The Phrase Finder explains this means to succeed “…through all forms of obstacles put in one’s way.” It is a very old expression that “…that has maintained its figurative meaning over many centuries.” It comes from the times when there were few roads and originated from riding a horse through the “…thicket and thin wood.” The earliest written version found by Phrase Finder was 1662.
Cuba has no Intention of Abandoning Communism
I was conflicted about President Obama’s announcement that he was taking action to open diplomatic relations with Cuba. I’ve been interested in Cuba since my days as a teenager watching Walter Cronkite when he announced (as I recall), with what appeared to be satisfaction, that Fidel Castro and his revolutionaries had overthrown the “evil dictator Batista.” I began to notice as time went by that things weren’t improving for the Cuban people. Those who were suspected of being Batista supporters, or were accused by someone who didn’t like them of being Batista supporters, were being tried in a stadium by Che Guevara and either being executed or imprisoned. I became even more conflicted as the years passed as I noticed young people were eager to wear shirts with a picture of Che “celebrating the revolution.” I’ve always found it sad to see young Liberals (or Progressives, if you prefer) celebrating a man who oversaw the murder or imprisonment of people who “might” have disagreed with him. I wasn’t included in those who mourned his death.
My conversion to being a “Cuba policy skeptic” was intensified as Cuba began to be a proxy providing soldiers for the Soviet Union when they wanted a revolution in some African country. The willingness of Cuba to allow installation of Soviet missiles that could carry nuclear warheads to many American cities in the early 1960s (the Cuban Missile Crisis) ended any tiny remaining doubts. Continue reading
Spying in America
This book by Michael J. Sulick has the subtitle, “Espionage from the Revolutionary War to the Dawn of the Cold War.” Sulick was a former director of the CIA’s clandestine service, and his book describes how “…nations large and small, from Russia and China to Ghana and Ecuador, have stolen the most precious secrets of the United States.” The book describes thirty of the most famous espionage cases. The introduction discusses a subject that continues to be importance: government monitoring of communications to uncover potential terrorist threats versus freedom from government intrusion into our daily lives. “America’s susceptibility to the threat of espionage…developed, ironically, from the very qualities that catapulted the nation to superpower status and made it a symbol of democracy: an exceptional geography and a tradition of individual liberties. These attributes shaped American attitudes toward national security and bred both disbelief about the threat of espionage and a distrust of countering it at the expense of these cherished liberties.”
I’ve always had the question as to why U.S. citizens would spy against the country. The author explains that the massive Soviet espionage efforts before and during World War II were assisted by the ravages of the Great Depression. “Americans disillusioned with capitalism were lured by the utopian promises of communism and swelled the ranks of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA)…Communist sympathizers attracted by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal policies flocked to work in the new administration and willingly supported the Soviet cause by passing government secrets. When irrefutable proof of widespread Soviet espionage eventually surfaced, the highest levels of the US government still refused to believe the senior officials of the Roosevelt administration were Soviet spies.” Many in the liberal media expressed “…a highly suspicious distrust of government efforts to combat spying, viewing them as intrusiveness and even persecution of its citizenry.” The focus often was on what was seen as the excesses of McCarthy instead of the revelations from Chambers and Bentley, two Soviet spies who turned and provided lists of spies in the government. The book accurately describes that much of the media could or would not accept their stories until irrefutable proof became available years later. Continue reading
Wet Blanket
The literal explanation is “a blanket damped with water so as to extinguish a fire.” However, the common use is to define “…a person or thing that dampens enthusiasm or enjoyment.” The expression has been around for several centuries.
A Criticism of Climate Change Science
The following was provided by Dr. William F. Downs, a Geochemist and friend. I’ve done a tiny bit of editing, and added a comment at the end. The timing is perfect as a contrast to the review posted today.
There is little controversy over the fact that the temperature of Earth is currently rising and has been since the end of the “Little Ice Age” which lasted from about 1380 AD until circa 1780 AD. Previously the climate experienced a warm period which was called the “Millennium Optimum” (c. 850 AD – 1300 AD) when I studied it during the 1960s. It was considered “optimum” because the Vikings were able to expand into and develop farms in Greenland and grapes that had been planted in Britain by the Romans produced wine. By the early 1300s, Greenland was no longer able to sustain agriculture and the Viking society in Greenland had collapsed. There was another warming period termed the “Roman Warm Period” that existed in the first few centuries after the time of Christ. The “Little Ice Age” was documented by Monks in Monasteries along the roads to Rome as Alpine Pilgrims on their way to Rome told their stories of glacial destruction of their Villages.
The temperatures and CO2 contents of the atmosphere in the past are estimated by measuring the oxygen isotope ratios and concentrations of CO2 released from ice cores collected from Vostok Glacier in Antarctica. These data have been collected from ice that had formed during the last 100,000 years or so. These data indicate that the current temperature level is lower than those experienced during the Millennial Warming Period. Continue reading
Progressive Policies and Climate Change
On this blog we have tried to understand global warming and resulting climate change, and the social and scientific factors that affect the topic. But as interesting as the science is – and trying to understand the entire Earth as a single system is fascinating – there would be no public interest if not for the economic and ideological implications.
I have looked for a book that addresses the progressive view of climate policy. In This Changes Everything – Capitalism vs. The Climate, Naomi Klein clearly believes that global warming is real, predominately caused by humans, and an impending global crisis. She says we deny or ignore the issue “because we fear that letting in the reality of this crisis will change everything. And we are right.”
I think I’ve found my progressive tome.
Klein immediately draws the ideological battle lines, featuring the Heartland Institute as the capitalist position, whose scientists are “so steeped in fossil fuel dollars that you can practically smell the fumes.” But “deniers” are not just American. Klein notes that Canada, the UK, Western Europe, and Australia also have strong denier activists. Heartland stands in for many ring-wing think-tanks that were created to defend capitalism against socialism and “aggressive Keynesianism” in the 1960s and 1970s.
She notes that “climate change could become a catalyzing force for positive change… the best argument progressives have ever had…” This articulates the belief of many that global warming is just the latest excuse to do what progressives always want to do – block free-trade, undermine corporations, invest in public projects, open borders, and (as Klein states) “take back ownership of essential services like energy and water,” to “leave us with both a more habitable climate… and a far more just economy than the one we have right now.” Klein even uses the hot-button phrase “wealth redistribution”. If global warming is indeed threatening civilization, “climate change can be the force – the grand push – that will bring together all of these… movements.” Continue reading