[the crimean war] and the persistence of old issues

For a look at this conflict, try this site.

How much has really changed?

A glance through key elements of the wiki version of the Crimean War show that the old issues are still alive and well.

“The Crimean War lasted from 28 March 1854 to 1856. It was fought between Russia and an alliance of the United Kingdom, France, and the Ottoman Empire, joined somewhat tardily by Piedmont-Sardinia. The majority of the conflict took place on the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea.

The war ended with the Treaty of Paris (1856).”

My exit from Russia, not fancifully I would suggest, had some of its antecedents in Britain’s traditional rivalry with Russia. The war also confirms continued support for the Muslims at governmental level and in many other sections of British society.

Basically, Russia wanted to solve its Eastern question and to score some much needed victories for home consumption. It had a vehicle for victory in Admiral Nakhimov or so it thought.

It was a fiasco and many things resulted from it, such as “the mass exodus of Crimean Tatars towards the Ottoman lands, resulting in massive depopulation in the peninsula. Crimean Tatars became a minority in their homeland.”

“The roots of the war's causes lay in the existing rivalry between the British and the Russians in other areas such as Afghanistan (The Great Game). Conflicts over control of holy places in Jerusalem led to aggressive actions in the Balkans, and around the Dardanelles.”

So what’s changed?

“Florence Nightingale came into prominence during the Crimean War for her contributions in the field of nursing during the war.”

A positive effect in the field of nursing.

In the light of coming events in our era, it’s interesting that Britain supported the side against the anti-Muslims in the Crimean War and subsequently in the Middle-East and North Africa. It’s interesting how, while Italy is vehemently anti-Muslim for the most part, to the extent of banning the proliferation of mosques and Islamic schools, Britain sees no need for such things.

The gates of Vienna clearly has had little effect on British foreign policy. Yes, it’s interesting but in the context of the forces really driving Europe and this island nation, it’s not at all puzzling.

[bloghounds] stirrings from the hearth

Bloghounds Term Report

[Cross-posted at the site, if the technically wizardry of Cherry Pie worked.]


As usual, this is a personal review and you’re welcome to post your own. The Bloghounds welcome your perspective.

We find ourselves with eight months under our belt and where are we?

The attrition of blogs

Some say that the nature of blogging has changed; certainly there is a move by certain sections of society to restrict and register blogs but there also seems to be less blogging going on in general.

Bloghounds needs to recognize realities and the immense pressures [in blogging terms] of real life in 2009. In short, people have their own worries and less time to devote so this, in turn, makes rules about visiting other members and linking quotas unworkable.

There is also the firm principle that a blog is a voluntary, largely unpaid medium which someone maintains because he or she wants to. Therefore, he will want to visit the Dales, Wat Tylers and Dmajor bloggers, he has his own daily round and his own inner circle.

Where does that leave Bloghounds?

From a personal point of view, it seems, as I wrote once before, that BH is a brand name and as such, the principles upon which it was founded need to remain immutable, as the best trading houses in the world, the ones remaining viable and not bailed out, also do.

The line, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’ applies to us. As a badge of a certain, if minor distinction, it stands for ethical principles and that has implications for new inductees. We don’t have many rules but those we do have, we stick to almost vehemently. Not to put too fine a point on it – there is a certain type of blogger we like to see wearing the Bloghounds badge and there are, sadly, some which we don’t.

This is not high-nosed but a simple statement that we are protecting the brand name.

The committee

We do seem to have settled on a skeleton committee which takes care of the nuts and bolts but I’d like to mention some in particular.

There is our technical whiz, Wolfie, who made it possible in the first place and keeps these matters going, there are the original committee members such as Andrew Allison, Welshcakes, Jams O’Donnell [current committee member], Sackerson and then there is one other to mention at this time.

This lady is the goods, a great administrator because she does it with so little fuss. To have an admin who is also so in Real Life is a coup and I’m referring here to Cherry Pie who has carved out her own little niche in the blogosphere and who crosses so many blogging boundaries.

Issues

There are two issues we’ve so far had to face.

One was the image copyright matter which we jumped on in uncharacteristic haste, followed now by our own langorous search for a new logo.

The other is the constant problem of applicants who are refused. A look at the correspondence which goes back and forth over any controversial applicant has shown a distinct pattern – unanimity amongst those who spoke and silence from the others.

We know what we want and we know what we don’t. We reserve the right to rely on our members’ voices and we go with the majority opinion. There is no undue administrative directing of opinion for the simple reason that this membership has shown itself to be impervious to undue influence. They’re big boys and girls in their own right.

Bighound

There is one mystery member who can usually be found contentedly curled up on the hearthrug. We assure members he’s been fed and watered and if you see him roaming round the premises late at night, do not be alarmed – he’s simply shifting position to get closer to the warmth.

The human members

We are the members. Having said that, recent votes and comments have shown a distinct tendency to leave it to the few and so be it. BH does not push the unattainable; it recognizes reality. If things are going in a certain direction, then that’s the direction they’re going.

If this report resembles a boring quarterly company review sent to your mailbox, then that’s a big plus in our eyes. ‘Steady as she goes and into 2009’ is where Bloghounds is currently sailing.

[united kingdom] or disunited kingdom

Do you need a manifesto? This one is worthy of perusal.

[birth] miracle of life or a pain in the proverbial

Interesting post on giving birth here.

My mate tells me my recent posts have been cr-p so here's another one in the same line:


Sadly, I can’t claim any first hand experience of giving birth and like any issue I’m shut out of, it’s of interest to your humble blogger.

My only experience of such matters has been to be present at a few of these momentous occasions and in each case I couldn’t help thinking, ‘Better her than me.’

Well, anyway, there is a section in the latter half of the last book of mine which deals with babies being born all over the place and in the interests of variety, I had to make some of the births easy, following good preparation and some a bit … well, I hardly like to use the word ‘messy’.

I’d be delighted if some of you could describe your experiences of birth, as it seems a sort of miracle to me.

Along the way, I came across … hmmm … found is a better word … found some snippets I’ll now share with you.

Dr Patricia Rashbrook and her husband, in 2002, had a 6lb 10oz baby they named named JJ. The point of interest was that she was 62 years old. Hope for us all yet.

She was described as "selfish" by pro-life groups for having a child at such an advanced stage in her life and she promptly told them to get knotted, that she and her husband were meeting all the child’s needs. The fertility treatment had come from the Italian doctor Severino Antinori.

She wasn’t the only woman in her 60s to have a child. The oldest woman in the world to give birth is thought to be Adriana Iliescu, from Romania, who had a daughter called Eliza Maria in January in 2001, at the age of 66.

This blog’s advice is not to try this at home.

At the other end of the scale, we have a 1.3 metre tall 9-year-old girl of the Apurina tribe in Brazil's Amazon rainforest who gave birth to a baby. She apparently had an almost full-term pregnancy but her weight was below normal.

A doctor, Christiane da Costa, from the hospital where the girl had a Caesarian section, reported, "The girl is only starting to feel that she's a mother, with the help of our psychologist. She's still playing with her dolls and watching cartoons in her room, like a child would."

The girl had spent three months in the hospital under observation after her 19-year-old sister took her to Manaus from the riverside town of Manacapuru. She had a high fever and was initially diagnosed with malaria, pneumonia and an ear infection. Authorities were reportedly investigating local tribal customs in that village.

This blog’s advice is not to try this at home.

From another more orthodox account of a birth come these observations:

“Even though I was ten days "overdue" I hoped nothing would happen for at least another week or two... Giving birth frightened me more than I had told anyone.

About three pm, [I] had to stand leaning at a table because my back hurted so badly...

I sat in the sofa, clock in one hand and pen in other, timing each one. Now and then running around the house trying to organize my packing of the bag for the hospital.

The pain wasn´t really that bad, actually … 10 minutes apart, seven, five …

A nurse came running and almost didn´t stop while checking us in. Short of breath she asked "Where to? Light or Normal?"

I leaned towards a wall as I tried to figure out what on earth the woman meant ... the nurse cut me off with a sigh "Okay, okay You can go to the Normal, but we are rather busy today... "

I asked about enema. “We don’t use those anymore, it´s only natural ...” I had to stop her and explain that I hadn´t been able to "go" for several days. Finally she agreed but gave the enema was given with no respect for any privacy. Door open and people running around looking in...

Our designated midwife ran all the tests. (vaginal and external examination, CTG, blood pressure and other) She than told me that the baby was a bit "high" and the best for me would be, not to lie down during the opening- phase. The midwife chasing me up each time i tried to lie down "upright as much as possible makes it all much quicker!"

My arms were totally numb, I was all sweaty and hardly managed to catch my breath between the enormous contractions....

Without any explanations she broke the membranes (amnion) in order to speed up the procedures... As I asked if I could please try to breathe the N2O for the pain, her reply was: "Oh, I thought you had taken it already...."

She ordered me to assume "gyn-position" [and] we were a bit puzzled.
“I´m just going to check that your baby is Ok, we are going to take a small blood-sample.”

My dis pair and anxiety grew and I started to cry. Not from pain, but from concern over my unborn baby.

"I feel an unconformable pressure at my rear end..." I whispered to another nurse. The nurse was convinced "we will fix that with the bed-pan... "in an inferno of pain she forced me to climb a portable chamber pot.

No, nothing happened in it... "Couldn´t it be the baby coming...?" I moaned. "Oh, no You are a first-timer, I bet you have many hours ahead, and anyway, the baby isn´t below spinae yet..."

I still hadn´t realized that this simple and common test measures the amount of oxygen reaching the baby, and doesn´t at all indicate anything being wrong.

Fine, said the midwife, not even bothering to check the dilation first. i was to receive epidural pain-relief.

Four in the morning, exhausted, large as an elephant, movable like a ninety five years old, in a sweaty hospital-robe, water running down my legs and contractions twice a minute I wasn´t really at my best.

The doctor came in. Handsome man in his early thirties, a total ass hole. He started out telling everyone who cared to listen how many important patients he had, waiting right now, and what he thought about this, having to run around giving injections to sissies, unable to have their baby s in a natural way...

Finally, the anaesthetic hit me and in the same moment the nurse made an examination just to realize that "oh, look at this, you are already fully dilated!!".

She ordered injections of syntocinon to stimulate the contractions and now the real inferno began!

I can´t remember clearly what happened for about an hour but I know I clinged to my husband screaming "Do anything, cut me up, but take the baby out, I can´t stand this anymore!!!"

Suddenly the doctor and nurse started quarreling above my head about an injection. My husband interrupted, he finally found this too much and threatened to sue them all if they didn´t go back to work.

Anyway, two nurses lying on my belly, pushing, while the plastic-doctor pulled the handle with all her power...

It felt like popping a balloon when the tissues broke from the quick stretching. "The head is out!" my husband shouted and tried to pep me up, I screamed and tried to push but nothing happened.

Finally it came and a blue and messy little creature came out, coughed, screamed and were placed directly on my belly with a warm towel on top. "It´s a boy!!"

Enjoying the silence and the smell of the newborn baby, the absence of pain (except for some very sore parts below...) I didn´t quite understand that I was a mother, no concern whatsoever about the baby being a boy or a girl

45 minutes and more than 40 stitches to patch me up, [it didn’t matter now.]

I was disposed of into a dark storage room where I waited for hours. I hadn´t eaten for more than 24 hours and lost 2.4 liters of blood.

On fourth day I was very concerned. I had no milk for my baby and he was now dry and tired. For four days he had been screaming all the time, nurses denying me to give formula since "you will soon get milk, be patient" he now had stopped crying and slept for nine hours.

[The nurse said,] "Oh Lord, anyone should know that there is absolutely no chance of getting any milk after losing that amount of blood!!!"

I was also informed that I should have spent hours in the "pump room" every day. - What pump room? Why? Where? How? … A nurse told me that I should have received a blood transfusion earlier, but someone forgot it...”

The name of that hospital, by the way, was Danderyd, North of Stockholm. Bloody hell! This blog’s advice is not to go to a hospital.

Apart from the incredibly callous hospital staff, the appalling procedures and non-existent care, which I can’t say I’ve ever witnessed although one particular lady of mine had to have heaps of injections and all manner of fearsome attention, it was this account above which really brought home to me, with such force, what women have to go through to have a child.

I’m trying to come to terms with it in my head. We make the beast with two backs one night in a fit of lust and nine months later, give or take, she has to go through all of that.

This blog’s advice is to be a man, if you can.


Thanks to BBC News & Reuters, on Saturday, July 8th, 2006 for some of this material.

[to be a scot] what must it feel like

Local VIPs clearly approve of the image of Glasgow Rab projects

I’ve often wondered what it must feel like to be Scottish.

Apart from being home to G-d’s own nectar, it must have something else going for it. If Salmond and the gang are the result of Scottish evolution, then one really wonders.

And yet a glance at the major movements in the world, from the military through literature to the shop stewards who close down sections of British industry, e.g. in Liverpool, shows that the Scots have always been in there at the sharp end.

An article from some years back on a central issue to the Scottish heart gives the non-Scot some insight:

At a Berwick Highlands Gathering, event co-ordinator Ross Chudleigh said "simulated haggis" would be used as the real stuff would be too messy. The simulated version would instead use sand or oatmeal in a Hessian bag that would be thrown in the traditional Scottish style similar to a shot-put action.

But the decision not to use the sheep organs minced and boiled in the animal’s stomach - has outraged traditional Scots. Butcher Rob Boyle asked: "If there's no haggis, how can it be haggis throwing?"

He said he had supplied haggis to other festivals in vacuum-sealed bags, which did not result in any unsightly mess. "If you have an egg-and-spoon race you don't use a golf ball."

For the ignorant non-Scot, under haggis hurling rules, the dish is either thrown from one person to another until someone drops it, or the greatest distance without ruining it.

Trying to understand the Scot in the same way that I try, tomorrow, to understand the nature of giving birth, I came up with the following, beginning with that anthem, IMHO one of the best pieces of music ever used as an anthem, alongside maybe La Marseillaise:

“Those days are passed now
And in the past
They must remain
But we can still rise now
And be the nation again
That stood against him
Proud Edward's army
And sent him homeward
Tae think again.”

Why would a national song largely dwell on a terrible enemy rather than concern itself with its own greatness and the national ability to overcome all obstacles?

No matter, let’s move on.

‘It came with a lass and will pass with a lass.’ [James V]

Hmmm. I thought Macbeth had had something to do with it.

‘There are few more impressive sights in the worlds than a Scotsman on the make. [J.M. Barrie -1908]

I can well imagine although I’ve nae been wooed by a Scot, with the single exception of a Highland lass, Morag, I was once sweet on but that was me doing the wooing, bloody Sasenach.

‘Oh Caledonia! stern and wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child!’
[Scott – 1805]

That poetic child was certainly not Byron who ungraciously wrote, in 1812 [auspicious year otherwise]:

‘A land of meanness, sophistry and mist.’

Well, this blogger is not averse to bit of mist, especially Irish Mist and dear olde Eire will be the next subject in this ongoing series. An example is to the right here.

If I’ve breached copyright, forgive me, Mr. Lane and I’ll take her down immediately.

[retrospective legislation] today godwin, tomorrow ... you

Iain Dale takes one point of view on Our Fred and DK takes another.

Let me put it a third way.

The legacy of the Soviet Union bureaucracy is that whatever you do, wherever you go, you are illegal. Just by trying to make ends meet and live a normal life, you, by definition, break the law.

Now, the way the country gets around this is that having legally got you by the short-and-curlies, the law is by-and-large ignored. In the day to day running of things, it works semi-fine. However, if someone's a bit short of cash or whatever, the authority looks at you and says, 'Oh, you've broken the law.'

Your job is to now to rue your unlucky day, go across and say, 'Let's see if we can't sort this problem out.' This usually involves the transfer of a certain amount of cash or whisky or in lesser infractions, a large box of chocolates for his wife.

Everything goes back to normal and you hope to avoid anything like that the next time.

Now.

If you don't think someone has been punished enough, with a man named Fred Godwin, for argument's sake, who was encouraged anyway by another man we'll call, say, Gordon Brown, then to retrospectively decide to enact legislation to dock the man's pension, given that he has already made an agreement to forego his bonuses, is just plain immoral.

Worse than immoral, it is stupid. If the type of person who is the first to demand the death penalty in these sorts of situations, that enabling any sort of retrospective legislation and putting it into the hands of this lot in Westminster is a good idea, think again.

Thomas More, in that immortal Robert Bolt play pointed to just such an issue. If you go around tearing down the law or redrafting it to suit some moral outrage you currently feel, then when you have the devil cornered and he turns round and uses it on you, to whom will you have recourse?

You've left yourself wide open.

I suggest we think carefully before enabling anything which has a retrospective whiff to it and look to our own safety in the current onslaught taking us back to the new feudalism.

Hat/tip Lord T

[diamonds] and the yearning of an amethyst

How hopelessly soppy and romantic and brave for a man to reveal his heart. How lucky will 'she' be to stumble upon such a diamond.

Oh how I pine to be a diamond but sadly, I am but amethyst.

[enemies] there are some best not tackled

This ain't me ... yet. Still have to get home though.

Interesting day.

I'd just finished insulting [in the final chapters] the one entity in the world it's not advisable to insult and was making ready to have a bath when there was a knock on the door. They were turning all the water off for one hour.

Not to worry.

Went back to the desktop, Word had decided to close down and I lost half a chapter. plus suporting documentation.

I went into the kitchen to have a french toast when my reading glasses I'd forgotten to take off dropped, I tried to trap them with the leg as they fell, broke the frame and then went searching for the little screw which could put them back together. I got it all back in place and because of the coiled spring affect ... ping ... the little screw went flying.

French toast was all over the floor meantime and the brunch in the pan was burning.

You may or may not know that I bicycle to many places. The gears decided not to work today; the wind stopped me after a couple of hundred metres and I had to walk against it.

Doesn't pay to take on the metaphysical world. If I'm still around and haven't been skewered by my kitchen knife or whatever, I'll get back to you on this with an update.

[camerons] naturally

No one wishes this on anyone. Prayers and sympathy required.

[palestinian unity] post-apocalypse, methinks

Fat chance:

Egypt urged all Palestinian factions on Thursday to work on ending their internal chasm in reconciliation talks aimed at pushing rivals Hamas and Fatah to form an interim unity government.

Distrust between the groups runs deep after a power struggle including Hamas' violent takeover of Gaza in 2007, leaving Fatah in charge of only the West Bank. Tensions escalated further after Israel's three-week offensive in Gaza, designed to stop Hamas rocket fire into southern Israel.

Hamas claimed the government of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas ran a Gaza spy ring that fed Israel information about Hamas targets during the offensive that ended January 18. Abbas' Fatah accused Hamas of killing and wounding dozens of Fatah activists under the cover of the war.