Finally, a global calamity where the best thing to do is stay home, drink beer, and watch TV. I’m doing my part.

(Click on image to see the full size version)

Thank God for silver linings. I mean, global warming, the Af-Pak War, Somali pirates, world wide economic collapse, Susan Boyle … it’s all been too much lately. And now a new global menace is on the horizon, swine flu. It’s actually swine-bird-human flu to be more precise. It’s broken out in Mexico, and appears to have already spread to four continents. So what’s so bad about a little flu? Well, this flu is killing a fair number of its victims, including healthy young people. The scientific expression for a flu that kills healthy young people is “Oh, shit.” So how serious is this? No one knows. Should we panic and run for the hills? Definitely not. But, the gentle reader may ask, people are dying! Yes, they are. In fact people die of flu epidemics every year, typically in the hundreds of thousands every year. So let’s not lose perspective here. Moving right along, in my usual fashion I will comment on various aspects of this unfolding situation.

First of all, as disasters go, we are really prepared for this one. There are huge stockpiles of drugs to treat flus. There are enormous planet wide medical resources working on this as we speak, a vaccine will likely be ready within months. Virtually every government entity on the planet has whole departments devoted to public health, all of which can be brought to bear. And epidemics have been studied by very smart scientists for decades, we actually have a pretty good handle on this. These people do actually know what they are doing.

Which brings us to my first point, the armchair quarterbacking and conspiracy theorizing in this situation has already gotten ridiculous to offencive. In the states especially there are racist (or maybe just  ignorant to be fair) pundits calling for the the USA to seal the border with Mexico. This is dumb for so many reasons. The first being that it not possible to seal a border. The second being that this would deny us a huge tool in monitoring people who come and go and identifying the infected ones. And yes, it would cost a huge pile of money. It would also cause a false sense of security, because the experts say that the best way to fight this is locally. The more we can stop its spread locally, the better off we will all be.  We aren’t going to be able to stop this, but if we slow down its spread it will both give us time to make a vaccine and get us into the northern hemisphere summer, when the flu season tends to peter out all on its own. Lastly of course, it’s too late to close the border, the virus is already spread to four continents for God’s sake. I hate to say it, but “closing the barn door after the cows are gone” seems to be one of the only arrows left in many right wing pundit’s quivers.

And when we come to conspiracy theories, it gets worse. No this isn’t terrorism. It would take amazingly sophisticated technological resources to even consider using the flu as a biological weapon, few countries have those resources, let alone terrorists hiding in caves. Secondly, the flu is about the last pathogen one would chose to use for a biological weapon. No matter what, it is going to spread back to one’s own people. And worse, flu viruses are highly mutable and it could easily turn into something far more lethal than was intended. By the same token of course the people claiming this is some “new world order” plot to “thin the herds” also falls flat. There would be better ways to do it, and the herds are thinning themselves quite nicely as it is. (Not to mention the sophomoric immaturity of believing in some secret globe spanning secret world government.)

That being said, one should also keep in mind that while this flu almost certainly wasn’t created as a weapon, it most certainly will be used as a weapon. Aforementioned pundits are using it already to spread their message of hate. Some countries have already used it as an excuse to hit the USA with economic sanctions. And it can be assumed that governments, militaries, intelligence agencies, and commercial interests are quietly discussing how this can be best used to their advantage. Ex post facto conspiracies if you will.

And despite my cheery optimism, how bad could this get? Well, I’ve been reading about the 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic, and the answer would have to be “pretty bad.” In 1918 somewhere between one third to half the human race caught Spanish Influenza, and 20 to 100 million people died. In October of 1918 nearly 200,000 Americans died of the flu, the worst mass death toll in US history. That’s about one person in every 500, so almost everyone knew someone who died. A comparable modern death toll would be 600,000 dead Americans. That kind of puts hurricane Katrina in perspective, hell, it puts almost every war the USA has ever fought in perspective.

Will it get that bad?  No one knows, but in a  few weeks we will know a lot more. If one is worried, wash one’s hands frequently and avoid crowds. (Wearing masks is optional, it can’t hurt but it’s probably little protection outside of health care settings.) And if one is really worried, stay home and watch TV. Because the last thing we need is people panicking in the streets.

Skol!

(The above image is a reproduction of a painting made before 1918 and is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. I’m also pretty sure it’s  public domain under US copyright law. It’s “Death of a Maiden” painted by the amazing Austrian artist Egon Schiele. He was an up and coming artist who might have changed the art world, but because of his untimely death few people outside of art history classes have heard of him. He died in 1918 of the Spanish Flu at age 28, three days after his six months pregnant wife died of the same. He made a few sketches of her in his last three days, his last works. So while the overall impact of a pandemic may be minor, the individual impact is tragedy beyond words. There was another Austrian artist of the same age in 1918 who survived the flu, damn shame he didn’t die instead. The Lord works in mysterious ways, nu?)

If you thought the Iranian hostage crisis was bad, just wait till Pakistan falls apart

I’m a little concerned about developments in Pakistan. More than a little concerned actually. This is easily the number one spot on the planet where all hell could break out in the near future. And by all hell, I mean a major war, possibly even a nuclear war. Usually when our leaders in Washington make hysterical claims about some grave danger we face overseas, they are exaggerating for their own propaganda purposes. In the case of the unravelling situation in  Pakistan, Washington may be misstating the problem and ignoring the role they played in creating it, but there is no doubt it is a problem.

First of all, what’s going on? Well, the Pakistani government has been cutting deals with militants in its border regions. In fact Pakistan has basically ceded control of parts of Pakistan within 100 miles of the capitol to Taliban militants. Oh my. Instability has been spreading throughout Pakistan for a number of reasons. A collapsing economy. Indian meddling. Pakistan was basically forced to join a war against the Taliban that they weren’t enthusiastic about to begin with, and their war effort is falling apart. And there seems to be no doubt that America’s rocket attacks are turning Pakistanis against the USA and their own government in large umbers. This is one of the amazing examples of how war supporters have fatal tunnel vision, they can rant and rave about the rocket attacks  Gaza and how even one rocket justifies Israel’s military violence, yet they can’t grasp that firing rockets into Pakistan is going to piss the Pakistanis off in the same way so many Israelis are outraged.

In any event, I digress. Adding to the problem in a huge way are the comments of our leaders in Washington. Both Clinton and General Petraeus have recently lectured the Pakistanis on how they are conducting themselves with their rebellious border provinces. Clinton was particularly harsh, basically accusing the Pakistanis of abdicating to the Taliban. Quick poll, how would Americans react if some foreign leader lectured us and told us we had to do things their way or else? To put it mildly, people would be rushing to American leaders who told the foreign leaders to butt out.

Which leads to the conclusion that Washington is trying to destabilize Pakistan, maybe with hopes of inspiring a military coup. At the very least these comments  aren’t helping, and are a propaganda godsend for the Taliban and other such groups. I mean, for seven years now we have been losing ground in this part of the world, while the power and influence of our chosen enemies is increasing. Yet our only response is more troops and more threats and more rocket attacks … the very things that have been destabilizing the region for years?

God only knows what is going to happen, but at least the chances of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of the Taliban or the like is small. The Pakistani army retains very tight control of them, they no more want the Taliban to have the bomb than the USA does. And if it seems that an Islamic revolution is sweeping Pakistan, there’s no doubt that the USA /India/Israel would take military attack to destroy the Pakistani nuclear arsenal … very possibly with the support of the Pakistani military. Still, that would only add more fuel to the fire.

In some ways what most disturbs me about this mess is that western thinking on the subject never seems to change. For two centuries now British and then American armies have periodically marched through the region trying to impose our version of secular reality on them, and despite two centuries of bloody failure, we just keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

Maybe this will all work out OK. Obama does seem to be a little more inclined to diplomacy than Bush. A little. However, he seems to have the same blind spot as everyone in Washington regarding spending on war, no price is too high. (Well, no price in American dollars and foreign blood.) I don’t see how we can possibly invade and occupy Pakistan, yet we seem determined to forge a course where abject surrender or massive war are our only options. This is not a sound geopolitical strategy.

Maybe I’ll write a post of the ten biggest blunders in the “War on Terror,” that could be fun. Stay safe everyone and have a great weekend.

(The above image is claimed as Public Domain under British copyright law as it was executed prior to 1939. The author is unknown. It’s a nineteenth century painting of the Battle of Maiwand, where in 1880 an Afghan warlord defeated a British army in one of the few victories of an Asian army over  a western one in the nineteenth century. Just another example of our endless penchant for pouring European blood on the ground in foreign parts.)

Find the Three Somali Pirates Hiding in this Crowd:

This is what happens when a blogger has a graphics budget of $0, painful isn’t it? In any event, I think it’s a good sign that I am trying to have fun with the topic. The topic of course is pirates, Somalian pirates to be specific. There are four points I wanted to make about them, in the hopes that someone will refute me, or at least call me names.

Moving right along, the first point is that the people living in Somalia … are people. Most of them are basically decent folks getting by under circumstances that would make most westerners curl up and die. They are normal human beings who love their families, friends, and homeland. Just like Americans. There may be some bad things going on in Somalia, but it’s not because the Somalians are bad people. I’m not spewing “why can’t we all get along,” I’m just saying that most people are just that, people.

Secondly, and maybe too obviously, how does one identify a Somalian pirate? They aren’t walking around in funny hats with parrots on their shoulders. They don’t live in fortified pirate hideouts flying the Jolly Roger flag. In other words, the idea that we should “take out” the pirate bases or otherwise bomb or invade our way out of this problem are absurd.  Not to mention there’s no infrastructure, Somalian government, or anything else to bomb in Somalia. The more dispersed an enemy is, the less use conventional military power is against them. And the Somali pirates are as about as dispersed as it gets.

Thirdly  (see, this isn’t a completely random post) please read this article for some background and context to the pirate mess in Somalia. I don’t agree with all of it, but the history of Somalia and especially the history of US relations with Somalia is important for understanding the piracy and why the Somalians aren’t particularly thrilled with the west.

Lastly, the one part I disagree with. And a point where I’ve changed my thinking. I know I’ve said before, and even implied above, that there is no military solution to this problem. That’s not entirely true. While there is no way to solve this problem by invading or bombing Somalia, there is a way the Navy could effectively deal with this problem. We could deploy a Carrier Strike Group in the region to escort shipping and hunt pirates. That much air power could effectively patrol a vast area. And if pirates knew that Navy Seals were going to be showing up every time within hours (or less) of a pirate attack, it would most definitely act as a deterrent.

We have eleven carrier strike groups, why haven’t we simply deployed one to shut down the pirates and make the sea lanes off Somalia safe for international shipping? It’s a good question and one I don’t really have an answer for. I mean, these carrier groups are incredibly expensive to maintain no matter where they are, why not have one actually doing something useful? Beats me, but I have some ideas.

Possibly the expense, but the USA has launched far more expensive operations with far less by way of clear objectives, so that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. The Bush administration and the Navy  tried very hard to get the pirates classified as “terrorists” so fighting them could be included in the GWOT. And President Obama certainly picked up that torch and has done his best to portray the Somali pirates as some sort of threat to the world. So money and a stated desire to fight pirates doesn’t seem to be an issue, what gives?

Granted it would give critics of military spending new ammunition, but for all practical purposes the military has gotten everything it wanted for decades plus some, it’s hard to imagine one more example of wasteful spending being a serious issue. At least the pirates are real, unlike so may of the basically fantasy threats we spend pallets of money preparing to defend against. Maybe the pirates would simply hide and leave us stuck with a deployed carrier group, but I would think yet another excuse to keep our military deployed overseas would be welcome.

No, I suspect it may be something more subtle. A combination of two things actually. For one thing, maybe it wouldn’t really work. In commercials and Hollywood movies the Navy has all sorts of capabilities, but finding small boats filled with armed teenagers in a vast ocean is a tricky business. We would look pretty silly if the pirates managed to pull off even a few spectacular heists under our noses. Or worse, if the pirates or some other group managed to actually attack a carrier, it would give incredible street cred to those who advocate taking up arms against the USA.

I mean, while the USA claims it wants to kick butt and take names over the entire planet, we don’t really want fight the entire planet, do we? The people in Washington must know that would be a bad idea, right? Dear God I hope so.

On Friday, back to the ten biggest blunders made by the Allies during World War Two. And maybe my new theory on cat liquidity and temperature. Stay cool everyone.

(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit and its use here in no way interferes with the copyright holder’s commercial use of the image. Plus it’s been modified by the author of this blog. Yes, those green things are parrots. I know, don’t give up my day job.)

If this is a Russian house cat, I don’t even want to see a Russian dog …

Clearly Russians are tough. Or crazy. Maybe both. Definitely a good reason to avoid a war with Russia. Theres’ plenty of more pictures of the cat on line as well, the damn thing even plays with a grenade: The Russian Cat of Death. Moving right along, it was a long weekend and I’m too tired to continue with my World War Two ramblings. In no particular order, a few random rants regarding recent news.

Obama and the pirates. Sigh. This probably deserves a whole post but it’s too depressing. Yeah, go team. Obama’s a big hero now … he ordered Navy Seals to gun down 3 Somali teenagers. In terms of military victory street cred, I dunno. But, but, he saved an American’s life! No, not really, the Captain’s life wasn’t really in danger, unless you count ordering snipers to shoot his captors. The Somali pirates haven’t been running around killing people, it would be bad for business. In fact this “piracy” is basically commercial extortion. Yet it’s portrayed as this huge threat to the world.  (Odd how anything that threatens giant corporation’s profits is now automatically a threat to the world, nu?) And now we all have a live version of a 24 episode to feel all warm and fuzzy about. Gimme a break. What most bugs me about this (aside from the fact that it’s just going to make things worse, radicalize more Somalis, and result in dead Americans) is the pathetic mainstream news coverage of the whole situation. There’s rarely any context or history in the news, but lately it seems like it’s just they have stopped even trying. In any event I don’t approve of piracy, but this is a problem where shooting is going to make things worse, not better. And for those that can get their minds around it, here’s what a Somali has to say about the situation.

Meanwhile the so called “War on Terror” appears to be expanding in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and now Eritrea. I used the think that World War Three as going to be the First World fighting the Third World. I still think that. In fact, that’s pretty much what the story of the last 500 years or so has been, while there has been some squabbling over the spoils, the end result has always been the same. The west gets the spoils and the aborigines (third worlders) get the dregs. And if they don’t compliantly do what they’re told, we just make it harder for them.

Speaking of defiant foreigners, I read an interesting article on the recent North Korean missile launch. The basic point was that the Korean missile is a multi-stage liquid fuelled rocket, and that pretty much by definition this is not a military system. Liquid fuelled rockets cannot be left fuelled up and ready to go, it takes days to fuel one up. Days where it is sitting on a launching pad in full view of American spy satellites and drones. So this is not a first strike weapon, nor even much of a retaliatory weapon. In other words, once again a foreign “threat” has been wildly exaggerated.

Then there’s the whole Bush torture memo thing. Not much to say here, I don’t see it as being much more than a distraction. And maybe payback for the Republicans who simply can’t seem to open their mouths without claiming that somehow Obama is “endangering the country.” The Republicans have become one trick ponies, eight years of  “We’ll protect you, they’ll sell us out to our enemies” is getting pretty stale at this point. What’s endangering the country is mindless militarism and letting the rich call the shots.  I mean, spending more money that the rest of the globe combined hasn’t made us any safer, and the greatest upward transfer of wealth in history doesn’t exactly seem to be tricking down. The only thing trickling down from Washington smells funny and will ruin your nice Italian loafers if you step in it. Granted very few of  us can afford those nice Italian loafers now.

And aren’t I in a good mood this week? Don’t you wish this was another  World War Two Hitler post? In closing I will quote from my favourite US president, the man who tried to warn us about letting the military and the arms industry run the show. He must be spinning in his grave now:

“Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

— from Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation, 17 January 1961

By every measure of military might and spending we are more secure than any nation on Earth ever was … feeling prosperous yet?

(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit. Credit and copyright: A cool Russian couple and their cat. It’s an Asian Fishing Cat by the way, an endangered wild cat that lives in Southeast Asia. It’s unusual in that it has webbed feet and likes to swim, which it does skillfully. It’s diet? As the image above shows: whatever it wants.)

OK, now I clearly have Hitler and the Second World War on the brain

Well, on the subject of Hitler and World War Two I’m going to expound a bit further. I am working on a post about Allied blunders during the war, but they tend to be a bit different than the sorts of blunders Hitler made. Early in the war Hitler convinced himself that he was a military genius, and his overconfidence on that score really encouraged him to take insane risks later on in the war. With the exception of Churchill, most of the Allied leaders had a least some humility and didn’t make the kind of God-like miscalculations that Hitler was prone too.

So how did Hitler convince himself that he was the next Alexander the Great? Well, yes, he was a malignant narcissist with an ego the size of Germany, and likely a psychopath too boot. There was a bit more going on here though. In Germany’s first two big military campaigns, Poland and France, the Germans achieved crushing historically unprecedented success. And in both cases Hitler had gone with a risky plan that the majority of his generals had opposed. That’s right, in both Poland and France the German High Command favoured a more cautious attack. So their wild success in both these campaigns really reinforced the idea in Hitler’s mind that he was a better general than his generals. I mean, he had gone against the advice of the best German military minds, and achieved historically stunning victories, this must make Hitler a military genius, nu?

Well, no. There are two flies in the ointment. The first one is fairly obvious, and many of my astute readers may have already perceived it. While Hitler went with risky plans … they weren’t his plans. The guy that recognizes and promotes a good idea gets credit no doubt, but in both France and Poland the chief architects of the plans the German’s used were Generals Manstein and Guderian, not Hitler. This makes Manstein and Guderian the military geniuses, not Hitler.

This not only didn’t stop Hitler for taking the credit for the victories, until the day Hitler died he scorned his generals’ sound advice and over ruled them on many occasions. And despite the many disasters that resulted, Hitler always blamed the failure on the people carrying out the orders, and could never grasp that the orders were flawed, not their execution. That might seem hard to grasp for some people, most people if they lost a few big battles would at least question their abilities. Not Hitler though, but not surprising when one realize that this was a man who appears to have actually believed that Germany lost World War One because of a vast Jewish conspiracy and fifth column inside Germany. Of course there was no proof of such a conspiracy, nor did the Jews of Germany have any reason, motive, or even opportunity to conduct such a conspiracy … but when it comes to people who believe in conspiracy theories, absence of evidence is just more proof of the  insidious cleverness of the conspirators.

Sigh. Moving right along, in a sense it can be claimed that Germany’s crushing victories over France and Poland actually paved the way for Hitler’s eventual downfall by convincing him of his infallibility. However, in the case of France, there is another take on this that is curious. Serious military historians backed up by serious wargamers have concluded that the Germans might very well have been better off in the long run if they had followed the cautious plan and basically charged into Belgium to fight the British.

Say what? How could there be something better than an almost bloodless ten day victory over France and England? Well, as pointed out in the previous post, to a very real extent the British army escaped from France unscathed. True, they lost all their stuff, but those two hundred thousand guys who escaped formed the backbone of the British military for the rest of the war. If the Germans had marched into Belgium instead and battled the Allied armies, it would have taken a bit longer and cost more German lives, but the result would have been the same. Even better, the irreplaceable British forces would have suffered heavy losses before they were withdrawn, if they were even able to withdraw at all. Best of all, the RAF would almost certainly have suffered much greater losses trying to support their troops on the ground.

Wait a second. If the Allies had more troops, tanks, and planes than the Germans … how the hell could the Germans have been almost certain to crush them in a huge head to head battle? Wasn’t a big battle in Belgium the Allies’ plan all along? Alas, I am approaching my 800 word limit, so that dear readers will have to wait until the next post.

And yes, I am aware that Doug’s Darkworld is morphing into chapters in a book about World War Two right before my reader’s horrified eyes. It’s just such a fun subject for students of war, history, and science such as myself. I’ll be back to ranting about Obama’s crimes and mysterious slime under glaciers and the onrushing  apocalypse soon enough, for now a little diversion into the dark corners of the largest war in history.

Have a great weekend everyone.

(The above image was made by the UK government before 1957 and is thus public domain under UK copyright law. It’s a Boulton Paul Defiant, a British “turret fighter.” Turret fighters, um, seemed like a good idea at the time. In practise the smaller, faster, more nimble German Me-109s flew rings around them, rendering them useless in the fight for the control of the skies over France. The Defiant did enjoy success as a night fighter during the Blitz, but afterwards was relegated to training duty. Not a blunder, just one of the handicaps the British entered World War Two with. And another reminder that a lot of very expensive weapons don’t necessarily work out in actual practise.)

Doug’s Darkworld’s dumbest mistake, I forgot one of Hitler’s greatest blunders

Yeesh, in the middle of the night I woke up and realized that I really blew it with my last post, I left out what was possibly Hitler’s biggest mistake aside from the ill-conceived and badly executed invasion of Russia. And since I appear to be on a  roll, a post about the biggest Allied blunders is in the works, I’ll take this opportunity to discuss a great historical mystery, why did Hitler order his Panzers to halt when they had the British army trapped in Dunkirk? Nearly two hundred thousand British troops were evacuated from France in the “Miracle of Dunkirk,” averting what would have been the worst disaster in British military history. What’s going on here?

OK, some background. In 1939 Hitler invaded Poland. Britain and France declared war on Germany. (There’s actually some interesting stuff here for a future post, none of this was preordained.) Suffice it to say that German troops conquered Poland in a few weeks in the fall of 1939, and for the next six months or so nothing much happened as the Germans marched their troops from Poland back to the frontier with France. This was the so called sitzkrieg or phoney war. Why the hell didn’t France and England attack Germany while she was busy with Poland? Good question. Basically because they had prepared to refight World War One. The French had built a fortified defencive line along the border with Germany, the Maginot Line, and had massed their armies to march into Belgium hand in hand with the British to fight the advancing Germans. They had more men than the Germans. They had more tanks than the Germans. They had more aircraft than the Germans. A foolproof plan, nu?

So in the spring of 1940 just as the French and British had suspected, Germany attacked Belgium and Holland, and the British and French Armies marched north into Belgium to aid the plucky Belgium defenders. If the Germans had followed their World War One game plan, there would have been a hell of a battle in Belgium. Alas for the Allies, the Germans had updated their plan. The Germans had put all their tanks in a few units, the aptly named panzer (German for armour) units. The Allies had more tanks than the Germans, but they were spread among their armies, not concentrated into large groups of tanks. While the main German army did indeed march into Belgium to meet the British and French armies, the panzer units advanced through a lightly defended wilderness (The Ardennes) and then raced to the English Channel virtually unopposed. The Germans reached the channel in ten days, completely surrounding the massed British and French armies in Belgium.

The British and French had reacted very badly as this disaster unfolded, they simply hadn’t planned for any such contingency as hundreds of German tanks making an end run around their armies. At this point the King of Belgium ordered his troops to lay down their arms, leaving a huge hole in the French and British lines, further compounding the disaster. It was then, with the German panzers just 20 miles away, that the British began to frantically evacuate their troops from Dunkirk, using every ship that could float including flotillas of fishing and pleasure craft. For the next nine days the British fled, avoiding a calamity of unimaginable proportions. If the Germans had captured the hundreds of thousands of British troops in Dunkirk, it would have been a crippling blow to England. This would have been the lion’s share of their military manpower, and the loss of so many experienced and trained troops would have left England virtually defenceless. In fact England might have been forced to capitulate to Hitler right then and there. Why the hell did Hitler order his panzers to halt their advance and let the British escape?

Well, nobody really knows. There is a lot of speculation, but no real consensus on what happened. For one thing the “halt order” only lasted for three days, but this did give the Allies time to organize their defences around Dunkirk. The widely believed rumour that Hitler ordered the halt as some sort of gesture of mercy to the British doesn’t seem to be true from my readings. I suspect a number of factors came into play. The Germans were almost as shocked as the Allies by their historically stunning victory, Hitler himself included. He was giddy with victory, and still focused on capturing Paris as well. The speed with which the British were able to evacuate probably played a role. The German panzer units were exhausted and in need of rest and repair, Hitler may have thought he had more time. And Goring (the leader of the Luftwaffe and an old pal of Hitler’s) assured Hitler that the Luftwaffe could keep the British trapped, a promise that he couldn’t keep. For one thing it was overcast almost every day, it’s hard to bomb and strafe ships one can’t see. Also this close to England the RAF (at heavy cost) was able to keep the Luftwaffe somewhat at bay for the first time in the war.

So for whatever reason, Hitler frittered away a chance to deal the British military a death blow.  (Not to mention handing the British a desperately needed boost to morale.) If Hitler had ordered his armies to capture the British army no matter what the cost, there’s little doubt they would have almost all been captured. And Britain would have had no army to defend against a  possible German invasion. And even if Britain hadn’t been invaded, they would have had no army to send to North Africa to fight Rommel a few years later, or to defend India against Japan. Or no army to send to Singapore to be captured by Japan in one of Churchill’s many mind-numbing military blunders. That however is for the next post.

(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit, is central to illustrating the post, and is an historically important image. Troops at Dunkirk stood like this in the water for hours waiting to be picked up, freezing, and knowing all the while that German artillery or strafing planes might take their toll. The evacuation of Dunkirk was a remarkable achievement in the annals of warfare. An unplanned reverse D-Day, and no doubt many of these fellows did wade back ashore in Europe four years later.)

Just for fun, Hitler’s ten dumbest mistakes

As I said, just for fun. And to provide debate ammo if one of my gentle readers is presented with the “If the USA hadn’t stopped Hitler, we’d all be speaking German now” tirades. Sigh.  Even without the USA, Hitler’s empire would have come crashing down sooner or later. A combination of strategic over-extension, resistence movements, and Hitler’s folly would have destroyed the Third Reich one way or the other. Not to even mention that it was Russian armies rolling inexorably westward that destroyed Hitler’s armies. In any event though, it is astonishing some of the blunders Hitler made. No wonder the Allied High command sometimes joked that Hitler was their greatest ally:

1. Battle of Britain. When Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to “take out” the Brits, the Luftwaffe sensibly enough began their campaign by trying to destroy the RAF. By the RAF’s admission, they nearly succeeded, in fact they were about two weeks away from pretty much shutting down the RAF and controlling the skies of Britain. Then Hitler got involved and ordered the Luftwaffe to attack the British cities instead, especially London. Which did nothing but piss the British off and freed to RAF to concentrate on regaining control of the skies over Britain. London burned, but German casualties mounted to the point where they had to call off the campaign, and that was that.
2. Cancellation of weapons programs. After the Fall of France in 1940 Hitler was so confident of victory that he cancelled most weapons research programs, insisting that the war could be won with the weapons they had. Two years later when the Germans were being outclassed on all fronts by next-gen Allied weapons, the programs were all frantically restarted. Two years had been lost though, and worse, key engineers and such had died in Russia. Germany did manage to produce some impressive weapons, but never in any quantity and most of them never had the bugs worked out and  thus weren’t terribly reliable in practise.
3. Invasion of Russia. There were multiple mistakes made here, just attacking Russia for one was incredibly optimistic. Compounded by a six week delay in the attack so Hitler could pointlessly bail out Mussolini in the Balkans. And then the Germans made no preparations for  a long war because Hitler assumed Russia could be completely defeated the first summer. He ordered Leningrad to be surrounded, not captured! And Hitler fatally delayed the push for Moscow by diverting his panzers to the stalled southern front. Unlike in Napoleon’s time, Moscow was the absolute centre of the Russian railroad network, and if the Germans had captured the city and the rail connections south of the city, it would have crippled the Russian war effort.
4. The “No retreat” order. This is Hitler’s biggest mistake in Russia and one of the biggest military blunders of all time. When the war in Russia started going badly during the first winter, Hitler ordered his troops to never retreat under any circumstances. This is insane in general because there’s no point standing your ground if you are outnumbered and getting the crap beat out of you. Doubly insane because the only real advantage the Germans had over the Russians was that the German troops were far more mobile. So it made far more sense to retreat when attacked and then counterattack after he Russians had advanced beyond their supply lines. The one German general with the stones to defy Hitler, Manstein, did this a number of times with devastating effect.
5. Me-262 as a bomber. The Me-262 was a beautiful plane, in some ways a decade or more before its time. It was the world’s first jet interceptor and could fly rings (literally) around the best Allied planes of the time. The Me-262 was conceived, designed, and developed as a jet interceptor, a plane specifically designed to hunt down and destroy Allied planes. Hitler ordered it into full production … as a bomber. His minions nodded, and quietly continued to develop it as an interceptor. Someone tipped Hitler off though, and he made sure it was developed as a bomber. In trial runs few pilots were even able to get their bombs within a mile of the targets. The Me-262 was a complete (and predictable) failure as a bomber. By the time a few Me-262 interceptors saw action they were too few too late to change anything.
6. No women labourers. Did the Nazis use slave labour in their factories because they were mean people? Well, yes, but they were also motivated by a severe shortage of factory labour … because Hitler had decreed that German women were not to do factory work. Millions of American and British women went to work on assembly lines freeing up millions of men for military duty. The Germans suffered terrible manpower shortages during the war, while millions of German women sat at home.
7. War on USA. Hitler declared war on the USA right after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Why? He thought it would be good for morale. (Most of his dumbf*ck ideas were based on thinking like that.) Maybe the USA would have declared war on him anyhow, but it was crazy to simply give Roosevelt what he wanted.
8. More Russian errors. In i942 Hitler ordered his armies to seize the oil fields in the Caucasus and the city of Stalingrad, spreading his armies far too thin. As a result his forces failed to capture the oil fields, and suffered crippling losses at Stalingrad.
9. The Battle of Kursk. At Kursk in 1943 Hitler ordered a massive attack even though the Russians clearly knew he would attack Kursk. The German armies last great offencive flung themselves against massed Russian defenders dug in with huge numbers of anti-tank weapons and legions of modern Russian tanks. It was the biggest tank battle in history, and a crushing defeat for Germany. The battle of Stalingrad guaranteed that Germany was not going to win its war with Russia, Kursk guaranteed that the Russians would win.
10. Battle of the Bulge. Hitler’s last gasp attempt to win the war. He attempted to repeat his success of 1940 by attacking the Allies the exact same way. Even though his forces were vastly smaller, didn’t have the fuel to do the job, and were facing a vastly superior enemy than the French army of 1940. The attack had zero chance of success, it would have been far more sensible to attack the Russians and try to slow down their advance.

And these are just the big blunders, there were plenty of minor blunders as well. My favourite is one last Luftwaffe story, because it shows just how shallow and demented Hitler’s thought processes were. At one point in the middle of the war the British bomber force was causing big problems for Germany, about a thousand British bombers would fly over Germany and carpet bomb some target almost every night. The Brits bombed at  night because they couldn’t replace their losses, so they sacrificed accuracy for safety. The Luftwaffe had a great idea, lone German long range fighters would lurk around British airbases and attack British bombers as they came in to land in the morning light. (The radars of the time couldn’t really track single planes flying at low altitude.) It was very effective and downed a number of irreplaceable British bombers and their crews. If it had continued at the very least the Allies would have been forced to divert significant air power to defend against a small number of Germans, and it might have even severely crippled the British bombing campaign.

So what did Hitler do when he heard about this clever program to defend against the British bomber fleet? Iron crosses all around? Nope, Hitler basically said “Nein, nein nein, the Luftwaffe must shoot down the British bombers over Germany, not England, so that the German people can see the wreckage of the British bombers and be encouraged!” Hitler cancelled the program, and the British high command (not to mention the British bomber crews) breathed a big sigh of relief when German planes stopped appearing out of nowhere to shoot them down as they landed.

Frankly it’s a wonder Hitler’s Third Reich lasted as long as it did.

(Welcome new and old readers. I hope you enjoyed this post. As of January 2018 I have resumed regular blogging on my new Patreon version of Doug’s Darkworld. Science, history, current events, and posts about a certain president who can hardly go a day without inspiring a blog post.)

(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit. Apparently the current German government is claiming copyright to works produced by the Nazis, so if they want the credit for this pic, so be it. Go figure. It’s Hitler and his beloved dog, Blondi. I think it’s a compelling image for a number of reasons, to me it captures Hitler’s charm, evil, and shallowness. Plus it captures a real moment in time, the magic of photography never ceases to amaze me. )

Explosive residue found in WTC Dust according to peer reviewed scientific journal, President Obama orders new investigation into the 9/11 attacks as stunned nation demands answers

How’s that for breaking news? It’s even partly true in a sort of sort of way. How’s that for equivocating? OK, yes, just recently there have been reports that a paper in a peer-reviewed scientific journal demonstrates that there was thermite residue in dust samples collected after 9/11. I’m like, wow, this is interesting. For reasons I have explained before, I don’t give much credence to 9/11 conspiracy theories, but could I have been wrong? Could there be actual evidence that exotic explosives were involved in the WTC collapses?

At first pass, I’m not qualified to pass judgement of any sort on the scientific conclusions. If these guys claim these chips are explosive residue of some sort, damned if I know. I don’t know a whole lot about the various technologies used to examine these chips. If these chips are real and the scientists are right, this is very hard to explain. So since I can’t really comment on the data and the conclusions, let’s look at some other aspects of this claim.

And here we start to have some problems. The people who wrote this peer-reviewed paper are the very same people who for years have been claiming that the 9/11 collapses were deliberately caused by by planted explosives, not the aeroplane impacts. Hmm, a tiny number of people claim to have analyzed evidence that proves their case, evidence that no one else has even been able to discover, let alone analyze. IE no other agency or government has found these mysterious flakes in the dust from the WTC. Well, that’s sure some conspiracy.

Lastly I looked in the “peer reviewed scientific journal” these results were published in. Turns out it’s a rather new journal, it just started publishing last year. Along with hundreds of other peer reviewed scientific journals also started at the same time by a publisher. Yes, and for only $800 you too can get your paper published in one of these journals. In other words, these “journals” are a joke at best, a place where people can dress up their theories in scientific garb.

So this is why this story isn’t making the national news, even with their low standards this doesn’t pass the bar. I suspect the 9/11 conspiracy people will see this as censorship and further evidence of conspiracy. Well, when holes in your conspiracy theories are filled by widening your theory, it’s not much of a theory. A reasonable theory explains things, it doesn’t raise questions that require expanding the theory to explain.

I know, I’m beating  a dead horse, but it is interesting to me that some people continue to weave these intricate theories for God only knows what reason. There’s no possibility of debate with them. They never have answers for simple objections to their theory, it’s just dodge and weave. I even went so far as to ask my two oldest best friends what they thought of the controlled demolition theories and the WTC collapse. They are both engineers, one of whom has even worked in major structural projects his whole career. Neither of them have the slightest problem with the idea that the towers (all three of them) collapsed largely as a result of the fires. (Being struck by large aircraft travelling at their top speed also contributed.)

Do I have all the answers about 9/11? Of course not. It wouldn’t surprise me for example if elements in the intelligence community were covertly encouraging 9/11 conspiracy theories. It’s a low risk way to keep a lot of people guessing, including foreign intelligence agencies. And it’s certainly a distraction from real conspiracies, as well as simultaneously discrediting any real conspiracies that might get uncovered.

If there’s any point I’m getting to here, it’s that I don’t think most 9/11 conspiracy theorists really grasp just how out of the loop they are, and how no one is listening to them. They will keep at it though, and if they do ever uncover any real evidence, the foreign press will surely pay attention. That’s how the Iran Contra scandal got exposed, while the US press may be a mouthpiece for the government, the foreign press is under no such aegis. Which means I can safely ignore this non-issue until it starts making waves overseas. I’m not going to hold my breath.

Next week I’m going to write about America’s militarism, a sickness that has deeply infected our society. It ties in nicely to some of my recent thinking about how technology may be an evolutionary dead end. Plus the latest scores have just been posted in our death-from-above campaign to blow up suspected Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders in their sleep. One out of ten predator missiles actually hit their targets, killing 14 suspected militants in total … and 687 civilians. These are smart weapons? I think I can work this into next weeks thesis somehow.

Have a great weekend everyone.

(The above image of Saturn is from NASA and is being used legally. It’s a cool image, which is why I posted it. Plus, it fits the topic. Yes, some people claim that a plot is afoot to blow up the planet Saturn in 2010 and turn it into a star. Watch this enthralling video or google “Lucifer Project.” I guess you can’t aim too high when proposing a conspiracy theory. And more proof of the failure of the American educational system. Sigh. Click on the image for the full size version, and note the pale blue insignificant dot just to the left of the bright rings. That’s us.)

Obama, Iraq, Af-Pak, history, French prostitutes win a battle, and other random and insightful thoughts

There have been a few posts getting some comments back and forth. Maybe there is some way I can include this in a sidebar, but for now I’ll just mention them here. The first is the “1 shot 2 kills” post and the other is the “World’s First Eyewitness” post. Join the discussion if you dare. Another reader recently asked if Doug’s Darkworld was my hobby. I never really thought about it, but I suppose it is. At least until someone sponsors me and I can devote myself to it full time. All reasonable offers considered.

Moving right along, in recent news, Obama made a surprise visit to Baghdad to praise the troops for their remarkable achievement. It’s a little unclear to me what, exactly, that achievement is. Iraq is still one of the world’s top ten failed states, was that the plan from the beginning? He also pressured the Iraqi government to “take responsibility” for Iraq. I’m sure more than few jaws dropped in Iraq at that one, I mean, how arrogant and patronizing can one get?

He’s also massively expanding the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which is making my jaw drop. Does anyone really think we can “win” the war against Islamic extremists by destabilizing yet another Muslim country? Half a million people have already fled Pakistan’s border regions because of US and Pakistani military actions there, that’s half a million potential recruits for Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Hmm.

Robert Gates just announced a “massive overhaul” of military spending. Yes, six years after we got involved in a massive counterinsurgency, we are going to start re-organizing our military to fight more counterinsurgencies. While I certainly can’t argue against the cancellation of leftover Cold War weapons programs, re-organizing a military years after the fact is pretty symptomatic of a military completely out of touch with the times. I wish I could find the words to make people see that the US military is a byzantine bureaucratic corrupt organization bloated beyond all reason and decades behind the times in almost every respect. If we ever have to fight a real war again, we’re all in big trouble. And oddly enough, the “new” budget calls for yet another increase in military spending. Sigh.

While on the topic of belligerent foreign policy, I see North Korea thumbed their nose at us and launched their missile anyways. Since there was zero chance they would cancel the launch, I really can’t imagine why we would set ourself up to be ignored. Are we trying to generate a casus belli for attacking North Korea? Colour me mystified.

Moving right along, I read an interesting article pointing out that the collapse of the world’s economy is almost certainly going to create a huge increase in world crime. I can’t really argue, hell, look what’s going on just over the border in Mexico. As tens of millions of desperately poor people the world over lose their jobs, some of them will turn to whatever jobs are available. In other words, it’s a golden age for finding recruits for criminal syndicates. And as more governments fail and more failed states are created, this problem is just going to get worse.

And as these and other economic collapse related problems get worse, we can expect governments to take ever more repressive steps to control their populations. I dunno, but one of my visions for the future is a world where much of the third world has reverted to local control, while the increasingly repressive “modern” western and Asian governments start to fight among themselves for their share of the ever shrinking global economic pie. And I’m not the only one starting to think this way. Interesting times indeed.

On a related note, I think I’m finally beginning to understand why leaders keep repeating the exact same mistakes throughout history. It’s simple, historians almost never get into positions of power. So I propose that governments set up a “Department of History” on par with other government departments. Then any time the government comes up with some great “new” idea, they can ask the Secretary of History if the idea has ever worked before? If he/she says “no, in fact it’s always made things worse,” back to the drawing board.

Yes, I’m  a dreamer. And yes, the idea is flawed because leaders for the most part aren’t trying to effectively and efficiently run their countries, they are trying to promote the political and financial interests of themselves and their cronies. Does that makes me a cynical dreamer? Or a realist?

Coming soon, posts on great military blunders in history. First will be the Battle of Castillion, where the British saw a cloud of dust made by a fleeing bevy of prostitutes, and concluded that the French army was running away. So they immediately charged the now “abandoned” French positions, only to discover belatedly that the French fortified line was packed with French soldiers, guns, and cannons. Oops. And that was the ignominious end of the Hundred Years War.

(The above image is public domain under US copyright law since it was executed in the ninetenth century. It’s a painting of the Battle of Castillon  by the French painter Charles-Philippe Larivière (1798-1876). It depicts the English leader, John Talbot, the 1st Earl of Shewsberry, having his horse shot out from under him. The Earl was trapped under his horse, and a French soldier named Michel Perunin recogised him and achieved footnote status in history by hacking him to death with his axe. Isn’t war glorious?)

Gunman goes on rampage

And Doug’s Darkworld starts posting again. No, they’re not related. I got my Internet connection back (I merely had to pay off the right people) so it’s time to start posting again. It’s not a good time though, personally this past week was the saddest week of the saddest month of my life. And some of my friends and family have suffered even worse losses.  And in the world, well, another mass shooting in the USA. April can be a bad month in the USA: Columbine, Virginia Tech, and now Binghamton.

What’s up with these mass shootings anyhow? As always, it’s complicated. For one thing, statistically, nothing.  A person’s chances of being killed by a crazed gunman in America is still so low as to be essentially zero. On the other hand, events like this send shock waves of pain through society, starting with the nearest and dearest to the victims, and spreading out from there. Aided and augmented by intense media coverage.

Which leads to my first point, all this media attention is not a good thing. Monkey see, monkey do. While most people aren’t going to be inclined to rush out and shoot a bunch of people because of seeing something like this on the news, some unstable and weak people will be given ideas. Add to that the current stresses as the economy continues to slide, and our culture’s “justified retribution” archetype, and voilà, the occasional nutbar decides to kill all those who have wronged him. I might also point out that endless immigrant bashing by certain public figures might have played a role in this particular shooting, but that could be misconstrued.

No, shootings like Binghamton aren’t really a big danger to most folks. Fortunately the government is protecting us from the real risks we face. And right now the biggest threat to America appears to be insurgents in central Asian caves, or the possibility that an impoverished isolated  Pacific rim country might launch a 50’s era ballistic missile. Hmm. Maybe I’m going out on a limb here, but neither of these seems like terribly big threats. I mean unless one is in a boat in the Sea of Japan and almost astronomically unlucky, or are so clueless as to vacation in Afghanistan or rural Pakistan, neither of these threats are threats at all.

So if the insurgents in Afghanistan aren’t really a threat to the USA, why the hell is it so important that we stay there? Simple, it’s all high ground. Yes, the Obama administration with its high regard for science has decided that the climatologists are right, and that global warming will cause sea levels to rise dramatically in decades to come. So it’s important that he USA control the high ground, and central Asia is about as high as it gets. See, foreign policy is easy to understand.

Locally of course the only hazard is being caught in a shoot out with the police, or getting caught in a riot protesting a shoot out with the police. The recent shooting of four Oakland police officers was a terrible thing, but as always it is somewhat misrepresented in the mainstream media. There’s a terrible problem with the Oakland police being perceived as “the enemy” in some Oakland neighbourhoods, and frankly there seems to be some truth to it. There are solutions to this sort of problem, but the government of Oakland, is, well, corrupt and incompetent. As in many (but not all) big cities.

In any event I will post regularly from now on, Internet connection willing. I won’t be doing as many focused posts as I’d like, becasue frankly I’m a little unfocused now. The old world is continuing to unravel around us though, so I want to keep making observations as we spin gently downwards.

“If the economy becomes disembodied from society it can only lead to disaster.” —Susan George, famous political scientist I’ve never heard of before.

“Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.” —William Tecumseh Sherman, famous (or infamous) general.

(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It is not being used for profit and is arguably a historically important image. It’s not a nice picture. It’s the SS at work in Russia. I got it from this fine site, but it’s not for the faint of heart. I am planning on discussing some of history’s great atrocities and calamities this spring and summer, just for the perspective  they may give us of course.)