So for us, Cold War military realities were axioms, facts as tangible as a pound of cheese. There was always an unstated feeling of “Sooner or later.” Sooner or later, the bill would come due. Sooner or later, some of our paratrooper neighbours would get dropped into the Fulda Gap to get chewed up by artillery or crushed to red porridge by tank treads. Sooner or later, the classes at our school would be interrupted by sirens, bright light, and about five pounds per square inch of overpressure.
And then suddenly, in a few weeks in the autumn of ’89, some people very far away decided to call off World War Three. Our nightmares got cancelled like a sitcom. When I talk to other Canadians about what happened in 1989 in Romania and Hungary and Germany, they remain impressed by the courage with which the people of the old Warsaw Pact seized their birthright of political freedom. What’s sometimes lacking is the element of personal gratitude — the sense that those rebels gave us something precious while taking liberty for themselves. Well, I was grateful then. And I still am.
Colby Cosh, “My Cold War”, National Post, 2009-11-06
November 6, 2009
QotD: The end of the Cold War
October 31, 2009
Bosworth Field located, finally
It may be surprising, but the actual location of Bosworth Field, “one of the four most important battles in English history” was only definitely identifed this year:
Just after midday yesterday, Glenn Foard stood on Ambion Hill in Leicestershire, next to the award-winning Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre, pointed at the distant church spire of Stoke Golding and declared an end to 500 years of arguments over the location.
“It’s over there, two miles away,” he said, beyond and below the church, off to the right a bit and spread over 250 acres of what is now flat farmland, crisscrossed by hedgerows, pasture and autumnal trees.
Mr Foard, a battlefield archaeologist who has led a four-year, £1.3 million investigation into the whereabouts of the fighting, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and Leicestershire County Council, is convinced that he has unearthed the proof.
In an unexpected and thrilling development for the archaeologists, that proof is in the form of 22 lead cannon and musket balls that dramatically reshape thinking about late medieval combat.
October 30, 2009
“Then we seize Canadian power plants near Niagara Falls, so they freeze in the dark”
OMG! US invasion plans target Halifax, Montreal, Winnipeg . . . and Sudbury?
The United States government does have a plan to invade Canada. It’s a 94-page document called “Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan — Red,” with the word SECRET stamped on the cover. It’s a bold plan, a bodacious plan, a step-by-step plan to invade, seize and annex our neighbor to the north. It goes like this:
First, we send a joint Army-Navy overseas force to capture the port city of Halifax, cutting the Canadians off from their British allies.
Then we seize Canadian power plants near Niagara Falls, so they freeze in the dark.
Then the U.S. Army invades on three fronts — marching from Vermont to take Montreal and Quebec, charging out of North Dakota to grab the railroad center at Winnipeg, and storming out of the Midwest to capture the strategic nickel mines of Ontario.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy seizes the Great Lakes and blockades Canada’s Atlantic and Pacific ports.
At that point, it’s only a matter of time before we bring these Molson-swigging, maple-mongering Zamboni drivers to their knees! Or, as the official planners wrote, stating their objective in bold capital letters: “ULTIMATELY TO GAIN COMPLETE CONTROL.”
Old news indeed, but still of historical interest. The plans in the other direction were held in Defence Scheme No. 1:
Lt. Colonel Brown himself did reconnaissance for the plan, along with other lieutenant-colonels, all in plainclothes. These missions took place from 1921 and 1926. As historian Pierre Berton noted in his book Marching as to War, these investigations had “a zany flavour about it, reminiscent of the silent comedies of the day.” To illustrate this, Berton quoted from Brown’s reports, in which Brown recorded, among other things, that in Burlington, Vermont the people were “affable” and thus unusual for Americans; that Americans drink significantly less alcohol than Canadians (this was during Prohibition), and that upon pointing out that to Americans, one responded “My God! I’d go for a glass of beer. I’m going to ‘Canady’ to get some more”; that the people of Vermont would only be serious soldiers “if aroused”; and that many Americans might be sympathetic with the British cause.
October 23, 2009
Wreck of WW1 British submarine found in Baltic
BBC News reports on a recent discovery by the Australian descendent of the only survivor of the sinking:
The wreck of a British naval submarine lost for more than 90 years has been found in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Estonia.
HMS E18 – with its complement of three officers and 28 ratings – went out on patrol in May 1916 and was never seen again.
The submarine was one of a handful sent to the Baltic during World War I by Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, to disrupt German shipments of iron ore from Sweden and support the Russian navy.
E18 left its base in the Russian port of Reval – now Tallinn, the capital of Estonia – on the evening of 25 May 1916 and headed west.
The following day she was reported to have engaged and torpedoed a German ship.
A few days later, possibly 2 June, she is believed to have struck a German mine and sunk with all hands.
October 21, 2009
QotD: England of bye-gone days
[I]t is worth noting a minor English trait which is extremely well marked though not often commented on, and that is a love of flowers. This is one of the first things that one notices when one reaches England from abroad, especially if one is coming from southern Europe. Does it not contradict the English indifference to the arts? Not really, because it is found in people who have no aesthetic feelings whatever. What it does link up with, however, is another English characteristic which is so much a part of us that we barely notice it, and that is the addiction to hobbies and spare-time occupations, the privateness of English life. We are a nation of flower-lovers, but also a nation of stamp-collectors, pigeon-fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts-players, crossword-puzzle fans. All the culture that is most truly native centres round things which even when they are communal are not official — the pub, the football match, the back garden, the fireside and the ‘nice cup of tea’. The liberty of the individual is still believed in, almost as in the nineteenth century. But this has nothing to do with economic liberty, the right to exploit others for profit. It is the liberty to have a home of your own, to do what you like in your spare time, to choose your own amusements instead of having them chosen for you from above. The most hateful of all names in an English ear is Nosey Parker. It is obvious, of course, that even this purely private liberty is a lost cause. Like all other modern people, the English are in process of being numbered, labelled, conscripted, ‘co-ordinated’. But the pull of their impulses is in the other direction, and the kind of regimentation that can be imposed on them will be modified in consequence. No party rallies, no Youth Movements, no coloured shirts, no Jew-baiting or ‘spontaneous’ demonstrations. No Gestapo either, in all probability.
George Orwell, “England, Your England”, The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, 1941-02-19.
October 19, 2009
The American social contract
L. Neil Smith received some anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Iranian material recently. He tries to point out to the Christian who sent it to him that the United States was not intended to be a Christian country:
As I’ve testified often, I’ve known many Arabs, many Moslems, and more than a few Iranians, and found most of them to be extremely likeable, if not downright admirable people. What I see in my e-mail is an obvious product of ignorance and prejudice, and even worse, it fuels the evil machinations of the murderous warmongers in government.
Accordingly (with a few later additions), I wrote back to my correspondent:
We’ll all do better at getting rid of this administration if we face the truth, even if some of us find it unpleasant. This is not a Christian nation, nor was it ever intended to be. It was founded by a coalition of various Christians and deists (which is what atheists and agnostics back in the 18th century called themselves to avoid getting burned at the stake). It was bankrolled by a Jew, Haim Solomon. Look him up. None of this information is secret. It’s freely available to anybody who possesses the courage and integrity to click on Google or Wikipedia.
The deal between all of them is that religion would be separate from politics, that we would not make public policy on the basis of our mystical beliefs. Christians are trying to break that deal now, which is too bad. People in other nations, historically, have murdered each other over theological disputes. We have not, but we might start, if the Christians won’t stop welching on the bargain their ancestors made.
October 17, 2009
Tweet of the day: Mayan prognostication
cetaylor: Everything you need to know about Mayan 2012 nonsense: They couldn’t foresee the end of their own effin’ civilization in the 16th century.
October 8, 2009
Google’s neglect of its USENET archive
Maybe giving Google a monopoly over all those millions of out of date books won’t work out as well as we might hope. They’ve (kinda) been here before, and the results weren’t what you would expect. For those who remember the “good old days” when USENET was the place to be (before the Web, it was the best thing online), Kevin Poulsen looks at what happened after Google took over the effective ownership of the archive:
Salon hailed the accomplishment in an article headlined “The geeks who saved Usenet.” “Google gets the credit for making these relics of the early net accessible to anyone on the web, bringing the early history of Usenet to all.”
Flash forward nearly eight years, and visiting Google Groups is like touring ancient ruins.
On the surface, it looks as clean and shiny as every other Google service, which makes its rotting interior all the more jarring — like visiting Disneyland and finding broken windows and graffiti on Main Street USA.
Searching within a newsgroup, even one with thousands of posts, produces no results at all. Confining a search to a range of dates also fails silently, bulldozing the most obvious path to exploring an archive.
Want to find Marc Andreessen’s historic March 14, 1993 announcement in alt.hypertext of the Mosaic web browser? “Your search — mosaic — did not match any documents.”
September 24, 2009
Biggest Anglo-Saxon treasure find since Sutton Hoo
Amateur “metal detectorist” Terry Herbert is the discoverer of an Anglo-Saxon treasure hoard in a field in Staffordshire:
The collection contains about 5kg of gold and 2.5kg of silver, making it far bigger than the Sutton Hoo discovery in 1939 when 1.5kg of Anglo-Saxon gold was found near Woodbridge in Suffolk.
Leslie Webster, former keeper at the British Museum’s Department of Prehistory and Europe, said: “This is going to alter our perceptions of Anglo-Saxon England as radically, if not more so, as the Sutton Hoo discoveries.
“(It is) absolutely the equivalent of finding a new Lindisfarne Gospels or Book of Kells.”
A great exploit for Mr. Herbert, although the report makes what appear to be conflicting statements: “It has been declared treasure by South Staffordshire coroner Andrew Haigh, meaning it belongs to the Crown”, but also “BBC correspondent Nick Higham said the hoard would be valued by the British Museum and the money passed on to Mr Herbert and the landowner”.
I hope that the latter part is true, because if it isn’t, it will only encourage future treasure finders to conceal their discoveries in hopes of selling it off on the black market, likely destroying the historical and archaeological value of the site in the process.
September 23, 2009
Watch the collector value of M1 rifles drop now
The South Korean government is planning to sell off its large holdings of M-1 rifles and carbines, according to this BBC News report:
South Korea has come up with a novel way to boost its defence budget — by selling a vast stockpile of old Korean-war rifles to collectors in the US.
The guns were originally sent to Korea as military aid, and some were also used during the war in Vietnam.
For more than five decades, they have been kept mothballed in warehouses.
Most of those on offer are M1 rifles — a weapon once described by US General George S Patton as “the greatest battle-implement ever devised”.
I recall when the Canadian Forces retired the FN C1 rifle . . . the government freaked at the thought of thousands of “assault rifles” being sold to civilians, so they changed the regulations to move the FN into a more restricted category (which most casual gun owners didn’t qualify for).
September 12, 2009
The untold story from the Plains of Abraham
Desmond Morton points out that one of the most interesting parts of the battle — after both Wolfe and Montcalm had become casualties — is almost unknown today:
What happened next? Suddenly French soldiers knew: they would die. The chill of terror that dissolved British regulars in earlier battles now struck Montcalm’s men. A British cannon shell smashed their general’s side. As soldiers lugged Montcalm back to Quebec, they were jostled by terrified whitecoats fleeing for their lives.
Bayonets glinting, the British followed at their heels. On the left, Fraser’s Highlanders dropped their muskets, drew their heavy claymores, and raced forward with blood-curdling screams to cut off a French escape to Beauport.
This is as much of the battle as most historians report. What more do you need?
Montcalm died before dawn on the 14th. Hit again, probably by a Canadien militiaman, Wolfe died as the French ranks dissolved. Fighting on the Plains continued until dusk, sustained by Canadien militia and their native allies. When Quebec sovereignists killed plans to re-enact the battle they helped keep that heroic story secret. Perhaps they had no idea that it happened. When French regulars fled, the militia fought on.
Five times they stopped Fraser’s terrifying Highlanders from slaughtering the terrified regulars. Thanks to their despised militia and aboriginal allies, Montcalm’s French regulars could safely stop at Beauport, catch their breath, and begin a long, dreary march back to Montreal to prepare for another year of war. Did the separatists not want anyone to know?
September 11, 2009
QotD: Eight years on
On the Hewitt show tonight I started talking about 9/11, and my mouth overran my head, because somewhere down there is a core of anger that hasn’t diminished a joule. This doesn’t mean anything, by itself — anger is an emotion that believes its justification is self-evident by its very existence. Passion is not an argument; rage is not a plan. But as the years go by I find myself as furious now as I was furious then — and no less unmanned by the sight of the planes and the plumes. Once a year I watch the thing I cobbled together from the footage I Tivo’d, and the day is bright and real and true again.
Or not. It’s all so far in the past, isn’t it? The ten-year-old you had to sit down and console and reassure is off to college. The President is retired — seems like he left two years ago. The wars grind on, but as far as the front pages are concerned, they’re like TV shows that lost their popularity but pull enough viewers to avoid cancellation. (The video store doesn’t even carry the DVD of the first two seasons anymore.) We’re used to the hole in the ground where the towers used to be, and if they announced they won’t rebuild, but will pave it over and use it for parking, people would shrug. We haven’t forgotten that the towers fell, but no one remembers what they planned to replace them with. The towers they planned looked empty in in the pictures — shiny, contorted, as if twisting away to avoid a blow.
Right after the towers fell, people who’d never liked them as architecture wanted them back just as they were. Get back up in the sky! But it hasn’t happened. Even if they build the replacement towers, there’s still a space in the sky where no one will ever stand again. We could stand there once. That we couldn’t stand there eight years ago was their fault. That we cannot stand there today is ours.
James Lileks, The Bleat, 2009-09-11
September 9, 2009
A plethora of Billy Bishop airports
Publius reports on an attempt by Toronto to steal away the name of Owen Sound’s most famous warrior:
The small regional airport was originally named after George VI. Publius’ humble suggestion would be to change it back to its original name. Modern Canadians can’t tell the difference between George VI and George III, so that’s probably a no go. The choice of Billy Bishop, one of the leading Allied fighter pilots of World War One, as a namesake is an inspired one.
So inspired I was shocked by it. Billy Bishop is very Old Canada, pre-1960s. Bishop didn’t engage in peacekeeping and we’re fairly certain he was a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. He was never discriminated against, except when British officers made fun of him for being Canadian. The British used to do that a lot back then. We just returned the favour by making fun of them. Perhaps Bishop could have filed a human rights complaint, had such things existed back then.
Billy Bishop was something modern Canada has half forgotten. An ordinary man with extraordinary skill and courage from small town Canada. He was one of the very best in the world at doing a very dangerous, very new and very important job. Here was a Canadian who was, in the current phrasing, completely world class.
September 3, 2009
Was Fukuyama correct after all?
Scott Sumner has an interesting post up about Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” thoughts of the late 1980s:
So the obvious choice for most successful prediction is Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 claim that “history was ending,” that the great ideological battle between democratic capitalism and other isms was essentially over, and that henceforth the world would become gradually more democratic, peaceful, and market-oriented.
[. . .]
I get very annoyed when I see people say “the Chinese case proves that economic development doesn’t inevitably lead to political liberalization.” There are so many problems with this sort of statement that one hardly knows were to begin. China has seen incredible political liberalization since 1978, indeed even some progress since 1998. But what about western-style democracy? To answer that question, consider the list above. I would argue that China most resembles Thailand. Both have similar per capita GDPs, both have a huge split between the urban elite and the rural poor. My hunch is that consciously or subconsciously, the urban residents of China are not thrilled by the idea of a pure democracy that would effectively turn the country over to the rural poor. But wait a few decades, when China goes from being 60%-70% rural, to 60%-70% urban, and from mostly poor to mostly middle-income, and from mostly undereducated to mostly educated. Then let’s see how Fukuyama’s thesis holds up.
History is still ending. Or maybe I should say “his story” is ending, the story of war, revolution and voyages of discovery. The Illiad and the Odyssey. And “her story” is beginning. A world focused on improving education, health care, cuisine, leisure time, the arts, communication, animal rights, the environment, etc.
1939: Britain declares war on Germany
The German invasion of Poland two days earlier triggered the French and British governments’ guarantee to Poland, so after the expiry of the ultimatum, war was declared. Here’s British PM Neville Chamberlain’s announcement of the state of war (RAM file, not WMV).
Unlike the situation in 1914, where Canada was automatically at war when Britain went to war, in 1939 Canada was able to decide whether and when to go to war. It wasn’t until a week later, on September 10, that Canada was formally at war with Germany.
