New Voice

Whole acres of searing months have dissolved since my last post. Well, ok, just under two months has past with a distinct lack of writing on my part. I would obfuscate and manoeuvre and say things like – I was so busy, don’t you know how it is; or, My God, but where did the time go. Unfortunately, the truth is more accurate, I was finishing out a series of books that I had been plodding through and with no firm conclusions made on the subject matter I did not have any posts wandering around my mind. But, of course, now I do. Well, Newsweek, in all its genius, has helped. (continue reading…)

I endeavoured to follow through my readings of the Vietnam conflict, from my last post, with a shopping excursion to right my centre of gravity and ensure that I tackle the history from every angle – well, more than one. Being a historian first and foremost this is part of the obligation that is owed to the seriousness of the subject, apparently. I, of course, am not a historian, but I can read and do and pretend at the writing part.  My esteemed colleague, of the Secular Sundays posts, lent me his encyclopaedic knowledge of sixties and seventies American writings with a collection of Michael Herr-equalling shots of literature to vacuum up my soul into the US Armed Forces. Two things happened to impel a slight discursion on my Nam – centric world view. (continue reading…)

Vietnam. A word that still to this day means many things to many different people. Travellers etch across its landscape throughout the year wandering its myriad paths and villages, soaking up its cultured cities. Its people are famous for their relaxed personalities and interesting take on life. But for several thousand Vietnam War veterans, this beautiful country remains a nightmare of ferocious memories, strange drug-addled flashbacks, and the emotions of fear and loss. Recently, I was picking through a history of America in the Twentieth Century and spent some time looking at this infamous war. One of the recommended readings, I was informed, was Michael Herr’s Dispatches. Herr wrote for Esquire Magazine during the late sixties and spent two years embedded with the US forces in Vietnam. A number of years following his return Herr wrote this book as a memoir of his time in the country and a scathing overview of the human catastrophe of the conflict. I was surprised, and deeply enlivened to the book before I even began reading, to find that Herr had co-wrote Full Metal Jacket – and indeed the crisp dialogue of that film is referenced significantly in the reality of his account of the war. He went further by writing much of the voiceover in Apocalypse Now – thus acquiring a central role in the two greatest Vietnam War movies. (continue reading…)

A World of Computers

Networking is a significant impediment on my life. I have been offline for what seems an age, in reality a shocking three and half weeks. Often the issue, when I am down and out from the interweb, is the catastrophic nastiness that is wireless networking devices. LAN is just so much more logical. Anyway, Happy New Year to one and all: may they be technologically flawless.

Before Christmas I was nattering on about the German soldier, which was jumping up all over my radar due to their involvement in Afghanistan. Similarly, there is a deal of talk these days about the return of the Russian to the forefront of international relations. Given this, I thought I might look at an aspect of Russian history that has always stood out to my mind. (continue reading…)

The above is an interesting line quoted by Hitler in the second or third year of the Second World War. Memorable for its brevity, yet comprehensively encapsulating the reality of the German fighting machine. Hitler threw it out during the planning stages for Operation Barbarossa, when clamped up spartanly in the forested fortress of the Wolfsschanze, the eponymous Wolfs Lair. In a way it is a throwaway line, consistent to the megalomaniac Furher’s distorted faith in German dominance. But the fact of the matter is the German soldier was considered the finest of the war. This is in almost every respect: courage, order, imagination, alacrity and probably most of all counter attacking initiative. This final one is sufficiently exemplified by the Battle of the Bulge, following several months of consistent allied pressure, and having clearly lost the war, they almost completed a rout, bizarrely; it said a great deal about the Wehrmacht. Of course, they did not complete this rout, nor win the war. It’s somewhat unsettling to consider but baring the tremendous over extension of Barbarossa it might have been a different war following the D Day landings of June ’44. (continue reading…)

I must begin with a quick qualification: I’m not a socialist by any interesting stretch of the word, though I would espouse an interest in socialistic matters – in that I would like to be helpful to my fellow citizen, if I can. But further than this, I have always been deeply curious of economic history and read so accordingly, which is (certainly for the twentieth century) heavily inundated with multitudinous words of a Marxist flavor. Incorporating all of this, I have been reading the auto-biography of Mr. Fidel Castro for the last few days. It is defined as an auto-biography but is essentially a printed interview. The interviewer, the French thinker Ignacio Ramonet, is somewhat left-leaning (though it would be unfair to call him a socialist or entirely a follower of the Cuban socialist project), which makes for a central theme that follows the movement of Castro’s Marxist ideas from their beginnings right through their revolutionary achievements. And at what rate these ideas are delivered! I could get bogged down at suffocating length in an attempt to tackle just a few of the plethora of interesting ways the socialist subject is delved into throughout the interview; but there is not the time or space (our website is terribly finite) to do so. But more importantly, I was immediately struck by the subject of Marxism itself, and how in the twenty first century it still remains such an antagonist to a capitalist view point. (continue reading…)

Is war a guaranteed consequence of humanity? I think most people would consider it is, given the planets consistent, and extremely long-term infatuation, with war – and all other forms of violence. But is it really in our nature to be violent? I read an article recently in which scientists examined the human propensity for war craft. Archaeologists have confirmed that civilization itself had only commenced before weaponry is known to have come into increasing use: archaeological remains seem to tie the strong arrival of warlike tendencies to movement of our ancestors from hunter gather status to farmers; which makes sense since farming forms a connection to the land, and hence there then exists something to fight to control. Though violence would have existed before this point, it seems not to have been more than individuals, as opposed to large numbers of organised participants. But apparently it does not stop there: it has been noted extensively in chimpanzees that some contain a violent disposition – say a member of one grouping clubbing to death a member of another grouping (2001: A Space Odyssey style), for no noticable gain. This illogical violent nature leads some to believe that war is part of our biological heritage. (continue reading…)

Nuclear proliferation is the hottest of topics, and as I discussed a few weeks ago, the foundation is now available for a comprehensive treaty to begin to deal with this thorny issue. The international community (at least those seeking stable society) can commit to the deceleration of nuclear production and manufacture a way forward for a world still cognisant of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The United States is at the very centre of any progress that can be made, not least because they control the vast majority of active nuclear warheads, but also given they are thus far the only nation to have made use of the weaponry: the Soviet Union’s feint in 1962 being an alarming follow up. (continue reading…)

The shockwaves from the North Korean nuclear weapon test have begun to recede, yet the issue of a response likely fills the halls of global power. What to do when a rogue state chimes an international warning bell and effectively draws a shot across the proverbial bow of the United States? Surely the answer is in nuclear disarmament. (continue reading…)