ARAB DEMOCRACY
Are we seeing a tipping point with democracy in the Arab world, a bit like what happened to the communist countries of Eastern Europe? For many years, it seems impossible to imagine that the situation will change. Then, suddenly, cracks appear in the wall, both literally and figuratively. And then it seems impossible to imagine how it used to be.
At a time when Egypt might go one way or the other, I would say no, for two reasons. First, unlike with the Sovet Union under communism, there is no one monolithic force keeping Arab populations repressed. Arab rulers may all be strongmen, if not dictators. But the forces keeping them in power vary hugely from country to country. Some of those strongmen (eg in Tunisia) may be swept away, some may survive. Indeed, the ones that survive are those most likely to adapt. Recent events have given them a huge wake-up call, and there is still time for them to turn that to their own advantage.
Secondly, again unlike events in Eastern Europe, the Western powers (i.e. the United States) are not actively egging on the insurgents from the sidelines. It was clear in 1989 that if communism fell, what replaced it would be welcome to the West. That is not so clear today. In particular, it is not clear that free and fair elections in Arab countries would automatically produce a regime to the West's liking. Moderate, or even radical, Islamists might come to power, and then what?
This concern is reinforced by the politics of one particular Arab country, namely the fledgling Palestinian state. It too is being repressed by a strongman regime, namely Israel; and illegitimately to boot. If Arab populations really got the idea that peaceful mass demonstrations could bring about meaningful change in their political circumstances, then what would that mean for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process? No wonder the Americans are struggling to find the words to describe and influence events in Egypt, and to coax them in the right direction.
Walter Blotscher
Monday, 7 February 2011
Sunday, 6 February 2011
FLOODING
The ground has thawed for the first time since the beginning of November. And that means lots of water, not just from our property but from all the fields up the hill from us. The area around the compost heap is a lake, the back lawn is very soggy indeed, and the orchard is looking rather Somme-like.
The good news is that the Mole Army will not retake their compost heap headquarters for a while. Moles don't like wet ground, which is understandable. Who wants to live in a cold, flooded tunnel?
Walter Blotscher
The ground has thawed for the first time since the beginning of November. And that means lots of water, not just from our property but from all the fields up the hill from us. The area around the compost heap is a lake, the back lawn is very soggy indeed, and the orchard is looking rather Somme-like.
The good news is that the Mole Army will not retake their compost heap headquarters for a while. Moles don't like wet ground, which is understandable. Who wants to live in a cold, flooded tunnel?
Walter Blotscher
Saturday, 5 February 2011
THE LINGERIE FOOTBALL LEAGUE
Americans can dream up funny things when they put their minds to it. But the weirdest I have seen in a long time is the Lingerie Football League.
The LFL is a 7-a side American Football league, played by women. Nothing wrong with that, in principle. The problem is the uniform. Players wear shoulder pads, knee and elbow pads, and ice hockey helmets, pretty much like the men. The difference is that the rest of their gear consists only of very small bikinis and garters!
When I first saw this, I couldn't work out if it was supposed to be serious sport or soft porn. Officially, it is the former; many of the players are ex-college athletes from other sports. But the league's commissioner has also said that it is marketed towards "beer-drinking college students aged 21 and up". What a surprise!
Walter Blotscher
Americans can dream up funny things when they put their minds to it. But the weirdest I have seen in a long time is the Lingerie Football League.
The LFL is a 7-a side American Football league, played by women. Nothing wrong with that, in principle. The problem is the uniform. Players wear shoulder pads, knee and elbow pads, and ice hockey helmets, pretty much like the men. The difference is that the rest of their gear consists only of very small bikinis and garters!
When I first saw this, I couldn't work out if it was supposed to be serious sport or soft porn. Officially, it is the former; many of the players are ex-college athletes from other sports. But the league's commissioner has also said that it is marketed towards "beer-drinking college students aged 21 and up". What a surprise!
Walter Blotscher
Friday, 4 February 2011
WALLENSTEIN
Count Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Waldstein (more commonly known as Wallenstein) was the most controversial figure in the Thirty Years War, both at the time and afterwards. Reams of paper have been written about him, including an 11-act, 3-volume play by Friedrich Schiller in 1797-9 that followed on from his earlier history of the war. Schiller portrayed him as an idealistic figure, a man of destiny and genuine peace-seeker, murdered by his own officers. Others have presented him as a German or Czech nationalist, or as the last of the condottieri, the mercenary captains of mediæval Italy, who were made redundant by the emergence of the modern state.
Orphaned at the age of twelve, he eventually took over his father's modest estate in Bohemia after a conventional Protestant upbringing. He chose a military career, taking part in the latter stages of the 1593-1606 Habsburg war against the Turks, the training ground for so many of the principals in the later conflict, and converting to Catholicism as a way of getting on in Imperial service. He was fortunate to marry a rich widow, who then died young, leaving him her fortune. This he invested astutely, and he was one of the main beneficiaries of the reorganisation of property following the crushing of the Bohemian Revolt in 1620, the largest such transfer of assets in Europe until the communist takeovers after the second world war. Wallenstein carved out a 1,200 sqkm estate in north eastern Bohemia and built himself a huge palace in Prague, now the home of the Czech Senate. The profits from this and other ventures were loaned to the Emperor Ferdinand, who raised his estates to the Duchy of Friedland in 1624.
By 1625 Wallenstein was a very rich man, with military experience and growing ties to the Habsburg elite. But what catapulted him to the very first rank within the Holy Roman Empire was his offer that year to finance a complete Imperial Army at his own expense. The Bohemian Revolt, which dumped Ferdinand as King, started off as a local problem in one part of the Empire. What turned the event into a general conflict was the Bohemians' election of the Elector Palatine as his replacement in August 1619, two days before Ferdinand was himself elected Emperor in succession to his cousin Matthias. When the Elector Palatine foolishly accepted the Bohemian Crown - a move which required the Emperor's consent, which would obviously not be forthcoming - a full-blown constitutional crisis erupted. Ferdinand made the Elector an outlaw under the Imperial ban, and called on Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, at the time the richest man in Europe, to raise an army to enforce it. Although Maximilian and Ferdinand were both devout Catholics and the Elector and the Bohemians were hardline Protestants, the dispute was more legal than confessional. Maximilian and the Elector were both members of the Wittelsbach family, and Maximilian's main aim was to obtain the Electorate as a reward (which he duly got).
Wallenstein's later army offer was, therefore, enthusiastically received by Ferdinand, since it enabled him to escape from the military leverage of his nominal vassal. The Emperor could not pay Wallenstein back with money, but he could give him more titles. He was given the Duchy of Sagan in 1627; and after the Duke of Mecklenburg was punished for helping the Danish King in his war with the Empire, Wallenstein was given the duchy for life, and then, in 1629, as a hereditary possession. However, the idea of making someone of relatively low birth a full Imperial Prince was hugely controversial to both Protestants and Catholics, and made Wallenstein enemies amongst the Imperial nobility, notably Maximilian. Following backsniping, Wallenstein was obliged to resign his command in 1630, when he retired to his estates.
Two years later, he was back. Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden had landed in Germany in 1630; and following his stunning victories at Breitenfeld in 1631 and the Lech in 1632, the Imperial forces were both demoralised and rudderless. Tilly, Maximilian's hitherto invincible commander for more than a dozen years, was killed at the Lech, and Gustavus had overrun most of Germany. Wallenstein took over the imperial command, and fought a draw with Gustavus at Lützen in 1632, which was costly for both sides. But since Gustavus was himself killed in the battle, the advantage seemed to swing back to the Emperor.
It is now that things started to go seriously wrong for Wallenstein. He had seen enough of war in general, and this war in particular, to know that nobody was going to win it outright. Much of Germany was already devastated; trade and agriculture were declining rapidly. Yet the longer fighting went on, the more the zealots on both sides started to gain the upper hand. Wallenstein spent most of 1633 doing not very much fighting, but instead trying to broker peace with the various enemy participants; Sweden, Saxony, France. However, his inactivity - which seemed close to betrayal - caused alarm in his masters, and Ferdinand and Maximilian decided to get rid of him. In February 1634 he was murdered by some of his own officers. The religious and national tangles caused by the war are vividly shown by the principals in this last act. Wallenstein, a Bohemian Catholic convert, was betrayed to the Austrian Catholic Emperor by his Italian Catholic subordinate Piccolomini; the deed itself was carried out by three of his officers, two Irish Catholics and one Scottish Calvinist. All were later rewarded.
Why did Wallenstein do it? Early modern history was rarely kind to "lads on the make". No sooner had they claimed the rewards of their effort than they were being attacked by nobles alarmed and resentful of the erosion of their special status; what was the point of being noble if any old riffraff could get in? Since no king or emperor could rule without the support - or, at least, tacit acquiescence - of those nobles, a former high flyer could quickly become a scapegoat for problems. As a clever man, shouldn't Wallenstein have remained living quietly on his estates?
With hindsight, yes. But that ignores the situation as it was then. The pool of European talent was limited, and Wallenstein was a big fish in that pool. Furthermore, he wasn't trying to create a dynasty; his only son had already died. The principal motive seems to have been a feeling that he was indispensable. The war had already dragged on for 15 years, and Wallenstein had convinced himself that he was the only person who could stop it. He couldn't, because the various protagonists were not prepared to compromise enough to get it stopped. It would take another 15 years, and a lot more killing, before the exhausted parties eventually managed to bring it to an end.
Walter Blotscher
Count Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Waldstein (more commonly known as Wallenstein) was the most controversial figure in the Thirty Years War, both at the time and afterwards. Reams of paper have been written about him, including an 11-act, 3-volume play by Friedrich Schiller in 1797-9 that followed on from his earlier history of the war. Schiller portrayed him as an idealistic figure, a man of destiny and genuine peace-seeker, murdered by his own officers. Others have presented him as a German or Czech nationalist, or as the last of the condottieri, the mercenary captains of mediæval Italy, who were made redundant by the emergence of the modern state.
Orphaned at the age of twelve, he eventually took over his father's modest estate in Bohemia after a conventional Protestant upbringing. He chose a military career, taking part in the latter stages of the 1593-1606 Habsburg war against the Turks, the training ground for so many of the principals in the later conflict, and converting to Catholicism as a way of getting on in Imperial service. He was fortunate to marry a rich widow, who then died young, leaving him her fortune. This he invested astutely, and he was one of the main beneficiaries of the reorganisation of property following the crushing of the Bohemian Revolt in 1620, the largest such transfer of assets in Europe until the communist takeovers after the second world war. Wallenstein carved out a 1,200 sqkm estate in north eastern Bohemia and built himself a huge palace in Prague, now the home of the Czech Senate. The profits from this and other ventures were loaned to the Emperor Ferdinand, who raised his estates to the Duchy of Friedland in 1624.
By 1625 Wallenstein was a very rich man, with military experience and growing ties to the Habsburg elite. But what catapulted him to the very first rank within the Holy Roman Empire was his offer that year to finance a complete Imperial Army at his own expense. The Bohemian Revolt, which dumped Ferdinand as King, started off as a local problem in one part of the Empire. What turned the event into a general conflict was the Bohemians' election of the Elector Palatine as his replacement in August 1619, two days before Ferdinand was himself elected Emperor in succession to his cousin Matthias. When the Elector Palatine foolishly accepted the Bohemian Crown - a move which required the Emperor's consent, which would obviously not be forthcoming - a full-blown constitutional crisis erupted. Ferdinand made the Elector an outlaw under the Imperial ban, and called on Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, at the time the richest man in Europe, to raise an army to enforce it. Although Maximilian and Ferdinand were both devout Catholics and the Elector and the Bohemians were hardline Protestants, the dispute was more legal than confessional. Maximilian and the Elector were both members of the Wittelsbach family, and Maximilian's main aim was to obtain the Electorate as a reward (which he duly got).
Wallenstein's later army offer was, therefore, enthusiastically received by Ferdinand, since it enabled him to escape from the military leverage of his nominal vassal. The Emperor could not pay Wallenstein back with money, but he could give him more titles. He was given the Duchy of Sagan in 1627; and after the Duke of Mecklenburg was punished for helping the Danish King in his war with the Empire, Wallenstein was given the duchy for life, and then, in 1629, as a hereditary possession. However, the idea of making someone of relatively low birth a full Imperial Prince was hugely controversial to both Protestants and Catholics, and made Wallenstein enemies amongst the Imperial nobility, notably Maximilian. Following backsniping, Wallenstein was obliged to resign his command in 1630, when he retired to his estates.
Two years later, he was back. Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden had landed in Germany in 1630; and following his stunning victories at Breitenfeld in 1631 and the Lech in 1632, the Imperial forces were both demoralised and rudderless. Tilly, Maximilian's hitherto invincible commander for more than a dozen years, was killed at the Lech, and Gustavus had overrun most of Germany. Wallenstein took over the imperial command, and fought a draw with Gustavus at Lützen in 1632, which was costly for both sides. But since Gustavus was himself killed in the battle, the advantage seemed to swing back to the Emperor.
It is now that things started to go seriously wrong for Wallenstein. He had seen enough of war in general, and this war in particular, to know that nobody was going to win it outright. Much of Germany was already devastated; trade and agriculture were declining rapidly. Yet the longer fighting went on, the more the zealots on both sides started to gain the upper hand. Wallenstein spent most of 1633 doing not very much fighting, but instead trying to broker peace with the various enemy participants; Sweden, Saxony, France. However, his inactivity - which seemed close to betrayal - caused alarm in his masters, and Ferdinand and Maximilian decided to get rid of him. In February 1634 he was murdered by some of his own officers. The religious and national tangles caused by the war are vividly shown by the principals in this last act. Wallenstein, a Bohemian Catholic convert, was betrayed to the Austrian Catholic Emperor by his Italian Catholic subordinate Piccolomini; the deed itself was carried out by three of his officers, two Irish Catholics and one Scottish Calvinist. All were later rewarded.
Why did Wallenstein do it? Early modern history was rarely kind to "lads on the make". No sooner had they claimed the rewards of their effort than they were being attacked by nobles alarmed and resentful of the erosion of their special status; what was the point of being noble if any old riffraff could get in? Since no king or emperor could rule without the support - or, at least, tacit acquiescence - of those nobles, a former high flyer could quickly become a scapegoat for problems. As a clever man, shouldn't Wallenstein have remained living quietly on his estates?
With hindsight, yes. But that ignores the situation as it was then. The pool of European talent was limited, and Wallenstein was a big fish in that pool. Furthermore, he wasn't trying to create a dynasty; his only son had already died. The principal motive seems to have been a feeling that he was indispensable. The war had already dragged on for 15 years, and Wallenstein had convinced himself that he was the only person who could stop it. He couldn't, because the various protagonists were not prepared to compromise enough to get it stopped. It would take another 15 years, and a lot more killing, before the exhausted parties eventually managed to bring it to an end.
Walter Blotscher
Thursday, 3 February 2011
DIARMAID MacCULLOCH
Diarmaid MacCulloch is Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University. If that sounds rather dry and dusty, his writing is certainly not. His two books Reformation and The History of Christianity are two of the best books I have read in the past decade. He writes clearly about what at times can be quite dense material, he keeps things moving, he is always interesting and perceptive, and often witty. History at its best.
I wouldn't say that I was a particularly religious person. But I am a European. And the history of Europe (not all of it, admittedly, but a large part of it nevertheless) for most of the last 2,000 years has been one of Latin-speaking Christianity. If we want to understand how we came to be what we are, then we need to understand those two phenomena.
The public religiosity of modern American politicians can often sound grating or treacly to European ears. Yet it is easy to forget that until quite recently, we were all like that. Religion dominated politics, because it dominated life. Hardly anybody in Europe did not believe - absolutely and totally - in a Christian God; and that belief affected all aspects of a person's behaviour, both public and private. The great change came not when people who called themselves Christians began to differ markedly about what exactly they did believe in, to the point where they were prepared to kill and be killed in order to defend those differences - yes, this was one of the effects of the Reformation, but as MacCulloch's other book shows, such disputes had been going on for 1,000 years before Luther nailed his theses to that church door - but when the rational ideas of the Enlightenment pushed religion more and more into the private sphere. It was still OK to believe in an omnipotent being and an afterlife called heaven; yet that belief should not intrude on (say) proposals about how to structure unemployment benefit.
Despite huge technological progress since the 18th century, religious tensions seem to be on the rise again. Not necessarily amongst Christians (though there are still plenty of those; think contraception, the ordination of women and homosexuality), but between some Christians and some Muslims. Reading The History of Christianity makes you realise that it is not really belief as such that causes differences and problems, but the political structures and consequences of those beliefs. Even in the heart of the Reformation, people who thought - nay, knew -that their opponents faced an eternity of damnation, still managed to work together to solve common problems. Perhaps if more people read MacCulloch's terrific books, then we could find that common ground again today.
Walter Blotscher
Diarmaid MacCulloch is Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University. If that sounds rather dry and dusty, his writing is certainly not. His two books Reformation and The History of Christianity are two of the best books I have read in the past decade. He writes clearly about what at times can be quite dense material, he keeps things moving, he is always interesting and perceptive, and often witty. History at its best.
I wouldn't say that I was a particularly religious person. But I am a European. And the history of Europe (not all of it, admittedly, but a large part of it nevertheless) for most of the last 2,000 years has been one of Latin-speaking Christianity. If we want to understand how we came to be what we are, then we need to understand those two phenomena.
The public religiosity of modern American politicians can often sound grating or treacly to European ears. Yet it is easy to forget that until quite recently, we were all like that. Religion dominated politics, because it dominated life. Hardly anybody in Europe did not believe - absolutely and totally - in a Christian God; and that belief affected all aspects of a person's behaviour, both public and private. The great change came not when people who called themselves Christians began to differ markedly about what exactly they did believe in, to the point where they were prepared to kill and be killed in order to defend those differences - yes, this was one of the effects of the Reformation, but as MacCulloch's other book shows, such disputes had been going on for 1,000 years before Luther nailed his theses to that church door - but when the rational ideas of the Enlightenment pushed religion more and more into the private sphere. It was still OK to believe in an omnipotent being and an afterlife called heaven; yet that belief should not intrude on (say) proposals about how to structure unemployment benefit.
Despite huge technological progress since the 18th century, religious tensions seem to be on the rise again. Not necessarily amongst Christians (though there are still plenty of those; think contraception, the ordination of women and homosexuality), but between some Christians and some Muslims. Reading The History of Christianity makes you realise that it is not really belief as such that causes differences and problems, but the political structures and consequences of those beliefs. Even in the heart of the Reformation, people who thought - nay, knew -that their opponents faced an eternity of damnation, still managed to work together to solve common problems. Perhaps if more people read MacCulloch's terrific books, then we could find that common ground again today.
Walter Blotscher
Wednesday, 2 February 2011
A BACK INJURY
I have spent much of today in a horizontal position. Yesterday I changed the chain on my chainsaw, prior to chopping up more wood. If you don't fit the chain exactly right on the rotor wheel, then you can't start the machine with that rope thingy, since the wheel won't go round properly.
That is exactly what happened. When I tugged hard to start it, the wheel didn't move, but something in my lower back did. It was painful yesterday, though I was still mobile and managed to finish my chopping. However, it seized up completely during the night, so I could hardly walk this morning. I have either been hobbling around or lying on the sofa on top of a hot water bottle.
Still, my enforced immobility means that I have ample justification for watching Black Hawk Down, which is just about to start.
Walter Blotscher
I have spent much of today in a horizontal position. Yesterday I changed the chain on my chainsaw, prior to chopping up more wood. If you don't fit the chain exactly right on the rotor wheel, then you can't start the machine with that rope thingy, since the wheel won't go round properly.
That is exactly what happened. When I tugged hard to start it, the wheel didn't move, but something in my lower back did. It was painful yesterday, though I was still mobile and managed to finish my chopping. However, it seized up completely during the night, so I could hardly walk this morning. I have either been hobbling around or lying on the sofa on top of a hot water bottle.
Still, my enforced immobility means that I have ample justification for watching Black Hawk Down, which is just about to start.
Walter Blotscher
Tuesday, 1 February 2011
DAS LEBEN DER ANDEREN
Das Leben der Anderen ("the life of others") is a terrific German film, which I saw again on television last night. It takes place in the former East Germany in 1984, five years before the Berlin Wall comes down. Ulrich Mühe plays Captain Wiesler, a dedicated Stasi officer, who carries out a bugging operation on the flat of Dreyman, a playwright who is officially suspected of wanting to undermine the regime. However, while sitting at the listening station up in the building's attic, he gradually works out that he is being used. Dreyman's actress girlfriend is coveted by the lascivious Culture Minister, who has asked Wiesler's ambitious boss to dig up dirt on Dreyman and thereby clear the field for himself. Wiesler is horrified by this systemic abuse of power. Within the tight constraints of his job, he manages to doctor his reports and remove evidence from the flat, so that Dreyman is exonerated (though the girlfriend is forced to collaborate and commits suicide in remorse). The immediate price for Wiesler's human kindness is demotion to a drudge job steaming open letters in the basement of the Stasi building. After Germany is reunited, Dreyman discovers - from the former Culture Minister - that he had been bugged all along, and gets to read his (copious) Stasi file. The film ends with Wiesler, now a humble postman, purchasing a copy of Dreyman's new hit book, which is dedicated to the anonymous Stasi agent, who had saved his skin.
There are two great things about the film. The first is the depiction of East German society, filled with drab colours, Trabant motor cars, and dead-end jobs. Everyone is either miserable or afraid or both. The second is the brilliant performances, particularly from Mühe as the robotically bureaucratic Wiesler and from Ulrich Tukur as his boss, the oily apparatchik on the make.
The film won the 2007 Oscar for best foreign language film, and has won a host of other prizes. They were well-deserved.
Walter Blotscher
Das Leben der Anderen ("the life of others") is a terrific German film, which I saw again on television last night. It takes place in the former East Germany in 1984, five years before the Berlin Wall comes down. Ulrich Mühe plays Captain Wiesler, a dedicated Stasi officer, who carries out a bugging operation on the flat of Dreyman, a playwright who is officially suspected of wanting to undermine the regime. However, while sitting at the listening station up in the building's attic, he gradually works out that he is being used. Dreyman's actress girlfriend is coveted by the lascivious Culture Minister, who has asked Wiesler's ambitious boss to dig up dirt on Dreyman and thereby clear the field for himself. Wiesler is horrified by this systemic abuse of power. Within the tight constraints of his job, he manages to doctor his reports and remove evidence from the flat, so that Dreyman is exonerated (though the girlfriend is forced to collaborate and commits suicide in remorse). The immediate price for Wiesler's human kindness is demotion to a drudge job steaming open letters in the basement of the Stasi building. After Germany is reunited, Dreyman discovers - from the former Culture Minister - that he had been bugged all along, and gets to read his (copious) Stasi file. The film ends with Wiesler, now a humble postman, purchasing a copy of Dreyman's new hit book, which is dedicated to the anonymous Stasi agent, who had saved his skin.
There are two great things about the film. The first is the depiction of East German society, filled with drab colours, Trabant motor cars, and dead-end jobs. Everyone is either miserable or afraid or both. The second is the brilliant performances, particularly from Mühe as the robotically bureaucratic Wiesler and from Ulrich Tukur as his boss, the oily apparatchik on the make.
The film won the 2007 Oscar for best foreign language film, and has won a host of other prizes. They were well-deserved.
Walter Blotscher
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