Okay, we really are living in a Salvador Dalí movie: following in the footsteps of of Washington, New York & probably other states, the FDA & FTC are moving to ban caffeinated alco-pops.
Seems alcoholic energy drinks (an oxymoron that should have been a clue from the start) are really, really bad for you (especially if you drink six of them at a frat party) & so supermarket & convenience store shelves should be cleared of them ASAP. (On Tuesday the manufacturer of these things announced it would take the caffeine out of their formula. That makes it so much better.)
Now, coming from the agencies that took bleeding decades to slap a “smoking may be hazardous to your health” sticker on packs of cigarettes & allowed GlaxoSmithKline to manufacture & sell (at top dollar) defective drugs for years (despite constant warnings by a whistle-blower) before finally tickling a $750M fine out of them (a sum which can be vacuumed out of the sofa cushions in the executive lounge), this is just kurazy.
All I can think is that the alco-pop industry doesn’t have the juice that big pharma & big tobacco does so it was easy for the FDA to be seen to protect the public.
It’s still Chien Andalou.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Kings & queens
Well, Britain’s just hogging all the news this week; latest is the announcement that Prince William, second in line to the throne, has got engaged to longtime girlfriend Kate Middleton. The ceremony will take place in an as yet unidentified London location (what besides Westminster Abbey or St. Paul’s would hold even the bridal party?), sometime next spring. Or maybe summer.
A couple of thoughts on this:
Let the souvenir selling begin—a royal wedding might just haul the UK’s butt out of recession faster than anything the Tory-Lib-Dem coalition could come up with by way of benefits-cutting or tax-raising.
Whatever nom-de-rule Wills chooses (they haven’t had much luck with a King William since the Conqueror, & he was a Frog), she will be the first Queen consort named Catherine since Henry VIII. Which may also not bode well.
Three of his wives were Catherine (or Katherine); two did not enjoy what you would call happy marriages. Henry divorced Catherine of Aragon because over the course of nearly 25 years she bore him no viable sons. This resulted in England irrevocably leaving the Roman Catholic fold, the establishment of the Church of England, the destruction of Church assets, the enrichment of the Tudors & five centuries of Anglican theology trying to straddle the fence between high & low church.
Most recently we saw the defection of five CoE bishops to the Roman Church over their discomfort with modernizing trends, including the ordination of women priests & consecration of female bishops. Which I don’t get because if they’re jake with the Queen being the Supreme Head of the Church, what’s the beef with women clergy?
Catherine spent her final few years after the divorce (granted not by the Pope, but by Henry himself—after he declared himself head of the church) in spitefully penurious retirement (King Hal didn’t like reminders of failures), & she wasn’t allowed to see her daughter, who eventually ascended the throne as Mary I. Upon receiving word of her death, Henry is reported to have celebrated.
The second of Henry’s Kates was Catherine Howard. About 30 years his junior, she was unprepared for the reality of an aging, obese sexual partner with a permanent festering ulcer on his leg. This not only impeded his dynastic designs, when she sought an extra-marital affair it made her vulnerable to blackmail from courtiers. Within two years of the wedding she was beheaded on charges of adultery. Girls just wanna have fun; but even in the days before TMZ & Twitter these things have a way of becoming known, & the Tudors were never known for their sense of humor.
Henry’s final Catherine, Parr, managed to outlive him; but as he was her third husband, she’d probably acquired enough negotiating skills to be able to manage him for their four years of marriage. This doesn’t mean it was necessarily a happy union for her: she’d actually been in love with Sir Thomas Seymour (brother to Henry’s third wife, Jane Seymour), but the King’s proposal trumped the baronet’s.
Following Henry’s death in 1547, Catherine was able to marry Seymour, but he was deeply involved in schemes to seize power, which included making a play for Princess Elizabeth, third in line to the throne, who was under Catherine’s care.
Nothing was simple with the Tudors.
Catherine died shortly after giving birth to her first child, at age 35. Her widower was beheaded for treason a year later.
Now, of course, historical dynastic marriages aren’t predictive; they’re not even indicative. But it’s interesting to speculate about a 21st Century Queen Catherine.
Don't get me started on the Williams, though.
A couple of thoughts on this:
Let the souvenir selling begin—a royal wedding might just haul the UK’s butt out of recession faster than anything the Tory-Lib-Dem coalition could come up with by way of benefits-cutting or tax-raising.
Whatever nom-de-rule Wills chooses (they haven’t had much luck with a King William since the Conqueror, & he was a Frog), she will be the first Queen consort named Catherine since Henry VIII. Which may also not bode well.
Three of his wives were Catherine (or Katherine); two did not enjoy what you would call happy marriages. Henry divorced Catherine of Aragon because over the course of nearly 25 years she bore him no viable sons. This resulted in England irrevocably leaving the Roman Catholic fold, the establishment of the Church of England, the destruction of Church assets, the enrichment of the Tudors & five centuries of Anglican theology trying to straddle the fence between high & low church.
Most recently we saw the defection of five CoE bishops to the Roman Church over their discomfort with modernizing trends, including the ordination of women priests & consecration of female bishops. Which I don’t get because if they’re jake with the Queen being the Supreme Head of the Church, what’s the beef with women clergy?
Catherine spent her final few years after the divorce (granted not by the Pope, but by Henry himself—after he declared himself head of the church) in spitefully penurious retirement (King Hal didn’t like reminders of failures), & she wasn’t allowed to see her daughter, who eventually ascended the throne as Mary I. Upon receiving word of her death, Henry is reported to have celebrated.
The second of Henry’s Kates was Catherine Howard. About 30 years his junior, she was unprepared for the reality of an aging, obese sexual partner with a permanent festering ulcer on his leg. This not only impeded his dynastic designs, when she sought an extra-marital affair it made her vulnerable to blackmail from courtiers. Within two years of the wedding she was beheaded on charges of adultery. Girls just wanna have fun; but even in the days before TMZ & Twitter these things have a way of becoming known, & the Tudors were never known for their sense of humor.
Henry’s final Catherine, Parr, managed to outlive him; but as he was her third husband, she’d probably acquired enough negotiating skills to be able to manage him for their four years of marriage. This doesn’t mean it was necessarily a happy union for her: she’d actually been in love with Sir Thomas Seymour (brother to Henry’s third wife, Jane Seymour), but the King’s proposal trumped the baronet’s.
Following Henry’s death in 1547, Catherine was able to marry Seymour, but he was deeply involved in schemes to seize power, which included making a play for Princess Elizabeth, third in line to the throne, who was under Catherine’s care.
Nothing was simple with the Tudors.
Catherine died shortly after giving birth to her first child, at age 35. Her widower was beheaded for treason a year later.
Now, of course, historical dynastic marriages aren’t predictive; they’re not even indicative. But it’s interesting to speculate about a 21st Century Queen Catherine.
Don't get me started on the Williams, though.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Retail therapy
This just in via my BFF Leilah in Palm Springs: this Random Acts of Culture crowd brought the “Hallelujah” chorus to one of the US’s secular temples, Macy’s in Philadelphia. The Knight Foundation (may their endowment never depend on Wall Street investments) has sponsored various outbreaks of the classics around the country.
It clearly knocked the socks off the shoppers & proves that Handel is not just for the holidays.
I don’t care if you’re at work, crank your volume up to the max & let the experience envelope you.
Then hit replay.
& then email to your friends.
It clearly knocked the socks off the shoppers & proves that Handel is not just for the holidays.
I don’t care if you’re at work, crank your volume up to the max & let the experience envelope you.
Then hit replay.
& then email to your friends.
Adding up
A few random examples of how the art of written communication is going straight to hell in a hand cart.
First--an advert on the back of a Safeway receipt:
From the same tape an ad for a local spa:
But it doesn't stop there. Here's an ad from the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle's food & wine section:
This illustrates one of my personal bugaboos: using the possessive (you know, the thing with the apostrophe) for the plural.
But even if the restaurant's marketer or ad agency couldn't tell the difference, doesn't the Chronicle have editors?
Monday, November 15, 2010
Power to the phalanges
Interesting piece from the Telegraph about a UK Twitter protest against the conviction of a guy for Tweeting a threat to/about Sheffield’s airport.
Seems that Paul Chambers, 27, was annoyed at the thought he was going to miss his flight, but evidently had the time and the device on his hands to threaten to blow up Robin Hood Airport (I’m not making that up) in a week if it didn’t get its [act] together.
A British judge found the content of the Tweet to be “menacing” (which is a crime) & fined him a total of £3000, which is probably the only kind of thing that will get a 27-year-old male Tweeter’s attention.
Although you might not think this was your basic blokish bloviating, and that authorities all along the line have lost their senses of humor and perspective, that’s not the story.
The story is that the Twittersphere has rallied behind Chambers, with thousands retweeting his original post and adding “#IamSpartacus”. (Although I’m sure there are multiple variants on the spelling.) This in reference to the 1960 Stanley Kubrick film where the rebellious gladiators refused to let their leader be singled out for punishment.
I’m not sure what to make of it—except that such an act of viral solidarity (is that an oxymoron?) is not at all the same thing as standing with a lighted candle under posters of the desaparacidos, marching on Selma or even texting three quid to a fund to help pay Chambers’ fine. Tweeting “I am Spartacus” is a no-cost no-brain act of trendiness, rather than a real protest, viral or otherwise.
Seems that Paul Chambers, 27, was annoyed at the thought he was going to miss his flight, but evidently had the time and the device on his hands to threaten to blow up Robin Hood Airport (I’m not making that up) in a week if it didn’t get its [act] together.
A British judge found the content of the Tweet to be “menacing” (which is a crime) & fined him a total of £3000, which is probably the only kind of thing that will get a 27-year-old male Tweeter’s attention.
Although you might not think this was your basic blokish bloviating, and that authorities all along the line have lost their senses of humor and perspective, that’s not the story.
The story is that the Twittersphere has rallied behind Chambers, with thousands retweeting his original post and adding “#IamSpartacus”. (Although I’m sure there are multiple variants on the spelling.) This in reference to the 1960 Stanley Kubrick film where the rebellious gladiators refused to let their leader be singled out for punishment.
I’m not sure what to make of it—except that such an act of viral solidarity (is that an oxymoron?) is not at all the same thing as standing with a lighted candle under posters of the desaparacidos, marching on Selma or even texting three quid to a fund to help pay Chambers’ fine. Tweeting “I am Spartacus” is a no-cost no-brain act of trendiness, rather than a real protest, viral or otherwise.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
It's not another country
Here’s irony for you: on the same day that the BBC reports that France’s state rail company finally admitted and apologized for its role in deporting that country’s Jews to Nazi extermination camps, the NY Times runs a story on a US government report admitting that for years this government did indeed harbor and use for geopolitical purposes whole rafts of Nazis and Nazi collaborators.
SNCF, which operates France’s railway system, spent the last five and a half decades insisting that it and its employees weren’t responsible for participating in the deportations; it was all German orders, and rail workers had no choice in the matter.
France as a nation has had an uneasy time with this issue of collaboration—right from the Liberation, when the preponderance of “collabos” punished were women who had consorted with Germans (and not, say, public officials who paved the way for governmental cooperation, or businessmen who made big profits off the invaders), there’s been this national myth that, really, no one helped the occupiers, everyone was a resistant and all the evil-doing was auf Deutsch. The biggest collaborator of all, Philippe Pétain, was in fact tried for the crime, but the French couldn’t bear to give him the death penalty he richly deserved—they did reluctantly sentence him to death, but commuted it to imprisonment.
(They didn’t have the same problem with his deputy, Pierre Laval; they couldn’t wait to send him to the firing squad. Laval was the perfect target. His execution gave the French the satisfaction of having “dealt with” a big-wig collaborator and enabled them to pretty much dust their hands of the whole issue.)
The reality is murkier, as you’d expect. There was plenty of go-along-to-get-along cooperation with the Germans; it was a long four years of occupation. Notable among the goers-along were businesses large and small. SNCF would be one of them.
There were resistants, even within SNCF; which means that if some employees could sabotage operations then there were choices to be made. But, as with the country as a whole, it’s easier to think back on those days as perhaps their “greatest generation”, and pretend that the French were either heroes or victims.
But the Frogs are nothing if not pragmatic: the “profound sorrow and regret” expressed this week are directly related to bids that SNCF wants to put in to build high-speed rail networks in Florida and California. It seems both states are making noises about not doing business with any organization that refuses to acknowledge its involvement in the Holocaust.
C’est l’argent qui parle; et la fraternité qui marche.
However, the US has been engaged in its own cover-up about collaborating in giving refuge to Nazis who should have been dealt with as war criminals. The report the Times acquired this week documents five and a half decades of activities by some federal agencies (largely intelligence related) to protect these Nazis from other agencies (like Justice) that were trying to identify and prosecute war criminals. (And, BTW—this is our tax dollars at work: one agency working full bore against another.)
Our hands are not only not clean in this matter, the agencies are still trying like hell to obfuscate their involvement. If not for a lawsuit filed four years ago, we still wouldn’t have any official recognition. They all want to pretend that their actions were above board; or else that it was so long ago it really doesn’t matter anymore.
But here’s a clue: if you spend all this governmental capital on covering something up, it’s generally something that you wouldn’t want to brag to your grandchildren about.
I understand that, having made a deal with the Georgian devil to destroy the Austrian one, the Anglo-American governments got to 1945 and realized that Stalin was going to be more troublesome than expected, and they made more deals with a whole flock of Nazi devils to help in the Cold War. We don’t have the luxury of black and white clarity; it’s all half-tones.
But what bothers me is that going on for 60 years after the fact we’re still acting like we’ve taken the high road when obviously we’ve been grubbing around in the ditches.
Perhaps what our government needs is a financial incentive such as enticed SNCF into apologizing. If brotherhood won’t do it, maybe the money will.
SNCF, which operates France’s railway system, spent the last five and a half decades insisting that it and its employees weren’t responsible for participating in the deportations; it was all German orders, and rail workers had no choice in the matter.
France as a nation has had an uneasy time with this issue of collaboration—right from the Liberation, when the preponderance of “collabos” punished were women who had consorted with Germans (and not, say, public officials who paved the way for governmental cooperation, or businessmen who made big profits off the invaders), there’s been this national myth that, really, no one helped the occupiers, everyone was a resistant and all the evil-doing was auf Deutsch. The biggest collaborator of all, Philippe Pétain, was in fact tried for the crime, but the French couldn’t bear to give him the death penalty he richly deserved—they did reluctantly sentence him to death, but commuted it to imprisonment.
(They didn’t have the same problem with his deputy, Pierre Laval; they couldn’t wait to send him to the firing squad. Laval was the perfect target. His execution gave the French the satisfaction of having “dealt with” a big-wig collaborator and enabled them to pretty much dust their hands of the whole issue.)
The reality is murkier, as you’d expect. There was plenty of go-along-to-get-along cooperation with the Germans; it was a long four years of occupation. Notable among the goers-along were businesses large and small. SNCF would be one of them.
There were resistants, even within SNCF; which means that if some employees could sabotage operations then there were choices to be made. But, as with the country as a whole, it’s easier to think back on those days as perhaps their “greatest generation”, and pretend that the French were either heroes or victims.
But the Frogs are nothing if not pragmatic: the “profound sorrow and regret” expressed this week are directly related to bids that SNCF wants to put in to build high-speed rail networks in Florida and California. It seems both states are making noises about not doing business with any organization that refuses to acknowledge its involvement in the Holocaust.
C’est l’argent qui parle; et la fraternité qui marche.
However, the US has been engaged in its own cover-up about collaborating in giving refuge to Nazis who should have been dealt with as war criminals. The report the Times acquired this week documents five and a half decades of activities by some federal agencies (largely intelligence related) to protect these Nazis from other agencies (like Justice) that were trying to identify and prosecute war criminals. (And, BTW—this is our tax dollars at work: one agency working full bore against another.)
Our hands are not only not clean in this matter, the agencies are still trying like hell to obfuscate their involvement. If not for a lawsuit filed four years ago, we still wouldn’t have any official recognition. They all want to pretend that their actions were above board; or else that it was so long ago it really doesn’t matter anymore.
But here’s a clue: if you spend all this governmental capital on covering something up, it’s generally something that you wouldn’t want to brag to your grandchildren about.
I understand that, having made a deal with the Georgian devil to destroy the Austrian one, the Anglo-American governments got to 1945 and realized that Stalin was going to be more troublesome than expected, and they made more deals with a whole flock of Nazi devils to help in the Cold War. We don’t have the luxury of black and white clarity; it’s all half-tones.
But what bothers me is that going on for 60 years after the fact we’re still acting like we’ve taken the high road when obviously we’ve been grubbing around in the ditches.
Perhaps what our government needs is a financial incentive such as enticed SNCF into apologizing. If brotherhood won’t do it, maybe the money will.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
News of the good
A brief light piercing through this week’s usual complement of dreary news: Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been released from more than seven years of house arrest.
House arrest was only the latest of the restrictions levied on Suu Kyi. She was separated from her husband and sons for more than two decades—they lived in Britain and if she visited them there was a good chance that she’d have been refused return to Myanmar. The junta even denied her husband permission to visit her when he was dying eleven years ago.
Of course, you never know with dictatorships whether a decision will be reversed in the next five minutes. And you definitely know that this woman isn’t going to veer from the course she’s held for more than 25 years, resisting the military dictators and working to bring democracy to her country.
So it’s not the beginning of the end. But it’s a lovely end to this week in November to think that she’s able to walk around her neighborhood and share a cup of tea with a friend.
House arrest was only the latest of the restrictions levied on Suu Kyi. She was separated from her husband and sons for more than two decades—they lived in Britain and if she visited them there was a good chance that she’d have been refused return to Myanmar. The junta even denied her husband permission to visit her when he was dying eleven years ago.
Of course, you never know with dictatorships whether a decision will be reversed in the next five minutes. And you definitely know that this woman isn’t going to veer from the course she’s held for more than 25 years, resisting the military dictators and working to bring democracy to her country.
So it’s not the beginning of the end. But it’s a lovely end to this week in November to think that she’s able to walk around her neighborhood and share a cup of tea with a friend.
Friday, November 12, 2010
The bishops' strife
Well, I just almost don’t know what to say: it seems three sitting and two retired Anglican bishops are jumping ship because the Church of England has decided to move ahead with ordaining women priests and consecrating women bishops.
Evidently Pope Benedict XVI is happy to welcome them, married though they be, into the fold. After all, he’s been having a bit of pother over the failed cover-up of pedophile priests. Probably five white middle-aged guys who’ve managed monogamy are looking pretty good about now.
According to the Telegraph, the Right Reverend Andrew Burnham, Bishop of Ebbsfleet, compared the CoE to a chain of “failing coffeeshops” that doesn’t maintain consistent product offerings across its franchises.
“The Church of England has decided that it can make its own mind up about what it can do. There are signs it is forgetting and losing a sense of where it came from,” Burnham is quoted as averring.
According to a statement released by the Fab Five, this range of ecclesiastic products, including new approaches to women, gays & who knows what-all, “is incompatible with the historic vocation of Anglicanism and the tradition of the church for nearly 2,000 years.”
Now, I only know what I read in the papers, & I’m certainly not a theologian, but I find it just choice that leaders of a sect established to satisfy the sexual & dynastic appetites (and fill the coffers) of Henry VIII should suddenly be shocked, utterly shocked, that the church has the unmitigated gall to move into the 21st Century.
These are leaders who recognize the reigning monarch of Britain as the head of their church as God’s representative, & have conveniently neglected to mention that this particular tradition only goes back 500 years.
As near as I can tell, they don’t like the way the match has gone, so they’re picking up their balls & going home.
Or, as the Brits would say, tossing their toys out of the pram.
I don’t know which is sadder: them for being in such a snit or Benedict for being so grateful to have them.
Evidently Pope Benedict XVI is happy to welcome them, married though they be, into the fold. After all, he’s been having a bit of pother over the failed cover-up of pedophile priests. Probably five white middle-aged guys who’ve managed monogamy are looking pretty good about now.
According to the Telegraph, the Right Reverend Andrew Burnham, Bishop of Ebbsfleet, compared the CoE to a chain of “failing coffeeshops” that doesn’t maintain consistent product offerings across its franchises.
“The Church of England has decided that it can make its own mind up about what it can do. There are signs it is forgetting and losing a sense of where it came from,” Burnham is quoted as averring.
According to a statement released by the Fab Five, this range of ecclesiastic products, including new approaches to women, gays & who knows what-all, “is incompatible with the historic vocation of Anglicanism and the tradition of the church for nearly 2,000 years.”
Now, I only know what I read in the papers, & I’m certainly not a theologian, but I find it just choice that leaders of a sect established to satisfy the sexual & dynastic appetites (and fill the coffers) of Henry VIII should suddenly be shocked, utterly shocked, that the church has the unmitigated gall to move into the 21st Century.
These are leaders who recognize the reigning monarch of Britain as the head of their church as God’s representative, & have conveniently neglected to mention that this particular tradition only goes back 500 years.
As near as I can tell, they don’t like the way the match has gone, so they’re picking up their balls & going home.
Or, as the Brits would say, tossing their toys out of the pram.
I don’t know which is sadder: them for being in such a snit or Benedict for being so grateful to have them.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Eleven eleven eleven
At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, an armistice went into effect between the armed forces of the Central Powers and those of the Allied Nations. And thus ended, not with a bang but a whimper, the worst systematic slaughter the world had seen up until that time.
From August 1914 until November 1918 around 8.5 million soldiers of the various armies and navies were killed, and another 21 million wounded. Maybe six million civilians were killed and I don’t have figures for further collateral damage.
I’m also not counting the death toll from the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, or the Russian Civil War, both of which are related to the conflagration.
World War I was one of those appalling confluences of technology, politics, idiocy and willful refusal by those in positions of power to view the world as it really was and not as they expected or wanted it to be. Among the worst offenders were the military commanders, the generals, the field marshals, the planners & the strategists.
What they essentially ignored was the fact that the invention and implementation of the machine gun gave the tactical advantage to the defensive, and that the frontal charge, even by mobile troops like cavalry, simply couldn’t work against entrenched forces with this new technology.
Every time I revisit this war, in books, in film or TV or on the battlefields, I’m poleaxed all over again at the utter blindness and criminal stubbornness of the professionals whose business it was to send men into battle for a purpose (to win battles, gain territory, destroy enemy armies, ,bring about some change). Because again and again they proved Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over & over again, expecting different results.
And, frankly, it’s not like they didn’t see it coming. There were European military observers at many of the battles of the US War Between the States, when the prototypical use of entrenchments and rapid fire indicated things to come. And at the battle of Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05, western military observers practically outnumbered the combatants and saw first-hand what happens when infantry charges machine gun emplacements. (Among the observers were Ian Hamilton, later to command the British debacle at Gallipoli; John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force; and Douglas MacArthur. Don’t get me started on MacArthur.)
The First World War is a nightmare of pitched battles and wholesale slaughter, repeated again and again throughout a four-year night. It exhausted nations, natural resources, gene pools and national political and moral fiber. It left a legacy of open wounds, disillusion, broken dreams and broken faith, and I don’t think we’ve fully recovered from it 92 years on.
The problem is, in my view, that we haven’t really learned from it, although we’ve been paying for it all along. Old men were too traumatized by 1914-18 to step up to the plate in 1933 in Manchuria or 1938 in Munich to scotch the snake (which by then was armed with 20 years of improved weaponry, like tanks and tactical fighter-bombers; as well as ideologies that would have wilted the moustaches of Wilhelm II or Franz Josef I). Willfully blind to the realities of Stalin’s rule, western leaders gave away the farm in Eastern Europe, and then gathered to their bosom surviving Nazis to help fight the Cold War. (And, 65 years beyond that, now we have technologies including satellite navigation, handheld missile launchers, dirty bombs, assault rifles and mass communications undreamt of 100 years ago. And nuclear devices.)
And then there’s the situation in the Balkans and Middle East. All the result of or exacerbated by that Great War, and all living on beyond the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918.
You notice I’m short on any answers to these situations. Me—I start by remembering.
From August 1914 until November 1918 around 8.5 million soldiers of the various armies and navies were killed, and another 21 million wounded. Maybe six million civilians were killed and I don’t have figures for further collateral damage.
I’m also not counting the death toll from the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, or the Russian Civil War, both of which are related to the conflagration.
World War I was one of those appalling confluences of technology, politics, idiocy and willful refusal by those in positions of power to view the world as it really was and not as they expected or wanted it to be. Among the worst offenders were the military commanders, the generals, the field marshals, the planners & the strategists.
What they essentially ignored was the fact that the invention and implementation of the machine gun gave the tactical advantage to the defensive, and that the frontal charge, even by mobile troops like cavalry, simply couldn’t work against entrenched forces with this new technology.
Every time I revisit this war, in books, in film or TV or on the battlefields, I’m poleaxed all over again at the utter blindness and criminal stubbornness of the professionals whose business it was to send men into battle for a purpose (to win battles, gain territory, destroy enemy armies, ,bring about some change). Because again and again they proved Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over & over again, expecting different results.
And, frankly, it’s not like they didn’t see it coming. There were European military observers at many of the battles of the US War Between the States, when the prototypical use of entrenchments and rapid fire indicated things to come. And at the battle of Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05, western military observers practically outnumbered the combatants and saw first-hand what happens when infantry charges machine gun emplacements. (Among the observers were Ian Hamilton, later to command the British debacle at Gallipoli; John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force; and Douglas MacArthur. Don’t get me started on MacArthur.)
The First World War is a nightmare of pitched battles and wholesale slaughter, repeated again and again throughout a four-year night. It exhausted nations, natural resources, gene pools and national political and moral fiber. It left a legacy of open wounds, disillusion, broken dreams and broken faith, and I don’t think we’ve fully recovered from it 92 years on.
The problem is, in my view, that we haven’t really learned from it, although we’ve been paying for it all along. Old men were too traumatized by 1914-18 to step up to the plate in 1933 in Manchuria or 1938 in Munich to scotch the snake (which by then was armed with 20 years of improved weaponry, like tanks and tactical fighter-bombers; as well as ideologies that would have wilted the moustaches of Wilhelm II or Franz Josef I). Willfully blind to the realities of Stalin’s rule, western leaders gave away the farm in Eastern Europe, and then gathered to their bosom surviving Nazis to help fight the Cold War. (And, 65 years beyond that, now we have technologies including satellite navigation, handheld missile launchers, dirty bombs, assault rifles and mass communications undreamt of 100 years ago. And nuclear devices.)
And then there’s the situation in the Balkans and Middle East. All the result of or exacerbated by that Great War, and all living on beyond the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918.
You notice I’m short on any answers to these situations. Me—I start by remembering.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
How's your drink?
I’m so glad I’m no longer in Washington state. In the space of a week Evergreen voters rejected two ballot measures that would have removed the state government’s monopoly on the sale of liquor to the public, & the State Liquor Board has banned the sale of alcoholic energy drinks.
I don’t get either—except that they’re both indicators that the population that considers themselves the vortex of intellectual activity also clearly thinks that Government Knows Best, & that the intellectual achievers are too stupid to make rational choices about booze.
But the energy drink thing just doesn’t make sense. Apparently if you want to buy a Red Bull & vodka you’re jake; or if you order up a Colt 45, no problem; if you want a caffeinated alcopop you’ll have to go to Idaho.
Really—you just can't make this stuff up.
I don’t get either—except that they’re both indicators that the population that considers themselves the vortex of intellectual activity also clearly thinks that Government Knows Best, & that the intellectual achievers are too stupid to make rational choices about booze.
But the energy drink thing just doesn’t make sense. Apparently if you want to buy a Red Bull & vodka you’re jake; or if you order up a Colt 45, no problem; if you want a caffeinated alcopop you’ll have to go to Idaho.
Really—you just can't make this stuff up.
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