As we approach the bicentenial of the British naval victory over Napoleon's forces at Trafalgar, someone in the British bureaucracy has seen fit to dishonor Lord Nelson and his men at the official commemoration.

Instead of the British taking on a French/Spanish fleet at next month's event to mark the battle's bicentenary a "red" force will take on a "blue".

Navy organisers fear visiting officials may be embarrassed at seeing their side beaten, The Sunday Times reported.

Portsmouth MP Mike Hancock said an event which did not acknowledge who the enemy was is "absolute twaddle".

The Lib Dem MP said: "If we are going to re-enact it we should do it properly. I am sure the French do not pull any punches when they celebrate Napoleon's victories.

"The French will be there - let's not rub it in but at least be accurate. I see no reason why we should not be out there proud as punch proclaiming it."

He said it was unlikely the decision was made by a serving naval officer and concluded it must have been "a faceless bureaucrat somewhere who thinks their next posting might be in Paris."

One event sponsor said: "Surely 200 years on we can afford to gloat a bit."

"Not even the French can try and get snooty about this."

Official literature for the event refers to "an early 19th-century sea battle" instead of the Battle of Trafalgar, The Sunday Times said.

You must be freakin' joking. Not offend the French? Why commemorate the battle at all, if you don't want to note its name and the respective sides that took part in it. That would have been like commemorating the end of WWII without noting who won, who lost, and who committed a genocide second only to that perpetrated in the name of Communism.

What next? Signs by the roadside that say "On this site, on thus and such a date, something really interesting happened, but we don't dare tell you what it was for fear of offending someone."

Nelson's exploits, including this last battle, made him the model for generations of British naval officers. If you cannot accurately commemorate one of his greatest victories -- the one in which he gave his life for his country -- then why bother with the commemoration at all.

Besides -- the French have been getting their asses kicked regularly since at least the Battle of Agincourt. I'm sure they are used to being reminded of it by now.

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When Charles Bieger, a St. Louis trunk salesman, died in 1930, he was buried beneatha family headstone that bore only his last name. Nothing more indicated that this man was decorated for heroism during the Civil War.

There is now a new tombstone on his grave.

I encourage folks to read the article, as it talks about some fine people who work to make sure that every Medal of Honor winner has his heroism commemorated. It also provides a really interesting bit of history about the award.

But the most interesting part of the article is this.

Descendants of Bieger don't know why his grave wasn't marked. The Post-Dispatch obituary on Bieger mentions the medal in its headline and says he was buried with military honors.

Surviving evidence also suggests that Bieger was modest about his bravery. An article on his exploits that was published in 1927, when he was 83, notes that the reporter had to keep directing the interview back to the fateful battle. Bieger wanted to talk about how he helped police crack open an old trunk that was used to hide a body in a notorious murder downtown.

"It required about 27 direct questions to worm this interesting information out of the veteran," reporter Robertus Love noted in his article in the old St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

Bieger, a native of Wiesbaden, Germany, immigrated to St. Louis with his family in 1857 and joined the Union cavalry in 1862. He was 19 when he accompanied an unsuccessful thrust from Memphis, Tenn., into Mississippi in February 1864.

The column was supposed to meet Gen. William T. Sherman's infantry at the rail junction of Meridian, Miss. But halfway there, the cavalry ran into a force led by the wily Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest.

On Feb. 22, 1864, the two sides fought a series of galloping clashes near Okolona, Miss. At Ivey's Hill, nine miles northwest of town, Capt. Frederick Hunsen was unhorsed and surrounded.

Bieger rode through gunfire, offered his horse to Hunsen and steadied the captain's wounded mount. Together they fled to safety.

The fight was a Confederate victory. The cavalry limped back to Memphis, forcing Sherman to withdraw from Meridian.

"Forrest licked us that day. Licked us good and plenty," Bieger said in 1927.

He returned to St. Louis after the war ended and eventually opened a trunk shop at Broadway and Market Street. (Forrest returned to Tennessee, where he briefly served as the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.)

In 1895, Hunsen wrote a letter detailing Bieger's exploits. Congress awarded him the Medal of Honor in 1897.

T learn more about the Congressional Medal of honor and the heroes whose actions are honored with the nation's highest military honor, visit the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.

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They've sent the USS America to the bottom.

The Navy sent the retired USS America aircraft carrier to its final resting place at the bottom of the sea Saturday, in a closely guarded series of explosions that the Navy didn't announce until days later.

The 84,000-ton, 1,048-foot warship, which served the Navy for 32 years, thus became the first U.S. carrier to be sunk since 1951, and the largest warship ever sunk.

"Explosions were internal to the ship and allowed a controlled flooding," said Pat Dolan, a spokeswoman with the Naval Sea Systems Command. She declined to say where the ship now sits, except that it was 50 nautical miles - or about 58 miles - off the coast, and more than 6,000 feet below the surface.

The Navy previously said the final explosions would be off North Carolina.

Before it sank, it also served as a target for a series of explosions over 25 days designed to help in the making of the of the Navy's next generation carrier, the CVN-21, now being designed at the Northrop Grumman Newport News shipyard.

It is always a sad thing to see such vessels go into the great beyond. Not every ship can be saved as a museum, though there was hope for USS America. I have to say I agree fully with this former member of the ship's crew.

"Very depressing," said Lee McNulty, a New Jersey resident and president of the USS America Foundation, which wanted to turn the ship into a museum. "Not a day goes by that I don't think about it. I just can't believe that she sunk. She's gone. Of all the carriers, that one should have been saved, just for the name of the America."

Before she the last explosions were detonated, the ship was given an appropriate farewell.

"A solemn moment of silence was held as the aircraft carrier ex-America slipped quietly beneath the waves," Dolan told the USS America Carrier Veterans Association on Monday. "We thank and honor all the veterans of the USS America who lived and fought for freedom and democracy aboard this majestic vessel."

Farewell, USS America. We honor you, and those who served aboard you.

USS America Museum Foundation

USS America Carrier Veterans Foundation

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I can just make her out in the distance, a gray hulk in the mist, as I drive to and from school each day. She is a presence – a reminder of what once was.

I would certainly hate to lose this beautiful old lady.

This old warship was at the surrender of the German fleet during World War I and withstood torpedoes at Omaha Beach in France on D-Day. Long moored in a berth at the Houston Ship Channel, the Battleship Texas is now a floating tourist attraction, and a badly leaking one at that.

Time and corrosive saltwater are slowly destroying the vessel once called the world's most powerful weapon, and cash-strapped conservators are scrambling to secure funding for an overhaul before it's too late.
"It's been rusting for 90 years," ship curator Barry Ward said. "It isn't going to fall apart tomorrow, but the longer you avoid a major repair, the harder it will be to repair the damage that's already been done."

A proposal to use $16 million in federal highway funds for ship repairs passed through a conference committee of the state Legislature this month. If lawmakers vote to approve the funds, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, which maintains the vessel, will start work on a dry dock that could feature a cradle capable of lifting the 34,000-ton ship out of the water permanently.

"However [the dock] is designed, this ship is part of our cultural history and it deserves to be saved," said Steve Whiston, director of the parks department's infrastructure division. "There's not another one like it left."

The Texas, commissioned in 1914, is the last surviving dreadnought battleship — a ship design that features large weapons of the same caliber, allowing for more concentrated blasts of fire. It is the only remaining U.S. battleship to survive two world wars, and is a microcosm of the technology of the era, Ward said.

"Her career spans the earliest days of flight through the nuclear age," he said.

Decommissioned in 1948, the ship was brought here by "Texans who couldn't stand the thought of a warship with the name 'Texas' on it being sunk as fodder during nuclear testing," Ward said.

It was docked south of Houston at the San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site, the location of an 1836 battle that led to Texas' independence from Mexico.

As a result, numbers of confused children have asked whether Sam Houston fought Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna from the bow of a battleship. "We inherited the location," Ward said. "We don't do public monuments that way anymore. It's up to educators to teach students that the ship wasn't at the battle of San Jacinto. Otherwise it's just a jungle gym to them."

It's unlikely the Texas will be moved elsewhere, in part because conservators are unsure whether the fragile ship can withstand a sea voyage. "It's risky because of the stress of the tow, the cross currents and the waves," Ward said.

The ship was last towed to a dry dock in 1988 for a $12-million renovation of the hull — the first in 40 years. State lawmakers later approved an additional $12 million in bonds for ship maintenance but did not provide the money to issue the bonds. Ward hopes the federal highway money tentatively approved this month will lead to badly needed repairs.

The hull should be repaired every 10 or so years for damage caused by water, Ward said. "It's like changing the oil in your car — it's something that should be done regularly. But I would advocate getting her out of the water permanently so the state of Texas would never have to pay for that kind of cyclical repair again. We're going for a cure, not a Band-Aid."

Floating next to refineries and oil storage tanks, the 573-foot dark blue battleship looks startlingly out of place, but it is a popular field trip destination. Last week, a busload of seventh-graders climbed aboard and quickly scattered into nooks and crannies.

"I love ships," said Ariel Barron, 13. "You can read about them in a book, but it's better to see with your own eyes how things used to be."

Cheyenne Dutton said he was on his third field trip to the battleship. Each time he visits, he said, "something else is closed off. I wish they'd fix everything so we can see all of it."

Cheyenne nimbly climbed a ladder and stopped in front of a locked door. "See, we can't go in there," he said. "I think it stinks."

IÂ’m with you, Cheyenne. We need to save this grand old ship, the last of her breed.

You can help.

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I’ve taken heat in a number of forums for agreeing with President Bush that the agreement to permit/accept (you pick the word – it’s a difference that makes no difference) Soviet domination of Eastern Europe that was wrong.

Setting aside those who call me a blind right-wing ideologue (usually blind left-wing Alger Hiss-wannabes who would have supported Stalin), IÂ’ve been accused of not accepting the fact that Eastern Europe was already in Soviet hands at the time, or wanting to fight another war that would have been long, drawn out, and possibly nuclear.

Those who say that are wrong.

Jonah Goldberg quite clearly sums up my attitude in todayÂ’s column.

It's ironic: Liberals celebrated Bill Clinton's numerous apologies for America's Realpolitik "mistakes" during the Cold War as a sign of great statesmanship. But when an apology reflects poorly on the mistake that basically launched the Cold War, they bang their spoons on their highchairs about any attempt to tarnish FDR's godhood.

This raises the larger moral point. After a war to end one evil empire, we signed a piece of paper accepting the expansion of another evil empire. And it happened at Yalta.

When all is said and done, we can debate forever the practicality of Roosevelt and ChurchillÂ’s decision to ally with Stalin, HitlerÂ’s former ally, after he was betrayed in the summer of 1941. We can debate whether it was proper to allow Stalin to achieve every bit of what he was promised in his treaty with Hitler and more. But what cannot be debated by anyone with a love for freedom is that the result of these decisions was half a century of oppression by Stalin and his heirs. IsnÂ’t that alone worth a few words of regret?

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More proof that Putin's Russia is continuing the descent back towards the sort of oppressive government that marked the Communist era. One of history's most bloody dictators is being honored with a new statue.

AN enthusiastic crowd gathered for the unveiling of a new statue of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in the Siberian district of Mirny ahead of massive Russian commemorations of the defeat of Nazi Germany 60 years ago.

Dignitaries and thousands of local residents gathered for the ceremony in the eastern Siberian republic of Yakutia-Sakha, laying flowers beneath the monument to the wartime leader credited with helping vanquish Nazi Germany in World War II but reviled by critics for his bloody treatment of his own people.

"We have erected a monument to a great son of Russia who gave everything he had to his nation, his love and his dedication, without receiving anything in return," Mirny's mayor Anatoly Popov was quoted by Ria-Novosti news agency as saying.

"He died without a ruble in his pocket, without a bank account, without good furniture or buildings."

The new statue is the latest sign of Stalin's resurgent popularity among some Russians.

Utterly disgusting! What next-- statues of Hitler in Germany, honoring the dedication of the Fuhrer to the Fatherland?

I'd like to paraphrase the greatest American leader of the 20th Century.

Mr. Putin -- tear down this statue!

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There are some matters that are so clearly established inhistory that their denial is patently absurd. One of those is the historical fact that the Soviet Union illegally occupied and annexed the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in 1940, and then again following World War II.

Russia has denied it illegally annexed the Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia in 1940.

It has also rejected demands to admit illegally occupying the three countries at the end of World War II.

A Kremlin spokesman said Soviet troops were deployed with the agreement of the Baltic governments of the time.

Correspondents say the annexation issue has provoked a major diplomatic row as Russia prepares to host celebrations to mark the end of World War II in Europe.

Soviet authority was established in the Baltics in 1940.

German forces then held the states from 1941 until the Soviet army returned in 1945.

Russia has made defiant remarks on the issue of the occupation.

"There was no occupation. There were agreements at the time with the legitimately elected authorities in the Baltic countries," the Kremlin's European affairs chief Sergei Yastrzhembsky said on Thursday.

I guess i shouldn't be surprised by this stubborn refusal of the Putin government to concede the error of Russia's ways at the time of the Second World War. After all, Putin is a former KGB official and an admirer of Stalin, who has been undergoing something of a rehabilitation recently.

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IsnÂ’t Egyptology fun. It seems like there is always something new and interesting to find when you deal with a civilization that spanned three millennia! Even though this is from a relatively late period of Egyptian history (I'm not sure if it is Ptolemaic or if it is slightly earlier, given the date in question) , it is still fascinating.

SAQQARA, Egypt (AP) - A superbly maintained 2,300-year-old mummy bearing a golden mask and covered in brightly colored images of gods and goddesses was unveiled Tuesday at Egypt's Saqqara Pyramids complex south of Cairo.

The unidentified mummy, from the 30th pharaonic dynasty, had been closed in a wooden sarcophagus and buried in sand at the bottom of a 20-foot shaft before being discovered recently by an Egyptian-led archaeological team.

"We have revealed what may be the most beautiful mummy ever found in Egypt," Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said as he helped excavators remove the sarcophagus' lid to show off the find.

Hawass said experts will use CT scanning technology within the next week to reveal more details about the ancient Egyptian's identity and he had lived and died.

Afterward, the mummy will be displayed at Saqqara's museum of Imhotep, the famed architect who designed the Stepped Pyramid - Egypt's oldest.

The mummy, found two months ago, was covered from head to toe in brightly colored cartonage burial material depicting a range of graphic scenes, including the Goddess Maat of balance and truth who was shown with outstretched arms that took the shape of feathered wings.

Also shown were the four children of the falcon-headed god, Horus, and the rituals and processes to mummify the person, who Hawass believed must have been wealthy considering his burial location and fine gold used for the mummy's mask.

"The artists who made this mummy more than 2,000 years ago demonstrated the brilliance of the ancient Egyptians by using stunning colors and depicting his face so graphically," Hawass said.

The mummy had been buried within the necropolis of King Teti, a funerary area containing scores of burial chambers, false doors that ancient Egyptians said the souls of the dead would use to leave their tombs, and temples.

The necropolis is built alongside the collapsed pyramid of Teti, who ruled during ancient Egypt's 6th dynasty, more than 4,300 years ago. Hawass said a "lost" pyramid had been located in the Saqqara area and would be uncovered after two months.

Saqqara, located about 12 miles south of Cairo, is one of Egypt's most popular tourist sites and hosts a collection of temples, tombs and funerary complexes.

It is stuff like this that makes me long for a summer on a dig in Egypt.

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