Hostile takeover

The bully will push and push to get their way until people of conscience say “enough”. Sadly, to say enough generally involves picking up a weapon.

Putin in the 21st century is copying what Hitler did in the 20th century. Hitler broke the Versailles limitations on rearming Germany. Europe did nothing. He reunified the Saar in 1935 and nobody objected. So he re-militarized the Rhineland in 1936 and nobody stopped him.

Austria was annexed in 1938, followed in the same year by the Munich agreement to give the Sudetenland to Germany. By March 1939 Czechoslovakia had ceased to exist. Poland followed in September of that year. Had people of conscience denied the early demands Europe may have had a far different history.

Putin is, quite simply, another Hitler. He snipped South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia, Crimea from Ukraine, followed by the Donbass.  Transnistria was snipped from Moldova. He installed a puppet ruler in Belarus and has tried twice to do the same in Ukraine. It is long past due for the world to say no to Putin.

Many Russians have taken to the streets, at great personal cost, to protest the war. Wars are not fought at the behest of ordinary citizens. Wars are the tools of the wealthy and the powerful. But you cannot fight a war without at least a grudging support from your own people. In the past I did not support using sport and the arts as a means of preventing war. I felt that a Russian footballer or Ballet Dancer is hardly going to make a difference, so why penalize them for Putin’s decisions.

As I have grown older my attitude has changed. Putin controls the state media and gains support for his war through lies. One way to undermine lies is to bring home to the ordinary people that the world is unhappy with the direction of the nation. When your little girl is told she is banned from the junior Eurovision how do you interpret this action? When your adult act is banned from the main show what does this say to you as a people? When your sporting teams are refused games bilaterally by team after team you have to begin to balance this against the news you are seeing on the TV. If your symphonies and ballet troupes have all their foreign appearances cancelled you know that there is a dissonance between what the Government is telling you and the wider world attitude to your nation.

Faced with widespread international isolation you face a harsh choice. Retreat inwardly like North Korea, or depose the regime. Effective revolution can only come from within.

After the Battle; by Thomas Moore

Night closed around the conqueror’s way,
and lightnings showed the distant hill,
where those who lost that dreadful day
stood few and faint, but fearless still.
The soldier’s hope, the patriot’s zeal,
for ever dimmed, for ever crossed
Oh! who shall say what heroes feel,
when all but life and honour’s lost?

The last sad hour of freedom’s dream,
and valour’s task, moved slowly by,
while mute they watched, till morning’s beam
should rise and give them light to die.
There’s yet a world, where souls are free,
where tyrants taint not nature’s bliss;
if death that world’s bright opening be,
Oh! who would live a slave in this?

-=o0o=-

This site is available for free and I make no money from any ads you see here. If you would like to show your appreciation feel free to leave a comment or you can buy me a coffee! http://buymeacoffee.com/DonalClancy

Culminating Point

On this day in 1941 the German Armies in Russia found their culmination point outside Moscow. The military concept of the culmination point was defined by the Napoleonic era Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz in his book “On War”. On the offensive, the culminating point marks the time when the attacking force can no longer continue its advance, because of supply problems, the opposing force, or the need for rest. The task of the attacker is to complete its objectives before the culminating point is reached. 

By late October 1941, the Germans were stretched thin, struggling in a sea of mud and rain, only a third of their motor vehicles were still operating, infantry divisions were severely below-strength, serious logistics issues prevented delivery of equipment to the front, especially winter clothing and footwear.

October mud which hampered German progress solidified in mid-November when the ground froze. From November 15th the Germans pushed their tank divisions forward in a pincer movement on Moscow. Heinz Guderian, the famous German tank strategist wrote in his journal that “the offensive on Moscow failed … we underestimated the enemy’s strength, as well as his size and climate. Fortunately, I stopped my troops on 5 December, otherwise the catastrophe would be unavoidable.”

On the Russian side Marshals Zhukov and Vasilevsky had massed 58 divisions, including 18 divisions of crack Siberian troops. They hurled over a million troops at the Germans who were smashed backwards. By the 14th of December the Germans were forced to redeploy west of the Oka river, without Hitler’s permission.

The 5th of December 1941 was the day the Germans lost the war. Only the smartest Generals understood the truth. The concept that with Russia “You only have to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down!” was proven to be just another of Hitler’s lies.

Hitler himself was embedded in his myth of military genius. His reaction to Moscow was to issue the infamous Directive No.39. He wanted every patch of land defended. He hamstrung his armies by sacking many of his best commanders. He dismissed his commander-in-chief, Walther von Brauchitsch taking over personal control of the army. He then deprived his replacement commanders of their most effective weapons, maneuverability, flexibility, speed and the ability to select suitable defensive positions.

For most of the world it took another year and the loss at Stalingrad to understand that the war was over. For ardent students of Clausewitz it was clear that the Germans had failed in their objectives before they reached their culminating point.

-=o0o=-

This site is available for free and I make no money from any ads you see here. If you would like to show your appreciation feel free to leave a comment or you can buy me a coffee! http://buymeacoffee.com/DonalClancy

Telling lies #16: Eugenics

Scientific discrimination is one of the most dangerous lies of all time. It includes discrimination on grounds of gender, race, ethnicity etc. It is often insidious, living beneath the surface, polluting the facts in a seemingly rational and scientific way.

The poster boy for scientific led racism is Francis Galton. A genius in many ways Galton pioneered some amazing work in the world of statistics. We have him to thank for correlation and regression to the mean, weather forecasting, finger printing and many other innovations. Had he only remained in the fields of maths and stats. But he is most famous for his studies into heredity. His book “Heredity Genius” was published in 1869. He was the man who coined the phrase “nature vs nurture”. Have no doubt he was on the side of nature and heredity.

Galton lived in the era of English exceptionalism, sitting on the top of an empire over which the sun never set. From that position is was easy to slide into the trap of making the scientific findings fit the success of his race. He coined the term “Eugenics” in 1883. Once you come to eugenics you are heading down the path to genocide:  “There exists a sentiment, for the most part quite unreasonable, against the gradual extinction of an inferior race.” If you accept gradual extinction, why not hasten the process along?

As a member of “an inferior race” I grew up as a white, English speaking, educated person who was constantly aware that the English saw the Irish as a lesser race. The Victorian stereotypes of the stupid, violent, drunken, feckless Catholic spawning a raft of children they are unable to support is pervasive. Overtly ask any Englishman today and he will flatly deny holding any such views. But scratch the surface and it lies beneath. English exceptionalism underpins the entire UK education curriculum.

It was the Nazis under Hitler who brought Galton’s theories to the public mind in the most stark terms, with the Holocaust. But have no doubt his influence extends into some of the most caring and evolved societies (in their own view) in the world. The USA was an active and overt supporter of eugenics for decades. If you ever participated in a beauty pageant or “bonnie baby” contest you were engaged in an activity designed to select the best and most fit genes. In Sweden enforced sterilization programs were still running up to 1976 on eugenic grounds. In India today who is more likely to be sterilized? A Brahmin man or a Dalit woman? In China the Uighurs claim that a widespread program of sterilization is on going today. China for the Han Chinese.

A Work Of Artifice; by Marge Piercy

The bonsai tree
in the attractive pot
could have grown eighty feet tall
on the side of a mountain
till split by lightning.
But a gardener
carefully pruned it.
It is nine inches high.
Every day as he
whittles back the branches
the gardener croons,
it is your nature
to be small and cozy,
domestic and weak;
how lucky, little tree,
to have a pot to grow in.
With living creatures
one must begin very early
to dwarf their growth:
the bound feet,
the crippled brain,
the hair in curlers,
the hands you
love to touch.

The White Terror

The White Terror was the murder, killing & assassination of left wing forces during and after the Spanish Civil War by the Nationalists of the right under their Caudillo General Francisco Franco Bahamonde.  It is estimated that between 100,000 and 200,000 republican supporters were killed by assassination and in concentration camps during the Civil War and in the decade after the war.

A “Red Terror” of assassinations of Nationalist supporters was instigated on the Republican side.  The reds managed about 50,000 which is below half of the most conservative White Terror number.  In addition the “Red Terror” involved insider assassinations as the Communists eliminated competiton from Anarchists, Democrats and Union Leaders who did not fancy the creation of a Stalinist Spain.

Commonly remembered simply as Franco, the Dictator of Spain was born on this day, Dec 4th, 1892.  A career military man he came from a Naval family in El Ferrol but elected to join the army.  Serving in the Rif wars in Morocco he rose rapidly in the ranks and at age 33 was the youngest General in Europe.

He led the Spanish troops who brutally suppressed the Anarchist mine workers strike in Asturias, an event which polarised left and right and may have led to the civil war.

When the Civil War commenced with a military coup by a group of generals Franco was the junior of the junta.  He famously negotiated with Hitler to have the Luftwaffe airlift his Army of Africa to the Spanish Mainland.  All his rivals met with “unfortunate accidents” leaving Franco as Caudillo – the Spanish version of Il Duce or Der Führer.  From October 1936 to November 1975 he was dictator of a repressive conservative Catholic Spain.  He was buried on his death with full honors in the mausoleum at the Valley of the Fallen (Valle de los Caídos) the only person interred there who did not die in the civil war.

After a long and drawn out legal process to prevent the veneration of his dictatorship his remains were removed from the mausoleum in October of this year.

Aprende un llanto que limpie el tierra, aprende un llanto que me limpie de tierra.

 

Gacela De La Muerte Oscura; Federico García Lorca

Quiero dormir el sueño de las manzanas,
alejarme del tumulto de los cementerios.
Quiero dormir el sueño de aquel niño
que quería cortarse el corazón en alta mar.

No quiero que me repitan
que los muertos no pierden la sangre;
que la boca podrida sigue pidiendo agua.

No quiero enterarme
de los martirios que da la hierba,
ni de la luna con boca de serpiente
que trabaja antes del amanecer.

Quiero dormir un rato,
un rato, un minuto, un siglo;
pero que todos sepan que no he muerto;
que hay un establo de oro en mis labios;
que soy el pequeño amigo del viento Oeste;
que soy la sombra inmensa de mis lágrimas.

Cúbreme por la aurora con un velo,
porque me arrojará puñados de hormigas,
y moja con agua dura mis zapatos
para que resbale la pinza de su alacrán.

Porque quiero dormir el sueño de las manzanas
para aprender un llanto que me limpie de tierra;
porque quiero vivir con aquel niño oscuro
que quería cortarse el corazón en alta mar.

Never forget

Reichstag building wrapped by the artist Christo

On this day in 1933 Adolf Hitler managed to push “The Enabling Act” through the Reichstag in Germany.

This gave him the position of Dictator, and gave the minority Nazi party effective control of Germany.  Democracy was sacrificed to expedience.  The confusion of coalition government was replaced by the clarity, direction and strength of single minded purpose.  See where that ended up?

Democracy is hard.  Government is a messy process.  It is dirty, political, flawed, frustrating, time-consuming and downright annoying.  The Germans swept all that away in favour of simple solutions.

Beware politicians who seem to offer simple solutions to complex problems.  Remember the Enabling Act.  If you don’t know what it is, inform yourself.  This stuff is important to know!

Epic: by Patrick Kavanagh

I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided, who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man’s land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.

I heard the Duffys shouting “Damn your soul!”
And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue cast-steel –
“Here is the march along these iron stones.”

That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was more important? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer’s ghost came whispering to my mind.

He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.

-=o0o=-

Hope you enjoyed this post. The site is available for free and if you see any ads here I make no money from them. If you would like to show your appreciation for my site you can buy me a coffee! http://buymeacoffee.com/DonalClancy

War and Peas

I’ve declared war.  I am arming up and gathering reinforcements.  As soon as the logistics are in place we march to battle.

In general I am against war and violence.  But all attempts at diplomatic solutions have failed.  I am not about to become some modern day Neville Chamberlain, kowtowing to a rodent Hitler in his quest for increasing Lebensraum.  I do not want peace at any price.  I do want peas.

Yes, this is a war of peas.  I plant them, the rabbits eat the shoots.  Seemingly pea shoots are delicious.  Especially to rabbits.  Now, on top of the pea issue there is the burrow issue.  They seem to think my courgette patch would make a nice new home.  They want to move in on a semi-permanent basis.

Initially I thought we could shoo them away.  Just chase them off.  But they kept coming.

Then I thought the foxes would see to them.  No such luck.

Lately I have taken to carrying a bow and arrow around the garden.  When I encounter them unarmed they stand their ground and try to stare me down.  The moment they spot the bow in my hand they melt into the long grass.  They seem to know somehow that the bow spells danger.  Maybe it’s my body language.  Not that I have a hope in hell of hitting them with an arrow if I do get a shot off.  Rabbits are small and they move fast.  Still, it feels as though I am doing something to stem the tide of invasion.

The long term solution is cats.  A couple of young rescue cats from the local rescue centre.  That will sort them out.  Anyone who knows me well knows my attitude to cats.  I feel like I am signing a pact with Stalin to defeat Hitler.  Cats have taken over the internet.  Now they are taking over the world.

MACAVITY, THE MYSTERY CAT; by T.S. Eliot

Macavity’s a Mystery Cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw –
For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad’s despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime – Macavity’s not there!

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime – Macavity’s not there!
You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air –
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity’s not there!

Macavity’s a ginger cat, he’s very tall and thin;
You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.
His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed;
His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.
He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake;
And when you think he’s half asleep, he’s always wide awake.

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
For he’s a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square –
But when a crime’s discovered, then Macavity’s not there!

He’s outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)
And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard’s.
And when the larder’s looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,
Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke’s been stifled,
Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair –
Ay, there’s the wonder of the thing! Macavity’s not there!

And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty’s gone astray,
Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way,
There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair –
But it’s useless to investigate – Macavity’s not there!
And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:
‘It must have been Macavity!’ – but he’s a mile away.
You’ll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs,
Or engaged in doing complicated long division sums.

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:
At whatever time the deed took place – MACAVITY WASN’T THERE!
And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known,
(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)
Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time
Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime.

When clients go bad.

For anyone with their head in the sand, the Scottish Independence campaign reached a new height this week with a poll showing the Yes and No vote running neck and neck.

The big swing away from the No to the Yes campaign was on the back of a Twitterstorm from the Women of Scotland who roundly rejected the “Better Together” campaign video “The woman who made up her mind”.  Have a look here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLAewTVmkAU

The Yes campaign dubbed it the “PatronisingBTLady” and you can track the resentment on twitter by searching #patronisingbtlady

I wondered what it would be like to be on of the advertising team who made the ad, in a meeting with Alistair Darling, head of the Better Together campaign.

I reckon the meeting might go something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm0KYL5_wNU

The magic touch in Business

How do you protect businesses from the brilliant decision makers who end up getting it all wrong?

The human mind is a pattern recognition engine.  It is an excellent learning tool.  When you spot a situation you have been in before, the mind tells you “oh yeah, I know this, here is how we moved through this situation the last time”.

There are positives to this, and also negatives.

The positives are that we learn rapidly from each other.  Spend an afternoon trying to learn a video game on your own, and then try it with your 14 year old son beside you.  With the benefit of his experience, and his bank of knowledge, built from games played by his social network, you very quickly pick up the things you need to know, and learn the distractions that you can safely ignore.

In business it is vital to have people in the room who have been there before, who saw the situation before, and can tell the strategies they used to work through it.  That is not to say you should slavishly follow an old strategy.  Remember, the competition also have a guy in the room who was there last time around.  If they lost the last “match” chances are they are going to adjust strategy this time round.  But the starting point is to know what happened in the last war.

The biggest danger in the “pattern recognition” engine is the way it craves order in chaos.  The human mind abhors uncertainty.  When faced with pure chaos it scrambles for anything that might make sense.  Derren Brown, the UK “magician”, illustrated this with a very funny episode “Trick or Treat” where he wired a sensor to a goldfish tank.  Each time the goldfish swam past the sensor a counter added a score.

In a separate room he assembled a group of people, who were told they could win an amount of money if they managed to get the counter to 100 in a given time.  They did not realise that they had no control over the counter.  They jumped, shouted, ran about, organised themselves, disorganised themselves, and sometimes it seemed to work.  The counter moved.  So they would repeat what they did, and fail.  Their brains were trying to make order out of chaos.

It is this struggle to make order from chaos that has led to some of the worst episodes in human history.  When things are at their worst, the pressure to find an answer is more acute, and we do some really bad things or make some really bad decisions.  Aztecs harvesting thousands of heads, Celts burning people in wicker men, burning witches, self immolation, sacrificing virgins, anything that might work.

Then into this space you get people with an agenda, who see that the time is right to lay blame on a section of the community.  God is displeased with us because we tolerated  Jews/Gays/Irish/Blacks/Dancers/Gamblers/Alcohol whatever.  Now the time is rife to rid ourselves of this evil and set ourselves straight with some made up divinity who seems to have a pretty nasty and narrow minded agenda.

Of course this would never happen in the business world.  When we operate in the workplace we make rational decisions, based on logical analysis of events, and we don’t allow demagogues to hijack the agenda and drive us collectively to construct a new tower of Babel…..do we?  Well, sadly we do.  We see success and we see the guy who causes the success and we assume that he must have the “secret”.  OK he isn’t slicing off heads and rolling them down the front steps, but he may be doing the business equivalent.  Look at Enron, Nick Leeson in Barings Bank, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, securitization of sub-prime mortgages, contracts for difference.  The truth is, the more confusing a derivative is, the more magical it seems to those who cannot understand how it works.  Many senior managers in banks failed to spot the magic tricks for what they were, because they were working at first.

In World War 2 both Churchill and Hitler interfered with military strategy.  The lucky thing for the British was that some of Churchill’s early interventions were disasters, and he bowed to sound military analysis later in the war.  The unlucky thing for the Germans was that all of Hitler’s early interventions were successful.  His cabinet believed that he had a magic touch, and his interference became more pervasive and more damaging

In the workplace if you have senior managers who are seen as having a magic touch, that in itself should be a warning sign.  These managers should be subject to MORE monitoring and analysis to ensure they are making commercially sound decisions.  Instead the opposite holds true.  The manager who delivers a big win is given more latitude than his non-performing counterparts.  He may buy into the belief that he has that bit of magic, and he may carry out less and less analysis on his own decisions.  He is given more and more resources to “gamble” on the next big move.  If he is given enough rope he will ultimately make the bad decision that costs the company dearly.

A worse situation is that the manager is someone with an agenda.  His agenda is not aligned with the corporate goals.  His decisions are being made to line his own pocket, at the ultimate expense of the business itself.  The greater the flux in the market, the greater the uncertainty, the easier it is for this person to make the call that can collapse the business.

In Ancient Rome a triumphant general was made up to look like a God for the day of his triumph.  He rode through the city in a chariot at the head of his army.  A priest in the chariot had the job of repeating constantly, in his ear, “Remember, you are only a mortal”.  In business we need those kinds of priests.

 

What can we do to protect businesses?

1.  Operate the same decision control procedures for all managers.
2. Ensure that charismatic “stars” have grounded detail analysts on their teams.
3. Make sure everyone understands how an investment works, there is no magic money.
4. A solicitor on the decision team to ask “is this legal?”
5. Post-decision analysis.  Something that appears in every textbook, but seldom exists in reality.  We are all focused on the next big thing and it seems wasteful to analyse what is over.  We should bring in a cold resource, from outside the decision team, who will demonstrate what elements of the success were due to team decisions, and what elements were down to general market movements.  The winning teams hate these guys, but they can separate the myth from the reality, and greatly change the way you will approach the next opportunity.

-=o0o=-

This site is available for free and I make no money from any ads you see here. If you would like to show your appreciation feel free to leave a comment or you can buy me a coffee! http://buymeacoffee.com/DonalClancy