense that is consequential.  Anytime Israel mobilizes, the entire economy takes a hit.  All the soldiers moved to the front line are no longer working and producing.  Wars are not only matters of blood and lives but affordability.  Particularly when you are talking about a democracy in a sea of authoritarian states.  Authoritarian regimes, at least in the short term, have much greater latitude to inflict economic hardship on citizens than does a democracy.  

As Hamas has repeatedly demonstrated over the years.  

Finally, the NYT keeps suggesting plans and exercises which might have made a difference in terms of readiness.  They are probably not wrong in that simplistic calculation.

What they fail to take into account is the range of threats and risks the whole nation of Israel always faces.  This is where the tactical level reporting in absence of insight to the strategic command level so hobbles the usefulness of the NYT reporting.  Exercises and rehearsals are expensive.  On a given budget, if the exercise is done at the Gaza border, then the comparable necessary exercise is not done on the northern border.  Or in the Golan heights.  Or on the West Bank.  Or on the coast.  And so on.  

Israel simply cannot afford to invest the time and money in all the conceivable or possible threats which it faces.  No government can do so in the face of dedicated violent opponents.  The defending country always has to be lucky and the violent opponent only needs to be right once.

It is just like commercial enterprises covering their various operational and financial risks.  The population of truly conceivable risks is always far greater than the business's ability to afford to mitigate those risks.  You have to choose the most probable risks and spend time and money on that subset while keeping an eye on Black Swan events.  

The article is useful but is undermined in the following ways.  

It has a tactical bias and an absence of a strategic view.  

It fails to acknowledge the challenge of intelligence in the Middle East context as demonstrated in past conflicts.  

It fails to acknowledge the asymmetry between defense of a nation and the threats of a terrorist non-state group.

It fails to take into account the challenge of trade-off decision-making in an environment of extreme danger, uncertainty, and constraints (economic and manpower).

Poor planning and exercises will probably be some element of the post-war analysis as the NYT focuses on.  I suspect, however, that the more full investigation will focus much more on the very real challenge of effective intelligence gathering among hostile and neutral state and non-state entities and how to appropriately respond to that intelligence in a complex systems environment which has to accommodate politics, diplomacy, economics, and military needs.  

The Times' own reporting actually points to a couple of issues that counter its own simplistic diagnosis.  

At 7:43 a.m., more than an hour after the rocket assault began and thousands of Hamas fighters stormed into Israel, The Pit issued its first deployment instructions of the day. It ordered all emergency forces to head south, along with all available units that could do so quickly.

But the nation’s military leaders did not yet recognize that an invasion of Israel was already well underway.

This points to military unpreparedness on the part of the IDF and that may be true.  But if neither Hezbollah nor Iran knew of the attack, which seems so far to be the case, then this more a testament to Hamas planning that it is necessarily an indictment of Shin Bet and Mossad.  Hamas seems to have moved the bar for secret planning far from what anyone thought was possible.

The NYT also has a certain inconsistency in their indictment of the IDF.  They invoke an early defense doctrine from Israel.

That lack of preparation is at odds with a founding principle of Israeli military doctrine. From the days of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister and defense minister, the goal was to always be on the offensive — to anticipate attacks and fight battles in enemy territory.

But the editorial board has long been critical of even minor Israeli and IDF offensive actions.  The NYT does not believe in or support the Ben-Gurion doctrine but they use it nonetheless to criticize the IDF.  Seems an inconsistent and illogical position for them and completely undermines their criticism.

Another contradiction:

Israeli security and military agencies produced repeated assessments that Hamas was neither interested in nor capable of launching a massive invasion. The authorities clung to that optimistic view even when Israel obtained Hamas battle plans that revealed an invasion was precisely what Hamas was planning.

The decisions, in retrospect, are tinged with hubris. The notion that Hamas could execute an ambitious attack was seen as so unlikely that Israeli intelligence officials even reduced eavesdropping on Hamas radio traffic, concluding that it was a waste of time.

All that might be true.  But was the assessment well-founded.  Israel did not believe Hamas had the capability to conduct such an attack.  Were their reasons for that conclusion well-founded?

It seems like they were.  The Times reports

Hamas fighters poured into Israel with heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, land mines and more. They were prepared to fight for days. 

Ill-prepared as the IDF turned out to be, they still managed to suppress the invasion within 24-hours.  Clearly far sooner than Hamas anticipated (fighting for days).  Israel was wrong to assume that Hamas would be willing to make an attack but they seem to have been correct that a Hamas attack had little likelihood of success.  While most of the Hamas terrorists were killed or captured in the first 24 hours, a few hid out to conduct ambushes and the last invading terrorists in Israel were not killed until about October 14th.  But the heaviest fighting was all over within 24-48 hours.  

The misjudgment of Hamas's willingness to invade came at the expense of the 1,200 civilian lives lost but IDF was not wrong that Hamas did not represent a serious military threat.  It is a fine, and tragic, distinction, but important.

Good for the New York Times investing the time and money in some deep reporting.  I just wish it had been better informed and more informative.  As a counter example to the reporting from seven NYT journalist, there is this piece by a single author from a month ago that provides much more information and context and history and reaches more refined and likely more accurate conclusions.  From Hamas’s October 2023 Attack on Israel by Dr. Omer Dostri.  The subheading is The End of the Deterrence Strategy in Gaza.  

Dostri provides hard information most often missing in other accounts.

In the early hours of 7 October, Hamas launched thousands of rockets at Israel while many Israeli officers and soldiers were on leave due to a holiday and Shabbat occurring simultaneously. Hamas’s special forces (known as the Nukhba) deployed squadrons of drones equipped with explosive charges and drones equipped with grenades, which targeted guard posts and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) surveillance, control, communication, and weapons systems near the border. Following this, thousands of Hamas terrorists, divided into teams with specific attack plans, gathered near the Israeli border. They managed to breach the border at multiple locations using explosive devices, infiltrate Israeli territory, and open the way for thousands more terrorists on motorcycles and dozens of Islamic State (IS)-style vans loaded with various weaponry, including rifles, machine guns, antitank launchers with advanced technology, rockets, explosive devices, and a substantial number of hand grenades. In addition, some Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel by air, using parachutes for aerial insertion. In total, about three thousand terrorists infiltrated Israel that morning.

Three thousand men, roughly a regiment, invaded Israel.  I have not seen that number elsewhere but accords with other numbers I have seen indicating some 800-1000 Hamas invaders were killed and some hundreds taken prisoner.   

Dostri identifies intelligence as the central issue as opposed to preparedness and planning alone.  I agree.  But he also takes the evidence and logic to a conclusion which the NYT would not support.  

If the tragedy is just a matter of poor preparation by the IDF, then things can proceed as they were after some term of conflict.  

If, on the other hand, Dostri is correct and it is the impossibility of effective intelligence gathering in a complex environment, then the viability of the deterrence strategy is called into question and the viability of Netanyahu's commitment becomes much more salient - "Hamas must be destroyed."  For any number of reasons, including imagined humanitarianism, that is not the conclusion the NYT likely wants to reach.  Which is why their reporting improbably focuses on operational preparedness as the central issue rather than strategic information gathering and decision-making.

If your enemy is transparently dedicated to your destruction, and their actions cannot be effectively predicted (with material destruction to yourself as a consequence), and if they are determined not to negotiate, then the destruction of Hamas becomes increasingly the only viable strategy remaining.  Something I am certain the journalists and editorial board of the NYT do not want to support.  Hence the reporting they did rather than the better reporting from the expert.  

History

The 13th Century CE, Indian poet and saint Gyandev created a children's game called Moksha Patam. The British later named it as Snakes and Ladders instead of retaining the original Moksha Patam.

Originally, the game was used as a part of moral instruction to children. The… pic.twitter.com/GmBeC5IcUz

— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) October 28, 2023

 

An Insight

We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.

-- Werner Heisenberg pic.twitter.com/WE0zfSpXQY

— Physics In History (@PhysInHistory) November 18, 2023

 

I see wonderful things

Socotra is considered the jewel of biodiversity in the Arabian Sea.

37% of Socotra’s 825 plant species, 90% of its reptile species and 95% of its land snail species do not occur anywhere else on Earth.

Literally a different world.pic.twitter.com/DAm9TA2LiC

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) November 19, 2023

 

Offbeat Humor

 

Click to enlarge.

Data Talks

Fifty Years of Gender Bias: When it comes to hiring decisions, people vastly overestimate how much gender bias there is against both sexes https://t.co/XCx5pw01CT via @SteveStuWill pic.twitter.com/al6b3B9kYE

— Ash Paul (@pash22) November 12, 2023

 

History

Phoenician Anthropoid Sarcophagi (5th Century BC),from Sidon (modern-day Lebanon), beautifully carved in white marble from Greece.

The sarcophagi consist of a hollowed lower box covered by a lid that slightly conveys the contours of the upper body and the legs.

National Museum… pic.twitter.com/OErcR3ylpX

— ArchaeoHistories (@histories_arch) December 4, 2023

 

An Insight

Milton Friedman on the tendency to compare ideal governments with actual markets pic.twitter.com/7uF3lQOYbj

— Chris Freiman (@cafreiman) November 18, 2023

 

That very thing has indeed happened

From ‘We’ll Get You Through Your Children!’ The Night in 1958 That Launched the Culture War by Mark Judge.  

“We’ll get you through your children!”

That was the threat shouted by the poet Allen Ginsberg on a fateful night in 1958. Ginsberg was yelling at Norman Podhoretz, a conservative writer. The confrontation between Ginsberg and Podhoretz is described in Podhoretz’s 2001 book Ex-Friends: Falling Out With Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer.

The Podhoretz essay, called “My War With Allen Ginsberg,” has stayed with me for years. I occasionally re-read it for its tremendous foresight, wisdom and power. It is a first-hand account of a night in America in which the modern culture war began. With elegant and at times very funny observations, Podhoretz predicted everything that would happen for the next 60 years: How we got to be a country awash in drug abuse, transgenderism (and the medical malpractice that comes with it), mental health problems, anti-Americanism and atheism. It’s the genesis of our modern cultural and political nightmare.

Most chilling is the part where Ginsberg, a drug user, sex addict and member of NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy Love Association, bellows at Podhoretz: “We’ll get you through your children!” That very thing has indeed happened. It’s why Podhoretz, still going at 93, has never forgiven Ginsberg, who died in 1997. The left did in fact get back at square America by corrupting her children.

I see wonderful things

A spectacular example of an Iridescent cloudpic.twitter.com/hwjXdDUdhs

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) November 18, 2023

 

Do Ring doorbell videos reduce crime rates and increase conviction ratess?

Not an especially informative article but topical.  From Do Video Doorbells Really Prevent Crime? by Rod McCullom.  The subheading is More people are using doorbell cameras and sharing the footage with the police, but there are few data showing their effectiveness

It is a hard subject to research and most the research I have seen tends to be motivated research.  The researcher explicitly wants to find a reduction in crime or explicitly wants to find that it makes no difference.

This article falls in the latter category and concludes that there is no current evidence to support that Ring doorbell videos reduce crime rates.  

I am agnostic.  I suspect that they might only marginally reduce crime rates (criminals have to be aware that they are being videoed and/or that they are more likely to be caught on video in particular neighborhoods.  If they do not pay attention to the existence of Ring videos, then perhaps they don't make a difference.

Beyond that, even if criminals do pay attention to Ring videos, there is the issue of whether police departments are willing and/or able to incorporate Ring videos into their investigations or policing practices.  Finally, there is the issue of whether the judicial system will incorporate video evidence in a fashion which increases the number if convictions.  

Here in Atlanta, lots of Ring video shows up on Next Door in discussions.  My impression is that a materially high percentage of crime never gets reported.  It happens and is witnessed (or videoed) or not, but is never reported to the police.  I suspect porch pirates fall into this category.  People complain about it a lot but it seems to attract little police department action.  

While the Atlanta Police Department has all sorts of initiatives going on with regard to video, there doesn't seem to be much in terms of increased crime clearances.  

Do doorbell videos decrease crime rates and or increase conviction rates?  Logically it would seem to make sense that they ought to.  We don't know yet whether they do.  

In an area such as this whether there is both complexity and a strong taint of motivated research, perhaps the best evidence that Ring doorbell videos make a difference is the widespread public belief that they do.  The public often is more grounded around complex issues than are academics.

Offbeat Humor

Nobody has a better sense of humor than God. 🙂 pic.twitter.com/f3NVatqz0s

— Chris Nelson 🇺🇸 🏝 (@ReOpenChris) December 2, 2023

 

Data Talks

Sex differences in the incidence of various common diseases and disorders https://t.co/HaiDRqwfWJ pic.twitter.com/x3M6X8opLz

— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) November 5, 2023

 

Hradčany Under the Snow by Tavík František Šimon

Hradčany Under the Snow by Tavík František Šimon

Click to enlarge.

As prosperous as Egypt and with more living space than Paris

You come across important details in the strangest of places.  I am accustomed to thinking of Gaza as essentially an existential refugee camp - overcrowded, dilapidated, impoverished.  The October 7th war has been going on for nearly three months now and there has been little to mitigate that mental picture.

I am reading On the sexual atrocities Hamas committed on Oct. 7 by Alex Berenson.  The subheading is We cannot ignore the depravity of these attacks, or what they mean for women. 

Deep into the piece, I come across this:

(And despite the problems with living conditions in Gaza, it has a per-capita gross domestic product comparable to Egypt or Jordan, and a population density one-third of that of Paris.)

Now, Egypt is no economic Eden and Paris has its own nests of dense poverty.  But those factual points are important.  It argues a greater economic vitality than the trope accommodates and a better built environment than one assumes.  

I wish we had more reporters more factually oriented to ground our understanding of events in useful ways. 

Hamas must indeed be destroyed

Reading these horrific accounts, it is understandable why the immediate response on October 7th to the attacks was "Hamas must be destroyed."  The accounts are in ‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7 by Jeffrey Gettleman, Anat Schwartz and Adam SellaPhotographs by Avishag Shaar-Yashuv.  The subheading is A Times investigation uncovered new details showing a pattern of rape, mutilation and extreme brutality against women in the attacks on Israel.

History

The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III is a black limestone Neo-Assyrian bas-relief sculpture from Nimrud (Nimrud is the Assyrian Neo-Aramaic name for the ancient Assyrian city Kalhu /the Biblical Calah/, located 30 km south of Mosul), commemorating the deeds of Assyrian King… pic.twitter.com/bIHp9llyQR

— ArchaeoHistories (@histories_arch) December 4, 2023

 

An Insight

Great daily advice, especially for the past month.

"When you hear someone profess some absurd belief, it’s often more productive to wonder not how gullible they are, but what goal they might be trying to accomplish."
https://t.co/NJXGKGoLsv

— Rob (@robsica) November 18, 2023

 

I see wonderful things

Aurora Borealis on Saturn captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Image credit: NASA/ESA/HST/STScI pic.twitter.com/nhQhaMhHfb

— Amazing Astronomy (@MAstronomers) November 18, 2023

 

Offbeat Humor

Love it https://t.co/O003QrZ7PH

— Matt Ridley (@mattwridley) November 20, 2023

 

Data Talks

Happy Sunday. pic.twitter.com/E4yQQl9F57

— Crémieux (@cremieuxrecueil) November 19, 2023

 

Eleanor of Toledo and her son Giovanni de' Medici, 1544 by Agnolo Bronzino

Eleanor of Toledo and her son Giovanni de' Medici, 1544 by Agnolo Bronzino

Click to enlarge.

Winter Day in the Forest, with a Woman Carrying Firewood, 1936 by Peder Mørk Mønsted (Danish, 1859-1941)

Winter Day in the Forest, with a Woman Carrying Firewood, 1936 by Peder Mørk Mønsted (Danish, 1859-1941) 

Click to enlarge.

Scarce societal resources have been wasted due to mistaken beliefs about the power and prevalence of unconscious bias

From Stretching the Limits of Science: Was the Implicit-Racism Debate a “Bridge Too Far” for Social Psychology? by Gregory Mitchell and Philip E. Tetlock.

Ask an employee of any public company if the topic of unconscious bias came up in the company’s most recent diversity training session, and chances are good that she will respond “yes” (see, e.g., Zelevansky, 2019). Review the contents of the student orientation program at any liberal arts college, and you will probably find a session devoted to the pernicious effects of unconscious bias (see, e.g., Rao, 2020). Search the New York Times website for the phrase “unconscious bias” and more than 250 articles will appear. Interview anyone who regularly watches MSNBC about the causes of racial inequalities in the United States, and we would wager a week’s pay that unconscious bias will be mentioned as an important cause (cf. Kam & Engelhardt, Chapter 29 this volume; Baskakova et al., Chapter 28, this volume). Review articles from the last ten years of any randomly selected social science journal outside psychology (yes, even an economics journal), and we would wager an even larger sum that multiple articles discuss the significance of unconscious bias. If you dig deep enough, you will find a common source for all these references to unconscious bias: research using an Implicit Association Test (“IAT”) (Greenwald et al., 1998).

After doing one of these tasks to verify that “unconscious bias” figures prominently in public understandings of racism, interview a reasonably well-informed social psychologist and ask whether the racial attitudes IAT (or “the race IAT”) measures unconscious bias, whether an individual’s score on the race IAT reliably predicts that person’s behavior during interracial interactions, whether the race IAT measures the strength of category associations within one’s mind or something about the ambient social environment, and whether training sessions on implicit bias prevent implicit bias. For reasons discussed in this book (e.g., Arkes, Chapter 11 this volume; Fazio et al., Chapter 2 this volume; Jussim et al., Chapter 13 this volume; Meissner & Rothermund, Chapter 18 this volume; Wolsiefer & Blair, Chapter 8 this volume) and elsewhere (e.g., Blanton & Jaccard, 2008; Corneille & Hütter, 2020; Forscher et al., 2019; Hahn et al., 2014; Lai et al., 2014; Schimmack, 2021; Tetlock & Mitchell, 2009), the informed psychologist should answer “no” or “I don’t know” to all these questions. 
 
How did we reach this place where public understanding of what the race IAT reveals about racism and how to combat it diverges so greatly from that of the scientifically well-informed? And where do we go from here? We reflect on the highly successful, and highly misleading, public education campaign associated with the race IAT and why the psychological research community was so slow to react to unsubstantiated claims about the potency and pervasiveness of unconscious racism. Scarce societal resources, including opportunities to develop effective interventions to address ongoing inequities, have been wasted due to mistaken beliefs about the power and prevalence of unconscious bias – beliefs attributable to social psychology’s valorization of the race IAT and failure to correct unwarranted speculation about what the race IAT reveals.

History

Golden bust of Emperor Marcus Aurelius from Avenches, western Switzerland, is going on display at the Getty. It is the largest known bust of an emperor made of a precious metal and one of only a handful of gold busts to escape being melted down.

Bust was found in a sewer… pic.twitter.com/hLJGTJYy7G

— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) December 4, 2023

 

Choosing to ignore attention seeking surveys which offer misleading results

Many good points.  Easier to read the short essay than to summarize.  From Don't Put too Much Stock in Survey Finding that 67% of 18-24-Year-Olds Say Jews are "Oppressors".  by Ilya Somin.  The subheading is The much-cited Harvard-Harris poll question has flawed wording,and is at odds with other, better surveys.

Among the important points is this:

A second problem is that the question uses terminology ("oppressors," "ideology") that may not be familiar to respondents who don't follow politics closely (which many studies show a large percentage of the public does not). If you're reading this post, you probably do follow politics closely, and may find it hard to believe that anyone is unfamiliar with terms like "ideology." Perhaps that's also true of all or most of your friends and relatives. Maybe none of them would be confused about such things, either.

But, if so, you and your social circle are highly unrepresentative. Most of the general public is not like that. A majority of Americans can't name the three branches of government, don't know when the Civil War happened, and support mandatory labeling of food containing DNA (the latter probably because they don't understand what DNA is). Political scientists also find that most of the public has little understanding of such basic political concepts as "liberal" and "conservative." It would not be surprising if the same was true of many survey respondents' understanding of "oppressor" and "ideology," though admittedly I haven't seen research specifically focused on these terms.

Political enthusiasts overlap closely with those who are either politicians or whose livelihoods are largely dependent on politics.  They are noisy about politics and also a small minority and unrepresentative of the average American and their concerns.  This isolation from the norm is routinely overlooked.

The point of small numbers of individuals driving impressions is universal and not limited to the question of antisemitism.

If anti-Semitic sentiment is actually much lower than the result on the "oppressor" question suggests, why the dramatic increase in anti-Semitic incidents since the war started? The answer is that a small minority of the public does have anti-Semitic views, and those become more salient at a time when Israel and Jews are highly prominent in the news cycle. Much research shows that, when a set of attitudes become more salient due to current events, people are more likely to act on them. Moreover, the far-left variant of anti-Semitism is disproportionately represented on college campuses (which have a higher proportion of far-leftists than the general population), thus accounting for the relatively high number of incidents there.

The actions of a small but virulent and galvanized minority of bigots can still cause pain and—in extreme cases—lead to horrific hate crimes. That's a genuine problem. But it should not lead us to give undue credence to dubious survey results that make anti-Semitism seem much more widespread than is actually likely to be the case.

An Insight

We have an entire class of journalists that believes that nothing is real, and that everything is about words, and that the public’s obvious concern about the tangible problems that are in front of their eyes is invariably about something else. https://t.co/z1csFjTb1Z

— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) November 18, 2023

 

War induced technology of management

An interesting argument.  From Creating the “American Way” of Business: Evidence from WWII in the U.S. by Michela Giorcelli.  From the Abstract:

The Second World War II (WWII) was arguably one of the largest shocks to the U.S. economic and production system in history. Historians, business historians, and economists have largely discussed the stimulus that WWII had on U.S. technological advancements. However, its effect on U.S. ‘‘managerial technology’’ innovations has been largely ignored, except for very few qualitative works. In this paper, I argue that ‘‘managerial technology’’ played a key role in shaping U.S. WWII production and its capacity to defeat some of the most advanced economies in the world. The large-scale diffusion of innovative management practices to US firms involved in war production acted as a technology that put them on a higher growth path for decades. Moreover, it made U.S. managerial practices internationally distinctive and helped create the so-called “American Way” of business, which was exported to war-torn European and Japanese economies in the war aftermath.

I see wonderful things

#DYK? A flock of flamingos is called a flamboyance! With their bright pink feathers, long legs, and graceful necks, these colorful birds command attention wherever they go. The world's largest flamingo colony can be found in Tanzania, where 2 million+ birds have been observed. pic.twitter.com/rFnT2TFD2X

— American Museum of Natural History (@AMNH) November 18, 2023

 

With an additional twelve months, what do we now know?

As we approach the end of the year it is natural to do some cognitive housekeeping.  What mysteries or issues did we consider at the beginning of the year which might have been answered?  Which mysteries of issues do we exit the year with unresolved?

I missed this summary from the beginning of the year, neatly wrapping up many of the issues attached to our disastrous public health and governmental response to Covid-19.  From America's COVID Response Was Based on Lies by Scott W. Atlas.

Here are the 10 biggest falsehoods—known for years to be false, not recently learned or proven to be so—promoted by America's public health leaders, elected and unelected officials, and now-discredited academics:

1. SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has a far higher fatality rate than the flu by several orders of magnitude.

2. Everyone is at significant risk to die from this virus.

3. No one has any immunological protection, because this virus is completely new.

4. Asymptomatic people are major drivers of the spread.

5. Locking down—closing schools and businesses, confining people to their homes, stopping non-COVID medical care, and eliminating travel—will stop or eliminate the virus.

6. Masks will protect everyone and stop the spread.

7. The virus is known to be naturally occurring, and claiming it originated in a lab is a conspiracy theory.

8. Teachers are at especially high risk.

9. COVID vaccines stop the spread of the infection.

10. Immune protection only comes from a vaccine.

Let's switch to the positive perspective.  We now know with some certainty:

1. SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has a low to moderate fatality rate.

2. The very elderly and those with multiple comoborbidities are the population with any material risk exposure.  The young and healthy had effectively zero risk.  

3. Natural immunity exists and is effective.  

4. Those without symptoms are not a significant driver of the spread.

5. Locking down schools and businesses, confining people to their homes, stopping non-COVID medical care, and eliminating travel does not stop or eliminate the virus.

6. Masks are ineffective at stopping the spread.

7. The virus is now believed to be manmade and likely an inadvertent leak from a research lab.

8. Teachers are at no greater risk than the general population.

9. COVID vaccines did not stop the spread of the virus and it is unclear the extent to which it might have reduced mortality rates or mitigated illnesses.  

10. Natural immunity can be safely cultivated without vaccines.

Those ten principles tend to be true across most communicable diseases and were truths known in advance of Covid-19.  Many known facts and general principles of public health were discarded or ignored for unknown reasons.  And with no material benefit.  

Additional things which 2023 has revealed about the Covid-19 response with greater certainty or probability include:

The importance of a public health response which addresses palliative treatment as well as a possible vaccine prevention. 

Increased certainty that the virus was man made.

The increased probability that it was an accidental release from the Wuhan Virus Institute.

The increased clarity on the education loss owing to school closures (and its concentration among the poorest households).

Increased awareness of the magnitude of the negative health consequences owing to lockdowns including obesity rates, inflated death rates, suicide rates, overdose rates, anxiety medication prescriptions, etc.  

Improved clarity about the economic cost and the logistical and supply chain disruptions arising from the lockdowns.

Emerging awareness of unintended side effects such as myocardial infarctions among young men.

Emerging awareness of unintended deaths from ventilator treatments.

Emerging awareness of the elevated death rates arising from interrupted or postponed medical treatments during the pandemic.   

Increased danger arising from coercive governmental actions abridging or transgressing constitutional rights.

Much of the government generated panic and misinformation is crumbling in the face of sustained truth-seeking.  What remains unknown is some sort of explanation for why so many government agencies and "experts" so persistently ignored well-established public health knowledge and protocols.  

What also remains unfinished is holding individuals (corporate and governmental) accountable for crimes and dereliction of duties.  We don't need a witch hunt but accountability has to be seen as real by the voting public in order for any degree of trust to be regained.

Offbeat Humor

Australian magpies sunbathing for parasite control and relaxation

📹birdpersonlikesbirdspic.twitter.com/MQDRX0dTKR

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) November 18, 2023

 

Data Talks

Poverty causes crime. It's purely material. That's why crime skyrocketed after the Great Society programs. https://t.co/aBoUV4UtNs pic.twitter.com/oIuqZpZryt

— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) November 18, 2023

 

Lady in a Fur Wrap by Alonso Sánchez Coello (Spain, 1531–1588)

Lady in a Fur Wrap by Alonso Sánchez Coello  (Spain, 1531–1588)

Click to enlarge.

History

A bronze figurine of #dog, found at the #Roman roadside station on the Brandsteig, Aichhalden-Rötenberg, where an votive altar dedicated to Diana Abnoba was found. #Dogs were associated with Diana, the figurine may have been an offering to the goddess. pic.twitter.com/I31cz1REMM

— Nina Willburger (@DrNWillburger) December 4, 2023

 

An Insight

It will cause giggling among ironic people today, but when men used to proclaim “death before dishonor” they conveyed a crucial truth about moral agency: that something bad happening to us (death) is preferable to bringing something bad upon ourselves (dishonor). pic.twitter.com/mTpfZYZnmk

— The Chivalry Guild (@ChivalryGuild) November 17, 2023

 

I see wonderful things

Bean Biodiversity.
Cultivars, mostly from the genus Phaseolus. pic.twitter.com/ChcZS2Qkoq

— Jonas Frei (@jdfrei) November 17, 2023

 

Offbeat Humor

pic.twitter.com/L856zscZ1d

— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) November 4, 2023

 

Data Talks

Worth following the schism between Arab Israelis and Palestinians since Oct7.

70% of Arabs in Israel identify with the country, whereas 75% of Palestinians (West Band and Gaza) support the massacre of Oct7 by Hamas.

Arab Israeli political leaders came out with clear… pic.twitter.com/qWbujhzBxb

— George Deek (@GeorgeDeek) November 17, 2023

 

The Professor's Dream, 1848 by C. R. Cockerell (English)

The Professor's Dream, 1848 by C. R. Cockerell (English)

Click to enlarge.

History

In 1516, Leonardo da Vinci designed a double helix staircase for the Château de Chambord in the Loire Valley, France.

This staircase is unique because it consists of two intertwined spiral staircases that allow people to ascend and descend without obstructing each other. pic.twitter.com/TCCMvEYPg7

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) December 3, 2023

 

An Insight

Many of today's horrors come from "a failure to appreciate just how much we’ve gained from science, the rule of law, the recognition of human rights, and the rest of the legacy of the Enlightenment." Anti-Enlightenment Thinking, Past and Present. (No, I didn't write this article;…

— Steven Pinker (@sapinker) November 17, 2023

 

I see wonderful things

Moroccan Lamp, known as the 'Fanoos'.

A classic icon of Moroccan and Middle Eastern culture, Fanoos has an allure that stretches far beyond its practical function, offering a timeless tribute to an ancient tradition, it’s more than a simple light source, Fanoos, a time-honored… pic.twitter.com/TWNxr2dZb5

— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) November 17, 2023

 

Offbeat Humor

He forgot which side he was on! 🤣pic.twitter.com/tHMSFX3ZfT

— Figen (@TheFigen_) November 1, 2023

 

Data Talks

Bloomberg scared you witless about drought and extreme heat

Told you it would screw up the harvest

Turns out Bloomberg was totally wrong

Biggest corn harvest ever

Oopshttps://t.co/UoxqORv6ln pic.twitter.com/gjBe72i0ym

— Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) November 19, 2023

 

Winter day in Jyderup, 1924 by Peder Mørk Mønsted (Danish, 1859-1941)

Winter day in Jyderup, 1924 by Peder Mørk Mønsted   (Danish, 1859-1941)

Click to enlarge.

History

For #AncientSiteSaturday a glimpse into a tomb of the #Roman period in Corinth/Greece. One of the terracotta sarcophagi has the shape of a bed and is painted in bright colours: a woman's head is resting on a pillow, her body is covered with a blanket. The details are amazing: 1/2 pic.twitter.com/ZPiYvzt06X

— Nina Willburger (@DrNWillburger) November 19, 2023

 

An Insight

When you buy into an ideology that treats children as lifestyle accessories, you end up in dark, anti-human places quickly--for example, weighing their "cuteness" against their "environmental impact" and congratulating yourself for your "eco-responsibility" in not having a child. https://t.co/xFPFmyaCtZ

— Robert P. George (@McCormickProf) November 16, 2023

 

I see wonderful things

This may blow your mind!

Witness a zoom out from the sharpest view of the Andromeda Galaxy ever, revealing over 100 million stars!

(Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Dalcanton, B. F. Williams, L. C. Johnson, the PHAT team, R. Gendler / video by Universal-Sci) pic.twitter.com/AbEXtngIeZ

— World and Science (@WorldAndScience) November 18, 2023

 

Offbeat Humor

Scary https://t.co/kjirfgPw0f pic.twitter.com/RUBEDQPUFJ

— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) November 17, 2023

 

Data Talks

"Of all the factors most predictive of economic mobility in America, one factor clearly stands out in their study: family structure...kids are more likely to climb the income ladder when they are raised by two, married parents"https://t.co/YmCxCSr3W4 ⁦@WilcoxNMP⁩ pic.twitter.com/AjRKqVDReQ

— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) September 21, 2019

 

Sex may be a more useful explanatory variable than gender identity for predicting the performance of athletes

At a different time of year, say, April 1st, I would assume this to be a joke.  It apparently is not. 

From Study shows sex could be a better predictor of sports performance than gender identity.  The subheading is Sex may be a more useful explanatory variable than gender identity for predicting the performance of athletes in mass-participation races, a new paper has found.

The answer seems so obvious but apparently it has not actually been measured before.  I guess we chalk this one up to a confirmation of common sense.

Published in BMJ Open Sports and Exercise Medicine, the authors believe their findings suggest it is valuable to include both sex and gender identity in data collection.

Dr John Armstrong, King's, Dr Alice Sullivan, University College London and George M Perry, an independent researcher from the USA, conducted a study analysing data on the performance of people who competed in the non-binary category of 21 races in the New York Road Runners database.

Outside of purely biological outcomes and criminology, little empirical work has been done to test the theory that gender identity is more important than biological sex as a cause of gender disparities in outcomes. The data set of 166 race times achieved by non-binary athletes within a data set of 85,173 race times was selected as it was the largest available consistently formatted data on non-binary athletes.

Since the race results do not provide the sex of non-binary athletes, the sex of non-binary athletes was either derived from previous races they had run, or where this wasn’t available, the researchers used a novel technique to model the sex of athletes probabilistically based on their given names, using US Social Security Administration data. Race times were used as the outcome variable in linear models with explanatory variables derived from biological sex, gender identity, age and the event being raced.

The researchers found a sex gap in race times between athletes who identify as non-binary, and that there is no evidence that the gap between biological males and biological females is less for athletes who identify as non-binary. The results also indicate that non-binary athletes may have slower race times than other athletes once sex and age are controlled for.

Reality seems to be breaking out all over.

The Journey to Bethlehem by Jane Crowther

The Journey to Bethlehem by Jane Crowther

Click to enlarge.

History

View of Itamaracà Island in Brazil, painted in 1637 when Frans Post of Haarlem had just arrived in this amazing new place. He was born on this day in 1612. pic.twitter.com/O7r4b19Ltx

— Dr. Peter Paul Rubens (@PP_Rubens) November 18, 2023

 

An Insight

"What is a luxury of the rich in one generation becomes a universal necessity in the next, and finally a publicly-acceded right. We can see this process working with everything from bathtubs to automobiles to college degrees" https://t.co/lOtLGFaLhs

— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) November 15, 2023

 

Academia as the Augean Stables

From this thread:

This lady is having a heck of a race, cruising through the last lap at Daytona, all alone, running smooth, comes out of Turn 4 and just turns that car directly into the wall and becomes a fireball. That is what this thread felt like. https://t.co/zpQD2DGBBF

— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) December 24, 2023

Ham for the win.

Genevieve Guenther is a product of academia.  From Wikipedia.

Guenther received her bachelor's degree from Columbia University and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2004, in Renaissance literature.

So, a humanities professor.

But

Genevieve Juliette Guenther is an American author and climate change activist. A former Renaissance scholar, she is the founding director of the media watchdog organization End Climate Silence. She is currently affiliate faculty at the Tishman Environment and Design Center at The New School.

From professor of Shakespeare to a climate change activist professor - quite a career shift.  No wonder AGW has such a challenge establishing itself as a credible scientific field if its more vocal participants are from the humanities.

What is this whole storm in a tea cup?

I came across the first accusation a couple of days ago.  What I then read was (extracted from tweets)

Dr. Genevieve Guenther

@DoctorVive 

 

One of the most powerful English professors of the past 40 years stole an argument I made in a seminar presentation, turning it into the core of his next book. 

The week after my presentation, he came into the classroom and he read a conference paper he was going to deliver at the Shakespeare Association that month, re-articulating exactly what I had said about the same material the week before. The 15 or so grad students around the seminar table were dumbfounded. Jaws on the floor. 

2/n

She is coy about actually making a direct accusation, presumably for fear of being sued.  I am not sure how sound a strategy that is because she keeps dropping increasingly obvious hints so that it quickly becomes apparent that she is probably accusing Stephen Greenblatt of plagiarism.  

He, ironically given the circumstances of Harvard President Claudine Gay, is a professor of Shakespeare at Harvard.  From Wikipedia:

Greenblatt was born in Boston and raised in Newton, Massachusetts. After graduating from Newton High School, he was educated at Yale University (BA 1964, PhD 1969) and Pembroke College, Cambridge (MPhil 1966). Greenblatt has since taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University. He was Class of 1972 Professor at Berkeley (becoming a full professor in 1980) and taught there for 28 years before taking a position at Harvard University. He was named John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities in 2000. Greenblatt is considered "a key figure in the shift from literary to cultural poetics and from textual to contextual interpretation in U.S. English departments in the 1980s and 1990s."

I am interpreting "contextual interpretation" to mean that he has been part of the wave of academicians pushing the Woke transformation of the past thirty years.  

And as an aside, we have a plagiarist Harvard Shakespearean professor Stephen Greenblatt who works for a plagiarist president of Harvard University, Claudine Gay, who is being accused during the administration of president Joe Biden whose first presidential campaign was sunk by his plagiarism.  

With an appropriate head nod to Sir Walter Scott and acknowledgement of his inspiration.

Oh how tangled become our lies

When first we start to plagiarize

Anyway.

Clickthrough on the embedded Genevieve Guenther tweet for the full elaboration of her accusation (plus the responses.)

One of the most powerful English professors of the past 40 years stole an argument I made in a seminar presentation, turning it into the core of his next book.

The week after my presentation, he came into the classroom and...

1/n https://t.co/N5d1s8Nm0J

— Dr. Genevieve Guenther (@DoctorVive) December 22, 2023

She knows her academic audience and gets a lot of support for how the mean male professor used power dynamics to exploit her naive doctoral student self to steal her ideas for his book.  There is plenty of support for her position and moral outrage going around.  

But accusations without names is pretty mealymouthed.  In fact, there is more than a whiff of moral corruption on the part of the accuser.  Just make your accusation, don't tease an audience with clues and hints.  This feels far more about gaining attention than actually revealing an injustice or righting a wrong.  Very passive aggressive academia.

She may very well be a victim of plagiarism but her presentation of her own case undermines it.

Ham's joke is about the end of Guenther tweet thread.  Guenther has made her veiled allegation.  A Woke male humanities professor at Berkeley stole her doctoral student ideas and published a book based on it.  Plagiarism and sex power dynamic issues.  Which naturally leads to . . . 

Dr. Genevieve Guenther

@DoctorVive

Again, the person I'm talking about is perhaps the most celebrated scholar in the field — and a hugely successful crossover author. And EVERYONE KNOWS HE'S A PLAGIARIST. 

So if there are any doubts over double standards—comparing one white professor stealing whole arguments to a black grad student repeating banal phrases, performing "scholarliness," in her fucking acknowledgements, which are not even ideas—let this anecdote help put them to rest.

The right is going after Gay because they don't want the kids at Harvard to have any sort of an anti-racist education and they're not even trying to hide it. DON'T FALL FOR IT, FFS. Support Gay. Support DEI. Support anti-racism. 

And, yes, US right-wing politics are so dangerous right now that I feel like I have to defend the president of fucking *Harvard*, which is absurd, but that's the power of today's white supremacists, to make *Harvard* a bastion of racial sanity. What a time to be alive. 

Wait . . . What did I just see?

A profound indictment of plagiarism by the powerful in academia leading to . . . a defense of plagiarism by the powerful in academia (a defense of Gay), and an attack on those seeking to expose plagiarism and double standards in academia.  

Well, my goodness.  That was an unexpected crash into the wall.  

The Woke defending the plagiarists and the exploiters.  In the words of that grand old Harvard man, Henry Kissinger in another context:

It's a pity they both can't lose.

Neither Gay nor Greenblatt have had their day in court.  With even the Harvard and DEI friendly Washington Post turning against her, Gay's days may be numbered.

Greenblatt?  Guenther might be simply an aggrieved fabulist envious of a successful and accomplished professor.  After all, he is a man which, in the world of Woke, is the original sin.  It is conceivable that Guenther's entire plaint is a product of the aggrieved intersectionalist Woke cult of victimhood mind.  

I especially enjoyed Greenblatt's Swerve, How the World Became Modern.  As an argument, I don't find it completely convincing.  As a history of a particular book (Lucretius' On the Nature of Things) and a history of medieval and Renaissance Europe, it was entertaining and informative.  If he plagiarizes, it decreases his personal stature but doesn't take away from his accomplishment.  From a moral perspective, regrettably, all artists and creators are human and therefore subject to the litany of human failings.

Does Guenther's accusation have merit?  No idea.  Certainly possible.  Maybe even plausible.  Her presentation of her argument undermines its own credibility, performing an academic strip tease, removing one more veil of modesty at a time as Guenther effectively reveals the person she is accusing without wanting to accuse.

In the end, there may be a real charge.  Maybe Greenblatt is indeed a serial plagiarizer.  

On the other hand, Guenther's accusation may simply be the product of an infect Woke mind all twisted up in intersectionality.  We may be looking at a three classes of victim, with one of them trying to assert primacy as well as claiming to be a white knight for the beleaguered racial minority.

This might be a youngish white Woke woman redeeming her unearned privilege by accusing an elderly Jewish man of a crime (plagiarism) already also committed by a middle-aged black woman.  Talk about competitive victimhood.  I have no idea who has the points in this match.  

As a nation, we need to undertake the herculean task of cleaning the academic Augean stables.  It won't be easy but it is most certainly necessary.

I see wonderful things

Ostrichs dont's have any problem to keep up at 50km/h and apparently they do 70km/h with no sweat.

This happened in South Africa.

[📹 Oleksiy]pic.twitter.com/6DxGrdfD2j

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) November 17, 2023

 

Offbeat Humor

pic.twitter.com/LTTlccZItO

— Oppenheimer Ranch Project (@Diamondthedave) November 19, 2023

 

Data Talks

The obvious is found, again.

Per at least a dozen studies: with everything adjusted for, usually including IQ proxies, having two parents instead of one has a giant positive effect on later-life income, social mobility, criminal behavior, etc. https://t.co/S0menHPUnp

— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) November 18, 2023

 

Christmas Tree - Chadds Ford, 1922 by N.C. Wyeth (American, 1882-1945)

Christmas Tree - Chadds Ford, 1922 by N.C. Wyeth (American, 1882-1945) 

Click to enlarge.

Amid the gloom, there was one upbeat note.

From The Coldest Winter by David Halberstam.  Page 100.  Background and context to an historical event I learned about in ninth grade in 1974 in Social Studies at the Anglo-American School in Stockholm, Sweden from Mr. Ball.  That was the Soviet misstep of boycotting the United Nations in its decision making dealing with the North Korean invasion of South Korea.  The Soviet boycott meant that all the decisions in the UN were made by America and its allies.  A mistake not repeated by the Soviet Union in the future.

For a fourteen year-old, Mr. Ball clearly was an authority and I had no reason to doubt him but his explanation seemed . . . improbable.  Little did I know then of the inanity of dynamic, evolving complex systems.  As it turns out, Mr.s Ball's explanation was reasonably accurate.  From Halberstam.

In Washington, Dean Rusk, the assistant secretary of state for the Far East, and Joe Collins, the Army chief of staff, were working their end of the teleconference between roughly 3 A.M. and 4 A.M. But because they were, relatively speaking, lower-level officials, and the hour was early, it turned out to be a slow and clumsy process. Higher authorization was always needed. These were not minor issues posed by Tokyo: they were about nothing less than war and peace. Answers did not come quickly. There were delays on a number of points and this did not please MacArthur. “This is an outrage! When I was chief of staff I could get Herbert Hoover off the can to talk to me! But here, not just the Chief of Staff of the Army delays, but the Secretary of the Army and the Secretary of Defense. They’ve got so much lead in there that it’s inexcusable.”

At about 4:30 A.M. Washington time, MacArthur confirmed his request for ground troops to Collins, and Collins called Pace, who in turn called Truman. Truman was always an early riser. His internal farm-boy clock had never left him. He was shaved by the time he got Pace’s call. Just before 5 A.M. on the morning of June 30, 1950, he approved the use of American ground troops in Korea. With that the deed was done. In the very beginning MacArthur had said that he could easily handle the invasion if only Washington would leave him alone. Now he said he needed two divisions to do it. He was, it would turn out, still underrating the enemy, and overrating the forces who would serve under his own command, including American troops.

Truman still wondered if there were a plus side to the offer of Chiang’s troops. He then called in Acheson, Harriman, Johnson, and the Joint Chiefs to talk one last time about using them. With the South Korean Army falling apart, Chiang’s offer still made some sense to the president as a stopgap measure. Acheson was sure it would bring the Chinese Communists into the war. And the Joint Chiefs wanted no part of it either.

Amid the gloom, there was one upbeat note. U.S. troops would fight under a United Nations flag. Before Truman approved the use of American ground troops, he had already gotten UN authorization—easier then than it would be in any decade to come. The UN of 1950 was still very much a reflection of American and Western European interests, the only significant dissent coming from the Soviets and their satellites. It was in some ways very much a last vestige of a white man’s world. On the Security Council vote to authorize the use of force in Korea, the only two abstentions were by non-white countries, India and Egypt. Beginning in the late 1950s and accelerating into the 1960s, the coming of the end of the colonial era, and the arrival of newly independent African and Asian and Middle Eastern nations, would change the UN’s makeup dramatically, greatly diminishing Western influence and turning it into an organization that conservative political factions in the United States and Western Europe absolutely scorned. The Russians had foolishly boycotted the Security Council meetings on Korea (ironically because they were protesting the fact that the Chinese Nationalists were still on the council), and with their veto gone, the Americans got the resolution they wanted on Tuesday, June 27, eventually giving the predominantly American force a UN flag under which to fight.

Chiang Kai-Shek and the Kuomintang, though defeated by the Chinese Communists under Mao, had retreated to Formosa (Taiwan) by 1950 but still were on the Security Council owing to their having been the wartime government in China who fought against the Japanese and as full allies of the US.