A naturally selective anniversary

Charles Darwin in 1880 (photo from Wikipedia).

As noted by Afarensis, yesterday marked 148 years since the first time Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection was published, in a contribution to the proceedings of the Linnean Society in London.

Having developed, mulled over and collected evidence for his theory over a period of twenty-odd years, Darwin's hand was apparently forced by his receipt of a letter from Alfred Wallace, who had independently come to similar conclusions.

Before Stonewall...

I hadn't heard of the Compton's Cafe riot until I read on Gay.com that a plaque memorialising it was unveiled in San Francisco last week (shame on me).

Predating the Stonewall riots by three years, it prompted positive local community police liaison among other things. A 2005 film documents the events, as does this website.

Speaking of uncovering LGBT history, it was amazing to see Remember When's Rainbow City exhibition at the City Art Centre in my old home of Edinburgh when I revisited it the other weekend.

Apart from having had some minor early input in collecting the material used, it was an enriching experience to see the gay history of the city in which I lived for thirteen years celebrated in such a visible and well-executed way.

Now I'm just waiting for someone to buy me the book!

Happy St. George's day

April 23 - a day to remember the half Turkish, half Palestinian soldier of Imperial Rome who, according to early Christian legend, was tortured and beheaded for refusing to persecute fellow Christians but who was canonised by Pope Gelasius I for acts "known only to god" and later associated with dragon-slaying and princess-saving; who is now patron saint of Aragon, Canada, Cappadocia, Catalonia, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, Malta, Palestine, Portugal, Amersfoort, Beirut, Ferrara, Genoa, Gozo, Haldern, Heide, Istanbul, Limburg, Modica, Moscow, Ptuj and Venice, as well as of butchers, soldiers, Boy Scouts, archers, armourers, cavalry and chivalry, farmers and field workers, riders and saddlers, helper of those suffering from leprosy, plague and syphilis, and revered by some Muslims as al-Khadr.

An appropriate patron saint for England if ever there was.

An Ethiopian Orthodox priest displaying an antique bible with a depiction of St. George on horseback slaying a dragon (sacredsites.com)

Information from Wikipedia, the BBC and Catholic Community Forum.

The Easter Rising/Éirí Amach na Cásca

Today is the 90th anniversary of the Easter Rising, which took place largely in Dublin but that also involved smaller but similarly-spirited actions elsewhere in Ireland.

One of my grandfathers took part in one of these, armed only with farm implements, and was imprisoned for a time by the British because of it. A shipment of arms arranged from Germany through the US organisation Clan na Gael had been intercepted by the Royal Navy, though it may have been inadequate for the rising anyway.

One of my grandfather's own grandfathers in turn was English, as of course am I - such is the way of these islands.

The Easter Rising is one of the key events in the history of the British and Irish Isles, and a commemorative military parade has taken place in Dublin for the first time in 35 years, reported today by RTÉ News.

BBC Northern Ireland also has an article on observances there and in the Irish capital.

For more details about the original event, see the Irish Times' anniversary supplement and the BBC's history feature.

Opium to the people

See this article in today's Guardian for a Communists sell opium to the Chinese shock.

Something the British haven't done for a while ...

Cleveland Street scandal

I found out about this late 19th century sensation for the first time from a knowledgeable friend in Edinburgh last weekend, and was intrigued as it all took place a short walk from my home.

As first reported in the North London Press in September 1889, the police uncovered a male brothel on Cleveland Street in the West End in which telegraph boys had been recruited to have sex for money with aristocrats and other well-connected men.

The then second in line to the throne, Prince Eddy, was among those implicated, and there were rumours (some confirmed in ensuing court cases) that certain individuals had been allowed to leave the country so as not to expose those higher up the Victorian pecking order.

It's considered to have been one of the factors behind the moral backlash that ultimately led to the conviction of Oscar Wilde for 'gross indecency' in 1895, at the height of the naughty nineties.

...

Japanese imperialist atrocities, Chinese Communist lies

This morning, AP reports that a district court in Japan has rejected compensation claims by 45 Chinese men who were used as wartime slaves.

They were demanding US$9 million (US$8.5 million according to the BBC) from the government and two companies - Mitsubishi and Matsui Mining Co. - involved in taking them from their homes in China and into forced labour in Fukuoka between 1943 and the end of WWII.

One of the plaintiffs' lawyers says the case was ruled against despite recognising the wrongdoing due to a 20-year deadline for filing suits and because the current government shouldn't be held responsible for wartime leaders' actions.

A March 20 article by a Fukuoka Jo Gakuin University faculty member says Mitsubishi's defence had denied facts of forced labour accepted by courts hearing earlier cases, going so far as to question whether Japan had "invaded" China at all.

There have been many claims for compensation relating to Japan's war crimes against Chinese people (including forced labour, sex slavery, use of biological and chemical weapons and the Nanjing Massacre) progressing through its courts in recent years.

The great majority have been rejected for similar reasons, most notably that the government of China renounced all potential claims in exchange for aid in 1972's joint statement reestablishing relations between the two countries, though campaigners say this does not cover claims made by private citizens.

Shocking though the wartime atrocities committed by Japan are, I found the way they are perceived in China to be extremely warped by the lens of Communist misinformation, particularly among younger people.

Taught history has to conform to the Communist Party's narrative, portraying it as the saviour of the Chinese people and legitimating its authority over them.

As far as I could tell this results in a focus on the overlapping civil war and Japanese invasion, in which the Party's role in securing their own victory is exagerrated, and a brushing over of the millions who were killed and many more who suffered from Communist policies during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.

Whilst many of my older Chinese colleagues could contextualise Japan's crimes within history, those in their 20s, though educated, were either largely unaware of or disinterested in significant events between 1945 and Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms.

It is no coincidence that this is a generation so easily provoked into anti-Japanese demonstrations and violence over a textbook used in a small minority of Japanese schools with no reference to the books used universally in Chinese schools that whitewash Communist mass murder and lethal negligence under Mao Zedong.

Beijing Loafer talks about the reluctance of Chinese people to criticise a government that casts itself in a parental role, pandering to the misguided Confucian obsession with filial piety - contrasting sharply with the Communists' hackneyed demands for the Japanese government to "take history as a mirror and look forward to the future."

There does appear to be a huge amount of denial in Japan about its wartime actions, but repeatedly coming face to face with this hypocrisy in Beijing left me with little sympathy for those seeking compensation.

Instead, I (unfairly) began to see them simply as pawns used by the Party to help score points in wider strategies against its neighbour, keeping a check on its role in the UN and competing for natural resources.

Once again, the Chinese people are victims of their biggest real enemy: the Chinese government.

Crackers: forgotten but found

BBC News reports today, and Reuters yesterday, on the discovery under Brooklyn Bridge of a stash dating back forty years of "350,000 Civil Defense All Purpose Survival Crackers, medical kits and now-empty water drums."

Apart from prompting a string of "remember what the Cold War was like?" reveries, was anyone concerned that emergency supplies were so easily forgotten about?

And why on earth would its location still be considered secret (or have they simply already let this information slip from their minds again)?