Blood & Treasure

entering Shanghai

The PLA entered Shanghai on May 25 1949. Urbanatomy Shanghai has collected some newspaper accounts of the day. This from le Monde:

This morning, I saw the Communist spearhead arrive at the heart of Shanghai along the Nanking Road and the Bund. At the foot of the giant buildings, small, khaki-clad, mud-spattered young men advanced methodically. They were moving in small groups, hugging the walls in the empty streets and jumping from one crossing to the next.

The immediate impression was one of skilled and disciplined troops specialised in street fighting. The patrols, moving in single file and covering one another, knew exactly where they were going behind their leaders. Fifteen minutes after the arrival of the communications brigade, the telephones had been fully installed. The pillboxes, erected but never used by the nationalists, were immediately taken over.

Guards were posted at the entrance of the main buildings where white flags flew. Yet these troops who were about to conquer China’s first city were not accompanied by any motorised transport or artillery. Old rifles and machine guns, worn-out shoes, uniforms faded by the sun and the rain: it was a troop of hardened, but visibly exhausted, foot soldiers. During their short periods of rest, these peasant-soldiers craned their necks to stare at the tops of the 15- or 20-storey buildings, an obviously unfamiliar sight to them.

Peng Dehuai’s men in good fettle, then. There’s been a fairly intense revisionist debate over the past few years over whether the Nationalists or the Communists did more to defeat the Japanese, that itself being a response to the fairly mendacious CPC account of the anti-Japanese war. I think this misses the point about the PLA. For most of the war, the Communists fought as a guerilla formation. I don’t think they fought an action in anything more than battalion strength until 1944. A couple of years later they were winning giant encirclement battles against the Kuomintang on the north China plain and by the time the Korean war rolled around…

…The American army suffered one of the most humiliating defeats in its history. In “the big bug-out”, its broken units were driven back 120 miles in 10 days, losing most of their weapons and equipment.

By contrast, Kuomintang partisans claim that over 200 of their generals died fighting the Japanese and the Communists, which really just explains why they lost. Pertinent to which:

The taxis were replaced here by thousands of rickshaws and bicycle rickshaws powered by mobilised coolies who, pedalling frantically in a mad rush, bore thousands of officers and soldiers perched on their luggage racks. However, unlike the Marne taxis, this procession was not moving towards the front but returning from it, evidently part of the ‘elastic defence’ tactics. This perhaps explains why the enemy, less than 500 metres away, did not even bother to shoot…The city is without rice. The troops have stopped fighting, despite princely wages paid in silver dollars and massive reinforcements of ‘comfort girls’. The Generalissimo, not feeling at all safe, sleeps in a different place almost every night. His friends claim that he is having a nervous breakdown

And lastly, some veterans of the Chinese Expeditionary force who fought with the 14th Army in Burma have finally come home.

an elegant offence

Thanks to d-squared, we actually have an MP who bought a book on expenses. Step forward Natascha Engel:

Miss Engel, who has said she wants her constituents to judge whether her expenses are justified, also claimed £12 for a copy of Thomas Mann's Nobel Prize winning novel, The Magic Mountain, set in a tuberculosis clinic in the Swiss Alps before the First World War.

Well I’m not your constituent Natascha, and Mann isn't exactly to my taste, but it’s fine by me: “to steal a book is an elegant offence” as they say in China.

legless Douglas and Richard

A minor incidence of British social history. The hitherto unremarked Branson/Bader connection:

Mr Branson told the BBC that as a "nasty little boy" he would run off with Sir Douglas's legs, requiring the airman to come "on his hands, screaming after me".

I’m surprised he didn’t try to sell them back to him.

some pyongyanginess

The official North Korea twitter feed, as if there would be any other kind. This is apparently Kim Jong-il’s personal twitter page, though he’s not favoured us with anything yet. I presume he’s too busy giving field guidance.

North Korea in sinister plot with the Iranians. Embroidery? Ha. Can’t fool me.

Get that Google Earth map of North Korea everyone’s talking about here.

ambassador, you are spoiling us

There was some fuss a bit ago when Obama rewarded a major donor with the Court of St James. Never mind:

No doubt the new political appointees can handle the job. Roos, as CEO of a global, technology-focused law firm, understands trade issues likely to arise in Japan. Rivkin has international experience as a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy. And Obama's appointee to Great Britain, Louis Susman, speaks fluent English.

via. Like what we do over here. On the other hand:

Political appointments can end badly. Reagan's appointee to Norway, Mark Austad, was known for getting drunk and chasing women around. "We had to get rid of him," says Spiers, who handled State Department personnel at the time. Another ambassador, this one to Denmark years ago, was asked to resign after it became known that he kept two prostitutes in his residence.

You see, if you don't just rely on a permanent civil service you can get all sorts of things done

bodies unburied

The killing by a policeman of Benno Ohnesorg, a student demonstrating against a visit by the Shah of Iran to Germany, in 1967 was the catalytic event that launched the whole Baader-Meinhof phenomena. Now it turns out that the cop who shot him was working for the Stasi:

The most insidious question raised by the revelation is whether Mr. Kurras might have been acting not only as a spy, but also as an agent provocateur, trying to destabilize West Germany. As the newspaper Bild am Sonntag put it in a headline, referring to the powerful former leader of the dreaded East German security agency, Erich Mielke, “Did Mielke Give Him the Order to Shoot?”

The direct answer to any headline posed as a question is "no". But the wider agent provocateur theory is credible. It’s also credible that Kurras wass the kind of self-dramatising nut who’d do it out of self-importance. There’s certainly an Oswaldish feel to his career; volunteered to fight for the Nazis in 1944, rather than waiting for conscription, endures years at the Sachsesnhausen camp for POWs, joins the cops then puts himself forward for the Stasi. Also, like Oswald, a bit of a gun nut.

Interesting that a guy like that could get himself accepted by the West German cops. But that would increase his utility to the Stasi, in the same way that Kim Philby proved himself ‘sound’ to SIS by fabricating fascist sympathies.

Perhaps relatedly, the real Rosa Luxemburg has been found. Apparently the woman they dragged out of the canal back in 1919 wasn’t her. Germany: where nothing is as it seems.

isn't it time we all just got along?

So the Hezbies are negotiating with the IMF. Now a Hezbollah led IMF riot would be something to see. But I’m sure they got on fine. Two gangs of discipline dudes reaching out to each other.

Via. I wonder if this story is anything to do with the timing of der Spiegel’s claim that Hezbollah are behind Rafiq Hariri’s assassination. This has been refuted in various places, but that’s not the point. The point is that in Lebanon you can’t rule anything out and any sense that a given story is too bizarre to be credible tends to generate a feeling that in that case it must be true.

All of which brings me to a bit of fact free speculation I’ve been mulling over regarding another assassination: Imad Mugniyeh.

Israel was the number one candidate, along with the US, Syria and even the Hezbies.

I think they all did it.

The thing about Imad is that he was kind of old school. As far as the Hezbies are concerned, you don’t want him hanging around in the background while you’re putting on the natty suits and talking turkey with the global bankers. That doesn’t in itself mean that they would dispose of him unless interested parties insisted on it.

Which brings us to Israel. The overall effect of the ’06 war was for Israel to lose its marker in Lebanese politics. The IDF screwed it up so monumentally, that even March 14 can’t be seen to be publicly associating with it. Hence, perhaps, the semi-rapprochement with the Syrians that we’ve seen recently.

But that doesn’t mean that Israel is just prepared to go quietly. It would want some evidence that co-operation produces results, maybe a side deal that mistrustful parties can work together on as a kind of proof of test. Given that the Syrians want in out of the cold as well, they get to lose an embarrassing guest.

So here’s the scenario. Maybe Israel insisted on knocking off Imad, or maybe they asked for something and Imad was the result, put up by Syria, Hezbollah or both. Anyway: Israel does the hit, Syria sets it up, and Hezbollah signs off, getting itself a useful martyr in return. It would only be courtesy in this scenario to inform the United States. And the US is hardly going to object.

Like I say: fact free speculation. But if I could source it to an Israeli intelligence specialist, maybe Der Spiegel would print it.

children who need a nightlight

Colonel Lang on closing Guantanamo:

It is a place seen within the mind's eye as a projection of what is inside us. I have been impressed since just after 9/11 with the depth of the illusion of personal security within which most Americans lived before the attacks. A friend called then from across the country to say that "now we all live in your world," referring I suppose to the life I had lead in the security services. The caller was a well traveled international businessman. The "blue funk" level was incredible for months. People acted as though each and every one of them stood on the ramparts on watch against the Saracen hordes. I remember repeatedly being stared at with hostility on the DC Metrorail system by men who could not take their eyes off the modest beard I then had. Supposedly grown up people would say things like "Say Muzlim, not Muslim!" Why? They imagined that to pronounce words correctly made one a kind of collaborator.

Now, we have the media encouraged phenomenon of the masses' inability to deal with the idea of prisoners charged, tried and imprisoned on our soil. This is fear of the boogy-man come back once again. This is behavior for children who need a night light. I heard a member of Congress from Kansas say on the floor of the US Senate that prisoners could not be sent to Leavenworth because the "purity" of the post and Army school at Ft. Leavenworth would be ruined by their presence. No matter that the federal prison that adjoins Fort Leavenworth is full of some of the worst people who ever lived.

Sinosphere friday

Once more into the breach...

Inside an “April Youth” patriotic Chinese message board:

 "We were united together when fighting on Tibet and the Olympics issue," George Cui, one of the senior moderators – better known as "thin air" in the forum – told the Global Times."But after the Olympics, with the easing of outside pressure, the differences between leftists and rightists inside the website began to appear."

Another corrupted official, Huang Peng, even said in court it was his “personal hobby to hide big sums of money at home.”

Why twitter took off in China:

By the way, I want to point out that the Chinese Twitterland is funnier than the English one, for a Chinese tweet can have three times the volume of an English tweet, thanks to the high information intensity of the Chinese language. 140 Chinese characters can make up all the full elements of a news piece with the "5 Ws" (Who, What, Where, When and HoW).

A pretty female pharmaceutical company sales representative, bribery, wanton sex, doctors and nurses, AIDS and human flesh search came togehter to become AIDS Gate at the Jiangsu Province People's Hospital.

Military urbanism in Kashgar.

Pre-Tiananmen digital shutdown:

Netizens are telling each other via twitter and fanfou that the best way to find good post in this sensitive period is to google for “comments have been closed”.

Two men who defaced a giant portrait of Mao have been granted asylum in the US. One of them served 16 years in jail, the longest sentence given to any of the demonstrators: Here’s the kicker:

They were quickly seized by student protesters anxious to distance themselves from the act. The trio were handed over to the police.

Another massacre…and along came Hugo.

The Washington/Beijing/Pyongyang triangle.

And finally:

Formerly, during the latter generations of the Han house, strong men began to carve up the empire. The mighty encroached upon the weak, and the people became deceitful and shrewd. Male and female lightly engaged in erotic excess. The government could not relieve the situation and families did not impose prohibitions. Cities were plundered and the common people were victims of injustice, even to the extent of being made slaves. The people were being devoured just as mulberry leaves are consumed by silkworms, and because of their grievances they began to consider revolt.

political small change

Quite a few posters for Saj Karim the Tory Euro MP and candidate up in the shop windows along Cheetham Hill Road. This isn’t necessarily too significant. The shopkeepers will put up posters of candidates in the same way they’ll put up posters announcing “lost Staffie – answers to killer”: because somebody asked them to. But it’s the first time in the dozen years I’ve lived here that I’ve seen any Tory posters at all. The Tories obviously think it’s at least worth the effort.