Ghost of a flea: Gilt by association

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September 07, 2007

Gilt by association

Commenting to his own posted at the Belmont Club, Wretchard considers an important reason elites avoid war; Canada's former Primer Minister - with his family connections to French oil and his representing Canadian oil in its business dealings with Iran - slouches to mind.

Consider this: maybe the real reason to avoid war, even in self-defense, is the same reason the Tsarist Empire had reason to avoid war back in 1914. The necessity of never having to put the corrupt parts of the system to the test. The Great War showed up all the secret deals, all the seedy connections, all the unthinkable compromises into which the Russian elite had entered. The revelations the Great War laid bare discredited an entire ruling class.

By request of the Czar, Dr. H. H. Horne and his wife brought his X-ray apparatus to the palace of Nicholas II at St. Petersburg in the winter of 1898. "... according to Mrs. Horne, the equipment overloaded the palace’s electrical system, and she inadvertently bumped into the Czar in the darkness."

Tag-line and image of the hand of Nicholas II - The Lloyd E. Hawes Collection in the History of Radiology at the Harvard Medical Library.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at September 7, 2007 07:44 AM