Wasted in War: Sometimes, losing your mind is the only option.

  I thought I might have some fun this week and put together a little something on alcohol usage in military history. However, the subject soon got way out of control and is proving way too big for a single post so I've had to narrow things down to just a select few of my favorite drinkers in military history.

   Any decent history of humans getting wasted and killing people under the influence probably starts with the moment alcohol was stumbled upon by Stone Age men. However, 'Ugg' smashing in 'Goggz' skull while hammered on fermented fruit skins and all for Ika's affections is one of countless human stories that happened in some cave somewhere but never got written down and therefore doesn't exist for us.  So the 'history of wasted' must begin, for us at least, with the recorded history of any number of ancient civilizations. It's hard to choose which one because who doesn't like a drink?

   Only one thing is for sure.

 Once alcohol was discovered, rulers were quick to control its use for their own gain. It's like anything in human history that people like. A strong man steps in and makes money off human desire. Sometimes, alcohol was used to get warriors in the mood for killing the enemy and other times it was used just to make sane people believe crazy shit.

   Either way, controlling hearts and minds is primarily a chemical affair.

   For instance, the Pharaohs knocked up the Pyramids with an army of dumb fuck worker citizens who were  duped  into believing in the Pharaoh's immortality. This worldview was administered by priests (a necessary subclass funded by the pharaohs) who expounded the virtues of citizens slaving their asses off all day under the hot sun while straining to lift multi ton rocks; all so dear leader could have an eternal life in his triangular bunker. This may seem to us today like a difficult amount of bullshit for the average Egyptian to swallow but throw in the priestly handout of two gallons of free beer per day and a tent to crash in at night and suddenly shit didn't seem so bad to the average laborer. Hey presto, the pyramids still stand today. That daily Egyptian beer ration was a serious factor in getting those things built, possibly the deciding factor.

   Score one for ancient alcoholism!

   By the time the cultivation of the grape had spread to the Greeks around 2000 BC, most of the ancient world was pretty clued in on the virtues of getting wasted. Alexander the Great liked to get black out drunk, especially after his victories at Issus and Gaugamela, when all the decadence of the Persian Empire was his. A few hundred years later, the Romans seemed to have a remarkably temperate view of alcohol use, using it just like me, that is, for 'medicinal purposes'. While habitual drunkenness was rare for the ancients, being hammered at banquets and festivals was not. The Greeks and Romans even had their very own 'god' of getting wasted, the Greek Dionysus or, in the Roman context, Bacchus, a god of wine, fertility and fucking. Our gods today are boring compared to the gods of antiquity. We today are stuck with various 'angry daddy' cloud gods with long beards and a wagging finger every time we're about to get our fun on; the ancients had gods who commanded them to get drunk and run out into the forest naked while looking for unsuspecting females to have surprise sex with. Of course, today they lock you up for shit like that and put you on the sex offender registry. In antiquity, that same  night of debauchery would just be considered a  fun  and typical night out at the festival.

   My favourite Roman drunk was Marc Anthony. A legendary boozer, he drank everyone under the table while fighting at Caesar's side in Gaul, banged legendary amounts of women including Cleopatra (after Caesar got JFKd). She was probably the hottest chick in the ancient world or, at the very least, a sultry seductress who knew how to make men think she was the hottest chick since sliced panem. Anthony avenged Caesar's death and killed the conspirators and headed off to Egypt for a few years where he fell deeply in love with the urn. Who wouldn't I suppose? He was living like a king, downing buckets and having his knob polished by Nubian beauties. But he lost it all to Caesar's adoptive son Octavian in the ill fated sea battle at Actium. He and Cleopatra offed themselves soon after, her by poisonous snake, him by 4 gallons of Chianti and a Gladius short sword. Still, not a bad outing for a boozer in human history.  Marc Anthony's ancient bender still beats the life out of the average life of a drunk hanging outside a 7 Eleven today, begging for change even if it's in our technological fantasy sci fi world.

   If you could live the life of any historical figure, who would you choose?

   Or is today's office job the best life's ever been?

Dionysus, naked and drunk as usual.

   Perhaps my favourite army of alcoholic lunatics whose actions in a single week in 900AD would get you locked up for life in 2011 were the Viking raiders. If I were given a choice of where to be inebriated in military history, I'd probably hop in a Longboat and set sail with the Norsemen.  Fun times. We're talking serious badass drinking and plenty of 'non consensual temporary marriage' to captured females. Also, you got to avail yourself of a lot of free gold and silver trinkets. I wonder how many of us today would trade in our mind numbing cubicle job to go plundering foreign shores with the Norsemen? Sure it'd be risky and there'd be no Internet but it does make you wonder if the side benefits of non prosecutable sex and violence would make up for the lack of modern medicine, traffic jams and the added ability to punch your mother-in-law every time she dropped that comment about you not having a real job.

   As Europe settled down after the Dark Ages, alcohol manufacture fell into the hands of a transnational global cartel known as the Catholic Church. Monasteries with carefully maintained vineyards sprang up all across southern Europe. Monasteries had free recruitment. They were essentially the place where you stored that 'difficult' son in the family who didn't like girls and had no other excuse for not being married. To offset this, monks had a daily ration of a liter of wine which was a decent way to make life in a prison camp bearable.

   The next major impact of alcohol on world history emerged after the discovery of the New World. In the century following, the British Royal Navy emerged as a force that would soon dominate the seas. This was an outfit which practically ran on booze. As the empire expanded, there was a constant need for fit men to man ships and these were often gathered when they were passed out in a gin joint and grabbed by a gang of heavies. Wow, that puts today's otherwise uneventful stumble to the pub in a certain historical perspective doesn't it.

Getting drunk on a Friday night could result in many non voluntary years at sea with the Royal Navy.

   Once you found yourself a member of a Royal Navy crew, you were issued with a daily ration of a half pint of rum, a practice which soon got nixed because a lot of sailors were saving up their half pints over a few days so they could get well and truly wasted twice a week. By 1650, the brass decided to mix all rum with four parts water (using the rum as a water purifier and algae suppressor... tasty) and hence giving us the drink known as 'grog'. The Royal Navy still used alcohol as a pacifier on their ships and the officers fed the men just enough to keep the crew tipsy but never enough that they got wasted and wondered what they were doing 8000 miles from home in the middle of some ocean and getting paid in diluted gin for what the fuck reason nobody could explain to them.

   It wasn't so much that the British used alcohol as a motivator for its men and more that they adapted to the situation as they found it, that is, the population were already hammered on a regular basis and military service needed to adapt to this fact. It's a lot like one of those beach resorts in Spain or Greece today that gets invaded every year by British 'tourists' and we're using the term 'tourist' very loosely here. We're talking planeloads of drunken young working class men, the very same people that in 1750 the Crown dressed in Red Coats, handed a musket and daily gin ration to and shipped out to the far flung corners of the earth to bring 'civilization' to the 'savages'.

   The British could also use 'wasted' as an offensive weapon.

   They trafficked opium and shipped boatloads of the stuff into China from India in the 1800s. Low Chinese demand for European goods, and high European demand for Chinese goods, forced European merchants to purchase tea, silk and porcelain with silver, the only commodity the Chinese would accept. This quickly resulted in depleted treasuries in Europe and back then you couldn't simply 'print' more gold and silver like they do these days. This highly pissed off the British and they decided it was time to create some demand for a product they could supply. Opium. The Chinese quickly developed a taste for that particular flavor of wasted. Obviously, the Chinese authorities weren't happy about this and fought two abortive Opium Wars in 1839 and 1856 to no avail. It's so much easier to dominate a country many times your size and population if you can keep a sizable portion of the men of fighting age wasted.

   During World War I many countries tried to crack down on alcohol use for fear that it would negatively impact production. The Russians banned vodka in 1914 which resulted in lots of home made varieties that also made handy paint stripper and could be thrown at the authorities while alight. In January 1915, Lloyd George claimed that Britain was "fighting German's, Austrians and Drink, and as far as I can see the greatest of these foes is Drink." Times had certainly changed since the glory days of the Royal Navy in the Age of Sail. In the trenches too, the British rum ration had dried up to a few tablespoons per man on a cold winter's morning. The industrial revolution and the hourly wage had taken its toll on attitudes to inebriation. Being wasted now got in the way of all important efficiency.

   By the outbreak of WW II, alcohol found itself competing for shelf space with new varieties of mind altering chemicals. The Germans in particular experimented with a new drug called Pervitin better known to us today as methamphetamine. It was distributed to pilot and tank crews, often in chocolate, and kept them alert, sleepless, and in too high a dose, fighting off the shadow people. Hitler himself, growing ever more demented after Stalingrad, ditched the chocolate part and began injecting the stuff which may have directly affected the course of the war. Holding back the Panzer divisions at Normandy, the Ardennes Offensive, poor usage of new weapons (Me 262) may not have changed the outcome but having a deranged tweaker meddling with strategy certainly didn't help.

   Current US policy under Order Number 1A basically rules out any consumption of alcohol by any US service member while in Iraq, Afghanistan or Kuwait. These days, a soldier can't even get a drink before dying for his country. This has led to some fun conflicts in the NATO mission in Afghanistan with the US bitching that the German Army performance is sub par due to a generous alcohol allowance. Over a million liters of alcoholic drinks were sent to troops based at German camps in Afghanistan last year.

   If you can't get wasted in war then when would be a better time?

   Humans in the 21st century and especially in the US are becoming dangerously prudish it seems. Sex and drugs are deemed decadent because pleasure is dangerous. While killing and maiming for one's country are seen as good and one's patriotic duty. You know humans are fucked if this continues. Think of it, you can turn on the TV anytime and witness a high number of violent deaths per hour. This is considered 'normal' entertainment. Yet the depiction of sex, the loving act by which humans create new humans, is considered obscene. Think what an alien intelligence might make of us upright apes. We've managed to glorify destruction and abhor creation, the very thing that got us here in the first place. We've somehow managed to get the whole purpose of life exactly backwards. We prefer killing to creating. We prefer pain to pleasure. From the aliens point of view, we're probably the most fearsome species in this sector of the galaxy. Thank the heavens, say the hypothetical aliens that we're not a space faring species and we'll probably wipe ourselves out before we ever are.

   And many of us are confused and wonder why there are so many wars.

   I do know and that is probably why I drink. 

  

  

The Tiger Tank: German armor and why the Tiger I got made.

 Chillin' on a Tiger's back.

   I got pretty much burned out on Middle East rioting this week so I thought I might cheer myself up and write about Tiger tanks instead. World War II armor is the kind of thing that cheers me up when I'm down. There's something about the way Germans over engineered their tanks that makes me happy. It's like even in the midst of WWII the Germans were still churning out vehicles that could win not just militarily but also on style points. Even if those production actuary tables cost them the war.

   Sure, the Germans could never win. Not with 30 million Russians punishing them on the OstFront and the Americans and British running an effective strategic bombing campaign on German factories. That's why it's fun to play "what if" with history and wonder what the Germans were thinking when they came up with the Tiger Tank. My favorite  thing is that the Germans named their new main battle tank in 1942 the "Tiger". Well actually Ferdinand Porsche gave it that name. Officially, it was known as the 'Panzerkampfwagen VI Ausführung H' which is somehow not as sexy. What was it with the WW II era Germans and sexily named vehicles? The Americans at the time tended to name their tanks after stuffy old Civil War generals like "Sherman" and "Lee". Hell, the British named one of their best tanks of the war the "Matilda", which is possibly the worst name for a tank ever. It conjures up an image of your granny in combat boots. Psychologically damaging yes, but not that scary.

   But the Germans?

   They called their tank a "Tiger" just to mess with the average infantryman's head.

   The Tiger I gets a lot of flak for being expensive, heavy, slow and prone to break downs. And it was all of those things. But it was also a damn fearsome piece of engineering. Before we talk about all the fun stuff though, first let's get to the point in the war where the Germans realized a need for such a heavy tank.

   When the Germans invaded France in 1940 and first unveiled Guderian's Blitzkrieg to the world they did so with some pretty shitty tanks. Panzer Is, IIs and IIIs. The Panzer I had paper thin armor, a two man crew and sported two 7.92mm machine guns. Yes, you heard that right. No anti tank gun of any kind fitted. One fifth of German armor in the Battle of France in 1940 was composed of Panzer Is. Keep in mind here that the French at the time were no slouches in tank design. They fielded the frighteningly powerful Char B1 which was a heavy tank with 40mm armor, a 47mm anti tank gun and, I shit you not, a 75mm howitzer poking out of its belly. Sure, it was slow and heavy but it could blow Panzer Is and IIs in half in a pitched battle.

The French Char B1. An ugly fucker but formidable if driven by anyone but the French!

   The French fielded it wrongly though and used it as some kind of movable arty piece and tended to spread them out across the front rather than bunching them together in single tank units where they might have been more effective against the oncoming Wehrmacht tank rush. The Germans merely bypassed the isolated Char B1s when they stumbled across them (the one thing the light Panzers had on their side was a top speed of 50 km/h). There is one fun story though of a Char B1 taking out 13 German Panzers IIIs and IVs (the 'better' German tanks in 1940) and returning to its staging point having been hit 140 times to no effect by German guns. Even Guderian himself relates a similar story and laments his casualties after a face to face encounter with one of these Gallic behemoths.

   But it was Barbarossa that finally convinced the Germans that they needed to up the ante in terms of heavy armor design. The single catalyst was a little Red Army tank known as the T-34. Probably the best tank of WW II, maybe the best tank ever, it deserves its own post, but, in short, it was a beast and an all rounder. Fast, with sloped armor, a reliable diesel engine, and with a nasty 76.2mm short barrel high velocity gun, the Russians spammed these from factories behind the Urals and in many cases rushed them onto the battlefield unpainted. Suddenly, for the first time in the war, the Wehrmacht found its armor totally outclassed. The German's best medium tank in 1941, the Panzer IV, was hurriedly fitted with a new 75mm gun and as much extra armor slapped on as the engine could handle and designated the Panzer IV Ausf. G. It still proved vulnerable to the oncoming Russkis.

   And this was where the Germans lost their minds.

   Much has been made of the lack of a German heavy bomber in WWII. The Battle of Britain was lost because the Luftwaffe design philosophy in the 1930s (and due to the Versailles restrictions) stipulated/forced a preference for fast twin engined medium bombers like the He 111 or the Ju-88 over four engined heavy bomber designs. That Germans were capable of producing such aircraft as the Focke Wulf Fw 200 'Condor' clearly proves that there were no technological hindrances to production of four engine bomber designs. Those Condors the Germans did produce were used as maritime patrol craft rather than pressing some variant into service as a heavy bomber and getting with the strategic bombing program that the Americans and British had such a hard on for.

   It was perhaps because of such mistakes that the Wehrmacht went decidedly overboard when they dreamed up the Tiger I. They overcompensated. Of course, another factor in this whole equation was Hitler himself, who was always interfering in every design decision and invariably fucking things up royally. When the Germans pulled off the amazing feat of producing the world's first jet fighter, the ME-262, Hitler decided it would make a good "fighter bomber" when it was obviously way ahead of its time as a high altitude interceptor. A war changing weapon was hobbled and never given its chance to turn the tide, relegating it to the dustbin of "what if's" in military history. Hitler similarly messed with the Tiger design.

   In response to the T-34, two designs for a 45 tonne plus tank were submitted. One by Ferdinand Porsche and the other by Henschel & Son, a German locomotive manufacturer. The Porsche prototype looked decidedly T-34ish in the chassis with a familiar Tiger I turret bolted on top. Porsche was zealous enough to produce over a hundred working prototype chassis before he was told that the Fuhrer had gone with Henschel's design.

The failed Porsche prototype chassis was later adapted as the Elefant self propelled anti tank gun.

   Henschel won the contract and the Tiger went into production in August 1942 at a rate of twenty five per month. Yes, I shall repeat that. Twenty five per month. Meanwhile, the American 'arsenal of democracy' Chrysler factories were churning out tin can Shermans at a rate of fourteen per day.

   Could the Germans have matched this production rate if they had a simplified generic tank? No they could not have. Could they have made life easier for themselves and come up with a simpler tank design than the Tiger I that would have made production faster? Absolutely. But they pressed ahead with their over engineered and expensive uber tank nonetheless. So what was the rationale here?

   For one thing, part of the Tiger was already proven technology. That was the main gun. The legendary German 88mm. Originally an AA gun, Rommel proved its lethality in North Africa as a potent tank killer. It had a high muzzle velocity and a remarkably flat shell trajectory which made it ridiculously easy to hit targets and penetrate 150mm of frontal armor at ranges beyond 2 km. Those stats spoke for themselves so it was understandable that the Germans would try anything to marry such a weapon to a chassis that could accommodate it.

An 88mm in action.

   Of course, having figured out how to mount an 88 in an enclosed turret and mounting that turret on a chassis that could carry it, you'd already pushed up the cost of your new tank significantly. Now, after having spent that money, the designers were almost forced to up armor the thing. I mean, after creating something so formidable attack wise you didn't want to lose it to a couple of pot shots from a Sherman or T-34. So the Germans packed on the armor plate to the point where its engine, suspension and gearbox met the stress limits of structural steel. The Tiger operated right at those limits which is pretty badass if you ask me.

   But obviously there were many design sacrifices made.

   The Maybach diesel engine was underpowered for the 60 tonne weight but even despite this the Tiger I managed the respectable top speed of 38 km/h. That's something often overlooked when historians rag on the Tiger. It was slow but not 'useless slow' as many like to portray it as. It was actually quite maneuverable and even boasted less ground pressure than a Sherman due to its 725mm wide tracks, unprecedented at the time. One big weakness was the traverse time of the turret. Housing that heavy 88mm meant a hydraulic motor was needed and it took a full minute to turn through 360 degrees. That proved problematic especially because Russian and Allied tactics dictated that when attacking a Tiger the attack was carried out by four tanks, all of them attempting a flanking maneuver to land a rear shot where the Tiger's armor was weakest. This could work but involved the sacrifice of three Shermans/T-34s before the fourth one could flank in and land a rear shot to the Tiger's ass.

   58,000 Shermans and 36,000 T-34s were produced as opposed to a mere 1350 Tiger Is. And here comes the fun part. The Wehrmacht even went so far as to develop a whole new variant, the Tiger II, otherwise known as the 'King Tiger"! Holy shit, run for the hills! Seriously, the dying German Reich under assault on two fronts attempted to rectify the Tiger's design problems and win the game on style points alone. You must admit the King Tiger wins on every metric except rationality and a reliable drive train. But doesn't it look damn beautiful?

The King Tiger. They accidentally the whole German war economy.

   I'm not sure if the Allies or Russians got to try out the four tank attack tactic on a lurking King Tiger. It must seem to the generals that sacrificing three cheap tanks to kill a really expensive one looks good on paper when you break out the actuary tables. But when you look at it from a purely human perspective, you are talking about sacrificing 15 guys to kill 5.

   Stupid me, getting all philosophical and viewing war from a "human" perspective. That's never the way to look at it right? Because, I suppose, if humans had any real perspective, there would be no wars at all.

Egypt: The loss of Suez and the West's pet dictator to 'democracy'. What comes next?

  

No sooner had the virtual ink dried on my post concerning Tunisia last week and here we are a week later with all hell breaking loose in Egypt. Grab the popcorn and crack open a beer my friends. Shit's about to get real interesting in the Middle East. If Western interests lose their pocket dictator Mubarak to 'democracy' that could leave Suez in "the peoples" hands and that's what will have the major elites shitting their collective pants in boardrooms all across the world.  Democracy is always liable to land you with unpredictable results. And none more so than in Egypt.

   Oil jumped 4% on Friday on fears that the one million barrels that pass through Suez every day might get disrupted. Oil could go way higher if this revolt puts the Islamic Brotherhood in power and they decide to leverage the canal to mess with the US and Europe. Seven percent of all the world's goods pass through there every day too. Right now it's only costing the US and other foreign donors two billionish a year to help Mubarak subjugate the populace, keep Suez open and have Egypt not mess with Israel. That's bargain basement prices really for what they're getting in return. The fear now is that that bill is going to rise exponentially.

   The corporate oligarchy that runs the US pushed Obama in front of the cameras on Friday and made him say he 'hopes the protests remain peaceful'. I sprayed beer all over my keyboard. When did peaceful protest ever change anything in human history? Sure, there are isolated aberrations. But let's face it, human history is a history of war, a history of who killed who to take their shit, not who asked nicely for some one's shit and was told politely to fuck off. History says that if the other guy has something you want the only way to have it yourself is by taking it; with rocks, arrows, bullets or stealth bombers. That's just how things happen to work on this planet. From a hypothetical alien's point of view, we're scary and primitive upright apes that enlightened intergalactic travellers would be well advised to steer clear of. Sad really, but true.

   The Egyptian situation is difficult for the Western media to package.

   You can see that confusion on the American cable news networks. It's hard to craft a message the plebs will understand without sounding contradictory. Or making the West look bad. Mubarak is America's paid dictator, a point subtly glossed over, yet they insist on referring to Egypt as a 'democracy' in the Arab world. That's prime doublethink right there. But as you watch those brave Egyptians taking on the security forces the average western person on his couch is rooting for them. At the same time, the corporate oligarchy providing the video feed is dying a little on the inside. The fear for them is that a new Egyptian 'democracy' is going to land us with Iran part II. The Muslim Brotherhood is democratically elected, just like Hamas in Gaza and Ahmajinidad in Iran (LOL). Either way, the thought of Suez in the hands of right wing fanatical Islamists is frightening to the elites. The canal is fundamental to rapid deployment of US naval strategy in the Gulf.

If Islamists control Suez, the USN will shit brix.

   I heard some Fox News blond report earlier that officials at the Pentagon were watching events closely on the cable channels and especially on Al Jazeera. I sprayed more beer on my keyboard. Did America's premiere corporate agenda network just admit that its generals have to go outside American cable news (which is basically a "feeding interference to the proles" operation) to know what's going on in the world? As I'm typing, I just heard Sean Hannity say that after events in Egypt on Friday, he believes the only democracy left in the Arab world right now is in Iraq. OK, that's it!

   Now I need a whole new keyboard!

   So who is this Hosni Mubarak that the West seems to tolerate so much?

   He became el presidente after some Egyptian generals gunned down Sadat for making peace with Israel in 1981. That's a twenty nine year stretch, the longest of any Egyptian leader if you leave out the pharaohs. He's a sleazy character fitting the profile of the groomed dictator. In Gulf War I, the West needed a few Arab nations to join the party to make it look like an 'international' effort on paper. Mubarak was happy to oblige in return for $20 billion in forgiven debt. The math of that worked out at half a million per Egyptian soldier deployed. That's a serious dick waving deal if you can get it.

   Mubarak is corrupt. But not more so than any guy Western governments install or payoff to hold onto power in vassal states with strategic interests. It's hard to believe but Egypt has been operating under "Emergency Law" since 1967. This allows the cops to basically do anything they want without warrant. Censorship is everywhere and all Egyptian TV channels and newspapers are under Mubarak's central control. The government can chuck you in prison if they don't like the cut of your jib and leave you there without trial for years. There are at least 30,000 people locked up for no reason other than Mubarak doesn't like them. A lot of them are Islamic Brotherhood members and potential opposition leaders. When the token criticism comes from the West (hey dude, you're making us look bad), Mubarak just shrugs his shoulders and reminds them if he didn't do the West's dirty work for them, they'd end up with the Muslim Brotherhood running the canal. How would they like them apples?

   He basically uses the Muslim Brotherhood as a bogeyman against his own populace and against the US. "It's me, and I know I'm bad but those guys over there, they are far worse. You choose." This line of reasoning is what has kept Mubarak in power for 29 years. What he didn't account for was the explosive growth of Arab satellite news networks and the ease at which they can be received. Every ramshackle mud hut in the Middle East has a satellite dish poking out of it somewhere. But the biggest elephant in the room is the Internet. It truly is coming into its own today as a paradigm shifting force. In fact, if you're a member of the ruling elite, it's becoming downright dangerous. The fact that Mubarak shut it down speaks volumes and is probably his 'bridge too far' moment. Just like the Allies trying to seize that final bridge at Arnhem in Market Garden. Mubarak has gone too far and I'm sure the engines are warming up on his private jet. His family have already fled. I wonder how much gold bullion they managed to fit into their suitcases?

Wow! A good old M113 APC. I wonder who sold Mubarak that baby?

   So what's next?

   Who knows.

   At best, the Egyptians have a rational transition to some kind of representative government made up of secular and religious political parties. That's kind of a long shot. Polls there show 60% or more support for the banned Muslim Brotherhood. With 30% + unemployment and Egyptian pride bruised for thirty years under a Western supported dictator, you can see why they might vote in the West's worst nightmare as a form of cathartic vengeance.

   That's the thing you've got to realize about the Egyptians. They regard themselves as the heart of the Arab world. The cultural center of Arab history, art, music and the rightful inheritors of the golden age of Arab history when the streets of Córdoba had public lighting and 500,000 inhabitants while the rest of Europe was in a Dark Age. These people have been kept down and they are not going to take it anymore.

   Another concerned party in all this is Israel.

A flag seen at the protests, doesn't bode well for future Egypt-Israel relations.

   Egypt is the only Arab country to sign a peace deal with them. Public sentiment is not behind this deal. If Egyptian 'democracy' delivers the Muslim Brotherhood to power, Israel has got a new hostile neighbor on her southern border. You can expect Hamas to have a far easier time smuggling weapons and goods into Gaza and an emasculation of the Israeli blockade. I can't see the new Egyptian 'democracy' enforcing much border security with Gaza. Your move Israel.

   Wow, it's been a whirlwind two weeks. What's next, Libya? Syria? Jordan?

   One thing is for sure, I'm making another run to the store for more beer and popcorn.

Tunisia, the Middle East and Democracy. Can the genie be set free?

  The outbreak of 'democracy' in Tunisia last week was pretty interesting.

  Interesting because civil unrest is rare in Arab countries due to the risk of getting gunned down by cops/soldiers with AKs. Civil unrest leading to the ouster of a dictator is pretty much unheard of. There are all kinds of sleazy dictators in the Arab world who like to rake in cash while strangling human rights and civil liberties. The West is pretty cool with this so long as it doesn't interfere with business. Let's face it, it's cheaper to buy off an Arab dictator these days than deal with a bunch of pesky democratically elected officials who might actually press for a fair deal for the wider population. Shit like that might cost a fortune.

  Egyptian dictator Mubarak harvests a billion a year from the US on the idea that he can keep a lid on that subversive notion known as 'democracy'. Because if democracy were to break out in Egypt right now you'd end up with some batshit insane elected majority running shit and maybe doubling fees to float a container ship through Suez. Democracy is risky business in your vassal states. Just look what happened the last time there was a popular outbreak of majority opinion in the Middle East. That was in 1979 when the Iranians booted out the Shah and his US backers, replacing him with a top down theocracy of right wing crazy religious nuts who think stoning to death is a fitting punishment for married women who fuck the pizza delivery guy.

   Democracy.

   A nice idea, makes the masses feel all warm and fuzzy, but never something you want to toy with.

   That's why this type of popular revolt and outbreak of "democracy" in Tunisia has been met with a kind of tepid approval in the West. The US invaded Iraq and air dropped a few hundred billion dollars in the desert to bring "democracy" to Saddam's huddled masses. You'd think the US would be all over events in Tunisia like flies on shit right? Truth is, the sleazy powers that be in the US and Europe are a little wary about the whole thing. It's akin to that classic scene in Fantasia where Mickey Mouse brings a broom to life to do the chore of filling a well with water. The broom overdoes its job and causes a flood. When Mickey chops the broom into pieces, each splinter becomes a new broom that floods the room even more. These democracy protests in the Middle East are a little like that for Western interests. Shit like this can get out of control fast, spawning whole new governments we might not be able to buy off. Hell, some guy just torched himself in Saudi Arabia yesterday. If those Wahhabi House of Saud loons who run shit over there by way of US petro dollars ever get overthrown, world oil supply could end up in the hands of a whole new bunch of people who could cause all kinds of trouble by interrupting the flow of spice by not doing what they're told.



Sadly, some things have always been worth burning to death for.



   Democracy can be a little risky like that.

   It can lead to all kinds of problems for the corporate oligarchy in the US and Europe. For instance, when Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2006, the Palestinians exercised their democracy and duly elected Hamas and not the secular Fatah like they were supposed to. That resulted in the withdrawal of financial support from the US and EU and a blockade by Israel, basically saying, democracy is wonderful except when you get the process 'wrong' and elect the guys we don't like. 

   Democracy is always liable to end up with unpredictable results.

   When you give the average fucktard on the street a say in how countries get run, bad shit happens for rich people. That's pretty much why there are no real democracies left on the planet anymore. The last time true democracy showed up it was in Athens in 461 BC and good old Pericles was initiating a golden age. US style democracy is all about providing the plebs with the illusion that their vote matters whilst the corporate oligarchy feeds them the information on who to vote for whilst also controlling the candidate list. Pretty fucking genius really. When it costs a billion dollars to run for President, those supplying that billion own that President's ass. He's their man bought and paid for. Poor old Pericles today wouldn't stand a chance.

   Still, shit might be about to get interesting in the Middle East.

   History says there's always the unexpected in war and human affairs. Once an idea takes hold and becomes viral it's hard to suppress. That's why you've got protests going on right now in many Arab countries where protests are 'illegal'. You've gotta love the idea that protesting is illegal. It's like saying the storming of the Bastille in 1789 was illegal. Of course it was. When you're at the top of the food chain everything is illegal for those lower down on the pyramid when they start rocking the boat. I wonder if Louis XVI tried to funnel the French revolution into designated 'free speech zones' a few miles from the epicenter of the Estates-General.

   Democracy.

   It's a funny idea. But a little too risky to be really put into practice. To quote E.B. White, "Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time." But the truth is, half of the people are below average IQ just by taking the test. That means that if you are in any way intelligent you are in an automatic minority. It's too risky to give everyone a voice. Much easier to run interference and tell them what to think. All you need is to own the means by which people get their information, TV, radio, newspapers. That's pretty easy these days. Flood the airwaves with bullshit and you've bread and circused the mob into groupthink.

   Still, I love the idea that shit could go wrong for the powers that be.

   This whole idea of setting yourself on fire in a public place is an idea whose time seems to have come in the Arab world. You know shit is bad when you want to rage against the machine in such a way that you put your life on the table. What greater statement can you make?

    Right now, the rest of the Arab world is watching events in Tunisia closely to see what they do with their new found freedom. Tunisia is the home of the ancient city of Carthage. That's some hardcore military history right there. The Punic Wars take us back to a time in human history when wiping out the enemy, killing all their men and selling all the women and children into slavery before destroying Carthage stone by stone was a certain kind of justice.

   But that's war. Sadly, the only motive force in human history.

   If they can get their shit together, the Tunisians could make a wider point that could reverberate across the Arab world. It'd be a cool underdog story that Hollywood could make into a movie in a few years starring Brad Pitt as the guy who torched himself when they took his fruit stand away. But then again, I'm pretty fucking cynical when it comes to desert civilizations. I'm one of those contrarians who prefers Smith's Ozymandias to Shelleys.

 In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand." The City's gone,
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder, and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place

Are conventional armed forces obsolete?

   I found myself waxing philosophical this week about the future of war.

   I floated an idea at a party the other night that there was no longer a need for conventional armed forces, heavy armor, mechanized infantry, amphibious landing craft, you know, all the cool stuff that makes war so much 'fun'. Sure, alcohol was involved. But it was an interesting idea to float. Do nuclear armed nations need conventional forces when going to war against other nuclear armed nations? Is fancy new military hardware like stealth fighters and stealth ships a total waste of money when the other side can just bust out a nuke if things start getting sketchy? I think I upset some people by floating this idea but that party sucked anyway.  

    I'm sober now and I still say I'm not wrong.

   When you've got nukes, why do you need to spend money on stealth bombers and other expensive hardware?

   Cut me some slack here. I'm still having fun with this idea. Soldiers, tanks, and stealth fighters do have many uses. But mostly only when going up against a non nuke nation with some resources you'd like to acquire. In such cases you can attack with impunity, overcome their primitive defenses using your advanced air force, take out their AA radar, bomb heavily and follow up with a tank rush. Soon you find yourself the proud owner of some fancy new real estate that's sitting on top of some proven reserves. This is where conventional forces come in handy.

   But what if you are the US or China or the seven other nations currently with the big red button of win? China just test flew a shitty imitation stealth fighter last week and the US currently deploys 187 F-22 raptors at a cost of $361 million each. The US navy has eleven active carriers. The most recent, the daddy Bush, cost $6.2 billion to build with running costs of a hundred million per year. The US naval college recently admitted that these boats are 'vulnerable' when you introduce the new Chinese DF-21D anti ship ballistic missile into the mix. That hypersonic, satellite aimed fucker with a 2000 mile range will pick off a carrier group from space long before those carriers get their aircraft within strike range of Beijing or Ningbo. The Russians have a similar type missile. Hell, even the Iranians have a bunch of Silkworms which I'm not convinced the USN can defend itself against.

   But let's suppose for a minute this weren't already true. Let's suppose, in some hypothetical future resource war versus China,  a few USN carrier groups get close enough to the Chinese mainland to launch an amphibious landing at the beaches east of Fuzhou against the 3.5 million strong PLA. For lulz, let's imagine a beach head is established. The Chinese lose a few square miles of sovereign territory. US marines are pouring ashore. Lav-25s are fanning out into the surrounding countryside to probe the enemy defenses. For more hypothetical fun, let's pretend that a good chunk of the People's Liberation Army are on a 'training exercise' on the Outer Mongolian border and can't offer up much resistance. The natural option for China is to break out the nukes. This will always become the 'natural option' when any nuclear power starts losing any conventional war. The playbook here demands two single megaton low altitude airbursts over the beach head that minimize fallout and turn all those fancy mechanized brigades to molten metal and fry everyone inside now that the losing side has decided to break out Oppenheimer's death; the destroyer of worlds.

   That pretty much reduces years of sleazy military-industrial-complex design contracts to nothing in a single launch. All those billions funnelled into the 'defense' industry (more like offense industry, amirite?) are wasted. The billions of dollars spent in the production of all those high tech vehicles end up being rendered useless by a relatively cheap thermonuclear blast.

   Soldiers are good for occupying captured territory. But in a war between nuclear armed powers, what former owner of the territory captured will ever sign an armistice to halt the war and accept the new boundaries before nukes get launched? Would the US, after a successful Chinese amphibious landing, give up Washington State and Oregon to the Chinese for the sake of peace? Not likely. All wars today between nuclear armed countries must escalate to full nuclear winter by default once one side starts losing. The red button of win must be pressed because it is there. We're living in a temporary stasis on the nuclear clock, it's still two minutes to midnight, just like it was in the 80s but current geopolitics have put that reality on the back burner while everyone gobbles up the last planetary resources. The grand wars for the scraps will come later.

   Interestingly, with the way global nuke proliferation is panning out, a nuclear war today doesn't have to lead to an automatic earth wide Mad Max post apocalyptic zombie wasteland. There is a new and recent  alternative. The possibility of a 'regional nuclear war'. Grab the popcorn right? We're talking India versus Pakistan here. Both sides have enough megatons to glass each other's major cities. Both sides believe Kashmir belongs to them. Both sides hate each other's guts. Extremists in both countries believe a war could sort this shit out. And yet both sides still invest in conventional militaries as if a war between them  is somehow winnable WWII desert North Africa style. India conducted a military exercise entitled 'Brazen Chariot' in 2008 where they wargamed some hypothetical desert armor clash with Pakistan and won. Unfortunately, they left out the fateful third act in that battle where the victorious Indian tank divisions steamrolled over the vanquished Pakistani forces only to get vaporized by a well aimed tactical nuke.

   Take that ghost of Heinz Guderian!

   Truth is, there is no such future conflict between nuclear armed sides where one side begins losing the conventional war and hemorrhaging territory or resources that doesn't force the generals to reach for the launch codes.

   So the point here is, why bother with the conventional forces at all?

   The current rulers of the world are still stuck in an outmoded paradigm.

   The British are broke yet have commissioned two new aircraft carriers. The Queen Elizabeth carrier is about to come online at a cost of 4 billion. It's supposed to field a squadron of F-35 stealth fighters. Those fighters are already cost over run programs from the US running into the billions. Western countries are going bankrupt while still trying to maintain the illusion of the sun never setting on their historic empires. It's hard to watch the slow and inexorable transfer of primacy to Asia. Perhaps there's a certain justice in that considering how we fucked them over in previous centuries.

  War is starting to favor defenders these days. Following that old Clauswitz paradigm, an attacking force needs a 3:1 numerical advantage to overcome entrenched defenders. Today's weapon technology seems to support that. In fact, today's technology magnifies that. Build a six billion dollar aircraft carrier? I can  wreck that with a one million dollar missile. Build a twenty million dollar tank? I can waste that shit with a cheap ass RPG-29. Build an up armored Humvee? I can waste it with ten bags of fertilizer buried under a manhole.

   War is getting cheaper these days if you are the defending force.

   Life itself is getting cheaper these days if you are willing to press the big red button of win.

   The 21st century has the potential to be the most interesting century in human history. All of us alive today get to watch shit go down. All of us alive today get to realize that the human race is fucked.

China's New Toys

  

   I suppose everyone has already noticed the 'leaked' pictures of China's new J-20 stealth fighter. First off, there's no such thing as a 'leak' in China. Secondly, that thing looks pretty shitty, like a real stealth fighter that ate too many cheeseburgers. It's a bit too big to be a fighter. Seems, at the very least, to be a fighter bomber or some kind of multi role craft. Possibly built for long range. Also, with those traditional engine nozzles, the heat signature on that thing would be way too high for it to be in any way stealthy.  At best, this aircraft reveals what the Chinese are aiming for. Something that could fly to Taiwan, loiter for hours over the battlefield engaging both air and ground targets and fly back without the need for lumbering mid air refuelling. Or, maybe, something that could fly far out into  'blue water' in the Pacific to harass a USN carrier group? Judging from the leaked images though, the Chinese are still years away from having anything stealthy enough to achieve these goals.

Notice those traditional unstealthy engine nozzles

   And then there's the other new toy that the US media began reporting on this week. China's new Anti Ship Ballistic Missile, the Dong Feng-21D. Yeah, that's D for Dong right up a USN carrier's tailpipe. If this system works, and preliminary testing hints that it does, then it's a pretty serious piece of fuck you to the US Navy. Launched from land based launchers and travelling at Mach 5 or more (high hypersonic) and with a range of 2000 miles, the DF-21D will be aimed and guided to blue water targets by Chinese satellites. Even the USN War College has admitted that if this system is fully operational it pretty much takes US naval dominance off the table for the first time since World War II.

   Fun thing is, since this Dong is satellite guided, I don't see any scenario where the US and China start a shooting war (mid 2020s at least when the resources wars get started in earnest) where there isn't an initial flurry of space wars where each side takes out each other's satellites. Currently, the US is way ahead on this score and once this DF 21D has lost satellite guidance, it's blind. So much for hitting a carrier group that is sure to loiter in blue water. Not to say this missile isn't an advance and that carriers are not already obselete but watch the space war to see who's really winning the global arms race.

China's large new dong, the DF-21D mobile launcher

   All this makes the US media shit their pants. I saw some Fox News blonde this morning reading the teleprompter talking points and floating the idea that the Chinese had 'stolen' the plans for their stealth fighter from the US by 'hacking'. Whatever that means. She had this expression of confused marvel on her pretty little face like she was trying to come to grips with how the slants could ever be so clever as to challenge the good old US of A. It's also patently absurd considering these Chinese planes are not in the same league as the US F-22 or F-35s. Yet.

   My first thoughts on this whole new Chinese weapon thing was that it was a ploy planted in the US media by sleazy defense contractors now that the Republicans have taken over the House and have their fingers on the purse strings again. That big bad military industrial complex is still pissed that defense secretary Gates cancelled an order of F-22 raptors last year and limited the stealth fighter force to 187 planes. At $361 million a pop that seemed like a pretty wise move when you consider the state of the US economy and when you take into account the nature of today's asymmetric warfare that the US is engaged in. But those greedy slimeball corporate fucks could care less about the overall economy. It's all about the flow of taxpayer money into their coffers and now that there are  a new bunch of bought and paid for politicians reshuffled into office, it's time to scream OMFG China! Look at all their new shit! Give us more monies!

   But lets face it, China is rising. The US is still way ahead by most metrics and it might take twenty years, but the trend lines are there and that makes the old fart white guys who run the US go crazy. From China's point of view it's perfectly rational to up military spending these days. Especially with all the money they've got to throw around. If you've got money to spend on empty cities like Ordos you might as well have an aircraft carrier and stealth fighters right? When your chief rival in the geopolitical chessgame is spending more on defense than the next 10 countries combined, it makes sense to have some nice guns too. The Dong missile is a device aimed at containing the US Navy. But the J-20 stealth fighter is a weapon designed to bring it to the enemy. Which is an interesting political message ahead of upcoming talks between Obama and the visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao.

The People's Liberation Army: 3.5 million strong.

  When you take history into account, it is interesting to note that the Chinese have always been on the cutting edge of military tech. Gunpowder anyone? They did fall behind the Europeans in the 18th and 19th centuries but that was pretty much an historical anomaly in 4000 years of Chinese history. I have always wondered how the Roman legions would have faired in a hypothetical battle against an army of Han dynasty Chinese running off the Sun Tzu playbook.

   Did China make this stealth plane all by themselves? No way. They are still dependant on the Russians for engine technology (the Russkis have always been amazing engineers) and there is some evidence of espionage but the fundamentals of stealth technology are pretty much well known these days. Fuselage design is just one part of it. You've also got to be able to have low emission targeting systems and engine nozzles that limit heat signature. The Chinese jet doesn't have these so it's pretty much a dick waving message to the US media at this point.

   At first it had just taxied out onto a runway, shown off its pair of all-moving tailfins and Russian style engine nozzles, had photographers take its picture and then gone back inside its hangar like a Chinese hooker who came out from behind a curtain, flashed her tits and left without delivering on the blow job. The J-20 was apparently test flown yesterday just as US Defense Secretary Gates touched down in China. It did some circuits of the airfield so the photographers could snap some cool pics through the smog. However, much like a Chinese gymnast, she won't be legal operational until at least 2016. If even. Still, the sight of China's new toys prompted Gates to say that “China's investments in anti-ship weaponry and ballistic missiles could threaten America’s primary way to project power and help allies in the Pacific -- particularly our forward bases and carrier strike groups.”

   Well no shit Sherlock.

   Isn't that the whole point?

You can just make out the maiden flight through the air pollution

The Ivory Coast: Are the ghosts of Rwanda about to strike back?

  

  There might be a new war brewing in West Africa. 

  But don't hold your breath for the 24/7 live TV coverage. At best expect some images of machete wielding crazy black people (African-Africans?) threatening to go medieval on each other, and, since Ivory Coast is the world's largest cocoa producer, expect maybe some Ron Burgundy reporter interviewing a corporate shill chocolate spokesman as he laments how impending genocide in Africa might cause a ten cent rise in the price of Hershey Bars. Probably you'll hear nothing in the media unless you go looking. There are just too many real wars going on right now for anybody to give a shit about what's going down in West Africa.

  

   This war has the potential to get ugly though. And when we talk about ugly in African terms, we're talking really fucking ugly. People in the Ivory Coast have already started painting tribal insignias on their doors and front gates which means the country is gearing itself up to go Rwanda on itself in the near future. You don't want to get massacred by the wrong tribal death squad after all. There's only one thing worse than getting hacked up with machetes and that's getting hacked up accidentally by 'friendly machetes'.

   You'd think the world would care. The Rwandan genocide in 1994 resulted in 800,000 dead, most of them stabbed or carved up on the cheap because hey... bullets cost money. I remember Clinton making some speech when he was doing his elder statesmen book tour or something and dropping in on old Rwanda to say sorry he hadn't done anything to stop the massacre. It was pretty funny. I was thinking that what he was really saying was that it was a pity the Rwandans had no oil or diamonds to make it worthwhile for the US to intervene and keep the old colonial power structure in place. That's usually the one that's best for business. And this was a while back when the US still had a shot glass of moral authority left in the world. But of course, it's not like the Russians or Chinese or whoever else are waving some awesome flag of freedom. The world is closing down. The US still alludes to the idea of 'freedom' which is better than nothing I suppose. But lets face it, we're living in Blade Runner. Corporations run this shit now. There are no nation states anymore.

   The history of Ivory Coast follows the typical colonial West African model. The Europeans started the usual coastal rape in the late 15th century. Ivory Coast dodged the worst of the slave trade in the 17th century partly due to easier pickings further along the coast and also due to a lack of natural harbors. It got its name from a time before plastics when everything from piano keys to billiard balls were made from elephant tusks. Chances are that Mozart bashed together Don Giovanni and the Turkish Rondo on ivory lifted from that coast. However, by the time the 19th century rolled around there was a mysterious shortage of elephants there. Go figure. It was around this time some French Admiral signed a few pieces of paper with some native kings in the interior and the Côte d'Ivoire became a "French Protectorate" which basically gave the natives the right to be ass raped by the French for the next century.

   In 1960, the Ivorians finally gained their independence though not following the typical post colonial African script, you know, the one where the departing European power scribbles "congratulations you're independent" on a piece of paper and then fucks off home with the embassy furniture. Usually this scenario devolves into civil war. That's the thing about Africa that never worked. Dividing that vast continent up by drawing lines on European drawn maps and thinking those borders were anything but arbitrary and bore any relation to tribal, ethnic or religious division. Most times it took a war to settle those old scores after the Euros bailed.

   But Côte d'Ivoire didn't follow that script.

   That was largely due to one man, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the first president of the newly independent Ivory Coast in 1960. This guy wasn't some general who muscled his way to power thanks to a few container loads of AKs and RPGs from whatever country had an interest in watching Africa burn. It's hard to believe, but under this guy's leadership we're looking at an African 'success story'. Maybe. We're not talking bullet trains and universal healthcare or anything but still, most of the population of your capital city was not using the local beach  as an open air toilet like in neighboring Liberia. That's some measure of success by African standards right? The Ivory Coast prospered more than any other West African nation that wasn't sitting on top of tanker loads of oil. In fact, it was so prosperous that its cocoa, pineapple, banana and palm oil plantations started attracting labor from neighboring countries and led to an influx of people from Ghana, Liberia and Burkina Faso.

   By 1990 and after 30 years of rule, wily old Félix had pocketed 10 billion for himself and become the longest serving leader in African history that you've probably never heard of. No seriously, only Castro and Kim Jong Il's daddy have served longer in modern history. Peace and prosperity tends to have a negative effect on fame though. You need to chalk up some deaths before anyone remembers you these days. Félix died in 1993 but not before he was flown back from some French hospital on life support to die in his native land and have his lifeless hand sign some papers that made sure the acting Prime Minister at the time, Alassane Ouattara didn't stay in power. Bear with me here because shit's about to get interesting. Turns out Ouattara is central to what's going down today. He's the guy the UN and 'independent observers' are saying 'fairly' won last month's election. He's also a bankster who acted as Deputy Managing Director at the IMF from '94-'99 and if that doesn't make alarm bells ring than what does? Still, nobody in this seedy mess is going to have clean hands. Ouaterra is famous for causing the Ivorian parliament to come up with a new law in 1994 to keep him out of domestic politics by decreeing that only people whose parents were born in Ivory Coast could become el presidente. The measure passed. Turns out all that cheap labor that flooded into the country to work the plantations in the 60s and 70s weren't full citizens. Not even their children. Faultline number one created right there.

   But we're jumping ahead.

   What happened after solid old Félix Houphouët-Boigny died? After a massive state funeral he was succeeded by some guy who got overthrown in 1999 by a typical power hungry general in Ivory Coast's first military coup. The whole clean Ivorian record on the military takeover front was just too good to last. The new guy allowed free elections a year later after the economy took a nosedive and foreigners panicked and started pulling their money out of the country. Still, free elections are a pretty bad idea if you're an African dictator because another general is always likely to come along and fuck you up, in this case Laurent Gbagbo, and he has been the General enjoying Côte d'Ivoire power, coke and hookers from 2000 to this day. Of course, I'm leaving out a civil war he fought between 2000-2004 but it was pretty low grade shit compared to what's about to go down now.

   So where are the fault lines in all of this today?

   One is Gbagbo himself. He's liked by the army which is pretty much a win in electoral politics when you happen to be the general in charge of that army. You can divert some of those cocoa profits to army pensions and guarantee your legions a retirement Caesar style. Despite losing this election (if you believe the UN and IMF) he's refusing to step down and waving his dick around and saying 'fuck you' to the rest of the world. The United States, the United Nations, the European Union, the African Union and the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS) have all recognised electoral commission results showing Ouattara as the winner of the election and have called on Gbagbo to step down. That's pretty much when you know you're not wanted. But is a dick waving guy subject to the ordinary rules of pencil pushers? Right now, he wants the UN out and things could get ugly if his forces decide to mount an attack on the limited UN forces there. There's the possibility of losing some troops, Belgian Rwandan style and causing an 'incident' that might make the UN's pussy dry up.

   Basically the blowback right now is that those ECOWAS states might be prepared to get their shit together for the first time in history and actually mount an attack on the Ivorian capital to remove Gbagbo. That would certainly have me grabbing the popcorn. ECOWAS would field a hodge podge of 70s Soviet equipment like T-55 and T-72 tanks combined with British Scorpion light tanks bought in the '80s. They could also field some NATO equipment. Ivory Coast has pretty much nothing vehicle wise against this potential force except infantry, jungles and IEDs. I'm so big on heavy infantry right now that I'm down on military vehicles at the moment considering the amount of ways there are to take them out and score economic damage for the cost of ten bags of fertilizer buried under a manhole. Of course, no matter how dirty Gbagbo chooses to fight, ECOWAS would still win.

   The other fault line in all this is Ouaterra. He's liked by the UN, IMF and international community because he's going to be their stability guy where they get to make some nice inroads into that cocoa supply. If you know anything about the history of chocolate you'll know that it was pretty much the crack of 18th century Europe. Not that anyone cares today since it's a convenience store item. But still, the IMF has always had a hard on for anything they can pick up cheap in Africa. Currently Ouaterra is holed up in a hotel surrounded by Gbagbo's troops. That's a pretty shitty situation to be in considering you've got the weight of the world's financial institutions on your side. But loaded guns pointed at you always beat sentiments or speeches.

     Whats going to happen? I have no idea. But expect some kind of genocide if ECOWAS decides to invade in the name of 'democracy'. The rebels in the north (those Burkina Fasa residents denied citizenship because their parents working those plantations weren't citizens) have already stated they would join up with any pan African force if it were to invade and undo the power structure of those Christian coastal elites that have been running shit since the French left. The funniest story so far is thousands already fleeing Ivory Coast and heading for Liberia. That made me laugh. You know things are bad when civilians feel the need to flee to the worse shithole nextdoor.

   Right now, Gbagbo has been offered asylum and safe passage to wherever. After running a country for ten years he's probably stashed away a decent amount of bank, enough at least that he could live comfortably in the South of France for the rest of his life. But that's the problem with leaders and dictators and men in power. They become victims of "target fixation". It's something that used to happen to dive-bomber pilots in WWII. So much so that German Stuka dive bombers were fitted with an automatic air brake that pulled the plane out of a dive when the pilot became obsessed with landing his bomb on target to the point where he would crash his plane into the target. Sometimes, leaders get like that. When you own the kingdom so much that you can't let go of the control stick except when it's too late. It's because you can never imagine living a life anymore like a mere citizen.

    It's another classic war in Africa that nobody will give a shit about.

    Except maybe when Hershey Bars cost ten cents more.