The loneliness of the battlefield

June 1941: newly-appointed Major-General Bill Slim addresses the officers of 10th Indian Infantry Division in Iraq. The audience, like all in HM Armed Forces connoisseurs of bullshit, half-expect to go away as usual with "the impression that their general was a pompous old blatherskite."

But having congratulated them on their success in skirmishes so far, Slim makes practical recommendations for further improvements in tactics and training, and goes on to prepare them mentally for the harder fighting to come:

""... in the end every important battle develops to a point where there is no real control by senior commanders. Each soldier feels himself to be alone. Discipline may have got him to the place where he is, and discipline may hold him there - for a time. Co-operation with other men in the same situation can help him to move forward. Self-preservation will make him defend himself to the death, if there is no other way. But what makes him go on, alone, determined to break the will of the enemy opposite him, is morale. Pride in himself as an independent thinking man, who knows why he's there, and what he's doing. Absolute confidence that the best has been done for him, and that his fate is now in his own hands. The dominant feeling of the battle is loneliness, gentlemen, and morale, only morale, individual morale as a foundation under training and discipline, will bring victory."

"I went back to our camp in a thoughtful mood. Slim's sort of battle wouldn't be much of a lark, after all.""

- from John Masters' autobiography, "The Road Past Mandalay."


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It's official: kittens more important than liberty or drugs

The 65-year-old piece about a young cat on the Matterhorn has displaced "Liberty and drugs" on the all-time most-read list (left sidebar).

In related news, our attention span has dwindled from 12 seconds to 8 - one less than goldfish - thanks to smartphones.

Naturally, the class of people who read will continue to direct our lives. As Pantsov and Levine reveal, the Chinese Communist "Long March" of 1934-35 was, in Mao's case. the "Long Carry", as he was borne for thousands of miles on a litter in which he continued to absorb knowledge from books, so that he could eventually model his long and brutal reign on the worst and most effective aspects of the old Emperors.

Let's leave it all to the higher-ups to manage, shall we?

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a kitten.

- Old Possum's Book of Practical Distraction

Lol.


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What is it with slugs?

Yet again, last night, checking the kitchen before bed, my bare foot steps on something slimy. I have to evict the soggy-cigar thing with kitchen roll and wipe my foot repeatedly.

We now have a bunker-grade triple-glazed back door. How do they get in?

https://d861dk9kf78fl.cloudfront.net/CreatureComforts2_NewsThumb_Big.jpg

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The Yeomen Of The Guard

World War Two: the Household Cavalry prepares for combat...

At the general's final inspection before the division left England for war, he had asked one of the Yeomanry colonels whether everything was in order. The colonel replied, "Oh, I think so, George." The general gently pressed for details - ammunition? Vehicles? Non-coms' training? Gas-masks? The colonel scratched his head and said, "Dash it, I don't know about any of that, George... but we've got forty dozen of champagne, well crated, and the pack of foxhounds is in fine fettle."

- from John Masters' autobiography, "The Road Past Mandalay."


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New poll - exercise your democratic right!

See right sidebar - answers by Twelfth Night, please.

UPDATE:

The question was: "It's another rainy bloody day. Do you..."

Put the world to rights on Blogger?

Watch Rhod Gilbert on Youtube?

Get your burnt-out car headlamp replaced?

Go shopping?

 

The winner - on a tiny poll - was the last. Personally, I found Rhod Gilbert far and away the best use of my time.

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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Could there one day be liberalisation in Islam as there was in Judaism?

Extract from the article on “The Muslim Enlightenment Movement of the early 2200s” from the International Enseculopedia (2416 edition)

“… The Almustaniri ("enlightened") main motivation and aim was the modernization of the Muslims, in accordance with the rationalistic and liberal ideals of the Western Enlightenment. Members of the movement sought to acquaint their people with European culture, have them adopt the vernacular language of their lands, and integrate them into larger society. They opposed Islamic reclusiveness and self-segregation, called upon to discard traditional dress in favour of the prevalent one, and preached patriotism and loyalty to the new centralized governments. They acted to weaken and limit the jurisdiction of traditional community institutions - the Sharia courts, empowered to rule on numerous civic matters, and the Council of Elders, which served as lay leadership. The Almustaniri perceived those as remnants of medieval discrimination. They criticised various traits of Muslim society, such as child marriage - traumatized memories from unions entered at the age of thirteen or fourteen are a common theme in Almustaniri literature - the use of anathema (laenatan) to enforce community will and the concentration on virtually only religious studies.

“As long as the Muslims lived in segregated communities, and as long as all social intercourse with their non-Muslim neighbours was limited, the imam was the most influential member of the Muslim community. In addition to being a religious scholar and "clergy", an imam also acted as a civil judge in all cases in which both parties were Muslims. Imams sometimes had other important administrative powers, together with the community elders. To become an imam was the highest aim of many Muslim boys, and the study of the Quran was the means of obtaining that coveted position, or one of many other important communal distinctions. Almustaniri followers advocated "coming out of ghetto," not just physically but also mentally and spiritually in order to assimilate among non-Muslim nations…”

Couldn't happen? The above paragraphs are only very slightly adapted from this article on the 18th Century Jewish Enlightenment or "Haskalah".

But surely the Wahhabite version of Islam currently tearing up the Middle East is too ferocious to ever permit liberalisation?

So was Judaism at one point. Have a look at the Bible, for example the Book of Numbers, Chapter 25. Here's a snippet:

"6 And, behold, one of the children of Israel came and brought unto his brethren a Midianitish woman in the sight of Moses, and in the sight of all the congregation of the children of Israel, who were weeping before the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.

"7 And when Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose up from among the congregation, and took a javelin in his hand;

"8 And he went after the man of Israel into the tent, and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel, and the woman through her belly."

That (and other things) brought me up short when I was trying to read my way through the Bible as a child.

Things will change, over time, once the worst have been dealt with. One hopes. In any case, the headbangers do not represent the majority, even now.


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Superseded by machinery

source

He was one of that large class of purely mechanical and perfectly mediocre persons connected with the practice of the law who will probably, in a more advanced state of science, be superseded by machinery.

Wilkie Collins – Man and Wife (1870)

The other day I received an email from our electricity and gas supplier asking me to submit a new meter reading. Of course the email was composed and sent by a computer. I duly read the meters, entered my readings online and the machine calculated our latest statement. Mine was probably the only human role and a subservient one at that. One day smart meters will get rid of my job too.

Early in the New Year I’ll receive another email from another machine reminding me that our credit card payment is due. I’ll pay our credit card bill via the online machine and another machine which is our bank. Nobody else involved here either.

Later I’ll probably visit Tesco and pay for some groceries using that same credit card. When I reach the checkout a Tesco machine will validate my credit card and issue a receipt allowing me to take the goods. If I buy a bottle of wine a machine will tell the Tesco checkout operator to confirm that I’m old enough. One day it will already know.

At some point I may take the car to the unmanned fuel station at Asda to buy some diesel from yet another machine. Some machines have permanent human minders, but that may change. Supermarkets alone give us some pretty strong clues about our future – machine minders.

Picture a solicitor behind a desk a few years into the future. On the desk is a computer and this is where the solicitor’s professional expertise really is. The solicitor consults the machine but it is the machine which really sorts out the legal work. The solicitor is merely its trained minder, its human face.

How about teaching, job interviews, accountancy, driving a car, lorry, taxi, bus or train? How about delivery drivers, journalism, supervision and even management? How about politics? In many ways David Cameron is a machine minder. He looks after that little cog in the global machine, the cog we used to call the United Kingdom.

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