Happy Birthday, Ewan

Today in 1971 Ewan McGregor was born in Perth, Scotland (he grew up in Crieff), and what a wonderful thing that is.

Happy Birthday, Nikolai

Today (March 19, OldStyle) in 1809, in Sorochintsy, a town near Poltava, Ukraine, in what was then the Russian Empire Николай Васильевич Гоголь, Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol, or Микола Васильович Гоголь, Mykola Vasylyovich Hohol as he is in Ukrainian, was born. His deft touch with characters, linguistic playfulness, and keen sense of what a professor of mine insisted on calling "the Russian absurd, not the English one!" make him one of the most distinctive voices in all Russian literature.

Or, to put it another way, he's funny. Oh, my word, he's funny.


A number of his works are available on line, such as The Inspector General, The Overcoat, Dead Souls, and a collection featuring The Diary of a Madman, The Nose, and Taras Bulba among others.

Works in Russian are here.

Free with oatmeal pump

We've been looking at syntactic ambiguity - you know, those perfectly grammatical sentences that can be read more than one way? "The cop saw the man with binoculars" kind of thing - and today I found a perfect example.

Aveeno Daily Moisturizing Lotion Fragrance Free with Oatmeal Pump

One reading makes it seem as if you get "lotion fragance" "free with oatmeal pump" - that is, if you get the pump you get the fragrance of the lotion free - and the other that you get the whole thing - "Aveeno Daily Moisturizing Lotion" that is "Fragrance Free" and has an "Oatmeal Pump" - which is closer to the real reading. But not quite there.

And what the heck is an "oatmeal pump", anyway?

Hyphens, anyone? And commas?

Stop Fracking, Dammit!

I have clearly watched too much old, bad sci-fi on televison.

I get an email from Jim Dean at Democracy for America with a subject line of: Stop Fracking Now, and in it he sends me to www.StopFrackingNow.com, and I cannot stop giggling.

Happy Birthday, Tris

Born today 1888 in Hubbard, Texas, the Gray Eagle, aka Spoke: Tris Speaker. Probably the greatest center fielder ever, he compiled a career batting average of .345 (fourth all-time), and still holds the record of 792 career doubles. Defensively, his career records for assists, double plays, and unassisted double plays by an outfielder still stand as well. His fielding glove was known as the place "where triples go to die."

Security Overkill

I'm required to use a Citibank credit card for official, business travel.

Their website is horrible. And their security is risibly oversensitive.

I don't travel much, and it used to be that every time I logged in to pay my bill I would have to call them to get my password reset. Turns out - the guy said, last time this happened - you have to change your password every sixty days and if you don't log in within those sixty days you get locked out.

Okay. Fine. Sigh.

I put a recurring reminder on my calendar to log in and change the password every seven weeks. (Did I mention, you must use IE?) What happened? "Logon credentials are invalid."

So at least I could still reset the password by answering all the questions (first pet's name? billing zip code? last six digits of account?) and then, when I logged in, I had to answer another security question.

So I've changed the reminder to every six weeks. We'll see if that makes a difference.

At some point security hoops become so not worth it, and if you can you abandon the company/bank/website requiring them for one that lets you never change your password. I'm not sure exactly where that point is. But Citi is well past it.

Happy Birthday, Countée

Countée Cullen was born today in 1903, probably in New York City. Abandoned by his parents, he was at first raised by his grandmother but then adopted by a Methodist minister. He was a leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance, but unlike others his upbringing had been primarily in a white community and his poetry lacks much of the personal experience or popular black themes other members of that movement show.

Though this is not to say there isn't any... I don't imagine any black man in America at that time could really escape. But here's one of those that lack, though only that.

That Bright Chimeric Beast

That bright chimeric beast
Conceived yet never born,
Save in the poet's breast,
The white-flanked unicorn,
Never may be shaken
From his solitude;
Never may be taken
In any earthly wood.

That bird forever feathered,
Of its new self the sire,
After aeons weathered,
Reincarnate by fire,
Falcon may not nor eagle
Swerve from his eyrie,
Nor any crumb inveigle
Down to an earthly tree.

That fish of the dread regime
Invented to become
The fable and the dream
Of the Lord's aquarium,
Leviathan, the jointed
Harpoon was never wrought
By which the Lord's anointed
Will suffer to be caught.

Bird of the deathless breast,
Fish of the frantic fin,
That bright chimeric beast
Flashing the argent skin,--
If beasts like these you'd harry,
Plumb then the poet's dream;
Make it your aviary,
Make it your wood and stream.

There only shall the swish
Be heard of the regal fish;
There like a golden knife
Dart the feet of the unicorn,
And there, death brought to life,
The dead bird be reborn.



(info here and poems here)

NCAA Final Four

The Final Four is set. Notre Dame takes on UConn (go Irish!) and Stanford meets Texas A&M (go, I guess, Cardinal).

I hate it when my interest in the final games is that I hate one team really, really badly.

Happy Birthday, Gene

Today in Watkins, Minnesota, in 1921, Eugene McCarthy was born. I should have been for him in the '68 election, but I was young and I hated him for being alive when Bobby was dead... Older, I appreciated him more. We need men like him now.

He was also a poet.

BICYCLE RIDER (To Mary)

Teeth bare to the wind
Knuckle white grip on handle bars
You push the pedals of no return,
Let loose new motion and speed.
The earth turns with the multiplied
Force of your wheels.
Do not look back.
Feet light on the brake
Ride the bicycle of your will
Down the spine of the world,
Ahead of your time, into life.
I will not say--
Go slow.

QUIET WATERS

There are quiet waters
where a berry dropped
by a bird flying
starts ripples that
from the center of the pond
spread in concentrics, dying
in silence at the feet of the blue reeds.
I now know where these waters are.

WILLOW IN A TAMARACK SWAMP

There in the savage orange of autumn Tamarack
rusted spikes reeling the slanted, last
of the northern day, down
into the black
root waters,
among the least trees in that least land
in the darkened death camp
of the tribe of trees
I saw you.
green gold willow, arched and graced,
among spines and angled limbs.
captive? queen?
all lost light from the smothering swamp,
alone, you bear back.



KILROY

Kilroy is gone,
the word is out,
absent without leave
from Vietnam.

Kilroy
who wrote his name
in every can
from Poland to Japan
and places in between
like Sheboygan and Racine
is gone
absent without leave
from Vietnam.

Kilroy
who kept the dice
and stole the ice
out of the BOQ
Kilroy
whose name was good
on every IOU
in World War II
and even in Korea
is gone
absent without leave
from Vietnam.

Kilroy
the unknown soldier
who was the first to land
the last to leave,
with his own hand
has taken his good name
from all the walls
and toilet stalls.
Kilroy
whose name around the world
was like the flag unfurled
has run it down
and left Saigon
and the Mekong
without a hero or a song
and gone
absent without leave
from Vietnam.

Technically, no kidding

"Technically the M16 isn't a machine gun" the clue began. No kidding. I don't know anyone who thinks it is!

Let's not lose sight of what did happen

And on a more sober note: With all the alarums and excursions in the press over the reactors, let's not lose sight of the actual, ongoing, and real destruction caused by the quake and tsunami. Help if you can.

Red Cross, Global Giving, Doctors Without Borders, Mercy Corps

NCAAs: Had to happen sooner or later

Notre Dame absolutely outplayed the Vols. Novosel and Diggins looked really, really good, and the Irish never slowed down - and did slow the Vols, fatally. And Notre Dame wins it (their first win over UT ever, what a time to do it!)73-59 If they plays Connecticut (okay, or Duke) like this, they have a good chance to go all the way.

I'll be on vacation next weekend, and this will make it a lot easier not to want to get back to the hotel... Go Gonzaga!

NCAAs: UT vs ND

The round of eight is underway. Notre Dame is off the mark fast, leading by four after playing 4...

This is not the night for the Irish to beat the Vols for the first time ever. No.

¡Feliz cumpleaños, Mario!

Today in 1936, in Arequipa, Peru, Mario Vargas Llosa was born. One of the great writers in the Latin American Boom, author of several brilliant novels (especially The Green House), Varga Llosa ran for the presidency of Peru, winning the first round but losing the run-off to Alberto Fujimori. He lives in London most of the time, returning to Peru for several months each year, and continues to write - his latest novel is 2006's The Bad Girl.

His semi-autobiographical account of his courtship and marriage, Aunt Julie and the Scriptwriter (it's only fair to say that Julie wrote her own book, What Little Vargas Didn't Say, in response) was made into one of my favorite movies, the quirky (and fairly unknown) Tune in Tomorrow.

The Week in Entertainment

Live: Shrek: The Musical at the Hippodrome. This was a whole lot of fun - good songs and performance and very imaginative staging - Farquad was hilarious and I loved his backstory (Daddy was Grumpy!!!). And the dancing rats - very cute. The show is definitely worth seeing.

DVD: Finally actually watched the Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice, which is as good as the things I'd heard about it (I'm not sure why I missed it before). Also, Morning Glory which was very cute.

TV: Thurgood - damn, that was a brilliant show - writing and acting. Caught up on Harry's Law. Modern Family - I have to agree with Jay that Frankie Valli is great music, and I loved Pepper telling Jay that Tallulah (his little dog) would "be quiet once she's on your lap." The Middle remains worth watching, and I see (hope?) they've given up on the horrible Better With You, running reruns of The Middle instead... Also, I watched 2012 and thought it spectacular to look at - though somewhat dark visually for the tv - but amazingly predictable. And NCAA women's basketball, of course.

Read: Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile - a nice entry, about Wilde's US tour and its aftermath in Paris. Some more Thinking Machine. Robert Green's You Are What You Speak, which was very engaging - I highly recommend it. Started Sarah Vowell's new book - Unfamiliar Fishes.

NCAAs: Regional Finals set

Okay - the regional finals are set. In the Spokane Regional, 11th seed Gonzaga takes on 1st seed Stanford. I expect the Cardinal to win it, but I'd love to see Gonzaga get there. In the other three games, unlike on the men's side, all the matchups are 1-2; all the 1 seeds made it and of the 2s only Xavier was knocked out (by Louisville, who then fell to Gonzaga in the third round): in Philadelphia, Duke takes on UConn (go Duke, I have to say); in Dallas, Baylor takes on Texas A&M; and in Dayton, it is Notre Dame against Tennessee. We could see a Final Four of the top four seeded teams - unless the Bulldogs can take out the Huskies.

Positivity

This is the kind of thing I love. Writing at Throw Grammar From the Train, Jan Freeman remarks on the OED's recent additions of such things people, you know, actually say as LOL and OMG. She quotes Charles Walsh as accusing Chris Brown of "inventing the word positivity, which no doubt will be included in the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary." As she says,

Well, you all know what comes next. The OED’s first cite for positivity (“The quality, character, or fact of being positive (in various senses); positiveness”) dates to 1659. Here’s Isaac Watts in 1741: “Courage and Positivity are never more necessary than on such an Occasion.” And Fraser’s Magazine in 1842: “The most positive man I ever met with … There is positivity in his dark face, large eyebrows, stern features.” And so on, till the present day. But who wants 350 years' worth of facts when there's a good rant just begging to be ranted?

Uplift

"My teammates uplifted me a lot," said Meighan Simmons.

That's certainly out there, and I'm not objecting to it at all. But it struck me, because I'd've said (in the unlikely event I were to say it) "they lifted me up".

I think it shows she looks at that as a verb from the noun uplift, rather than the noun coming from the (phrasal) verb to lift up. Which is cool.

UT over OSU

After a rough first half - down by 2 - the Lady Vols came out running and rebounding and outplayed the very game, very tough Buckeyes to win 85-75 and make it to the Elite Eight for the 24th time.

Tax Breaks vs. Budget Cuts

Here is a snippet from a nice chart illustrating why we do not need to cut programs if we cut tax breaks instead. You can see the whole thing and read all the numbers and sources at Center for American Progress. The green column is money saved by cuts, the blue is money lost to breaks...

Script Westview

It's Saturday, and that means a new Comment of the Week at The Comics Curmudgeon. They're usually very funny, but last week's deserves to be honored for, I don't know, the year. It was a ref to a statement in the strip Funky Winkerbean, about the high school band director's "script Westview" marching formation. The comment:

'Script Westview' is also known as 'Comic Sans Happiness'."

NCAA Rd 3 - Regional Semifinals

Today the third round of the NCAA women's basketball tournament start. Tennessee is in the Sweet Sixteen for the 28th time.

Of course, I'm pulling for UT to go all the way - at the very least I want them to make it through the Final Four (for several reasons, not least of which because UConn is in their way). Georgetown and Duke (maybe DePaul) get first shot at the Huskies - UT has to face Ohio State today and probably Notre Dame on Monday.

Tennessee's only two losses this year are to Georgetown and Baylor - the latter one of the teams that could play in the Final Four from the other side of the bracket. They haven't played UConn in years now, and they beat Stanford (the other likely winner from the other side.

It's going to be good. And it starts now.

Cronon tests the waters, and the sharks show up

Over at Salon, Andrew Leonard writes

A week ago, I had never heard of [Professor William] Cronon. This is embarrassing, since it doesn't take much digging around to discover that he is one of the most highly regarded historians in the United States (not to mention president-elect of the American Historical Association).

But that was before Cronon's fascinating opinion piece in Monday's New York Times detailing how Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's political agenda flies in the face of "civic traditions that for more than a century have been among the most celebrated achievements not just of their state, but of their own party as well." A devastating new broadside in the battle for Wisconsin, Cronon's Op-Ed deservedly went viral.

But in today's political climate, there are consequences for taking a stand. As surely nearly everyone who has been following developments in Wisconsin already knows, the Republican Party of Wisconsin has filed an open records request demanding access to any emails Cronon has sent or received since Jan. 1 containing [the following] search terms...

Cronon believes the open records request was sparked by a lengthy blog post he describes thus:

my first-ever entry for a blog I had long been planning on the theme of “Scholar as Citizen,” about how thoughtful scholarship can contribute to better understandings of issues and debates in the public realm. In my first blog entry, I published a study guide exploring the question “Who’s Really Behind Recent Republican Legislation in Wisconsin and Elsewhere?” I by no means had all the answers to this question, but I thought I had found enough useful leads that it was worth sharing them to help others investigate the American Legislative Exchange Council further.

Here's that blog post. A taste of it:

That’s why events like the ones we’ve just experienced in Wisconsin can seem to come out of nowhere. Few outside the conservative movement have been paying much attention, and that is ill-advised. ... This is especially true when politicians at the state and local level promote legislation drafted at the national level that may not actually best serve the interests of their home districts and states. ALEC strategists may think they’re serving the national conservative cause by promoting legislation like the bills recently passed in Wisconsin–but I see my state being ripped apart by the resulting controversies, and it’s hard to believe that Wisconsin is better off as a result. This is not the way citizens or politicians have historically behaved toward each other in this state, and I for one am not happy with the changes in our political culture that seem to be unfolding right now. I’m hoping that many of my fellow Wisconsinites, whether they lean left or right, agree with me that it’s time to take a long hard look at what has been happening and try to find our bearings again.

Here's Cronon's NYT op-ed that's gone viral. A taste:

The policies that the current governor, Scott Walker, has sought to overturn, in other words, are legacies of his own party. But Mr. Walker’s assault on collective bargaining rights breaks with Wisconsin history in two much deeper ways as well. Among the state’s proudest traditions is a passion for transparent government that often strikes outsiders as extreme. Its open meetings law, open records law and public comment procedures are among the strongest in the nation. Indeed, the basis for the restraining order blocking the collective bargaining law is that Republicans may have violated open meetings rules in passing it. The legislation they have enacted turns out to be radical not just in its content, but in its blunt ends-justify-the-means disregard for openness and transparency.

At the moment, I agree with Andrew Leonard:

If good ideas are ever to drive out bad, both need more exposure. And that's why I just bought two of Cronon's books. We can't shape the future without understanding the past. The potency of Cronon's current involvement in the hottest political struggle of the day is all the proof I need that my own understanding of how the world works will benefit from more exposure to his work -- whether manifested in a blog post, New York Times Op-Ed, or book. What better response could there be to an attack on academic freedom than to spread that academic's ideas as widely as possible?

So I've bought two of Cronon's books, too.

edited (4:00 pm) to add: Over at Halfway There, Zeno has a look at ALEC's draft legislation. Take a look.

Happy Birthday, AE

Today in 1859 Alfred Edward Housman was born in Worcestershire, England.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

more Housman here

Happy Birthday, Robert

T0day in 1874 Robert Frost was born in San Francisco.

Hyla Brook

BY June our brook’s run out of song and speed.
Sought for much after that, it will be found
Either to have gone groping underground
(And taken with it all the Hyla breed
That shouted in the mist a month ago,
Like ghost of sleigh-bells in a ghost of snow)—
Or flourished and come up in jewel-weed,
Weak foliage that is blown upon and bent
Even against the way its waters went.
Its bed is left a faded paper sheet
Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat—
A brook to none but who remember long.
This as it will be seen is other far
Than with brooks taken otherwhere in song.
We love the things we love for what they are.

Today in 1836 More Frost here

"Shirtwaist"

Ny the way - you know what was an odd but lasting result of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire?

No, I said odd. And lasting.

We stopped saying "shirtwaist" and started saying "blouse".

Happy Birthday, Christopher

Christopher Clavius was born today in 1538 or maybe 1537, depending on when you count the year beginning, which was not Jan 1 back then. That's not the only thing we don't know for sure about this astronomer and mathematician - his surname may have been Klau, Clau, or even Schlüssel.

But he gave the world the Gregorian calendar - named after the pope who used it, not the man who created it. So goes the world, doesn't it?

Remember the Triangle Fire

One hundred years ago today, 146 garment workers - one hundred and forty six- died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City. Most of them were women, and immigrants, and they died because management had locked the doors to the stairwells and exits. People jumped from the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers.

An eyewitness (Louis Waldman, later a state assemblyman) described it thus:

Word had spread through the East Side, by some magic of terror, that the plant of the Triangle Waist Company was on fire and that several hundred workers were trapped. Horrified and helpless, the crowds — I among them — looked up at the burning building, saw girl after girl appear at the reddened windows, pause for a terrified moment, and then leap to the pavement below, to land as mangled, bloody pulp. This went on for what seemed a ghastly eternity. Occasionally a girl who had hesitated too long was licked by pursuing flames and, screaming with clothing and hair ablaze, plunged like a living torch to the street. Life nets held by the firemen were torn by the impact of the falling bodies.

The owners were found not guilty of manslaughter (on the grounds that it could not be proved they knew their foremen locked the workers in), but lost a civil suit which made them pay compensation of $75 per worker (less than a quarter of what their insurance had paid them over their property losses); in 1913, one of them was convicted of locking the doors in another factory and fined ... $20.

There were two major outcomes from the fire - first, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union became a major force for labor safety legislation, and second, the New York State Legislature created its New York State Factory Investigating Committee to "investigate factory conditions in this and other cities and to report remedial measures of legislation to prevent hazard or loss of life among employees through fire, unsanitary conditions, and occupational diseases"; the 1915 report helped modernize the state's labor laws. As a result, New York became one of the most progressive states with regards to labor and safety in the nation...

All that was a long time ago? Well, 80 years later - in 1991 - another fire broke out in a factory - this time a chicken processing plant in North Carolina. Twenty-six people died behind locked doors, one of whom was a vending machine stocker from another company, and 54 were seriously injured. The phones inside the building could not be used, so the operations manager -the plant owner's son - drove to the fire station and informed them that the factory was on fire ... but he didn't bother to say that workers were still in the plant. This time the company - Imperial Foods - was help accountable. They were fined $808,150 (far less than OSHA fines would have been, but N. Carolina runs its own programs), and the owner went to jail (his son and the local manager both went free as part of a plea bargain on the owner's part). He served 4 years.

Well, that was 20 years ago. Yes, it was. But in 2004 it came to light that WalMart routinely locks its night shifts and janitorial staff in - over 10% of its buildings. No WalMart has ever caught fire and killed locked-in employees, but people have been injured and waited hours to be let out: WalMart managers threaten to fire whole shifts if fire doors are used, or else tell people that the fire doors cannot be used unless the alarm is triggered (not just may not, that the doors will not open). And they're a major company, and this only came to light during an INS sweep. Who knows how many small factories and businessnes lock people in on a regular basis?

I am willing to bet money that right now there are people, probably immigrants (legal or otherwise), working in a building with locked doors, hoping that there's won't be a fire. And if that happens when unions are so strong (according to their foes) what will happen when they're gone? Well... this.

Just last year, in December of 2010, a fire at a Bangladeshi factory which employs thousands of workers making garments for companies such as Gap, JC Penney and Phillips-Van Heusen (good American brands all) killed 26 and injured more than a hundred more. Again... locked doors. Not in America? No - but working for American companies. And not unionized.

Happy Birthday, Patrick

Patrick Troughton was born on 25 March, 1920 in Mill Hill, Middlesex. He had a long and varied career, but to me (and millions) he will always be The Second Doctor...

Not quite...

I winced when I saw "Russian Food and Drink" as a category, but only two of them had Russian in the clue and Alex didn't butcher either (драники draniki and шарлотка sharlotka). So why I am posting? It can't be because I'm going to complement him on his pronunciation?!? (Okay, no; anyway he didn't do that well... He stressed the "nik" and it should be stressed on "dran" (hear it here), and while he put the stress on "lot" he was misled by the English version - in Russian, that's a long O, as in lote (if there were such a word) not lot - hear it here)

It's because he began by announcing "The Ides of March haven't been too hard on our players".

Alex. Alex. The ides are the 15th day of the months of March, May, July, and October, and the 13th day of the other months. This is the twenty-fourth of March.

Or perhaps it's not his fault. After all, this show isn't broadcast live. They may be off the presumed schedule for some reason. If so, too bad for you, Alex: they've made you look foolish...

Wait. Did Connie just say that 1961 was after 1962?

Bank Notes redux

Back in February I found out that Bank of England bank notes used to be one-time use. Now I find out - via a Jaques Futrelle 'Thinking Machine' story and some research - that in the US, between 1863 and 1935, banks could issue their own notes as legal currency.

Here's the line from 'The Man Who Was Lost' (available on line here):

“Series B, hundred-dollar bills 846380 to 846395 issued by this bank are not in existence. Were destroyed by fire, together with twenty-seven others of the same series. Government has been asked to grant permission to reissue these numbers.”

Fascinating.

Happy Birthday, Harry

Harry Houdini born today, 1874, in Budapest. Houdini (born Ehrich Weiss) began his career as a magician and became an escapologist - perhaps the escapologist. He certainly pioneered the PR-tie in and brought more than a little sex appeal to the trade as well. But in his later years he devoted his energy to investigating spiritualists - and debunking them. The Randi of his time, he used his knowledge of stage magic to unmask the tricks such frauds used to deceived their audiences. Since his death, yearly seances have been held (he'd told his wife, Bess, how to recognize a genuine message from beyond so that she would not be taken in, and she steadfastly refused to fall for those who claimed to have received one) - but to date, Houdini has not escaped from death. As he predicted...

trying not to read too much in it

I wrote a bunch of checks today - I'll pause while some of you recover from your astonishment that people still use paper checks - renewed some magazines, made some donations, bought some books - 17 in all.

The only one where the form you're supposed to fill in and mail back didn't fit in the envelope they wanted us to use was ... the DCCC.

AFLAAAAAAAC

Cute. I just saw the new AFLAC commercial - a silent film!

"unrest comes in many sizes"

Up front: this is long. But it's good. George Friedman on the Libyan intervention.

tl;dr:

"In my view, waging war to pursue the national interest is on rare occasion necessary. Waging war for ideological reasons requires a clear understanding of the ideology and an even clearer understanding of the reality on the ground. In this intervention, the ideology is not crystal clear, torn as it is between the concept of self-determination and the obligation to intervene to protect the favored faction. The reality on the ground is even less clear. The reality of democratic uprisings in the Arab world is much more complicated than the narrative makes it out to be, and the application of the narrative to Libya simply breaks down. There is unrest, but unrest comes in many sizes, democratic being only one.

Whenever you intervene in a country, whatever your intentions, you are intervening on someone’s side. In this case, the United States, France and Britain are intervening in favor of a poorly defined group of mutually hostile and suspicious tribes and factions that have failed to coalesce, at least so far, into a meaningful military force. The intervention may well succeed. The question is whether the outcome will create a morally superior nation. It is said that there can’t be anything worse than Gadhafi. But Gadhafi did not rule for 42 years because he was simply a dictator using force against innocents, but rather because he speaks to a real and powerful dimension of Libya."

Here's the whole thing:

Libya, the West and the Narrative of Democracy is republished with permission of STRATFOR.

Libya, the West and the Narrative of Democracy
By George Friedman

Forces from the United States and some European countries have intervened in Libya. Under U.N. authorization, they have imposed a no-fly zone in Libya, meaning they will shoot down any Libyan aircraft that attempts to fly within Libya. In addition, they have conducted attacks against aircraft on the ground, airfields, air defenses and the command, control and communication systems of the Libyan government, and French and U.S. aircraft have struck against Libyan armor and ground forces. There also are reports of European and Egyptian special operations forces deploying in eastern Libya, where the opposition to the government is centered, particularly around the city of Benghazi. In effect, the intervention of this alliance has been against the government of Moammar Gadhafi, and by extension, in favor of his opponents in the east.

The alliance’s full intention is not clear, nor is it clear that the allies are of one mind. The U.N. Security Council resolution clearly authorizes the imposition of a no-fly zone. By extension, this logically authorizes strikes against airfields and related targets. Very broadly, it also defines the mission of the intervention as protecting civilian lives. As such, it does not specifically prohibit the presence of ground forces, though it does clearly state that no “foreign occupation force” shall be permitted on Libyan soil. It can be assumed they intended that forces could intervene in Libya but could not remain in Libya after the intervention. What this means in practice is less than clear.

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There is no question that the intervention is designed to protect Gadhafi’s enemies from his forces. Gadhafi had threatened to attack “without mercy” and had mounted a sustained eastward assault that the rebels proved incapable of slowing. Before the intervention, the vanguard of his forces was on the doorstep of Benghazi. The protection of the eastern rebels from Gadhafi’s vengeance coupled with attacks on facilities under Gadhafi’s control logically leads to the conclusion that the alliance wants regime change, that it wants to replace the Gadhafi government with one led by the rebels.

But that would be too much like the invasion of Iraq against Saddam Hussein, and the United Nations and the alliance haven’t gone that far in their rhetoric, regardless of the logic of their actions. Rather, the goal of the intervention is explicitly to stop Gadhafi’s threat to slaughter his enemies, support his enemies but leave the responsibility for the outcome in the hands of the eastern coalition. In other words — and this requires a lot of words to explain — they want to intervene to protect Gadhafi’s enemies, they are prepared to support those enemies (though it is not clear how far they are willing to go in providing that support), but they will not be responsible for the outcome of the civil war.

The Regional Context

To understand this logic, it is essential to begin by considering recent events in North Africa and the Arab world and the manner in which Western governments interpreted them. Beginning with Tunisia, spreading to Egypt and then to the Arabian Peninsula, the last two months have seen widespread unrest in the Arab world. Three assumptions have been made about this unrest. The first was that it represented broad-based popular opposition to existing governments, rather than representing the discontent of fragmented minorities — in other words, that they were popular revolutions. Second, it assumed that these revolutions had as a common goal the creation of a democratic society. Third, it assumed that the kind of democratic society they wanted was similar to European-American democracy, in other words, a constitutional system supporting Western democratic values.

Each of the countries experiencing unrest was very different. For example, in Egypt, while the cameras focused on demonstrators, they spent little time filming the vast majority of the country that did not rise up. Unlike 1979 in Iran, the shopkeepers and workers did not protest en masse. Whether they supported the demonstrators in Tahrir Square is a matter of conjecture. They might have, but the demonstrators were a tiny fraction of Egyptian society, and while they clearly wanted a democracy, it is less than clear that they wanted a liberal democracy. Recall that the Iranian Revolution created an Islamic Republic more democratic than its critics would like to admit, but radically illiberal and oppressive. In Egypt, it is clear that Mubarak was generally loathed but not clear that the regime in general was being rejected. It is not clear from the outcome what will happen now. Egypt may stay as it is, it may become an illiberal democracy or it may become a liberal democracy.

Consider also Bahrain. Clearly, the majority of the population is Shiite, and resentment toward the Sunni government is apparent. It should be assumed that the protesters want to dramatically increase Shiite power, and elections should do the trick. Whether they want to create a liberal democracy fully aligned with the U.N. doctrines on human rights is somewhat more problematic.

Egypt is a complicated country, and any simple statement about what is going on is going to be wrong. Bahrain is somewhat less complex, but the same holds there. The idea that opposition to the government means support for liberal democracy is a tremendous stretch in all cases — and the idea that what the demonstrators say they want on camera is what they actually want is problematic. Even more problematic in many cases is the idea that the demonstrators in the streets simply represent a universal popular will.

Nevertheless, a narrative on what has happened in the Arab world has emerged and has become the framework for thinking about the region. The narrative says that the region is being swept by democratic revolutions (in the Western sense) rising up against oppressive regimes. The West must support these uprisings gently. That means that they must not sponsor them but at the same time act to prevent the repressive regimes from crushing them.

This is a complex maneuver. The West supporting the rebels will turn it into another phase of Western imperialism, under this theory. But the failure to support the rising will be a betrayal of fundamental moral principles. Leaving aside whether the narrative is accurate, reconciling these two principles is not easy — but it particularly appeals to Europeans with their ideological preference for “soft power.”

The West has been walking a tightrope of these contradictory principles; Libya became the place where they fell off. According to the narrative, what happened in Libya was another in a series of democratic uprisings, but in this case suppressed with a brutality outside the bounds of what could be tolerated. Bahrain apparently was inside the bounds, and Egypt was a success, but Libya was a case in which the world could not stand aside while Gadhafi destroyed a democratic uprising. Now, the fact that the world had stood aside for more than 40 years while Gadhafi brutalized his own and other people was not the issue. In the narrative being told, Libya was no longer an isolated tyranny but part of a widespread rising — and the one in which the West’s moral integrity was being tested in the extreme. Now was different from before.

Of course, as with other countries, there was a massive divergence between the narrative and what actually happened. Certainly, that there was unrest in Tunisia and Egypt caused opponents of Gadhafi to think about opportunities, and the apparent ease of the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings gave them some degree of confidence. But it would be an enormous mistake to see what has happened in Libya as a mass, liberal democratic uprising. The narrative has to be strained to work in most countries, but in Libya, it breaks down completely.

The Libyan Uprising

As we have pointed out, the Libyan uprising consisted of a cluster of tribes and personalities, some within the Libyan government, some within the army and many others longtime opponents of the regime, all of whom saw an opportunity at this particular moment. Though many in western portions of Libya, notably in the cities of Zawiya and Misurata, identify themselves with the opposition, they do not represent the heart of the historic opposition to Tripoli found in the east. It is this region, known in the pre-independence era as Cyrenaica, that is the core of the opposition movement. United perhaps only by their opposition to Gadhafi, these people hold no common ideology and certainly do not all advocate Western-style democracy. Rather, they saw an opportunity to take greater power, and they tried to seize it.

According to the narrative, Gadhafi should quickly have been overwhelmed — but he wasn’t. He actually had substantial support among some tribes and within the army. All of these supporters had a great deal to lose if he was overthrown. Therefore, they proved far stronger collectively than the opposition, even if they were taken aback by the initial opposition successes. To everyone’s surprise, Gadhafi not only didn’t flee, he counterattacked and repulsed his enemies.

This should not have surprised the world as much as it did. Gadhafi did not run Libya for the past 42 years because he was a fool, nor because he didn’t have support. He was very careful to reward his friends and hurt and weaken his enemies, and his supporters were substantial and motivated. One of the parts of the narrative is that the tyrant is surviving only by force and that the democratic rising readily routs him. The fact is that the tyrant had a lot of support in this case, the opposition wasn’t particularly democratic, much less organized or cohesive, and it was Gadhafi who routed them.

As Gadhafi closed in on Benghazi, the narrative shifted from the triumph of the democratic masses to the need to protect them from Gadhafi — hence the urgent calls for airstrikes. But this was tempered by reluctance to act decisively by landing troops, engaging the Libyan army and handing power to the rebels: Imperialism had to be avoided by doing the least possible to protect the rebels while arming them to defeat Gadhafi. Armed and trained by the West, provided with command of the air by the foreign air forces — this was the arbitrary line over which the new government keeps from being a Western puppet. It still seems a bit over the line, but that’s how the story goes.

In fact, the West is now supporting a very diverse and sometimes mutually hostile group of tribes and individuals, bound together by hostility to Gadhafi and not much else. It is possible that over time they could coalesce into a fighting force, but it is far more difficult imagining them defeating Gadhafi’s forces anytime soon, much less governing Libya together. There are simply too many issues among them. It is, in part, these divisions that allowed Gadhafi to stay in power as long as he did. The West’s ability to impose order on them without governing them, particularly in a short amount of time, is difficult to imagine. They remind me of Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, anointed by the Americans, distrusted by much of the country and supported by a fractious coalition.

Other Factors

There are other factors involved, of course. Italy has an interest in Libyan oil, and the United Kingdom was looking for access to the same. But just as Gadhafi was happy to sell the oil, so would any successor regime be; this war was not necessary to guarantee access to oil. NATO politics also played a role. The Germans refused to go with this operation, and that drove the French closer to the Americans and British. There is the Arab League, which supported a no-fly zone (though it did an about-face when it found out that a no-fly zone included bombing things) and offered the opportunity to work with the Arab world.

But it would be a mistake to assume that these passing interests took precedence over the ideological narrative, the genuine belief that it was possible to thread the needle between humanitarianism and imperialism — that it was possible to intervene in Libya on humanitarian grounds without thereby interfering in the internal affairs of the country. The belief that one can take recourse to war to save the lives of the innocent without, in the course of that war, taking even more lives of innocents, also was in play.

The comparison to Iraq is obvious. Both countries had a monstrous dictator. Both were subjected to no-fly zones. The no-fly zones don’t deter the dictator. In due course, this evolves into a massive intervention in which the government is overthrown and the opposition goes into an internal civil war while simultaneously attacking the invaders. Of course, alternatively, this might play out like the Kosovo war, where a few months of bombing saw the government surrender the province. But in that case, only a province was in play. In this case, although focused ostensibly on the east, Gadhafi in effect is being asked to give up everything, and the same with his supporters — a harder business.

In my view, waging war to pursue the national interest is on rare occasion necessary. Waging war for ideological reasons requires a clear understanding of the ideology and an even clearer understanding of the reality on the ground. In this intervention, the ideology is not crystal clear, torn as it is between the concept of self-determination and the obligation to intervene to protect the favored faction. The reality on the ground is even less clear. The reality of democratic uprisings in the Arab world is much more complicated than the narrative makes it out to be, and the application of the narrative to Libya simply breaks down. There is unrest, but unrest comes in many sizes, democratic being only one.

Whenever you intervene in a country, whatever your intentions, you are intervening on someone’s side. In this case, the United States, France and Britain are intervening in favor of a poorly defined group of mutually hostile and suspicious tribes and factions that have failed to coalesce, at least so far, into a meaningful military force. The intervention may well succeed. The question is whether the outcome will create a morally superior nation. It is said that there can’t be anything worse than Gadhafi. But Gadhafi did not rule for 42 years because he was simply a dictator using force against innocents, but rather because he speaks to a real and powerful dimension of Libya.

Happy Birthday, William

Today in Oxfordshire, England, William Smith - the "Father of English Geography" - was born. (I can heartily recommend The Map That Changed the World by the brilliant Simon Winchester.)

Wikipedia summarizes his life's work thus: As he observed the rock layers (or strata) at the pit, he realised that they were arranged in a predictable pattern and that the various strata could always be found in the same relative positions. Additionally, each particular stratum could be identified by the fossils it contained, and the same succession of fossil groups from older to younger rocks could be found in many parts of England. Furthermore, he noticed an easterly dip of the beds of rock- small near the surface (about three degrees) then bigger after the Triassic rocks. This gave Smith a testable hypothesis, which he termed The Principle of Faunal Succession, and he began his search to determine if the relationships between the strata and their characteristics were consistent throughout the country. During subsequent travels, first as a surveyor (appointed by noted engineer John Rennie) for the canal company until 1799 when he was dismissed, and later, he was continually taking samples and mapping the locations of the various strata, and displaying the vertical extent of the strata, and drawing cross-sections and tables of what he saw. This would earn him the name "Strata Smith". As a natural consequence, Smith amassed a large and valuable collection of fossils of the strata he had examined himself from exposures in canals, road and railway cuttings, quarries and escarpments across the country.

Why are we in Libya?

Another excerpt from Glenn Greenwald on Libya:

Note how, in Judis' moral world, there are only two possibilities: one can either support the American military action in Libya or be guilty of a "who cares?" attitude toward Gadaffi's butchery.
...

But my real question for Judis (and those who voice the same accusations against Libya intervention opponents) is this: do you support military intervention to protect protesters in Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and other U.S. allies from suppression, or to stop the still-horrendous suffering in the Sudan, or to prevent the worsening humanitarian crisis in the Ivory Coast? Did you advocate military intervention to protect protesters in Iran and Egypt, or to stop the Israeli slaughter of hundreds of trapped innocent civilians in Gaza and Lebanon or its brutal and growing occupation of the West Bank?

If not, doesn't that necessarily mean -- using this same reasoning -- that you're indifferent to the suffering of all of those people, willing to stand idly by while innocents are slaughtered, to leave in place brutal tyrants who terrorize their own population or those in neighboring countries? Or, in those instances where you oppose military intervention despite widespread suffering, do you grant yourself the prerogative of weighing other factors: such as the finitude of resources, doubt about whether U.S. military action will hurt rather than help the situation, cynicism about the true motives of the U.S. government in intervening, how intervention will affect other priorities, the civilian deaths that will inevitably occur at our hands, the precedents that such intervention will set for future crises, and the moral justification of invading foreign countries? For those places where you know there is widespread violence and suffering yet do not advocate for U.S. military action to stop it, is it fair to assume that you are simply indifferent to the suffering you refuse to act to prevent, or do you recognize there might be other reasons why you oppose the intervention?

And check out Eugene Robinson on the same thing:

Anyone looking for principle and logic in the attack on Moammar Gaddafi's tyrannical regime will be disappointed. . . . Why is Libya so different? Basically, because the dictators of Yemen, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia -- also Jordan and the Persian Gulf sheikdoms, for that matter -- are friendly, cooperative and useful. Gaddafi is not. . . .

Gaddafi is crazy and evil; obviously, he wasn’t going to listen to our advice about democracy. The world would be fortunate to be rid of him. But war in Libya is justifiable only if we are going to hold compliant dictators to the same standard we set for defiant ones. If not, then please spare us all the homilies about universal rights and freedoms. We'll know this isn’t about justice, it's about power.

Read both of them in their entirety; they're well worth your while.

Happy Birthday, Edith

Today in 1936, Edith Grossman was born today in Philadelphia. She's one of the great translators from Spanish - her Don Quixote, which came out in 2003, is considered one of the, if not the, best translations (Carlos Fuentes called it "truly masterly") and was a best-seller - and I loved it, though I don't speak Spanish so can't judge it as a translation - and Gabriel García Márquez calls her "my voice in English". She has also translated Mario Vargas Llosa, Mayra Montero, Augusto Monterroso, Jaime Manrique, Julián Ríos, and Álvaro Mutis. In 2003, at the PEN Tribute to Gabriel García Márquez, she said:

"Fidelity is surely our highest aim, but a translation is not made with tracing paper. It is an act of critical interpretation. Let me insist on the obvious: Languages trail immense, individual histories behind them, and no two languages, with all their accretions of tradition and culture, ever dovetail perfectly. They can be linked by translation, as a photograph can link movement and stasis, but it is disingenuous to assume that either translation or photography, or acting for that matter, are representational in any narrow sense of the term. Fidelity is our noble purpose, but it does not have much, if anything, to do with what is called literal meaning. A translation can be faithful to tone and intention, to meaning. It can rarely be faithful to words or syntax, for these are peculiar to specific languages and are not transferable."

Or, as she put it in an interview with Guernica:

Yes, I think we have to be faithful to the context. But it’s very important to differentiate between fidelity and literalness. Because you can’t be faithful to words, words are different in different languages. You can’t be faithful to syntax, because that changes from one language to the other. But you can be faithful to intention and context. Borges allegedly said to one of his translators, “Don’t translate what I said. Translate what I meant to say.” That is, in fact, what a translator does. Because languages are very resonant and various levels of diction and styles of discourse echo in the mind of the native reader and native speaker. I always think that my job is to find the English that will resonate like the original Spanish for the English speaking reader.

And here's a bit about translating García Márquez for the first time, from a piece in Criticas:

“I knew this Colombian writer was eccentric when he wrote me saying that he doesn’t use adverbs ending with -mente in Spanish and would like to avoid adverbs ending in -ly in English.” She remembers thinking, what do you say in English except slowly? “Well, I came up with all types of things, like without haste.”

NCAAs Rd 2 part 2

Whew. Marquette never quit - never quit. Down only by 6 with 2:04 to play ... 1:07 left and still the six-point lead as Alicia Manning shoots free throws, drops one, two (into double digits) ... Offensive rebound and Glory Johnson runs down the court and leaps, dropping it in. 75-67 with :43 to play... But Marquette is still not quitting. Angie Bjorklund to the line, sinks both. Manning just fouled Robinson who got the bucket too. Three-point play.

Now we're into that bit that gets me every time. 33 seconds to play, and they foul Shekinna Stricklen - down by 8 points. I know - I know - you don't quit. You don't quit. But they can't win.

Glory's fouled again.

Wait, what? The UT game wasn't over yet. (I know - I just said they can't win....) Okay, Duke up by only 3 over Marist. Wow. Okay, yes, let's see the last two minutes of this!

See, this - down by 5 - this is when the foul-the-worst-shooter strategy works. She missed both, and Marist hit a three. Now down by only 2 with :39 to play. But this time it didn't work - she hit them both. The three doesn't fall... Duke wins it, by the skin of their teeth. Final score 71-66. What a game. Wow.

And UT wins, 79-70.

And now they've taken us to another great close one - DePaul winning over Penn State by only 2 pts.

NCAAs

Tennessee romped over their first-round competition, Stetson, 99-34. But they're playing Marquette tonight, and Marquette is not intimidated. It's halftime, and UT's only 4 points up (39-35).

The way Marist is playing Duke - leading them! - it might be a good night for underdogs starting with MAR...

Grayson: A tactic in search of a strategy

I got this from Alan Grayson today. It makes sense, I think:

One of the unfortunate imperatives of public life is that when something is the lead story, you think you’ve got to be doing something about it. Not just have an opinion on it. Be doing something about it.

Volcano erupts? Prepare a news release on the new anti-volcano policy.

Zombies are multiplying? Introduce anti-zombie legislation.

Well, Libya’s been on the front page for a month now. Demonstrations. Civil unrest. Army attacks, etc. So our world leaders think that they’ve got to be doing something about it.

Hence the Libya no-fly zone.

Here is a link to UN Security Resolution 1973, authorizing the Libya no-fly zone. It shows a laudable, albeit rather repetitive, concern for civilian wellbeing. It also completely fails to explain how a no-fly zone will ensure the safety of civilians.

The Libyan Air Force hasn’t received a major delivery of new aircraft in 22 years. Roughly three-quarters of its “air”craft can’t fly.

It is true that the Libyan Air Force, such as it is, has been deployed. But the serious threat to civilians in Libya is not from the Libyan Air Force. It’s from the government security forces on the ground. A no-fly zone does not take away their guns, or their artillery.

For outsiders like us, there are two questions to answer:

(1) Do you want Gaddafi in or out?

(2) Either way, what are you willing to do about it?

Here are my answers:

(1) Out, because Gaddafi is a dictator who has stunted the development of his country and its people (although in a list of the 5,000 things that are most important to America, I’d have to rank this close to the bottom, even if it is on the evening news every night).

(2) Economic sanctions, including extending the de facto oil embargo and asset freeze that already are in effect.

And it’s likely that an oil embargo/asset freeze will work. Oil is 95% of Libya’s exports, and 25% of GNP. Libya has about four years of oil revenue in the bank, but with an asset freeze and economic sanctions, that becomes meaningless. Whatever the result in the streets, as soon as Gaddafi runs out of money, he’s gone.

But a no-fly zone? In the case of Libya, that’s a tactic in search of a strategy. The Yiddish word for it is “shmei,” roughly translated as aimless strolling around. A no-fly zone is basically just looking like you’re doing something to remove Gaddafi, at the cost of $60 million in a day (which was the cost of the first day’s worth of cruise missiles launched).

The last time we tried this, in Iraq, we had to sustain it for 12 years. At enormous effort and expense. And it didn’t bring down Saddam at all.

More fundamentally, a no-fly zone in Libya feeds the dangerous fantasy that every problem has a military solution. That the answer to the use of force is the use of more force. That if a hammer doesn’t drive that nail in, try a howitzer.

It was Mao Tse-Tung who said that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Do we really want Mao’s principles running our foreign policy?

Happy Birthday, Johann

Today in 1685 in Eisenach, Germany, Johann Sebastian Bach was born. The world would be a poorer place without him.

One of my favorite CDs for the office is The Goldberg Variations, scored for a string quartet. But it's hard to go wrong picking something of his.

He spent a large part of his life as a playing musician - an organist, mostly - and much of his composed music was considered too old-fashioned or too ornamental. He changed jobs a lot, until 1723, when he became a choirmaster in Leipzig where he remained until his death in 1750. Most of his jobs were for one church or another, in fact, but he happily wrote secular music when he worked for Prince Leopold of Cothen - until his wife (the prince's) disapproved of such a frivolous expense as chamber music. But whatever kind of music Bach wrote, he did it gloriously.

The Week in Entertainment

Film:The Adjustment Bureau, which I really enjoyed. It's smart and exciting, and Matt Damon makes you believe it.

TV: Fallen, which I don't remember from when it came out, but it too is smart and exciting, and the cast (Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland) very good. House, which was better than I thought it would be. I'm still hanging on the edge with it. The Mentalist, which was excellent, as usual. I loved Cho in charge - and Lisbon's "I'm not even going to ask where you're really going. You know why? You're not my problem any more!" was great. Also some women's NCAA basketball - March Madness!

Read: All seven of the Maisie Dobbs books. Someone recommended them to me, I read the first, then got the rest. I think I may have read Birds of a Feather when it first came out, I'm not sure - the motive for the killings was absolutely no surprise but I don't remember the rest of the story. At any rate, I really like the books (this time?), and the time period (late 20s-early 30s England) is fascinating. Also some "Thinking Machine" stories, and You Are What You Speak by Robert Lane Greer.

Sky Watch: Full Moon of Spring

Today is the vernal equinox - or, of course, the autumnal equinox if you live in the southern hemisphere. It's also a full moon. And that full moon is nearer to us than one has been in a while. Here are a few pictures of it off my balcony - one with added grackles!










more Sky Watchers here

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Happy Birthday, Ivan

Іван Степанович Мазепа - Ivan Mazepa - was born today, in what is now called Mazepyntsy, near Bila Tserkva in Ukraine around 1640. The usual English spelling of his name is Mazeppa, which is from the Russian.

Mazepa was an ambitious Kozak (Cossack) officer who rose quickly through the ranks in the post-Pereyaslavl Left Bank Hetmanate (the 1653 Treaty of Pereyaslavl between Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytskyy and Tsar Alexey I of Muscovy was fraught with misunderstandings from the beginning). Mazepa began as a loyal ally of Russia (as Muscovy was now called under Peter I, the Great), and became hetman in 1687 after accusing his predecessor, Samoylovych, of planning to break the treaty and secede from Muscovy. In 1702 Mazepa crossed the Dnipro (Dneiper) and annexed large portions of Right-Bank Ukraine after Semen Paliy's failed uprising against the Poles, establishing him as a wealthy and powerful ruler.

But the Great Northern War wasn't good to Russia - the Swedes and Lithuanians were a serious force back then - and Peter I decided to take steps - steps Mazepa saw as threatening the Hetmanate's autonomy. Peter I began sending Kozaks to fight in foreign wars, instead of leaving them to defend Ukraine against Tatars and Poles (as the treaty stipulated). Kozak soldiers were neither equipped nor trained for modern warfare, and they were often commanded by Russians and Germans who often did not much value their lives. They suffered loss of morale, and heavy casualties, while at home a Russian force became an oppressive occupier.

In 1708, Polish King Stanislaus Leszczynski, an ally of Charles XII of Sweden, threatened to attack the Hetmanate. Peter I refused to defend Ukraine, expecting an attack on Russia proper by Charles XII. In Mazepa's opinion, this blatantly violated the Treaty of Pereyaslav, since Russia refused to protect Ukraine's territory and left it to fare on its own. As the Swedish and Polish armies advanced towards Ukraine, Mazepa allied himself with them on October 28, 1708.

The Russian army responded by razing the Kozak capital Baturyn, killing the defending garrison and all of its population. The Russian army was ordered to tie up the dead Kozaks to crosses, and float them down the Dnieper River all the way to the Black Sea with the goal of scaring all the people loyal to Mazepa who lived along the river.

The Battle of Poltava, June 29, 1709, was won by the Russians (a victory which shook Europe and established Russia as a true imperial force and power player in European politics), and this destroyed Mazepa's hope for an independent Ukraine. He fled along with Charles to refuge in Bendery, among the Turks, where he died soon afterwards. The tsars began to dismantle the Hetmanate, and by 1764 the largely puppet remains of it were abolished.

Mazepa's legacy during Russian rule of Ukraine, and Soviet rule thereafter, was one of treason and revilement. He was excommunicated by the Orthodox Church, Tchaikovsky's opera "Mazeppa" casts him as the villain, and any positive view of him was "Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism", a serious crime in Soviet days. But since Ukrainian independence the hetman's memory has enjoyed a resurgence, and he is recognized as a national hero.


He's even on the money.

Radiation doses

A set of charts, fewer colors, more science terms, by a Senior Reactor Operator at the Reed Research Reactor, or this (larger version here and with lots of words here) by Randall Munroe based on the Reed one.



Munroe's may be republished "anywhere without any sort of restriction; I place it in the public domain. I just suggest that you make sure to include a clear translation of the disclaimer that the author is not an expert, and that anyone potentially affected by Fukushima should always defer to the directives of regional health authorities."