History, Language and Crimes

This is exhausting. Life once seemed like a road to travel - choose the less traveled one or walk the one you know, whatever you wanted, but it was a road going forward. Now, it feels like a merry go round without the fun, just the going round and round part because:

Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

The learning part is missing, hence the round and round part, as well as the language, history and crimes part. 

What have we failed to learn? 

Way back 1946, In Politics and the English Language: An Essay on Writing George Orwell wrote, "if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better."

In 1949, in the Appendix of 1984, The Principles of Newspeak, George Orwell wrote, "The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view...but to make all other modes of thought impossible."

If we travel forward in time to just a few years ago, we will remember a world where infectious diseases like measles were held at bay by a robust uptake of vaccines because vaccines were considered a responsible way to protect our children and those around them. However, today we have measles outbreaks throughout North America because what has decimated vaccinations are antivaxxers words like "freedom". Freedom is defined as, "the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action" and its antonyms are "slavery, bondage, captivity, confinement, oppression, imprisonment". One can see why antivaxxers chose the word 'freedom' to describe their dangerous choice. They also tout phrases like, "do your own research" to dismiss the expertise of researchers and doctors and pretending that true expertise can be replaced by internet searches. This language hides the truth of community responsibility, the complicated expertise behind vaccine effectiveness and worst of all, it hides the suffering and deaths caused by these infections. The freedom to cause suffering and death is a freedom no one should want. 

Fast forward to a meeting last week between Prime Minister Mark Carney and President Trump where language was again used to 'corrupt thought'. President Trump revisited the annexation of Canada, claiming the Canada-U.S. border is an "artificially drawn line...Somebody drew that line many years ago with, like, a ruler — just a straight line right across the top of the country... When you look at that beautiful formation, when it's together — I'm a very artistic person — but when I looked at that beaut, I said, 'That's the way it was meant to be.' "

Prime Minister Carney responded by saying, “Having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign ... it’s not for sale. Won’t be for sale, ever.”

Prime Minister Carney's response was applauded throughout Canada by the owners of Canada. However, there was a great deal to worry about in that meeting. The U.S. president, on the world stage, touted some dangerous language, inciting some dangerous crimes and all crimes have victims.

Annexation of countries is prohibited by international law and at the core of that law is respect for territorial integrity of countries and their borders:



"The international legal norm that prohibits forcible annexations of territory is foundational to modern international law. It lies at the core of three projects that have been central to the enterprise: (1) to settle title to territory as the basis for establishing state authority; (2) to regulate the use of force across settled borders; and (3) to provide for people within settled borders collectively to determine their own fates." 

This International law should not just be known, but the history of it must be understood as a law born from the atrocities of WWII. German annexation of Austria in 1938 was accomplished without the use of force but with the threat of force. Germany then went on to 'annex' other countries, igniting a world war and then losing that war. When the allies occupied Germany after the war, they did not annex Germany, hence earning the allies a place in history as standing on the side of ethics while German actions have been rightfully scorned. 

The prohibition of annexation was born from the need to protect countries and protect the world from devastating wars. Understanding that history - the difference between those who annex and those who don't - is important. 

What about the talk of calling the Canada-U.S. border an "artificially drawn line"?  Well, that goes hand in hand with annexation because not invading countries means you respect their borders and their right to decide what happens within their borders. 

"Respect for territorial integrity - the principle under international law that nation-states should not attempt to promote secessionist movements or to promote border changes in other nation-states, nor impose a border change through the use of force - is a guiding principle among OSCE participating States under Article IV of the Helsinki Final Act of 1975."

This language of annexing Canada, making it the 51st state, by erasing the borders between the countries is dangerous. Orwell said, "The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view...but to make all other modes of thought impossible." What is missing in this world-view is the illegality of annexation, the respect for borders as crucial for territorial integrity, the history of why annexation is illegal and how it has kept the peace. Basically, the complicated issues and history are replaced with catchphrases. On social media, even democrats opposing Trump have done so by buying his statements, saying they want to be annexed by Canada - a shocking statement indeed. 

If we don't understand and learn from history we are forced to repeat it and the history we should remember is not just recent, it's ongoing - the attempt of Russia to annex the Ukraine has led to a devastating loss of life and the destruction of a way of life for Ukrainians within their borders. The reason annexation is illegal is because, like all crimes, there are victims that suffer. That is what would result in Canada as well if the U.S. attempted to annex us and make no mistake, Canadians understand the risk this poses for the ones they love, the life they love and the country they love. The anger of Canadians is because we understand what is at risk and have no patience with ridiculous jokes about our lives.  

Imagine if this was another action that was once legal and is now illegal, like rape, was turned into a line repeated without acknowledging the ethical and personal implications. It would be outrageous to debate who will rape who, or saying that the use of the word 'no' is artificial and can be ignored. This is exactly what Orwell meant when he wrote, "language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better."

So here we sit, on a merry go round of history not understood, language corrupted and limited to words and phrases failing to encompass any complexity of the concepts and the human costs of crimes. We have learned little from how simple words and phrases dismantled 225 years of robust vaccination. Annexation has been illegal for less than 100 years. What are the chances that it will withstand the new assault with language and how long until countries revert to taking over other countries as if it's not illegal?  

Many of us tried to fight back against antivaxxers, and now we're fighting against annexation - the language, the simplicity of thought, the shrugging off of complexity and human suffering - it's all the same. So, round and round we go. While some have conversations about annexation with smiles on their faces, nodding in agreement, the rest of us are drowning in frustration, sadness and fury at the suffering and crimes their words are hiding. Language is being bastardized - removed from the history of words, the grave issues those words entail and this is a call for crimes to be committed with no regard for the victims impacted. When Putin called for the annexation of the Ukraine, the rest of the world was appalled and the resulting death and destruction has broken our hearts. Yet, a few years later when President Trump calls for the annexation of Canada, he is surrounded by supporters nodding, smiling and speaking with the media supporting this horrific action. 

This is the exhausting round and round trip we're on - all it would take is a deeper understanding of history and language to get off the roundabout and walk forward on an open road again.

2025: The Year of The Bizarre Legal Questions

 

With 2025 in it's infancy, it can already be dubbed The Year of The Bizarre Legal Questions. One of the weirdest of the lot, and one none of us have ever heard before is: if Canada is attacked by the United States, what protections does Canada have? 

This is a rather breathtaking question, given the longstanding friendship between our two countries, but here we are. How we got here and where we go from here are the crucial questions. 

The GOP began threatening Canada around the convoy protests, when in February, 2022, Republican congresswoman, Lauren Boebert, claimed that the United States has, "neighbors to the north who need freedom and who need to be liberated.”

Then entered Tucker Carlson, with comments and a film, proclaiming, "the US should invade our neighbors in the north."

Many Canadians thought this was an extremely odd way to object to how Canada handled a domestic issue, but most of us shrugged and continued on with our lives. Then, in November, 2024 when Canada's Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, met with the incoming U.S. president-elect, Trump talked about the potential annexation of Canada to make Canada the 51st state.

Since then, this conversation has become one where the issues are a moving target. 

After threatening 25% tariffs on all Canadian imports if Canada didn't improve border security, Trump responded to Canada's proposed border investment of $1.2-billion with a new spin that the United States pays to protect Canada. Since Canada has never required protection from attacks, this must mean NATO investments, but Canada's ramping up their investments in NATO also doesn't seem to satisfy Trump. He responded by saying, "Canada and the United States, that would really be something," Trump said. "You get rid of that artificially drawn line, and you take a look at what that looks like, and it would also be much better for national security." 

After meandering around this issue, trying out many narratives, Trump seems to have settled into the idea that he will use, ''economic force to acquire Canada." 

Others in the GOP are lining up on this with Rep. Brandon Gill, a Republican from Texas saying, "I think that the people of Canada, for that matter, should be honored that President Trump wants to bring these territories under the American fold." 

The moving of goal posts is breathtaking, but worse is the misuse of language. 

"In his essay “Politics and the English Language” (1946) Orwell observed that “political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” In other words, certain political language (propaganda) uses words and phrases to hide ugly truths. He foresaw how politicians would misstate and mislead in order to stay in power, using words to distort more than to inform, not to convey meaning but to undermine it." 

The deliberate misuse of of language is hiding a potential march to war.  

Clearly, Canada is an independent and sovereign country and is not a 'state' or 'territory' but by refusing to call Canada a country, Trump et al suggests that 'annexation' of Canada is easy. 

But we all know that any attempt to 'annex' another country is a declaration of war and we only need to look at Russia's attempt to 'annex' the Ukraine to know the dire consequences of such actions. 

So, as we meander along the path of Trump and his sycophants, it's understandable why Canadians - who are generally a calm people -  are asking about international laws. 

I really hope that someone with true expertise answers the questions that are arising from all this. Certainly, Canada has many multilateral defence agreements, but the most significant and most talked about these days is NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). Canada was one of twelve founding members of NATO in 1949, and now there are 32 members. Of these, three of NATO's members have nuclear weapons: France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. 

Since the United States and Canada are both founding members of NATO, perhaps this article analyzing this question in the context of the 2020 tensions between NATO allies Turkey and Greece, helps clarify the issue: 

"what if this altercation between two NATO allies did escalate, leading to the beginning of a new armed war? Considering there are no such precedents, what would this mean for the fighting allies and in what way will NATO interfere?

"The goal of collective defence is codified in Article 5 NAT. It states that an attack against one member of NATO should be considered an attack against all. In this case, all other NATO allies will assist the said attacked member...it is important to note that this article does not make a distinction between NATO members and external attacking parties. This could imply that the article could even be triggered when the attacking party is a NATO ally. Since an event like this never occurred, there are no precedents to look into.

"Another Treaty article that could give us more insights into the consequences of such conflict between allies, is Article 8 NAT. The specific article states that ‘Each Party undertakes not to enter into any international engagement in conflict with this Treaty’. Knowing that the main purpose of the Treaty is peacekeeping and preventing attacks against NATO members, this could imply that fighting allied nations means disobeying the article and therefore breaching the Treaty." 

The last point is crucial. The main purpose of NATO is to prevent attacks against members. So, will NATO act as a form of deterrence? Will the United States, if it attacks Canada, be expelled from NATO? Given that the United States is a major contributor to NATO, this will give everyone pause. However, the United States attacking a peaceful country like Canada, with a stellar reputation around the world, will worry all NATO nations that their country could be next on the list and joining Canada in this fight would be a form of self-defence much like the Ukraine is seen as the frontline of Russia's aggression and, if it falls, other countries will be that frontline. 

Underlying all this Orwellian language is the key deception by Trump et al: that mild and meek Canada can easily be invaded by the mighty United States. I leave it to experts to analyze the real numbers in terms of military might of the United States verses the military might of the other thirty one NATO nations combined, as well as other nations Canada has military and cooperative agreements with, such as Canada's defence relations in the Asia Pacific . However, if I can be forgiven for spitballing in lieu of expertise, the United States has touted its large military contribution to NATO of 1.3 million troops. Let's put this in context. Canada contributed  1.159M  troops to World War II, when Canada's population was a mere 12M. Today, Canada has a population of 40M. And we are just one country in NATO.  Also, despite Trump's claims that the United States contributes two-thirds of the NATO overall budget, that number is actually only 15.8% of the total NATO budget as of 2024. Add to this the other two NATO nations besides the United States that have nuclear arms and we have the makings of a real mess. This is why an actual expert is needed to gauge the military might of the United States verses all other NATO countries because if NATO is to function as a deterrent to war - and it should - the might of NATO should be stated as a counterweight to the spin emanating from Trump et al. 

After walking down this road, one can't help wondering how the road ahead will look. First, it could go like all the other trade and tariff wars Canada and the United States have had over the years and end up at a negotiating table with a deal hammered out. We will then have proof - lacking at this time - that all this talk of war was just a negotiating strategy, however, the moving goal posts of how to resolve this makes this narrative a tad questionable. Second, Trump et al could be forced to back down by Americans - citizens and members of the government - calling out the Orwellian language and demanding a stop to calls for war. These first two options are the preferred choice for all those who want peace and a continuation of the long, fruitful friendship between our two nations, so we can go back to walking our dogs, sipping lattes and pondering real problems such as what to make for dinner.* Third, it could end up as a war where the United States attempts to take Canada by force with NATO and other allies of each country being involved. As Canadian citizens from coast to coast and Canadian governments at all levels have clearly stated:  Canada, an independent country, will not become a part of the United States without a fight. Avoiding that war is a crucial issue for 2025. 

*Update: while I was writing this article, my husband made dinner so, that problem is solved. 

Dodge & Burn

 

Ellen Crosby came through Santa Fe a little while back, to promote her new novel, Dodge and Burn.  I’d met her some years previous, at the Edgars, and I wanted to show my support, so I went to her very lively chat and signing, and came home clutching a brand-new copy of the book. 

I’d read a couple of her Lucie Montgomery wine country mysteries – there are twelve, set in and around Virginia and DC, and wine-making is the underlying theme, the mysteries character-driven and on the edgy side of cozy; they steer away from graphic violence, but the consequences of that violence are full frontal. 

This is true as well of Dodge and Burn, the fourth in the Sophie Medina series.  Sophie’s a photographer, who’s spent time scouting war zones and natural disasters, and the fractures of domestic collapse.  Her husband Nick was a CIA covert officer, murdered in the line of duty.  Dodge and Burn, in fact, is more thriller than mystery, strictly speaking.  There’s a killer unmasked at the end, but the story’s really about Sophie’s moral doubts, and a climate of shifting loyalties.  There are moments when she’s in physical danger, yes, but the real danger is inward. Betrayal is corrosive; Sophie wants badly to trust, and her trust is too often treated carelessly.

Our tale begins with a dead guy out at Dulles airport, and his unclaimed baggage turns out to be a load of looted Ukrainian artifacts from behind Russian lines, ready for sale on the black market.  Then there’s the noted collector and philanthropist with an icon of the Virgin of Vladimir in his basement safe, who invites Sophie to take some head shots, later found dead on the floor with Sophie’s camera tripod the murder weapon, and the icon gone, putting Sophie very much in the frame.  And the half-brother Sophie never knew she had, a by-blow of her absent and long-dead dad, the brother a modern-day Robin Hood who steals back – wait for it – stolen black market artifacts, and he’s hot on the trail of the Virgin of Vladimir. 

I’m giving you the hook, and a little extra.  It’s worked out, more or less, but there’s a cloud of ambiguity at the end.  Good is served, but at what price?  Sophie’s left, to my mind, with an unsatisfactory resolution.  It isn’t tied together neatly.  Sophie questions herself, and she doesn’t come up with easy answers.  At least she knows to ask.

I was struck by the notion of how a different writer might write a completely different story, in fact a completely different kind of story.  We know the rule that you can only write your book, that it’s a book only you can write, so I’m in a sense comparing apples and oranges.  But if you take the initial plot element of Dodge and Burn, not its theme, or execution, you may see it develop in other directions.  If it were me, for instance, I’m pretty sure I would have leaned into the Ukraine end, and the war as enterprise, probably Wagner Group, and former KGB behind the looting.  Off the top of my head.  If it were a Don Westlake, it could be a comic caper, the Dortmunder crew, figuring out how to boost the stolen icon; or if it were a Westlake, but one of the Richard Stark books, it would be dark and nasty, and the gang would turn on each other, in a murderous circle.  This is what’s the most interesting to me, the way Ellen Crosby chose to write her book.  The conflict isn’t with Sophie Medina trying to foil the bad guys; the conflict is Sophie trying to figure out where she herself falls, on the moral spectrum.  Would she do the wrong thing for the right reasons?  And which reasons are those?  Sophie doesn’t have to choose, as it turns out, but she’s led to the edge, and she has to look over. 

Warnings Don't Always Work – But Sometimes They Do

There's been a run of very important warnings given and unheeded this year, haven't there?

TERRORIST ATTACKS

Bibi Netanyahu was warned about the Hamas attacks, and apparently blew it off. Much conjecture about why, but I personally start with the premise that Netanyahu was in deep trouble both criminally and politically, and there's nothing like a bloody hard war to keep someone in power. If they're ruthless enough.

Recently, the US embassy warned Putin about upcoming attacks on a large public gathering by ISIS. Apparently, he ignored it. But after the attack on the Crocus City Hall concert, Putin blasted the American warnings as “provocative,” saying “these actions resemble outright blackmail and the intention to intimidate and destabilize our society.” (CNN) And then went on to accuse Ukraine of ordering it. (Reuters) Nonsense.

NOTE: My personal theory is that the ISIS-K group or whatever that did it was based on Chechnya, based on the remarkably similar Moscow Theater attack of 2010. Afterwards, many of the Chechen rebels went off to help Isis in Syria, and then came back to Chechnya in 2018, which would give them plenty of time to plan a larger attack against Moscow. (LINK)

UPDATE! Four of the suspected gunmen are Tajik citizens and were arrested along with seven other suspects, some of whom also come from the ex-Soviet Central Asian nation [of Tajikistan]. "There are estimated to be well over three million Tajiks living in Russia, about one-third of the total Tajik population. Most of them hold the precarious status of "guest workers", holding low-paying jobs in construction, produce markets or even cleaning public toilets... Non-Slavs are systematically discriminated against in Russia, and since 2022 they have been disproportionately conscripted and sent to Ukraine to serve as cannon fodder at the front." (LINK) And now they're scrambling to get out of Russia... preferably alive...

My SECOND NOTE: Interestingly, Tajikistan, along with its neighbor Kyrgistan, are completely omitted on the Chinese made Map of the World shower curtain I own. (See HERE)

But warnings being given yet not heeded, not acted upon isn't exactly new. Sometimes there's so much chatter, or so many assumptions of threats, that of COURSE there are too many to worry about. It can't happen here. After all, Warnings abounded before 9/11 actually happened. ("Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US").

ASSASSINATIONS

And when it comes to assassinations, well... the most famous assassination victim (perhaps) of all time, Julius Caesar, was warned repeatedly and still went to his fatal meeting with the Senate.

For the matter, Abraham Lincoln: Ward Hill Lamon said that three days before his death, Lincoln related a dream in which he wandered the White House searching for the source of mournful sounds:

"I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. "Who is dead in the White House?" I demanded of one of the soldiers, "The President," was his answer; "he was killed by an assassin."

But the day of his death, Lincoln happily told his cabinet that he had dreamed of being on a "singular and indescribable vessel that was moving with great rapidity toward a dark and indefinite shore", and that he had had the same dream before "nearly every great and important event of the War." (Wikipedia) And the rest is history...

But there are also successful warnings, and one of the most unknown came up in my Reuters' feed the other day:

The Al Qaeda plot to kill President Bill Clinton in Manila.

Back on November 23, 1996, just as Air Force One with President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton on board, was approaching Manila, when their U.S. Secret Service detail received the alarming intelligence that an explosive device had been planted on the motorcade route into the Philippines capital. Being Secret Service, they got on it, and set up a back-up route to the hotel, getting the Clintons there safely. But, according to retired agents, Filipino security officers found a powerful bomb on a bridge the convoy would have taken and an SUV abandoned nearby containing AK-47 assault rifles.

This assassination attempt was mentioned briefly in books published in 2010 and 2019, but I certainly don't remember any mention of it in the news.

Now, eight retired secret service agents – seven of whom were in Manila – have given Reuters the most detailed account to date of the failed plot. And no one stuck around to conduct a thorough investigation:

"I always wondered why I wasn't kept back to stay in Manila to monitor any investigation," said Gregory Glod, the lead Secret Service intelligence agent in Manila and one of seven agents who spoke out for the first time. "Instead, they flew me out the day after Clinton left."

"There was an incident," said Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. "It remains classified." He declined to say what, if any, actions the United States took in response.

Clinton did not respond to multiple attempts to reach him through his spokesperson and the Clinton Foundation. And the FBI declined to comment on the Manila assassination attempt.

Former CIA director Leon Panetta, who was Clinton's chief of staff at the time, said he was unaware of the incident but that an attempt to kill a president should be investigated. "As a former chief of staff, I'd be very interested in trying to find out whether somebody put this information to the side and didn't bring it to the attention of people who should have been aware that something like that happened."

Glod said a U.S. intelligence agency later assessed that the plot was set up at bin Laden's behest by al Qaeda operatives and the Abu Sayyaf Group, Filipino Islamists widely considered an arm of al Qaeda. According to a 2022 International Crisis Group report, the group is in disarray, with only a handful of its leaders still alive.

Four of the Secret Service agents who spoke to Reuters noted that Ramzi Yousef - the al Qaeda-linked mastermind of the first World Trade Center attack in 1993 and a nephew of September 11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who had trained Abu Sayyaf militants - was in Manila days before a 1994 visit by Clinton. Yousef is currently serving a life sentence plus 240 years in a federal "supermax" prison in Colorado.

Why / how did it get as far as it did? Chatter. Multiple problems roiling under the surface: "The Philippines was battling communist and Islamist insurgencies. Police discovered a bomb at Manila airport and another at the summit conference center in Subic Bay several days before the Clintons' arrival. The U.S. State Department warned of threats against American diplomats in Manila the day before the First Couple flew in." (Reuters)

Chatter is always a problem: how much of what is heard in rumor, innuendo, and warnings is true? How much matters? And these days, what with social media, conspiracy theories from here to Saturn, and general threats from everyone who wants attention... how do you find the one almond in the peanut butter? And how do you get the people who can do something about it (like Netanyahu or Putin) to listen?

But at least there was one time when people did listen, and a disaster was averted.

---

MEANWHILE, DON'T MISS IT!

Murder, Neat—our first SleuthSayers anthology—is available in both paperback and Kindle editions from Amazon and your favorite bookstores.

You're Byoodiful in Your Wraff

 

Genghis Khan.  The name conjures up blood-lust and plunder, barbarism and cruelty.  Deservedly so, in some respects.  But historically, the Mongol horde brought a lot less proverbial rape and pillage and a lot more cultural synthesis, engineering skills, and adaptive political function than the popular imagination credits them with.  Absent the Mongols, we quite possibly would never have witnessed the Russian, Indian, or Chinese empires, or the European Renaissance – what we think of, in other words, as the birth of the modern world. 

I picked up a couple of books, lately.  Following on my recent interest in the Ottomans (provoked, I imagine, by Orhan Pamuk’s Nights of Plague), and because nobody seems to know where the Ottomans came from, or how they got where they got, beforehand, I went back a little in time, to the nomadic horse tribes of the Great Steppe.  This biome reaches from Ukraine to Manchuria, and it’s figured for centuries in proto-European history.  In one instance, the Achaeans, the Homeric Greek warriors of the Trojan War, were driven south out of the grasslands above the Black Sea and the Caspian by somebody even more ferocious, and those Greek tribes settled along the coast, driving out or assimilating the earlier Mycenaeans, whose mother culture was Crete.  There have been successive historic waves of predatory nomad armies, Scythians, Huns, Mongols, and the peopling of Europe and India (the Celts, the Mughals) is one result.  Looking beyond a Euro-centric view of history, we see not the barbarian periphery, but a creation myth. 

The two books I’ve been reading, not back-to-back, but in tandem, are Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford, and Empires of the Steppes by Kenneth Harl.  Weatherford’s book is the more readable, in part because it’s more manageable, even though it includes most of the 13^th century.  Harl’s book is more unwieldy, covering more ground, in time from Cyrus the Great to Tamerlane, but also literally, across Eurasia.  Reminiscent of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, they take it as a given that human migration – cultures, tools, and diseases – move on an east-west axis, like the animal herds before them.

I was fascinated by the Mongols after I read Harold Lamb’s bio of Genghis.  (I was ten or eleven, I’m guessing.)  They rode with their knees, their arms and hands free, and they shot from horseback with compound bows, reinforced with horn, more powerful than the English longbow that defeated the French cavalry at Crecy.  On forced march, legend had it, Mongol horsemen would open a vein in their horse’s neck and drink the blood rather than stop and pitch camp.  They were beyond imagining.  It wasn’t that they were savage, or not that alone; it was that they were implacable.

I’d be the first to admit that The Conqueror (1956) was a disappointment.  Everybody makes fun of the casting, of course.  Wayne is just not the right actor, and he was later embarrassed when anybody brought the picture up.  The only person whose dignity survives even partly intact is Pedro Armendariz, and that’s being charitable.  Still, did we expect historical accuracy?  Robert Taylor in Ivanhoe.  I rest my case.  (Or for jaw-droppingly atrocious, there’s the Omar Sharif version of Genghis, best passed over in silence.)  The real problem with The Conqueror is that it trivializes the whole Mongol thing: the blood-drinking and fermented mare’s milk; riding bareback by the age of six; surviving every season of weather, from snow squalls to burning thirst, in a single day - the Eastern Steppe has the greatest extremes of temperature anywhere in the world – because what’s so fascinating about the Mongols is that they thrived in that environment, and created a social, religious, and military culture conditioned by life on the steppe.  And as poor an imitation as The Conqueror was, I still tore the ears off my Mickey Mouseketeers hat, and pinned a square of black scarf on it to hang down in back, which was the closest I could get to the Mongol costumes in the movie. 

This recent development seems, first of all, like a kind of vindication.  Maybe we all go through a dinosaur phase, when we’re a certain age, or science fiction (which a lot of us never outgrow), but I’m pleased that the Mongols have come back around into fashion.  There are two parallel strands of historiography going on, here.  One is the movement away from Caesar and Napoleon, and an emphasis on the farriers and quartermasters that kept armies on the move.  There’s a famous French guy, Braudel, the founder of the Annales school, who believes the groundlings give us a better picture of the past than the emperors.  This idea led me to a book called The Lisle Letters, about a merchant family’s rise to power under the Tudors, and a revealing social portrait of the era.  The second shift in thinking about history is a de-emphasis of the European.  This appears to have taken hold only since around the year 2000.  We see, for example, new histories of the Americas that don’t talk primarily about what happened after Columbus and the conquest.  And looking east of the Urals, we discover our own deeper heritage.  The horse tribes of the steppe are in our race memory, back behind the curtain, and we can pull it aside. 

Who wouldn’t want to have these people in their genealogy?  It’s not just opening a vein in the horse’s neck, or the fact that they conquered the known world, it’s that they’re us.  This myth, this memory, is ours.

The Reckoning

I don’t want to jump feet-first into the savage quicksand of Israel and her adversaries, but I have some observations about the Hamas attack, absent politics. 

First, the intelligence failure.  It’s astonishing that the Israeli security services missed the signals; Hamas may have kept planning for the offensive under wraps, but the best you can say is that the Israeli intelligence community was asleep at the wheel, complacent if not derelict.  They pride themselves on active countermeasures – and the U.S. shares satellite coverage and electronic intercept – so how did Hamas hit them so hard, and so suddenly?

The word “surprise” is being over-used, in this context.  Netanyahu’s current governing coalition includes some rabid right-wing fundamentalists, who not only reject the two-state solution, but reject basic human rights for the Palestinians in general.  (It should be pointed out that Fatah, the political wing of the PLO, accepts in principle Israel’s right to exist; Hamas is dedicated to Israel’s destruction, and Jewish genocide.)  If you listen to the inflammatory rhetoric of the present administrator of the West Bank, once investigated by Shin Bet for suspected sedition, you couldn’t be blamed for thinking he represents an existential threat to Palestinians as a people.  This isn’t to make excuses, or to suggest any kind of moral equivalency with Hamas, only to say that the terror attacks shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Another thing is that Israel is obliged to respond – has already responded – with brute force.  Civilian casualties are only going to mount.  This is a cruel consequence of the years of war.  You can argue the rights and wrongs of occupation, of resistance and intifada, but the intractable reality is unyielding grievance, and more innocents die. 

Then there’s the presence of other actors, in the wings.  The confrontation states have never given a rat’s ass about the Palestinians; the cause is just a stick to beat Israel over the head with.  Syria has been meddling in Lebanon for fifty years, and hope is lost.  Hezbollah and Hamas, once Syrian clients, are now supported by Iran.  The mullahs have of course disavowed the Hamas terror strike, saying they support Hamas in their struggle, but had nothing to do with this specific attack.  I call horse feathers.  Hamas stockpiled tens of thousands of missiles in preparation for this.  The obvious suspicion falls on Tehran.  Talk on the street says officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard met with Hamas in Beirut to plan the ground game. 

Israel won’t sit on its hands if the Iranians are even remotely implicated.  A strand of DNA, a single nose hair recovered from the crime scene, and Iran’s balls will go on the block.  It will not be pretty. 

---

On a more political front, the disarray in Congress can only sidetrack an effective American response.  The lack of a Speaker means the House can’t take up military aid to Israel, or Ukraine, or Taiwan.  (Has everybody forgotten about the Chinese and their Pacific ambitions?)  We’ve just sent a carrier battle group to the eastern Mediterranean.  But as it happens, the Navy doesn’t currently have a Chief of Naval Operations, because Tommy Tuberville, Republican senator from Bumwad, has put a hold on flag rank promotions - in response to a Defense Department policy on abortion. 

This is insane. 

The Prigozhin Effect

 

Yevgeny Prigozhin didn’t fall out of a window; he fell out of the sky.  In a terrifying nosedive, from 28,000 feet.  I hope he had just enough time left to know who ordered it.  And just for shuffles and grins, they took out Dmitri Utkin too, the guy who gave Wagner its name, after his callsign.  Few people, inside Russia or out, are in any doubt that Putin pulled the trigger.  The Kremlin issued a denial, but that’s what plausible deniability is all about, a smooth lie and a sly wink.  The point of the exercise is its utter shamelessness. 

Putin eulogized his onetime best bud as “a man of difficult fate,” which is an interesting locution.  If a literal translation, we might put a different construction on it, someone who sailed under a troubled star.  They went back a ways together, to Leningrad in the late 1990’s, the Boris Yeltsin years, when the oligarchs were raking in cash, over and under the table, and the siloviki – current and former members of the defense and security apparat – had both feet in the trough along with them.  This is what’s come to be known as gangster capitalism, and Vladimir Putin is now the capo di tutti capi.

Wagner Group certainly had its uses.  Murder for hire in Syria and central Africa, leveraging gold, oil, and diamond concessions.  It generated high yield at low risk, even as they normalized war crimes, terror a common instrument, but Wagner wasn’t a state actor, at least on paper.

What seems to be happening now is that they’re being brought under discipline, specifically the central military intelligence chain of command.  There’s of course a lot of intentional confusion about Progizhin’s death and who authorized it, but reliable indicators suggest the job was assigned to Gen. Andrei Averyanov’s special purpose unit inside GRU.  This is the crew that went after defector Sergei Skripal in the UK, with a nerve agent, five years ago.  They’ve never been known for subtlety.  And as luck would have it, Gen. Averyanov has reportedly now been given command of Wagner’s Africa mission.

On a different front, in what we can consider the Russian asymmetrical war effort, Prigozhin was also the founding partner of the Internet Research Agency, the Leningrad troll farm best known in the U.S. for social media influence operations to promote Trump for president.  IRA is supposedly being dismantled in the wake of the Prigozhin mutiny, but we can be sure its assets will be repurposed. 

In other words, although the Wagner coup attempt was widely heralded by Kremlin-watchers as seismic, an exposure of Putin’s fatal weaknesses, it seems more like a fart in the bathtub.  Nothing much has really changed.  “Death is our business,” Wagner’s recruiting pitch went, “and business is good.”  Is it ever. 

Putin’s murderous war in Ukraine grinds on, and Russia’s weakness makes it even more dangerous, like a wounded animal in a trap.  The disinformation campaigns are being redoubled (with China slipstreaming alongside), and God help us, we’ve got Trump taking up all the air in the room, again.  If anything, Putin is stronger than he was before Prigozhin’s mutiny.  No amount of wishful thinking can make this go away. 

Dead Man Walking: Prigozhin's Mutiny

For those of you wondering what the hell is going on, trust me, nobody else knows much more than you do. 

A cheat sheet. 

Wagner Group was founded by a Slavic fundamentalist  and neo-Nazi knuckle-dragger named Dmitri Utkin, a former GRU spec ops tactical who later contracted out in Syria as private security.  Back-door finance courtesy of Yevgeny Prigozhin, who maintained deniability while Wagner recruited from Spetsnaz, airborne, and OMON militia assault teams, along with other dedicated special warfare units.  Using regular army logistics and support, Wagner deployed into Crimea and the Donbas, and then to South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and Mali.  Often suspected of war crimes, their general M.O. in Africa was to corner the export market in a given natural resource.  Uranium and gold, for example, in Darfur.  Profit aside, this allowed Wagner to maintain the fiction of a private contractor and independent business entity, although it’s common knowledge they operated out of Putin’s hip pocket. 

Prigozhin maintained his distance from Wagner until the war in Ukraine, when it began to suit his purpose to take credit for successes the mainstream Russian military couldn’t claim.  The problem, obviously, is that Prigozhin began to believe his own press – or his own podcasts.  When his enemies in the defense establishment, Shoigu and Gerasimov, effectively engineered a coup against Wagner, by requiring private contractors be subordinated to the Army chain of command (and Prigozhin’s supposed patron Putin signed off on it), the handwriting was on the wall.  Prigozhin moved against the garrison in Rostov-on-Don, and redeployed mobile units toward Voronezh – and Moscow.  It looked like a show of strength, but it mostly served to show Prigozhin had lost touch with reality.  It’s like the guy who climbs out onto the ledge of a tall building and threatens suicide.  If they call your bluff, the only thing left to do is jump. 

I doubt if Prigozhin is dumb enough to take refuge in Minsk.  Lukashenko would happily send his ears to Putin on a string, brokering the truce be damned.  His other options are limited.  He can’t go to any Western capital; it would only be a matter of time before the Hague asked for his extradition.  The former Soviet republics are out, or anywhere that has diplomatic relations with Russia.  And the Kremlin has a long reach, look at Trotsky, or Alexander Litvinenko.  Maybe the Saudis, or the Emirates. 

That’s the trouble with being an apex predator who loses his nerve, or thinks himself safe.  There’s always somebody lurking, in the deep water. 

Art theft: Churchill and Zelensky

Around December 2021 the famous Yousuf Karsh 1941 photograph of Winston Churchill was stolen from the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa and replaced by a forgery. The heist was about 2 months before Russia invaded Ukraine. The Russian invasion is not related to the photograph but also, very related.

The photograph is perhaps one of the most widely reproduced photos of all time. Prime Minister Churchill's belligerent expression exemplified the British resolve to win against Hitler, who many believed to be invincible.

Karsh at that time lived in the Chateau Laurier and was a friend of the Prime Minister of Canada - William Lyon Mackenzie King - and this is how he was able to take the photograph and why it was hanging in the Chateau Laurier.

The photograph is aptly titled ‘The Roaring Lion’. The roar behind the photograph has a story, some parts moving and some parts simply hilarious. Just prior to the photograph being taken, Prime Minister Churchill had given a rousing and defiant speech to the Parliament of Canada. In fact, if you look closely at the photograph you can see the speech peeking out of his pocket. It was a speech to an ally in Parliament but Churchill knew it was a speech that would be shared with the world. I picture him writing the speech by reaching deep within himself into places where hope and belligerence met.

After this speech, and probably carrying the mood of the speech with him, Churchill was brought into the Speaker’s Chamber. Here he found Karsh waiting, with his camera and lighting equipment. The Prime Minister of Canada, William Lyon Mackenzie King, hadn't told Churchill he was to be photographed so Churchill roared, "Why was I not told?” I suspect that the look captured on Churchill’s face was present at that moment. Churchill gave Karsh two minutes to take the photograph and this is how Karsh described the two minutes:

“Churchill’s cigar was ever present. I held out an ashtray, but he would not dispose of it. I went back to my camera and made sure that everything was all right technically. I waited; he continued to chomp vigorously at his cigar. I waited. Then I stepped toward him and, without premeditation, but ever so respectfully, I said, “Forgive me, sir,” and plucked the cigar out of his mouth. By the time I got back to my camera, he looked so belligerent he could have devoured me. It was at that instant that I took the photograph.”

The title of the photograph came, inadvertently, from Churchill himself, who told Karsh, “You can even make a roaring lion stand still to be photographed.” So Karsh named the photograph 'The Roaring Lion'.

This photograph, as much as Churchill’s speech, helped bolster the resolve to continue fighting during those difficult days.

Almost 80 years – perhaps even to the day – after Karsh took this photograph, it was stolen. Then two months later, Russia invaded Ukraine.

Russia believed it would win the war quickly because it was a much more powerful nation than Ukraine. It felt invincible, just like Hitler did. However, Russia faced two potent forces: history and Zelensky.

History taught Europe and North America that appeasement doesn’t work and the only thing to do when one country attacks a sovereign country is to fight. Churchill’s photograph embodies this fight.

After the 1938 Munich Conference, then British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declared his appeasement of Hitler had obtained “peace for our time.” When Chamberlain resigned in disgrace, Churchill - who had argued against appeasement - became the Prime Minister, outlined a bold plan of British resistance and declared Britain would “never surrender.”

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky turned down an offer from the United States of evacuation from the capital city Kyiv, by famously stating, "The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride," and with that statement, Zelensky became a wartime leader and, his own ‘Roaring Lion’.

This is because human stories of history never stay in books about the past - they are relived by every generation.

Listening to Churchill’s 1941 speech in that Parliament of Canada and then, Zelensky’s 2022 speech to the Parliament of Canada - although they are very different - one can hear similar themes: both spoke to the courage of their people and the brutality of their opponent. Both were unbowed and pugnacious in their resolve. Leaders give speeches for their allies, for their enemies but, most of all, for their own people because of the personal costs of war. We see that now in videos of Ukraine. We know that more from stories of WWII. My mother-in-law told me half of the young boys she grew up with were killed in the war. I think of that incomprehensible loss when I see videos of the devastation in Ukraine. During wartime, leaders must be roaring lions to keep up the spirit of their people and play down the invincibility of their enemy.

Even though the original stolen photo, The Roaring Lion, has never been recovered, there are copies of this elsewhere, to remind us of a time back then and how easily back then becomes now. History never stays in books - as long as there are people, history is relived by each generation. Apparently, art continues to be stolen by each generation as well.

My DNA—Oh, the Places It's Been!

DNA evidence is one of the hallmarks of contemporary crime investigation, separating it from the cruder forensic methods, interviewing of witnesses and suspects and Sherlockian reliance on deductive reasoning, of the past. But access to DNA solves many mysteries besides those of murder. We now have easy access to the information coded in our own DNA, and I, for one, am finding what I'm learning, even at the most superficial level, fascinating.

Liz as Greek goddess: a fun feature of MyHeritage.com

This isn't about genetic markers for disease or health issues, though for a lot of people, it has been crucial information that would not have been available to them before. It's about my roots and familial relationships. We live in a nation composed largely of immigrants: the voluntary, the involuntary, and the desperate. My own parents were born, respectively, in what was then called the Ukraine and ruled by the Czar of Russia and in Hungary. With their own parents and nearest siblings, they came through Ellis Island as young children in 1905 and 1906. My father's extended family on both sides emigrated too; he grew up in Brooklyn alongside dozens of cousins. My mother knew the aunts and uncles and their twenty children on her father's side, but her mother's equally large family remained in Hungary and was eventually lost to the Holocaust.

Because of the Holocaust, there were significant gaps in the record. Synagogues, cemeteries, whole villages in Europe were lost. Registers of births, marriages, and deaths as well as countless family documents and photographs were destroyed. Memories and family stories were killed en masse along with the people who carried them. Without these, Jewish genealogists ran into blind alleys, with no way to tell whether people with the same name shared a common ancestor. DNA changed that, along with the potential for people to reach out to possible kin on the Internet.

Liz as Persian princess

I've had my DNA tested by both MyHeritage.com, which I got as a gift a couple of Xmases ago, and Ancestry.com, which I did later on. I pay a monthly fee to MyHeritage, and as a result, I get more ongoing information, notably a weekly list of DNA matches, ie people who share segments of DNA with me and some of the people I share DNA with who also share DNA with those people. Most of the folks whose names they offer me share only 1% or 0.9% of my DNA. The cousins I've made contact with, with whom I actually share known family members, are a 4.1% match on the Hungarian side and 2.8% (mother) and 2.3% (son) match on the Ukrainian side.

Janos, a Hungarian about my age who has lived in Denmark since 1957, is the grandson of my my mother's mother's sister Paula. Gran, whom I adored, always said that Paula was her favorite sister. I learned from Janos that she almost survived the War; she died of starvation in the Budapest ghetto in 1945. Gary told me his mom, Leni, was the granddaughter of my father's mother's sister Basya or Bessie, who was thus his own great-grandmother. Gary lives in New Jersey.

Liz as Edwardian lady

Now, here's the mystery. As I scroll through the lists of DNA matches and their matches to my matches every week, I find dozens of people who share not only bits of my DNA, but also bits of DNA I got from my mother, born in Pápa, Hungary, and bits of DNA I got from my father, born in Ekaterinaslav (now Dnipro), Ukraine. My mother always said she didn't even know Russian Jews were human until she grew up and met my father in law school in 1921. There's always a pecking order. I guess the German Jews who emigrated to the United States in the nineteenth century considered themselves above the Hungarian Jews, and the Sephardim (the Iberian Jews who got kicked out of Spain and Portugal in 1492 and 1493) a cut above the Ashkenazim (the Eastern European Jews) in general. One study says that the Ashkenazim, who seem to have arisen as a genetic and linguistic entity in Europe in the eleventh or twelfth century, originally consisted of only 350 people. So maybe I shouldn't be surprised that my Hungarian side and my Ukrainian side are connected. But I still marvel.

Liz as Art Nouveau poster girl

Bigots and would-be world dominators have been trying to wipe the Jews out for five thousand years, and they haven't succeeded yet. We may not all define our Jewishness the same. We may not all practice traditional Judaism. We may reshape it to accommodate contemporary concepts of spirituality and family. But we are everywhere. Segments of DNA that matches mine are walking around in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Israel, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, the United States, United Kingdom, and Uruguay, keeping my genetic heritage alive all over the world.