Quotulatiousness

June 29, 2011

Corruption as a catalyst for rebellion?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Germany, Government, Politics, Russia — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:26

Austin Bay points out that better communications have been important elements in the “Arab Spring” and other populist protests in the world right now, but there’s another element joining them together:

What links the Arab Spring rebellions with political agitation in China and at least another five dozen simmering or emerging crises?

If your answer is “the Internet,” you have identified one of the key information technologies that spread the flames. However, the common human fire in these disparate struggles is intense disgust with embedded corruption.

Tyrants maintain control by isolating and intimidating their subjects. However, since the advent of the printing press and increasing public literacy, preserving tyrannical isolation has become a bit more difficult.

Over time, subjects become aware of social, cultural, economic and political alternatives to the despot’s rule, despite the despot’s propaganda. Just how deeply West German television influenced East German resistance to communism is debatable, but the Iron Curtain could not hide the overwhelming evidence of Western affluence and the West’s ability to occasionally remove corrupt leaders.

Communist elite corruption amidst systemic economic failure certainly influenced resistance throughout Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The special stores and vacation homes enjoyed by Communist Party favorites infuriated workers denied similar access. East European workers knew that they were industrialized serfs in handcuffed societies falling further and further behind Western European nations. In 1989, when the Russians concluded the Eastern European security forces could not — or would not — shoot everyone, the Berlin Wall cracked.

June 9, 2011

Those ungrateful peasants

Filed under: Europe, Germany, Government, Humour — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:09

I had wondered about the origins of that bit of verse:

I asked if people were perhaps not tricked, but legitimately voting against the left because they objected to socialist policies such a massive spending and multiculturalism.

He responded that these issues were indeed difficult for ‘common people’ to comprehend, and therefore for the right to take advantage of. He reiterated however that the problem was not with the policies, it was that people did not ‘understand’.

This was a revealing statement, for it is a typical line of thinking across the left-wing political spectrum, from the most hardened communist to the most moderate social-democrat. While all leftists claim to be for the ‘people’, at the same time they have utter contempt for the people.

They believe they know what is best for the people, and if the people — uppity ungrateful peasants — object, then the people be damned.

Bertolt Brecht — ironically himself a dedicated Marxist — poked fun at this leftist mentality in a now famous poem, Die Lösung (The Solution), following a workers uprising against the Communist East German government in 1956.

    After the uprising of the 17th of June
    The Secretary of the Writers Union
    Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
    Stating that the people
    Had forfeited the confidence of the government
    And could win it back only
    By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
    In that case for the government
    To dissolve the people
    And elect another?

June 7, 2011

Not funny: Germany tops another international poll

Filed under: Europe, Germany, Humour — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:00

Some national stereotypes are apparently more accurate than we think:

Now an international poll appears to reinforce the humourless national stereotype after concluding that Germany is the least funny country in the world.

More than 30,000 people in 15 countries were asked to rank the nations with the worst sense of humour and Germany came out on top.

But before Britons become too smug, the survey did not rank the UK a great deal higher, placing us fourth behind Russia and Turkey.

Countries including Canada, Holland and Belgium all performed better than the UK when it came to demonstrating wit.

The UK boffins are scrambling to find an answer, as Lester Haines points out:

As the Telegraph notes, humour doesn’t translate too well, so it’s a bit difficult for the average Johnny Foreigner to understand just how complex and advanced we are in this most challenging of fields.

Having said that, the pollees were spot on about the Germans.

June 6, 2011

Colour footage of D-Day, 1944

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, France, Germany, History, Military, USA, WW2 — Tags: — Nicholas @ 17:25

H/T to Nick Gillespie for the link.

May 20, 2011

Salesmen get rewarded for whoring their wares

Filed under: Europe, Germany, Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:09

At least, according to this story, the best salesmen at Munich Re were rewarded with whores:

However, this being a German-run orgy, it was not an unseemly free-for-all, but an efficient affair in which the prostitutes “had worn colour-coded arm-bands designating their availability, and the women had their arms stamped after each service rendered”.

Handelsblatt‘s informant told the paper: “After each such encounter the women were stamped on the lower arm in order to keep track of how often each woman was frequented.”

He elaborated: “The women wore red and yellow wrist bands. One lot were hostesses, the others would fulfill your every wish. There were also women with white wrist bands. They were reserved for board members and the very best sales reps.”

This was back in 2007, according to Handelsblatt, a German business publication. I’ve worked at companies where the sales force seemed to be extravagantly over-rewarded with various goodies, but this seems to be a few steps further.

April 20, 2011

Michael Ignatieff as a modern Kaiser Wilhelm II?

Filed under: Cancon, Germany, History, Politics, WW1 — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 13:00

This is a fascinating article. I’m not sure I agree, although we’ll find out in less than two weeks if this is the “Black Day of the German Army Liberal Party”:

The Liberal party, like the Kaiser’s Germany, is stuck in the middle. (An analogy I do not expect any Liberal to use in public, ever.) To the right is the Conservative party. To the left, the NDP. Every election campaign is a two-front war.

To deal with this mortal peril, the Liberals have traditionally followed their own Schlieffen Plan.

In the event of electoral war, the Liberals move swiftly to the left. Taking ground from the NDP ensures vote splits go their way but also creates the perception that the NDP is out of the fight. Voters whose primary concern is stopping the barbarians in the East — the Conservatives, naturally — are thus forced to support the Liberals.

Now, here comes the part of the column Michael Ignatieff won’t like.

April 14, 2011

From supercar to superscrap

Filed under: Europe, Germany, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:15

This is what it looked like before the owner’s son took it for a drive:

And this is after the drive got stopped a bit early:

The good news is that the driver and passenger were able to walk away from the wreck, leaving £275,000 of scrap metal behind.

April 9, 2011

Rare WW2 German bomber discovered off British coast

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:32

What may be the only intact example of the German Dornier 17 bomber has been discovered in the Goodwin Sands off the coast of Kent:

The plane came to rest upside-down in 50 feet of water and has become partially visible from time to time as the sands retreated before being buried again.


Image from Reuters

Now a high-tech sonar survey undertaken by the Port of London Authority (PLA) has revealed the aircraft to be in a startling state of preservation.

[. . .]

Known as “the flying pencil,” the Dornier 17 was designed as a passenger plane in 1934 and was later converted for military use as a fast bomber, difficult to hit and theoretically able to outpace enemy fighter aircraft.

In all, some 1,700 were produced but they struggled in the war with a limited range and bomb load capability and many were scrapped afterwards.

Striking high-resolution images appear to show that the Goodwin Sands plane suffered only minor damage, to its forward cockpit and observation windows, on impact.

“The bomb bay doors were open, suggesting the crew jettisoned their cargo,” said PLA spokesman Martin Garside.

H/T to Elizabeth for the link.

March 2, 2011

QotD: Humour

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Germany, History, Humour, Quotations, WW2 — Nicholas @ 12:02

A German I know will on occasion tell you his father died in the concentration camps. He waits for the concerned and properly sympathetic faces and then adds that he got drunk and fell out of a watchtower. Europeans find that boorish, faintly crass and rather tasteless; the English love it. It’s a proper joke, and a German doing it is double bubble. The surprise is that neither the Europeans or the English realize that it’s not a joke at all, his father really did fall out of a watch tower and it’s poignant and sad because his son never knew him, never met his dad.

A.A. Gill, The Angry Island: Hunting the English, p. 112.

February 15, 2011

Defector’s lies may have been the key to convincing White House to invade Iraq

Filed under: Europe, Germany, Middle East, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:05

The Guardian has a fascinating story about Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, an Iraqi whose made-up tales of bioweapons may have tipped the scales on the decision to attack Saddam Hussein’s regime:

The defector who convinced the White House that Iraq had a secret biological weapons programme has admitted for the first time that he lied about his story, then watched in shock as it was used to justify the war.

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed Curveball by German and American intelligence officials who dealt with his claims, has told the Guardian that he fabricated tales of mobile bioweapons trucks and clandestine factories in an attempt to bring down the Saddam Hussein regime, from which he had fled in 1995.

“Maybe I was right, maybe I was not right,” he said. “They gave me this chance. I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime. I and my sons are proud of that and we are proud that we were the reason to give Iraq the margin of democracy.”

The admission comes just after the eighth anniversary of Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations in which the then-US secretary of state relied heavily on lies that Janabi had told the German secret service, the BND. It also follows the release of former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s memoirs, in which he admitted Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction programme.

Update: Ace points out that the Guardian is trying to push the idea that “Curveball” was a proven liar long before western intelligence agencies depended on his information:

The Guardian, in reporting this, is of course invested in proving that Curveball had “already” been “proven a liar” when Colin Powell referenced mobile WMD trucks in his United Nations speech. Their evidence? Well, Curveball claimed that the son of an Iraqi official in the Military Industries Commission was abroad for the purposes of procuring WMD. That official said that Curveball was lying. Case closed, the Guardian claims triumphantly.

What? One source says Iraq had mobile weapons lab and the man in the Military Industries Commission accused of facilitating WMD procurement says Oh no we don’t and the Guardian thinks that the case has been proven and this should have been oh so obvious to the world’s intelligence services?

While knocking Western intelligence for being credulous and not understanding that people might have motive to lie they credulously accept the word of a high military/industrial official in Saddam’s regime as the definitive statement on the matter.

Um, doesn’t he have a motive to lie, too?

If the Guardian and the left generally wants to demonstrate it’s more wordly, savvy, and wise than the dummy-dumb-dumbs in the intelligence bureaus, shouldn’t their conclusion be something far more modest like “The evidence was conflicting and scant, and should have given decision-makers pause” rather than “Oh gee, Saddam’s accused of something but one of his Top Henchmen says Nuh-uhhh so obviously the case for war was a lie”?

January 27, 2011

They’ll be around to collect his “man card” any moment

Filed under: Europe, Germany, Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:50

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.

January 26, 2011

Nostalgia for the Dreadnought era?

Filed under: China, Economics, Germany, History, WW1 — Tags: — Nicholas @ 09:03

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.

December 28, 2010

The French Foreign Legion in film and in history

Filed under: Books, Europe, France, Germany, Media, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

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).

November 4, 2010

The continuing dramedy of the A400M

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Europe, Germany, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:09

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.

November 1, 2010

Shipping at Age-of-Sail speeds

Filed under: Asia, China, Economics, Germany — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:40

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.

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