Close up looking down onto Chrysler Building, New York.

– Today is ANZAC Day! A quote from Ataturk in its honor, courtesy of Abu Muqawama:

Heroes who shed their blood and lost their lives! You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours. You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.

– In case you missed it, this past week the USAF launched the unmanned X37 ‘space plane‘. According to the Air Force’s Deputy Undersecretary for Space Programs, DoD has no idea “when it’s coming back for sure.”

– Britain still owes Iran something like £400 million for 1,500 Chieftain tanks that it never delivered to the Shah thirty years ago. Because, of course, the Shah wasn’t around by the time the Ministry of Defence got around to it.

– It just sucks to be Mexico City. And often in this article when they say flooded with ‘water’, what they mean by water is ‘raw sewage’ (of course, it’s sucked to be Mexico City – or Mexico at all, for that matter – for quite some time now).

– ArmsControlWonk surveys the now-raised Cheonan and compares the effect of a modern North Korean torpedo (i.e. splitting the ship in half) with that of the Cole bombing and ‘classical’ torpedo effects.

Continue reading →

The Chain Bridge; Budapest, Hungary; March 21, 2010.

– Kings of War unearths a 1940 BBC recording that provides proof of the British stiff upper lip.

– Christopher Hitchens re-reads Animal Farm and realizes what Orwell left out (via The Arabist):

There is, however, one very salient omission. There is a Stalin pig and a Trotsky pig, but no Lenin pig. Similarly, in Nineteen Eighty-Four we find only a Big Brother Stalin and an Emmanuel Goldstein Trotsky. Nobody appears to have pointed this out at the time (and if I may say so, nobody but myself has done so since; it took me years to notice what was staring me in the face).

– Daniel Gross explains why the U.S. will have a bigger, better recovery from the Great Recession than a) everyone assumes and b) everyone else.

– Obama v. Roberts: the struggle to come.

Continue reading →

Festung Hohensalzburg overlooking Salzburg, Austria.

Been catching up on lots and lots of stuff… So there will be even more to come soon.

– Toby Young responds to General John Sheehan’s remarks about the ‘gay Dutch’ at Srebenica: “Gay Dutch soldiers responsible for Srebrenica massacre? Balls. One of the finest British commanders of the Second World War was as bent as a nine-bob note.”

– GRANTA offers a primer on writing about Africa (via Edge of the American West):

Always use the word ‘Africa’ or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’ in your title. Subtitles may include the words ‘Zanzibar’, ‘Masai’, ‘Zulu’, ‘Zambezi’, ‘Congo’, ‘Nile’, ‘Big’, ‘Sky’, ‘Shadow’, ‘Drum’, ‘Sun’ or ‘Bygone’. Also useful are words such as ‘Guerrillas’, ‘Timeless’, ‘Primordial’ and ‘Tribal’. Note that ‘People’ means Africans who are not black, while ‘The People’ means black Africans.

– In further memory of the horrific Polish plane crash yesterday, here’s Adam Zamoyski on Chopin and his public diplomacy abroad on behalf of Poland.

Continue reading →

Actual Iranian postage stamp, 1983.

– Foreign Policy offers a brief introduction to that subtlest of espionage tactics, the ‘honey trap‘. It’s certainly Sterling Archer’s favorite.

– A fantastic series of photographs called Vider Paris shows the French capital devoid of people, and with the bottom two stories shielded with concrete. But the crosswalks remain.

– Will Wiles offers a great review of the new American embassy in London:

It’s worth taking a step back to really admire what we’re looking at: a building designed with explosions in mind. A shape formed by the manipulation of spheres of destruction. It could be the first London building built with attack from the ground in mind since the Second World War.

– Isegoria offers an overlook of the very first American assault rifle: the Pedersen device.

– An absolutely fascinating article in GlobalPost on Theo Padnos, who pretended to convert to Islam and infiltrated several mosques and madrassas in Yemen. His inside look will surprise you:

As an educated, left-leaning American, Padnos says he expected that intensive, firsthand exposure to the Salafist faith would temper the message emanating from the West, that these ultra-conservative Muslims were to be feared.

Instead, he says that what he witnessed worried him further.

– Terry Eagleton gets Hitchens, Amis, and the rest of the iconoclast ‘movement’ entirely wrong (it’s “Islamophobia”).

Bank of England, Liverpool Street, showing all of the City of london with Tower Bridge at upper right.

– Medvedev is displeased with the apparent lack of progress. Russian military to double their efforts. Putin will not be as forgiving as Medvedev is.

– Newsflash: water runs downhill. Why America supports Israel.

– Greece continues to head towards imminent collapse. Some German MPs are calling for Greece to sell off a few lesser islands, the Acropolis, and the Parthenon. Meanwhile, the Greek citizenry cannot cope with a sacrifice – higher taxes or spending cuts (or both) are the only way to recovery. Do they even know what they’re protesting in favor of? (via Shloky). The U.S. is soon to face the same problem.

– An unbelievable tale about the attempt to save one soldier’s life, courtesy of Michael Yon. Complete with fancy infographic.

– Regardless of what party wins the British elections, Gordon Brown will almost certainly not be prime minister.

– The ultimate case for prison as rehabilitation.

– I like having comments here (even if they’re underutilized). Not everyone is quite so lucky, as Theodore Dalrymple explains in “Thank You for Not Expressing Yourself.”

(via Shloky).

– It’s Strategic Decision Making Exercise time yet again at the Army War College. Mark Grimsley wanders the halls and reports.

– Boeing’s new KC-X will officially be a competitor for the Air Force’s tanker replacement program. Built on a 767, it can’t look like anything but a civilian plane, try as they might with the grey drab paint job.

– Has anyone else noticed an increasing disconnect between the mainstream media and the reality-based community? Even parts of the MSM itself are starting to pick up on this (but it won’t be far-reaching or fast enough a discovery to really change anything).

– I would really like to commit a crime in Norway. Though it’s equally possible that by the time I get to Halden my life turns into an O. Henry story.

– More on the decline of Germany and the rise of the uber-left.

– The US Postal Service may have to make some severe service cuts, including ending Saturday delivery. As long as they don’t go on strike, I’ll be fine with it (via GOOD).

– The U.S. is facing a “surge” of rightwing extremist and milita groups to the tune of 250%. It makes one long for the Clinton years, when the fringe movements weren’t legitimized by Glenn Beck, CPAC, and the Teabaggers.

– Armored trains are back on track in Russia. But based on where most IEDs are in Russia (the railroad system), are the trains really MRAP?

– Galrahn at Information Dissemination gives a brief overview of ‘AirSea Battle’. As he points out though, it may be nothing more than “a new wine in old barrels,” and in most ways it sounds like, well, Air Force-Navy cooperation. Just with a catchy name.

– Even the upstart kid-gangs in Mexico are getting ballsy. But unfortunately for them, the existing cartels probably won’t take too kindly to this.

U.S. Marines from Bravo Company of the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines look for a Taliban sniper from inside a cotton workshop in Marjah, Helmand province, February 19, 2010.

– The captain of Hr.Ms. Tromp, a Dutch frigate conducting anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden, has a Twitter account. Recent highlight: “approaching a suspiciously behaving Dhow, turned out they were all (!) asleep” (via Information Dissemination).

– The recent Chilean earthquake has permanently affected the length of a day. Sure, only by 1.26 microseconds, but even so.

– American manufacturing is not dead after all. But the statistics everyone quotes do refer to a loss in the manufacturing industry: a loss of manufacturing employment. Hale Stewart breaks down the numbers.

– Everyone knows that cities (particularly the slum-riddles megacities of the developing world) are the future. But that might actually turn out to be a good thing.

– The Army Air Force again? The Air Force is having a bit of an identity crisis – and some are questioning its existence as an independent branch (via Neptunus Lex).

New propaganda poster from the Second Artillery Corps, the land-based ballistic missile unit of the People’s Liberation Army (via War is Boring).

– Shades of Scott Brown: remember that impending Tory victory? Turns out it might not happen after all (via Harry’s Place).

– Charlotte Allen takes on the modern dating game, including its neo-Neanderthals. Regression? Lateral movement? A trend that is nothing else if not hilarious.

– Slate answers the question we’ve all been asking ourselves: does Afghanistan have phone books?

– Naval jihad in the Gulf of Aden. Constant exchanges between Yemen and Somalia. Reclaiming the Bab al Mandat Strait for Islam. And it’s much more effective than we thought:

An AQAP-HSM coalition would not have to actually block the 18-mile wide sea corridor…. Instead, all they have to do is conduct some kind of operation that permeates a far greater psychological threat internationally.

– A bit older, but the New Yorker did a piece on “neuro-enhancing drugs” last year that’s absolutely perfect. Dead-on. I think I recognized myself in at least three of the article’s subjects.

– Now that Multicam’s been officially approved, Oakley has put out a pair of ridiculously fly boots. But I doubt they make them in a 16 (via Strike – Hold!).

– A fascinating overview of how the recession has impacted migration in America. Massachusetts better off than New Hampshire? New York seeing more inflow than Vermont? And the world is upside down.

"The scariest unemployment graph this year."

It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in five years.

–John von Neumann, 1949

– Don Peck sees a grim future for the American economy. Persistent joblessness and relatively high employment will most likely continue to reign for at least the next decade. And the current generation of recent graduates? Yeah, we’re pretty much screwed. Get ready for depression, heavy drinking, and lifetime of mental scarring (via Sullivan).

– Are you an eccentric billionaire? If so, maybe you too can buy a former closed Soviet city in Latvia. And how much might this set you back? Only $3.1 million. Man, has the housing bubble burst (via Disinformation).

– The New York Times has a must-read piece about the battle between Christianity and secularism on the Texas School Board. It’s argued that “we’re a Christian nation,” etcetera etcetera. Religious lunatics are everywhere these days.

– Israel’s legitimacy is under attack everywhere (especially Britain). But even for those who support and defend Israel, and don’t question its right to exist, arguing on its behalf can be troublesome:

Anti-Semites will never be appeased and are not worth engaging on Israel. But to those people who simply care about basic human values, how do you answer “Why does Israel keep expanding its settlements into areas it knows it would have to evacuate in any peace deal?” How can any reasonable person see “Sudan has killed hundreds of thousands of people” or accusations of anti-Semitism against any critic of Israel as anything more than a feeble deflection. It is true that no matter what Israel does, some people will vilify it. Israel should not make movements towards peace to mollify them or anyone. It should do so because it is both the moral thing to do and a strategic necessity for Israel’s long-term survival.

– Change blindness: the more you see it, the more you don’t (via Isegoria).

– David Aaronovitch (new book just released) talks about the appeal of conspiracy theories, even for smart people. And don’t forget the one about IDF theft of organs in Haiti. At least Jenny Tonge got sacked.

– Tonge forgot that blood libel has a long and storied history. That general historical ignorance may soon be on the rise, as Britain’s historians – last of the outward-looking – face an inward, parochial turn.