Quotulatiousness

September 9, 2014

One of the lost Franklin Expedition ships of 1845 has been located

Filed under: Cancon, History — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:47

In Canadian Geographic, an interesting find in the Canadian Arctic:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced today the discovery of one of the shipwrecks of Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated 1845-48 British Arctic Expedition. At this time it is not clear which of the two ships, HMS Terror or Erebus, has been found because of similarities of the two vessels; however, the ship’s authenticity has been confirmed.

The discovery of the wreck was confirmed on Sunday, Sept. 7, using a remotely operated underwater vehicle recently acquired by Parks Canada. Details of where exactly the ship was found have not yet been released.

“I’m delighted to announce that this year’s Victoria Strait Expedition has solved one of Canada’s greatest mysteries,” said Harper in a release.

“I would like to congratulate and pay tribute to all partners involved in this year’s momentous Victoria Strait Expedition, including Parks Canada, The Royal Canadian Geographical Society, the Arctic Research Foundation, the Canadian Coast Guard, the Royal Canadian Navy and the Government of Nunavut.”

And everyone’s a comedian:

BBC News linked this map, showing the approximate locations for the two ships when abandoned, plus the search areas:

Franklin Expedition search areas

UK re-runs Canada’s 1995 near-death experience

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, History — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:32

Andrew Coyne points out some of the parallels between the 1995 referendum in Quebec and this month’s referendum in Scotland:

It has been an entertaining, if unnerving, couple of weeks, recalling the referendum of 1995 and speculating about what would have happened had the separatists won. Now, thanks to the Scots, we may be about to find out.

Next week’s referendum on Scottish independence is indeed looking eerily reminiscent of the 1995 near-disaster: the same early complacency in the No camp, the same unbridled panic as the Yes side surges in the polls; the same unappealing mix of threats (“one million jobs”) and accounting on the No side, the same fraudulent claims (“we’re subsidizing the English”) and utopian fantasies on the Yes; the same blurring of the lines on both sides, independence made to look like the status quo (“we’ll keep the pound”) even as the status quo is made to look like independence (“devo-max” is the British term for special status). Add a charismatic Yes leader and an unpopular, seemingly disengaged prime minister, and the picture is complete.

Learning nothing from our experience, the Brits made all the same strategic errors we did, first conferring an unwarranted legitimacy on the separatist project, then attempting to pacify it with powers and money, only to watch it grow more ravenous in response. They have ended up in the same game of heads-I-win, tails-you-lose: a No vote simply marks the launch of the next campaign, while a Yes, supposedly, is forever.

[…]

We should not underestimate how much of separatism’s decline in this country can be explained by sheer exhaustion, especially post-Clarity Act. A great many soft nationalists, for whom it retains a romantic appeal, were persuaded it was simply too arduous an undertaking, full of too much uncertainty and upheaval. But if that premise appeared to have been debunked — if the British pull off the same quick divorce that the Czechs and Slovaks did in the 1990s — we might yet see the issue resurface. You see, the Parti Quebecois would crow? It is just as we told you. And Britain, of all places, has proved it.

This is why NATO countries are not supplying weapons to Ukraine

Filed under: Europe, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:48

It’s not about a sudden sensitivity to Russian feelings: NATO is not providing up-to-date weapons and ammunition for excellent practical reasons:

The Ukrainian armed forces use Soviet weapons systems. These are well-designed, solid, easy to use for a conscript army, and although the Ukrainian inventory may be aging, Soviet arms production was never geared to high-tech generational obsolescence. They build simple, solid and cheap because they have to. NATO countries are casualty-averse and never commit a platoon where a Hellfire missile is available. On the other hand, Soviet doctrine never varied much from the World War II stories of tank attacks shoving the flaming hulks of the first wave out of the way, for the second wave to be destroyed in turn, until the Germans ran out of ammunition. Almost anything NATO could supply would be very hard to employ on the battlefield without training, and time for training is what the Ukrainians do not have.

In this sense, “training” doesn’t just mean “here’s the operator’s manual.” It means that the whole operational and tactical doctrine of the army has to be redesigned around the new weapons systems.

It’s not just the actual weapons, training and doctrine, either. Not to be unkind about it but Ukraine’s armed forces are almost completely hollowed out by official neglect, underfunding, and corruption. Back in May, Sarah Chayes reported on the pitiful state of Ukrainian military preparedness:

In a 2012 analysis Leonid Polyakov, another senior defense official, detailed the corrupt workings with remarkable candor. Chronic underfunding “enhanced the role of the human factor” in choosing among operational priorities. Ostensibly outdated equipment was sold “at unreasonably understated prices” in return for kickbacks. Officers even auctioned off defense ministry land. Gradually, Kyiv began requiring the military to cover more of its own costs, forcing senior officers into business, “which is…inconsistent with the armed forces’ mission,” and opened multiple avenues for corruption. Commanders took to “using military equipment, infrastructure, and…personnel [to] build private houses, [or] make repairs in their apartments.” Procurement fraud was rife, as were bribes to get into and through military academies, and for desirable assignments.

So even if Ukraine had taken advantage of NATO equipment, training, and support, much of the new kit would have disappeared into the same criminal enterprises which sold off so much of the old kit.

Russian FSB lured Estonian official into a trap

Filed under: Europe, Military, Russia — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:26

In the Guardian, Julian Borger updates the situation in Estonia after the kidnapping of Eston Kohver by Russian forces:

The Estonian intelligence official seized by Russia thought he was going to meet an informant in a secluded spot on the border as part of an organised crime investigation but instead walked into an FSB trap, according to Estonian security sources.

Eston Kohver went to the arranged meeting at 9am on Friday in woodland near the village of Miikse, about five miles north of the official Luhamaa border post. He had armed backup in the form of Estonian security officers nearby but they were unable to react in time because of the use of flash grenades and because their communications were jammed.

By the time they realised what has happening, Kohver had been dragged into the woods on the Russian side of the border by a group of gunmen.

Kohver is now in Moscow where he is awaiting formal charges. Russian media have suggested he could be accused of spying; a pistol, a recording device and €5,000 in cash were displayed on Russian television as evidence.

Estonian security sources confirmed that all the items were Kohver’s but said it was entirely routine for him to be carrying them. The recording device and the cash were intended for the informant he thought he would be meeting.

The Russian-Ukrainian War

Filed under: Europe, Military, Russia — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:16

Paul Goble summarizes Konstantin Gaaze’s ten questions and answers about the war between Russia and Ukraine:

Gaaze’s first question is “Why did we (they) act as we (they) did with them (us)?” His answer: “President Putin considers that the Ukrainian state exists only because he agrees to its existence.” Consequently, “Moscow has acted from the false hypothesis that ‘Ukraine is not a state,’” something for which several thousand people have already paid with their lives.

But Kiev, the Moscow writer says, has also operated from a false hypothesis.” Ukrainian leaders believed that “Russia will not provide essential assistance to the local uprising in the east of Ukraine because it is intimidated by Western sanctions.” But Moscow isn’t, and it has intervened. Consequently, Ukraine has had to fight, and many have suffered as well.

His second question is “What has been obtained and how did the war end?” In Gaaze’s view, “the east of Ukraine belongs to people whose names we in fact do not know. Kiev has lost part of its territory but forever have been marginalized the future of the non-existence Novorossiya.”

“It will never become part of Russia,” Gaaze says, but “in the near term, it will not be part of Ukraine either. Millions of people thus are condemned to live in an enormous Transdniestria, to live between two armies, one of which (the Russian) is committed to destroy the other (the Ukrainian).” The first is only waiting for the order to do so.

Gaaze’s third question is this: “Was Putin fighting with Ukraine or with the West?” the answer is with both, but the results are different. “Kiev did not lose the war, but it did not win it either. The West,” in contrast, “lost the first round of the new Cold War. Moscow did what it wanted,” while the West did not act decisively because of various fears about the future.

“But the first round of the cold war is not the entire war,” Gaaze says. The West can recover. NATO can rearm. “There will be other rounds,” and Russia “will not be able to win them.”

QotD: The Iron Law of Redistributionism

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

[P]olicies intended to “help” the poor are invariably hijacked by a rentier class that fattens on the rising diversion of income. Result: help never arrives, much wealth is destroyed, growth is strangled, and the poor get poorer.

Eric S. Raymond, Google+, 2014-09-06.

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