Daily review 03/12/2024

5 comments on “Daily review 03/12/2024 ”

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1. Dennis Frank 1

   3 December 2024 at 6:07 pm

   Becoming a war hero is quite rare, and even more so for a pigeon. Cher Ami was flying messages during WWI, and also became a movie star:

   The Lost Battalion (1919 film), a 1919 silent film, includes the living Cher Ami hopping on one leg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cher_Ami

   Cher Ami was one of 60 pigeons assigned to Mobile Loft No. 11 during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, with the 77th Infantry Division into the Argonne Forest, when

   more than 550 men were trapped in a small depression on the side of the hill behind enemy lines without food or ammunition [under] friendly fire from allied troops who did not know their location. Surrounded by the Germans, many were killed and wounded and only 194 men were still alive… Because his runners were consistently intercepted or killed by the Germans, Whittlesey began dispatching messages by pigeon. The pigeon carrying the first message was shot down. A second bird also was shot down.

   Third time lucky:

   As Cher Ami tried to fly back home, the Germans saw him rising out of the brush and opened fire. After several seconds, he was shot down but managed to take flight again. He arrived back at his loft at division headquarters 25 miles (40 km) to the rear in just 25 minutes… He had been shot through the breast, blinded in one eye, and had a leg hanging only by a tendon.

   The pigeon was awarded the Croix de Guerre Medal with a palm Oak Leaf Cluster for his heroic service… He died at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, on June 13, 1919, from the wounds he received in battle and was later inducted into the Racing Pigeon Hall of Fame in 1931… To American school children of the 1920s & '30s, Cher Ami was as well known as any other World War I hero.

   I was just reading about his role in saving the US detachment being pounded by their own side in this new library book: https://www.ynharari.com/book/nexus/. Philosopher Yuval Noah Harari is ambitious in doing a history of information – particularly since best-selling author James Gleick already did that well, some years back!

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2. joe90 2

   3 December 2024 at 6:36 pm

   Only the best people…

   //

   A previously undisclosed whistle-blower report on Hegseth’s tenure as the president of Concerned Veterans for America, from 2013 until 2016, describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity—to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization’s events. The detailed seven-page report—which was compiled by multiple former C.V.A. employees and sent to the organization’s senior management in February, 2015—states that, at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team. The report also says that Hegseth, who was married at the time, and other members of his management team sexually pursued the organization’s female staffers, whom they divided into two groups—the “party girls” and the “not party girls.” In addition, the report asserts that, under Hegseth’s leadership, the organization became a hostile workplace that ignored serious accusations of impropriety, including an allegation made by a female employee that another employee on Hegseth’s staff had attempted to sexually assault her at the Louisiana strip club. In a separate letter of complaint, which was sent to the organization in late 2015, a different former employee described Hegseth being at a bar in the early-morning hours of May 29, 2015, while on an official tour through Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, drunkenly chanting “Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!”

   https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/pete-hegseths-secret-history

   https://archive.li/YouQs

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3. joe90 3

   3 December 2024 at 7:41 pm

   Marc Daadler;

   .

   Conventional wisdom in 2024 seems to dictate that the Covid-19 response was an overreaction, but that conventional wisdom is wrong.

   […]

   New Zealand was lucky to follow the playbook we did, even though it had its flaws. If we had the same mortality rate as the United States, more than 23,000 Kiwis would have been killed by Covid-19. Instead, we’ve seen just under 4500 deaths since January 2020 – still the worst infectious disease death toll in a century and three times worse than the road toll, but far better than what could have been.

   https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/12/03/historical-revisionism-on-covid-threatens-nzs-pandemic-preparedness/

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   • AB 3.1

     3 December 2024 at 10:13 pm

     Yes. The Right's determination to rewrite history has been extraordinary, but not surprising. For the Right, such a clear and recent historical example of the power and success of collective commitment to the common good cannot be allowed to stand. It is a direct contradiction of the ideology of personal action for private benefit.

     Reply
   • Obtrectator 3.2

     3 December 2024 at 11:28 pm

     Conventional wisdom is in the same sort of category as common sense, in that it's too often neither conventional, nor wisdom.

     Reply

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