Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Amongst the Dead Cities - Hitchens

I posted a piece by Hitchens on Dresden, where he responds to defenders of the British bombing. Here, for anyone interested, is the original piece by Peter Hitchens, which provoked his readers to rally to justify the bombardments.

"Among the Dead Cities

Last weekend was the 65th anniversary of the RAF and USAAF bombing of Dresden. I was impressed to see that residents of that lovely city formed a human chain to prevent a demonstration by neo-Nazis, trying to equate the bombing with the Holocaust. Appalling as the bombing was, it was an act of war taken against an aggressor nation, not the same as the deliberate, cold-blooded industrial slaughter of Europe's Jews, a unique crime (which I hope will remain unique and is often falsely compared with lesser horrors by irresponsible propagandists of many kinds).

The citizens of modern Dresden, which has now at least partly recovered from the destruction, and also from nearly 50 years of Communist vandalism and stupidity, are a credit to the German Federal Republic, which has made immense efforts to build a free, law-governed society out of the ruins of Hitler's Reich, and doesn't get enough credit for its success. No, it's not a perfect society (its attitude to home schooling is insupportable, for instance). But it is a very creditable one. Perhaps now we can see (in Iraq and Afghanistan, for instance) how badly such attempts to build freedom out of the rubble of tyranny can fail or falter, we should pay more attention to the German success.

Apart from anything else, anyone who seeks to excuse or minimise or diminish the Holocaust may have the effect of making a repeat of it more likely, however unintentionally. That is why the 'revisionist' arguments of some German historians, who seek to equate Holocaust and bombing, ought to be resisted.

Even so, I think we have to admit that the bombing of civilian targets by the RAF during World War Two was wrong. We can say this without in any way impugning the undoubted courage of the young men who flew in the bombing missions - and who suffered appalling casualties while doing so. But their commanders, and the politicians who knew full well what was going on, cannot be let off.

I have just read A. C. Grayling's powerful book ‘Among the Dead Cities’ (you will have to read it yourself to find out where this startling and disturbing phrase comes from). I think its case against the bombing of German civilians is unanswerable. He deals with all the standard arguments of those who justify it, pointing out that all of these would be a better argument for what the RAF largely didn't do - that is, accurate bombing of industrial, economic and military targets. One of the few missions where careful targeting was involved was the rightly famous 'Dambusters' raid, though that did inevitably cause some severe civilian casualties, many of them slave workers from defeated allied nations. Another was the bombing of the missile factory at Peenemunde. Such bombing, which was also tackled by the USAAF, also at great cost in young lives, did in fact have a much greater effect on the German ability to wage war than the bombing of civilians. The Americans, by the way, did bomb civilians in Japan, another dubious episode.

Many other issues flow from this, including the validity of the 'finest hour' and 'glorious struggle' views of the Second World War, which seem to me (who once believed them entirely) to grow more threadbare by the year. And I know that many people would simply rather not think about the matter for this very reason. The market for accounts of the Hamburg firestorm is pretty limited in Britain. That's a pity. We need to know what was done in our name, and in my view to be horrified by it, so that we can be sure we are not again reduced to this barbaric and - as it happens - ineffectual form of warfare.

It is my suspicion that the moral shrivelling of Britain since 1945, the increased violence and delinquency, the readiness to accept the abortion massacre, the general coarsening of culture and the growth of callousness have at least something to do with our willingness to shrug off - or even defend - Arthur Harris's deliberate 'de-housing' of German civilians. The British people in 1939, told of what would be done in their name within six years, would have been incredulous and astonished. I am glad at least that people such as Bishop George Bell of Chichester raised powerful voices against it at the time, at some cost to themselves. We owe it to them to revisit the argument."

Peter Hitchens on the bombing of Dresden

A very interesting post from Hitchens where he responds to readers of his blog who have posted comments in defence of the British bombing of Dresden.

"Now to the bombing of Dresden. I am accused of hindsight. Well, I personally can have no other sort of sight in this case, since I was born more than six years after the Dresden events. I hope I should have had the courage to object at the time. Others certainly did. There were notable voices raised against the indiscriminate bombing of German civilians at the time, particularly by the most impressive and courageous George Bell, then Bishop of Chichester and (until he raised his voice) likely to have become a very distinguished Archbishop of Canterbury. Bell was a powerful intellect, not a naive sentimentalist, and had maintained good contacts with the anti-Hitler resistance in Germany since before the war.

As A.C. Grayling says in his book (p.181) ‘George Bell's attitude to the conduct of the war was not a function of other-wordly innocence. He knew rather better than most what was at stake in Nazi Germany. Before the outbreak of hostilities in 1939, he was active in helping people of Jewish origin gain asylum in Britain, and he had maintained contact with people engaged in opposition to Hitler.’

Bell called what the RAF was doing 'obliteration bombing'. He had supporters in both the Lords and the Commons, including Richard Stokes MP and the then Marquess of Salisbury. Others opposed the decision to engage in this sort of bombing on the grounds that it would do little to end the war, would draw valuable resources away from the decisive battle against the U-boats, and would cost horrendous numbers of lives (an interesting insight is given into this in C.P. Snow's novel 'The Light and the Dark' in which (spoiler warning) a brilliant academic who was at one time sympathetic to the Nazis eventually joins the RAF as a bomber pilot and (knowing full well that this fate is virtually certain) is killed while bombing Berlin. Snow wrote from personal knowledge of the debate, as a senior scientific civil servant. He was horrified at the losses, comparable to those on the Somme in 1916, and it is plain from his account that many experts argued against the Harris campaign, on the grounds of the casualties, which by their nature destroyed the lives of some of the country's best young men, and the military futility of the action.

In answer to 'Roy,' and Michael Williamson, Grayling also notes a surprising (to some) lack of enthusiasm for the bombing of German civilians by British civilians who had themselves been subjected to this uniquely horrible form of attack. When a British pacifist , Vera Brittain, wrote a book attacking the bombing, it was most savagely denounced in the USA, a country which had at that time never experienced aerial attack on civilians. I should stress here that I have little time for Miss Brittain, whose silly attitude between the wars contributed to calls for British military weakness in the 1930s and so helped lead to a war in which we felt the need to resort to bombing.

George Orwell, who justified bombing during the war, wrote after touring the scenes of destruction in Germany when the war was over: ‘To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.’

And I should say here that the destruction visited on Germany by British bombs was immeasurably greater than that suffered by British cities. Even the famous raid on Coventry was small by the standards of Harris's thousand bomber raids (600 people died in the Coventry raid. This would be equalled or exceeded in many British raids which nobody has heard of - Stuttgart, April 1943, Dortmund, twice in May 1943, Wuppertal, 3,400 dead in May 1943, 1,800 dead in a second raid soon afterwards, Dusseldorf, 1,292 dead, June 1943, Krefeld, 1056 dead, June 1943, Hamburg, 1,500 dead, July 1943, then two days later, 35,000 dead in the firestorm of 'Operation Gomorrah' - these are a mere selection from the catalogue of carnage). Nothing Germany ever did compared with 'Operation Gomorrah', which destroyed the houses and people of much of Hamburg, or the Dresden raid, in which the numbers of dead are not known but were probably around 25,000. As many as 20,000 may have died in Pforzheim a few days later. There was no German equivalent of the Lancaster bomber.

And 'Roy' should note that most Germans, while they still remained free from secret-police terror (under which even he might have found himself voting for someone he didn't like. Can he be sure he wouldn't have?) did not vote for Hitler, and that the principal opposition to him (and the last brave voice raised in the Reichstag against him before the darkness fell, that of Otto Wels) came from the Social Democratic Party, whose support was concentrated in the close-packed working-class housing which Harris destroyed. What were these poor people supposed to do to avoid the supposed 'justice' of Arthur Harris's incendiaries and high explosives? Emigrate in protest?

'Brian T' says: ‘As far as I know, the people who prevented the demonstration in Dresden were not peaceful residents of the city, but violent left-wing extremists.’ He does not know very far in that case. Such extremists were present, mainly in the area round the Neustadt Station (used for the deportation of Jews to the death camps) which is some way from, and on the other side of the Elbe from, the historic centre. One might expect such people to be present. But, in a report which can be found with ease on the English site of 'Der Spiegel', and also from the account in the International Herald Tribune, it is clear that the human chain was composed of ordinary citizens. Their action was applauded by the city's Christian Democrat Mayor, and by civilised people all over Germany. Why, I wonder, would anyone want to give a different impression?

Mr Barnes's curious remarks on the Holocaust (15th February, 6.52 pm) are worth serious study, despite being partly incoherent. I shall certainly read his future contributions more closely, in the light of this one.

James Shaw (among others) dismisses as 'nonsense' my argument that: 'It is my suspicion that the moral shrivelling of Britain since 1945, the increased violence and delinquency, the readiness to accept the abortion massacre, the general coarsening of culture and the growth of callousness have at least something to do with our willingness to shrug off - or even defend - Arthur Harris's deliberate 'de-housing' of German civilians.'

I think he has missed my point. He can explain whether this was accidental or deliberate. I am obviously not offering a direct line between Arthur Harris and the 1967 Abortion Act, nor (as he fails to note) is abortion my only example of the effects of the wartime demoralisation of Britain. If I were, his instances would be of some value. But I am not. I am saying that such actions helped to coarsen and brutalise a nation which was formerly notable for its gentleness, kindness and Christian charity.

Other countries started from different places and came under different influences. Sweden, which enthusiastically sterilised some of its citizens before 1939, may have other reasons for its demoralisation, rooted in its enthusiastic worldly utopianism. Few would question that the Spanish Civil War, with its legacy of horror and unrestrained brutality, has poisoned that country for generations, and also associated the Catholic Church with the discredited Franco tyranny.

He also makes two other remarks which I find irritating and rather low: ‘Presumably you would have rather that the RAF had allowed German industry production to peak even higher, and take a terrible toll on the Russian front.’

Well, if he had made any attempt to study my argument, let alone to read Professor Grayling's book, or even studied the subject marginally, he would know that the effect of bombing German civilians on German industry was startlingly small, especially in comparison to the awful losses of our young men, and the hecatombs of German dead.

People were angry and defiant, rather than demoralised. Germany remained able to restore basic services in its bombed cities until a very late stage in the war. Its air defences by night were frighteningly effective, as any Lancaster veteran can recount - not all that much less effective than by day. And the factories were untouched except by accident. The main damage to German industry was done by the accurate daylight bombing of the USAAF, especially its attacks on oil installations rather late in the war. The Americans sacrificed bomb load for protection, and developed, as we could have done, long-range escort fighters which made such bombing practicable. Harris didn't like being asked to do this, and resisted his Army colleagues' demands for help in attacking transport targets in the run-up to D-Day. When he did assent, the attack was highly effective. A policy of bombing industrial targets by day under fighter escort would also have absorbed just as much, if not more, of the German war effort as did the indefensible alternative of killing women and children in their homes, by indiscriminate carpet-bombing.

Mr Shaw adds: ‘It's also worth remembering that the British government only came to the conclusion that the bombing of German cities would work after examining the effect of German bombing on British cities.’

Did it? What is his evidence for this claim? He seems very assured, verging on the smug. Has he any reason to feel so? British civilian morale did not break during the London Blitz or after the Coventry massacre. So why should the Germans behave differently? (They didn't either, as it turned out). The main reason for the de-housing policy was that we couldn't hit proper targets by night. The devastating Butt Report (look it up) demonstrated that Bomber Command's night attacks were mostly dropping bombs on German cows, if they were lucky. The reason for attacking big cities, rather than industrial or military targets, was because they could reliably hit them by night.

The bombing of civilians from the air may have appeased Stalin a little and given the British people the (wrong) impression that they were doing serious damage to Hitler's war effort. But it squandered valuable young lives, and was a poor substitute for direct engagement with the enemy on the ground, the only way in which wars are won.

This we were unable to do because our army in 1940 had been so small and weak that it had been abruptly ejected from continental Europe at Dunkirk (which was, by the way, a defeat, not a victory). It could not get back there for many years and then at horrendous cost in lives, invasion from the sea being a terribly bloody form of fighting. No wonder Churchill (who could not forget the disaster of his attempted landings at Gallipoli) hesitated so long. The bombing's only good effects, the diversion of strength from the Eastern front, could have been achieved by American-style accurate daylight attacks, with well-armed bombers under fighter escort, which would have been morally defensible while simultaneously doing real damage to the Nazi war effort. I doubt if the casualties on our side would have been much worse, either. Admit it. Bombing civilians deliberately was both wrong and ineffectual, and robbed us of much moral authority. Its roots lie in British weakness, brainless pacifism and dumb diplomacy during the 1920s and 1930s. It is time we recognised it.'

cold weather puts the freeze on the economy

Interesting
observation from economist Blogger Stefan Karllson:

'Freezing Weather Freezes Economies
Last month, I told you about how unusually cold weather was a factor increasing the probability of a "double dip" recession in the U.K.

Now we are seeing more examples of how the cold winter in the northern part of the northern Hemisphere is reducing economic activity.

The U.S. payroll employment number for February will likely be negatively affected by the blizzards that struck much of the North East United States, while the German ifo-index fell as cold weather reduced both retail sales and construction activity. Meanwhile, much of the Swedish rail system (and to a lesser extent some car/truck and air traffic) was paralyzed by extreme cold and large amounts of snow, something which will likely negatively affect many business activities.

If only we had more "global warming"....

Aside from that, another interesting observation one could make is that this makes "seasonal adjustments" more problematic. While I think "seasonal adjustments" makes sense in principle (assuming the absence of below mentioned practical problems), it is often a lot more problematic than many people think in practice applied to actual statistics.

Here we have a clearly seasonal (in the northern hemisphere, cold- and snow related problems only arise during the last and the first months of the year) factor depressing economic activity, yet because the severity of this seasonal factors varies from different years, the standard statistical method of historical averages will easily become misleading. If it was possible, one should let the factor vary from different years instead, but the risk is that this could allow statisticians to make arbitrary judgments, possibly influenced by political factors. Finding a way to objectively assess the different seasonal effect each year is something which aspiring statisticians should think about.'

Monday, February 22, 2010

Human progress happens at 4% per year

I had to blog this with a headline like that!

Progress in Usability: Fast or Slow?
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox
February 22, 2010:

...

Stephen Moore and Julian L. Simon wrote a book called It's Getting Better All the Time that summarizes improvements in 100 different fields across the 20th century. Following are some of their statistics (all from the United States):
  • Infant mortality: 100 per 1,000 births in 1915, dropping to 9 in 1998. Improvement rate: 3% per year.
  • Children without dental cavities: 26% in 1971, increasing to 55% in 1988.
    Improvement rate: 5% per year.
  • People showering or bathing daily during winter: 29% in 1950, increasing to 75% in 1999. Improvement rate: 2% per year.
  • Time worked to buy a chicken (at an average worker's salary): 2 hours in 1920, dropping to 15 minutes in 1999. Improvement rate: 3% per year.
  • S&P stock market index: 6 in 1900, growing to 1,400 by 1999. Improvement rate: 6% per year. (As it turns out, 1999 was a bubble year, and the S&P later dropped, but for the sake of the long-term analysis, I'm sticking with the book's 20th century data.)
  • Toy sales: $2 billion in 1921 (adjusted to 1998 dollars), growing to $45 billion in 1998. Improvement rate: 4% per year.
  • Farm productivity, sacks of onions per acre: 200 in 1950, increasing to 800 in 1999. Improvement rate: 3% per year.
  • Deaths caused by Chicago heat waves: 10,000 in 1901, dropping to 300 in 1995. Improvement rate: 4% per year.
  • Airplane speed: 37 miles per hour in 1905 (Wright brothers Flyer III), increasing to 2,070 miles per hour in 1965 (Lockheed YF-12A). Improvement rate: 7% per year.
I could go on (the book has 100 datasets), but the conclusion is clear: Human progress happens at 4% per year, averaged across many fields, ranging from 2% to 7%.

Israel accused over death of Hamas' Mahmoud Mabhouh in Dubai

Can you imagine BBC coverage of the killing in Dubai - supposedly by Mossad - of senior Hamas operative Mahmoud Mabhouh including pictures of babies and children killed by Mabhouh-sourced rockets? No, I can't either, but there are a couple at Tom Gross's blog.

Personally I hope Mossad did do it, but that the exposure of the operatives (if such it be) was not a hideous cock-up, but either no such thing, or planned that way.

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Is Israel the only suspect over Dubai death?
Tom Gross
February 18, 2010

* Dubai death may have the support of many actors
* Did the Saudis have a hand? Did British intelligence?
* Few weeping over death of Hamas master terrorist
* There’s much we don’t know about Mabhouh’s death, so it’s unwise to jump to conclusions

...

* There seems a very real possibility that Israel is being set up. Airlines keep detailed passenger records these days and anyone could have got the flight manifestos of British and other passport holders who have flown to Israel in the past and then used these names in a deliberate attempt to point the finger of blame at Israel.

* The Dubai authorities have provided no forensic evidence that points to Israel, only a series of photos and videos of random hotel guests who may or may not all know each other. In any event, the persons shown in these photos and videos are not shown committing any crime. It would be very easy to frame Israel, using the identities of six randomly-chosen Israelis based on flight manifestos. This could have been done by anyone – and especially by persons who wanted to avoid being suspected of this action by blaming the Israelis and diverting attention from the real perpetrators.

...

* Many governments wanted Mabhouh out of the way, not only Israel. Sources confirm to me that the missiles Mabhouh was procuring from the Iranians had the capability of hitting central Tel Aviv, and were Hamas to use such missiles later this year, the Israeli response might lead to a region-wide conflagration, which many Western and Arab governments want to avoid.

* If Israel was responsible – and that is a very big if – it would be an indication of how strongly Israel feels it is being left with few other options in protecting its citizens from deadly threats. All the governments that have supported the Goldstone report have in effect told Israel that it cannot defend itself when attacked by missiles from Gaza in future, missiles that put over five million people at risk, so it would not be surprising if Israel decided it has no choice but to try and prevent those missiles reaching Gaza at an earlier stage in the supply chain.

...

* Indeed it is not even clear that those nine photographs that the Dubai authorities have released to the media actually portray real people. (Have they been heavily retouched, for example? Is each one a composite of several faces?) They have been shown repeatedly in news broadcasts and plastered on the front page of newspapers around the world in the last 48 hours, not a single person has come forward to say they recognize any of them, even from high school days, despite front page headlines such as Israel’s Ma’ariv newspaper saying “If you recognize any of these people, call us”.

* Unlike the anti-Israeli elements of the Western media that have rushed to blame Israel (creating a public furor and thereby forcing the hands of the British, Irish and French governments to summon their respective Israeli ambassadors), the Arab media are suggesting that the truth is far more complicated.

For example, the Arab world’s leading and arguably its most reliable newspaper, Al Sharq Alawsat, runs these stories:
* UAE Tipped Jordan of Palestinian Suspects whilst they were in the Air – Sources
* Palestinian Dubai Murder Suspects are Hamas Members – Palestinian Security Official

more...

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BBC broadcast: 'One million Jews help Mossad'
Telegraph Blogs
Douglas Murray
February 18th, 2010

Amid all the excitable nonsense being talked about dead Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh I think the BBC has topped the lot. In an interview broadcast on Radio 4’s PM programme last night broadcast (at 17:35 mins) one interviewee explained that up to one million Jews worldwide might be on hand to assist Mossad in executions. That would mean about one in every dozen Jewish people worldwide is a secret assistant to assassins.

Now I must have more than a dozen or so Jewish friends. So which is it? Maybe I know two? It makes you think doesn’t it?

more...

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Mossad Passport Affair: A Stick to Beat Israel?
Honest Reporting
22/02/10