. . . things are pretty bad in the mother country when a self-described “Whig” calls Stephen Harper “a magnificent fiscal conservative.” It’s like calling Gordon Brown “a brilliant and charismatic leader,” or Jean Chretien “a visionary and articulate statesman.” In politics, at least practical politics, all truth is relative.
Compared to most G8 leaders Stephen Harper does look like a genius. This is, as you’ve guessed, damning by the faintest of praise. Barack Obama is an avowed socialist, who described his one real job in the private sector as working “behind enemy lines.” Japan has been governed by a series of interchangeable non-entities for the better part of the last decade. In most of Europe, and certainly the English speaking world, Silvio Berlusconi would be awaiting sentencing. Angela Merkel rivals Helmut Schmidt in the visionary department. Sarko is a living embodiment of every mistake the French have made since Diem Bien Phu: A domestic policy summed up by the quintessentially French term “dirigiste,” and a foreign policy consisting of German guilty tripping and sophomore anti-Americanism. If Stephen Harper looks taller than others, it is because he is standing on the shoulders of midgets.
Publius, “Well, at least someone likes him…”, Gods of the Copybook Headings, 2010-06-21
June 22, 2010
June 9, 2010
Confused by international finance? Monty can help
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.
June 2, 2010
Litany of problems with new NH-90 helicopters
Strategy Page reports that new NH-90 helicopters delivered to Australia are showing similar problems to the laundry list of issues the Germans reported when their NH-90s went into service:
The German Army conducted an evaluation of their new NH-90 helicopters, and were not pleased. Their conclusion was that, for combat missions, another model helicopter should be used whenever possible. A particular problem was the lack of ground clearance. The NH-90 can’t land on a piece of ground with any obstacles higher than 16 cm (6.4 inches). That makes many battlefield landing zones problematic. That assumes you can even get on a NH-90 and find a seat. The passenger seats cannot hold more than 110 kg (242 pounds). Combat equipment for German troops weighs 25 kg (55 pounds), meaning any soldier weighing more than 85 kg (187) has to take stuff off, put it on the floor, than quickly put it back on before exiting. Then there’s the floor, it’s not very sturdy, and combat troops using the helicopter for a short while, cause damage that takes the helicopter out of action for repairs. Worse, there is the rear ramp. It cannot support troops carrying all their equipment, making it useless for rapid exits of combat troops. There is not enough room in the passenger compartment for door gunners. There are no strap downs for larger weapons, like portable rocket launchers or anti-aircraft missiles. The passenger compartment also does not allow for carrying cargo and passengers at the same time. The winch is not sturdy enough for commandoes to perform fast roping operations. And so on. The Germans were not pleased with the NH-90.
I’ve never specced out a new helicopter design, but these complaints sound like issues that should have come up during the initial design review, not things that appear once you’ve taken delivery. It sounds like the military equivalent of buying a new car without taking a test drive or checking the specifications for how well the vehicle matched your actual requirements.
Design fail, manufacturing fail, or ordering fail?
May 26, 2010
French and German troops play catch-up
Strategy Page looks at recent changes in the role of French and German troops in Afghanistan:
Since France and Germany loosened up their ROE (Rules of Engagement) in the last year, and allowed their troops to more readily engage Taliban gunmen, there has been a lot more combat for them. Before the ROE change, the Taliban generally ignored the German and French troops, knowing that these foreigners would not interfere with Taliban terrorism operations, and would not even fire unless the Taliban fired on the foreign troops first. But now that the French and Germans can go after any Taliban they spot (or suspect they’ve spotted), the Taliban have become much more aggressive against the French and Germans.
This led to the Germans and French discovering that they were not really equipped or trained to deal with the Taliban. The Americans, British, Canadians, Dutch and Australians made it all look so easy. But it isn’t, so now the French and Germans are hustling new equipment (especially armored vehicles, UAVs and sensors like night sights and thermals) to their troops in Afghanistan. But another shortcoming was training, and that was solved by borrowing training manuals (and some trainers) from their combat experienced allies, and starting to train troops back home, before sending them to Afghanistan. This meant having MRAPs back home, as well as realistic training exercises to get the troops ready.
May 19, 2010
Remembering Dunkirk, 70 years on
This is the 70th anniversary of the Dunkirk evacuation, where 338,000 British and French troops were carried out of the German encirclement by just about everything that could float.
“Without Dunkirk, Britain wouldn’t have had an Army and it’s extremely questionable whether Britain could have fought the war,” he explains.
Mr Hewitt gives the credit to the Royal Navy and Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, who led the operation, but also to all the civilians who helped.
“They thought they would bring back 30-40,000. In the end they rescued 338,000 British and French troops. It’s an extraordinary achievement.”
And this pulling together of civilians and the military meant an event that could have been seen as a failure became, in fact, a key turning point in World War II.
“Dunkirk was a military defeat, but it was a symbolic victory,” he adds.
March 18, 2010
Bombing of Dresden horrible, but not as horrible as we thought
The bombing raids which destroyed much of the fabric of the city of Dresden late in World War Two didn’t cause as many civilian casualties as has been claimed:
Up to 25,000 people died in the Allied bombing of Dresden during World War II – fewer than often estimated, an official German report has concluded.
The Dresden Historians’ Commission published its report after five years of research into the 13-15 February 1945 air raid by Britain and the US.
The study was aimed at ending an ongoing debate on the number of casualties in the German city.
Germany’s far-right groups claim that up to 500,000 people died.
They say the bombing – which unleashed a firestorm in the historic city when the Nazi Germany was already close to defeat – constituted a war crime.
Note that the “they” in that final paragraph refers to the “far-right groups” and not to the Dresden Historians’ Commission. It’s not the judgement of the commission that the bombing was a war crime.
March 16, 2010
Prepare for fireworks
. . . or actual fire, as Qur’an researchers prepare what is carefully referred to as a “critical edition”:
A team of researchers at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences is preparing to bring out the first installment of Corpus Coranicum — which purports to be nothing less than the first critically evaluated text of the Qur’an ever to be produced.
What this means is that the research team is in the process of analysing and transcribing some 12,000 slides of Qur’an mansucripts from the first six centuries of the text’s existence. Once that is complete, the way is open to producing a text that annotates and, presumably, provides some sort of exegesis on the differences found in the early manuscripts.
The impact of such a project can hardly be underestimated.
Delicately put.
Update: It is an inherently dangerous act to discuss certain works, never mind to apply academic analysis tools and provide readers with context and interpretation. This project is intended to be complete by 2025 (they’re concentrating on small sections to start with). The debate — of which I suspect I really should say the uproar — will likely consume a lot of bandwidth. If the Berlin scholars are unlucky, it may consume significant chunks of their city.
On this news, Ghost of a Flea finds an interesting parallel.
February 24, 2010
Make up your minds!
American soldiers have been accused of being too “egg-headed” in their approach to war, with much being made about the constant upgrading of equipment with newer electronic and computerized gizmos. But it’s not what it seems — now a New York Times Idea of the Day blogger says the US military has a “fetish” for Wilhelmine and Hitlerian Germany:
“Why do people have a fixation with the German military when they haven’t won a war since 1871?”
That’s the Tom Clancy quote William J. Astore uses to begin this essay on TomDispatch (picked up by Mother Jones), renewing a critique of what some see as a Clausewitz cult among American military strategists.
Mr. Astore, a former Air Force Academy history instructor (and Wehrmacht buff as a boy), says “the American military’s fascination with German military methods and modes of thinking” is reflected outwardly in busts of Clausewitz on display American military academies, and more tangibly in echoes of the Blitzkrieg in the first and second Iraq wars:
In retrospect, what disturbs me most is that the military swallowed the Clausewitzian/German notion of war as a dialectical or creative art, one in which well-trained and highly motivated leaders can impose their will on events. In this notional construct, war became not destructive, but constructive. It became not the last resort of kings, but the preferred recourse of “creative” warlords who demonstrated their mastery of it by cultivating such qualities as flexibility, adaptability and quickness. One aimed to get inside the enemy’s “decision cycle” . . . while at the same time cultivating a “warrior ethos” within a tight-knit professional army that was to stand above, and also separate from, ordinary citizens.
There were lots of things that western armies could profitably learn after 1945 from German tactical and operational models. There was no intrinsic reason why small German units fought better and more effectively than their allied opponents, in spite of Nazi propaganda, there was no “racial” strength that made German soldiers better at their trade than other nations. Remember that a lot of “German” soldiers were Austrians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, and other allied or conquered peoples.
German soldiers were better trained, and had much greater tactical autonomy, which gave them more flexibility and encouraged improvisation at all levels. Western armies were much more hierarchical and didn’t delegate decision-making to lower ranks. That alone made German battalions, companies, and platoons far more dangerous: when things didn’t go according to the detailed plan, they adapted and still tried to accomplish their assigned mission. British, French, and (especially) Soviet units were not rewarded for departing from their (inevitably) more detailed orders.
Non-military critics may easily assume that trying to learn anything from the Kaiser’s army or Hitler’s army carries a moral taint, but paradoxically, those soldiers — fighting for an authoritarian or dictatorial government — had more tactical freedom than Allied soldiers who could vote (and whose votes actually mattered).
February 23, 2010
February 2, 2010
There’s more than one 3:54 length clip in Downfall?
Elsewhere, the Guardian wonders why the Hitler-in-the-bunker scene from Downfall has become such a popular meme.
November 9, 2009
Beware of Ostalgia, both left and right
Steve Chapman warns about the dangers of indulging in too much nostalgia one both sides of the divide:
Communism was the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century, and one of the greatest in human history. Twenty years ago, suddenly and improbably, it fell into its death throes.
The end began the night of Nov. 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall was opened, allowing East Germans to leave the prison that constituted their country. Throughout Eastern Europe, one Communist regime after another disintegrated. Within two years, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was not only out of power but banned by law. A system soaked in the blood of millions was gone.
It was the most dramatic, life-affirming, and miraculous event of our time. And for those of us in the West, it is one from which we have yet to recover.
The Cold War was often grim and scary. For four decades, we had to maintain vast defenses against a numerically superior enemy that threatened the freedom of our allies and, by extension, ourselves. We lived with the daily reality that, with the push of a button in the Kremlin, we would all be dead in half an hour.
But the “long twilight struggle,” as John F. Kennedy called it, was also inspiring. It gave us a purpose greater than ourselves. In those days, most Americans understood it was our national duty to prevent the spread of the most malignant force on earth, lest it enslave us all.
That may sound absurd to anyone who has grown up since 1989. But there were serious people who feared the worst. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher thought that in the 1970s, the West was “slowly but surely losing.”
Our unequivocal victory brought joy, but it also created something else: a void in our lives. If upholding freedom and democracy against a global enemy was not our purpose, what was?
September 10, 2009
Magna wins the competition for Opel
The German government has settled on Canada’s Magna as the winner in the bidding for Opel (GM’s European presence, including Britain’s Vauxhall):
Earlier, there had been rumours that GM could be planning to try to keep control of its European arm.
Magna was the German government’s preferred bidder. The decision must be approved by the Opel Trust, which is due to hold a press conference shortly.
Magna has pledged to keep all German plants open.
“I am very pleased about the decision that’s been made and it is along the lines that the federal government has been advocating,” Chancellor Merkel said.
“But it’s also along the lines that the employers and the employees of Opel wanted.”
September 2, 2009
Speaking of historical revisionism, here’s Pat Buchanan!
Pat Buchanan recently published a book called Churchill, Hitler and ‘The Unnecessary War. From the title, you can probably pick up the notion that he feels that Hitler was misunderstood and didn’t really want to go to war. If you aren’t busy retching already, try this on for size:
Did Hitler Want War?
Well, from the title alone, we’re off into cloud-cookoo land already. Yes, Hitler did want war. He was pretty emphatic about it too, and not just in 1939. His written-in-prison Mein Kampf was not a particularly pacific and conciliatory little homily.
The German-Polish war had come out of a quarrel over a town the size of Ocean City, Md., in summer. Danzig, 95 percent German, had been severed from Germany at Versailles in violation of Woodrow Wilson’s principle of self-determination. Even British leaders thought Danzig should be returned.
Why did Warsaw not negotiate with Berlin, which was hinting at an offer of compensatory territory in Slovakia? Because the Poles had a war guarantee from Britain that, should Germany attack, Britain and her empire would come to Poland’s rescue.
Danzig was an excuse, not a reason. The plebiscite had shown that the inhabitants wanted to be part of Germany again, which is probably not surprising as the pre-war Polish government was anti-German and were actively trying to suppress the German language and culture in former German areas of Poland. The Polish government was authoritarian, not democratic, and were not the innocents that some later portrayals might try to indicate. Few of the governments of central or eastern Europe would pass muster as democracies in the 1930s.
Poland did not trust the German government to negotiate in good faith, with plenty of reason, so trying to blame them for the outbreak of the war is ludicrous.
But where is the evidence that Adolf Hitler, whose victims as of March 1939 were a fraction of Gen. Pinochet’s, or Fidel Castro’s, was out to conquer the world?
Um. There’s a tiny little bit of evidence. His book. His speeches. The war plans he had his military leaders draw up. The re-armament program, far in excess of what a peaceful nation with nearby enemies might need as a deterrent.
But yeah, aside from that, he didn’t — so far as we know — conduct a secret pinky-swear session with Mussolini and Hirohito at midnight in the Chancellery basement to conquer the world or else. I mean that’d be the smoking gun, wouldn’t it?
But if Hitler was out to conquer the world — Britain, Africa, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, South America, India, Asia, Australia — why did he spend three years building that hugely expensive Siegfried Line to protect Germany from France? Why did he start the war with no surface fleet, no troop transports and only 29 oceangoing submarines? How do you conquer the world with a navy that can’t get out of the Baltic Sea?
Why did he build the Westwall (aka “Siegfried Line“)? Well, perhaps it was because the French had already constructed large sections of the Maginot Line? This — at least as far as generals on both sides thought — provided a dual purpose: to prevent a German attack into France, and to provide a safe starting point for a French attack into Germany. The fact that the line failed to prevent an attack which came from beyond the flank of the line is hindsight. The Westwall was also multi-purpose, in this case it had three goals: prevent the French attacking, provide a base for an attack on France, and (borrowing the modern term) infrastructure. The Nazi party came to power partly because of the unemployment situation in Germany in the early 1930s. A vast construction project like the Westwall offered chances to soak up lots of “excess” labour . . . and to provide money to the “right” kind of private firms (those who supported the Nazis or those which the Nazis needed to curry favour with).
Go read the whole thing if you’re interested, but I’m feeling that there’s little point in going on . . . I’m certainly not going to persuade Mr. Buchanan or his followers of anything.
September 1, 2009
70 years on, Poland remembers
Seventy years ago today, German troops crossed the Polish frontier, starting the Second World War in Europe. Poland held a memorial to that event this morning:
The first ceremony took place at dawn on Westerplatte peninsula near Gdansk, where a German battleship fired the first shots on a Polish fort in 1939.
Poland’s president and prime minister led a sombre ceremony at the fort.
President Lech Kaczynski added to a row with Russia over responsibility for the war, saying his country had received a “stab in the back”.
Foreign leaders from 20 countries including Germany and Russia are expected in Gdansk during the day as ceremonies continue.
