I'm currently struggling through

• Ensayo sobre el catolicismo, el liberalismo y el socialismo  by Juan Donoso Cortés.
• Swords and Swordsmen by Mike Loades
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

French Intel, litany of disaster...

I'll compile more information in the future, but reviewing (yes I'm never fast on the hop, comes from consuming too much spicy food and beer) the recent French Spec Ops fiasco in Mali I'm getting the feeling that French Intel and part of their Services are either: A) rank amateur and not engaged with enough counterinsurgency and or special forces actions of late, B) Their intel is just so woeful they drop the ball more now, C) a bit of both.
Premise; The US Army has gained a wealth of counterinsurgency skills and more importantly know-how, at least since October 2001, and this shows. Gone is the ineptitude and lack of clear goals in cases such as the much publicised US cock-up in Somalia in 1993 (read; "Black Hawk Down", No! READ the book by Mark Bowden).

Should make for some interesting dissection. Western Europeans?, they're just too soft now.

Bayonets to the Front!

 Due to a need to protect musketry from a resurgent, marauding cavalry in the mid-17th century new technology was devised: the bayonet, probably in Bayonne (France) from where it gets its name. A simple blade attachment plugged into the front of the musket relegated the push of pike to history.

Spanish Musket and Arquebus, 16th century, obsolete and going nowhere...

Perhaps the inventor or those who adopted this simple device were unaware of the battlefield revolution they were creating. By the simple expediency of turning a mixed force of 10,000 men, of which one would presume 5,000 – 6,000 pike, the army evolved into 10,000, all musket men, ready to provide murderous volleys over a longer line, and consequently greatly increasing the chances of turning the flank.

Ever wondered why we were ever so much better with swords & yet derived our name from our 'firestick'?

And it would prove revolutionary. Gone too was the matchlock whose costly match made its, arguably superior, firing mechanism too expensive to maintain. And it did make the army far more professional too. Which in that strange way would make 18th century warfare that beautifully schizophrenic affair were armies proved too expensive to just waste, and gentlemen’s agreements on limiting wholesale destruction became de rigour.

No! Not him, but ok, it is based on a 'Tale of Two Cities'...

That same revolution that would in time bankrupt economies or enact such strains upon them that colonies would secede and monarchies topple. Catapult an obscure Corsican to Emperor of Europe (the most powerful seen since Charlemagne).

And it provided powerful imagery too. As the pike harked back to the civic imagery of the Hellenes, the Hoplite and all his panoply a symbol of European civilisation versus the barbarian east, the massed ranks of muskets bearing bayonets re-imagined those serried ranks at Marathon (490 BC), Plataea (479 BC) and Gaugamela(331 BC), adding to the Republican imagery of a France at war ‘et en danger’.

No longer 'subjects of the crown' but American 'Citizens' A new breed of man.

It is true there is little evidence of actual charges ‘a la bayonete’. Surgeons of the Napoleonic period saw as little as 3 or 4 bayonet wounds, but then, that was amongst the injured. It proves such a brutal way of carrying the charge, that the deaths (there seems to have been little work into actual cause of death), would probably be quick.

The French would use it to great effect. Traditionally a very attack minded army, the republican dregs were barely trained, yet numerous, and the simple expedient of the headlong rush could carry the day, if the enemy was sufficiently shaken by artillery and rifled skirmishers. Carry it did, from 1793 AD to 1812 AD it made a mockery of the old continental powers, from Northern Italy, to Vienna, to Moscow. Finally withering away in the barren highlands of Spain, and the desolate winter of the Russian steppe.

"Allons enfants de la Patrie, Le jour de gloire est arrivé!"

It was British firepower that broke its back, at Waterloo (1815 AD). Just as a half century later it would prove useless again in the headlong charge against a determined enemy as at the third day at Gettysburg (1863 AD). But it remained, potent in the imagination. New empires would use it, generally out of desperation, or inadequate foolish leadership, almost always to the same effect, at Sedan (1915 AD) or countless pointless brutal charges during Barbarossa (1941 AD) and the Pacific Campaign (1943-1945 AD) where German and American superior firepower would annihilate hundreds of thousands.

Attaque à outrance (French: Attack to excess, & they would, straight into the machineguns & artillery)

Nonetheless, it continues to this day. Having seen action lately at Tora Bora, (2001 AD) and Basra (2005 AD). Cold steel, and all its brutal realism.

Legislating 'Morally'

I’ve a serious issue with legislation being made on ‘moral grounds’. Even as a socialist I had a basic enough understanding of law and how it affects society (my understanding is still elementary), that I discounted the moral principle. More so because if it wasn’t abstracted into absolutes, (i.e. the universal, thou shalt not kill, thou shall not steal etc…) there was a genuine risk of someone’s morals being imposed over the rest.

I don’t mean strictly speaking religious sensitivities in the extreme, as one would suppose in Islam with Sharia Law, but also the ideology which I subscribe to, Catholicism. We believe abortion is wrong, I do too, we call for it to be restricted or outright banned, I don’t. The thing is whilst I don’t have issues arguing the point I cannot bring myself to overstretch into directly limiting another person’s life. The same goes for homosexual marriage.

Yesterday 13th of January, France saw 500,000 people demonstrate against the concept of same sex marriage. And whilst I can understand the sentiment, and the sound ‘religious’ grounds on which it is based, I cannot condone this action. (I am well aware this leaves me at odds with not only a great part of the Roman Curia, but its higher doctrine as ratified by the last two popes).

Demonstration in Paris- Photo from EFE

However the issue is not one of belief. It is one of civil liberties, an aspect which cannot be covered by religion, or at least gels badly with it. (An utter paradox, though understandable, ironically Christianity is one of the very few religions to set itself apart from temporal power from the very beginning). Not a simple matter by all means, but one which needs to be addressed constantly, and protected, if we are to remain not just faithful to our religious principles, but to something much higher, namely democracy and the rule of law.

Golden Memories

The Ballon d’Or or Golden Ball, (which sounds equally dodgy), has been decided, and yet again it is wee Lionel Messi. I can understand the frustration from soccer purists regarding this decision. Ultimately if one were to gauge-in sporting merit with individual accomplishment, (as certainly was the case in 2006 when Fabbio Cannavaro was awarded the trophy), then there are other candidates.

However it isn’t measured that way. And if the truth be told, it is hard to see anyone at present being even close to the Argentinian dive-baller’s level. Not even close. Still, as I am in the bah humbug mood, I’d like to point out that rather than Cristiano (who already has one, FFS!) or Xavi and Iniesta (who have only won more things than Messi), there is one person I have always felt, missed out on the trophy, and he certainly merited it more than the erstwhile Italian World Cup winning captain, Samuel Eto’o Fils. A chap whose contributions to FC Barcelona are progressively being erased.

Such is the 5’ attention span of modernity, I guess.

I don't approve of sedition

I have little truck with Sedition, though I can be brought to understand secession. There is little beauty in the break-up of an established political union to search for narrow gain, though in certain extreme cases that may be justified.

However if said break-up is in pursuit of unjustified grievance, the upstaging of a union of equals through the subversion of legality, propaganda, and in the whole for the protection of a corrupt elite, I believe that case to be seditious. This is borderline treason.
The Oxford English dictionary categorises each with a straightforward definition:
Secession is;

noun
[mass noun]
•    the action of withdrawing formally from membership of a federation or body, especially a political state:the republics want secession from the union

Sedition is;
noun
[mass noun]
•    conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch.

Wikipedia takes the concept of sedition further in language, which is true and accurate and which I would not be capable of matching.

In law, sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent (or resistance) to lawful authority. Sedition may include any commotion, though not aimed at direct and open violence against the laws. Seditious words in writing are seditious libel. A seditionist is one who engages in or promotes the interests of sedition.

The only difference, in real terms, between sedition and treason, is the matter of violence and or aiding powers, foreign and internal, who run contrary to the established order.

I believe the Regional Government of Catalonia, (northern Spain), is engaging in activities which are close to, but not yet openly seditious by running roughshod over the constitution, denying basic rights to citizens enshrined in it, promoting violence on local government channels, running mass media campaigns that demonise the rest of Spain and it's peoples.

I hope it does not go further.

Deutsche

And we are off back to schule. To "lernt deutsche". Always wanted to master the language of Schiller, Goethe and Beethoven. Well, mastery might be a tad premature. First steps. and then hopefully the taste will be acquired with the eating, as is generally the case, Ja?