Poor guy can’t get enough sleep because of his sex-mad spouse:
An exhausted Turkish man living in Germany has asked cops to protect him from his sex-mad missus, Bild reports.
The bleary-eyed victim of his wife’s “voracious embraces” walked into a police station in the southwestern city of Waiblingen on Tuesday to explain he’d spent four years kipping on the sofa in a vain attempt to get some shut-eye.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard finds the parallels between the rise of Imperial Germany in the years leading up to the first world war and attitudes toward China today:
And we all learned how the Kaiser overplayed his hand. That much was obvious.
Yet it is difficult to pin-point exactly when the normal pattern of great power jostling began to metamorphose into something more dangerous, leading to two rival, entrenched, and heavily armed alliance structures unable or unwilling to avert the drift towards conflict. The Long Peace died by a thousand cuts, a snub here, a Dreadnought there, the race for oil.
[. . .]
Is China now where Germany was in 1900? Possibly. There are certainly hints of menace from some quarters in Beijing. Defence minister Liang Guanglie said over New Year that China’s armed forces are “pushing forward preparations for military conflict in every strategic direction”.
Professor Huang Jing from Singapore’s Lee Kwan Yew School and a former adviser to China’s Army, said Beijing is losing its grip on the colonels.
“The young officers are taking control of strategy and it is like young officers in Japan in the 1930s. This is very dangerous. They are on a collision course with a US-dominated system,” he said.
The problem with drawing parallels from history is that it’s never as neat and clean-cut as you’d expect. First, China is supposed to be like Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany, then more like Japan after WW1. I have to say I’m not totally following this line of thought. But, getting back to today’s situation:
There is a new edge to Chinese naval policy in the South China Sea, causing Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines to cleave closer to the US alliance. Has Beijing studied how German naval ambitions upset the careful diplomatic legacy of Bismarck and pushed an ambivalent Britain towards the Entente, even to the point of accepting alliance with Tsarist autocracy?
Factions in Beijing appear to think that China will win a trade war if Washington ever imposes sanctions to counter Chinese mercantilism. That is a fatal misjudgement. The lesson of Smoot-Hawley and the 1930s is that surplus states suffer crippling depressions when the guillotine comes down on free trade; while deficit states can muddle through, reviving their industries behind barriers. Demand is the most precious commodity of all in a world of excess supply.
H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord, for the link.
Peter Shawn Taylor explains how what was once the second most popular “adventure movie” themes has become all but invisible today:
The French Foreign Legion, steeped as it is in romance and adventure, had an entirely prosaic birth. It was a supply-side army.
In 1830, France’s reputation for continual political upheaval made it a magnet for Europe’s wandering class. Political agitators, disenfranchised liberals, left-wing revolutionaries and outright criminals from every country flocked to Paris. Such an agglomeration of potential trouble-makers proved unsettling for the newly reinstalled French monarchy.
At the same time France had recently conquered Algeria, rather by accident. (It’s a long story involving Napoleon Bonaparte’s unpaid grain debt, a flyswatter to the face of a French diplomat and the Gallic need to avenge even the slightest insult.) Maintaining the colony, however, was proving perilous for regular French troops.
The genius of the French Foreign Legion was that it solved both problems.
Refugees, criminals and agitators were pressed into a special unit of the French military created exclusively for foreigners. To make this urban renewal process as efficient as possible, no questions were asked as to the background of the recruits. And because French law prevented mercenary troops from serving on French soil, these soldiers were immediately shipped off to Algeria. Out of sight, out of mind.
After the “cowboys and indians” movies, Legion movies were the next most common adventure movie in early Hollywood. They faded from Hollywood’s radar even faster than the French empire did in the real world.
I remember reading a book about the Legion in French Indochina in the late 1940s and early 1950s (The Devil’s Guard by George Robert Elford), but I assumed it was largely fictionalized. Checking the Wikipedia entry, I see I wasn’t alone in suspecting it to be less than fully factual:
[. . .] published in 1971, is the story of a former German Waffen-SS officer’s string of near-constant combat that begins on World War II’s eastern front and continues into the book’s focus — the First Indochina War, as an officer in the French Foreign Legion. The book is presented by the author as nonfiction but considered to be untrue by military historians, and usually sold as fiction. In 2006 the online bookstore AbeBooks reported that it was among the 10 novels most frequently sold to American soldiers in Iraq (the only war fiction in the top 10, in fact).
Remember when the opposition were up in arms that Canada wasn’t going to be buying the new A400M for the Canadian Forces? That decision is looking better and better:
Germany has cut its order for A400M transports from 60 to 57. This was in response to demands from the manufacturer for more money. This is not a new problem, but for those who have already ordered the A400M, it’s getting old. The new European military transport, the A400M, is already three years late and billions of dollars over budget. Those who have already placed orders (for 180 aircraft) have been told that the price they thought they were going to pay ($161 million per aircraft) will go up twenty percent. In response, some major buyers said they were considering cancelling their orders. In turn, the manufacturer said that such actions would force the cancellation of the project. With the German reduction of its order, it looks like the A400M will be getting more expensive, to the point where it will be twice what the new C-130J costs. The A400M made its first flight 11 months ago.
[. . .]
During the Cold War, such air transports were very low priority in Europe, because if there was a war, the mighty Red Army of the Soviet Union was going to home deliver it. But now all the action is far away, and the military needs air freight for emergencies and other urgent missions. For that reason, the Russian An-124s get a lot of work from NATO nations. This aircraft can carry up to 130 tons of cargo, as well as outsized and extremely large cargo. The more numerous American C-17 can only carry up to 84 tons, while the new A400M can lift a maximum of 40 tons. The advantage of the two smaller airlifters is the ability to operate from shorter unpaved runways, which makes them less dependable on existing infrastructure. Russia has put the An-124 back into production, partly because of the delays in the A400M project.
In an attempt to save fuel, shipping lines have been ordering their ships to go slower. Some of them are now slower than 19th century clipper ships:
For those who haven’t followed the situation closely, many container ships right now have practiced ‘slow steaming’ due to a glut of ships being built worldwide.
Essentially, they are sailing at speeds well below their potential in order to reduce the supply of ships in the market, and thus support shipping rates.
The way this works is that the slower a ship sails, the fewer times it can make a round trip per year. Thus purposely sailing slowly reduces the effective supply of ships. It’s a response to insufficient shipping demand relative to the size of the global container shipping fleet.
Yet these poor shipping companies have taken this practice to such an extreme that many ships are now sailing at speeds slower than old clipper ships from the 1800’s.
H/T to Monty:
Overcapacity in shipping means lower demand for the finished goods overall. This is also a prime reason why export-driven economies (China, Germany) are in for a pretty dramatic adjustment soon. They’ve been counting on an economic recovery in America and Europe to soak up all that excess production, but it looks like things are going to stay weak for at least another six months to a year.
Roger Henry sent a link to this Australian story, which is just plain weird:
It was a macabre crime that horrified Germany: a farmer, battered to death and dismembered by his own family, his body apparently fed to his pigs and dogs.
A killing without a corpse, since all traces had been gobbled up in the farmyard.
Yesterday, thought, nine years after Rudi Rupp disappeared, a Bavarian court opened a retrial of his supposed killers after the discovery of his intact body in the River Danube. The case has sent shockwaves through the German judicial system, which since the Second World War has prided itself on its probity and professionalism.
Mr Rupp, a 52-year-old Bavarian pig farmer, allegedly returned home from the pub one autumn night in 2001 and was hit over the head with a large wooden beam by Mathias Eisenhofer, 17, the lover of Mr Rupp’s daughter Manuela, 16. He was beaten almost to death and taken to the cellar where Manuela noticed that her father’s leg was still twitching. Eisenhofer then hit the farmer’s skull with a sharp-edged hammer. Manuela joined in. Another daughter, Andrea, 15, watched, as did the farmer’s wife Hermine.
Why would they make up such a gruesome story? It doesn’t appear to make any sense. The whole thing is so weird that I’d be tempted to check that it wasn’t an early April news story.
Consider the case of Imperial Germany:
First World War officially ends
The First World War will officially end on Sunday, 92 years after the guns fell silent, when Germany pays off the last chunk of reparations imposed on it by the Allies.The final payment of £59.5 million, writes off the crippling debt that was the price for one world war and laid the foundations for another.
Germany was forced to pay the reparations at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 as compensation to the war-ravaged nations of Belgium and France and to pay the Allies some of the costs of waging what was then the bloodiest conflict in history, leaving nearly ten million soldiers dead.
H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord, for the link.
Attempts to block websites showing child pornography don’t appear to be as effective as direct action, according to a press release from the German Working Group against Access Blocking and Censorship (AK Zensur):
Internet blocking is advocated as an allegedly effective measure against the proliferation of child abuse images. Countries such as the United Kingdom, Sweden and Denmark have been using this technology for years. But a practical test by the German Working Group against Access Blocking and Censorship (AK Zensur) in cooperation with European civil rights advocacy groups has shown: Internet blocking does not fight abuse, in practice it only serves to conceal the failures of politics and police. Websites can remain on blocking lists for years even though they have either been deleted or could be deleted easily and quickly.
How is this possible, and what could be done against illegal sites? Answers are given by a new analysis of current blocking lists from Sweden and Denmark by the Working Group against Access Blocking and Censorship. The group developed software to select, categorise and geo-locate 167 blocked Internet domains as a representative sample of websites blocked in Denmark at the time of the investigation. “The result is a smack in the face of law enforcement authorities”, says Alvar Freude of the Working Group. “Of the 167 listed sites, only three contained material that could be regarded as child pornography.” Two of these three sites had been blocked in Denmark since 2008, and these are, or least were, blocked in Sweden, Norway and Finland as well. These sites were therefore known for at least two years in several countries, and apparently law enforcement authorities did nothing to try and get this illegal content removed.
This is even more disturbing because the Working Group managed to take down the remaining sites just by sending a few emails. Two of the sites were hosted in the USA, and even during the weekend (Friday, ca. 10 p.m. EDT) they were removed by the hosters within 30 minutes. On the following Tuesday, the third website was taken down by its registry in India, three hours after notification. The content was stored on a server in the Netherlands. “The removal of this dehumanising content and the pursuit of the perpetrators must have absolute priority. Internet Blocking leads to the exact opposite”, says Alvar Freude, who sent the take-down requests.
H/T to BoingBoing for the link.
September, 1940: the start of the Blitz:
The London Blitz started quietly. Less than 100 incidents reported by the London Fire Brigade up to 5pm on September 7, 1940. Only a few weeks after the British victory in the Battle of Britain, what came then must have been a terrible shock for Londoners. You can read the original Guardian archive report of the night here.
At 5.30pm, some 348 German bombers escorted by 617 fighters pounded London until 6.00pm. Guided by the flames, a second group attacked with more incendiary bombs two hours later, lasting into the next day.
Note, that link to the Guardian archive is a bit badly behaved: it resized my browser window.
Update: Rare colour footage of the Blitz.
Newly released MI5 information shows that the allied defeat in Norway in 1940 may have been caused by a German espionage triumph:
[Marina] Lee is said to have infiltrated the headquarters of the British Expeditionary Forces in Norway and obtained information about the plan drawn up by British commander Gen Auchinleck.
German commander, Gen Eduard Dietl, who was holding the Norwegian port of Narvik, was reportedly considering a withdrawal, but the disclosure of these details meant his forces could block the Auchinleck plan.
British, French and Norwegian troops were later forced to withdraw from German-controlled Norway.
Born in St Petersburg, Russia, Lee was married to a Norwegian communist and had trained as a ballerina before becoming “a highly valued and experienced German agent”, according to the files.
She is described as “blonde, tall, with a beautiful figure, refined and languid in manner” and reportedly spoke five languages.
One account says she personally knew Stalin — leading to conjectures she was working for both Berlin and Moscow who, at that time, were on the same side, our reporter says.
Jon, my former virtual landlord, sent me this link while I was on vacation (and generally unable to stay connected to the internet for more than minutes at a time). If you’ve already seen this, my apologies for being late:
The First World War, explained as a pub fight…
Germany, Austria and Italy are stood together in the middle of the pub, when Serbia bumps into Austria, and spills Austria’s pint.
Austria demands Serbia buy it a complete new suit, because there are splashes on its trouser leg.
Germany expresses its support for Austria’s point of view
Britain recommends that everyone calm down a bit.
Serbia points out that it can’t afford a whole suit, but offers to pay for cleaning Austria’s trousers.
Russia and Serbia look at Austria.
Austria asks Serbia who it’s looking at.
Russia suggests that Austria should leave its little brother alone.
Austria inquires as to whose army will assist Russia in compelling it to do so.
As Jon pointed out, the key comment is “And when Germany wakes up, it goes out to its car, gets the gun out of the glovebox and heads back inside…”
Tim Harford explains part of the reason for the boardgame market’s health in Germany compared to its weakness in the English speaking world:
In a sprawling convention centre in Essen, western Germany, the busiest day in the German board games calendar – Saturday at “Spiel” – is about to begin. Hall after hall of stands are piled high with board game boxes, most eschewing the garish graphics of the toy shop for evocative paintings of lands far off and times long ago.
A few minutes before the official start time of 10am, the doors are thrown open. There’s a rumble and then a roar as thousands of gamers surge into the hall, breaking and swirling around the stands, sweeping into the farthest corners of the halls, seeking out rare second-hand products or the hottest of the 500 new games being launched, or simply a good place to sit and play. The biggest stands resemble pavement cafés whose patrons grab games instead of coffee: they are filled with tables, each just big enough to seat four players and a board. Before long, the spaces in between the tables are colonised, too, with gamers sitting cross-legged around their boards.
Beyond the sheer number of enthusiasts, the striking thing is that they look, well, normal. The convention centre boasts nearly as many mothers with prams as heavy-metal-T-shirted, body-pierced teens. In one of the farthest halls, Dungeons and Dragons merchandise is on sale, and I counted more than one person wearing a sword and a cloak. But for the most part, the convention centre’s population wouldn’t look out of place on any German high street.
“If you go to a games convention in the UK, you’re generally surrounded by fat, smelly people with bad social skills,” says Martin Wallace, a British game designer at a boutique games publisher called Warfrog. “That’s not true here.”
Wallace recalls an occasion when a group of his gaming friends were too embarrassed to admit their identities to a pretty waitress back home in the UK. “One of us told her that we were stamp collectors. I thought: great. We’re lower than stamp collectors.” But in Germany, if the leading game designers travel incognito, it is to avoid being surrounded by admiring fans.
I once joked with a fellow gamer that it was a good thing that most gaming stores were in “bad” areas of town . . . because if someone recognized you there you could always say you were visiting the strip club or the porno magazine store (so much better than admitting you were a gamer). Protective coloration, so to speak.
Clearly German gamers don’t have anything like the same reputation that English gamers do.
Strategy Page notes the imminent demise of two media staples: Armed Forces Network (AFN) broadcast television and the traditional base newspaper:
U.S. military television stations in Europe are halting the broadcasting of their signals. Not because so many American troops have left Europe since the end of the Cold War, but because everyone has cable. A few broadcasting towers will keep operating, for the few areas where barracks are not yet wired for cable. The big losers are American retirees and military families living off the base. In addition, a lot of locals enjoyed the availability of the “American Channel” and the military oriented content. It was something they could not find on the largest local cable plans. AFN often broadcast American TV shows before they were bought by local networks for broadcast in dubbed format. The dubbing is often poor, and many Europeans speak English, and like to get American TV shows as soon as they come out. But now that’s all history.
[. . .] the technology tidal wave is also destroying the oldest form of American military media; the base newspaper. Four years ago, U.S. Air Force bases began to scrap a century old tradition; the base newspaper. Some bases later brought the papers back, because they found there were a significant minority of base residents who did not use the Internet (which was supposed to replace the newspaper.) But that is not going to last long.
These weeklies were almost standard on military bases, mainly as a vehicle for getting out information of use to all those who lived or worked there. There were administrative announcements, as well as social ones. The base newspapers served a morale function, as well as a practical one. But the news papers cost money, some $3,000-$5,000 a week. The papers were distributed for free, and now there’s a trend towards eliminating the papers, and just putting out all the information on the base web site. All bases now have web sites, and troops, especially younger ones, find these more useful than newspapers. Surveys indicate that most junior troops don’t even read newspapers (nor do their civilian peers). But all these young troops rely on the web for news, and other information. The troops also note that, when they are deployed overseas, or just away from the base for a few days, they only way to stay in touch with what’s happening on the base is via the web site. But many older NCOs and officers, along with their spouses, do still read newspapers. It’s a generational thing, so the base newspaper is still doomed.
If you’re finding the up-then-down-then-under-the-table performance of your investments unfathomable, you’re probably wondering who can explain it all in a way that makes perfect sense and allows you to figure out the best way to handle your personal finances. If you find such a savant, let me know.
For the “real” story about why the markets are doing an imitation of an unstable personality on conflicting medication, here’s Monty’s “Wednesday Financial Briefing”:
Nicholas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel are still waging war against “the speculators” who had the temerity to point out that Euorpean finances were a God Damn mess. A spokesmen for the holders of European sovereign bonds warned the leaders that they were “teasing the gorilla in the monkey-house”. Sarkozy was heard to say that he farted in their general direction and that their fathers smelt of elderberries. Chancellor Merkel only muttered darkly, “I will break you!”
Interbank loans at Spanish banks are drying up. This tightens credit and leads to busted bond auctions. “Fitch can kiss my ass!”, said an unnamed source at Banco Santander who blames the problems on Fitch’s recent downgrade of Spanish debt. Just to show how not-broke they are, Santander bought back their stake in their Mexican unit from Bank of America for $2.5 billion. When asked if this was a wise move given their weak balance-sheet, a Santander representative lowered his trousers and mooned the press-pool.
US debt will climb to 19.6 trillion by 2015, according to a Treasury report to Congress. Tim Geithner assured everyone that, in true Keynesian fashion, every dollar of debt translates directly into GDP growth. Somehow. When pressed on the issue, Mr. Geithner began to cry and had to be excused to the lavatory to pull himself together.
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