A brief period away...

A brief period away while I take care of business. In the meantime...

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Check the Tumblr account for photos, music, video, or comment. All photos by myself. All music is by friends or creative influences. All video by myself or pulled through the tubes from elsewhere.

Fencing is the Reason Guns were Invented

Living with two fencers (EdWin + HutchiBaby), this article is was particularly fascinating.

"Since it has aristocratic roots, fencing still carries an elitist reputation that American fencers would like to shed. Still, the fencers I met confirmed the stereotype that this was a sport for agile brainiacs. I talked at random to three women competitors whose professions were biostatistician at the National Cancer Institute, naval engineer, and director of a think tank.

I asked several fencers why they are drawn to the sport. They all mentioned that it was good exercise, but they were much more interested in the intellectual discipline. Fencing requires finely honed mental reflexes, enjoyment in being intimidating, and a love of deceit. They liked that there was no reliance on a team: instead, it's one person alone with a sharp object trying to defeat another. I bet college fencers read a lot of Ayn Rand."

Dannatt does a Gates: Spend on What We Need, Not What We Think We Will Need

Following on from the below article, it appears General Dannatt is proposing the British Armed Forces adopts a frugal approach to defense spending. This will involve ditching 'big-ticket' defense projects and re-focussing defense spending on immediate needs, such as supporting 'stability operations', and away from post-Cold War strategic defense spending.

General Dannatt describes the current British security situation thus:

"We are in an era of persistent conflict. Iraq and Afghanistan are not aberrations, they are signposts to the future. We risk becoming irrelevant if we do not adapt right across the board."

The General also accepts that, wrongly or rightly our reputation as a powerful ally to America and global military force has been "called into question" due to Iraq.

"Credibility with the United States is earned by being an ally that can be relied on to state clearly what it will do and then do it effectively. Credibility is also linked to the vital currency of reputation and in this respect there is a recognition that our national and military reputation and credibility, unfairly or not, have been called into question at several levels in the eyes of our most important ally as a result of some aspects of the Iraq campaign."

Channel 4's Krishnan Guru-Murthy interviewed the General shortly after his speech at Chatham House (click through to the link if the video is not displayed below).



Not surpisingly, General Dannatt is ferociously sharp and his points clearly well considered. The recording of yesterday's speech reminded me more of a presentation by a corporate management consultant, than a military general. Quite fitting I feel, considering once you cut through the euthamisms his proposed solutions are all too common: we must raine in unecessary spending, take stock of our needs and requirements, and focus on what we do best.

GSRD on Evolutionary Defense

Unfortunately I missed this (but for good reason).

A Perspective on the Nature of Future Conflict

Friday 15 May 2009 13:30 to 14:30
Location

Chatham House, London
Participants

General Sir Richard Dannatt, Chief of the General Staff, British Army
Chair: Dr Robin Niblett, Director, Chatham House

In strategic and inclusive terms the speaker will give a view of future conflict, dominated by the concept of hybrid operations. He will explain the implications of this for the land environment in particular, showing how the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan have acted as a catalyst for 'transformation in contact' and describe how the Army could continue to evolve so that it can better contribute to defence and security in the future.

The question and answer session in this meeting was off the record.

But you can catch the audio here.

http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/events/listen/-/id/1153/doc/audio/

Embeded

VBS.TV has been at the fore-front of programming that is sometimes clueless but deeply hilarious. and other times crucially . They boldly go where most people don't care to look. This is excellent.

INSIDE AFGHANISTAN WITH BEN ANDERSON
In Inside Afghanistan VBS joins BBC correspondent and former Iranian captiveBen Anderson to review some of the footage he shot on his latest foray to the colossally mismanaged logjam that is NATO's war against the resurgent Afghani Taliban. Here's what Ben had to say about what he shot (we mean with a camera).

"This series is about 24 hours in Helmand, Afghanistan's most violent province. I was with the Queen's Company, British soldiers who normally guard Buckingham Palace. Their job was to train the Afghan National Army while fighting the Taliban, an almost impossible combination. On the day this was shot, we were ambushed late in the morning, then surrounded in a small house belonging to a terrified Afghan family. The battle to get out of the house lasted eight hours. The two most senior soldiers there - both veterans of Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Northern Ireland - agreed that it was the most intense day they had ever experienced. I spent two months in Afghanistan, and I'm sure that what I saw in Helmand is going on in many other parts of the country. We could be there for decades."

PS: If you're in Britain this week, also check out Ben Anderson's Jack: A Soldier's Story on BBC Three.

Watch it here

http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=1834373791

Obama & Lavrov: It's Business Time

Despite international events suggesting otherwise, Russia and America yesterday stressed the positive working relationship between their governments on a broad range of issues. President Obama and Secretary Lavrov expressed their professional respect of each other and their counterparts, ushering in an era of pragmatic co-operation. Check out the video of the resulting press conference here - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8039346.stm

Chiming with this sentiment, Secretary Clinton recently remarked; "It is, I think, old thinking to say that we have a disagreement in one area, therefore we shouldn't work on something else that is of overwhelming importance."

Smoking Men Shuffles and Bad Trainers

Danger Room, as always, has it...

Robert Gates isn't the only Bush-era Pentagon appointee that'll keep on working for Team Obama. So will defense poobahs like: intel undersecretary (and retired Air Force Lieutenant General) James Clapper; Air Force Secretary Mike Donley; and assistant secretary for special operations Michael Vickers, of "Charlie Wilson's War" fame.

Please also note the bad trainers advertised on this page.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2009/02/top-spook-air-f.html

The Video

or hit the link and see video in top-right...

http://www.terraplexic.org/review/2009/2/12/the-cybernetic-way-of-warfare-at-the-ica-23-feb.html

CTLab: Feral Cities and the Scientific Way of Warfare

The guys over at CTLab are really on to something at the moment. I attended a lecture at the ICA (with my partner in academic crime) on Monday given by Antoine Bousquet who speaks here. So what does happen when the command and control structure is flattened...

Putin to Obama: 'Let's See What You Got, Player'

The Financial Times' international affairs editor Quentin Peel pulls together the pieces of Putin and Medvedev's recent foreign policy surge.

'First, they leaked details of naval and air bases to be established on the shores of the Black Sea in the breakaway Georgian province of Abkhazia, whose independence is recognised by Moscow alone. Then they signed an air defence treaty with the former Soviet republic of Belarus, apparently paving the way for an anti-missile defence system to counter one planned by the previous US administration across the border in Poland. Moscow appears to have persuaded the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan to oust the US from its air base at Manas, outside Bishkek, in exchange for $2bn (€1.6bn, £1.4bn) in loans, and $150m in financial aid.'

That all amounts to quite a few moves on the great chess board. However this is a common trend amongst post-Soviet and pseudo-democratic states; the external projection of strength is designed to distract the gaze from internal weakness.