Author Archives: deanwebb

Dear AP Reader…

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While I can’t reveal the contents of the tests I grade as an AP Reader, I can say that every now and then, a student chooses not to answer the questions on the AP exam and instead opts to turn the exam into a sort of confessional. Sometimes, those students are rude, flighty, pompous, panicked, or given over to the drawing of hand turkeys. Every now and then, however, I get a “Dear AP Reader…” message that I really appreciate.

Such was today’s case. The poor kid apologized for why she didn’t finish the exam. She explained it was because she’d missed lots of class time. She further explained that the lost time was due to a series of tragedies in the past semester, including crises that hit close to home.

Reading the four pages of explanation moved me. She wasn’t making this stuff up, believe me. After reading it, I had to sit back a moment and reflect on my own life and count my blessings. She’d taken a huge beating, but held firm and found her way through it. I really admire how she kept holding on to life and found a way to still be positive after everything it did to her. Believe me, I know what life can do.

At the end of her explanation, she told me to treat myself to a dinner, that I’d deserved it. I want you to know that I honored that direction. I went to Campanello’s here in Cincinnati and had a fantastic Spaghetti Carbonara that has worked its way into my list of the Twenty Best Things I’ve Ever Eaten. More than that, as I waited for my food, a little boy from the table next to mine kept running around and saying “hi!” to everyone. He had blond hair and was only 17 months old, so he easily reminded me of my son, Jarom, who left this world 9 years ago. I talked with a group of people next to me, including a couple that had been together for 43 years, so that easily reminded me of Yvette, my dear wife, my best friend, and my true love. A group of kids asked me to take their picture: that easily reminded me of my three lovely children still here with me.

Sure, the food was great. But taking the advice of that student that had been through so much helped me to realize how blessed my life has been so far and how wonderful people really can be. I love my family, I love the good people of the world, and I love the positive experiences we’re able to enjoy each day, if we just allow them to happen.

On Crisis

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Reinhart and Rogoff are looking at historical evidence of defaults and make a strong case about what prerequisites will allow for a crisis to precipitate. Right now, Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland are in the most precipitous situation and stand ready to create a replay of the crisis that followed in the wake of German default in the late 20s.

Is this a stretch? I don’t think so.

Zimbabwe, Argentina, and others went bust either singly or as part of a regional financial crisis. We’re looking today at a global situation, with much more going on in more countries than in any other crisis since 1927-1933. Look at Spain’s recent election results: the Socialists that advocated austerity were swept aside in favor of populist parties. Greece isn’t likely to accept a surrender of fiscal independence to a band of German bankers, so look for a political trump there of any possible economic solution involving staying in the Euro with austerity. Italy’s and Belgium’s debt outlooks have both been lowered, and Italy is one of the G7/G8 nations: they’re a whale to the minnow of Greece.

The outcome of a crisis is never certain: one only knows that a crisis will precipitate an outcome that is in many ways significantly different from the set of conditions that existed prior to the crisis. While hindsight is also clearer than what people see at the time events are happening, it’s also insulting to those that experienced the events. By that, I mean we need to take a look at how people react in the midst of a crisis and what causes them to realize what will happen down the road. What danger signs do people consider? What events do they consider significant?

In Nazi Germany at the time of WW2, roughly half the Jews there had fled, while roughly half remained. While there were likely many Jews that could not afford to travel, there were those who could afford to do so that felt things would be all right in the long run. For those who fled, different things acted as triggers to their decision to depart. As the events became more obvious, escape became more difficult to accomplish, but remained possible. From a man who wrote “Mein Kampf” leading a coalition government to the Reichstag fire to the Enabling Act to Kristallnacht to the Nuremberg Laws to Rhineland occupation to Anschluss to Sudetenland to the Danzig crisis, events mounted in seriousness and yet war and its consequences still came as a surprise to many observers. Such will happen again in the current crisis.

This is not to say that we’re going to see, specifically, Nazism, World War, and a Holocaust. But I do believe we will see more political extremism and populism, increased tensions that will lead to more conflicts, increased opportunities for small nations to wage war as the bigger nations are preoccupied with internal troubles, and increased opportunities for ethnic-based conflict as the peacekeepers turn inward. We’re already witnessing the various Arab states dealing with their outbreaks of democracy in their own ways, and none of them are finished with their internal turmoil.

A huge question mark in my mind is China. It recently had to declare martial law in Inner Mongolia, adding that region to its list of ethnic hotspots. Couple that with increasing unemployment and inflation, and the necessary preconditions exist for a potential violent regime change in China – political infighting within the CPC at the very least and open warlordism with a breakdown of central authority as a real possibility.

Now back to Europe. 45% of Spain’s under-25s are unemployed. Massive anti-government protests have happened across the nation. This is on the level of what took place in Tunisia and elsewhere, this time in Europe. Greece had similar protests, and those are sure to worsen as the economy there worsens. Italy could be next. On the strategic side, the Visegrad nations of Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Slovakia have agreed to form a battlegroup under Polish command. This is significant because they would not feel compelled to do so if both Russian power were not on the ascendant and protection guarantees from NATO were credible. The Visegrad nations are seeking to extend their alliance to Romania and Bulgaria, to formalize a vision of Pilsudski’s to create an “intermarium” alliance between nations that were traditionally in the orbit of either Russia or Germany, or both.

When was the sign that got me thinking along these lines? When Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and the rich world watched on, impotently.

Wilson’s “The New Freedom”

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The New Freedom was written by Woodrow Wilson in 1912. I am finding it a fascinating read. While I do not agree completely with everything Wilson says, I do find his observations on the vast changes the USA underwent from 1890 to 1910 to make for compelling reading. Much of what he says resonates today. I would say his comments resonate even more so, since there have been nearly 100 years since he wrote for the forces he observed to continue their work.

Change the Government?

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Said the message board poster to me: “If government debt only benefits the wealthy then clearly society should get rid of it.”

Easier said than done. Government benefits the wealthy largely because the wealthy benefit the government. It’s a two-way street, to boot.

It’s not all doe-eyed politicians falling under the sway of evil Big Money. I’ve heard a good number of anecdotes about how politicians can’t take your calls because they’re too busy speed-dialing every multi-millionaire in the country. Then there was the story related by a former president of Standard Oil when he went to Congress to see why it was passing so much legislation against his company.

He went to the head of one committee, who flatly stated that the laws against Standard Oil would stop as soon as that company dumped its current legal representation and signed a contract with the committee chair’s legal partners back in New York. The representative was basically demanding a huge bribe for himself and his partners, and the president of Standard Oil refused to play ball that way… but I think we all know that it continues.

Because of the two national parties and their primary systems, we only get to choose leaders that are pre-approved by some segment of the powers that be. We don’t get to draft our own local heroes and have them battle it out for the political mindshare of the nation: we get Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dumber. We’re free to think that Tweedle-Dumber is the other party’s man, but there really isn’t enough difference between the two – except on social issues and in personal style – to truly make a difference.

The level of institutional change necessary to effect a change in the way the USA is governed is sufficient to be described as revolutionary at the very least and cataclysmic in only slightly more extreme scenarios.

George Friedman of Stratfor has said that the struggle in the USA between empire and the republic is very real. I’ve read a set of books from the turn of the previous century to indicate that the struggle was already finished by 1919 and the forces of empire emerged victorious. Even then, authors complained of media concentration in the hands of the elites and the use of propaganda to distract people from actual goings-on. Every thing said in these books from 1902, 1919, and 1921 resonates today, but even more strongly because not one condition they decried 100 years ago has done anything but increase in intensity.

Many consider Eisenhower’s speech about the military-industrial complex to have been a warning back in the 1950s: It was only an echo of sentiments voiced by Wilson in 1912, in his “The New Freedom.” The problems we worry over today were already intractable a century ago.

The Flipside of the Monroe Doctrine

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Whenever I heard about the Monroe Doctrine in school, it was always about how the USA put it forward to protect the Latin American republics from European interference. Never once was it mentioned that the Monroe Doctrine also effectively meant the USA could exercise a veto power on any Latin American relationship with the rest of the world. The new republics never asked for the doctrine in the first place and it was useless whenever the British navy didn’t feel like blockading France… until 1898.

After 1898, the USA could use the Monroe Doctrine to extend a condition of empire over the whole of Latin America. Rather than incorporate the lands politically and then have to deal later on with questions of citizenship and rights, as did the Roman Empire, the USA allowed for political separation to exist in legal terms, but managed to nevertheless control Latin American nations through forced treaty obligations and military interventions. This, in turn, meant that US corporations could use the puppet governments propped up by US forces and US-trained forces to create unfair economic arrangements to suck natural resources out of Latin America to make cheaper goods for US citizens. Slavery existed, just not in a jurisdiction where it was both illegal and where law enforcement would act to put an end to it.

Non-Muslim Mercenaries in the UAE

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Why isn’t this stuff in the major media? It’s because advertisers don’t want it. Therefore, you need to start getting news from ad-free sources. The story about the UAE contracting with Blackwater’s founder to provide specifically non-Muslim mercenaries to provide crowd control is absolutely sickening.

The upshot of this is that the UAE anticipates pro-democracy rallies and has chosen to put them down with brutality. The USA supports this move. Many of the mercenaries for the 800-man unit are from Colombia and South Africa, areas with a history of extralegal killings and rogue paramilitary forces. The guys the UAE is bringing in are mass-murdering thugs that will be ready and willing to pour hot lead into rioting crowds of enslaved foreign workers – and the USA is ready to smile on that sort of thing.

Drug Violence Moving Through Central America

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Democracy Now! reports that Los Zetas mass-murdered 27 people on a drug dealer’s ranch in Guatemala. Los Zetas used to be centered on Mexico: now their reach extends beyond that nation’s borders. One wonders what they’re doing in the USA, if this sort of thing is going on in Guatemala.

I’ll tell you: drug dealing concentrates money very quickly. The concentration of money leads to economic and political power. Simple as that. Of course, Los Zetas can’t just sit on their money: they have to launder it, and that means it hits the banking system.

Money laundering is the third biggest industry in the world, by some estimates. That makes the global banking system something that goes hand in hand with the drug cartels. It’s not just the cartels that make money off of drugs: banks got some skin in that game, as well. That means the influence of drug money and drug power can be exerted by the banks in addition to the cartels. This stuff reaches to the highest levels.

Economics Joke

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Four economists are taking a shower. One’s a classical, one’s a Keynesian, one’s a monetarist, and one is a Marxist.

The hot water goes out because someone started the dishwasher.

The classical economist stands there for 90 minutes, shivering in the cold water. He does that because he believes that the hot water will eventually come back on and there’s nothing he should do to bring it back sooner.

The Keynesian starts fiddling with both the hot and cold water valves in an attempt to fine-tune the system while using a government-issued emergency hot water supply he had installed in his shower. Unfortunately, the supply only delivers the hot water to certain sectors of the shower and most of it goes down the drain. Darn leakage!

The monetarist doesn’t want to shiver and he doesn’t want to waste water. He just turns off the cold water and enjoys the warmth of a slowly increasing trickle of warm water. This works well until 2008, when the pipes freeze and the velocity of the water goes almost to zero.

The Marxist thinks the other three are total idiots and lashes out by smashing the hot water tank, leaving everyone and everything equally dirty. Showering was an opiate of the masses.

Quote of the Day for Me:

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“Society has the right and the need to safeguard its interests against an injurious assertion of individuality.” – J.A. Hobson

Sorry, Ayn Rand, but Mr. Hobson is right. O, but that we had heeded his advice at the Fed instead of embracing hers! O, but if only Greenspan had been a devotee of Hobson instead of a disciple of Rand! Alas, but that is what a good government should do: protect society from the injurious assertions of individuality.

Tae Guk Gi

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I picked up this film at the Half-Price Books this past weekend and enjoyed it greatly. Perhaps “enjoyed” is the wrong word… it’s an incredibly brutal war movie. I should say that I appreciated its importance and scope greatly. It’s a magnificent film and is superlative as a war movie.

I watch war movies because of what they have to say about the human condition, both about the soldiers that fight and the people that make the films. I feel that war movies as a genre deserve a system of rating that considers them as war movies, to the possible exclusion of other elements.

The first consideration is how much stuff gets blown up. Wars are about destruction, and that has to be depicted strongly, or the film must deliver significantly in other areas. Even if a film is near-perfect in other areas, an absence of massive, cyclopean destruction will prevent it from being a consummate war film. In this regard, Tae Guk Gi delivers. Some would say that it over-delivers. The film has a strong advisory that is warranted for its stark, graphic, brutal depiction of what war can do to a human body. The film does not flinch from hand-to-hand combat with improvised weapons, shells rending bodies, or massacres of innocents. The violence makes it difficult to watch, but compelling as well. There is much to learn in that this is a true face of war, and it is ugly. 2 points for the blowing stuff up.

Next, I want to assess the honesty of the depiction of war. Every great war movie is also an antiwar movie. A movie that glorifies an aspect of the conflict is propaganda. Tae Guk Gi glorifies heroism, but on a personal, rather than national level. It questions so-called “national heroes” as fabrications of propaganda, with their actual deeds perhaps best left unknown. Tae Guk Gi is most certainly an anti-war movie. The war moves across Korea and devastates the whole of it. The characters are all complicated, regardless of their side, which aids the impact of the film. 2 points for honesty without propaganda.

Third for me is a question of veracity: does it ring true? I’m a military historian, and I cringe at ignorance of history. Ignorance of history leads directly into propaganda and mythology and glorification of war, which there should be none of. Tae Guk Gi is painstaking in its detail, down to the anti-communist brute squads that executed South Korean citizens in liberated areas for suspicion of collaboration with the Communists and the North Korean slaughtering of villagers in the path of the South Korean advance. The uniforms are impeccable and the equipment period- and theatre- accurate. I enjoyed seeing the North Koreans equipped with the proper USSR 1938-era war surplus, as happened historically, along with the evolving quality of equipment for the ROK forces. 2 points for veracity.

After veracity, I want to see empathy for the other side. Not sympathy, but an understanding of their motives – empathy. I don’t want the contending army to be simply “the bad guys.” I want them to be the enemy, but I want to see them act intelligently and not be a set of cardboard targets to blast apart. I don’t want to see a film that’s little more than a first-person shooter game. Again, Tae Guk Gi comes through on this count. The North Koreans aren’t idiots. They also aren’t a nameless mass. We see their soldiers, their officers, their prisoners of war, and each character has a memorable impact. There’s also a great Chinese mass charge scene that incorporates CGI and live action properly… unless the filmmakers really did hire 100,000 extras to charge up a hill for 20 seconds… but the scene conveys the idea of a mass charge more than any description I’ve read. I understand the Chinese style of fighting more now. 2 points for the empathy connection.

Finally, I need intensity of experience. I need to feel like I’m there, in the midst of the conflict. Tae Guk Gi is excellent in that regard. The cinematography uses a number of artistic touches that again and again put me directly in the trenches, bunkers, and city ruins. Blood, dirt, and bullet casings fly up into the lens, giving me more than a 3-D experience. I travel in time with those touches. 2 points for the intensity, 10 total.

Tae Guk Gi is what I would consider to be a consummate war film. It has it all, plus bonuses I did not need to consider because of its attainment of superlativeness without their consideration. This is not a romance. This is not a teenage angst vehicle. This is a WAR movie, and there is much to learn from watching it. If you like war movies, you owe it to yourself to see it.