When and if Barack Obama takes the oath of office as President of the United States, who most will he owe that high privilege to?

According to Alexandre Adler, one of France’s leading historians, journalists - and according to many - a neocon, that person would be George W. Bush. Read the rest of this entry »

Unbelievable? It has emerged that Barack Obama is a tenth cousin, once removed, of the man whose job he wants - George W Bush. The New England Historic Genealogical Society, founded in 1845, claims that the politicians’ ancestries show they have more in common than they think. The society is the oldest and biggest non-profit genealogical organisation in the United States.

The society has established that Bush and Obama are linked by Samuel Hinkley of Cape Cod, who died in 1662, reports the BBC. Obama is also a distant cousin of the actor Brad Pitt while Hillary Clinton is related to Mr Pitt’s girlfriend, Angelina Jolie.

“The ties of the US Democratic rivals were established by a respected US genealogical organisation after three years’ investigation. Obama’s political lineage includes not just President Bush but also Gerald Ford, Lyndon Johnson, Harry S Truman, Dick Cheney and Winston Churchill.

“Hillary Clinton’s distant cousins include the singers Madonna, Celine Dion and Alanis Morisette, as well as the beatnik author Jack Kerouac and Prince Charles’s wife, Camilla Parker-Bowles. She and Angelina Jolie are ninth cousins, twice removed. They are both related to one Jean Cusson, who died in St Sulpice, Quebec, in 1718.”

Here is the complete BBC story…

Does anyone remember the old classic song “Kissin’ Cousins”? Who was the singer? Now we have quarreling cousins…what?

The Gazette co-blogger Pieter Dorsman published a post recently about Bush telling Robert Draper that if he would’ve continued to drink as much as he did, he wouldn’t have been able to make the difficult decision he had to made (with regards to the Iraq War). Pieter rightfully pointed out that Winston Churchill drank a lot but still was able to make good decisions.

The great Andrew Sullivan linked to Pieter’s post, so it got quite some hits and comments (from people who normally don’t visit the blog). Some of them seem to have thought that Pieter argued that the more one drinks, the better decisions one makes. Of course, that’s not what he meant at all, he meant something else. To read what he was hinting at, please read his follow-up.

From the Headquarters of Sir Winston Churchill
near Blenheim Palace
May 3, 2007

Dear President Bush,

Just this my dear man:
“Let us learn our lessons…
Never believe any war will be smooth and easy…
or that anyone who embarks
on that strange voyage
can measure the tides
and hurricanes he will encounter.

“The statesman who yields to war-fever
must realize that once the signal is given,
he is no longer the master
of policy but the slave
of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events…
incompetent or arrogant commanders,
untrustworthy allies,
hostile neutrals,
malignant fortune,
ugly surprise,
awful miscalculations….

“…Always remember, however sure you are
that you could easily win,
that there would not be a war
if the other man did not think
he also had a chance.”

Yours Sincerely,
Winnie

(Sir Winston Churchill quote contained in article “This Time It’s Our War, by Leonard Fein, in The Jewish Daily FORWARD.)

Open Letter to President George W. Bush from Sir Winston Churchill on the Anniversary of “Mission Accomplished,” from manuscript, “Speaking From the Grave on Recent Grave Matters,”© 2007, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved, is printed here under Creative Commons License by which author grants permission to copy, distribute and transmit this particular work under the conditions that the use be non-commercial, that the work be used in its entirety and not altered, added to, or subtracted from, and that it be attributed with author’s name and this full copyright notice. For other uses, contact copyright holder.

Jules Crittenden has another great historical post up. Today Jules commemorates the battle of Gallipoli, which took place in 1915 and was a disaster for the British, and, more specifically, for Winston Churchill. Churchill, of course, was force to resign as First Lord of the Admiralty.

Jules highlights another aspect of this battle:

The deaths of thousands of diggers at Gallipoli became a galvanizing event that helped establish a sense of nationhood for Australia, which until recently had been a British colony. A controversial event in which some see Australia as the victim of imperial Britain and others as an early example of Australian spirit in the face of adversity and a willingness to act in the world, at a time when Australia’s security and economy were in large part linked to great powers elsewhere, as they are today.

Today, this small nation of 20 million on the other side of the world, with total air, land and sea forces of about 50,000, puts many nations to shame with its willingness to engage. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq again. Timor and the Marshalls. As Foreign Minister Alexander Downer put it several years ago, Australia is not subject to the popular multinationalism of the lowest common denominator, but has stepped up to play its role.

Next follow some personal accounts of what happened at Gallipoli. Go to Jules’ place to read them, they’re fascinating. Also read the Wikipedia entry on this famous battle.

The battle of Gallipoli left huge marks in the psyches of, indeed, New Zealand and Australia, but also in the national psyche of Turkey. As the entry at Wikipedia explains:

In Turkey, the battle is seen as one of the finest and bravest moments in the history of the Turkish people - a final surge in the defense of the motherland as the centuries-old Ottoman Empire was crumbling; which laid the grounds for the Turkish War of Independence and the foundation of the new Turkish Republic eight years later, led by Atatürk, a commander in Gallipoli himself.

Also be sure to read Shaun’s post on, what the Australians call, Anzac Day.

Cross posted at my own blog.