The Russian Curse

Russia, the largest single country, other than Antarctica, and a dominating world power. A constant target of war, Russia is the thing to get. And yet, it has never been taken. It has lost wars, oh yes, but no one has ever succeeded in taking over the country and keeping it. Why is this? Throughout my travels, readings, and watching’s, I have come up with some theories on how Russia has managed to remain the unobtainable goal and target of the world.

Lets Begin with the earliest I know, the Napoleonic wars (1799-1815). During the Napoleonic wars Napoleon Bonaparte lead France in a massive campaign against the world. It is my personal belief that it was indeed the real First World War, all the world powers of the time were fighting, Russia, England, France, Italy, all the rest of Europe, but anyway, I’m getting off track. The important thing is what happened in Russia. Napoleon led a massive charge across Europe all the way to Moscow. Like most massive charges the leader expects it to be over quickly before the Russian winter set in. Unsurprisingly he was wrong. His troops reached Moscow, looted it, declared it as France’s, turned round when winter set in and marched off into the cold. The Russian army simply attacked them as they marched chasing them all the way to France. There is a famous Graph by Charles Minard that represents this quite well. In short, for foolish reasons Napoleons ‘great’ charge ended in absolute failure and embarrassment. Is it a Russian curse?

Now, the Second World War. Operation Barborossa. Germany invaded Russia, breaching their peace treaty, and began a very familiar charge. Hitler began a ten week campaign which would finish before winter (where have I heard That before?). To Hitler’s great surprise his troops were unaccountably stopped and slowed along the way. Maybe he forgot that Russia had an army of massive proportions and the population to heavily increase those numbers. Whatever the reason Winter set in, freezing the very oil in the tanks and jeeps, and Russia brought in its Siberian trained Winter troops. In Stalingrad the troops were halted causing the first retreat of the war, and yet Hitler flung himself into it again. He poured his army on Moscow. But ‘General Mud’ and ‘General Winter’, nicknames for the ever-helpful mud caused by the rain and for the winter, slowed them once again. The Red Army dug in. For the Germans their desperate advancement left their supply lines open to constant attack from ‘Red’ guerrillas, and the equipment frozen solid. The Germans could only survive if the Russians didn’t attack. They Did! Once again, at the very brink of success the Russian curse kicked in and kicked out the enemy.

From these two wars I have created my theory. Skilled and experienced Generals turned their eyes on Russia and suddenly forget vital facts like the Russian Winter. I call it ‘The Russian Curse’.

A Short Note on the Soccer World Cup

The giving out of red cards is becoming hugely damaging to these games. There are three reasons – they are ‘earned’ too easily; they are too arbitrary; and the penalty is too massive with too unequal an effect.

1. ‘Earned’ too easily: As I understand it, one yellow card is the equivalent of a suspended death sentence – one more and you are out. This on its own would not be too bad, were it not for points 2 and 3 below;

2. Too arbitrary: Anyone who watches a game on TV will see two ‘yellow-cardable’ offences for every one that is actually carded. You will also see plenty of yellow-carding for offences that do not remotely deserve it. This is not the fault of the referees, who are not superhuman. It is just pretty well impossible to see everything all the time, especially without the slow motion TV to assist. But the end result is that the punishment is essentially arbitrary – its just luck, in many cases, whether a player gets a yellow card or does not, or gets away with the soccer equivalent of murder, or does not. Imagine if, in the real world, the death penalty was applied with the same margin of error. Not even its most enthusiastic proponents would accept that. Again, this alone would not matter that much, were it not for point 3 (which relates how a red card is the soccer equivalent of the death penalty).

3. Too massive and too unequal an effect: The penalty is too massive because once the red card is up all hope of a good game of soccer is gone (together with the hopes of tens of millions of the people of that nation). And sometimes this happens in the first half of a match! At the finely tuned World Cup level, one man missing ruins the game – there may still be drama, pathos, excitement, etc, but what there won’t be is a really good game of soccer. And the penalty extends beyond the game in play at the time, but knocks the carded player out of future games. For the smaller soccer-playing nations that is a massive disadvantage – a country like Ghana, a brave and brilliant African side, just does not have the depth of players that countries like Germany, England, or Brazil would have. They need to field their best team every time. But if they lose their best players to this arbitrary punishment they are massively and unequally disadvantaged.

I don’t have the solution to this problem and I understand that it is not easy. But at the very least, there should be three yellow cards before the red makes its appearance.

Just to clarify my position – I blindly and violently support every African side in the World Cup, followed by England and Australia, and then whatever underdog takes my fancy, and then, finally, Brazil. I also have a sentimental attachment to the Czech Republic, the Ukraine, and most South American teams.

Polemic on the Fatal Mix of Politics and Religion

My father fought in the War, so did my wife’s father, and his brother died in it. My grandfathers fought in the previous War. I am talking about World Wars One and Two.

Contention: They fought to save us from fascism and militarism. But both ideologies are on their way back. Anti-freedom. In the guise of fundamentalist religion, most obviously and dangerously Islamic, but also, more insidiously and no less dangerously, Christian (because Christian fundamentalists arguably now control the most powerful state in history).

While religion of all forms is to be respected, nothing that denies both life and reason should form the basis of society. Twisted forms of the Christian and Islamic religions do just that.

It is reason that has created history’s most successful societies; and life is all we know for sure that we have (these are secular statements, but let it ride for the moment).

The successful societies that I am talking about are the liberal democracies of the west. The western democracies were created by reason, not religion. They fought for their survival through two world wars, they evolved in a difficult and slow process over three hundred years. And they work. Perhaps the finest creation of the European Enlightenment, the USA, now seems, to much of the world, like a gathering force that could destroy the gains of the Enlightenment. I wonder, I wonder, what the American dead on the beaches of the Pacific and the fields of France would say to that?

It is a question of freedom. Your freedom. Do you want imposed on you a specific set of (usually sexual) morals that reflect the norms of a desert tribe in the Middle East 2,500 years ago (with an overlay of late Roman Empire insecurity)? You ought to have no problem with any person who wishes to live by those morals, but you ought to rise in furious outrage when that person imposes them upon you. And of course its not just morals, it is a whole set of practises laid upon us by those ancient, ignorant, desert tribes.

The real Christian fundamentalists, the ones I could respect, would cut through all that, cut through all the obviously metaphorical stuff in the Bible, and read what Christ actually said (remember that bit about turning the other cheek?). Stick to that and they probably can’t go too far wrong. I acknowledge that the bit about a wealthy man’s chances of entering the Kingdom of Heaven being the same as those of a camel passing through the eye of a needle may need thought, especially in America. Funny how those wealthy televangelists, and their wealthy flock, take every statement in the Bible literally except that one.

Instead, the Christian fundamentalists of the USA (admittedly I am talking about the really crazy ones here) focus on the wild metaphorical stuff at the end of the New Testament. Which turns them into supporters of Israel (I am not saying there is anything wrong with that per se) because some interpretation leads them to believe that when Greater Israel is formed the world will come to an end and the righteous (guess who) will inherit what’s left.

Mankind has an infinite capacity for self-delusion.

My own feeling is that we are lost and fearful creatures, huddling close to each other and to the thoughts of our ancestors, because of the awful reality of death.

Personally, my favourite form of religion is a mild, humanistic and somewhat hypocritical Anglican-style Christianity (tea and cakes on Sunday), that means just a little bit to a great many people and a lot to only a very few, and that supplies two important things – a set of literary, metaphorical and cultural concepts that are familiar to everyone, and the comforting notion, even among the least ‘pious’, that there is life after death.

Of course this is just a fantasy, belonging to a bygone world.

But let us return to freedom. Personal freedom. If an action of yours harms no-one, no-one at all, then why should you answer to a government, or to some crumpled bureaucrat, or to any authority? The essence, the very essential, of religious rule (it does not matter what religion) is that someone, somewhere, is telling you what to do, and what not to do, in the most personal and intimate aspects of your life. This is the opposite of freedom.

So now tell me, how can the land of the free and the home of the brave be telling us that that is our future? Is this brave? Is it free?

Reason, if we follow our reason, would tell us to design a country almost exactly like the USA. A great country, that has given more freedom, to more people, for a longer period, than any other political entity in history.
But.
The USA is now, it seems, dominated by ideologues and religious fanatics. That surely overstates the case, but one hears and fears the worst (particularly if you are, as I am, a deep admirer of the USA). Certainly that is the perception of the rest of the world. Where do we go when the most successful creation of the age of Enlightenment, the USA, becomes a theocracy? Do we all gird our loins for a ‘crusade’ against Islam? Do we acknowledge as a horrible but unavoidable fact that people are being killed daily in Baghdad but focus on the really pressing issue, that of gay marriage? Or do we stare closely into the eyes of our American friends and ask them, please, to take their country back?

Poetry

After such an amazing story I believe I shall struggle to compete.

RIDING
I Cant feel under the wheel
But I can feel the wheel under me
and what the wheel feels like under me
makes whats under the wheel feel unreal

DARKNESS
What is darkness?
The absence of light,
or something more?
Is it really an obvious
explainable occurance in nature?
or is it some other being,
a creature,
literally of darkness.
Perhaps there is a greater darkness
beyond that which we call shadow.
Perhaps the blind simply
fail to see the light of our world
and can only view the darkness beyond everything.

MY DOG
Black as the deepest night,
yet glowing with a joyous light.
she dances and prances,
leaps and bounds,
and all this just when she sees me
This beutiful lady,
both proud and playful,
is the kindest gift
a person may recieve.

SWALLOW
Lost, wandering
Like a you swallow
Thats strayed to far from the nest
Stumbling, Crying,
Chirping, Fluttering.
The lost little thing does wander.

BURNING
Flame, the endless burning.
Fire, the dreadful beuty.
Flickering as if between the worlds,
spreading love and despair.
The candle lit dinner,
the burning city.
Love to sorrow,
Beuty to terror.
What else in this world of ours,
can tear us to pieces in so many ways
Death
Destruction
Love Creation
What is more beutiful than a flickering flame,
What is more violent than the forest fire.
Fire,
the giver,
the taker.
Fire,
the God,
the demon.
Fire,
the life,
the death.
Fire.

Short Story: Flying in Rain

"The only reason to have an airplane with two engines is to be able to fly with one".
The Australian engineer's comment returned to me as I watched the sweating Bolivians close the cowl of the second engine and wipe up the oil underneath. They cleared things away and the pilot grinned back at us.
"Ahora si!" he said, "Vamos!"
I settled back. This was likely to be a long flight and I had brought nothing to read. Jose Luis in the seat beside me was gazing out across the sunny runway to the ramshackle buildings on the other side of the boundary wall. The propellers of the small plane kicked into life. The whine rose to a crescendo, slicing the air just a foot or two from my head. When the noise satisfied the pilot we taxied forward onto the runway, waited a few seconds for final clearance and took off.
Santa Cruz wobbled into view. We were flying from a small runway almost in the centre of town, not the big international airport further out. Which felt priviliged. Santa Cruz was a red-roofed haven to drug smugglers and hard-working honest men. We had two hours flying time ahead of us, over the dry jungles of eastern Bolivia.
We were aiming for a small landing strip in the jungle well to the north. Many years ago the Jesuits had mined gold in the hills out there. The ground had recently been pegged by a small company. My job was to go and look at this ground and assess the possibility of future commercial gold production. Jose Luis was coming along to assist me.
I worked for a big company and that was the reason we were flying in a twin-engined plane, the luxury of safety. We levelled off at about 10,000 feet. The sun was bright and the jungle green below us. But thunderstorms rimmed the horizon ahead.
I watched the pilots do the things that pilots do and then noticed a book stuck in the seat in front of me. I opened it and found it was a western. I started reading and found it was a pornographic western. I read some pages with great interest as I had never before read a pornographic western. I forget the hero's name but he had an awful lot to say about his one-eyed snake and how often it stood to attention. More of a cock swinger than a gun slinger. I got bored with the book and put it down. Watched the greeness below and the thunderstorms advancing.
It started to rain as we got deeper into the clouds. I never liked flying in small planes in bad weather. It got bumpy. The pilots were unconcerned. They flew around some clouds and through others.
As the flight continued the pilots talked less and concentrated more. The talked on the radio and consulted their GPS navigational instrument. We were flying towards nothing more than a bush airstrip, bulldozed out of the jungle and allowed to grass over. No air control, navigational beacons or staff. Nothing at all. I believe there was a radio at the local military base and that they had been warned we were on our way.
The weather grew worse. The genial atmosphere of the early part of the flight had evaporated. The pilots still seemed relaxed but they were quiet now and their eyes were watchful. One could not say they were tense, but they were paying great attention.
The little plane bounced on. I gazed out at the jungle, intermittently visible between streaks of cloud.
The pilots were talking to each other. I could not make out what they said, but they seemed to be discussing fuel and the likelihood of being able to land at our chosen site. They decided to continue and we flew on.
Visibility was poor now. We were close to our target zone. The plane banked and we started to circle. I did not know how high we were. The landing strip itself was next to a river, I knew that, but I also knew there were mountains nearby, because the gold prospect was in mountains.
Suddenly close below us was the jungle again. I had had no idea we were so low. We were very close to treetop, perhaps 100 metres up. Dense jungle. The huge river circled into sight and out again, visibility 150 metres. It was pelting with rain. We continued to circle, coming lower as the rain increased, flying just above treetop level. Visibility ahead was virtually nil. I hoped that the GPS was set correctly, that the pilots had not misread it, and that we were not about to smack into those mountains.
We flew on, still circling. I guess they knew where we were because the same river came into view again and again, but I could see nothing that looked like an airstrip. I did not know whether we were looking for the airstrip or whether we knew exactly where it was. It was impossible to speak to the pilots. They were quiet, concentrating, talking in short phrases to each other. The jungle close below looked grey through the deluge of falling water.
We continued to circle, the river swam into view again, and disappeared again. This went on for some time. I began to wonder whether the pilots did know where the landing strip was. The rain poured down. There was a point of no return, I knew, a point at which if you had not landed you had to fly back to the nearest airstrip or risk running out of fuel. I also knew that in Bolivia strict rules are not always enforced. There was no radio communication with the ground.
Despite the rain it was hot and wet inside the little plane, the windows were fogging up. The pilots were soaked in sweat. Jose Luis was staring out through the front window between the pilots. I did not know what he was thinking. The pilots were very quiet. The engines were purring sweetly enough. They were beautiful looking machines, poking out on long nacelles well in front of the wings.
We suddenly banked very sharply, one wingtip almost touching the treetops. We swerved round in a tight turn, straightening up in almost the opposite direction and in a minute or two the landing strip was below us. We were coming in. The pilot lined up on the tiny grass-covered strip, which seemed too small to land a paper dart.
As we dived I had an impression of the pilot forcing the plane down through the water against its own buoyancy. We touched down in a spray of white, the little plane skidding from side to side through plumes of water. Eventually the tail came down and we skidded and slid to a halt. A bright red Toyota was standing next to a shelter. It drove over to us. The rain stopped. The pilots opened the hatch. We all got out. The truck drew up and our two field assistants got out, beaming. The pilots were grinning. Cheerful exchanges in Spanish. The pilots were laughing now. Everyone smiled and joked.
I asked the genial chief pilot what we had been doing. "Oh no" he said in Spanish, "no problems at all, we were just waiting for the rain to stop, there were no problems at all".
"Una pista buena!" a good strip, the pilots beamed at each other, "esta una pista buena". They gazed with huge satisfaction down the grassy strip "una pista buena!"

A little later. The sun peeping out. Sitting in a muddy shack beside a grey river in the jungle, watching a bright and pretty Bolivian woman talking on the shortwave radio, chatting up her friends, passing messages, while I smoked a wonderful cigarette.

In the beginning...

The intention of this blog is to allow our loyal readers to enjoy our writings every week from this week on. There are two of us. We undertake to post a readable blog every week from now on. Our topics will range from everyday life to complex imaginary numbers, and more interesting stuff. We will seek to tease out the reality underneath the surface of life. Do not fear the opinions presented here, they are presented in good faith by two people trying to understand the world. Apologies in advance to everyone we have offended. We are father and son and our names are Will and Dave.