The Fight against the Coronavirus Pandemic: Reflecting on the Numbers

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Geography, Media & Communications, Medical history, Natural Environment, Political geography, Public health,

The war against the coronavirus outbreak is indeed global, infecting to date 199 countries and territories and every continent with the possible exception of (largely and seasonally unpopulated) Antartica. Every day the apps on social media and the news broadcasts inform us of the rising tally of coronavirus cases and of the fatalities, but what we do know is that these totals do not convey a true picture of the populations affected by the virus. They are often an indicator only, a way of charting the trajectory of the elusive curve that every health service and provincial and national government strives to flatten.

Distribution of Covid-19 cases worldwide, 31-Mar-2020 (www.ecdc.europa.eu)

The complexity of the disease partly explains the inexactness. That being infected with coronavirus can be asymptomatic and remains recordable for those never tested, highlights this problem. On a country by country basis the uncertainty over numbers magnifies. Some countries (a lot in Africa for instance) have no or minimal records of testing, which is not the same as saying they have no coronavirus cases! The reason for this might lie in the fact these predominantly impoverished countries have not the wherewithal nor the infrastructure to test even significant numbers of the population, they simply can’t cope. Thus their true numbers are never ascertained. There are other countries in the world who are motivated by reasons other than capacity to report the incidence of infection and mortality, eg, a desire to mask the extent of the calamity for domestic or external purposes.

Geographical distribution of Covid-19 cases worldwide, 31-Mar-2020 (www.ecdc.europa.eu)

The media’s daily servings, the table of virus mortality and morbidity gives us the bare bones of the depth of the human catastrophe — Italy a disaster, Spain a disaster, China a disaster but seemingly over the hump, Iran shockingly bad, France shockingly bad, USA very bad but likely to become even more catastrophic, UK and Netherlands, both worsening, etc. But of equal curiosity is those countries positioned much lower on the ladder of gloom that stand out as demographic anomalies, their numbers almost too good to believe…indeed! Two such are Russia and India. Russia, a vast country with around 145 million people has fessed up to just 17 deaths⋇. On face value a result that would hearten the most pessimistic, but you have to wonder about the level of reportage? India, with 1.3 billion-plus people has so far recorded a mere 32 deaths⋇ (compared to Italy with 60 million people which has lost just shy of 11,600 lives⋇). With India, the lowness of the figure is overshadowed by the inevitability of magnification…the sheer mass of humanity confined within such an acute density of space means that for the substrata of Indians, the poorest classes, no matter how earnestly their prime minister entreats them, they simply cannot physically isolate themselves. The directive from on high to keep a “social distance” from others to ward off the virulent effect of the epidemic remains for the vast masses a pipe dream. That many, many of these unfortunate souls will not escape infection and worse—either recorded or unrecorded—remains inevitable.

At 26-Mar-2020 (Source: Newsweek Statista)

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⋇ as at 1515 hrs, Greenwich Mean-time, 31st March 2020, ‘Confirmed Cases and Deaths by Country, Territory, or Conveyance’, www.worldometers.info/

Hugo Boss, Gentlemen’s Outfitters to the German Nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Commerce & Business, International Relations, Military history, Racial politics, Regional History, Retailing history

Hugo Boss … luxury watches, fragrances, men’s suits and fashion wear and accessories, Nazi uniforms. Wait! Run that last one past me again? Yes, it’s true. Hugo Boss AG＊, that doyen of international fashion houses with annual revenue exceeding €2.7 billion (2018) and over 1,100 stores worldwide, provided the German Nazi Party, with their uniforms during (and prior to) the Third Reich. Although you wouldn’t know so from a perusal of the Hugo Boss website which keeps a firm lid on the company’s unsavoury past❂.

The clothing company was started in Metzingen (southern Germany) in 1924 by the eponymous Hugo (Ferdinand) Boss…it commenced supplying the NSDAP (National-Socialist Workers Party) with their brown military uniforms, according to the company’s own claim, in 1924 (the year in which Hugo Boss was founded)∅. Initially Boss designed and provided the standard Nazi brown-shirted outfits including Stürmabteilung (SA) uniforms,  Nazi workwear, and Hitler Youth uniforms. In the Depression Boss’s company was like many, many businesses severely hit and Boss was forced into bankruptcy in 1931. That year was momentous for another reason, HF Boss joined the Nazi Party, an event that was to turn his fortunes round dramatically. At the same time the failed businessman also joined the SS (Schutzstaffel) as a “sponsoring member”.

By appointment to the Führer
Membership of the party meant more contracts for Hugo Boss as a favoured supplier of Hitler. Under the Nazi dictatorship Boss’ sales grew from 38,260 RM in 1932 to 3,300,000 RM in 1941 (Timm). Boss’ motives for joining have been attributed to “economic opportunism” and its clear that he saw the business advantages of tying his colours to the Nazi flagship, but there’s equal little doubt that his commitment to the Nazi cause was heartfelt (a photo of him with the Führer was said to to be one of the tailor’s most prized possessions)❊ [‘Hugo Boss’ Secret Nazi History’, (Fashion and War), M2M, (video, YouTube)].

🔻A Boss ad placed in the SS newspaper

Nazi fashionistas
From 1937 on, the relationship acquired an exclusivity, Hugo Boss made clothing only for the Nazis, including the black uniforms worn by the elite Nazi force, the SS (Boss didn’t design the uniforms worn by Himmler’s SS Corps, two party members unconnected to the company designed them). Boss continued to heavily advertise his fashions in the SS newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps, and fashionably chic the uniforms were! One of the pillars of the Nazis’ ideology was the pseudo-scientific belief in Aryan superiority, this involved showing the world what the “new man” looks like. There was no finer exemplar of this than the Wehrmacht military man, and this is where Boss provided the finishing touches. The firm’s stylish, sharply cut uniforms conveyed the desired outer appearance, the SS corporate identity that Hitler and the Nazis wanted to project to the world (Fashion and War).

HB as slave-labour drivers
From 1940 Boss used slave labour at it’s Metzingen textile factory, predominantly comprising women and later supplemented by the infusion of Polish and French POWs. The company  (sans it’s founder), after decades of dodging accusations, finally came clean about it’s shameful Nazi collaboration, after being pressured into issuing a mea culpa in 1997 for the gross mistreatment of the workers. Later the corporation commissioned a book on it’s dark past association❏ [‘“Hitler’s Tailor” Hugo Boss apologises for using slave labour to make Nazi uniforms’, (Lauren Paxman), Daily Mail, 24-Sep-2011, www.dailymail.co.uk].

(Source: www.militaryuniforms.net/Pinterest)

A discounted form of justice
After the war Boss was tried along with other German collaborators by a regional Denazification tribunal. The man known as “Hitler’s Tailor” claimed in his defence that he only joined the Nazi Party to save his firm. The court found Boss to have been a “beneficiary of the system” and fined him 100,000 RM, made him sever all connexions with his own firm and stripped him of the right to vote, join a political party or professional organisation. However, on appeal, the fine was reduced by 75%, the other restrictions were lightened and his culpability was downgraded to ‘follower’ of the regime. Before the findings could be ratified by the French Military Government and the punishments imposed, Boss died in 1948 (Timm).

(Photo: Hutton-Deutsh Collection/Corbis/Getty Images)

Endnote: Supping with the 卐 devil
Hugo Boss AG was far from the only company to profitably cohabitate with Hitler and the NSDAP. The list of big corporations doing mutually advantageous business was extensive, both within Germany and outside  – including Volkswagen, Bayer, Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Kodak, Ford, General Motors, IBM, Siemens, Chase National Bank and Associated Press [‘Companies with Ties to Nazi Germany’, (Debra Kelly), Grunge, (Upd.17-Dec-2019), www.grunge.com].

┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷┷

＊ Aktiengesellschaft (German limited company)

❂ either that or trying to conceal or gloss over the inconvenient truth of the corporation’s history, eg, “in the 1930s it produced uniforms for various(sic) parties around the time of the world war”, www.bangandstrike.com

∅ the firm’s advertising in the 1930s stated that it was a “supplier of National Socialist uniforms since 1924”, however research suggest that this overstates by four years the length of Boss’ association with Hitler and the Nazis [Elisabeth Timm, ‘Hugo Ferdinand Boss (1885-1948) und die Firma Hugo Boss: Eine Dokumentation’, (Metzingen Zwangsarbeit – Forced Labour), MA Thesis, 1999]

❊ it was a ‘reunion’ of the two humble German corporals from World War I

❏ author Roman Koester wrote: “it’s clear that (Boss) did not just join the party out of economic calculation…he was a convinced Nazi” (Hugo Boss, 1924-1945. A Clothing Factory During the Weimar Republic and Third Reich)

The COVID-19 Crisis: Are We Creating a Whole Generation of New Scofflaws?

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Environmental, Literary & Linguistics, Medical history, Public health,

Scofflaw: (n) as neologisms go, the word scofflaw has an interesting back story. It is a portmanteau word, derived by combining scoff + law. Scofflaw’s origin came about in 1923 when Massachusetts banker Delcevare King offered up a prize of $200 in gold to the American public for the best word which described “the lawless drinker”.. America being knee-deep in the era of Prohibition at the time and King being one of Prohibition’s greatest zealots. The winning entry (in fact ‘entries’, as two separate entrants submitted the same word), came from Henry Irving Dale and Kate L Butler (who herself was a Anti-Saloon Leaguer) who shared the prize. ‘Scofflaw’ beat a field of over 25,000 entries which included ‘boozocrat’ and ‘boozshevik’ (“DELCEVARE KING, BANKER, 89 DEAD; Prohibitionist’s Contest Led to Coining of ‘Scofflaw’ “, New York Times, 22-Mar-1964; “Ken Burns & Lynn Novick: Prohibition”, PBS, broadcast 2011, www.pbs.org). So, it’s original meaning was someone who drinks illegally (earning the opprobrium of prohibitionists like Mr King) or someone who mocks (scoffs) or ridicules anti-drinking laws. Over time scofflaw was extended to mean “a person who flouts the law, especially by failing to comply with a law that is difficult to enforce effectively”…in the US since the 1950s the word has largely been applied to individuals who habitually violate laws of a less serious, non-criminal nature, especially traffic violations (‘Scofflaw’ Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/; www.thefreedictionary.com/).

Prohibition: confiscating barrels of illegal grog in America (Source: Pinterest)

As part of the government mantra directed towards us home-front civilians in the war on coronavirus, we are asked by our leaders, entreated even, to practice safe social distancing. In the early days of the war against the invisible biological enemy we were told to immediately implement social distancing from others at all times. Later this was quantified and codified – 1.5 metres distance outdoors from others, no congregations of people of more than 500, indoors a four to one ratio, no more than 25 people in a room 100 square metres. And yet at the same time—this is where the mixed messaging starts to gain traction—we were told we can keep using public transport to go to work or school or uni or TAFE. So we pile onto crowded buses, trains and LRVs like the George Street ‘Snail’, at peak time. We shop in scarcity-hit supermarkets teeming with increasingly chaotic shoppers, we sit in class rooms and cafés and pubs and restaurants, or line up in the ever-lengthening queues of the recently unemployed outside Centrelink offices – in all instances numerically and spatially infringing the prescribed limits✱. We should all, even the politicians, shout as one – “I’m a violator!” All of us at some point have been or will be violators – by design or default!

Bondi: defying the coronavirus warnings (Source: AAP)

Scofflaws and recusants of the world unite!And what of those other violators of social distancing in this time of pestilence, the beach-going masses whose capers—from Sydney all the way to Florida—the media have revelled in? The beach-goers at Bondi and other popular summer-time beaches who are either indifferent or wilfully tone-deaf to the authorities’ daily mantra of abstinence or are pleading ignorance of the messages on the grounds of being Generation X, Y, Z, Millennials, Xennials (or whatever term you prefer) and therefore invincible. We can add peripatetic domestic tourists currently roaming around the country to the list of sloth-minded transgressors. Whether the violators are blatantly snubbing their noses at society and authority or are forced by circumstance into breaking the government’s edicts, the trajectory of the crisis suggests that a new generation of scofflaws is in the making. These multitudes, theses new scofflaws or recusants, some with a very deliberate rationale of defiance, will undoubtably continue to breach government warnings and (now) rules on social distancing and contact as the crisis continues⊞, replacing the traditional notion we have of scofflaws – unrepentant recidivists who accumulate unpaid parking fines or debts, ignore summonses or graffiti public or private property.

Given the sheer impossibility of compelling all citizens to maintain social distances in public (considering the scale of the enterprise and the limitations of the enforcement agencies), it will probably come down to the will and commitment of governments and bureaucracies to enforce these rules. The stick is already out…the NSW police minister has announced that individuals breaching the social distancing guidelines will be instantly fined $1,000 or even jailed (this second option however is highly implausible in the present health climate which sees the country’s prisons under fire for crowding too many inmates in together!) (‘Breaking social distancing rules will lead to on-the-spot fines of $1,000’, ABC News, 25-Mar-2020, www.abcnews.com.au). Tough talk✬ but it remains to be seen how thoroughly this threat to act will be prosecuted or how practical it will be to implement. You can also expect the civil libertarians of the community to come out in earnest support of the Covid scofflaws, defending to the last adjective their right to freedom of movement. Watch this space.

Footnote: Of course the opposite could also happen – if recent reports of public reactions to self-isolation are an indication. We may witness a whole lot of people coming out of the woodwork, channeling their inner Oliver Cromwell and dobbing in their scofflaw neighbours to the local constabulary for breaching their two week home quarantine.

Postscript: Tips for occupying some of the 960 minutes a day of stay-at-home time you are awake

The more realistic and level-headed of us who are not still spending our days at the beach (yes there are scofflaws still trying to circumvent the barriers now in place at popular beaches) are hunkering down for the long haul during the pandemic. So if you are looking for some light reading material while in mandatory hibernation for the winter, there’s always that classic allegory of unrelentingly grim reality, Camus’ The Plague☌, or if you want something more apocalyptically contemporary, try The Road or Station Eleven.

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✱ even more unfathomably bizarre, after the latest round of war cabinet lockdowns, is the circumstance of hairdressers and barbers – they have been allowed to stay open and serve the public, whilst still observing the 1.5 m gap. How that will be expected happen remains a mystery to all except the inner workings of the war cabinet I surmise (robotic arms and 150cm-long scissors may be the answer!)

⊞ the best the government can hope for is to minimise the non-compliance of this cohort so that the numbers of them who are infected and the numbers that they infect are kept as low as possible

✬ certainly a considerably more substantial deterrent than the drop in the ocean £30 Boris has announced he’ll fine scofflaw Britons

☌ incidentally, sales of Camus’ book about a disease-infested 1940s Algerian town have soared during the pandemic (The Economist, April 2020)

The Struggle for California’s “White Gold”: The Making of LA’s Modern Metropolis

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Environmental, Natural Environment, Popular Culture, Regional History


In 1900 the population of Los Angeles was 102,479, the 36th largest city in the USAⓐ. A couple of years into the new century the name Hollywood resonated only as a hotel, Hollywood’s legendary preeminence as the epicentre of the world’s film industry was still over a decade away. Nonetheless the city’s growing numbers were already putting pressure on the water supplies. LA’s location on a water-poor, semi-arid plane magnified those pressures. A lack of rainfall and groundwater and droughts was making the situation worse (‘The Los Angeles Aqueduct and the Owens and Mono Lakes’ (MONO Case), Case No 379, (TED Case Studies), www.web.archive.org).

Mulholland in the valley (Photo: LA Times)

A couple of ambitious engineers in the city’s water company (later the LA Board of Water and Power)—Fred Eaton (also the LA mayor) and William Mulholland—cast their eyes round for a more reliable source of water to accommodate Los Angeles’ continued growth and development. The solution lay to the northeast, in the Owens River Valley which backs on to the Sierra Nevada mountain ranges. If Los Angeles owned the land here the water could be diverted to the city. The obstacle was that this was farming land with hundreds and hundreds of farmers legally ensconced on small plot-holders. The farmers’ land-holdings also gave them water rights and they had their own agenda regarding the Owens valley, they were backing a national valley reclamation project to irrigate the valley farmlands.

Mulholland (pointing), with members of his syndicate (Photo credit: www.latimes.com)

It was former mayor Eaton who started the ball rolling, at the same time setting the ethical standard for Mulholland, by securing options on riparian lands under the pretense of establishing cattle ranches (Marian L Ryan, ‘Los Angeles Newspapers Fight the Water War, 1924-1927’, Southern California Quarterly, 50(2) (June 1968)). Soon Mulholland was driving the scheme and the Los Angeles water authority set about buying up as much of the land around the Owens River as they could. Mulholland, Eaton and other local business notables including Harrison Gray Otis and Henry Huntingdon formed a business cabal which became known as the San Fernando Syndicate. The syndicate allegedly used inside knowledge (the plan to build a aqueduct connecting the valley to the city) to buy up land that would become highly profitable (‘William Mulholland’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org).

Cottonwood Creek diversion conduct and Owens Lake in background (wwww.owensvalleyhistory.com)

Mulholland’s vision for LA’s prosperity was dependent on the monopolisation of the valley’s water, but he was completely unscrupulous in the way he went about it, “employ(ing) chicanery, subterfuge, spies, bribery, a campaign of divide-and-conquer, and a strategy of lies” to secure the water LA needed (‘Reading Los Angeles.: Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert’, (Christopher Hawthorne), LA Times, 29-Jun-2011,  www.latimesblogs.latimes.com). The cagey, Belfast-born Mulholland deceived Owens Valley farmers and also misled the Angelenos as well by grossly understating the quantity of water that would be taken for LA.

Route of the LA aqueduct (Image: www.owensvalleyhistory.com)

The syndicate, from 1905 on, bought up strategic parcels of land piecemeal in the valley (by 1928 90% of the water rights were in Mulholland’s hands). The City of Los Angeles meanwhile built a 375km-long aqueduct (completed in 1913) to siphon off the water from the Owens River. Some of the water was diverted to irrigate the San Fernando Valley but most went via the aquifer to service the needs of the LA metropolis. (‘The Water Fight That Inspired “Chinatown”’, Felicity Barringer, 25-Apr-2012, (Green),  www.green.blogs.nytimes.com).

The problem with the proposed Owens Valley Reclamation Project, which had it gone ahead would have stymied Mulholland’s plans, was already taken care of. Mulholland through his political connexions in Washington lobbied the US president, Theodore Roosevelt, who squashed the project (‘The Los Angeles Aqueduct’). This was viewed by the farm settlers as a public act of betrayal (‘The Valley of Broken Hearts’, C.E. Kunze, The San Francisco Call (1924), in ‘Owens Valley’s – Los Angeles Aqueduct’, (Owens Valley), www.owensvalleyhistory.com). In time the Owens Valley farmers amd ranchers realised the enormity of the threat to them…by 1926 Owens Lake was completely dry. Frustrated, angered and rebellious, they attempted to retaliate through acts of sabotage, in 1924 blowing up the aqueduct. Mulholland responded by calling in armed guards, conflicts occurred and tensions ran high over water access. A second flashpoint occurred when Owens Valley activists aided by a local scofflaw element commandeered the Alabama Gates section of the aqueduct resulting in a four-day standoff. Afterwards Mulholland hired Pinkerton private detectives to track the ‘culprits’ and ‘ringleaders’. Other incidents escalated the conflict including more dynamiting of the infrastructure in 1927ⓑ (‘The Water War that Polarized 1920s California’, (Gary Krist), Literary Hub, 17-May-2018,  www.lithub.com ; ‘New Perspectives on the West’, ‘William Mulholland (1855-1935)’, www.pbs.org).

Detectives investigating the scene (Photo: LA Times)

Mulholland eventually came out on top in the ‘war’ due to a combination of factors, “determination and deceit” on his part, but also because the Inyo County Bank folded , taking with it most of the ranchers and farmers’ savings. Personally for Mulholland though, he had just a modicum of time to savour his victory. In 1928 the collapse of St Francis Dam cost nearly 500 lives and caused widespread devastation of property and crops. As he had been project engineer, Mulholland was blamed for the disaster and forced to resign in disgrace (‘New Perspectives’, PBS). By 1930 the handful of remaining farm-owners, with unviable land having lost their irrigating water—the “white gold” as they called it—and confronted with droughts, their only one recourse was ultimately enforced migration (Kunze, ‘Owens Valley’).

Mono Basin, Cal.

The Los Angeles Water Department (even after Mulholland’s esclipse) continued the search for new sources of water, one scheme sought to extend the LA aqueduct to the Mono Basin. Local farmers after eventually realising that Mono Lake was staring down the same fate as Owens Lake, took action to save it from destruction (‘Mono Lake’)ⓒ.

The Los Angeles water authority’s and Mulholland’s diverting of the Owens River and the incorporation of the San Fernando Valley into LA’s municipal boundaries, paved the way for LA’s eventual growth into a mega-sized city by any standardsⓓ (Hawthorne). But this achievement was at devastating and irreparable cost to the Owens Valley environment which became no longer viable as a farming community… the Owens River was reduced to a trickle and the Owens Lake ecosystem destroyed (Barringer).

Endnote: Chinatown backdrop

The story of the LA water wars and the Californian “water czar” William Mulholland’s machinations inspired the 1974 cult neo-noir mystery film Chinatown. Polanski’s film uses the historic 1920s conflicts as backdrop for a fictional detective story in which the persona of the larger-than-life Mulholland is represented by two characters: the visionary and straight dealing Hollis Mulwray, and the Machiavellian über-schemer Noah Cross (Barringer).

ᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽ

ⓐ ‘Population of the 100 Largest Urban Places: 1900’. United States Census Bureau, June 15, 1998
ⓑ prompting LA newspaper of the day The Gridiron to report that “Civil War Threatened” as “L.A. Faces Water Famine”, (11-Jun-1927)
ⓒ Mulholland and Los Angeles also looked at tapping into the Colorado River to replenish the city’s water supplies but this proved logistically too difficult even for Mulholland
ⓓ 9,000,000 people by 1994