I don’t know how much you can trust polling inside Russia, but even so… consider this:

What is most surprising to me is that Russians’ attitudes toward the United States have actually worsened during Obama’s first year in office compared with what they were during the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush…

(Emphasis mine.)

After not even a year of this vanity-fueled ineptitude on the international stage, we are weaker at home and less-respected around the world.

This was a rather interesting and serious visit, and I got to spend quite a bit of time talking with both business and government leaders about their longer-term development plans and aspirations. If there is interest (vote in comments ), I can try to put together a more serious post later in the week (once I get home and get everything settled back down).

But for your Sunday morning relaxation, I’ll just present a few photos from Nairobi for some cultural upliftenment.

More below the fold….

Despite being at a latitude of 1.3 degrees south, Nairobi actually has a very nice climate. The city is at an elevation of 5400 feet - the Brits sure knew how to pick their spots for administrative centers.

East Africa is basically dry, so Kenya is mostly open grasslands. Thus, grazing is the main agricultural activity - and Kenya is heavenly on the BBQ count.

It’s also strange to see the contrast between persistent Third World squalor (such as cattle being driven along the median strip of a major highway) and a great deal of gleaming new construction.

But as I said above, we can leave the serious stuff for the workweek. Here are a few photos and comments.

Sunshine and flowers abound.

Meeting room name FAIL.

More flowers….

Is this sculpture racist?

Meeting room name WIN. (RS insider joke….)

More flowers….

Another flowering tree….

More flowers….

More flowers….

More flowers….

This is an interesting (and beautiful) flowering bush. It produces flowers in three colors (which you can see if you look closely) - white, lavender, and violet. From that the bush derives its poetic name of “Yesterday, today, and tomorrow.” The smell of the blossoms is heavenly.

More flowers….

More flowers….

This is an interesting feature of the mid-day sun at latitude 1.3S at this time of year….

Finis.

Jimmy Carter is prominently mentioned - as is LBJ.

But recent events prompt me to give you another one - of a presidency that never even happened.

Barack Obama is Walter Mondale. And he insists on running - 25 years later - a silly philosophy that was soundly rejected at the polls in 1984 (and, within a few short years, by history itself).

More below the fold.

This thought has been percolating in my mind for some time, but last week’s jaw-dropping announcement seemed to clinch it - and indeed the deep-in-the-night announcement of the surrender to Russia on missile defense in eastern Europe is a cataclysm.

Last fall when I was in Estonia, Estonians were still very rattled by the Russian moves against Georgia - since it was an eerie replay of their own history and seemed even to possibly provide a ghastly prototype of what they themselves might be facing in the not-too-distant future.

While I realize that Senator McCain has long driven us nuts over the past many years, this sort of thing was one reason why I was fully willing to put up with him as our Presidential candidate - regardless of his domestic transgressions, he has always taken a very hard line against our foreign adversaries and enemies. My main fear with Mr. Obama has been his spineless, ahistorical touchy-feely worldview - one that harsher men will be happy to exploit.

But three points to share in here:

As noted we’ve discussed numerous metaphors for Mr. Obama, but I keep getting stuck now on one in particular - that he’s trying to run the 1984 Walter Mondale presidency that we never got (not even close).

Anyone who was around then (I was) can recount for you the intellectual irritation of leftists back then - that THEY knew how to handle the world situation better than we knuckledraggers. They never got the chance to try - see the results of the 1984 presidential election. Many of them have nursed that grievance for a quarter-century - and Mr. Obama (as his contemporaneous writings make clear) is one of them. So they have dusted off their playbook from back then and are giving it a whirl - even though the world of 2009 and the world of 1984 are vastly different.

Back then, the problem wasn’t Soviet belligerence, aggression, and oppression. No, it was all our doing that the bear was cantankerous. You see, “Russia” had been invaded so many times, such as by Napoleon in 1812 and Hitler in 1941 - and we had to understand that “root cause” of the psychological trauma (what psycho-babble that all was!!). If we were nice to the bear, and would stop talking about things like “human rights” and “economic growth” and robustly defending our freedoms…. and instead started acting nice, and talking about acknowledging the bear’s past trauma, and grant it recognition of a “sphere of influence” over the empire it possessed (against the will of the subjects)…. well, then the bear would purr like a kitten, curl up beside the nice warm woodstove, and fall placidly asleep.

And, oh, in central America, all those burning communist power-grabbing squads certainly weren’t due to outside influence. They were uprisings against the awful (American-sponsored, of course) oligarchs! We should just get with the plan, acknowledge our past sins and required present penance, and turns our allies over to the communists as a offering.

Then, of course, we could next gut all military budgets…. and “invest” (sic) all that money in the reaching of the ultimate endpoint of human social evolution - the western European welfare state.

Does any of this sound familiar of late?

It’s almost bizarre to remember - particularly as events were to unfold just a few years later - that supposedly serious people believed these sorts of things. The loathing and snobbishness of the left back then is identical to that of today. And they were indeed aggrieved that despite their obvious correctness and intellectual superiority, they were laughed off the stage (49 states) in 1984.

Remember El Salvador? Well, with El Salvador no longer around to be given over to the communists, today apparently Honduras will serve as a contemporary substitute.

But perhaps the ultimate incarnation of leftist loathing of President Reagan centered around missile defense.

When President Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative in a 1983 speech, the entire lefto-sphere went completely - hysterically - bananas.

The following years were filled with “study” after “study” - “proving” that it couldn’t work…. or that if it did work it would be expensive…. and even if it did work somehow we shouldn’t do it because it might offend the bear….

It was all very silly - and the silliness got stomped in November 1984 by 49 states to 1.

Since then, it’s never mattered to the rabid left whether or not missile defense could work and even be cost-effective - or that it could be more useful when arrayed against small-scale adversaries.

It was just OFFENSIVE to them back then - and for more than a quarter century they have seethed at every continuation and every success that anti-missile technology has scored.

So now we are seeing a reactionary obsession with running the Mondale presidency of the 1980s that never was.

o Defense is icky - cut military budgets and be “strong” in things non-military.

o No missile defense - it’s aesthetically offensive.

o Coddle our enemies and adversaries, and betray our friends and allies.

Of course, we regarded all this as settled history. Communism collapsed, the Iron Curtain crumbled, and the old evil empire opened up. And as some of us can testify based on a great deal of on-the-ground experience, those stranded inside the communist world absolutely loathed that system, were absolutely delighted to see it go, and have never wanted it back.

Today, all the old statues of that old rat Lenin are gone. Instead, statues and place names commemorate Ronald Reagan - and Pope John Paul II.

This was supposed to all be left in the past now. It’s bizarre to see this reactionary insistence on running Walter Mondale’s rejected (and ultimately demonstrably incorrect) worldview.

In my many long chats with my many eastern European friends (especially in Estonia - where, due to some coincidences, I actually know a fair number of people in governmental circles), I long ago noted how they regarded their memberships in organizations such as the EU and NATO as being important for symbolism as much as anything else - that in the now-cemented new-order, they were permanently linked to what had been the “free” part of Europe (via the EU) and also the United States (via NATO and other security arrangements).

Given my understanding of “old” European spinelessness - and the obvious reptilian impulses that were clearly made visible by the Chiracs and Schroeders - I cautioned them that they might be reading too much into the idea that they had “friends” in the EU now and were equals; that as “equals” they would be protected by an “all for one, one for all” standing out of Brussels.

My caution was that to the contrary, the reptiles in places like Paris, Berlin, and Brussels could see them less as equals and more as cattle - being available for “free,” they could be easily acquired but then perhaps traded back to the Russian sphere for considerations of various sorts. (The notion here is simple - if you can pick up something for nothing that might eventually have tangible “sales” value for you not too far down the road, why not?)

This scenario, sadly, appears to be kicking into motion, as the frightening condominium of Russia and Germany (an old source of endless trouble for eastern Europe - but now featuring a foolish Germany being increasingly Finlandized due its stupid insistence on throwing away nuclear energy, a gap that can only be battened with Russian natural gas) begins to gain traction.

Sadly, Mr. Obama now appears to be entering the same game - regarding our eastern European allies as mere trifles that can be handed back to the Russian Empire; in this case, the return seems to be nothing more than some sort of demented goodwill gesture.

One of my strange senses regarding a McCain presidency was that a key “victory” would be that another four years of containment and the Putin/Kremlin notion of a Russian revival (along the lines of Mr. Putin’s idol, Peter the Great) would collapse under the weight of Russia’s poverty, weakness, and demographic/social problems.

I had thought that an Obama presidency could be a magic elixir to revive Russian ambitions.

The problem inherent in those two sentences is something I’ve said in these pages already - that in my view, Putin et al. are becoming belligerent and expansion-minded not in spite of the domestic social problems - but because of them.

In their view, Russia’s social problems exist because Russia is weak - and that if Russia can be made strong and great again, Russia’s social problems will melt away.

As I’ve said before, the issue isn’t whether this view is correct or not - it’s a matter of what the Kremlin believes, since it will act on those beliefs.

At this point, that worldview inside the Kremlin seems to be gaining confirmation - that basically “It’s working!!” Russian belligerence is paying off, and Russia’s “containers” are conceding ground regarding Russia’s revival of its old tsarist “sphere of influence.”

I do not know how these will play out.

But I do know that the world is a much more dangerous and unstable place than it was even a week ago.

However, the “War of 1812” (which actually stretched on until the end of 1814) was anything but trivial. Circumstances concatenated to a fever pitch in the later part of 1814, as the fledgling United States of America frantically fought off a three-pronged British attack of continental scope.

And while today we mark more recent events, we should also note that perhaps the most crucial of those moments occurred on this date in 1814 – in the waters near (of all places) Plattsburgh, New York.

The tale is told – in words and pictures – below the fold.

The “War of 1812” had begun mostly due to American consternation with British belligerence toward American merchant shipping. British navy vessels had begun to stop American merchant ships on the high seas without justification – and were also in the habit of taking away sailors they liked for forced service in the British Navy.

During the first two-or-so years of the war, most of the action had been at sea – where the new-and-inexperienced United States Navy distinguished itself; to the surprise of the more-experienced British, American ships out-maneuvered and out-fought their British opponents in engagement after engagement. It was during these battles that the U.S.S. Constitution accumulated a legendary battle record – and became known, due to her resilience against British cannon shot, as “Old Ironsides.”

On land, hardly anything happened. The “United States” were, to a large degree, “united” only in name; most of the possibly-available land forces consisted of state militias – which were under the control not of the federal government in Washington, but of the various governors of the individual states.

The only notable action was a tragicomic attempt by some units of the New York state militia to capture Canada – which resulted in the burning of York (Toronto) and an embarrassing rout at the hands of the British.

For two years, the British showed little interest in this little North American war – largely because they had the proverbial bigger fish to fry.

For some twenty years, Britain had been engaged in a large and far-ranging war against Napoleon and revolutionary France. This war had been fought on land and sea, and over nearly all of Europe – and even in the Middle East.

But in 1814, Britain and her allies finally managed to defeat France; the situation on the continent was settled, and Napoleon abdicated and was sent into exile on the Mediterranean island of Elba. (He, of course, escaped from Elba in 1815 and returned to France for a brief revival of his fortunes – but that is another story.)

With Napoleon defeated, the British could now turn their attention (and considerable resources) to putting an end to the nagging conflict that had been dragging on – in desultory fashion – in North America.

The British plans for inflicting a catastrophic defeat on the United States – one that would allow the British to impose a favorable peace settlement – were quite simple.

The British planned a three-pronged attack for the latter part of 1814; the three prongs would come at the United States from its three geographic extremes – the south, the east, and the north.

The southern prong would attack and capture the critical American port of New Orleans – critical because it was the port for the (lucrative) export of American agricultural products from the middle of the continent. New Orleans would provide a valuable negotiating bargaining chip – or a prize that Britain would happily retain.

The eastern prong would attack Washington DC and the surrounding areas – perhaps as much as anything, this would provide a diversion that might serve to draw resources away from the defenses under attack by the more-crucial southern and northern prongs.

The goal of the northern prong had been subject to some debate. Given the position of British Canada, it would have made considerable strategic sense to attack along the line of the Great Lakes – to secure British use of the Great Lakes for its Canadian territories.

However, the objective of the British strategy was not to secure its position in Canada. The objective was to inflict a stinging defeat on the United States – both to be able to force a favorable (to the British) peace settlement, and to teach the United States a lesson.

Thus, the northern prong revived a strategic line-of-attack that the British has used previously – in 1776 and 1777. From their bases in Québec, a combined land-and-naval force would move down the Lake Champlain valley – following the natural Champlain-Hudson corridor, perhaps as far (if circumstances permitted) as Albany, New York.

To facilitate this attack, some 15,000 British troops – mostly regulars, veterans of the campaigns against Napoleon – were sent to Canada to form the core of the land force. At the same time, the British set up a ship-building operation on the Richelieu River (into which Lake Champlain drains), just north of the U.S. border.

The circumstances that flowed from the southern and eastern prongs of the British attack are now fairly well-known. These attacks had crucial objectives, and were occurring in heavily-populated “core” regions of the United States.

In contrast, the northern prong was moving into what was even then considered a remote part of the United States.

However, the northern prong may have been the most dangerous of the three for one critical reason.

In sharp contrast to the southern and eastern prongs, the British could launch the northern prong from British territory (rather than having to support the effort entirely from the sea). Bases could be established, materials stockpiled, and troops and support-staff assembled – all on British territory.

In Washington, American war planners knew that a big British attack was coming – and they knew that they could expect a major British attack from Canada. They thus sent two commanders – and what troops they could scrape together – to Plattsburgh, New York. Plattsburgh was the closest town of any size to British Canada, and provided a reasonable location to keep watch on British intentions.

In the meantime, the two American commanders arrived in the Lake Champlain basin and began to do what they could. The land commander was General Alexander Macomb – a 32-year-old general who proved to be very talented. The sea commander was the 30-year-old Commodore Thomas MacDonough; by a wonderful stroke of luck, MacDonough turned out to be a naval commander of exception insight and ability.

While Macomb assembled his small corps of some 5,500 troops at Plattsburgh, MacDonough set up a ship-building operation at Skenesborough, New York. During the summer of 1814, MacDonough oversaw a frantic operation that cobbled together a small fleet for operations on Lake Champlain. As summer began to wane, MacDonough’s shipwrights had assembled several gunboats, and four sail-worthy vessels – the brig Eagle, the sloop Preble, and schooner Ticonderoga, and the small frigate Saratoga - which, being the largest vessel, MacDonough made his flagship.

During the summer of 1814, the British had also been busy – around their main base at St. Jean-sur-Richelieu. The British commanders, Governor-General (of Canada) George Prevost and Admiral George Downie, had collected shipwrights from both Canada and Britain – but had also taken advantage of the ability to bring in large pre-fabricated parts of naval vessels that had been manufactured back in Britain. This allowed the British to build up a small but formidable fleet – the sloops Chubb and Finch, the brig Linnet, and the centerpiece (and flagship), the full-sized frigate Confiance.

By late August, the British were ready to move. Likewise, MacDonough had completed his flotilla at Skenesborough, and moved it north to Plattsburgh.

But in Washington, there was consternation. Would the British attack into the Great Lakes – or down Lake Champlain?

Trying to figure out British intentions was a murky business – be it from scraps of gathered information, or trying to make educated guesses from the circumstances.

But in August, a decision was made – that the main British thrust in the north would likely move along the line of the Great Lakes. While MacDonough’s ships could not be moved, most (some 4,000) of Macomb’s troops were sent west to defend the Great Lakes.

Left with barely 1,000 troops, Macomb was frantic. He put out a call to the governors of New York and Vermont for militia reinforcements, and also recruited any volunteers he could find.

Surprisingly, Macomb’s call was answered –as some 2,000 New York and Vermont militia troops were mustered and arrived at Plattsburgh

In the most prominent example, the Vermont state militia had mustered some 1,000 men; however, their governor had ordered them to remain in the state to guard Vermont’s own border with Canada.

But they went anyway – crossing the lake to Plattsburgh and joining Macomb’s army.

On August 31st, 1814, the British moved south – with the land force moving along the western shore of Lake Champlain toward Plattsburgh, and the naval force, led by the Confiance, moving along the lake as the north wind would permit.

Macomb and MacDonough got word of these moves; the game was on.

The northern part of Lake Champlain; the horizontal line across the top is the U.S.-Canadian border, while the wavy line down the lake is the New York / Vermont border. Lake Champlain drains into the Richelieu River at the top left of the lake in the photo; it was down this line that the British – in 1814 as in 1776 – advanced from their bases in Canada. In addition to this starting point, the New York / Vermont border provides what is essentially the main north/south channel of the lake; the channel to the east of the Lake Champlain islands (which are part of Vermont) is more difficult – and at the time, the channel was blocked by a sandbar that is clearly visible today as a causeway connecting South Hero island with the Vermont “mainland.” (Photo from Microsoft Virtual Earth.)

To the inexperienced eye, Lake Champlain doesn’t look like much. It is a big, long lake that occupies a north-south valley; while 12 miles wide at its widest point, its length – from the opening-up of the Poultney River in the south to its closing-in to its drainage into the Richelieu River in the north – is greater than 100 miles.

But to a mariner with some experience, Lake Champlain is a uniquely-treacherous body of water.

Much of the shoreline of Lake Champlain is crooked and rocky, and the lake is infested with dangerous shoals and jetties – many of which project out far from the visible pieces of land to which they are attached.

The lake is also notorious for its short-period waves – waves that in height alone seem unimposing, but which come at a frighteningly-high frequency.

But perhaps the most maddening aspect of Lake Champlain is its winds. Channeled by the valley, Lake Champlain’s winds are constrained – and thus blow almost exclusively from either the north, or from the south.

When the winds are light, the lake takes on a small chop – and is a delight. But when the winds kick up, the open lake is worked up into a froth and takes on the appearance of a boiling cauldron.

These eccentricities of Lake Champlain were to play a crucial role in the upcoming battle.

Commodore MacDonough had had the summer of 1814 to familiarize himself with the peculiarities of Lake Champlain – and in this, he “did his homework” and showed a surprising ability to quickly grasp those peculiarities.

One peculiarity he clearly noted was how the rocky shoreline – and its numerous rocky headlands – caused conditions to vary radically between those found in-shore and those encountered on the open lake. In particular, he noted how even in-shore, the wind conditions – and water conditions – were frequently very different on the windward and leeward sides of the various headlands.

A quick study, MacDonough formed plans in his mind to take advantage of those peculiarities, if and when the time came.

During the first days of September, the British infantry had no difficulty moving across the border and down along the New York shoreline of Lake Champlain.

However, Lake Champlain’s fickle winds were causing problems for the British fleet. With the wind regularly channeling from the south (rather than the north), the British fleet made slow southward progress – and fell well behind the British land force.

With overwhelming numerical superiority, the British land force kept moving. General Prevost’s first objective had been the capture of Plattsburgh – and he moved on to that non-nautical task.

Approaching Plattsburgh on September 6th, Prevost sought out a ford on the Saranac River – so as to come around and attack Plattsburgh from the west.

Unknown to the British, Macomb had sensibly chosen the Saranac River as his main defensive line – and that crucial ford was closely guarded by the men of the Vermont state militia.

Despite their dolorous experiences in both the French-and-Indian War and the Revolutionary War, the British still had not bothered to grasp the notion that marching and battle dress were very different matters for open European battlefields vs. the dense forests of eastern North America. The core of the British land force that was approaching Plattsburgh was excellent – being composed of veteran troops from Wellington’s “Peninsular Campaign” against Napoleon in Spain. But as in the past, the British were dressed in bright red jackets, and marched in good order through the American forests.

Finding the ford, the British troops approached in those bright red jackets. Hidden in the underbrush on the south side of the river – dressed more appropriately in dark greens and tawny browns, and with pine boughs stuck into their hats to provide extra cover – was the Vermont militia.

As the first British troops splashed into the Saranac River, the Vermont troops opened fire. Taken by surprise, and unable to spot their well-covered and well-camouflaged adversaries, the British quickly took heavy loses and, unable to respond, beat a hasty retreat.

Prevost then decided that a combined land-and-water attack would be a better option for capturing Plattsburgh. He kicked back and waited for Downie’s fleet to make its way down the lake to join him.

With the action on land having started, MacDonough knew that the British fleet couldn’t be far behind. He needed to come up with a strategy – and he knew that he faced three particular tactical problems.

The first was that he knew that he would be outgunned; with their pre-fabricating methods and long experience of ship-building, the British fleet would be carrying more guns than MacDonough’s fleet.

The second factor was that MacDonough doubtless knew that he faced a crew-quality disparity; the British crews consisted of veteran officers and sailors – many of whom had served as far back as Trafalgar, nine years earlier – while his own crews had been assembled hastily and were inexperienced.

The third factor was the lake itself. MacDonough had quickly figured out that the numerous shoals, fickle winds, and land-effects on those winds, made it undesirable to fight a conventional sea battle – of maneuver – on Lake Champlain. Besides those factors themselves, as per the prior paragraph MacDonough must have understood that an engagement in tricky waters might turn the British crew-experience to decisive advantage.

MacDonough needed to find a unique strategy – one crafted to neutralize British advantages, while taking advantage of his knowledge of the temperament of Lake Champlain.

The legendary German general Erwin Rommel was once asked how it was that he was able to come to Africa and lead the thrown-together “Afrika Corps” to victory after spectacular victory over the British.

Rommel replied that he quickly learned that since he had a mechanized army in the open Sahara desert, he had to think about his tactical problems in a completely different manner. He quickly learned to think of the open desert as the sea, and his mechanized vehicles as ships on that sea. Operating in that tactical manner, he ran rings around his conventionally-minded British opponents for a year.

Rommel, in his own words, had found a way to convert a land battle into a sea battle.

MacDonough faced a similar tactical problem, as denoted above. He was also doubtless mindful of the strategy that had been adopted – under similar circumstances – in 1776 by Benedict Arnold, at nearby Valcour Island.

Arnold had taken advantage of the winds of Lake Champlain in a carefully-considered fashion. Knowing that the British would only be able to ride down the lake on a northerly wind, he carefully positioned his small fleet of gunboats in the channel behind Valcour Island – forcing the British to reverse course and come upwind if they wanted to engage.

MacDonough adopted a similar strategy – and, doing the opposite of Rommel, he chose a way of (more-or-less) converting a sea battle into a land battle.

A detailed view of Cumberland Bay in front of Plattsburgh, New York; the large peninsula of Cumberland Head protects the bay from the north, while little Crab Island is clearly visible near the south end of the bay. MacDonough formed his anchored battle line along a south-southwest to north-northeast line running from Crab Island north to near the shoreline of Cumberland Head just on the inside of the bay. (Photo from Microsoft Virtual Earth.)

MacDonough had his four main ships form a defensive line, pointing north, in Cumberland Bay in front of Plattsburgh. As in 1776, the British would only be able to run southward on the lake on a good north wind – and would have to reverse course and move upwind if they wanted to engage his ships. In addition, MacDonough had been careful to observe the details of Lake Champlain. He had noted that while a strong north wind might be blowing out in the open waters of Lake Champlain, once a ship had rounded rocky Cumberland Head and entered Cumberland Bay, the terrain of Cumberland Head provided excellent cover from the north wind – often leaving Cumberland Bay calm even as whitecaps surged southward along the water outside of the bay.

Thus, MacDonough anchored his ships in line – from north to south were the Eagle, the Saratoga, the Ticonderoga, and the Preble.

The Americans then waited for the British fleet to arrive.

The view southward down the main channel of Lake Champlain, with the northern side of the peninsula of Cumberland Head visible on the right. This is the view that the British would have had as they arrived on the evening of September 10th, 1814. (Photo by the author.)

Finally receiving a favorable north wind to move them down the lake, Downie and the British fleet arrived just north of Cumberland Head late on the afternoon of September 10th. Some of the British officers wanted to race immediately to the attack, but Downie demurred; in the shortening days of September the light was fast fading. In addition, Downie wanted to reconnoiter the American position in the bay – and he also wanted to make arrangements with Prevost for a combined land-and-lake attack.

With these preparations complete, Downie returned to the Confiance for the night. He would move against MacDonough’s fleet if-and-when a favorable north wind was available.

Sunday, September 11th, 1814 dawned clear and fresh – and a light northerly wind was stirring down the valley of Lake Champlain. Downie had what he wanted; the British ships weighed anchor, raised their sails, and moved to the attack.

The rocky and heavily-treed tip of Cumberland Head. This is the view that the British would have had as they approached Cumberland Head and prepared to round it – to enter Cumberland Bay and engage the American fleet. (Photo by the author.)

The British fleet fell into a line of the Finch, the Confiance, the Linnet, and the Chubb – which they intended to reverse-in-position upon entering Cumberland Bay. In short order, the British fleet rounded Cumberland Head, and moved into Cumberland Bay – where MacDonough and the Americans were waiting for them.

As the British ships entered Plattsburgh Bay, Downie and his men – many of whom had indeed served with Nelson – must have had in mind a great British triumph of a few years earlier under similar circumstances.

On August 1st, 1798, a British fleet, commanded by the legendary Horatio Nelson, had found Napoleon’s French invasion fleet in an excellent protective anchorage on the Egyptian coast, at Aboukir Bay.

In the narrow and dangerous bay – protected by a headland and studded with numerous dangerous in-shore shoals – the French fleet (its commander knowing of the superiority of the British sailors he faced) sat at anchor in a defensive battle line.

In one of the most astounding achievements of the age of sail, Nelson split his fleet into two columns, and had the ships of one column – the ships commanded by his very best captains – maneuver in close to shore, past the front of the French line, and in-shore of the French line. The French had figured that it would be impossible to get in-shore of their line and into the bay – but the British ships managed this. Attacked from both sides, the French fleet was completely destroyed – with all of its ships being either destroyed or captured.

Downie may have wished to repeat this triumph.

As the British ships came into Plattsburgh Bay, Downie tried to form them into a line – with a turned-around line-order of the Chubb, the Linnet, the Confiance, and the Finch – and sail in order past the head of the American line. This would have been the classic naval maneuver of “capping the T,” in which the attacking vessels can unleash full broadsides while their opponents can only return fire from the very limited number of guns on their bows. The British ships would then have been able to circle behind MacDonough’s line and – as at Aboukir Bay – attack from both sides.

But Lake Champlain is not the Mediterranean – and Cumberland Bay is not Aboukir Bay.

As Downie’s ships tried to make the desired maneuver, MacDonough’s homework on Lake Champlain’s unique conditions began to pay off. As MacDonough had foreseen, the rocky profile of Cumberland Head blocked the north wind so effectively that conditions in Plattsburgh Bay were nearly calm.

The view into Cumberland Bay upon rounding Cumberland Head. Readers are encouraged to click on this photo for a full-size version – since in the larger version, the “calm line” that begins from the very point of Cumberland Head (and which extends south) is clearly visible; this clearly shows how Cumberland Head blocks a north wind and produces much calmer conditions inside Cumberland Bay. (Photo by the author.)

Looking eastward out of Cumberland Bay into the broad lake; in the first photo, the tip of Cumberland Head is visible on the left. These are the views that MacDonough and his men would have had of the British ships entering Cumberland Bay. (Photos by the author.)

The lead British vessel (the Chubb) was unable to make any progress toward the front of the American line; in the meantime, the starboard guns of the American ships were able to open fire while the British ships were still trying to maneuver and had their under-gunned bows pointed at the Americans. Due to MacDonough’s tactical foresight, for the moment it was actually the Americans who were able to bring more firepower to bear.

In the nearly calm water, things went further wrong for the British.

As the Chubb tried to lead the British line around the front of the American line, it got ahead of its companions; in addition, in the unexpected (to the British) calm of Cumberland Bay, the Chubb was unable to maneuver – and began to drift.

Thus exposed, the Chubb became a magnet for the American gunners. Heavily hit and already uncontrollable due to the calm, the Chubb drifted right on in to the American line – where its captain sensibly surrendered to the Americans.

At the south end of Cumberland Bay, the British suffered a further debilitating embarrassment.

Near the south end of Cumberland Bay sits small and rather unimposing Crab Island.

As was all-too-common in army camps of the era, Macomb’s army had a fair number of men who had taken ill and were too sick to serve in the defensive positions along the Saranac River. As was also the usual case at the time, Macomb set up a sick ward camp for this ill and invalided soldiers; rather than put this camp somewhere in the forests south of his defensive position, something possessed Macomb to instead place the sick camp on Crab Island. This was not a random choice; Macomb also saw to it that a few cannon and some ammunition were deployed to Crab Island and made available at the northern end of the island – on the odd chance that they might be able to do some good during the naval battle.

This seemingly-trivial set-up ended up paying off handsomely for the Americans.

Crab Island doesn’t look like much – the northern end of the island is rather drab-looking, with a simple rounded rocky shore coming down to meet the lake.

Crab Island, near the south end of Cumberland Bay. This is the view from the north that anyone in Cumberland Bay would have of the island. (Photo by the author.)

However, Crab Island – in typical Lake Champlain fashion – is more than meets the eye. Modern nautical charts clearly show that a long, rocky jetty juts out from the northern end of Crab Island – extending out some 1,500 feet from the island’s shore and pointing roughly to the north-northeast. This jetty lurks invisibly below the surface, but for most of its length – although narrow – it sits only some two to four feet below the surface of the lake.

Having led the British line downwind on the ride toward Cumberland Bay, the Finch was the farthest down the bay when the order came to turn and run into the bay to engage the Americans. Unfortunately for the Finch, the ship was caught by the calm zone – and started drifting sideways toward Crab Island.

To the British sailors on the Finch, this didn’t seem to be a problem – they were well north of Crab Island, and had plenty of room to maneuver.

However, the crewmen on the Finch were unaware of the narrow jetty that lurked just below the surface. As the Finch tried to turn itself around and move into the bay, it suddenly ran aground on the narrow jetty.

Under normal circumstances, this would not have been a problem – it would not have been terribly difficult (with some effort) to free the Finch and resume battle maneuvers.

But here, Macomb’s little ploy paid off in a big way. Seeing the Finch run aground, enough of Macomb’s sick troops were able to rush down to man the provided cannon. Hard aground, an easy fixed target for the gunners on Crab Island, and unable to quickly free itself, the Finch was forced to surrender.

By simply understanding the unique conditions of Lake Champlain and Cumberland Bay and planning strategy accordingly – and with a little luck – MacDonough and Macomb had taken two of the four large British ships out of the battle before the battle had really begun.

With the British ships nearly becalmed, Downie was making no headway in his attempted maneuvers. Seeing that the Confiance was starting to drift – and was beginning to suffer from the outgoing American fire – Downie decided to drop anchor and maneuver the Confiance with anchor lines.

It took some time in the calm water, but Downie eventually managed to maneuver the Confiance into position. Belatedly, he was able to fire off a broadside at the Saratoga.

The heavy British guns staggered and hurt the Saratoga - killing or seriously wounding a fifth of her crewmen with that first broadside. As the exchanges of fire continued, the Americans fought back furiously – and in a hail of cannon fire, Downie was killed and all of his senior officers were either killed or wounded.

By this point, the Confiance had been hit hard; her senior officers were dead, and many of her cannon had been knocked out, reducing her rate of fire.

But the heavier gunnery of the Confiance was beginning to tell. The Saratoga was in even worse shape; her starboard side was wrecked, and hardly any of her starboard cannon were still serviceable.

In addition to the usual bow and stern anchors, MacDonough had also (prior to the battle) ordered that several other anchors be deployed from the Saratoga. Foreseeing the possible extrema that he now faced, these anchors were intended to serve as kedging lines – to allow MacDonough to (in a pinch) maneuver the Saratoga in the nearly-calm waters.

That moment had arrived.

MacDonough gave a seemingly strange order to the crew of the Saratoga. He ordered them to cut the line of the bow anchor, and to kedge-in the lines running to the stern anchor and the constellation of kedge-anchors,

Slowly, majestically, and in almost total silence in the nearly-calm water, the Saratoga began to pivot and turn about herself. For several tens-of-seconds, she turned in place – the silence punctuated only by the occasional creaking of her timbers.

During this interval, MacDonough’s surviving gunners scrambled over to the port side of the Saratoga, and frantically prepared the port-side cannon for action.

At first, the surviving British officers on the Confiance looked on in puzzlement at the Saratoga’s strange maneuver. Too late – and to their horror – they realized what was happening.

As the Saratoga came about, the anchor crews stopped turning the capstans, and the Saratoga settled to a stop in the water – her undamaged port side now facing the Confiance.

Suddenly, the Confiance was a sitting duck – and MacDonough wasted no time in taking advantage of the situation his maneuver had created.

The Saratoga unleashed a devastating broadside that shattered, splintered, and wrecked the Confiance.

The junior officer now in command of the Confiance tried – belatedly – to execute a similar maneuver. However, all this managed to achieve was the turning of the completely-vulnerable stern of the Confiance directly at the now-restored Saratoga.

Sensing that a decisive advantage was at hand, the guns crews of the Saratoga poured it on with everything they had. The crippled Confiance was faced completely the wrong way and was helpless; several more broadsides from the Saratoga turned her into a floating wreck.

Faced with reality, the British commander struck colors and surrendered the Confiance.

Not wasting any time on enjoying his triumph, MacDonough quickly gave orders to pivot the Saratoga once again – this time to point its port cannon at the last surviving British ship, the suddenly-outgunned Linnet.

The Saratoga quickly raked the Linnet with heavy fire, forcing its rapid surrender.

All four large British ships had been wrecked and forced to surrender. In contrast, the Eagle and the Preble were significantly damaged but still serviceable, the Ticonderoga - which had spent most of the battle fighting off a rather half-hearted attack by the small auxiliary group of British gunboats – was largely unscathed, and the Saratoga was damaged but triumphant.

The Battle of Plattsburgh was over. Due to MacDonough’s tactical brilliance – both before and during the battle – and the doggedness of his sailors, the Americans had won a stunning and decisive victory.

Once the firing had stopped, the surviving British officers came to MacDonough and offered him their swords in the traditional gesture of surrender. MacDonough refused the offer – telling them that he could not possibly accept the swords of such brave and valiant men.

In the meantime, the land part of the British attack had embarrassingly achieved precisely nothing. Trying to find the American positions, Prevost’s army had quite literally become lost in the woods to the west of Plattsburgh. Eventually noting a ridge that was sufficiently clear of trees to allow sighting, Prevost climbed to the top to get his bearings. Reaching the top, he was rewarded with the sight of the shattered, burning Confiance striking her colors and surrendering while the stars-and-stripes still flew above the Saratoga.

Despite seeing the effective end of the naval battle, Prevost now had his bearings and finally moved in the right direction. His vanguard troops began to come into contact with Macomb’s troops, and the volume of fire began to increase.

However, word soon arrived of the extent of the disaster that had befallen the British in the lake battle. Realizing that trying to continue the advance without a supporting fleet – with the Americans in command of the lake – and with the season already being quite late, Prevost reluctantly gave the order for his army to disengage and begin a retreat back to its bases in Canada.

As the British troops (and a few surviving gunboats on the lake) retreated northward, there was a final epilogue to the battle.

During the War of 1812, there had been a publicly-stated American policy that any British soldier or sailor who deserted and “came over” would be given amnesty and (more importantly) a grant of land sufficient for a farmstead.

The ability to own land was something that continued to be greatly circumscribed in Europe, but was of course a common feature of the United States – thus, this offer was tempting indeed.

As a result, during the retreat north to Canada, several hundred British troops and sailors (including the commander of the British gunboats) slipped away and deserted – and “came over” to receive their amnesty and their land grant.

A few days after the Battle of Plattsburgh, the British army crossed back into Canada. It would be the last time that foreign troops set foot on American soil.

Two days after the Battle of Plattsburgh, the eastern British attack prong captured and burned Washington DC – but was then memorably repulsed in a night naval battle near the entrance to the harbor of Baltimore.

In addition, the British also built a fleet on Lake Erie and tried to take naval control there; however, they were also defeated there, by an American fleet commanded by Oliver Hazard Perry – whose victory report consisted entirely of the laconic (but memorable), “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.”

With the northern and eastern prongs having been repulsed, the British turned to Lord Wellington – already famous, but soon to become legendary with his victory over Napoleon at Waterloo – for strategic advice. His take was that if Britain wanted to pursue the war in North American, it would require massive reinforcements on both land and water. The choice was either to make that massive effort – or to make peace.

The British choice the latter course – one that proved serendipitously-wise when 1815 unexpectedly found the British facing the sudden threat of the returned-to-France Napoleon.

Peace negotiations at Ghent (in Belgium) basically concluded a status quo agreement – one that basically left affairs in North America as they had been, while setting in final detail the arrangements between the United States and British Canada.

Perhaps the main factor was that Britain now recognized the existence of the United States of America – with its borders of the time – as permanent.

In one of history’s period-specific ironies, news of the peace treaty that had been signed at Ghent in the latter part of 1814 took weeks to actually reach the combatants in North America. Thus, the southern prong of the British attack proceeded in its plans – and on New Year’s Eve famously attacked the American defenders (commanded by the soon-to-be-famous Andrew Jackson) of New Orleans. Completing the sweep, the Americans routed the British and saved New Orleans.

The Treaty of Ghent had left New Orleans in American hands – so, had the British captured the city, the treaty would have required them to return it to the Americans. However, it is entirely possible that with such a prize in hand, the British would have retained the city. By winning the battle, the retention of New Orleans as an American city was absolutely assured.

The main outcome of the War of 1812 was that it really didn’t have one. The boundaries in North America remained unchanged. However, keeping those boundaries unchanged clearly represented an American victory. In addition, the Treaty of Ghent amounted to a British recognition that the United States of America was not a temporary entity – but was rather a now-permanent feature of the international landscape.

Thus, for the fledgling United States, the end of the War of 1812 represented a “settling” with Europe. With this “settling” along the eastern part of the continent, westward expansion could begin in earnest.

Today, we mark more recent (and searing) events.

But we should also pause to remember our own history.

And we should also remember that while the defeat of the British southern and eastern prongs are celebrated in song (the latter giving us our national anthem), there was a third prong in the north that was also defeated – a victory which does not seem to get the recognition that it truly deserves.

So today we should pause to remember the stunning victory that was won by the tactical genius of Commodore Thomas MacDonough and the doggedness of his sailors – on an inland sea in the far north, on September 11th, 1814.

End.

(References: With a little digging, information on the Battle of Plattsburgh is surprisingly ubiquitous. Of particular note, the Wikipedia entry isn’t half bad. The Battle of Plattsburgh Association has for years done a marvelous job of educating the public about the events of September 11th, 1814 - and holds a commemorative weekend every year to mark the event. Cannonade Filmworks of Plattsburgh, New York produced a relatively-good 56-minute-long documentary (”The Final Invasion”) on the battle back in 1999; copies of this documentary can actually be found in many public libraries nationwide. Of course, as the photos show, there’s no substitute for choosing a day when the wind and water conditions are similar to those of September 11th, 1814, and getting out there to examine the site.)

Seventy years ago today, the foreign ministers of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany - Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop - stunned the world by announcing a non-aggression pact between their two (totalitarian) countries.

While there had been a great deal of vituperate invective between the two great socialist powers, the underlying reality was that they had long been de facto allies. During the 1920s and into the 1930s, the Soviet Union provided training facilities for German pilots as Germany tried to secretly rebuild its air force - something that was forbidden to Germany under the terms of the Versailles Treaty. In the meantime, the Soviet Union continued to be a very large supplier of raw materials to Germany’s rebuilding industries. And during the 1930s, Nazi Germany’s nascent “security services” learned a great deal from the Soviet Union’s “security agency”….

So on the surface, the agreement of a simple “non-aggression pact” seemed rather anodyne.

But it was the secret protocols that were the real “content” of the agreement.

We’ll look at those details - and why they are suddenly important again - below the fold.

The mechanics of the secret protocols are best covered in pieces, from north to south.

Romania

Stalin wanted to carve some pieces off of Romania, and in the pact the Germans agreed to give him a free hand to do so.

The main trick of Stalin was to exploit an old piece of Romanian linguistic history.

Prior to Romania’s gaining of independence from the Ottoman Empire in the 1880s, Romanian - despite being a Latin-based language - had been written in Cyrillic. After independence, to help cultivate useful interactions with the more-developed countries of western Europe, a Latin-character alphabet was introduced as the official script for written Romanian.

Stalin had some of his “scholars” make the “discovery” that in the northeastern part of Romania, there was a slightly-different dialect - and that this dialect should be written in Cyrillic, “proving” that this was a region that had deep Russian roots (unlike the rest of Romania). Thus, the northeastern region of Romania was carved off, deemed the Moldovan S.S.R., and incorporated into the Soviet Union. As a consequence, the Republic of Moldova is today an independent country in its own right - and “Moldovan” is still written in Cyrillic.

On the northern edge of Romania, Stalin carved off three pieces of territory - the largest of which was (and still is) known as Northern Bucovina. These pieces were grafted onto the Ukrainian S.S.R, and today they are part of now-independent Ukraine.

The Baltic Countries

Perhaps the most dreadful fate of the secret protocols was inflicted upon the three small Baltic republics - Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. These three small countries had only gained their independence from the disintegrating Russian Empire in the immediate chaos following the end of World War I, in 1919.

Basically, it was agreed that Stalin could annex these three independent countries; Russian troops rolled in great force across the borders in 1940, and the three Baltic countries became S.S.R.s for the next fifty years.

Finland

Stalin was also given a free hand to make territorial demands on Finland - all in the name of “greater security” for the Soviet Union, of course. Having also escaped from the Russia following World War I (and then facing a civil war in which - unlike in Russia - the “whites” defeated the “reds”), independent Finland had long looked to Germany as a model for development; thus, the pact represented something of a betrayal to the Finns.

When the demands were presented to the Finns in November of 1940, they refused to accede to them. Stalin retaliated by sending his air force to bomb Helsinki, and huge numbers of Soviet troops poured across the border. In a memorably-heroic struggle, the badly outnumbered Finns used the dark and cold of the northern winter to their advantage; Finnish ski troops blunted the Soviet attack, and inflicted horrid casualties upon the Red Army. It was only after months of attack (and probably the coming of spring) that the Red Army was able to break through the Finnish lines, and force Finland to agree to the Soviet demands.

Poland

But it was Poland that was the centerpiece of the secret protocols - and it was here that the Germans had their main interest in coming to the agreement.

Basically, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to partition Poland between them - similar to what had happened back in the 18th century, Poland would be partitioned between its neighbors and effectively cease to exist.

And indeed, shortly after the German blitzkrieg rolled over Poland, Soviet troops crossed the border from the east; facing little resistance, they advance right up to the agreed demarcation line, and met the advancing Germans there.

Stalin’s piece of Poland was grafted onto the Ukrainian S.S.R. At the end of the war, Poland was reconstructed by taking the German-occupied part of 1939 Poland and augmenting it with a large chunk of what had previously been part of eastern Germany. The chunk of Poland that Stalin had carved off was retained by the Soviet Union, and is today part of independent Ukraine.

Exactly what Molotov and Ribbentrop were really thinking at the time is of course unknown and unknowable. But in the wake of the secret protocols and the various invasions, the two great socialist empires were now in direct contact with each other….

The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact had faded as an issue in recent years - with the end of the Soviet Union and the regaining of independence of the various eastern Europe countries.

During Soviet times, the Soviet authorities were always quick to defend the pact as an agreement of necessity for the Soviet Union - that they had no other good choice, as it provided the only way to buy time to prepare for an eventual war with Nazi Germany. (Why this required, for example, that parts of distant-from-Germany Romania be carved off and added to the Soviet Union, of course, goes unsaid). In fact, in typical Soviet fashion, the Soviet propagandists blamed the catalysis of this pact on the western powers - trying to argue that the rebuffing of Soviet diplomatic efforts by Britain and France (regarding the formation of a collective security agreement) left them no other choice.

Sadly, today the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact has resurfaced as a critical fault line in Europe.

Today’s Russian government is once again talking the line that the pact was a “necessity” - and not a matter for shame.

This is largely a matter of convenience - since the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact gave to the Soviet Union something that today’s Putin/Medvedev Russian government really wants.

Molotov-Ribbentrop was a tacit diplomatic acknowledgment of a Russian “sphere of influence” in eastern Europe.

Today’s Russian government wants that acknowledgment to be made once again.

The best-known manifestation of that desire became apparent during the August 2008 Russian incursion against Georgia - which has served to solidify the status of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as de facto independent territories (though they have been virtually annexed by Russia at this point). Even three years ago, when I was Sochi, it was notable that tourists could - if they so desired - day-trip to Abkhazia if they possessed a Russian visa in their passports; any notion of Georgian political control was already long gone.

I also happened to be in Estonia last fall, a few weeks after the Russian incursion into South Ossetia. To say that this event rattled Estonian nerves would be an understatement. To so many Estonians, it seemed as if the same movie was starting to be run again - that the Russian government was boldly and unilaterally (?!) re-asserting its view of a Russian sphere of influence that it wanted the rest of the world to acknowledge. Inside this sphere, Russia is to have a free hand, and everyone else should just keep their noses out of “Russian” business.

Russian interest in Georgia follows along those lines - that Georgia was part of the old Russian Empire for centuries, and was an S.S.R. Thus, Georgia should be abandoned by the West and recognized as a Russian area of interest. The possible prize, longer-term, is the energy corridor that runs from the Caspian to Turkish ports on the Black Sea - with Georgia providing a crucial territorial link in the chain.

But the bigger prize of Russian attentions is Ukraine - “Little Russia” as it was known to the Tsars. The flashpoint of Sevastopol (the only good port on the northern Black Sea coast, where the Russian Black Sea fleet is based - in what is now a Ukrainian port) is becoming more widely known. But Ukraine in general remains the real centerpiece of any Russian “spheres of influence” strategy. Beyond any tangible considerations, a re-invigorated Russia simply cannot be great unless it regains Ukraine.

And that may be the final story. As I’ve opined before, I hold a different view of Russian intentions - due to continual on-the-ground exposure in eastern Europe. Russia is in deep social, economic, and demographic trouble. It would seem that it would be better for Russia to turn inward and tackle those problems - and many observers have expressed astonishment that Russia’s present leadership seems to be foolishly looking outward rather than inward.

I disagree with that viewpoint.

In my view, the present Russian government is looking outward not in spite of those problems - but because of them. In the old Peter-the-Great and Catherine-the-Great viewpoint, Russia’s problems stem from one core factor - when Russia is weak and disrespected, Russian society suffers. If Russia can be made great and important again - a great power again on the world stage - then all of Russia’s social problems will magically disappear. I don’t necessarily agree with this prescription - I just find that it is this viewpoint that underlies what is driving the present Russian leadership.

There is one last frightening piece of information.

I’ve long told my jittery Baltic friends that they should worry a bit less about Russia - and a bit more about Germany. Historically, Russia has been unable to gain ground (both literally and figuratively) in eastern Europe without overt co-operation from Germany. My Baltic friends found this puzzling - Germany has gotten over its past, and is now a fellow EU country, isn’t it?

Well, perhaps. But who could not notice that there might be a temptation to use the new-Europe countries (chiefly through their presence in the EU) as bargaining chips, to be traded “back” to Russia for various considerations.

Frighteningly, Germany is becoming a growing headache on that count. Due to an idiotic drive for a “green” society, Germany has been taking its nuclear power capacity - a technology in which Germany was once a world leader - out of use, with the intent of replacing it with “renewables.”

Well, that’s working out about as well as might be expected. As a result, Germany has had to make up the gap by importing large quantities of …. Russian natural gas.

Putin and company know an opening when they see it - and this dependence on Russian natural gas is warping Germany to the point of causing what used to be known as “Finlandization.” Germany is increasingly acting as a client state of Russia - and acting as a virtual Russian-interests section inside the EU - and NATO. It was the German veto last year that kept NATO from extending the beginnings of a NATO membership route to Ukraine and Georgia. The tussle is in progress, but Germany is clearly serving the Russian goal of a renewed “sphere of influence.”

We’ll of course have to see how this all plays out.

But the root of so much of this can be traced back to the moment when Molotov and Ribbentrop affixed their signatures to that agreement, seventy years ago today….

He had a number of fascinating things to say about the present situation in Zimbabwe, which I’ll share below the fold.

Well, it started off a bit strange. I mentioned that I have a friend/colleague in Windhoek (Namibia) who is originally from Harare - and it turns out that they actually know each other. Go figure.

His work brings him to Pretoria several times a year (and his sister lives here now), so he drives back and forth pretty regularly.

He said that being in Pretoria so often reminds him of how even the simple things of life have been lost in Zim.

For example, he said that he hasn’t taken a shower in Harare in about four years - there’s no running water into the residences any more. To wash in the morning, he takes a bucket somewhere (where you can get some water), and then uses that to take a sponge bath. For about as long, there has been no electricity in the residences.

Since their kids happen to be on a school vacation break at this time, he brought the kids down to Pretoria with him on this trip; the kids are going to stay in Pretoria with his sister for the next two weeks, while he flies back to Harare tomorrow - he’ll fly back to Pretoria in a couple weeks, and then after that drive back to Harare with the children.

He said that this was the first trip ever out of Zim for the children - and so they are getting their first real exposure to the outside world. When they got to his sister’s house in Pretoria, he asked them, “Okay, we’ve arrived - what’s the first thing you want to do?” They unanimously cheered that they wanted to take showers. Once they had all had their turn at showering, he asked them what they wanted to do next. The reply to that was also unanimous - “McDonald’s!!” They don’t have a McDonald’s in Zim - “Yet!” I replied to that.

On the good side, he said that the abandonment (a few months ago) of the totally degraded Zim dollar in favor of making the South African rand and the U.S. dollar legal currency in Zim has had spectacular positive effects. The most prominent is that whereas a year ago the shops in Harare were all barren of goods, now they are well-stocked; and while more items in greater quantities are becoming available, the use of stable outside currencies has broken the hyperinflation problem - the prices are reasonable. He noted that he had some construction to do at his house last year, and the price of cement was the equivalent of $25 a bag; now, the price is $7 a bag. I noted that the general commodity price reduction of the past year has probably helped as well, but this one seems to be working as intended - get a stable currency as the medium of transaction, and inflation disappears very quickly.

He also said that if you travel to the remotest corners of Zim, people have U.S. dollars even there - and have been using them in transactions on their own for some time. He also said that the money-changers in Harare are doing a brisk business - particularly with the South African rand having appreciated considerably against the U.S. dollar over the past year (when I was here last year the exchange rate was about 10 rand to the dollar; now it’s about 8).

Some time back, my Zim-born colleague in Windhoek sent me some of his photos of Harare from back in happier times. I’ve never been there, but it looked lovely - it’s on a high plateau (giving the city a moderate climate), and from the pictures it was very green, florid, and sunny; apparently, Harare is known as “The Sunshine City.” (If you talk to some really old Africa hands, it’s surprising how many of them will tell you that back in the bad old days when Harare was “Salisbury,” they found it to be the most gracious and appealing city in Africa.)

But the upside here is very simple. If you don’t debase the currency and ensure that it retains its value, it’s amazing what positive economic consequences flow just from that.

Maybe soon, we’ll be able to hector the present occupants of Washington with this - that they can learn a lot by looking at Zimbabwe.

There’s a nice little piece over in today’s Wall Street Journal authored by General Merrill McPeak, expressing his dismay at the premature termination of the build-out of the originally-planned fleet of the F-22 Raptor - the kick-*ss air-superiority fighter pictured above.

The piece is rather good, so I’ll let you go read the whole thing via the link.

I’ll just note a couple of things here:

The future air combat capabilities we should build are based on the F-22, a stealthy, fast, maneuverable fighter that is unmatched by any known or projected combat aircraft.

….

It’s been more than half a century since any American soldier or Marine has been killed, or even wounded, by hostile aircraft….

That first item is simply a statement of fact, while the second is a truly-astonishing description of an unparalleled military achievement.

But there’s a kicker at the end of this piece, which we’ll note below the fold….

The kicker comes when you get to the end of the piece, and read the general’s byline:

Gen. McPeak (ret.), Air Force chief of staff from 1990 to 1994, was a national co-chair of Obama for President.

Why does any of this surprise you, General? Weren’t you fully aware of Mr. Obama’s lifelong views on these sorts of topics? Don’t you recall the “surrender lobby” of the 1980s? And of how Mr. Obama made it perfectly clear back then that he agreed with the views of that “lobby”?

Elections have consequences, General. Welcome back to reality.

(Back in June, while I was in Washington, “Green Hell” author Steve Milloy graciously agreed to sit down for an interview. You can find my review of “Green Hell” here.)

Q: At what point did you realize that you had accumulated enough material for a book?
A: Having run JunkScience.com for 13 years now, I started to realize that on this issue someone really needed to issue a tough message to the public. So during the 2008 hysteria, I started to simply collect newspaper clippings. After just two weeks of accumulating such clippings, I realized that it would soon accumulate into a book – something that was basically indeed the case after about three months.

(More below the fold.)

Q: Has the hysteria peaked?
A: There really never has been any public hysteria, so there’s no hysteria to peak. In terms of the pushers, though, we haven’t reached “peak alarm” with them yet – they are opportunists and there’s no sign that they’re yet ready to drop their “publicity” efforts. The real problem now is that big business has come aboard to try to shape this matter to its own benefit; General Electric has been decidedly notable on this count.

Q: Among other things, I’m an engineer – and so I’ve come to regard “green” as basically meaning “inefficient.” Given the massive inefficiencies inherent in the “green” agenda, how may the global economic downturn change the game?
A: Probably the most immediate effect is that the economic slide will make it more difficult for everyone to swallow the whole idea of cap-and-trade.

Q: In recent years, we’ve seen a massive and mindless drive for “green energy” as a core policy in Germany – one that has led to Germany’s forced reliance on Russian natural gas supplies, and to the increasing “Finlandization” of Germany. In recent months and years, we’ve also seen that the Putin government is increasingly willing to use that sort of European energy dependence as a weapon. Back in March at the New York ICCC, I asked Czech President Vaclav Klaus if any of this was causing an awakening in Europe with regard to the political stability issues that the “green” agenda was raising. Do you have any thoughts on this matter?
A: The funny part is that the entire “green” agenda does indeed play right into Vladimir Putin’s hand – and his political plans. Let’s not forget that because of the collapse of the massive carbon-dioxide-emitting industries of the old Soviet Union, the way the whole “climate change credits” game is structured will be an enormous benefit for Russia. Politically, the entire objective of the whole global “green” agenda is to ensnare the United States – with the added irony that the United States (in contrast to others) is a jurisdiction in which “green” legislation will actually be enforceable (and enforced).

Q: What kind of backlash might develop?
A: For the moment, there’s been no pushback – so far. The immediate problem is that business has “gone over” in an attempt to manage this to self-advantage. But on the other hand, the best sign for right now is that cap-and-trade legislation has run into such strong headwinds in Congress. Basically, as soon as business loses interest in the “green” agenda, this whole thing is over.

Q: Speaking of “cap-and-trade,” this has quite obviously transformed itself into “cap-and-pork.” What implications do you see from this?
A: That’s an indication that whatever merits “cap-and-trade” might have had on its own, it’s now gone down the same Washington road – which basically involves making it easier to pass. This has transformed “cap-and-trade” into something akin to the various “farm bills” and “highway bills” – it gives Washington a vested constituency that it can feed forever. Ironically, this amounts to an admission of how decidedly “imperfect” all of this is.

Q: There seems to be a schism among the “greens” when it comes to nuclear power; some are willing to acknowledge that it’s the most potent low-carbon-emitting source of energy, while others are adamant about its complete unacceptability. What implications does these sorts of internal “green” self-contradictions have going forward?
A: Well, a key “problem” with nuclear power is that it just works too well. This just points out that much (if not most) of the “green” agenda is really an anti-growth agenda. As I mentioned earlier, in the United States all of this is a Washington-driven issue in its entirety; however, economic realities are quickly bringing people back down to Earth.

Q: I mentioned earlier that I’ve come to see “green” as implying “inefficient” – meaning that “green” basically amounts to a poor use of available resources, and the explicit waste of resources. Clearly, your society has to be wealthy enough to have sufficient resources in order to be able to waste them. Is there a backlash coming from developing countries – who clearly don’t have resources to waste?
A: Strangely, there has been less of this than one might have expected. For example, the “greens” have been adamant about blocking absolutely any reintroduction of DDT, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa – where it’s badly needed. It’s surprising that governments and societies in places like that haven’t gotten more excited about this.

Q: Why is Paul Ehrlich still around?
A: Because he has the “right” point of view – even if he’s always in practice wrong.

Q: In Europe, they’ve already had at least one emission-trading-permit market – and the “market” (sic) value of those credits rather quickly reached their true value of zero. We also find factories being built in places like China and India solely for the purpose of collecting payments to not start operating (and emitting things). How widespread are these distortions and games-being-played?
A: These things highlight the overall unenforceability of all of these schemes. In Europe, they’ll just make up whatever numbers are necessary to feed the agenda. In China, they’ll happily continue to build facilities just to get money – and never, ever turn them on to do anything productive. This whole scheme can go on for only so long – because it’s just too expensive.

Q: Is it fair to call this “green fascism?”
A: Yes. It’s frightening to watch this growing conflation of big business and big government – and together, to that duopoly every “solution” amounts to “command-and-control.”

Q: Is greenism a neurotic hobgoblin of decaying jurisdictions?
A: (Laughs at the pretentiousness of the verbiage.) Well, “green” does correlate to a high degree with the “blue” states. But this fits in with the general viewpoint, and serves as a vehicle – climate hysteria can alter the bases of political power, so it makes for a nicely creeping agenda for some people and their viewpoints.

Q: One strange sidelight of the “green” agenda has been a schizophrenic relationship with hydroelectric power – similar to their schizophrenic relationship with nuclear power. A couple decades back, when Hydro Québec began to build their huge James Bay dam projects, the greens were quite tickled – and gushed over a future of plentiful supply from HQ of “renewable” electric power; many of the northeastern states (such as Vermont) giddily signed long-term supply contracts with HQ. However, the “greens” did one of the fastest and most stunning “one-eighties” on record with regard to HQ, when they learned that the reservoirs being created were flooding lands of the Cree Indians – about which there was a “Cree roadshow” around the Northeast. In Vermont, there was a proposal to set a goal by some date of having some high percentage of electricity come from “renewables;” the problem was that if you included HQ-supplied electricity, that goal was already far exceeded – and Vermont was already the high-percentage-from-“renewables” state. This “forced” the passing of a piece of legislation declaring that electricity from any hydroelectric facility with an output capacity larger than 200MW was “non-renewable” – essentially, slapping the designation onto HQ. That’s a long question, but how does hydroelectric power fit into the “green” scheme of things?
A: I think the bottom-line of that discussion is that the “green” agenda means total chaos. The only question now is how much of this is due to simple incoherence – and how much of it is planned.

Q: How significant are the problems of “numerophobia” and “non-quantitative science?” Are these problems fixable?
A: Probably the main issue there is going to be finding ways to make sure that the people who are going to bear the brunt of “green actions” understand the numbers of what is going to be inflicted upon them.

Q: One of the more shocking parts of your book was the discussion of the explicit “green” plans to cram everyone into densely-packed conurbations – in the name, of course, of keeping the countryside clean and (of course) anchoring everyone to small geographic ranges in the name of reducing carbon footprints. (This is somewhat interesting, since it’s the exact opposite of what the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia back in 1975 – where they drove everyone out of the cities and into the countryside.) How much traction is “rural cleansing” getting?
A: Well, the “greens” package this under the rubric of “smart growth.” But the reality is that among other things, “smart growth” equals “rural cleansing.”

Q: Are hybrid cars profitable for their manufacturers?
A: No, they’re not. Toyota clears about ten dollars per hybrid car sold.

Q: Is Al Gore working so hard on this “green” agenda so as to be remembered for something other than the “Gore toilet?”
A: (Laughs.) Mr. Gore feels that he has redeemed himself. Maybe he has redeemed himself in his own eyes – and maybe that’s the most important thing to him.

Q: What do you making of all the vague babbling we continually hear about “family farms?”
A: The whole “family farms” thing was basically a 1990s anti-biotechnology line-of-attack; that’s what led to that whole “organic” craze. That’s faded now.

Q: How big a problem is the European Union?
A: They’re a huge problem. Basically, they’re trying to make us (the United States) less competitive and drag us down to their level. The EU has been very aggressive about putting in place very strict regulations for doing business within the EU; those regulations, when imposed on multinational companies, get turned into de facto international regulations – which get back-door imported into the U.S. without any American say in the process.

Q: How big a fiasco will the adoption of compact fluorescent light-bulbs (CFLs) be? Can it be reversed?
A: There’s no chance at this point of reversing the ban on plain old incandescent bulbs in time. The main thing we need to hope for is that lighting based on LEDs (light-emitting diodes) will be ready soon – hopefully, the costs can be brought down in time to pre-empt the widespread deployment of CFLs. The widespread use of CFLs is going to be a total disaster; despite the rules-and-regs, many of these bulbs will be discarded in the trash and end up in landfills – causing mercury contamination and a variety of Superfund liabilities.

Q: Can we fight back? Can we win?
A: We have to win. Look, conservatives have a million think tanks, but the left has activist groups. The left “does,” and has been “doing” for forty years now. The reality is that people on the right need to get active.

Q: Steve Milloy, thank you.
A: You’re welcome.

You might have noticed that Al Gore has recently been saying some very immodest things about anyone who dares to disagree with his views. Of course, when someone like Mr. Gore says things like that, it tells us more about his views than about those of his opponents.

And what is the real agenda of Mr. Gore and his fellow-traveling greenshirts?

If you want to find all of that scary information in one place, read “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do To Stop Them,” by Steve Milloy.

More below the fold.

Mr. Milloy is the founder and publisher of the web site JunkScience.com, and so has been in the forefront of observing the greens and their wide-ranging efforts to get their tentacles into every facet, nook, and cranny of your life.

And as Mr. Milloy notes, that agenda is frighteningly ambitious; it intends to force us all into rationing of just about everything (electricity, water, food – even health and safety, and births), the forced-downsizing of our lifestyles, massive social re-engineering, and the altering of business in both its methods and its outcomes. None of this is supposition or extrapolation; Mr. Milloy has compiled the pillars of this green-dystopian nightmare from the greens’ own statements.

The green agenda is just the most recent recycling of a deeply misanthropic agenda – and the greens have adopted – from whole cloth – much of the prior agenda items of earlier misanthropes.

In the world of energy, the greens profess hatred of all carbon-based forms of energy – and want to end the use of oil, coal, natural gas, etc. as soon as possible as an act of moral hygiene. However, the green energy agenda – like communism – is fatally-flawed with a large number of irreconcilable contradictions; these contradictions end up amounting to trying to prevent everything.

Mr. Milloy trenchantly observes that the greens are all for wind and solar power – until plans to actually build such facilities threaten (in the case of wind) to mar the view and kill birds, or require (as in the case of solar) that vast regions of fragile desert be carpeted with paneling. Similarly, greens loved biofuels until efforts were made at large-scale production – which diverted food to fuel, caused food shortages and sharply higher prices, and induced destabilization in the developing world. In a similar way, greens were for hydro power before they were against it; when this carbon-free method of generating electricity was “discovered” (by greens) to involve the flooding of large areas for reservoirs and such, the greens turned against hydro.

The greens’ pathological hatred of motor vehicles remains as virulent as ever. One of the latest green-coercion plans is the wish to require mileage metering in all vehicles, so that drivers can be taxed based on how many miles they drive – and if necessary regulated to “permitted mileages” and punished for exceeding mileage quotas.

Mr. Milloy describes the bizarre jihad against bottled water (a new green fetish), and the green schizophrenia about farming; in the latter case, greens can’t decide if farming is good (the farmer is a “little guy”) or bad (farms use chemicals, and produce both run-off and greenhouse gases). This is an extension of the extremely destructive and long-running campaign against DDT – even though we know from good studies that DDT can be used very well in small, targeted doses, and was never nearly as dangerous as the late Rachel Carson implied. The green insistence on allowing no DDT use whatsoever is costing thousands of lives (mostly of children) every year.

In a similar notion, the greens will soon (2012) have succeeded in forcing the elimination (in the United States) of Edison’s marvelous incandescent light bulb – to be replaced by the ugly and dangerous compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs. Not only do these bulbs give off a fatiguing and flickering light; they contain mercury (an element that was diligently sidelined in recent years), and breaking one causes your house to become unsafe and contaminated – requiring a very expensive environmental clean-up.

As Mr. Milloy, notes, perhaps the most disturbing thing about the greens is their furious efforts to silence any all dissenters – not just via “social pressure,” but also via repeated calls for criminal prosecutions of those who dare to as much as disagree in word.

One example of the bluntness of the green agenda is summed up by this story from Germany:

In a typical example of voluntary participation giving way to compulsory green living, the town council of Marburg, Germany in June 2008 moved from mere encouragement of solar panels on homes to a first-of-its-kind mandate. New homes and those with renovated roofs or heating systems must install solar panels or face a $1,500 fine. Although the mandate had one local politician accusing the town council of operating as a “green dictatorship,” the local greens were unfazed. “What they are doing in Marburg is good and progressive, and we, and other cities, need to move forward with similar initiatives as well,” a Green Party member declared.

Apparently, old habits die hard in Germany – and are now being reborn in the service of a new master.

Of course, this is where Mr. Gore has his analogies correct – but he has them pointed in the opposite direction of the truth. And – surprise – none of these things apply to Mr. Gore and the rest of the green elite, who are free to consume massive amounts of energy in the service of forcing the rest of us to live in caves; Mr. Gore’s Nashville mansion notoriously consumes twenty-five times the electricity that is consumed by a typical American household.

Not surprisingly, the demands of the green elite for more and more coercive control extends far beyond individual countries – since the greens are fully aware that inter-jurisdictional competition is a powerful counter-weapon, making that something that they must eliminate. Thus, the green elite demands global “governance” mechanisms that will allow them to force their agenda onto everyone, everywhere – so that no one can keep themselves outside of the “system” and profit from the folly of others.

One problem that this book faces is that events have been moving so quickly; it came out earlier this year when the “Obama glow” was still strong and the potential for a big, successful green push was real. Realities may have rendered that possibility less likely, since (among other things) the science, economics, and politics are all now running against the green agenda; the world (if anything) is cooling, the world’s economies are in crisis, the absurd cost of the green agenda can no longer be fudged or hidden – and China and India have made it perfectly clear that they have no intention of joining what amount to economic suicide pacts.

After leading us through a long and frightening litany, Mr. Milloy devotes the final chapter to what may end up mattering more than anything – fighting back, and winning. Some of this involves direct activism – such as having a plane pulling an anti-Gore banner buzz Giants’ Stadium during a concert address by Al Gore back in July 2007 (a Milloy-instigated effort that he proudly calls “The first pro-free-market air raid in history”). But much of this will simply require persistence – and an unwillingness to be rolled by outright green aggression.

Mr. Milloy’s book is well-written, and is easy to read. As a compendium of the multiple spearheads of green aggression, it is a recommended read.

But between Bucharest and the Carpathian foothills, just 35 miles north of Bucharest, the transportation corridor runs just by the western edge of the small city of Ploesti. Just to the west of the road and the rail line looms the large and venerable Ploesti oil-refining complex.

Today, Ploesti and its environs are peaceful – and almost bucolic.

But on this day 66 years ago, Ploesti was anything but peaceful. In the short span of 30 minutes, the Ploesti refinery was engulfed in flames, and the cornfields of the Wallachian plain were littered with the burning remains of aircraft – following one of the most unusual and brutally-courageous air attacks in history.

The tale is told below the fold.

Europe is famously devoid of petroleum resources. When the “petroleum age” dawned in the latter part of the 19th century, crude oil could be found in only one place in all of Europe – outside the small town of Ploesti.

During the early years, the methods for the collection of crude oil at Ploesti were, well – crude. This was done mostly with hand-dug pits, which were allowed to fill up with crude oil – which was then collected by hand with buckets.

As demand for petroleum products grew, the more sophisticated methods that were being employed around the world for collecting crude oil came to the plains around Ploesti. However, the Romanians pioneered much of the chemical engineering innovation that really made petroleum a multifoliately-useful material – one that could be “cracked” and refined into a much wider variety of products. Ploesti saw the development of what was arguably the world’s first modern refinery operation.

By the time that World War 2 broke out in Europe, Romania was already a key German ally – thanks to the ideological sympathies and inclinations of Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu.

But the Germans were equally anxious to have Romania as a close ally for an obvious reason – unique in Europe, only Romania could supply crude oil and other petroleum products for German industry and the German military. Romania (via the Ploesti oil fields and refining complexes) supplied near all of Germany’s “normal” petroleum products – with the balance largely coming from “synthetic” methods of producing close-enough products from other starting resources (such as coal, which Germany had in abundance).

Gasoline, oil, and other petroleum products were obviously very critical to the highly-mechanized German military – on land, at sea, and in the air. This need was so critical – and the vulnerability to problems was felt so keenly in Berlin – that Hitler had directed the German summer-1942 offensive not at Moscow, but at Baku.

All of this made Ploesti a very, very critical facility to the German war effort. As a result, Ploesti was very heavily defended – by large concentrations of anti-aircraft guns (crewed by some of Germany’s best anti-aircraft gunners) and three full squadrons of Luftwaffe fighter planes.

Equally, the strategic importance of Ploesti made it a very tempting target for Allied war planners.

During 1942 and 1943, strategic bombing was still seen as something that could land devastating and crippling blows on key aspects of an enemy’s war infrastructure. As such, American planners gave very high priority to identifying – and attacking – “high-value” targets – “panacea targets” whose destruction would have a catastrophic effect on Axis war-making capabilities.

Not surprisingly, Ploesti appeared high on any such list of targets.

With the defeat of Rommel’s Afrika Korps and the complete ejection of Axis forces from north Africa, the Allies moved on to attack Sicily – and then Italy itself. To support these activities, the Ninth Air Force had slowly begun to be set up in North Africa – centered on the Libyan port city of Benghazi.

The Ninth Air Force’s heavy bomber arm consisted mostly of B-24s – in contrast to the situation with the Britain-based Eighth Air Force, which was built mostly around the more famous B-17.

The B-24 was a strange aircraft. Its wings – an innovative, low-drag design – were long and narrow. They were mounted along the top (rather than the bottom) of the plane’s fuselage; the design also included a very distinctive twin-ruddered tail. The fuselage was almost bulbous; many of the flyers derisively noted that in flight, the B-24 had the appearance of a pregnant cow.

The B-24 could not fly as high as its more famous cousin, the B-17. But it could carry a heavier load, and – crucially – it had a longer range.

Given the range of the B-24 and the temptation of Ploesti as a “panacea” target, it was inevitable that those two factors would converge. If a B-24 could be tweaked slightly – to carry an extra fuel tank in the bomb bay, at the cost of carrying a slightly-decreased bomb load – Ploesti was within range of the American air base at Benghazi.

By June of 1943, in great secrecy as “Tidal Wave,” plans were made for a strike on Ploesti – and B-24 squadrons were marshaled at Benghazi. In addition to the Ninth Air Force’s B-24 squadrons, several Eighth Air Force B-24 squadrons were transferred from Britain to Benghazi. In addition, several other brand new Eighth Air Force B-24 squadrons, fresh from flight school in the United States, were sent to Benghazi rather than to Britain. For these completely-green flight crews, the attack on Ploesti would be their first combat mission.

During July, the aircrews began their training – with absolutely no knowledge of what the target was that they were training to attack. But their training had one very odd feature about it. The B-24 was a four-engine strategic heavy-bomber – designed to fly to its targets at an altitude of some 20,000 to 25,000 feet. The flyers now found themselves practicing for a mission which would have them flying at very low altitude – no more than 200 feet off the ground. Before their July training, it wasn’t even known if there would be unforeseen complications that would render efforts to fly a massed formation of B-24s at such low altitude impossible; it wasn’t until the intensive July training was nearly over that such a strategy was even considered feasible.

This novel approach was one that was beginning to be developed, and which would continue right up into the 1980s, with the B-1 – which was designed to penetrate Soviet air defenses by flying at a ground-hugging (and computer-controlled) altitude of some 100 feet.

It was hoped that by flying at such a low altitude and using a careful flight path, the attacking force would be able to slip in unnoticed and achieve complete surprise. In addition to taking the target area by surprise – and getting in and out before German and Romanian fighter planes could get into the air – it was hoped that a surprise, low-level attack would leave too little time for the German anti-aircraft crews to reset the air-burst elevation on their shells from high altitude to low altitude.

These expectations indeed seemed far-fetched. But given the comparatively remote location of Ploesti, American planners had clearly underestimated the defenses that the attacking B-24 crews would face.

The plan of attack was relatively simple, as this map shows:

The first leg of the journey would carefully cross the Mediterranean to avoid German-occupied Greece – with its many islands and observation posts. Instead, the plan was to make landfall on the Albanian coast just north of Korfu, and then to turn inland over the sparsely-populated mountains. Crossing those mountains would bring the attacking force out over Wallachian plain, where one more small turn would bring them roaring into Ploesti.

That, at least, was the plan…

As the first hints of dawn broke over Benghazi on the morning of Sunday August 1st, 1943, 178 B-24s – carrying a total of some 1780 flyers – prepared to take off for the 2700 mile round to trip to Ploesti. With the extra fuel tanks in their bomb bays, each plane carried 4000 pounds of bombs – less than a normal bomb load, but still a combined collection of more than 350 tons of explosives.

Burdened to their carrying limits with fuel and bombs, the ungainly B-24s struggled into the air and formed up for the long and dangerous journey ahead.

Of the 178 aircraft that took off, 10 soon encountered mechanical problems that forced them to turn around and return to Benghazi.

But of more serious import, over the Mediterranean the lead aircraft for the mission – carrying the critical lead mission navigator – suddenly dropped out of formation and plunged into the ocean. The second-in-command aircraft, carrying the second navigator dropped down to make a pass to look for survivors – to whom a life raft could be dropped; but found nothing but a smoke plume. Worse, the still-overloaded B-24 couldn’t climb back up and rejoin the formation; this plane was also forced to return to Benghazi.

Still on course, the attacking force reached Korfu and the Albanian coast, and made its turn inland. Not surprisingly, it was spotted by coast-watchers – who relayed that information up the command channel. At that point, it was clear that a big raid was underway, even if the target remained unknown; however, some German air defense officers already had suspicions that Ploesti might be the target.

Moving inland, the attacking force would have to gain altitude to clear the mountains that ran down the middle of the Balkan peninsula. With the crest of the ridge reaching some 9,000 feet, the attacking force split into two vertical groups to keep apart. Again, things went unexpectedly wrong; the group that climbed up to 16,000 feet caught an unexpected tail wind and was wafted over the mountains, while the group that went over at 12,000 feet ran into strong head winds and was badly slowed down. Maintaining radio silence to avoid detection, the attacking force had now inadvertently been split in two.

Even more ominously, as they crossed the mountains, the lower, slower group noticed that they were being shadowed by a small group of Bulgarian fighter aircraft. Though no direct threat to the big bombers, their presence meant that there was now no chance for surprise. The German and Romanian air defense would be alert and ready – waiting for the B-24s to appear over Romania, no matter what the unknown (to the defenders) target might be.

Finally leaving the mountains behind, the B-24s followed the contour of the decreasing elevation of the land as they flew out over the Wallachian plain – and began to drop down to their attack altitude of some 200 feet.

The target was drawing closer, but things continued to go wrong – as they always do in war.

There was one final navigation checkpoint – a small town – ahead; here, the attacking planes were to make one final small right turn and head straight for Ploesti.

Unfortunately, the navigator of what was now (due to the weather problems in the mountains) the lead element of the attack force mistook the wrong small town for the turning point; turning too soon, the first half of the attack force turned and headed directly for Bucharest – rather than for Ploesti. When what was now the second part of the attack force came along, they picked out the correct ground checkpoint, and headed (properly) for Ploesti.

As the lead force roared low over the flatlands toward Bucharest, they began to encounter the unexpectedly-thick concentrations of anti-aircraft guns – and B-24s began to fall from the sky. Visibility was restricted at that low altitude, but when the skyline of Bucharest – rather than of Ploesti – came into view ahead, the navigational error became cruelly apparent.

Improvising and using their maps well, the pilots turned their B-24s in a sharp left turn – intending to follow the rail line running north from Bucharest, to guide them right into Ploesti. But now they would be coming at the target from a completely unexpected direction – and were now not properly lined up for their intended targets.

After all of these difficulties and problems, around noon the B-24s coming up from the south finally began to reach Ploesti. An atrocious and heart-rending 30 minutes was about to begin.

As the B-24s approached Ploesti, the anti-aircraft fire they faced – and the losses they suffered – grew worse and worse. Unable to properly find their intended targets and with no opportunity to set up as planned, the order went out to aircraft crews to attack whatever “targets of opportunity” presented themselves. So the lead wave of aircraft attacked whatever targets seemed most suitable.

Meanwhile, what was now the trailing force was rapidly closing in on Ploesti from the west, as planned – coming into the target at right angles to the direction taken by the improvising lead force.

As the “trailing force” flyers approached Ploesti, they were surprised to see low clouds and rain over the target – the meteorologists in Benghazi had assured them that fine weather prevailed over southeastern Europe. It was only as they drew closer that they realized that the “low clouds and rain” were actually the acrid smoke rising from the strikes of the inadvertent lead force.

Due to the navigation errors and the “targets of opportunity” order, the lead force actually attacked many of the targets that had originally been assigned to what became the trailing force. The trailing force aircraft were now going to have to try to find their targets through the smoke and fire left by the lead force – and do this while the aircraft of the now-exiting lead force were zipping across in front of them from right to left.

Going in.

By now, the carefully planned and well-thought-out plan-of-attack against Ploesti had turned into total chaos. Coming in low, many of the B-24 gunners fought virtual duels with anti-aircraft gun crews on the ground only some 200 feet below. The heat from the fires was so intense that many pilots, strapped to their seats in their cockpits, had the hair singed off their forearms. In the eloquently-descriptive words of the great historian of World War 2 in the air, Edward Jablonski:

The great B-24s, twisting and turning to avoid balloon cables and chimneys, wallowed like so many winged whales in a fiery sea.

Over the target.

The close-in intensity of the attack is well-recounted by Edward Jablonski in his description of the events that would earn Lloyd Hughes the Congressional Medal of Honor – posthumously:

Hughes’ [B-24] Liberator had been struck by flak as it approached the drop point. A wide stream of fuel poured out of a ruptured bomb bay tank, twisting and flashing under the big plane like a liquid ribbon of fuse. Now on his bomb run, Hughes did not attempt to land or evade the wall of flame which stood in his path. In an instant Hughes’ Liberator was set afire. The bombs fell into the target, but the stricken plane, a white sheet of pure fire streaming from the left wing, had no chance. Obviously still under control, Hughes seemed headed for a streambed for an emergency landing. A bridge loomed ahead in the path of the burning plane, but the plane rose above the obstruction, lowered again – and then a wing tip brushed the riverbank. The blazing Liberator whirled across the earth, spattering molten wreckage and scarring the meadow in its scorching death throes; all but two men in the plane died in the crash.

In all, the Ploesti raid was to produce five Medals-of-Honor (see below).

As B-24s became stricken around the target area, the pilots who were still able to control their aircraft did their best to belly-land their damaged planes in the corn and wheat fields around Ploesti.

Local Romanians rushed to the scenes of many of the crashes, attempting to extricate survivors. And despite the fact that Romania was at that time formally at war with the United States, many of the Romanians attempted to hide the American flyers from the German and Romanian troops who were coming to take them prisoner – as this remarkable story recounted by the then-six-year-old Corneliu Iliescu attests:

While my father and I were heading northwest toward Ploesti, we scanned the sky for bombers. As we were approaching the village, my father spotted a smoking B-24 bomber flying at low altitude. It looked like the plane was going to crash-land on the highway right in front of us. As it descended, the plane veered toward a cornfield that ran alongside the highway. The B-24 crash-landed, but there was no explosion or fire. My father jumped out of the car with me in his arms and rushed to the wreckage. He placed me on the B-24 outer wing so he could go into the plane to rescue any crewmembers who needed help. He was able to extract three aviators and rushed us all into the wooded area nearby. My father then went back to the aircraft to see if he could save the rest of the crew. As he returned, he saw - too late - that Romanian soldiers had arrived at the crash site. I was now hiding in the woods with the three American crewmen. One of them gave me a pair of pliers to play with and then told me to be very quiet. I did as I was told, and he rewarded me with my first Hershey’s candy bar. We were still hiding when my father and the rest of the crew from inside the bomber were arrested. We four were eventually found in the woods by a Romanian army search party and arrested, too. The Americans were taken prisoner and I was taken to the local police station to spend the night. My father was released the next day and found me - still at the police station with my new American friends and the pliers they had given me as a toy. (I still have those 15th [sic – ed.] AF pliers today) After a few minutes of talking to my father in the police station, one of the Americans told me in English that I “was a tough kid.” I did not understand what he said until one of the Romanian officers translated it from English for my father. In turn, my father explained to me that the Americans had given me a high compliment.

By 12:30pm – scarcely 30 minutes after the attack had begun – the last bombs were dropped into Ploesti. The surviving B-24s fled west with all the speed they could muster, trying to form up as best as they could for the long return voyage back to Benghazi.

Getting the heck out.

Many of the aircraft were too badly damaged to make the trip all the way back to Benghazi; some managed to reach Allied bases in Malta, Sicily, and Cyprus, while a few resorted to the desperate measure of landing in neutral Turkey.

Meanwhile, much of the Ploesti complex was in flames; but by early afternoon, the Wallachian plain was once again quiet.

It was evening before the surviving B-24s began to reach Benghazi, landing as best they could. Many of the planes had flown so low that back in Benghazi it was discovered that they had cornstalks stuck in their bomb bays.

It was only after the last planes had landed that the total cost of the Ploesti mission could be tallied.

Of the 178 B-24s that had taken off from Benghazi that morning, 164 had managed to reach the target area. Of these, 41 were lost due to enemy action. Six aircraft had been lost due to non-combat-related causes, while 8 others were in neutral Turkey – where they and their crews were to be interned for the remainder of the war. In addition, 23 B-24s had landed – in various states of disrepair – in Malta, Sicily, and Cyprus. Of the aircraft that had managed to make it back to Benghazi, fewer than 30 were now airworthy.

In total, 310 American airmen were killed in the attack. The official tally counted 50 wounded – but that did not include airmen who were now either interned in Turkey or prisoners of war in Romania. In total, some 100 surviving airmen were taken prisoner on the ground in Romania, and spent the rest of the war as POWs there.

The flames and smoke produced during the attack had given the impression that the attack had been a great success. But sadly, this was actually not the case. Much of the smoke and flame had come from the ignition of storage tanks that held finished products – not from the destruction of the main capabilities of the facility itself. The Ploesti complex had indeed been hit hard – and it was badly damaged. But the damage was reparable – and by that time, the Germans had available as labor a nearly limitless pool of POWs from the eastern front. The damage at Ploesti was rapidly repaired, and the complex remained in operation until it was overrun by advancing Soviet troops – in August 1944, a year after the American raid.

Edward Jablonski summed up the Ploesti raid this way:

In short, the men who undertook Tidal Wave had attempted the impossible. Their true achievement could be measured only in courage and not in decisive results. For the tragedy of Ploesti is that there were no decisive results.

Perhaps.

But it seems that this was actually a case of “Right church, wrong pew.”

Up to that point, “strategic bombing” had been perceived as a way to strike cataclysmic blows at the enemy’s few most critical holdings – basically, the idea was that if you could knock out just a few such ultra-high-value targets, the damage to the enemy war effort would be immediate and almost decisive.

That was tried – at Ploesti, in the celebrated British “dam-busters” attack in the Ruhr, and in the horridly-costly Eighth Air Force B-17 raids on what was thought to be the panacea target of the German ball-bearing-production facilities at Schweinfurt.

But it quickly became clear that this strategy was wrong. The losses were far too excessive (they would quickly render the bombing squadrons inoperable due to lack of men and planes), and the attacks were unable to produce anything even close to the expected decisive results.

But the sinews of modern, industrialized warfare run broad and deep in a belligerent country. There are a vast number of important facilities in play – and a well-functioning transportation network is required to move supplies, equipment… and men.

Chastened, American strategic bombing commanders completely changed their strategy. Rather than hitting the big “glamour” targets, they began to hit seemingly less-important targets. By suffering much lower loses in the effort, the bomber groups were able to maintain a very high tempo of operations – and aircrews gained experience and became very, very good at what they did. The vast European transportation network – so critical to the Axis war effort, and so obviously critical to Germany, with its “inside position” – was so vast that it was in toto indefensible.

The new strategy, while not spectacular, was frightfully effective – and the Germans soon realized this. As Edward Jablonski notes,

But inside Germany, unknown to Allied air leaders arguing about the cost of daylight missions and the foolishness of panacea targets, there was serious consternation. The bombing was taking on a serious pattern, no longer the derring-do of knocking out a dam, or a foolhardy low-level attack on an oil field. The bombing was beginning to look more business-like, less haphazard.

In particular, although Ploesti (and the German “synthetic” facilities) continued to operate, Allied (chiefly American) air action so disrupted the transportation network that the Germans found it increasingly difficult to simply get fuel to their units. The German Luftwaffe was increasingly hard-hit by fuel shortages, and found it more and more difficult to get planes into the air. Naturally, this process fed back on itself – the less the German planes could fly, the more the Allied air forces came to dominate the skies over Europe; due to that domination, the transportation infrastructure was squeezed even further.

By the time of the Normandy landings on June 6th, 1944 – barely ten months after the Ploesti raid – the main fear of Allied invasion planners was that there would be so many Allied planes in the air that they were more likely to shoot each other down by mistake than to be shot down by German aircraft. As a result, all Allied aircraft were garishly painted – on wings and fuselage – with broad black and white stripes, so that they would be clearly identifiable to all their friends. Such a notion would have been almost suicidal had the Luftwaffe been able to fly. And indeed, the fuel shortages suffered by the Luftwaffe were so great that on the day of the Normandy invasion, exactly two German aircraft got into the air – making one quick flight over the beaches (where they did no damage) and then returning to their base.

The strategic bombing campaign against Germany had (at first) been badly-thought-out – and had been able to accomplish anything at all due solely to the courage of the airmen who flew the big bombers. But once the strategy had been adjusted and the airmen got the knack of their tasks, the results were – finally – catastrophic indeed.

It was a long way from the 164 B-24s that had appeared over Ploesti on that hot August day in 1943.

Recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor, Ploesti, August 1st, 1943:

• Addison Baker (posthumous)
• Lloyd Hughes (posthumous)
• John Jerstad (posthumous)
• Leon Johnson
• John Kane

Ploesti today:

(Photo by the author, from the road, October 2008.)

(Reference: Edward Jablonski, “Tragic Victories,” Volume II of his “Airwar” series; this invaluable four-volume series describing World War 2 in the air was published by Doubleday in 1971 – and has (sadly) long been out of print.)

Last month (28 June) saw the 300th anniversary of the pivotal Battle of Poltava. Poltava was a watershed in the history of eastern Europe (and the world), as it marked the emergence of Peter the Great’s Russia as a major power - and the dashing of any hopes for Ukrainian independence for the next 282 years.

A third consequence was that Poltava marked the end of Sweden’s long run as a major power with an extensive and far-flung empire. After Poltava, Sweden gave up on its imperial status - and largely withdrew from the rough-and-tumble of continental politics.

Nowadays, Sweden is giving up on another long run - its run as the “model” welfare state.

More below the fold.

My business travels have taken me to Sweden a few times. It’s a very pleasant, congenial place.

The aggravating part about Sweden isn’t anything that’s directly the fault of the Swedes. It’s the way that Sweden (and its massive welfare state) became a sort of golden calf for tiresome “progressives” - who never grew fatigued with their infatuations, and never bothered to revisit their affections from back in the 1970s.

But reality has caught up even with mythical Sweden. Long the iconic end-of-human-social-evolution utopia-of-dreams of domestic “progressives,” Sweden is now frantically trying to back itself out of that swamp:

Anders Borg[*] has a message for those who look to government to take over health care, rescue the financial system and run troubled corporations: I have seen the future–and it doesn’t work.

As the finance minister of Sweden, Borg is the chief financial officer of a country long known as a walking billboard for a social welfare state. In Borg’s view, the 1970s and 1980s were lost decades for Sweden. Left-leaning politicians pushed government spending, excluding investment outlays, from 22% of gross domestic product in 1970 to 30% in 1980. Real growth fell from an average of 4.4% annually in the 1960s to 2.4% in the 1970s and remained low for the next two decades.

[* - Sorry, sci-fi fans, but in that funny pronunciation system used in Swedish, his surname is pronounced "Bor-ee" - ed.]

Those were lost decades indeed. If Sweden were a U.S. state, its GDP per capita would place it near the bottom among the fifty states, on a par with Mississippi.

So what is the “new Sweden” doing in public policy?

Borg is pushing Sweden in the opposite direction, encouraging the legislature to cut taxes, cap spending and privatize parts of health care.

….

His government has slashed the tax rate on low incomes from 30.7% to 17.1%. The combined tax take (national and local; income and other) has fallen by 2.5 percentage points in three years to 46.6% of gross domestic product.

….

Among other tax cuts: [Prime Minister] Reinfeldt has done away with a wealth tax and cut corporate and property taxes.

This is clearly not your father’s Sweden.

Having run the “progressive experiment” for a few decades, the Swedes have figured out that it’s a dead end that does not work - and they want out.

Of course, the main question is - can the situation be redeemed?

[Borg] became disenchanted after concluding the indulgent government was turning Sweden into a “boring, stagnant society.” [!! - ed.]

….

To hear Borg tell it, his government isn’t inspired by coldhearted Darwinism but by cold, hard evidence that the easier the state makes life for people, the easier they take it.

Many observers are starting to notice that most of the iconic lazy western European welfare-state-utopias are frantically trying to undo “utopia.” The open question is, will several decades of marination in that fiasco render those societies incapable of recovering? That remains to be seen.

But at least Mr. Borg sees governance not as an entitlement, but as a responsibility:

“Given that we’re taking money out of people’s paychecks, we have to be responsible,” he says of his low-tax ethos.

This is more commonly known as…. common sense.

Meanwhile, what’s going on in “emerging markets”?

Personally, I like “emerging markets” - because many of them really are determined to actually emerge. It’s been encouraging to see, experience first-hand, and participate in the renewal of eastern Europe - and also to become increasingly involved with parts of sub-Saharan Africa (a region which is finally showing some signs of real life).

So, what’s going on in the jurisdictions that have their acts together?

Sensible tax policies are another attractive feature of many emerging markets. The highest tax rate in Brazil is just 27.5%. Flat-tax structures have become the norm in places like Russia, the Czech Republic and numerous other countries that were once behind the Iron Curtain. And dynamic Asian markets like Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan have long since done away with capital gains taxes.

Where would you invest funds and build facilities (and create jobs)? (I actually have to worry about things like that first-hand.)

For a good 35 or more years now, domestic “progressives” have been hectoring everyone about how the United States has long been somehow out-of-step with “the rest of the world.”

Maybe now would be a good time for these cooks to begin eating their own cooking….

If there’s a possible theme, it relates to what the next onset of economic growth will look like. And these days, it’s about a great deal more than what will drive the next surge of economic growth - it’s also about where the next surge of growth will occur.

And on that count, contemporary Washington is badly, badly out of step with much of the world - and is dangerously oblivious to that reality.

More below the fold.

Personally, I like “emerging markets” - because many of them really are determined to actually emerge. Which jurisdictions have their acts together?

Sensible tax policies are another attractive feature of many emerging markets. The highest tax rate in Brazil is just 27.5%. Flat-tax structures have become the norm in places like Russia, the Czech Republic and numerous other countries that were once behind the Iron Curtain. And dynamic Asian markets like Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan have long since done away with capital gains taxes.

Where would you invest funds and build facilities (and create jobs)? (I actually have to worry about things like that first-hand.)

Meanwhile, Sweden - long the iconic end-of-human-social-evolution utopia-of-dreams of domestic “progressives” - is now frantically trying to back itself out of that swamp:

Anders Borg has a message for those who look to government to take over health care, rescue the financial system and run troubled corporations: I have seen the future–and it doesn’t work.

As the finance minister of Sweden, Borg is the chief financial officer of a country long known as a walking billboard for a social welfare state. In Borg’s view, the 1970s and 1980s were lost decades for Sweden. Left-leaning politicians pushed government spending, excluding investment outlays, from 22% of gross domestic product in 1970 to 30% in 1980. Real growth fell from an average of 4.4% annually in the 1960s to 2.4% in the 1970s and remained low for the next two decades.

….

His government has slashed the tax rate on low incomes from 30.7% to 17.1%. The combined tax take (national and local; income and other) has fallen by 2.5 percentage points in three years to 46.6% of gross domestic product.

For a good 35 or more years now, domestic “progressives” have been hectoring everyone about how the United States has long been somehow out-of-step with “the rest of the world.”

Maybe now would be a good time for these cooks to begin to eat their own cooking….

One of the forgotten ones was: How should we regard the “Soviet Union?”

Mushy-leftist types were fond of the notion that the Soviet Union was a relatively normal, basic “nation” - but one that was deservedly paranoid because of the 1941 German invasion (a line of thought conveniently stoked on a regular basis by Radio Moscow). In this view, the Soviet Union was really a cuddly little fuzzball, and if we’d just be gentle and reassuring it would cease and desist from its continual truculence - since if we could get across that we really, really, really had no aggressive intentions, the bear would purr. And, oh yeah, we could help this along by pledging that we would cheerfully recognize the extant possessions as a permanent Soviet “sphere of influence.”

More of us, though, took a different view - one that was more grounded in reality and history.

More below the fold.

The alternative view was actually simpler - that the Soviet Union was an empire, and an empire trying to convince everyone that it was really a normal state.

The empire viewpoint was clearly justified by history.

During the chaos of the two Russian Revolutions of 1917, much of the periphery of the Tsarist Empire managed to break away - most notably in eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Once the Bolsheviks had seized and consolidated power - and then defeated the “White” armies - their next effort was to set out to reconvene the Tsarist Empire by flat-out reconquest.

For the most part, this effort succeeded; it was only in Eastern Europe in 1918 - 1921 that the Red Army’s efforts were decisively defeated on the battlefield - most notably in Poland and Estonia. As it turned out, this setback was only temporary - and by 1945 the Soviet Union has not only retaken all of the old territories, but had extended its control even further west than the 1914 borders of the old Tsarist Empire.

Thus, in this view of the Soviet Union, this was a reconstituted Tsarist Empire - an empire which possessed regions and nations by force that it had no business possessing. This empire needed to be pulled down and broken up - and its captive territories freed from imperial control. The Soviet Union was the last European colonial empire, and it needed to go.

As events began to unfold some twenty years ago, the view of the Soviet Union as a colonial empire was vindicated. Starting at the edges and working closer to the core, the colonial possessions began to break away from the empire. First, nominally independent possessions became truly independent - then possessions that were actually inside the Soviet borders began to break away.

The Soviet Union was indeed an empire, and the colonial possessions were delighted to break away.

We now watch to see if Vladimir Putin and company will embark on an effort at another reconstitution of the old Tsarist Empire - in the model of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great.

All of this is prelude to another developing story. Taking a similar view, many of us have argued for some time that the People’s Republic of China - like the Soviet Union before it - is not really a nation, but an empire. Like the USSR, the PRC inherited and re-established an older imperial realm over far-flung territories.

And like the USSR, the PRC is having trouble:

For years it’s been a closely held secret: The People’s Republic of China is an empire desperately trying to make the world think it’s a state.

The riots by Uighurs in China’s far northwest are not something new; the place really erupted back about the time of the American Civil War. Clashes between Han Chinese moving into the basin, range and uplands inhabited by the much different ethnic people of the Central Asian heartland began at least 2,000 years ago in the Han Dynasty.

….

The Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) conquered East Turkestan in the 18th century and began to consolidate control there in the late 1800s. But the Qing court, terminally beleaguered by Western encroachments along the China coast, was too feeble to impose central control on its far-flung takings.

Now, reality is beginning to strongly assert itself:

With China’s rise to wealth and power in the post-Mao era, the PRC, now lacking the cover of world revolution, was forced to find some way to legitimate its possession of Xinjiang. World history’s age of empire had ended by the mid-20th century. Communist China’s evil twin, the USSR, had been the territorial successor to the Tsarist empire as Mao’s PRC had been to the Qing.

At the Cold War’s end, the Soviet Union came apart; its counterparts to China’s Xinjiang became independent sovereign states and UN members. The PRC, determined to avoid a like fate, began a fervent campaign to convince the international community that all lands behind its borders, acquired in the imperial past, are inviolable internal possessions of its sovereign statehood.

Personally, I agree with Mark Steyn - it seems very unlikely that “China” will become a fully-modern state with its present borders intact.

And as was the case with the Soviet Union, it would be unwise for us to try to artificially prop up a superannuated colonial empire….

There are layers of complex factors in play here involving power politics, economic exploitation, ethnic rivalries and religion. A new “Great Game” is under way, and the Chinese Revolution is still not over.

And trust me, this new “Great Game” is going to be even more interesting than its predecessors.

Much has been made of Russia’s ongoing demographic implosion - with the implication that as Siberia depopulates, China will “expand” to fill the void.

However, China is on the verge of a demographic implosion of its own - the “one-child” policy has worked too well, and China goes off a demographic cliff starting in about 2015 (which isn’t that far off).

So resource-rich Siberia will sit there - empty, and with no directly-neighboring country with sufficiently-healthy demography to do anything about it.

This promises to be an interesting century.

Hence, let’s have some culinary upliftenment:

(From the lunch menu in Iasi, Romania last Monday.)

Overnight culinary open thread.

The troubled Nabucco pipeline project — designed to diversify Europe’s energy supply and loosen Russia’s grip on the continent’s natural gas market — took a major step forward on July 13 with the signing of a transit agreement between Turkey and five European Union countries involved in the undertaking.

The 2,050-mile-long (3,300 kilometer) Nabucco pipeline is designed to bring gas from the Caspian Basin and the Middle East to European markets via Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria. The $10-billion pipeline is scheduled to start operating in 2014. Nabucco’s primary objective is to lessen Europe’s overdependence on Russia for gas. Moscow currently supplies approximately 40 percent of Europe’s gas.

But there’s even more good going on, which we’ll discuss below the fold.

We can grasp the multifaceted significance of this project simply by looking at a reasonable map:

The main stem of Nabucco will run from Erzurum to Vienna. The most important factor in the route is that it bypasses the Russian-originated routes that run through Russia and Ukraine - and which have been the source of so much friction and Russian bullying. Given Europe’s over-dependence on Russian gas supplies (thanks in part to Germany’s mindless and idiotic “green energy” drive), this allows a route free of that problem.

The main unresolved issue is simply - who will be the gas suppliers? The map provides a hint. The most important source is Azerbaijan - since the already-extant Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (that last is on the Turkish Black Sea coast) oil pipeline already follows a trans-Caucasus corridor that is free of Russian meddling.

The map also shows that Iran could be a supplier - however, this is politically difficult (and not included in the agreement); in addition, Iran’s gas infrastructure is in such terrible shape that Iran is actually now an importer of natural gas.

Another potential supplier is gas-rich Turkmenistan - on the far side of the Caspian from Azerbaijan. This seems to be likely, given that Turkmenistan is landlocked and overly dependent on Russian transit pipelines for getting its gas to market.

The most intriguing possible supplier, though, is Iraq. Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki was in Ankara Monday for the signing ceremony - and Iraqi participation seems to be a good idea all around.

This agreement on Monday is just that - a starting point. There is much work and planning to be done - but it’s good to see this bird finally get into the air.

E.g., excerpt:

Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos battalions!

(Citizens, to arms!
Form your battalions!)

Happy Bastille Day from…. Bucharest.

Bastille Day open thread….

The first time I came to Iasi, I had no idea that there was more to the hallway than I realized. At some point, one of my colleagues asked me, “Have you seen the paintings in the hall?” “What paintings???” “Let’s go back downstairs for a few minutes.”

There are paintings, but they are well-hidden. Along the colonnaded hallway, there are arched niches that contain many strikingly beautiful (and deeply allegorical) paintings.

More below the fold.

Some of these paintings are abstract, some are less so. I’ll include some of them below, and make comments when they are useful.

(As on Sunday, all the photos are clickable to allow viewing of the full-sized versions, in order to see more details.)

In this one, Stefan cel Mare still stands guard over Moldavia.

This one is highly allegorical. The “symbol” of Moldavia is the face of a bull; so the little girl riding a bull is somehow supposed to represent the strength of Moldavia.

This one is somewhat bizarre; the legend refers to a “church” but the origin of the legend goes back to pre-Christian times. A group of builders were charged with building a temple, but they kept encountering difficulties that were stopping and ruining the work. Frustrated by the inability to make progress, they consulted someone who was supposed to know about such things; he told them that they would be unable to complete the building of the temple unless the particular wife of one of the particular builders was walled up alive inside the walls of the temple as it was constructed. They did and they managed to finish the building of the temple. But the painting explains the “cost” very clearly.

This one is based on some legend about a woman who was punished by being turned into a mushroom-shaped stone pillar, but I don’t recall the details.

This last one is a compilation on canvas of the “heroes” of the long sweep of Romanian and Moldavian history. The gent glowering down from the very top is a great king of Dacians - the tribe that lived in what is now Romania at the time of the Roman conquest. In the middle are heroes of the medieval Moldavian kingdom - including (of course) on the right Stefan cel Mare. At the bottom are Moldavian peasants.

Finis.

One of the best instances of that occurred several years back when I made my first visit to Iasi, Romania. My hosts insisted that we make some time to visit the nearby Painted Monasteries of Southern Bucovina. This was all new to me, so I was intrigued - and these turned out to be one of the world’s greatest (yet still little-known) cultural gems.

Now, when I’m in Iasi, *I* insist that we make some time to visit the monasteries. So that’s what we did on Saturday - and if you’ve never seen or heard of these monasteries, you are in for a real treat.

I’ll do my best with some words and many photos below the fold.

Bucovina is a hilly/mountainous region in the western part of Moldavia (the northeastern third of Romania). To call it bucolic would be a bit of an understatement - but it is lovely and peaceful.

During the late 15th and early 16th century, when Moldavia was an independent kingdom, it came under pressure from the invading Ottoman Turks. For some 50 or more years, the Ottomans were held at bay by the efforts of the Moldavian king Stefan cel Mare (Stephen the Great) and his son Petru Rares. (This basically makes Stefan the Romanian equivalent of Skanderbeg. )

According to semi-legend, whenever Stefan won a battle against the Ottomans, he would commission the construction of a monastery to mark his victory. These “monasteries” are not “monasteries” in the sense that most of us are used to - they really are forts (strong points), with a rectangular outer defensive wall and quarters, and a Moldavian-style church in the middle. There are 47 such monasteries in Moldavia - not all commissioned by Stefan, but the large number reflects his success in holding off Ottoman encroachment.

What makes these monasteries famous are the decorations applied to the interior churches. Perhaps as a votive - but also as a means of teaching the liturgy to the illiterate soldiers and peasants of the time - the churches are covered (both inside and out) with spectacular and colorful frescoes. Photography is not allowed inside the churches, but the exteriors are fully available.

We had time on Saturday to visit three of the more famous monasteries - Sucevita, Moldovita, and Voronet. I’ll concentrate mostly on photos here (since they speak for themselves), and try to keep my explanatory blather to a minimum.

(All photos should be clickable for the opening of larger versions, to allow appreciation of the details).

Sucevita

Sucevita is perhaps in the loveliest setting of all - deep in the mountainous countryside, at the foot of steep hillsides that lead up to a pass. Sucevita is actually one of the few monasteries that was not commissioned by Stefan cel Mare.

Several of the monasteries are famous for specific colors; Sucevita is famous for its green.

Sucevita’s most famous fresco is the north wall fresco, depicting the thirty steps up the ladder of virtue.

On the upper right, angels encourage the ascent to virtue, while on the lower left demons try to pull climbers off the ladder.

Some details:

The north wall is heavily decorated and is quite “busy”:

The lower part of the wall features a collection of Greek philosophers surrounding a reclining figure of Jesse. If you can read the Church Cyrillic in the first photo, you can tell that these are Sophocles and Plato.

As in most Orthodox depictions, the Holy Mother appears in the dress of a Byzantine princess:

Moldovita

The Moldovita monastery is set in the village of the same name, in countryside along the Moldova River; Moldovita is noted for the use of a lustrous golden-yellow in its frescoes.

Voronet

Not far away is the Voronet monastery. Voronet is very famous for the strikingly-beautiful blue that was used extensively in its frescoes; the particular blue is apparently widely known as “Voronet blue.”

The most famous feature of Voronet is the “Last Judgment” fresco on the western wall; this is often referred to as being “The Sistine Chapel of the East.”

(To learn more, go here and here.)

Finis.

Last week, the donut chain Tim Horton’s, which operates on both sides of the border but is incorporated in the state of Delaware, announced that it was reorganizing itself as a Canadian corporation to take advantage of Canadian tax rates.

I’ve been sending up warning flares about this sort of thing for some time, and perhaps the only surprise is that it’s taken so long for things like this to actually start happening.

Let’s review a few facts below the fold….

Let’s just review a few facts.

o Tim Horton’s is mostly a Canadian-based operation (bit of an icon up there, particularly in Ontario); they may own some other brands, but I’m not sure and that might have changed.

o Canada’s corporate tax rate (now 21%) is lower than the U.S. rate (35%) - Prime Minister Harper, sensing an opportunity (particularly given the increased idiocy in Washington), has talked about reducing it further.

o Any profits earned in Canada but “repatriated” (sic?) to the U.S face that nutty double-taxation game that I’ve written about multiple times; Canada (like the rest of the world) doesn’t do double taxation.

So this just makes sense from a business point of view.

What is most mind-boggling about people who have spent their whole lives 100% marinated in politics and with 0% contact with business is that they can delude themselves into believing that shifting like this simply won’t happen for…. whatever…. reasons….

At some point, I’ll have to get Tim Horton’s financials and look at the overall effective corporate tax rate that the firm pays. But in general, one thing that just screams off such pages at you is that the more business you do outside the United States, the lower your net overall effective corporate tax rate. If you’re something like a domestic retailer, your corporate tax rate is pretty close to the U.S. rate (mid-upper 30s) - whereas if you’re a “multinational” it’s typically down in the low-mid 20s.

More than a decade ago, I had lunch in Seattle with a veteran investment banker. I got an incredible number of gems of wisdom out of that hour - but one of the best was, “Make sure that you’re supporting a business - not a lifestyle.” That was stated as advice for investors when looking at potential business-building investments; however, in reality that advice applies more widely.

If disconnected mandarins in Washington DC and the various state capitols think that they can ignore these inter-jurisdictional tax competition issues because the numbers simply can’t possibly matter…. then they are basically insisting that commerce exists to support lifestyles (especially theirs). And Tim Horton’s sensible and responsible fiduciary decision will be just the beginning….