History

Photography, Meaning and Historiography

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The Valley of the Shadow of Death by Roger Fenton (1855)

This is fascinating on several levels. First, there is a lot of discussion about the circumstances of the Sebastopol siege. Second, the photos themselves are impressive: those spent cannon balls littering the ground like rocks create, at least for me, a sense of tremendous danger. Finally, the guy who wrote this piece is a pretty good empirical historian and raises interesting questions about the circumstances of the photos and about historiography generally. Also, Susan Sontag comes out of it looking like a dope.

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Kennewick Man Update

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Moira Breen reports.

UPDATE: In the comments, DanTdaxp flags two posts (here and here) on this topic from Catholicgauze.
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Someone Explain to Me Why This is News

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The great Robert A. Heinlein published a short story entitled Solution Unsatisfactory in 1940.

The plot concerns a secret project to develop an atomic bomb to combat Nazi Germany, but the scientists involved with the project face insurmountable problems. Eventually the idea is hit upon to use the radioactive wastes from their experiments, ground up into a dust, which could be released downwind from enemy cities. The inhabitants of the city would all die in a few days, and the city itself would be poisoned by radioactivity for some years afterwards.

I have no idea if Gen. Douglas MacArthur was a Heinlein fan or not, but he suggested the same scheme during the Korean War. He publicly said that radioactive waste could be used to create an impassable minefield between the Communists and the Allies. That way the US could still use a nuclear weapon of a sort without goading the Soviets into using their own atomic bombs.

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On War, Comprehension and Persuasion

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There must be something in the water lately as I have been getting an upsurge of inquiries and public comments regarding information operations, public diplomacy, “soft power” agents of influence, 5GW and similar matters. There are other blogs I can recommend as being better on this score – Beacon, MountainRunner, Kent’s Imperative, Swedish Meatballs Confidential and Whirledview to name but a few. Also, I would suggest that interested readers search the archives of Studies in Intelligence, PARAMETERS, The Strategic Studies Institute, Combined Arms Research Library and the threads at The Small Wars Council. Genuine expertise may be found there and for discussions of theory and emerging trends, I recommend Dreaming 5GW.

That being said, I will offer my two cents anyway.

One point of agreement across the political spectrum and that of informed opinion is that the USG has not done a particularly good job of managing “the war of ideas” in the conflict with Islamist terrorism. Or against state adversaries. Or with persuading neutrals and even our own allies to our point of view. When you are having difficulty drawing even in global popularity contest with a crowd of bearded fanatics who put beheading videos on the internet, it’s time to admit there’s a problem.

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