Friday

                             Musings and History

Quote of the day:

“Let us be grateful to people that make us happy; they are the gardeners that make our souls bloom.”

                                                    Marcel Proust

A while back in northwestern Afghanistan the Taliban accused a pregnant WIDOW of ADULTERY and punish her by administering 200 lashes and then shooting her in the head three times. They also executed a 10 person medical team that was in Afghanistan on their own time to help the Afghanis. Their only crime was that they were westerners except for three of them who were Afghanis. The Taliban wants everyone to come to them and them only for everything. They want total control of everyone’s body and soul. I can assure you that they would love to take over America and enslave all of us. They are the enemy with which we are at war. The purpose of any and all wars is to kill the enemy. That is why we are in Afghanistan.

A few days ago at 1:30a in Cleveland county North Carolina, the 911 operator received a call from 48 year old Joe Crosby. Joe said that “he thinks he just killed his wife.” The operator dispatches a county cop and an EMS team and sure enough, Joe’s 51 year old wife Gaylain was dead. Joe was cooperative and helped the cops with their investigation. He had no criminal record of any kind. How can this happen?

             This Date in History  August 18

1227 Earlier, in about 1162 a man-child was born to a minor Mongol chieftain who he named Temujin. The chieftain died and Temujin was set to succeed him but the remainder of the tribe would not obey such a young leader and the rest of the tribe abandoned the family to fend for themselves out on the vast Steppes of Mongolia. By his late teens Temujin had become a very skilled and feared warrior and had attained a charisma that attracted other tribal leaders and he consummated many alliances. The end result was Temujin had acquired a monstrous army all of them on horseback. One tribe kidnapped Temujin’s wife. They should not have done that because Temujin and his troops went after her and tortured and killed all that had done the kidnapping. Temujin decided that he was going to combine all the Mongol tribes under his command by force if necessary. He made an offer to those tribes that had not joined him that either they would join or each and every member of the tribe would be killed. It was a simple choice for the other tribe leaders, they chose to live. Temujin ended up with and army of over 500,000 mounted warriors and his name was changed to Genghis Khan meaning “Oceanic Ruler.” There was no other army in the world that could even come close to competing with a cavalry that size. Normal armies in the rest of the world relied on huge infantry and a small amount of cavalry because of the amount of ground and feed required to support horses. The Mongols did not have that problem with thousands upon thousands of acres of open rangeland in the Steppes of Asia. Khan organized his army in units of 10, 10 horsemen to a unit, 10 units to a company, 10 companies to a division, etc. The most feared unit was a “Tumen” or a unit of 10,000 highly organized cavalrymen. After Khan got his troopers organized he set out to conquer China in 1209. Through an extensive network of spies, Khan found a weakness and sent 250,000 cavalrymen to the attack. It was no contest and Khan went in and slaughtered millions and then asked the survivors if they wanted be obedient or not. As you might suspect, they chose to become a follower of Khan. On one occasion he was attacking a city that refused to surrender so he dismounted many of his troops and they dug a diversion canal from a nearby river into the city and flooded it. There is no need for me to tell you what happened after the city finally surrendered. And finally as he approached yet another city the city leaders offered to surrender if Khan promised that “not a drop of blood would be shed”. Khan agreed and the city surrendered then Khan went in and strangled everybody. No blood was shed, however. While putting down a rebellion in the Xi Xia, China Khan died on this date. On his deathbed he ordered the Xi Xia wiped from the face of the earth. His army did as they were told and they did not leave one stone standing on top of another and either killed or enslaved all its residents. In order to keep Khan’s gravesite a secret, his army killed anyone that saw his funeral procession on the way to his home in Karakorum, Mongolia and Genghis Khan’s burial site is not known to this day. At one point Khan ruled half of the known world.

1931 After weeks of torrential rain, on this date the Yangtze River in China overflowed its banks and floods the surrounding countryside. The Yangtze River has the most populated cities in the world on its banks. The majority of the peoples of China live close to the Yangtze or its tributaries. The end result was the greatest disaster in the 20^th Century. Over 3.5 million Chinese died as a result of this flood either by drowning or disease promulgated by the failure to dispose of so many bodies at one time. Typhus, Typhoid and Malaria was rampant. Not only that the rice fields were flooded and the crops failed causing widespread starvation later on. The Chinese government had been warned about the possibility of the flooding of the Yangtze and had plans to reinforce the flood control system but a civil war intervened.

1853 Cyrus Skinner was born in Ohio in 1829 and began a life of crime almost as soon as his age allowed. He drifted into California and robbed a few people before being caught and sentenced to three years in San Quentin. He was released on this date and started his old routine again and began burglarizing business around Yuba City, California. He was again arrested and sentenced to 15 years in San Quentin where he met an old friend name Henry Plummer. I have mention Plummer in a previous essay about John X. Beidler. Anyway, Plummer and Skinner escaped and hightailed it over the mountain to the wild and wooly Montana gold fields where nearly no law enforcement existed. Plummer stopped enroute and organized a gang in Idaho before going to Montana. Skinner, Plummer and company began robbing the Montanans to the point that the local people organized a vigilante committee to handle these outlaws. On January 10, 1864 the vigilantes captured Henry Plummer and two of his buddies and they were hanged on the spot. Cyrus Skinner ran like hell out of the area but the vigilantes were relentless. They cornered Skinner in Hellgate, Montana. Skinner ran away on foot hoping to be killed by gunshot rather than hanging. No such luck. Skinner met his maker dangling from a tree limb. Skinner was one of the last of the 24 members of Plummer’s gang to be hanged by the vigilantes.

Born today:

1919 Former governor of Alaska Walter Hickel. While asking to be allowed to kill hundreds of wolves in the Alaskan wilderness he said “After all, we can’t allow nature to run wild.” Walt, shut up and quit ruining my life.

            Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow