Category Archives: History

My hero, Peter Cooper of New York, 1791-1883.

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Peter Cooper

It’s good to have hero, someone whose approach to life, family and business you admire that you might reasonably be able to follow. As an engineer, inventor, I came to regard Peter Cooper of New York as a hero. He made his own business and was a success, in business and with his family without being crooked. This is something that is not as common as you might think. When I was in 4th grade, we got weekly assignments to read a biography and write about it. I tended to read about scientists and inventors then and after. I quickly discovered that successful inventors tended to die broke, estranged from their family and friends. Edison, Tesla, Salk, Goodyear, and Ford are examples. Tesla didn’t marry. Henry Ford’s children were messed up. Salk had a miserable marriage. Almost everyone working on the Atom Bomb had issues with the government. Most didn’t benefit financially. They died hated by the press as mass-murderers, and pursued by the FBI as potential spies. It was a sad pattern for someone who hoped to be an inventor -engineer.

The one major exception I found was Peter Cooper, an inventor, industrialist, and New York politician who was honest, and who died wealthy and liked with a good family. One result of reading about him was to conclude that some engineering areas are better than others; generally making weapons is not a path to personal success.

Tom Thumb, the blower at right is the secret to its light weight per power.

Peter Cooper was different, both in operation and outcome. Though he made some weapons (gun barrels) and inverted a remote control torpedo, these were not weapons of mass killing. Besides he but thee for “the good side” of the Civil War. And, when Cooper made an invention or a product, he made sure to have the capital available to make a profit on it too. He worked hard to make sure his products were monopolies, using a combination of patents and publicity to secure their position.

Brand management helps.

Cooper was a strong family man who made sure to own his own business, and made sure to control the sources of key materials too. He liked to invest in other businesses, but only as the controlling share-holder, or as a bond holder, believing that minor share-holders tend to be cheated. He was pro monopoly, pro trusts, and a big proponet of detailed contracts, so everyone knew where they stood. A famous invention of Cooper’s was Jello, a flavored, light version of his hide-glue, see the patent here. Besides patenting it, he sold the product with his brand, thus helping to maintain the monopoly.

Cooper was generous with donations to the poor, but not to everyone, and not with loans. And he would not sign anyone’s note as a guarantor. Borrowers tended to renege, he found, and they resent you besides. You lose your money, and lost them as a friend. He founded two free colleges, Cooper Union, and the Cooper-Limestone Institute, plus an inventor’s institute. (I got my education, free from Cooper Union.) Cooper ran these institutions in his lifetime, not waiting till he was dead to part with his money. Many do this in the vain hope that others will run the institution as they would.

Peter Cooper always sought a monopoly, or a near monopoly, patenting his own inventions, or buying the rights to others’ patents to help make it so. He believed that monopolies were good, saying they were the only sort of business that made money while allowing him to treat his workers well. If an invention would not result in a monopoly, Peter Cooper gave the rights away.

The list of inventions he didn’t patent include the instruments to test the quality of glue and steel (quality control is important), and a tide-powered ferry in New York. Perhaps his most famous unpainted invention was a lightweight, high power steam locomotive, “The Tom Thumb”, made in 1840. Innovations included beveled wheels to center the carriage on its rails, and a blower on the boiler fire, see photo above. The blower meant he could generate high-power in a small space at light weight. These are significant innovations, but Cooper did not foresee having a monopoly, so he didn’t pursue these ideas. Instead, he focussed on making rails and wire rope; he patented the process to roll steel, and the process for making coke from coal. Also on his glue/jello business. Since he made these items from dead cows and horses, he found he could also sell “foot oil” and steam-pounded leather, “Chamois”. He also pursued a telephone/ telegraph business across the Atlantic, more on that below, but only after getting monopoly rights for 50 years.

Cooper managed to stay friends with those he competed with by paying license fees for any patents he used (he tried to negotiate low rates), or buying or selling the patent rights as seemed appropriate. He also licensed his patents, and rented out buildings he didn’t need. He rented at a rate of 7% of the sale price, a metric I’ve used myself, considering rental to be like buying on loan. There is a theory of stock-buying that matches this.

The story the telegraph cable across the Atlantic is instructive to seeing how the pieces fit together. The first significant underwater cable was not laid by Cooper, by a Canadian inventor, Frederick Gisborne. It was laid in 1852 between Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick. Through personal connections, Gisborne’s company got exclusive rights for 30 years, for this and for a cable that would go to Newfoundland, but he didn’t have the money or baking to make it happen. The first cable failed, and Gisborne ran out of money and support. Only his exclusive rights remained. This is the typical story of an inventor/ engineer/businessman who has to rely on other peoples’ money and patience.

A few months after the failure, a friend of Cooper’s, Cyrus Field, convinced Cooper that good money could be made, and public good could be done, if Cooper could lay such a cable all the way to London. One thing that attracted Cooper to the project was that the cable could be made as an insulated iron-copper rope in Cooper’s own factory. Cooper, Field, and some partners (see painting below) bought Gisborne’s company, along with their exclusive rights, and formed a new company, The New York, Newfoundland & London Telegraph Company, see charter here. The founders are imagined* with a globe and a section of cable sitting on their table. Gisborne, though not shown in the painting, was a charter member, and made chief engineer. Cooper was president. He also traveled on the boat with Gisborne to lay the cable across the St. Lawrence – just to be sure he knew what was going on. This cable provided a trial for The Trans Atlantic cable.

The founding individuals to lay a transatlantic cable. Peter Cooper at left is the chairman, Cyrus Field is standing, Samuel Morse is at the back. Frederic Gisborne, a founder, does not appear in the paining. Typical.

Samuel Morse was hired as an electrician; he is pictured in the painting, but was not a charter member. Part of the problem with Morse was that he owned the patent on Morse-telegraphy, and Cooper didn’t want to pay his “exorbitant” fees. So Cooper and Field bought an alternative telegraph patent from David Hughes, a Kentucky school teacher. This telegraph system used tones instead of clicks and printed whole letters at a time. By hiring Morse, but not his patents, Cooper saved money, while retaining Morse’s friendship and expertise. The alternative could have been a nasty spat. Their telegraph company sub-licensed Hughes’s tone-method a group of western telegraph owners, “The Western Union,” who used it for many years, producing the distinctive Western Union Telegrams. With enough money in hand and credibility from the Canadian trial, the group secured 50 years monopoly rights for a telegraph line across the Atlantic. Laying the cable took many years, with semi-failed attempts in 1857, 1858, and 1865. When the eventual success came in 1866, the 50 years’ monopoly rights they’d secured meant that they made money from the start. They could treat workers fairly. Marconi would discover that Cooper wrote a good contract; his wireless telegraph required a widely different route.

I should also note that Peter Cooper was politically active: he started as a Democrat, helped form the Republican Party, bringing Lincoln to speak in NY for the first time, and ended up founding the Greenback-Labor Party, running for president as a Greenback. He was strongly for tariffs, and strongly against inflation. He said that the dollar should have the same value for all time for the same reason that the foot should have the same length and the pound the same weight. I have written in favor of tariffs off and on. They help keep manufacturing in America, and help insure that those who require French wine or German cars pay the majority of US taxes. They are also a non-violent vehicle for foreign policy.

Operating under these principles, through patents and taxed monopolies, Peter Cooper died wealthy, and liked. Liked by his workers, liked by much of the press, and by his family too, with children who turned out well. The children of rich people often turn out poorly. Carnegie’s children fought each other in court, Ford’s were miserable. Cooper’s children continued in business and politics, successfully and honorably, and in science/ engineering (Peter Coper Hewitt invented the power rectifier, sold to Westinghouse). The success of Peter Cooper’s free college, Cooper Union, influenced many of his friends to open similar institutions. Among his friends who did this were Carnegie, Pratt, Stevens, Rensselaer, and Vanderbilt. He stayed friends with them and with other inventors of the day, despite competing in business and politics. Most rich folks can not do this; they tend to develop big egos, and few principles.

Robert Buxbaum, November 30, 2022. I find the painting interesting. Why was it painted? Why is Gisborne not in it and Morse in the painting — sometimes described as vice President? The charter lists Morse as “electrician”, an employee. Chandler White, holding papers next to Cooper, was Vice President. My guess is that the painting was made to help promote the company and sell stock. They made special cigars with this image too. This essay started as a 5th grade project with my son. See a much earlier version here.

Is the right the source of antisemitism in America.

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Hillary Clinton famously called Trump supporters “a basket of deplorables” and went on to explain that half of them were “unredeemable”, Nazis and Klansmen, while the other half “needed reeducation.” Her statement was applauded on the left, and taken as an insult on the right. To this day, Biden and his group make the claim that Republicans are antisemites and a threat to American democracy. The proof here is a 2017 video of Klansmen carrying torches, saying “Jews will not replace us,” as they protested the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee in Virginia. A further claim is that the rise in antisemitic incidents, shootings, beatings, etc., are the result of Trump and the Republicans. Things are not quite so black and white, or course, e.g. during the ANTIFA protests/riots four synagogs were attacked in LA alone, and the Crown-Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn was torched. Many of the attackers of Jews have Islamic names and left association, things that don’t suggest Republicans but Democrats.

CNN has claimed that the difference is intent: Trump’s intent is evil, while ANTIFA’s is to elevate black and Moslem lives by allowing them to vent their righteous anger (on Jews). The Moslems who attacked Jews in Monsey, India, Paris and elsewhere are acting for justice, while the marchers in Charlottesville march for hate. In a special program on “Antisemitism in American”, CNN made the claim that no Jew should support the Republicans or Jewish Israel, an apartheid, colonial occupation in their view. This appears to be the view of the Biden White House too. They have yet to congratulate the winner of Israeli presidential elections, 5 days after the election. They contacted Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader instead, to discuss joint efforts to enhance Palestinian security. Obama did the same, seven years ago, not congratulating the Israeli election winner (Netanyahu), and snubbed the Israeli delegation on their visit, leaving them to sit alone without food or photographs.

According to the CNN expert on Antisemitism, the lefts’ dismissal of Israel’s leaders is because European Jews are not Jews at all, but Russians with no connection to the land. To my thinking claims like this against a group’s identity are horribly hurtful — CNN’s expert was claiming, essentially, that the jews were lying about everything since the beginning. If Jews are not from Israel, why have we prayed in that direction for return, and in the language of that land. If we did not build the old synagogs, when did we displace the builders and take over their language and culture? Attacks on Jewish identity are more serious, in my mind, than any march for Robert E. Lee. (I’ve written in favor of the peace hammered out between Grant and Lee).

Perhaps even more damaging is the left’s attack on Jewish education. The New York Times ran three-page article claiming that Jewish education abuses the students by not teaching real science or history, and by enforcing religious and sexual norms that are counter to the children’s rights — rights that include LGBQT+ expression. While it is true that Jewish education is not a fan of LGBQT+, but neither is Moslem education, or Catholic, or Mormon. Education is how a culture survives. Some Catholic leaders have noted that they have a stake in this.

The left is anti Israel and anti Jewish education, yet claims to be the defenders of Jews because they can’t stand Trump.

Speaking of survival, about half of all Jews now live in Israel, a state established by the UN in 1947 in part as a response to the mass murder of Jews in Europe. Along with Europeans, about half of the Israelis today are exiles from communities wiped out by Moslem governments: from Egypt, Tunisia, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Yemen. If Israel becomes Islamic as Obama favored, they are likely to exile all the Jews as they did in 1968 in Jerusalem, and as the surrounding countries have done. Where would the Jews go? It’s not a problem for Obama-Biden, but it’s a survival problem for Israelis. My sense is that the left is, by far, the more antisemitic, both in terms of culture and physical safety.

Robert Buxbaum, November 7, 2022

Tests designed so that the Ivies pick preppies.

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Elite colleges strive to be selective, and they are, just not for the hard-working scholars they claim to select for. They claim to be color-blind, income-blind, and race-blind, aiming for the best: the most intelligent, most ethical, and hardest working scholar-candidates. Then, to their surprise and satisfaction, all the ivies find that the vast majority of the chosen come from the same rich families and prep-schools as 100 years ago. That happens because the selection is crooked with measures tilted to the rich, Protestant, and preppy.

Through most of the 1900s, most of the ivies had a Jewish quota, enforced formally or informally. They also did their best to discourage middle class, black, and Catholic students in the interest of maintaining the proper student mix. Under Woodrow Wilson, Princeton went further and admitted not one black student. When quotas became illegal, schools began to rely on athletics and tests, with blatant cheating as revealed by the “Varsity Blues” sting operation. In that sting, a dozen or more athletic coaches and high-school administrators were caught taking SAT tests for their richer, connected students, and/or making up phony athletic achievements. The Ivies claimed shock after the cheating was revealed, but it is beyond belief that no one had noticed that these top brains and athletes were neither.

Many top athletes are diagnosed as asthmatic. Some actually are. With the right doctor, you can get an advantage

Another version of this is that richer kids can get extra time to do SAT and ACT tests. The extra time doesn’t show up on the SAT or ACT score, you need a doctor to certify that you are dyslectic or have severe ADHD. Most boys are diagnosed with ADHD these days, itself something of a scam, but most boys don’t get extra test time. You need the right doctor and the right documentation, plus enough money and connections to get the test given by certified test-giver in your own private room. It used to be that the SAT and ACT would report the extra time, but this changed in 2004. Now the extra time, and the disease is not documented, just the higher score. There have been complaints, but the scam goes on. Similar to this, top Olympic athletes can be diagnosed with asthma, and allowed to use performance enhancing, anti-asthma steroids. Again complaints, but no change.

Ivy League schools also tilt to the right families by requiring signs of the right sort of leadership as evaluated by an interview and an essay (see my post on John Kennedy’s essay). You score high on leadership if you helped your relative run for governor. By contrast, if you organized a ping-pong or basketball tournament at your Catholic or Jewish school, you’re the wrong sort of leader. Eagle Scout is sort-of the right sort, and speaking against climate change on TV is. Greta Thernberg and Chelsea Clinton are climate leaders; you, probably are not.

The Ivys explicitly state that they choose for athleticism, but not all sports are equal. All the Ivies claim to need a good women’s lacrosse team, a good crew team, and some good high-divers. Are these sports unavailable at your high-school? What a shame, you’re not a real athlete. You can still try to get in based on extreme leadership and academics.

The Princeton alumni of 1993-1994 were primarily white, rich and preppy. Favoring their children helps insure that the class of 2024 is that way too.

There is no real reason that Harvard needs a top crew team, or needs to excel at women’s lacrosse or high-diving. Sport was not an admission criteria in the 1800s. It was added in the 1900s to avoid admitting Catholics, Jews, and Asians who tended to score well but could not compete on the selected sports. The president of Harvard, Abbot Lowell wrote, “Somehow or other the enrollment of the Jewish students must be limited”. The method he chose, and that all the Ivies came to use, included these tests of leadership and sport, plus a preference for legacies. The children and grand-children of alumni are given significant preferential selection at all the ivies. At Harvard, the acceptance rate for legacy students is about 33%, compared with an overall acceptance rate of under 6%. Since legacies are mostly white, rich, protestant, and preppy, the next generation is guaranteed to be the same.

The Ivies’ methods have been challenged many times over the years. Quotas were found to be illegal as early as 1964. Since then there have been claims of effective quotas, a cause that was pushed under the rug until Donal Trump took it up. Most recently, Harvard, Princeton, and UNC were sued by Asians. One of these, from a poor background scored at the top of his class with a 4.4 GPA and had near-perfect SAT scores, but was rejected for no obvious reason beyond race. The Supreme Court is expected to hear the case in 2023. Ahead of this decision, all eight Ivies have decided to dispense with testing for at least for now. The ivies claim that, by making tests optional, they will avoid locking out students who are great (though somewhat illiterate and innumerate). The real purpose seems to be to lock out pushy Asians who might sue them or be so bright they make the legacies feel dumb.

None of the above would matter if the Ivies were not so wonderful, at least the better ones are. I went to Princeton grad school, see photos. It was great despite its waspy leanings. If you can go there, or to Harvard, Yale, Cornell or Penn, go. My feeling for Brown and Columbia are rather the opposite: they’ve gone to the extreme and voted for BDS, see the text here for Brown’s version. Not only did they vote to boycott Israelis and Israeli produce, the “B” of BDS, the’ve also committed to suppress Zionists everywhere. That’s Jews who support Israel. Several, non ivy schools, have committed to the same. In their view, for open debate to flourish anywhere, proud Jews must be excluded. These are no longer colleges, but Klavens.

Robert Buxbaum, October 20, 2022.

John Kennedy’s Nazi spy lover

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Photo and biographical background from Julian Wiles

Kennedy was a well-liked president with several character flaws. The most famous were his sexual dalliances. One these was with a Nazi spy, Inga Marie Arvad, “Inga Binga”. He continued with her, on and off, from his days in Naval Intelligence through his election to congress in 1946 despite being informed of her background by the navy and the FBI. When they began their relationship, Inga Marie was beautiful, 28 and married. That didn’t seem to matter, as she was beautiful, the ex-Miss Denmark, charming and instantly in love with Kennedy. She was also a close friend of Hitler, Goring, and Göebbels, and in the employ of both The Washington Times-Herald and of Axel Wenner-Gren, a suspected Nazi spy master who owned the largest private yacht in the world. It was suspected that the fuel Wenner-Gren bought for his yacht was used to refuel German U-boats in the area.

Before becoming involved with Kennedy, Ms Arvand had married Kamak Abdel Nabi, an Egyptian diplomat, and then Paul Fejos, a Hungarian film-maker. She traveled the world with Fejos, financed by Wenner-Gren, meeting, greeting, and film-making. Still married, she left Fejos in 1936 to move to the US and study journalism at Columbia University. Getting a job at the Washington Times-herald, she wrote light hearted articles based on interviews with the movers and shakers of DC, supported by $5000 checks from her friend, Wenner-Gren.

The affair with Kennedy began in the fall of 1941. Kennedy was working at the Office of Naval Intelligence, a post he’d gotten with influence from his ambassador father, “Big Joe Kennedy”. Joe was an opponent of going to war. Ms. Arvand heartily agreed. She met Jack Kennedy through his sister, Kathleen, “Kick”.

The office of Naval Intelligence had rules against adulterous relationships. Kennedy ignored them. In this case it was particularly problematic as Inga was married, Protestant, and an associate of Hitler. The navy told Kennedy to stay away, and transferred him to Charlestown with orders to stay there, “not to venture more than 50 miles”. Ms Arvad visited him there often under an assumed name, Barbara White. They stayed together, took in movies, plays, and golf. The FBI watched as Arvad was thought to be a spy. Kennedy was again told to stay clear; he did not. Eventually, Hoover intervened and got Kennedy transferred to the South Pacific despite his bad back and other health problems. Inga broke off with Kennedy though he continued to write love letters. She ignored them. Perhaps she thought Kennedy was no longer interesting, even a liability. She was trying to get a job with US overseas intelligence, the forerunner of the CIA.

Inga with husband, and two children. Note that the older, Ronald, looks like J. Kennedy. Photo from Geoffrey Gray.

When Inga didn’t get the job, she moved to Los Angeles where she continued in journalism, working for Harpers Bazar, interviewing the movers and shakers in LA and New York, generally pushing for peace. In January, 1944, she started writing to Kennedy again. He was a hero with political ambitions. She reunited with Kennedy in LA, for a private interview, published, about the sinking of his PT boat. They continued dating well into 1946, after Kennedy was elected to congress. Inga got pregnant from someone (Kennedy?) and left to marry an actor she’d been dating, Tim McCoy. Some months later, Inga gave birth to a boy who looks a lot more like Kennedy than like her husband, see photo.

While Inga no longer contacted JFK, nor JFK her, it seems that Inga was a major factor influencing Kennedy to go into politics — where he could make the world more peaceful. Inga died of Colin cancer in 1973. She only revealed her part of the affair to her eldest son, the Kennedy look-alike, near the end of her life.

The FBI’s knowledge of this story this emerged from the private files of J. Edgar Hoover, recently unsealed, reported by investigative writer, Geoffrey Gray. He speculates that Hoover used his knowledge of Kennedy’s affairs to keep from having to retire, though well past retirement age. Hover was eventually removed by Nixon, and FBI got back at Nixon by leaking as much negative as they could to the press, and more-recently helping the Democrats bug the Trump campaign, then helping spread Russian collusion documents. Also, according to the BBC they were behind the plot to kidnap MI governor Whitmer — a crime they immediately “solved”. I’m not convinced that the FBI, isn’t more of a danger than a protection. See a previous essay, “who will protect us from our protectors?”

Regarding John Kennedy, I’m less-bothered by his sexual dalliances, than by his tendency to suddenly reverse himself. Kennedy called for an attack on Cuba, then reversed while the attack was in progress, dooming the attackers. He reversed again in South Vietnam, first first supporting the government then overthrowing it, and on civil rights. Vigorous persistence, even in the face of criticism is a good trait in a president, something I liked about LBJ, Nixon, Clinton, and Reagan.

Robert Buxbaum, October 14, 2022.

Ukraine looks like Vietnam or the beginnings of WWI

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The press and our Russian experts claim we’re helping in Ukraine, protecting it from a Russian invasion. I suspect they are wrong, and that our help and protection will prove to be as deadly to all as in the Vietnam war. I’m also uncomfortable with their presentation their framing of Putin as an out of touch autocrat. Putin has popular support, and acts with a strong sense of history, as I see it, just not our version of history. In the Russian version, it was Russia that stopped the Nazis — of Germany and Ukraine. We are not the heroes of WWII in their telling; I doubt we’ll be the heroes of this conflict either.

We have a habit of seeing ourselves as saving heroes as we enter other people’s conflicts. It is how we got into Vietnam, to save the South from the North. It’s also how Europe got into WWI: Russia was saving Serbia, Germany was saving Austria, etc (see cartoon below). We meddle our way, and leave much later than we planned. The result, as in Vietnam and Afghanistan is far more death and destruction than if we’d minded our own business. And US war-dead too. In Vietnam 58,000 US deaths. In Afghanistan 2,400 US dead. and no obvious accomplishment. As Henry Kissinger famously commented: “It’s dangerous to be America’s enemy, but deadly to be America’s friend.”

European aggression in WWII started with the good intention of preventing aggression. It got out of hand, as I fear our good intentions will in Ukraine.

The US troops we’ve sent to Ukraine are not called soldiers. They are “fighting advisors” sent to help the Ukrainians use our weapons. In WWI and Vietnam, fighting advisors are called invaders; it’s how we got drawn into Vietnam. The Russians claimed to send advisors when they entered the Crimea and later the Dundas. We called it an invasion. We can’t be that blind to our own words. Sooner or later, the advisors will start killing each other– something we’ll call an unprovoked attack. Our high tech aid including anti-tank missiles are reported to have killed some 10,000 Russians so far. We don’t seem to think the Russians will mind, or that they’ll give up as the body count mounts. In Vietnam, the more we killed with our high-tech weapons, the more the Vietnamese on both sides called us the villains, and the more Vietnamese joined the fight against us. That’s the future I fear for Ukraine, or worse. The conflict in WWI spiraled quickly beyond the borders of Serbia to include the whole world, and continued through WWII.

Our approach to diplomacy is counterproductive too, in my opinion, and similar to Vietnam too. We call Putin a terrorist, a madman and a narcissist, and then we begin talks with him to end the war. Biden has asked to have Putin removed by assassination.Does he think this will help, or if Putin is removed his successor will be a friend of the US? We demonized Ho Chi Minh, and propped up our favored, corrupt leaders. Minh was popular, as is Putin, and both have valid reasons for opposing us. Putin worries about the expansion of NATO. It’s not an illegitimate worry given Russian history of repeated invasions from the west.

Our desire to remove Russian leadership is a long-standing mistake. It does not lead to peace, or good negotiation, nor even peaceful co-existence.

Russia has been invaded many times. US schools mention Napoleon’s invasion in 1812 and the German’s in 1941, but there are more. They were invaded by the Germans in WWI too, and by the Ukrainian Cossacks in the days of Khmelnytsky, 1646-57. Before that the Polish Lithuanians, 1609-1618, the Swedes, 1701-1709, and in the early days, it was Tartars, Mongols, who invaded and ruled Russia from about 1225 til they joined with the Russian Tzars about 1650. Add to that, our help in the war of the Whites vs the Reds (1917-23) that produced Ukrainian independence — I talk about the relevance here. With a history like that, Russia has every reason to worry about NATO expansion. We should be cognizant of this and stop calling Putin a madman. Let’s accept the Russian version of history, and the sitting ruler of Russia.

Some cite the Budapest memorandum that lead to the removal of “Ukrainian” nuclear weapons –– read it here. It’s short, only 1 page, and deliberately vague. it was signed by Putin’s predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, for the Russian Federation, along with representatives for Ukraine, The US, and The UK. The missiles were not Ukrainian, they were Soviet, and pointed at us. As a result of that agreement, they were dismantled and moved into Russia. There is no sense that this is an invitation for us to protect Ukraine against Russia. The co-signers sort-of agree to protect Ukraine from outsiders (Germany, Turkey,..?), but that’s not clear. We commit ourselves to peace in the region, and can claim that Russia violated the peace first, but there’s no invitation for us to violate it second. Until recently, the UK provided no military aid. China and most of the EU still trades with Russia; if they see a villainy, it’s not enough to stop trade.

Robert McNamara was Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson, and a key “Whiz Kid” pushing for war in Vietnam. Years later, he decided Vietnam was a mistake. A sad cartoon: the veterans are walking past the grave monument for the 58,000 US dead. I worry we’ll have a similar cartoon after this war.

In my opinion, our best course is to reduce our military aid to providing only basics: bullets, blankets, food… We should reopen discussions with Putin, not demonize him, or try to remove him. Ukraine will likely fight on even without our high-tech weapons. Perhaps they’ll buy from Europe, or from independent dealers. The death rate on both sides will be lower and peace will come quicker without us. Crimea might remain Ukrainian or Russian, but that will not be our decision. We’ve done enough damage for now. It took many years after the end of the Vietnam war for the instigators admit is was a mistake.

Robert Buxbaum April 3, 2022. Much of my thinking about Vietnam comes from Francis Fitzgerald’s wonderful book “Fire in the Lake”. I see it all happening again here. Also worth reading is this 2014 letter by Henry Kissinger about how to negotiate a peace: “Damning Putin is not a foreign policy; it’s an alibi for the lack of one.” It’s a nice insight. He seems to understand diplomacy about as well as anyone.

The claim that Ukrainians are Nazis is also Ukraine’s claim to statehood.

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Recently Putin claimed he was going into Ukraine to fight Nazis. Twitter makes fun of this, but also shows many pictures of these Nazis. Under the hashtag #AzovBattalion, you’ll see many pictures of white boys with swastikas and Ukraine flags (see below). Perhaps these pictures are just Russian propaganda: According to our media there are no Nazis to speak of, and besides, the president of Ukraine is a Jew. Still, the pictures look real, and based on Ukraine history, there is quite a bit reason to think they are not an aberration. Still, to the extent that they represent Ukraine, these individuals are a major basis of Ukraine’s claim for independence. They are also a good reason to leave Ukraine out of NATO, IMHO.

Let’s go back to the late days of the Tartars and the early days of the Cossacks, about 1600. There is a painting, below depicting Cossacks of those days writing a letter to The Sultan (original in the Kharkov museum). They do not seem the most savory of people, but they do seem independent and egalitarian. The letter is not written by a noble, but by a committee of pirates, and not everyone is happy about it.

Zaporozhian Cossacks write a letter to the sultan. These are the people who Putin claims should be loyal to Russia, but they have a long history of behaving otherwise. I like the scribe. A couple of people at left seem unhappy.

From 1250 to the mid 1700s, Southern Ukraine was ruled, to a greater or lesser extent, by the Crimean Tartars, a group of horse-riding Mongols who nominally served the great Khan. Moscow paid dues to them, and in 1571 the Tartar ruler,  Devlet I Giray burnt Moscow to collect his dues. The early Cossacks were Black-sea pirates, and enemies of the Tartars. Around 1600, the Cossacks and Tartars realized they had a lot in common (alcoholism, pederasty…) and formed an alliance. Mainly this was against the Poles and Jews. A famous result of this alliance was the Khmelnytsky Uprising (about 1650). Khmelnytsky was the “Hetman” (Head man?), the elected, temporary ruler for the uprising. He has become a symbol of Ukrainian independence, but he was also a brutal murderer of virtually all the Jews and Catholics. Today, he graces Ukraine’s $5 bill, and sits atop a statue in Kyiv’s central square. This elevation of Khmelnytsky is no small insult to Jews, Catholics, and civilization.

Ukrainian Republic passport, 1919.

 In 1654, via the Pereyaslav Agreement, Khmelnytsky’s Tartar-Cossacks formed an allegiance with the Tsar while retaining autonomy in Ukraine. This autonomy eroded over the years, and ended with Bolshevik rule in the early 20th century. After WWI, Ukrainians briefly tried for independence, forming the Ukraine Peoples Republic and the Ukraine Democratic republic, from 1917 to 1921. The head of the Republic was called hetman, an elected leader but also a throwback to a mass-murderer.

Stalin punished the Cossack remnant before WWIi, and when the Germans invaded in 1939, many of the remaining Ukrainians supported the Nazi invasion, and provided some of the most brutal murders of Jews; the murderers of Baba Year, for example. Putin recalls this collaboration when he calls the Ukrainians Nazis, and I suspect that he’s more right than our press will admit. These #azovbattalion pictures don’t look faked. On the other hand, the autonomy of the Ukrainians and Cossacks, and their attempts at independence provide historical backing for Ukraine’s claim to independence. Putting this another way, the more you accept that Ukraine is full of Nazi sympathizers, the more you should accept them as a distinct society from Russia.

Ukrainians of the Azov Battalion with a statue of Khmelnytsky, or some other murderer.

As an idea of how the war might go, I should mention another group of Tartar-Cossacks. These were Moslems who operated between the Don and Volga Rivers in what is known as Chechnya. Chechnya fought Russia in a long, bloody, unsuccessful struggle, that is only recently ended. Russia may win in Ukraine, but it is not likely to win easily or cheaply if Chechnya is any model.

Robert Buxbaum, Mar. 2, 2022

Who watches the watchmen; who protects from the protectors?

One of the founding ideas of a limited government, as I think our founders intended, is that the power of the state to protect carries with it several dangers. The first of these is cost, all good services and all good protections come at a cost. Generally that is achieved by taxation or by inflation, or by imposing regulations that do more harm than good. Once a tax for a service is accepted the service is really removed, and there is a tendency to over tax or over inflate to maintain it and to mis-distribute the service as well. The people do not become wealthier, or better served, but the people distributing the services win out. There are those who would say we are living through this today.

Another problem with a big, protective government is that the protectors can turn on the people they are supposed to protect. This can be small issues, like firing people who refuse to vaccinate, or large matters like imprisoning enemies. The history of the world is littered with examples of governments taken over by their own police or army. Generally the excuse is that the police is protecting the people from some bigger danger: rioters, disease, subversives. But once the police take over, they are hard to remove. They tend to see anyone who wants to limit their power as another subversive, and they tend to treat treat such people ruthlessly.

In the French Revolution, the group who ran the guillotine was the “committee for public safety”. First they killed to protect the folk from dangerous monarchists, then the clergy, and capitalists, and eventually anyone they considered a threat: That is anyone who considered them a threat. A similar outcome occurred in Russia, the removal of the Tzar lead to a rein of terror by Stalin. Harry Truman wrote saying that the CIA was another Stalinist police force, and wrote that congress was afraid of them. (see his Op-ed here). It seems that FBI director James Comey used made-up evidence of Russian collaboration to try to remove Trump (see NY Post story here).

A final problem with a powerful group of protectors is that it can be bought by outside agents. Rudolf Hess was Truman’s agent for dealing with the UN to promote world peace. It also turns out that he was also a Soviet agent. In Britain in the 50s to 70s, the assistant head of spying, the second in command of MI6, was Kim Philby a Soviet agent. The Soviets helped Philby’s rise by destroying the reputation of anyone who might do the job well. To this day, we regularly find Chinese and Russian agents in our FBI, NSA, and CIA. There is no better place to gather information and spread lies than with the organization that is supposed to protect us.

The title of my essay comes from a satrical poem/ essay written by Juvinal, in first century Rome (read it here). The more famous line is Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Juvenal points out that not only is group of watchmen/protectors a danger in itself so that, if you hire a watchman to keep your wife chaste, she is likely to stray with the watchman, but he also points out that the watchmen are expensive, and that they are easily bought. Juvenal also points out that cruelty and vanities are common outcomes of a large retinue; if the wife or one of her high eunuchs feels disregarded, everyone lower will be beaten mercilessly. It’s a problem that is best solved, in the home and in politics in general by having a small staff — just what’s really needed. This, I think, was the intent of the founders of our country who limited the number of services provided.

Robert E. Buxbaum, November 27, 2021. As a more-fun way to present watchmen getting excessive, here is a parity song, “Party in the CIA,” by Weird Al. …Better put your hands up and get in the van, Or else you’ll get blown away, Stagin’ a coup like yeah… Party in the CIA.

Of cigars and marriage, Kipling and Freud.

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My last post included a rather gruesome bit of poetry by Rudyard Kipling where he describes the Afghani women coming to kill the wounded British soldiers in the first Afghan war. It’s sexist, or anti-sexist, if you like. Since it reverses a stereotype of the non-violent, female home-body. Then again the Afghanis had wiped out an entire British army, killing virtually everyone including civilians.

What follows is The Betrothed, one of Kipling’s first published poems, appearing in “the civil and military gazette”, Lahor, India (near Afghanistan), November, 1888. Kipling was an assistant editor). It has a more traditional view of women, or of British women who do not go out murdering, but who do wish to control/ stop a British man’s cigar smoking. In a sense, such stoppage is murder. The inspiration was a breach of ‘Promise of Marriage’ case in Glasgow, August 1888, where a young woman, Maggie Watson, sued her fiancee because he continued to smoke cigars after she insisted he stop. Kipling explores the psychology of the choice between smoking and marriage. I think Freud would approve.

The Betrothed.

OPEN the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout, For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out. 

We quarrelled about Havanas—we fought o’er a good cheroot, And I knew she is exacting, and she says I am a brute. 

Open the old cigar-box—let me consider a space; In the soft blue veil of the vapour musing on Maggie’s face. 

Maggie is pretty to look at—Maggie’s a loving lass, But the prettiest cheeks must wrinkle, the truest of loves must pass. 

There’s peace in a Larranaga, there’s calm in a Henry Clay; But the best cigar in an hour is finished and thrown away— 

Thrown away for another as perfect and ripe and brown— But I could not throw away Maggie for fear o’ the talk o’ the town! 

Maggie, my wife at fifty—grey and dour and old— With never another Maggie to purchase for love or gold! 

And the light of Days that have Been the dark of the Days that Are,
And Love’s torch stinking and stale, like the butt of a dead cigar— 

The butt of a dead cigar you are bound to keep in your pocket— With never a new one to light tho’ it’s charred and black to the socket! 

Open the old cigar-box—let me consider a while. Here is a mild Manila—there is a wifely smile. 

Which is the better portion—bondage bought with a ring, Or a harem of dusky beauties, fifty tied in a string? 

Counsellors cunning and silent—comforters true and tried, And never a one of the fifty to sneer at a rival bride? 

Thought in the early morning, solace in time of woes, Peace in the hush of the twilight, balm ere my eyelids close, 

This will the fifty give me, asking nought in return, With only a Suttee’s passion—to do their duty and burn. 

This will the fifty give me. When they are spent and dead, Five times other fifties shall be my servants instead. 

The furrows of far-off Java, the isles of the Spanish Main, When they hear my harem is empty will send me my brides again. 

I will take no heed to their raiment, nor food for their mouths withal, So long as the gulls are nesting, so long as the showers fall. 

I will scent ’em with best vanilla, with tea will I temper their hides, And the Moor and the Mormon shall envy who read of the tale of my brides. 

For Maggie has written a letter to give me my choice between. The wee little whimpering Love and the great god Nick o’ Teen. 

And I have been servant of Love for barely a twelvemonth clear, But I have been Priest of Cabanas a matter of seven year; 

And the gloom of my bachelor days is flecked with the cheery light Of stumps that I burned to Friendship and Pleasure and Work and Fight. 

And I turn my eyes to the future that Maggie and I must prove, But the only light on the marshes is the Will-o’-the-Wisp of Love. 

Will it see me safe through my journey or leave me bogged in the mire? Since a puff of tobacco can cloud it, shall I follow the fitful fire? 

Open the old cigar-box—let me consider anew— Old friends, and who is Maggie that I should abandon you? 

A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke; And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke. 

Light me another Cuba—I hold to my first-sworn vows. If Maggie will have no rival, I’ll have no Maggie for Spouse! 

Sigmund Freud with his cigar. The whole attraction of cigars, is a strange one, as Freud knew better than most. Cigars are deadly, but casual, often with a good flavor, and a sucking comfort. The death-risk of one is small and distant. Cigars thus represent risky fun they are thus life, in a temporary, risky way. Marriage is permanence and safe, and binding. The binding permanence is a sort of death, but children are good, and that’s life. Freud’s choice was to smoke himself to death. Kipling got married and eventually gave up smoking.

Robert E. Buxbaum, September 17, 2021. Kipling has a great sense of words, and an attractive sense of the subjects, great and small. For years he was the voice of his generation in Britain, but by the end of his life, his views were unacceptable. sexist. On the other hand, he remained staunchly anti-Nazi, anti eugenics, and anti Soviet. By comparison, George Bernard Shaw was a vocal fan of Stalin, of Hitler, and of the eugenic removal of Jews and other undesirables. Shaw’s words remain fashionable, while Kipling’s do not. Such is the nature of fame.

The British Exit from Afghanistan, and ours

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As bad as our exit from Afghanistan has been, the slow British exit in the 1840s to 1920 was worse. While we lost a lot of stuff and left hundreds of Americans and contractors behind, the British, in their first try at leaving, lost a whole army including thousands of civilians. Then they returned and left repeatedly for 80 years, having to fight against their own weapons and people that they had trained. We did many of the same things the Brits did, like trusting our security to folks we’d been trying to kill, but we have not lost anywhere near as many people (yet) and we have not returned (yet). What follows is a look at the British exit, based mostly on Wikipedia articles: “The First Afghan War“, and the retreat from Kabul, 1842, and the biographies of Shah Shujah and Akbar Khan, pictures below.

Akbar Khan. The British tried to kill him, then negotiated with him. Sketch by Vincent Eyre
Britain’s Puppet King, Shah Shujah, Sketch by Vincent Eyre.

The British went into Afghanistan, as we did, to create a more stable and western-friendly government. Their first act was to remove the king, Mohammed Khan, and install a more pliant leader, Sultan Shujah. Mohammed was part of the Khanate, that is the Moguls (Mongols), a deadly violent group who the British were fighting in India. We did the same when we entered Afghanistan. We removed the elected president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, a “radical Moslem” associated with the Taliban leader, Mohammed Omar, an even more radical moslem. Omar was associated Osama bin Laden who’d attacked the US on 9-11. We replaced these, long-bearded Moslems with Hamid Karzai, a moderate Moslem: short beard, reasonably popular, US-friendly, elected in Bonn, Germany. The problem with Shah Shujah and Hamid Karzai is neither one had legitimacy in the eyes of the people, nor respect from the army, either. In part that’s because we put them in power and kept them there, in part that’s because we never let them lead in war or diplomacy. Our follow-on leader, Ashraf Ghani, had no beard, and even less legitimacy and respect. The Afghan army left Ghani as soon as we started leaving; they’d done the same to Shah Shujah when the British left in 1842.

William Macnaughten, the British Envoy, prison sketch by Vincent Eyre, the same fellow who sketched Akbar and Shujah above.

Shah Shujah had a habit of mutilating those who worked for him whenever he got upset. All of Shujah’s servants were missing ears or noses or testicles. Strangely, this seems to have given him more legitimacy than Ghani had. Perhaps if we allowed our leaders to lead, or at least mutilate, the army would have stayed loyal. Then again, maybe nothing would have prevented the puppet from collapsing when the puppet-master left. Both we and the Brits relied on our own troops to keep the peace, along with payoffs and occasional assassinations (we call those airstrikes). It worked for a time, but did not build loyalty or love.

Among those the British paid off and occasionally tried to kill was Akbar Khan, the son of imprisoned Mohammed Khan. Eventually, the British felt they needed Akbar’s help to protect their exit, as he controlled the hills around Kabul including the old Silk Road that the British hoped to travel. Similarly, in the end, we found we needed Taliban help to clear the road to the airport. We didn’t quite get the help, nor did the Brits.

On December 23, 1841, the British envoy, William Macnaughten, visited Akbar Khan and proposed that he would hand over Shah Shujah and make him king in return for safe passage for 16,500 people under General Keith Elphinstone on a journey from Kabul to fort Jalalabad: 93 miles due east. Akbar agreed, but had Macnoughton arrested and later killed. His body was hung in the bazaar. Akbar seems to have figured that anyone willing to betray his old friend would be likely to betray him as well.

Kipling was stationed in India, near the Afghan border. His view of the locals is rather gruesome.

General Elphinstone left Kabulon January 5, 1842 with 4,500 armed soldiers, several cannon, and 12,000+ unarmed civilians. The going was slow and supplies didn’t arrive. Five days later, January 10, allies of Akbar attacked in the hills and killed or captured most of the group. Akbar invited Elphinstone to tea the next day and announced that the group was now his prisoner. He offered safe passage for the women and children, but demanded payment. The alternative was that they freeze in the hills. Elphinstone, at first refused, then ransomed himself and others, in all nine people. The rest of the group were shot, stabbed, taken by the Afghanis to be wives, or stripped of clothing and left to freeze. Younger children were raised as Afghanis, only identified as British sixty or more years later– the British liked to pretend they had not left them. Of the rest, only two survived. One soldier, William Brydon made it to Jalalabad, January 13, 1842. Elphinstone died in captivity in Kabul, April, 1842. According to Kipling’s poem, the Afghanis mutilated British bodies. More likely it was animals.

Hamid Karzai, American supported President, now under house arrest.

The British re-invaded Kabul several times after that, each time hoping to free captives and show who’s boss. There followed a second Anglo Afghan war (1878-80) and third (1919-20), and arguably a fourth (2001-21). Our exit isn’t as bad, at least not yet. We’ve left behind 200-300 Americans plus hundreds of helicopters, trucks, and high-tech weapons. The Taliban are now in charge, folks we’d tried to kill, all of them were associated with Omar, and several with Osama bin Laden, too. Our security forces have been shot, the embassy translator is scheduled to be beheaded, the new government includes several senior members who had been detained at Guantánamo Bay, released to Qatar in a prisoner swap for Bowe Bergdahl in 2014. Hamid Karzai is in captivity, and we’ve taken 100,000 Afghanis who may not integrate well into US society. But at lest there is no sign we’re going back, not for Karzai, or the Americans, or for anyone else. It’s very bad, but it could be worse. Biden calls it a success. Compared to the British exit, it is so far.

Robert Buxbaum, Sept. 5, 2021. IMHO beards are associated with commitment.

Aspirin protection from heart attack and COVID-19 death.

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Most people know that aspirin can reduce blood clots and thus the risk heart attack, as shown famously in the 1989 “Physicians’ Health Study” where 22,000 male physicians were randomly assigned to either a regular aspirin (325 mg) every other day or an identical looking placebo. The results are shown in the table below, where “Myocardial Infarction” or “MI” is doctor-speak for heart attack.

TreatmentMyocardial InfarctionsNo InfarctionTotalfraction with MI
Aspirin13910,89811,037139/11,037 = 0.0126
Placebo23910,79511,034239/11,034 = 0.0217

Over the 5 years of the study, the physicians had 378 MI events, but mostly in the group that didn’t take aspirin: 1.28% of the doctors who took aspirin had a heart attack as opposed to 2.17% for those with the placebo. The ratio 1.28/2.17 = 0.58 is called the risk ratio. Apparently, aspirin in this dose reduces your MI risk to 58% of what it was otherwise — at least in white males of a certain age.

A blood clot showing red cells held together by fibrin fibers. Clots can cause heart attack, stroke, and breathing problems. photo: Steve Gschmeissner.

Further study showed aspirin benefits with women and other ethnicities, and benefits beyond hear attack, in any disease that induces disseminated intravascular coagulopathy. That’s doctor speak for excessive blood clots. Aspirin produced a reduction in stroke and in some cancers (Leukemia among them) and now it now seems likely that aspirin reduces the deadliness of COVID-19. Data from Wuhan showed that excessive blood clots were present in 71% of deaths vs. 0.4% of survivors. In the US, some 30% of those with serious COVID symptoms and death show excessive blood clots, particularly in the lungs. Aspirin and Vitamin D seem to help.

.The down-side of aspirin use is a reduction in wound healing and some intestinal bleeding. The intestinal bleeding is known as aspirin burn. Because of these side-effects it is common to give a lower dose today, just one baby aspirin per day, 81 mg. While this does does some good, It is not clear that it is ideal for all people. This recent study in the Lanset (2018) shows a strong relationship between body weight and aspirin response. Based on 117,279 patients, male and female, the Lanset study found that the low dose, baby aspirin provides MI benefits only in thin people, those who weigh less than about 60 kg (130 lb). If you weigh more than that, you need a higher dose, perhaps two baby aspirin per day, or a single adult aspirin every other day, the dose of the original doctors study.

In this study of COVID patients, published in July, those who had been taking aspirin fared far better than those who did not A followup study will examine the benefits of one baby aspirin (81 mg) with and without Vitamin D, read about it here. I should note that other pain medications do not have this blood-thinning effect, and would not be expected to have the same benefit.

While it seems likely that 2 baby aspirins might be better in fat people, or one full aspirin every other day, taking a lot more than this is deadly. During the Spanish flu some patients were given as much as 80 adult aspirins per day. It likely killed them. As Paracelsus noted, the difference between a cure and a poison is the dose.

Robert Buxbaum, November 27, 2020.