The Hot Spotters

Thursday, February 3rd, 2011

Atul Gawande’s latest New Yorker piece, on lowering medical costs by giving the neediest patients better care, strikes me as a political Rorschach test.

To a progressive technocrat, like Gawande, the finding that one percent of patients account for a third of Camden, New Jersey’s medical costs presents a wonderful opportunity: by vastly increasing the amount of highly personalized social services these patients receive, we can reduce medical costs enough to more than compensate for all the visits and phone calls.

To a conservative (or libertarian), it raises the obvious question, Why are we spending other people’s money to help people who won’t help themselves? These “needy” patients are typically obese, with self-inflicted type II diabetes, and they need heroic measures to rescue them from a life of sugary treats and inactivity — exacerbated by their inability or unwillingness to check their own blood sugar and take their prescribed medications.

To an outright reactionary, it suggests the futility of taking responsibility for someone’s health without seizing any authority over their behavior.

Posted in Economics, Science | 1 Comment »

Copts

Thursday, February 3rd, 2011

One of Foseti’s friends is Egyptian — or, more specifically, Coptic — with extended family still in the motherland:

At this point, it sounds like his extended family is fine. However, it also sounds like they’re preparing to be slaughtered (and to flee or fight back) if a Muslim government takes over.

Think of them, dear reader, next time you hear someone gushing about the beauty of free expression in Egypt. They will be on the receiving end when “the Egyptian people” are allowed to express themselves.

Posted in Policy | No Comments »

Beneath Their Dignity

Thursday, February 3rd, 2011

Saudis will not do work that is beneath their dignity. That includes learning to be good at modern combat:

The Saudi Arabian Air Force had an embarrassing incident recently, when an air force lieutenant, in the rear seat of a two-seat F-15, ejected in a panic when he spotted a large bird apparently about to collide with the aircraft. A captain, in the front seat, who was flying the aircraft, made an emergency landing (if only because the aircraft was hard to fly with the canopy gone). The lieutenant also landed safely, by parachute. The air force is conducting an investigation, but such spontaneous, and ill-advised use of the ejection seat is not unusual in the Saudi Air force. In fact, the entire Saudi military suffers from similar problems with poor training and leadership.

Over half a century of oil wealth has made the Saudis soft and inept. During that time, most of the work force has been imported, and attempts to reverse that have not gone well. Saudis will not do work that is “beneath their dignity.” That includes learning to be good at modern combat. This has always been a major problem with training pilots, and many aircraft have been lost because some well connected kid insisted on being a fighter pilot, but lacked the aptitude, or fortitude, to succeed at the training. While many foreigners are still used to maintain the air force jets, the Saudis are the pilots and they vary enormously in ability. The few who are good at it are worked hard, and the worst are kept out of the way these days.

On the ground, poor leadership and haphazard training made Saudi troops easy meat for the combat experienced Yemeni tribesmen a year ago. This made the news in Saudi Arabia, but nothing was really done to solve the problems, which include lots of corruption and tribal politics. So the Saudis buy more high-tech, and very expensive Western weapons, hire Westerners to maintain the gear, and hope that there are at least a few Saudis capable of pulling the trigger, or pushing the button, effectively when crunch time arrives.

This is not a uniquely Saudi problem. Historically, it’s quite common for fabulously wealthy areas to lose their warrior spirit to the extent that mercenaries have to be hired to defend the fabulous lifestyle. In Islamic countries, it was common to train slaves (often children) to become professional soldiers (Mamelukes and Janissaries) or hired trusted foreigners (Chechens and Baluchis). For centuries, Baluchi tribsemen (from southwest Pakistan) served as mercenaries in Arabia. But wary Saudi Arabia sent the last of its Baluchi battalions home in the 1980s, although some Baluchis still serve in the Gulf. But the Saudis don’t feel safe hiring foreigners to handle defense, although their willingness to cooperate with the United States is another way of having friendly foreign troops handy for an emergency.

Posted in War | No Comments »

Invited to Join Spetsnaz

Thursday, February 3rd, 2011

Viktor Suvorov shares a fictional interview of a young officer invited to join spetsnaz, the Soviet special forces:

Any young officer can be invited to join spetsnaz irrespective of his previous speciality in the armed forces. If he possesses the required qualities of an iron will, an air of unquestionable authority, ruthlessness and an independent way of taking decisions and acting, if he is by nature a gambler who is not afraid to take a chance with anything, including his own life, then he will eventually be invited to the headquarters of the military district. He will be led along the endless corridors to a little office where he will be interviewed by a general and some senior officers. The young officer will not of course know that the general is head of the Intelligence directorate of the military district or that the colonel next to him is head of the third department (spetsnaz) of the directorate.

The atmosphere of the interview is relaxed, with smiles and jokes on both sides. Tell us about yourself, lieutenant. What are your interests? What games do you play? You hold the divisional record on skis over ten kilometres? Very good. How did your men do in the last rifle-shooting test? How do you get along with your deputy? Is he a difficult chap? Uncontrolled character? Our information is that you tamed him. How did you manage it?’

The interview moves gradually on to the subject of the armed forces of the probable enemy and takes the form of a gentle examination.

‘You have an American division facing your division on the front. The American division has “Lance” missiles. A nasty thing?’

‘Of course, comrade general.’

‘Just supposing, lieutenant, that you were chief of staff of the Soviet division, how would you destroy the enemy’s missiles?’

‘With our own 9K21 missiles.’

‘Very good, lieutenant, but the location of the American missiles is not known.’

‘I would ask the air force to locate them and possibly bomb them.’

‘But there’s bad weather, lieutenant, and the anti-aircraft defences are strong.’

Then I would send forward from our division a deep reconnaissance company to find the missiles, cut the throats of the missile crew and blow up the missiles.’

‘Not a bad idea. Very good, in fact. Have you ever heard, lieutenant, that there are units in the American Army known as the “Green Berets”?’

‘Yes, I have heard.’

‘What do you think of them?’

‘I look at the question from two points of view — the political and the military.’

Tell us both of them, please.’

They are mercenary cut throats of American capitalism, looters, murderers and rapists. They burn down villages and massacre the inhabitants, women, children and old people.’

‘Enough. Your second point of view?’

‘They are marvellously well-trained units for operating behind the enemy’s lines. Their job is to paralyse the enemy’s system of command and control. They are a very powerful and effective instrument in the hands of commanders. . . .’

‘Very well. So what would you think, lieutenant, if we were to organise something similar in our army?’

‘I think, comrade general, that it would be a correct decision. I am sure, comrade general, that that is our army’s tomorrow.’

‘It’s the army’s today, lieutenant. What would you say if we were to offer you the chance to become an officer in these troops? The discipline is like iron. Your authority as a commander would be almost absolute. You would be the one taking the decisions, not your superiors for you.’

‘If I were to be offered such an opportunity, comrade general, I would accept.’

‘All right, lieutenant, now you can go back to your regiment. Perhaps you will receive an offer. Continue your service and forget this conversation took place. You realise, of course, what will happen to you if anybody gets to know about what we have discussed?’

‘I understand, comrade general.’

‘We have informed your commanding officers, including the regimental commander, that you came before us as a candidate for posting to the Chinese frontier — to Mongolia, Afghanistan, the islands of the Arctic Ocean that sort of thing. Goodbye for now, lieutenant.’

‘Goodbye, comrade general.’

Posted in Viktor Suvorov, War | No Comments »

Hunting in the Old World

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

I recently noted that Wisconsin went an entire deer season without a single person getting killed. They had more than 600,000 hunters.

By contrast, Italy has seen 35 people killed in four months of hunting — and another 74 have been injured:

Italy’s anti-hunting league, the LAC, said all but one were hunters killed accidentally by their shooting companions.

But the 35th victim was a mushroom collector shot dead near Arezzo in Tuscany. Of the injured, 13 were also non-hunters, mostly people out for a walk in the woods or cycling down a country lane.

Cosa succede?

The annual bloodletting is a result of the unusual freedom allowed to shooting parties under Italian law. They can go on to private property and fire anywhere not within 50m of a road or 150m of a house.

So, Italian hunters have the same rights their aristocratic forebears had? Wild. This doesn’t make them popular:

A survey published by Eurispes, a research institute, found that that less than 18% of Italians regarded shooting as an acceptable pastime.

Over at Marginal Revolution, a commenter makes the not-so-surprising point that hunting accidents make a wonderful cover for not-so-accidental killings.

Posted in Weapons | No Comments »

A Completely Unpredictable Revolution?

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

The current situation in Egypt is a completely unpredictable revolution — like all the rest, Josef Josse says:

Only fools would predict the unpredictable, and thus with the course of the Egyptian revolution. Imagine yourself as a pundit in Paris at the start of the French Revolution, the mother of them all. In August of 1789, you would have celebrated the “General Declaration of Human Rights,” an ur-document of democracy, as the dawn of “liberty, equality and fraternity.” Yet, four years later, the Terreur erupted, claiming anywhere between 16,000 and 40,000 lives. In 1804, one-man despotism was back. Except its name was not “Louis,” but “Napoleon.”

In the Russian Revolution of 1917, a halfway nice man by the name of Alexander Kerensky pushed out the Tsar, only to be replaced by Lenin and Stalin. And then, some soothsaying from Berlin in 1918: Who would have thought that the first German republic would be done in by communists and Nazis? Shift forward to Cairo in 1952. A genuine people’s revolt drives King Farouk into exile. Yet democracy takes a fall, too — toppled by Egypt’s officers’ caste. Egypt has been a military dictatorship in civilian garb ever since.

Let’s move to Tehran in 1979. The Shah flees for his life, semi-liberal Mehdi Bazargan officiates for a few month, and then, the iron fist of Khomeinism closes around the country. It is still there 32 years later, prevailing in a long civil war and shrugging off the democratic revolt of 2009.

Radicalization, then, is revolution’s fate.

That doesn’t sound especially unpredictable. They may not go to plan, but they go awry quite predictably.

Mubarak’s fate may be sealed:

Yet, as revolutionary history shows, appeasement like Mubarak’s late offer of political concessions only emboldens the opposition. What’s more, Barack Obama’s pressure for reforms and free elections isn’t helping the Egyptian president. Mubarak must surely ponder what happened to the Shah of Iran once he was dropped by Jimmy Carter back in 1978, when the White House dispatched the same “mend your ways” message to Tehran. That was the beginning of the end of the Pahlavi dynasty.

Egypt will likely continue its long tradition of (thinly veiled) military rule:

Since the ouster of King Farouk, army and state have been one. Since 1952, Egypt has been ruled by a succession of officers-turned-pharaohs who never forgot where they came from: Naguib, Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak. They were the army, and the army was them. In other words, don’t count out the colonels.

Posted in Policy | No Comments »

Tiger Mother Cartoons

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

Inspired by the recent tiger mother brouhaha, The New Yorker digs up some classic parenting cartoons:







Posted in Education, Media | 1 Comment »

Credentialism and Elite Hiring Practices

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

Steve Hsu, a physics professor at the University of Oregon, discusses credentialism and elite hiring practices:

I refer to [elite law firms, consultancies and I-banks] as “soft” elite firms, whereas I will refer to hedge/venture funds, startups and technology companies as “hard” elite firms. (Goldman is a mix of the two; hence the internal battles between traders and bankers. I welcome comments from insiders on this particular issue.)

In the latter category performance is a bit easier to measure, and raw prestige plays less of a role in marketing to customers or clients — i.e., the customer can directly tell whether the gizmo works (“these search results suck!”) or the fund made money. Whether or not the advice received from a law/consulting/M&A firm is any good is much more nebulous and, well, soft.

  1. Rivera’s work confirms that in the real world, people believe in folk notions of brainpower or IQ. (“Quick on the uptake”, “Picks things up really fast”, “A sponge” …) They count on elite educational institutions to do their g-filtering for them. In the past, as noted by one commenter, firms often asked for SAT scores.
  2. Elite soft firms generally want people who are smart, but not too smart. Other factors, like personality, communication and leadership skills, etc. are valued as well. Startups, hedge funds, MSFT/GOOG, etc. generally want the smartest people they can get their hands on, at least for technical roles.
  3. The soft firms know that what they do isn’t “rocket science” — it just isn’t that hard, and any academic admit to a top university is smart enough. They just have to appear elite and smart enough to snow their clients and sell the work. Thus the emphasis on factors other than intelligence, once the threshold requirement is satisfied. Someone who appears smart and inspires confidence in clients is better than a smarter person who doesn’t get along with (often middlebrow) clients.
  4. In Rivera’s research school prestige was the number one signal used by soft elite firms in evaluating prospective hires. Extracurricular activities came in second, but this is probably just a way to differentiate between applicants who have already been filtered using school prestige.
  5. It is odd that the soft firms, which market themselves to clients as being super-smart repositories of brainpower (of course this is largely a fiction; see point 3 above), would rely so heavily on university admissions committees. They effectively outsource a big chunk of due diligence on their most important investment (human capital) to a group of people whose judgement they somehow trust, but perhaps without detailed understanding. When I was on the faculty at Yale I knew people in admissions and it’s not clear to me that they were the best able to spot potential in 18 year olds. In studies of expert performance admissions people are less good at predicting UG GPA than a simple algorithm. (The “algorithm” is simply a weighted sum of SAT and HS GPA!)

But this doesn’t matter if the success of HYPS grads becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once soft elite firms and large parts of the rest of society (in particular, clients) have accepted the idea that elite universities should be trusted to do the filtering, these schools will automatically produce large numbers of successful alumni — the imprimatur itself has value. The outsourcing of human capital filtering is more dangerous for hard elite firms, with their more objective criteria: if they find that Yale grads aren’t actually any good at pricing derivatives, writing code or designing chips, then they’ll have to adopt a different filter. Fortunately, since even the dumbed down SAT is still pretty g loaded, hard elite firms can be confident that the lion’s share of top talent is at elite universities.

I came  to Hsu’s post via Steve Sailer, who notes how little useful knowledge his college education taught him:

I can only recall one specific time that my six additional years of higher education taught me anything that [the self-taught young computer geek I hired] didn’t know. He came in one day convinced that we could save money by buying all the parts for PCs and assembling them ourselves instead of buying them from Dell. Being an Econ major, I said that the PC business was highly competitive, so the cost of assembling them ourselves would no doubt be slightly higher than what we could buy them from an assembler like Dell for. He went off and spent two hours building a spreadsheet with the prices for all the parts… and found my top-of-the-head guess based on economic theory had been right.

But, that’s the only time my half dozen years of expensive higher education (BA triple major and MBA double concentration) taught me something that would have saved him a few hours.

Posted in Economics, Education | No Comments »

Pay One Percent More

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

South Korean commandos recently raided a South Korean ship held by Somali pirates, and Malaysian commandos raided a Malaysian ship held by Somali pirates.  In each case, commandos of the same nation as the captured ship were available for the raids:

Most shipping companies, because they have insurance to cover the cost of ransoming the ship and crew, will not authorize such raids on captured ships. Most navies, especially European ones, prefer not to attempt such rescues, because of the bad publicity arising from any deaths (even of pirates.) But in nations with sailors being held captive, fighting the pirates, and freeing those captives, is big news.

Thus an increasing number of these raids are taking place. French and American commandos have undertaken these operations to free their countrymen, and several ships have been cleared of pirates after the crew barricaded themselves in “safe rooms” after disabling the ships engines. In some of these cases, the pirates have abandoned such ships before marines or commandoes could show up.

Back in Somalia, two pirate gangs holding South Korean sailors, moved their captives and threatened to kill them in revenge for the pirates killed by the South Korea commandos. This was all theatre for the media. The pirates know that escalating the killing is bad for business. If the pirates kill captives, they provide an incentive for foreign troops to come ashore.

On the South Korean side, the raid on the hijacked ship was risky, because a lot of deaths among the captive crew would have been bad news back home. But success provides a big morale boost for South Koreans in general, who are somewhat demoralized because of the two North Korean arracks in the last year. South Korean special operations troops are well trained, and the risk of failure was low. The ransom of a South Korean tanker last year, for $9 million, created a furor in South Korea, where many saw this high payment as just encouraging the pirates. Thus the recent commando rescue was very popular.

The growing number of commando attacks on captured ships is partly a reflection of the pirates going farther afield (often to the coast of India) in search of prey, and partly growing anger at the inability to shut the pirates down. The Somali exist solely because no nation is willing to send troops ashore to shut down the Somali coastal towns that serve as bases for the pirates, and provide anchorages for the captured ships. For thousands of years before, this was how piracy was controlled, by finding and destroying ports the pirates operated from. But no one is willing to get involved fighting the Somalis, who are unable to govern themselves, and proved a major headache when occupied by French, British and Italian colonial governments in the 19th and 20th centuries. Of the three colonies established in the Somali territory, only Djibouti (run by the French from 1894-1977, and acquired by negotiation more than conquest) is still enjoying self-rule. The rest of Somalia, especially the southern part, has always been lawless and chaotic. Most nations believe it’s preferable to pay one percent more (about $5 billion a year for insurance and security) to operate merchant ship near the East African coast, than it is to pacify Somalia.

Posted in War | No Comments »

Leadership Training in the Soviet Union

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

The heads of the GRU — Soviet military intelligence, in charge of spetsnaz, or special forces — considered special training necessary for every function — except that of leader:

A leader cannot be produced by even the best training scheme. A leader is born a leader and nobody can help him or advise him how to manage people. In this case advice offered by professors does not help; it only hinders. A professor is a man who has never been a leader and never will be, and nobody ever taught Hitler how to lead a nation. Stalin was thrown out of his theological seminary.

Marshal Georgi Zhukov, the outstanding military leader of the Second World War, had a million men, and often several million, under his direct command practically throughout the war. Of all the generals and marshals at his level he was the only one who did not suffer a single defeat in battle. Yet he had no real military education. He did not graduate from a military school to become a junior officer; he did not graduate from a military academy to become a senior officer; and he did not graduate from the Academy of General Staff to become a general and later a marshal. But he became one just the same.

There was Khalkhin-Gol, Yelnya, the counter-offensive before Moscow, Stalingrad, the lifting of the Leningrad blockade, Kursk, the crossing of the Dnieper, the Belorussian operation, and the Vistula-Oder and Berlin operations. What need had he of education? What could the professors teach him?

Posted in Policy, Viktor Suvorov, War | 1 Comment »

The Deal

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

Steve Sailer explains that the deal struck at Camp David in 1978 was, very roughly, that, in return for no more war, the U.S. would give Israel $3 billion per year and Egypt $2 billion per year, or $50 per Egyptian per year:

That wasn’t bad money back then.

But the payoff hasn’t gone up since then. And the population of Egypt has doubled, so now rather than $50 per Egyptian per year in 1978 dollars, the bribe is now $25 per Egyptian per year in crummy 2011 dollars.

Meanwhile, the wealth of the American wing of the Israel Fan Club has skyrocketed. This is not a secret in Cairo: they can go to the Forbes 400 website and do the math.

This doesn’t mean that a new Egyptian government would want war with Israel. War is stupid; it kills people and breaks stuff. War doesn’t pay.

On the other hand, perhaps under a new regime, the Egyptian border guards who currently keep the Egypt-Gaza Strip border locked down pretty tight might get, say, a little sleepy. And maybe a few shipments of longer range missiles might get through to the hotheads in Gaza, with unfortunate but predictable incidents to follow.

War doesn’t pay, but maybe, ambitious younger men in Egypt might be thinking: Peace can pay. And a lot better than a stinking $25 per head. If peace was worth $2 billion per year in the 1970s, what would it be worth in the 2010s? $20 billion? A younger, more energetic leadership in Egypt might just have some strong opinions on this subject.

Posted in Policy, War | No Comments »

You don’t have to open the door

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

Is it paranoid to answer the door with a gun in your hand?

About 8:45 p.m., three teenage males knocked on the door of a home in the 3300 block of Raines Street, Pensacola Police Department officials said.

When resident Jack Crawford, 72, answered the door, one of the teens hit him in the head with an aluminum bat and tried to force his way into the home.

“I opened it up, and he hit me right off…. Wham! Split my head open,” Crawford said.

“So I shot him and another guy,” Crawford said, chuckling as he told the story to a Pensacola News Journal reporter Sunday evening. “I could have shot the third one, but I would have had to shoot him in the back as he ran away.”

The attackers fled the scene on foot, and Crawford’s 70-year-old sister, who also lives at the home, called the police, he said.

Earl Benard, 15, Nathaniel Nichols, 17, and Curtis Crenshaw, 18, all of Pensacola, have been charged with home-invasion robbery and aggravated battery in connection with the case, police said.

Crenshaw and Nichols were arrested at a local hospital after being dropped off for treatment with gunshot wounds to their torsos. Benard later was arrested at a nearby rental home.

Nichols remained hospitalized Sunday afternoon, police said. Crenshaw was treated and released and was being held Sunday evening at Escambia County Jail on $300,000 bond.

State Attorney Bill Eddins said he plans to try all three suspects as adults.

Crawford said he grabbed his handgun as a precaution and was holding it at his side when he opened the door Saturday night.

“At 9 o’clock at night, I never take any chances,” Crawford said.

The three teens had “hoods on and scarves around their faces,” Crawford said, and they hit him with the bat before anyone had a chance to speak.

Crawford stumbled back a step from the blow but didn’t fall, and he started shooting as the first attacker was coming through the door, he said.

“I didn’t go down, and I think it shocked him,” Crawford said.

Following the attack, Crawford was transported by ambulance to West Florida Hospital for treatment of injuries to his head. He said doctors stapled his scalp back together, and he was back at home and feeling fine Sunday evening.

“Yeah I’m fine. I’ve got a hard head,” Crawford said.

The TV news video shows Crawford with staples in his head — and lots of gold jewelry around his neck and on his fingers.

Posted in Crime | 4 Comments »

Soviet Military Athletes

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

The Soviet Union supported its “amateur” athletes by giving them military ranks:

The most successful, richest and largest society in the Soviet Union concerned with sport is the Central Army Sports Club (ZSKA). Members of the club have included 850 European champions, 625 world champions and 182 Olympic champions. They have set up 341 European and 430 world records. (All figures as of 1 January, 1979.)

Such results do not indicate that the Soviet Army is the best at training top-class athletes. This was admitted even by Pravda (2 September, 1985). The secret of success lies in the enormous resources of the Soviet Army. Pravda describes what happens: ‘It is sufficient for some even slightly promising boxer to come on the scene and he is immediately lured across to the ZSKA.’ As a result, out of the twelve best boxers in the Soviet Union ten are from the Army Club, one from Dinamo (the sports organisation run by the KGB), and one from the Trud sports club. But of those ten army boxers, not one was the original product of the Army club. They had all been lured away from other clubs — the Trudoviye reservy, the Spartak or the Burevestnik. The same thing happens in ice-hockey, parachute jumping, swimming and many other sports.

What may come as a surprise is that these military ranks weren’t simple sinocures:

[T]he Soviet Army needs an enormous number of people with exceptional athletic ability at Olympic level to carry out special missions behind the enemy’s lines. It is desirable that these people should be able to visit foreign countries in peace time. Sport makes that possible. As far as the athletes are concerned, they are grateful for a very rich club which can pay them well, provide them with cars and apartments, and arrange trips abroad for them. Moreover, they need the sort of club in which they can be regarded as amateurs, though they will work nowhere else but in the club.

Spetsnaz is the point where the interests of the state, the Soviet Army and military intelligence coincide with the interests of some individuals who want to devote their whole lives to sport.

There are no women in the usual spetsnaz units:

But in the professional sports units of spetsnaz women constitute about half the numbers. They engage in various kinds of sport: parachute jumping, gliding, flying, shooting, running, swimming, motocross, and so on. Every woman who joins spetsnaz has to engage in some associated forms of sport apart from her own basic sport, and among these are some that are obligatory, such as sambo, shooting and a few others. The woman have to take part in exercises along with the men and have to study the full syllabus of subjects necessary for operating behind the enemy’s lines.

That there should be such a high percentage of women in the professional sports formations of spetsnaz is a matter of psychology and strategy: if in the course of a war a group of tall, broadshouldered young men were to appear behind the lines this might give rise to bewilderment, since all the men are supposed to be at the front. But if in the same situation people were to see a group of athletic-looking girls there would be little likelihood of any alarm or surprise.

To succeed in war, you need to know the terrain:

A private in the average spetsnaz unit cannot, of course, visit the places where he is likely to have to fight in the event of war. But a top-class professional athlete does have the opportunity. The Soviet Army takes advantage of such opportunities.

For example, in 1984 the 12th world parachuting championship took place in France. There were altogether twenty-six gold medals to be competed for, and the Soviet team won twenty-two of them. The ‘Soviet team’ was in fact a team belonging to the armed forces of the USSR. It consisted of five men and five women: a captain, a senior praporshik, three praporshiki, a senior sergeant and four sergeants. The team’s trainer, its doctor and the whole of the technical personnel were Soviet officers. The Soviet reporter accompanying the team was a colonel. This group of ‘sportsmen’ spent time in Paris and in the south of France. A very interesting and very useful trip, and there were other Soviet officers besides -for example a colonel who was the trainer of the Cuban team.

Now let us suppose a war has broken out. The Soviet Army must neutralise the French nuclear capability. France is the only country in Europe, apart from the Soviet Union itself, that stores strategic nuclear missiles in underground silos. The silos are an extremely important target, possibly the most important in Europe. The force that will put them out of action will be a spetsnaz force. And who will the Soviet high command send to carry out the mission? The answer is that, after the world parachuting championship, they have a tailor-made team.

Posted in Fitness, Viktor Suvorov, War | No Comments »

Do Republican Voters Ride Trains?

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

Kalim Kassam recently read a piece on the Republican party’s reluctance to invest in transit infrastructure, and he asks if William Lind provides evidence somewhere for his contention that Republican voters ride trains.

Not quite. He resorts to high income as a proxy:

Studies of passengers on rail-transit systems across the country indicate many conservatives are on board. Chicago’s excellent METRA commuter trains offer one example. A recent survey revealed that in the six-county area METRA serves, 11 percent of commuters with incomes of $75,000 or more commuted by train. In Lake County, the mean earnings of rail commuters were more than $76,000. (The figure for bus riders was less than $14,000.) Not surprisingly, the area METRA serves regularly sends Republicans to Congress.

For those not familiar with Lind’s conservative case for public transit, he argues that most bus passengers are transit dependents with no better way to get around, but most train passengers are riders from choice:

So why are conservatives using the public transportation we are told they oppose? Because being stuck in traffic isn’t fun, even if you are driving a BMW. On a commuter train or Light Rail line, you whiz past all those cars going no-where at 50 or 60 miles per hour — reading, working on your laptop, or relaxing, instead of staring at some other guy’s bumper.

Another pillar of his argument is that highways are not a free-market outcome; they’re heavily subsidized:

Still, libertarians shriek, “Subsidies!” — ignoring the fact that highways only cover 58 percent of their costs from user fees, including the gas tax.

The obvious answer isn’t to counter-subsidize the competition but to increase highway user fees, whether in the form of increased gas taxes or new tolls.

Posted in Urbanism | No Comments »

Re-fighting World War Two and Losing

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

A few years ago, I read that historian Niall Ferguson became obsessed with Making History, a World War II simulation game. I thought about picking it up. A few years later, I read that Making History 2 had come out, with input from Ferguson. I thought about picking it up. Then I read some reviews that mentioned Hearts of Iron III, and I stumbled across this story by the economics editor for the BBC’s Newsnight, who decided to re-fight World War Two in Hearts of Iron III — and lost:

I elected to play as France and my strategy was to re-arm as quickly as possible, intervene on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, sign a defence pact not just with Poland but also the Czechs — and attack Germany through the Netherlands at the slightest provocation, probably sometime around 1938.

But it wouldn’t let me.

My population’s “neutrality” was too high and the popularity of my ruling party, the Radicals, too low. So my tanks had to rev their engines in Toulouse, failing to speed to the aid of Barcelona; then they had to mass impotently while Germany re-occupied the Rhineland, then sit through the Anschluss, Munich and the annexation of the whole of Czechoslovakia, suffering a further indignity on the outbreak of hostilities in early 1939 because the Belgians refused my request for transit rights.

He learned a few lessons:

First, as with all god-games, how merciless strategy is towards tactics, human beings and trivial situations. I’ve been is several slightly chaotic situations as a journalist and the lesson of this top-down, realtime history game is clear: you never know what’s going on when it’s going on.

The second is quite topical: if you want to take a democracy to war, unless your country is actually being attacked, you have to relentlessly shape the narrative. This holds true in other times and theatres than 1930s Europe.

Finally, the 1930s were a complex reality. I’ve studied the period a lot on and off over the years and I’m dissatisfied at the simplistic picture that’s being created around it in recent TV dramas and movies, in which everybody is either fascist or anti-fascist, the war is always inevitable, and in which the focus is always the beleaguered aristocracy (King’s Speech, Upstairs Downstairs) or the fascist-friendly elite (Coco Before Chanel). The drama of the time — from Odets’ “Awake and Sing” to Coward’s soap-like “This Happy Breed” — was always a lot more focused on real people and the real situation. Even a serial like Granada’s “Family at War” (1970-72), written as it was by people who actually remembered the time, captured the complexities in a way we now seem unable to. And so in a way, and despite its ludicrous title, does Hearts of Iron.

I suppose I should pick HoI3 up.

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