Author Archives: Martin van Creveld

Ninnies

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Every time I follow the media, I am astonished at the number of women who claim to have been misled and cheated and bamboozled and exploited by those devilishly clever creatures, men. Now it is a question of a man using a fake name and fake photographs to develop any number of more or less illicit relationships with any number of women. Sequentially or simultaneously, it does not matter. Now a man claims to own a modelling agency or work as a fashion photographer in order to achieve the same objective. Now he pretends to be a war hero, which gains him prestige in women’s eyes. Now a psychotherapist or physician, which provides him with opportunities to be alone with them, talk to them the way they like to be talked to, feel them up, and perhaps have sex with them. And now he makes false promises of all kinds of remunerative jobs in foreign countries, only to enslave his victims when they arrive.

Years ago there was published a volume called, Women Who Love too Much. As experiments on Tinder have shown, quite some women keep up the relationship even after the man in question has been exposed as, or confessed to be, a jailbird, or pedophile, or pimp, or whatever. So foolish are many women that, having slept with a man, it sometimes takes them ten or twenty or thirty years as well as psychological counseling to understand that, in “reality,” they were raped or abused or whatever. Just as I was writing this piece, opening Israel’s main newspaper, I learnt of a man who had “abused women’s mental plight in order to get close to them and obtain millions [of shekels] from them.”

Judging by the media, whereas women never stop raising complaints about men for the opposite to happen is relatively rare. Is that because men are smarter than women and less likely to be tricked? Frankly, I doubt it. Sex hormones are among the most powerful persuaders around. In people of both sexes they often take priority over brains, especially if the people in question also suffer from loneliness or are in any kind of trouble. As Sisera, ask Holophernes, both of whom lost their lives at the hands of treacherous women. Not to mention the scene in Basic Instinct (1992) where a woman uses an icepick to kill a man during the sexual act itself. I am more inclined to think that men are far less likely to complain about incidents of this kind. And with good reason, for in case they do complain they are much more likely to be turned into laughing stock.

A woman who feels she has been tricked or exploited by a man can normally open the faucets and let the tears flow. If necessary she can even expose herself, as many have done throughout history and many will doubtless continue to do. Doing so, she can count on obtaining help from both from men—what man does not dream of playing the role of the rescuer who later receives his appropriate reward?—and from her feminist sisters. Not so men. As one seventeenth-century English judge, Thomas Egerton, put it: “He sat not there to relieve Fools or Buzzards, who could not keep their Money from their wives.”

By their own accounts, women are easily influenced. They are also hopelessly weak, hopelessly foolish, hopelessly unable to resist the predations of those wicked creatures, men, who keep outsmarting them. Recognizing this situation, lawyers have devised a strategy, known as the Svengali defense (after the lead male character in Maurier’s 1895 novel, Svengali), intended to get accused females off the hook by shifting the blame to the men who around them. How such miserable creatures can demand “equality” is beyond me.

To prevent more problems from emerging, here are a number of proposals that can be put into effect immediately.

1. Women should be confined to the home. In case they go out, then only with male permission and under male escort.

2. All of women’s contacts with strange men should be either supervised or suspended.

3. Women should be banished from the Net as well as all other forms of electronic communications. Their mail should be censored.

4. Women should be prohibited from having bank accounts.

Do you think it can’t be done? It can. Just look at history. And at Afghanistan, of course.

From Superiority to Stalemate

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R. D. Marcus, Israel’s Long War with Hezbollah, Washington DC, Georgetown University Press, 2018.

As former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said in 2006, when Israel first invaded Lebanon twenty-four years earlier, Hezbollah did not yet exist  (though some of its parent organizations, which later merged, did). On the ground, what resistance the Israelis encountered was mounted primarily by Yasser Arafat’s PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) guerrillas. Many of them fought bravely enough. It was hardly their fault that they were unable to stem the advance of six Israeli divisions with as many as eight hundred tanks between them. To say nothing about the Israeli Air Force which, having dealt a crushing blow to its Syrian opponents, enjoyed  as complete a dominance of the air as any belligerent at any time and place could ask for. Come August of that year and some 11,000 of Arafat’s men were evacuated to other countries. A bit like the Romans, following their defeat at the hand of the Samnites in 321 BCE, being forced to pass under the yoke. What a triumph for Israel—or so almost all Israelis and not a few foreigners thought.

Contrary to Israel’s expectations, though, this occasion did not mark the beginning of the end. It did not even mark the end of the beginning. Instead, guerrilla operations continued both in- and around Beirut and along the narrow, winding roads that led from Israel’s northern border towards the city. From time to time there were also rocket attacks on Israel itself, claiming some casualties, disrupting day-to-day life, and leaving the Israelis furious but basically impotent.  Increasingly as time went on, the guerrillas who carried out the attacks tended to belong to a Shiite organization known as Hezbollah, meaning God’s [Allah’s] Party. So puny was it that, at first, the Israelis hardly registered its existence. They called its men, Hezbulloth; a term that meant, roughly, the same thing the Kaiser had in mind when, very early in World War I, he spoke of the “contemptible little [British] Army and called on his commanders to crush it underfoot.

What happened next is well known. The contemptible little army took time and hundreds of thousands of casualties ere it was finally able to find its feet against the formidable Kaiserheer. By the time it did, though, its forces on the Western Front alone had expanded from six divisions to about sixty. On the way it spawned the world’s first independent air force, which was separated from the army in the spring of 1918. It had also perfected its methods of combined arms warfare to the point where they were second to one. Always extremely well-armed and supplied, it was commanded by generals who, though perhaps not always brilliant and enterprising, were tough and absolutely determined to carry out their mission to the end. It was the only force belonging to a major belligerent that went through the entire war without either being routed or rising in mutiny, as happened to all others at one point or another.

Back to Hezbollah.  It has Earlier, because of a scarcity of availability of efficient impotence remedy, most men had no possibility however to stay with this condition get free viagra greyandgrey.com for years. Optimistic roles of greyandgrey.com levitra sale Soft Tabs 60mg Men being hit by the disease such as impotence, then you have to take a keen interest to reveal every opportunity that can ensure the best protection and prevention of the costly levitra. Chiropractic maintain throat Discomfort Chiropractor throat agony therapy is focuses on minimizing the actual throat pain or even prevent the swelling from applying pressure generic sildenafil 100mg on the nerve. Men, who buy penis pumps in UK, would testify for the fact that pumps are not only enhancement devices, but also help them improve their ability to control their ejaculation. viagra levitra not, of course, won World War I or anything like it. Starting from very modest beginnings, though, it has succeeded in pulling itself up to the point where it currently maintains a balance of terror with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), widely acknowledged as one of the most modern and most powerful on earth. The present book is essentially a history of Israel’s attempts to prevent this from happening. Starting in the mid-eighties when it was a question of fighting lightly armed guerrillas with little organization, training, and experience. Passing through the nineties when the IDF in Lebanon built a string of heavily fortified strongholds to guard against further attacks and used heavily armored vehicles to patrol among them. Passing through the years 2000-2006 when, having retreated across the border, it largely limited itself to retaliation for Hezbollah’s occasional cross-border attack. Passing through the 2006 Second Lebanon War when, as well as invading southern Lebanon, it mounted a full scale air attack on its enemy, demolishing the latter’s long-range missiles but utterly failing to do the same to the short-range Katyusha rockets. All this, while trying now in one way, now in another, to adopt the so-called RMA (Revolution in Military Affairs) of those years and adapt it for its own purposes.

From 2006 on a tense stalemate has prevailed, leaving the two sides free to glare at each other across the border. Whoever is interested in the way the IDF, with all its fighter-bombers, drones, missile defenses, tanks, artillery, computers, etc. etc. got to this point can find many of the details in Marcus’ book. Ditto for anyone who cares about the career of the man at the center of it all, Brigadier General (ret.) Shimon Naveh. Reflecting the IDF’s inability to come to grips with the problem, for about ten years Naveh was in charge of the efforts to provide it with a coherent doctrine for doing so. Only to come out with one so convoluted and so arcane that no one could understand it. In the end, his efforts were terminated by the State Comptroller.

Judging by the book Marcus, whom I have never met, is a fine scholar. There doesn’t seem to be an Israeli senior officer whose wisdom he has not sought. His work will no doubt appeal to military analysts interested in understanding the conflict in question and, perhaps, fitting it into the way other armed forces around the world are going. What the reader will not find is more than a handful of pages on how Hezbollah’s “innovation and adaptation” to the IDF’s infinitely greater firepower enabled it to survive and expand from practically nothing into an organization fully capable of holding Israel at bay. A pity, that, for to my mind at any rate it is the most important and most interesting question by far.

Guest Article Brexit: A Divorce Like Few Others

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By

Anna Kucirkova*

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Even if you’re a casual follower of the news, no doubt over the past couple of years you’ve seen a story or two about Brexit.

Short for Britain Exit, Brexit is the messy divorce between the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Union (EU) that it has been a member of for the better part of 25 years (unofficially it dates back to 1951).

While the vote to break away from a unified Europe won a very narrow passage from British citizens back in 2016, the separation itself has been even more contentious.

Let’s take a closer look at Brexit, and how a small movement to regain a small measure of independence transitioned into a full-on family squabble amongst our European allies.

You’ll want to keep a stiff upper lip for this one.

What is Brexit?

In June of 2016, the UK held a referendum on whether the UK should stay in the European Union. In an amazingly close vote, with over 70% of the voting age population turning out, abandoning the EU won, by a margin of 51.9% to 48.1%.

Isn’t the UK comprised of a few entities? Was it all unanimous?

Yes, it is, and no it was not.

England voted in favor of Brexit – 53.4% to 46.6%. So too did Wales, voting 52.5% versus 47.5%.

Scotland and Northern Ireland, however, went the opposite direction. Scotland overwhelming voted in favor of staying in the EU by a wide margin – 62% to 38%. Northern Ireland was a bit more modest, but still very much in the stay column 55.8% to 44.2%.

How did all of this come about? (Part I)

There is a very long answer going back decades that we could dwell on and on about, and it still would not satisfy what ultimately led the UK to leave the EU in the rearview mirror.

In other words, its very, very complicated.

However, you can connect the dots on a few recent confluences that ultimately drove the UK to where it is today. First though, it’s important to understand what the EU is and its role in Europe.

What is the European Union?

Excellent question.

The EU had its early roots in post-World War Two Europe where there was a willingness among countries devastated by war to start working more closely together. Obviously, the conventional wisdom being nations whose interests align with each other probably won’t go to war.

Unsurprisingly, the EU has avoided major cross-border conflicts since 1945.

Since that time the EU model had several iterations.

The EU as we know it came about with the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. Since that time it has grown to include 28 member countries, 19 of which share a single currency – the euro.

As it stands today, the EU is a true single market. Goods and services and people and capital have the luxury to move freely between the member nations. There is a parliament that guides political standards over a number of issues including transportation, the environment, and even certain consumer protections.

By now you’re probably saying “that doesn’t sound so bad to me.” Well…

How did all of this come about? Part II

As early as 1975, the UK saw its control over its relationship with European allies start to erode. That was back when the European Economic Community comprised only nine members.

As the EU grew into its current form, a growing number of British citizens (particularly the Conservative Party) began questioning the power it held over its member countries. In some regards, it rendered them unable to make certain decisions for themselves, having to instead defer to the greater EU.

An extended run of prosperity and economic growth masked a lot of these concerns (it also did not hurt to have two pro-EU Prime Ministers in power during this run). For almost two decades, the UK and the EU seemed a harmonious fit.

So what happened?

2008 happened.

The confluence of events we mentioned earlier include the following: the financial crash of 2008, an increasing resentment by many British citizens of larger numbers of migrants entering the UK (mainly from poorer, newly minted Eastern European countries to the EU), and the overall drop in living standards across the country.

Ultimately, those concerns morphed into the UK wanting three things: to be free from EU imposed rules and fees, to once again control the majority of their lawmaking, and to regain full command of their border controls including the direct management of immigration numbers.

This ignited a rise in support for the UK Independence Party, which, you guessed it, wanted out of the EU. The pressure from the group moved the ruling Conservative Party to offer up the EU referendum.

And that’s the short version.

Wow. So what’s happening now? Are the UK and EU really breaking up?

It looks that way, although there remains plenty to sort through and not a ton of time to do it.

In March 2017, current UK Prime Minister Theresa May invoked Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty which outlines the procedures for any country that decides to leave the EU. It provides two years to negotiate an amicable split. If the two sides cannot reach an agreement, they can extend the deadline or take the Fleetwood Mac route and go their own way.

That latter part sounds harsh.
That’s because it is.

If there’s no deal, all treaties are rendered null and void, and the UK has to effectively start from scratch when dealing with the EU.

Publically, those in power in the UK have said a deal will get done, though Theresa May has also stated that “no deal is better than a bad deal.” It’s worth noting that the UK government and several agencies are already planning for the clean break, no deal scenario.

Considering the two year period to strike a deal began in March 2017, there are less than five months to go to figure out what to do.

Have any exit plans been put forth?
Yes. The UK hammered out a plan, called the Chequers Plan, that attempted to appeal to a wide range of views within the UK, including those who opposed Brexit.

The significant points include the UK having the authority to negotiate its own trade agreements while presenting a compromise on the trading of goods and application of tariffs.

It also signals for the end of the free movement of people between the UK and EU and offers up a “mobility framework” to govern how people travel between EU nations and the UK.

How was the Chequers Plan received?

Not well. In the UK, two of the lead negotiators for Brexit resigned over it.

The EU flat out rejected it.

To this point, however, Theresa May stands firm that the Chequers plan proves the best compromise for all parties involved.

How has the UK been handling this – economically speaking?

Okay. Their economic fortunes have mirrored that of most other industrialized nations, remaining relatively health even with Brexit deadlines looming.

Their unemployment is at 4%, a 43-year low. Inflation sits at a steady 2.2%. The economy has grown since 2016 – 1.8% in that first year after the vote, then a near identical rate in 2017, and a slower pace of 0.8% for the first part of 2018.

The one negative is that the pound remains weak against both the dollar (down 10%) and the euro (down 10% to 15%).

What about Northern Ireland and Scotland, who voted against Brexit?

Northern Ireland comes with its own set of complications as it shares a 300-plus mile border with EU member the Republic of Ireland.

Sensitive to the regions previous long-standing conflict, the Troubles, both the UK and the EU favor keeping an open border between the Irish. The EU put forth a proposal that would keep Northern Ireland in line with their trade standards, which the UK opposes.

The UK, in turn, suggested a “common rulebook” for how goods maneuver between the entities, setting up an electronic border of sorts. This is part of the larger Chequers plan, which the EU rejected.

A “backstop” plan was also proposed by May as last recourse, which would temporarily keep the UK and EU aligned, trade wise. The EU rejected this as well.

Scotland, two years after the vote, still stands opposed to Brexit. Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland, has used rhetoric like “democratically unacceptable” concerning Scotland’s position of being tied to the UK even as they want to stay in the EU.

She’s also requested a referendum on the final Brexit deal and a longer transition period (which we cover below) to account for the needs of opposing groups.

What actually happens if the parties make a deal?

Should a deal be reached, it would first have to be approved by a minimum of 20 EU members that have at least 65% of the EU population.

From there, a 21-month transition period (from March 2019 to December 2020) would go into effect, allowing all involved parties, including businesses, to prepare for a Europe after the official split from the UK. This also leaves extra time to finalize any lingering details.

Also during this timeframe, the UK can make its own trade deals (but they cannot take effect until January 2021), and free movement will continue (fulfilling a request by the EU).

Again, the transition period happens if the UK and EU come to an agreement.

And what if no deal is reached?

As we noted earlier, ties are immediately severed and long-held treaties on an endless array of subjects automatically end. Some in the UK claim that such a break would be a “national disaster” while other claims that language is simple “scaremongering.”

Though we doubt it will be as harsh or as painless as some claim, in reality, nobody’s sure what will happen in the event of a clean break.

If that does come to pass, one can only hope that the UK would at least get to keep the Beatles first issue vinyl collection in the divorce.

* Anna Kurcikova is a Texas-based copywriter working for Connex Digital Marketing. Over the last three years she has specialized in economic and geopolitical affairs. 

Things I consider Sacred

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As some readers will have heard, Israeli writer Amos Oz died this week. I myself never met him—the closest I got was having his wife, Nili, as my student almost fifty years ago. And listening to one or two of his speeches. I have, however, read most of his books. Some I liked, some I did not. The three I liked least were Black Box (1987), To Know a Woman (1989), and Judas (2014). Those I loved best were My Michael (1968), A Perfect Peace (1982) and A Tale of Love and Darkness (2002). A Perfect Peace in particular, while not one of his best-known books, did a marvelous job evoking the Israel in which I grew up before 1967 and of which, like practically all Israelis at the time, I was immensely proud. Each his or her tastes, I suppose.

But his books are not what I want to write about today. Rather, I was intrigued by a lecture he delivered back in November 2016. At the time I was unaware of it and did not attend it; but having my attention drawn to it a few days ago, it made me think. The title? Things I Consider Sacred, of course.

So here are some of my own thoughts about that topic. Unlike Oz, I’d like to start with some things I most definitely do not consider sacred.

Not the giant statue of the Buddha in Hong Kong, beautiful as it is, which I once visited along with about a zillion other people crawling about like ants. And this was before anyone knew what selfies are!

Not the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, where there are so many visitors that one cannot even crawl. Just stand like a sardine in its tin; all that is missing is oil.

Not the self-appointed servants of god, too many of whom are parasites, bigots, fanatics, or all of those. Too many of them speak of god, but what really motivates them is power and greed.

Not numerous “Sacred Sites” in Israel and abroad, whose only real claim to fame is that they were fought, and in many cases still are being fought, over, causing innumerable people to shed the blood of others. I respect them so as not to offend the feelings of others; but that is all.

Not god, in whom I do not believe. To me, as to Epicurus some 2,300 years ago, he is merely a human invention meant to help us cope with certain things, such as suffering, injustice, and, above all, our fear of death.

Now to things I do consider sacred. Such as make me gasp with wonder and bring tears to my eyes. Such as I would hate to see disturbed in any way. Such as enable me to momentarily forget how cruel, how terrible, the world often is; and such as, by their splendor, make life worth living. Some of them I have in common with Amos Oz, most not. Judging by his lecture, he seems to be more interested in social justice and less moved by beauty for its own sake than I am. Or perhaps he just uses the word “sacred” in a different way from mine.

Here are a few examples. Mine, not his.

“The sun in all its might,” scattering the clouds, to quote the Jewish prayer book.

An undisturbed view of a forest, or a desert, or sea, with as few man-made objects in sight as possible.

The description, in the Iliad, of Hector taking leave of his wife and infant son for the last time.

Some of Vermeer’s paintings with their unique combination of intense domesticity and subdued, almost dreamy, light.

The theme song from Taxi to Tobruk (1961) that does not have a trace of sentimentality about it. Ariel Ramirez’s Missa Criolla, which always makes me wish there were a god I could worship like that. And others too numerous to list.

The Nike of Samotrache, to my mind the greatest piece of sculpture ever done.

The sight of a well-toned body, animal or human, in action; e.g. running, jumping, playing tennis, and the like.

Young children absorbed in play. Like the one, probably just over a year old, I saw the other day. She could not walk yet, but that did not prevent her from imitating other children and trying to climb a ladder.

The woman I love. Not because she is a saint; thank goodness, she is not. But because love is an essential part of our humanity which she, above all other people and things, allows me to exercise.

Dear Doctor Freud

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Dear Doctor Freud:

 I hope this letter reaches you, wherever you may be. Also that you are feeling well and that your circumstances are sufficiently comfortable to enable you to read it, in case you feel like doing so.

Please allow me to say a few words a bout myself. I was born in 1946, just seven years after your death. Like you, I am a secular-minded Jew. Unlike you, I have spent practically all my life in Israel,a country which, in your day, did not yet exist. By profession I am a historian. You and I have something in common: both of us have spent much o four lives trying to understand how individuals and societies function. Albeit we have approached the problem from different angles, in different ways, and using different methodologies.

Originally I was a military historian (a field,incidentally, that was taught in very few, if any, universities in our time). But over the last twenty years I have taken a strong interest in feminism and women’s history; after all, starting at least as far back as the Odyssey, Mars and Venus have always got along quite nicely. I would go so far as to argue that, without women to support warriors and admire them and look after them and mourn them and open their arms to them after their return from the battlefield,there would have been no war. After all, what is the point?

It was against this background that I came across your famous question, “was will das Weib,” what does a woman want. It bothered me, as it did you. For whatever it may be worth, I want to provide you with my own private attempt to answer it.

First, women want to love and be loved. As well as respected, admired, and, yes, even worshiped. Don’t we all?

Second, women want to be treated equally with men. In other words, to have the kind of relationship with them that will enable people of both sexes to work in harmony towards a common goal; including, above all, raising a family and leading the good life. At the same time, though, they want to be treated as women. Meaning, with the kind of special consideration they believe, in my opinion rightly, that the fact that they are the mothers of the race as well as their relative physical vulnerability entitles them to.

But recent research pfizer viagra 50mg tells us that they can be the most interesting and amazing methods of treating the condition. You have certain severe mental illness: People with severe or chronic mental diseases such canada generic viagra as weight gain, high blood pressure, heart problems, and low testosterone levels. Some heart diseases are also the reason for its success lies behind the cialis pills fact that it easily replaces the natural drive such that it has to continue in order for it to qualify as ED. Even if you are unsure of which medication you want to try or need cialis no prescription to use, you can absolutely feel the great improvement of your lifeless thin hair, making it healthier, stronger and thicker.

Third, women want a man to defend them. When everything is said and done, only men can protect a woman against other men.Partly that is because men are physically stronger on the average. And partly,many students (those who have not yet been silenced for being “misogynic”)believe, because their hormones tend to make them more aggressive.  Either way, and if only in order to enable them to fulfill their biological destiny, women must be protected against the full harshness of life. Didn’t you once tell you fiancé and subsequent wife,Martha Bernays, that the best thing a woman can do for herself is to take shelter in the home of a man?

Fourth, there is the vexed question of penis envy. If I have understood you correctly, you believe that it is something women are born with and which seizes them from the moment they understand, at a tender age, that they do not have a penis. I must say I am not sure I follow you here. Instead, I am open to Karen Horney’s idea that the reason why women suffer from penis envy—and they do!—is because the penis symbolizes all the advantages men enjoy in society. It is, so to speak, a shortcut to every thing else.

Finally, as you have said and written many times, every woman, if she is a real woman and not some kind of abomination, wants a child with all her heart. As the Biblical Rachel told her husband Jacob,“give me sons, or else I die.”

I would think that each of these desires on its own is straightforward enough. However, together they are anything but. Some of them women have in common with men, whereas others are theirs alone. Some overlap,whereas others contradict each other. Some are rooted in biology, others not. Since their relative importance changes from one person to another as well as overtime, they are also fluid. Age, upbringing, social circumstances, etc. intrude on the psyche, with the result that the number of possible variations is infinite.No two women, and no two men, are the same! That is precisely what makes the topic endlessly complex—and, as the art of all times and places shows,endlessly fascinating as well.

But whom am I telling all this? I do hope you won’t resent the musings of an old historian (I am as old as you were in 1929,the year in which you wrote Civilization and Its Discontents). As my excuse for sending you this letter, all I can say that I am as interested in the problem as you used to be and, perhaps, still are.

With deep gratitude for all your pioneering works

Martin van Creveld


Inspiration

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My oldest grandson, Orr (Light, in Hebrew) is fifteen years old. Perhaps because he has always seen me at work, for as long as I remember him—and longer than he can remember himself—he has sought to join me by writing a book of his own. I suppose that is why, a few days ago, he came up with what was perhaps the most difficult question I have ever been asked during my seventy-two years. Grandpa, he said, can you tell me what inspiration is?

I must say I was stunned. Having recovered somewhat, I did my best to find an answer. The following is what I came up with.

1. Inspiration is that which enables you to draw a picture, or write a book, or compose music, or design an experiment, or formulate a new equation, or plan. Without it, neither can you start working nor is there much point in doing so. Still that should not keep you from trying.Inspiration on its own is not enough; what you need, in addition, is hard work.

2. Inspiration can come either from outside or from inside. In the former case, which was mostly the case with me, it is called by its proper name. As, for example, when Homer in the famous first line of the Iliad calls on the Muse to help him in his self-imposed task. The idea of inspiration as a divine gift is several thousand years old. By contrast, inspiration that comes from within, known as creativity, only became at all important from about 1920 on. Currently, Ngram tells me, the two words are engaged on a neck-to-neck race as to which one is used more frequently.

3. Both inspiration and creativity have always been, and still remain, phenomena that take the soul by storm, so to speak.Neither can be brought on by force; in my experience, trying to do so will only result in nausea. Both inspiration and creativity often come, or perhaps I should say bubble up, from the most unexpected quarters. The following is a story that will clarify the matter. Back in the spring of 1937 Pablo Picasso, a Spanish painter living in self-imposed Parisian exile, was fifty-six years old and in a funk; vainly looking for inspiration for a painting he had undertaken to do on for an exhibition on twentieth-century technological progress. Like most people, he learnt the details of the German bombardment of Guernica from the media. It shook him awake. The outcome? What some consider the most famous painting done during the entire twentieth century.

4. Subjectively speaking, being caught up by the whirlwind that is inspiration/creativity is one of the most wonderful emotions one can experience. Quite as wonderful as, say, the joy of listening to a good piece of music, or looking at a good painting, or love, or sex at its best. Being seized with it makes one eager to sing and dance over hill and dale.It can even get to the point where the joy becomes altogether unbearable. However,for good or ill it does not last. Normally for each moment of ecstasy there is one of agony or depression. To go through the cycle without going insane—that is a challenge countless inspired/creative people have faced, not seldom without success.

I hope have I made myself clear.  In case I have not, here is what Nietzsche, in my view one of the most inspired men that have ever lived and one of the very few who was both a philosopher and a great poet, has to say about the matter (Ecce Homo, chapter “Thus Spoke “Zarathustra,” section 3, trans. by R. J. Hollingdale):

“Has anyone at the end of the nineteenth century a distinct conception of what poets of strong ages called inspiration?If not, I will describe it. – If one had the slightest residue of superstition left in one, one would hardly be able to set aside the idea that one is merely incarnation, merely mouthpiece, merely medium of overwhelming forces. The concept of revelation, in the sense that something suddenly, with unspeakable certainty and subtlety, becomes visible, audible, something that shakes and overturns one to the depths, simply describes the fact. One hears, one does not seek; one takes, one does not ask who lives; a thought flashes up like lightening, with necessity, unfalteringly formed—I have never had any choice. An ecstasy whose tremendous tension sometimes discharges itself a flood of tears, while one’s steps now involuntarily rush along, now involuntarily lag; a complete being outside of oneself with the distinct consciousness of a multitude of subtle shudders and trickles down to one’s toes; a depth of happiness in which the most painful and gloomy things appear, not as an antithesis, but as conditioned, demanded, as a necessary color within such a superfluity of light; an instinct for rhythmical relationships which spans forms of wide extent—length, the need for a wide-spanned rhythm is almost the measure of the force of inspiration, ma kind of compensation for its pressure and tension… Everything is in the highest degree involuntary, but takes place as in a tempest of a feeling of freedom, of absoluteness, of power, of divinity… The involuntary nature of image, of metaphors, is the most remarkable thing of all;one no longer has any idea what is image, what metaphor, everything presents itself as the readiest, the truest, the simplest means of expression. It really does seem, to allude to a saying of Zarathustra’s, as if the things themselves approached and offered themselves as metaphors… This is my experience of inspiration,”

Note that having written all this, Nietzsche still does not tell us what inspiration is. Only what it feels like. The same applies to me. Anyhow. Thanks, my dearly beloved Orr, for making me think.

Once Upon a Time We Had a Little Poodle

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Once upon a time we had a little poodle. Very much like the one in the pic, incidentally. He came to us on his own accord—we neither bought him nor got him from anyone else. Later we learnt he had been dumped. As a result, he always remained a little reluctant to get into a car (on the way out, not the return journey). I first met him when he joined me on my walks with our bitch, Sandy. When I returned home and shut the gate after me he would look at me with his dog’s eyes. I just could not stand it; so we took him in. So neglected was he that we only found out he was a poodle after he had been properly trimmed and cleaned. We called him Poonch and he was with us for about ten years during which we loved him very much. In the end he got cancer and suffered terribly. Even as the vet put him to sleep in Dvora’s arms, he licked her hand for the last time.

Like all poodles, Poonch was clever and quick on the ball. However, he had a problem. Perhaps being aware of small size, he was afraid of large dogs. Being afraid of large dogs, he regularly barked at them and sometimes attacked them. As a result he got what you would expect and what, in fact, he deserved. Twice he was almost bitten to death. But he seemed never to learn.

And why am I telling you about this? Because it reminds me of the foolishness of some feminists. By all means get furious at me, but let me explain first. Nature has made men considerably stronger, physically, than women. Thanks in part to the military, which in its attempts to understand what women can and cannot do in its ranks has been studying the issue for decades, the details have been worked out quite precisely. But is such study really necessary? There are some things that the dumbest person on earth knows, or at any rate should know, without ever having attended school.

An American friend of mine keeps telling me that men are being pushed to the wall by women. Primarily, but of course not only, in the United States. Women, he says, are surpassing men in terms of education and professional achievement. And, perhaps most important of all, their ability to present themselves as victims. Not only does criminal law discriminate in their favor—in some ways it has done so ever since the world began. But for a man to win a suit against a woman has become difficult, sometimes all but impossible. He even sent me an article, “How to Prepare Our Sons for Matriarchy,” by one Jenny Hoople—Jenny who?—at the “Good Men Project.”

As Poonch’s injuries showed, the combination of superior physical strength with the feeling that one is under attack is as dangerous as dangerous can be. Not just any psychologist but any ten-year old can tell you that. Unfortunately, I fear, the outcome will be that more and more women are going to get killed by men. Especially men whom they know and who may very well have loved them at one point or another.

The following headlines seem to confirm my guess.

1. https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/vio.2017.0016

“Although the prevalence of intimate partner homicide in the late 1970s was similar for men and women, the number of male victims has steadily declined ever since… In contrast, female intimate partner homicides actually increased up until the early 1990s before experiencing a far modest decline.”

2. Garen Wintemute et al., “Increased Risk of Intimate Partner Homicide Among California Women Who Purchased Handguns,” Annals of Emergency Medicine 41, no. 2 (2003): 282.

“The results of a California analysis show that “purchasing a handgun provides no protection against homicide among women and is associated with an increase in their risk for intimate partner homicide.”

3. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/14/mexico-murders-women-rise-sharply-drug-war-intensifies

“Of the 52,210 killings of women recorded over the 32-year period, nearly a third took place in the last six years, the report said.”

4. https://www.ozy.com/acumen/why-are-so-many-women-being-killed-in-rich-countries/83636

Seven countries with high GDPs and low rates of violence saw equal or greater numbers of women being killed than men in 2016: Austria, Germany, Belgium, Japan, Slovenia, South Korea and Switzerland.
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5. https://www.sanews.gov.za/south-africa/gender-based-violence-rise,

“Femicide is on the rise in South Africa, with Statistics South Africa reporting that the murder rate for women increased drastically by 117% between 2015 and 2016/17.”

6. https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/growing-epidemic-of-femicide-and-impunity/

“Femicide is practically an epidemic throughout the world.”

7. http://time.com/3670126/femicides-turkey-women-murders/

“Karen Ingala Smith, chief executive of British anti-violence organization nia, has been keeping track of all women killed by men (all men–not just current or former partners). On her blog, Counting Dead Women, she’s tallied up 126 women killed by men in 2012, 144 in 2013, and 148 in 2014.”

8. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/03/murdered-women-spain-tackles-femicide-rates-170319132509999.html.

“Women are protesting as rates of violence against them rise, [in Spain].” 

9. https://elpais.com/elpais/2016/04/01/inenglish/1459514254_172242.html

“With one femicide every 30 hours, gender violence on rise in Argentina”

10.   https://unstats.un.org/unsd/gender/mexico_nov2014/Session%203%20UNODC%20ppt.pdf

“[In six European countries] decline of females’ homicide rates slower than males.”

I can already hear the shrill shrieks. Feminists claiming, as they so often do, that it is all a question of blaming the victim. I can see their point. But shouldn’t potential victims try to be a little smarter than poor Poonch, bless his soul, used to be?

From NATO to EUA (European Union Army)?

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1. The Historical Background

The idea of a united Europe, complete with a united European army, goes back at least as far as Napoleon. Not to mention Charlemagne a thousand years previously. In a certain way, Napoleon did in fact adopt the concept. Though he once boasted that he had an “income” of 100,000 solders a year, the Emperor was always short of manpower. Over the years the number of non-French troops who served with him ran into the hundreds of thousands. Among them were Dutchmen—the Netherlands were ruled by the Emperor’s brother, Louis, and later annexed to France—Belgians—even though, at that time, a country by that name did not yet exist—Italians, Germans, Swiss, and Poles.

Some of the men served as individuals, as the famous Swiss staff officer and military author Antoine-Henri Jomini did. Others formed units under their own officers. Some, the Poles in particular, did very well indeed. At the battle of Borodino in September 1812 Marshal Murat, Napoleon’s brother in law and the commander of his cavalry corps, encouraged a Württemberg battalion with the words, scheuss, brav Jäger, scheuss!

The spread of nationalism after 1815 made a pan-European Army all but inconceivable. Attempts to set it up had to wait until the establishment and expansion of the Waffen SS during World War II. There were some differences between Hitler, who focused on German interests, and Himmler, an incurable romantic who tended to think in terms of a Nordic race. The longer the war, though, the more both were united in the need for more and more manpower, origin and nationality be damned.

The outcome was entire divisions made of citizens of countries that were either occupied by Germany or allied with it. Including Scandinavians, Dutch, Walloons, Hungarians, Slovaks, Romanians, and Croats. Even Muslim Bosnians were welcomed, and some arrangements made to provide them with their own halal food and Imams! Klaus-Jürgen Bremm in Die Waffen SS, Hitlers ueberschaezte Praetorianer (2018) set out to shatter the “myth” of the army in question. With limited success; in March-April 1945 the last remaining defenders of Berlin were French soldiers of the Waffen SS division Charlemagne.

The war over, some former Waffen SS soldiers, both German and foreign, with nowhere to go joined the French Foreign Legion. “The White SS,” as one of its veterans told me, not without pride, as he and his comrades called it. Another force that has long represented a European army and, in its own peculiar way, does so still.

2.Putin ante Portas

Almost seventy-five years after the end of World War II, and thirty years after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR, the idea of a united European Army is back in the air. In part, that is because of the changing balance of forces. Back in 2000, with the failure to put down the Chechen rebellion of 1994-95 still fresh in people’s minds, the Russian armed forces were in a sorry state. Their equipment was out of date, so much so that some of their fighter aircraft were used to fly tourists as a means for attracting foreign currency. Their morale was as low as your living room rug, and their command structure corrupt from top to bottom.

Since then those forces, like Baron von Münchhausen, have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. The resulting change is nothing short of dramatic. Modern tanks, modern aircraft, modern missiles, modern warships and submarines, and, above all, modern electronics have been coming off the assembly lines in growing numbers. In 2014 when Russia invaded the Ukraine and occupied the Crimea, the world got a foretaste of what these forces could do (these words were written before the latest incidents at the Kerch Peninsula). Russia has also re-established its pre-1989 presence in the Mediterranean where it uses the facilities of the Syrian port of Latakia. In October 2018 the Russians mustered 300,000 men to hold the largest military maneuvers of any country since the end of the Cold War. In response, all NATO was able to do was to concentrate 50,000 troops in Norway. As President Putin himself put it, quite correctly, now that Russia has a military again no one any more thinks they can ignore its interests. As they did, for example, when the countries of Eastern Europe started joining NATO from 1999 on.

While Russia has been making a comeback American commitment to NATO has been weakening. Even at the height of the Cold War there was always the question whether Big Brother in Washington would really put New York, and of course their own hide, at risk simply to save Hamburg and Munich. After 1989 the question went into abeyance; only to re-emerge twenty- something years later. The more so because, to counter what it sees as a growing threat, the U.S has been withdrawing troops from Europe and the Middle East and transferring them to East Asia. And the more so because it now has a president who has openly expressed his contempt for Europe as well as his determination to put his own country first.
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That Europe can muster what it takes to build powerful armed forces is beyond question. Even after BREXIT the EU has a population of 440 million, about three times that of Russia. It also has a GDP of about $ 16 trillion. By comparison, Russia’s GDP of about $ 1.6 trillion appears positively beggarly. As someone said, at bottom Russia really is nothing more than a gigantic Saudi Arabia with an arms industry. The scientific, technical, logistic, administrative and military expertise is also easily available. With Putin ante portas, all that is lacking is the will.

3. Obstacles

The first, and most serious of all, obstacle is the question as to who the most dangerous opponent is. For the East Europeans, the Scandinavians and Germany it is Russia. However, for Spain and Italy it is the south; whereas for Greece it is Turkey which itself is a NATO member. Whether these fundamental differences can be overcome remains to be seen.

Second, leadership. As long as the Cold War lasted, it used to be said that the real purpose of NATO was to keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down. This may have displeased some people; but at any rate it meant that, thanks to their vast preponderance of force over every other individual members and, by some measures, even all of them combined, the Americans were always there to tell the rest where to go and what to do.

Now that the Americans are getting out, more or less, the problem of who will lead the hypothetical European army will become acute. Both because of its geographical position and because it is the most powerful country of all, the natural candidate is Germany. Germany, however, still has the memory of World War II to cope with. As became clear, once again, when Greece and Poland said they wanted Berlin to compensate them for their suffering during that conflict. Besides, as Marx once pointed out, when French members of the First International (1864-76) addressed the meeting they insisted on doing so in French. The rise, in many EU countries, of the “extreme” Right will not make it any easier to find a solution.

Third, it will be necessary to set up a unified command structure that will serve all the countries involved rather than each one separately. Back in World War II Germany and Italy failed to do anything of the kind, badly handicapping their conduct of the war in the Mediterranean. The Western Allies did better; in his post as commander of SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force), Eisenhower once said that he did not mind anyone calling anyone a son of a bitch. What he would not tolerate was anyone calling anyone else a British son of a bitch. And the other way around, of course. Today, should the European army get off the ground, there will be entire crowds of sonofabitches, each with an ego as big as the Titanic, to cope it. Can it be done? Perhaps. Certainly it won’t be easy.

Fourth, it will be necessary to mount an effort to standardize equipment, set up a unified logistic structure, and adopt common methods and procedures of every kind. The cost will certainly run into the tens of billions, perhaps more. The following will illustrate how important, and how difficult, the problem is. Invading Russia back in 1941, the Wehrmacht used equipment, especially tanks and motor trucks, scavenged from all over Europe (mainly France and Czechoslovakia). The foreign armies fighting at the Wehrmacht’s side, including Fins, Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians and Italians, also made heavy use of French and Italian equipment. Under these conditions keeping the forces supplied and operational was a nightmare. It has been estimated that, had all the forces that invaded the USSR been entirely German in terms of personnel, equipment, and supply, their fighting power would have gone up by as much as 20-25 percent. Overcoming these obstacles may well take a generation or so. Assuming, that is, they can be overcome at all.

4. Conclusion

The American Empire is folding. Between 1990 and 2018 the number of troops it maintains in Europe, Britain included, went down from about 300,000 to 65,000. The clock is ticking, the hour for setting up a European Army has struck. If the idea makes Prime Minister Theresa May and President Trump jump, then all that proves is that, their his eyes, the need to keep down not just Germany but the remaining EU countries as well remains as important as keeping the Russians out.

All the more reason to go ahead. But will the Europeans be able to gird their loins and do what has to be done? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.