War and Peace

Conclusion: The Secret Voyage of the Kofuku Maru

by

(Part 1 here and Part 2 here.)

Once they passed through the Lombok Strait, the Krait (formerly the Kofuku Maru) threaded a cautious way among islands that were irregular polka-dots of green along the Sumatra coast, Engineer McDowell and his assistant nursing his engine as if it were a cranky child prone to tantrums. One of the officers was in the wheelhouse at all times. The mixed crew of soldiers and sailors kept a careful look-out, day and night – but they had come deliberately by a route that avoided the normal shipping lanes in and around Singapore. They made a happy discovery, upon encountering other craft—mostly native fishing boats and small commerce; such craft turned around and went the other way, at top speed, upon seeing the purposefully stained and tattered Japanese flag which they flew now. By the 18th, they were a bare 22 miles from Singapore, lurking with intent among the islands star-scattered to the south of the city, searching for a deserted and unobserved spot within striking distance of Keppel Harbor. Anchoring off Panjang Island at 4 in the morning, they decided that spot would do, for disembarking the six members of the canoe teams, and deadly cargo: Lyon, Davidson, and Page, with the three naval ratings: Walter Falls, Arthur “Joe” Jones and A.W. Huston. In two weeks exactly, the Krait would return to the rendezvous at Panjang to retrieve the six … if all went according to plan.

Read more

In At the Beginning

by

Reading here and there about what can only be viewed as corruption of various charitable agencies by an apparent flood of government dollars, I am certain now that I was inadvertently present at the very start of that corruption – a warping of charitable concern towards refugees, as well as non-refugee migrants, the homeless, the addicted and the otherwise socially maladjusted. I was a college student in my junior year at a no-name public university, at the time of the fall of the South Vietnamese in 1975. My adolescent years had been haunted by the ongoing war in Vietnam, a war painted in the most horrific colors by the then-extent national media. I grew up in a place, a time and in a class of Americans where men were much more likely to be drafted and sentenced to serve for a year in what was painted by the national establishment media as a pointless, endless, thankless war.

Read more

What do American Indians Have to be Thankful For?

by

Much of the modern left views the migration of Europeans to the Americas as one of history’s greatest tragedies. This cynicism represents a failure to examine both sides of the balance sheet, to recognize both good and bad consequences of trans-Atlantic colonization, as well as the consequences of having no European colonization at all. The answer to the question posed in the title comes down to at least four items.

Access to advanced technology. Recall this quote from Life of Brian: “All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?” One can nitpick and identify a few things the Judeans already had (e.g. wine), but overall the Romans significantly improved infrastructure that increased quality of life. The technological gap between Renaissance Europeans and pre-Columbian Americans was vastly greater. The Europeans also brought a non-technological advance that benefited some tribes in the short term: the horse.

And end to the constant threat of warfare. Before Europeans displaced the American natives, the natives were displacing each other. Such is life in a continent where one can find little land that isn’t frontier. As nation-states emerged and maintained long-term power, warfare became a less frequent concern.

Rule of law and relative freedom under the law. These principles evolved in Northern Europe and especially in England. They were exported to the Anglosphere colonies where they were developed further. Latin America was settled by the most autocratic region of Western Europe; centuries of existential threat under Moorish rule is not the sort of environment that breeds high-cooperation societies. Democratic reforms eventually came to many parts of the region with varying degrees of success. 

The Chinese did not colonize the Americas. If Ming Dynasty maritime exploration had taken a different turn…

Happy Thanksgiving! 

Dedicated Followers of Fashion

by

It’s kind of depressing, reading the various stories linked here and there by various blogs and social media about pro-Palestinian/pro-terrorist orgies of protest on the grounds of various colleges and universities, and in the streets of certain big cities. This reminds me of the anti-war demos of the Vietnam War era. Massive turnout, lots of signs, lots of free-floating rhetoric … which turned out to mean absolutely nothing at all, in the long run. Much of the ruckus wasn’t motivated by sincere conviction about the welfare of the South Vietnamese, or the lives of our military troops. It was all just the followers of fashion, making a show of their fashionable conviction.

Read more

“When Is Blowing Up the World A Success?”

by

VDH’s excellent summary:

Recently, Secretary of State Antony Blinken bragged in an op-ed that “The Biden administration’s strategy has put the United States in a much stronger geopolitical position today than it was four years ago.”
 
What?
 
This is the latest campaign fantasy narrative also served up by Harris-Walz—analogous to the four-year untruth that “the border is secure” and “the economy is strong”—as they try to explain why the world utterly blew up on their watch and due to their own actions…

Read the whole thing.