Food For Thought

..some statistics I read recently:

No. of Allied (i.e. US, British and others) Divisions in France and the Low countries in late 1944:   91
No. of German divisions facing them:  65   (the numbers in a division varied hugely depending on what type of division, e.g. infantry or armoured, and whether it was at full strength, a lot of the German ones in particular wouldn't have been by this time, but we're talking thousands of men).
Length of front:   c. 400 km

compared with..



No. of Soviet divisions on the Eastern front at the same time:  560
No. of German divisions facing them:  235
Length of front:   c.  3200 km


or, earlier than that, in August 1944 not long after D Day, 38 Allied divisions encircled 20 German divisions on a 120 km front and took c 90,000 prisoners in 27 days
.
..compare that with the three Soviet offensives happening concurrently:

1) 92 Soviet divisions and 6 tank/mechanised corps (a corps was/is made up of multiple divisions) attacked 47 German and Romanian divisions on a 700 km front in South Eastern Europe, encircling 18 divisions and taking 100,000 prisoners in a week.
2) 86 Soviet divisions and 10 tank/mechanised corps attacked in Southern Poland, destroying 40 German divisions.
3) the biggest of all, launched on 22 June 1944 in Belarus and Eastern Poland, the third anniversary of the German invasion and named 'Bagration' after a general from Napoleonic times, comprised, according to the figures I have, saw 172 Soviet divisions and 12 tank/mechanised corps advancing 600 km in about two months, on a 1000 km front, defeating 67 German divisions in the process (17 of which disappeared altogether).

...now, I don't know about you but that seems a huge disparity. I had to chuckle to myself the other day when I saw a youtube poster, unfortunately I've lost the link, but I assume an American, thanking the Russians for 'watching our backs' during the war. Hmm, we must have had a hell of a big back.

The fact remains that, galling though it may be from a Western perspective, it probably wouldn't have made any difference at all if the Western theatre hadn't been opened. What would've happened if there had been no Western alliance at all, or if they'd been knocked out earlier by the Germans, is more speculative still, but presumably all of Germany would have fallen to the Soviets, not just the East, and if Germany why not France and...

Thought For The Day No. 29 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

...psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste..

Scholarly life, education, and science can turn into leaves on the tree of your life, and still not bring any fruit.

George C. Lichtenberg

Always Baikalade...

..this is the drink for me ... 'Baikal', I call it Baikalade, tee hee hee...

According to wikipedia it's been produced for the last 40 years or so in Russia and was re-branded (or whatever they had instead of rebranding in the USSR) in 1973 when Pepsi arrived there.

Named after the lake, which is often cited as being the lake with the largest volume of freshwater in the world; if the appearance of lake Baikal on a map were a scar you wouldn't bother with corrective surgery, but the key to all that water is the depth, apparently it extends more or less to the centre of the earth).

I like to think it's actually made from water direct from the lake, which may account for its muddy hue, but it also contains such healthy sounding ingredients as essential oil of eucalyptus and essential oil of bay laurel. Not sure if pepsi has that. It's doing wonders for the raging cold I incongrously seem to have contracted in the summer heat, and I should imagine it would be good for a hangover too..

Western palates might find it a little odd at first, its taste is rather subtle for those of us who are used to the corn syrup that sweetens coke and the others (corn syrup is a lot less sweet than cane sugar, which explains the confusion I've always had about how much sugar they say goes into coke; after all I couldn't imagine eating a whole cupful of cane sugar, but that's 'cos it isn't actualy cane sugar that goes into the drink. They have to put so much corn syrup to make it sweet). But I swear by it now.

Available in comfortingly old-style 0.33l glass bottles (remember when coke came in those?!) and a bigger 2 litre plastic bottle, I hope this guy that I posted about all those months ago stocks it too..

Baikalade - Enjoy.

Thought For The Day No. 28 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

...psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste..

I have now reigned above fifty years in victory or peace; beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honors, power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In this situation, I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount to Fourteen: - O man! place not thy confidence in this present world!

Abd Ar Rahman III, Caliph of Cordoba 912-961

Off-White Nights of St Petersburg

...reusing material which was originally a course assignment (written this morning!) but passes the PMC quality control (i.e. has it been run through spellchecker?) on more or less all counts..describes day one of a recent trip to St Petersburg.

It's hard to apprehend the fact that I've arrived in the biggest country, by land area, in the world. By far the biggest; Russia is twice the size of Canada and yet the arrival here couldn't be more underwhelming. It starts gradually, and sullenly, like the people. The main road from the border to Petersburg has the consistency of a flapjack left in a rusty tin for nine months, I discover much later that corruption is such that all the backhanders at each stage of production make it such that it would quite literally be more cost effective to build a road surfaced with caviar, or a canal flowing with cognac. So noone invests in roads. The tangle of forest that begins where a pavement or verge would be in other countries is quite different from Estonian forests. This is Tolkienian bad forest, not a place to wander romantically yearning to bump into dryads, satyrs or Herne the Hunter.

Petersburg starts gradually too; I was expecting it to rear up suddenly like the concrete wall of Manhattan, for no particular reason, but it doesn't. Indeed I still thought I was in yet another small town for several kilometres, before I saw the light – of the sun bursting off the golden cupolas, real gold, of the signature Orthodox sobor, plonked down, not incongruously, but only as Russians could, in an area which at an uninterested glance could be mistaken for the west midlands. Except there would be a mosque there not a cathedral. Slava bogoo. But it seems Petersburg is a big village too, not only Moscow.

The hotel is megalithic, which suits me because I'm only small, and perfectly spruce and businesslike inside, but not a place to spend a lot of time in, Alan Partridge-like. We head out, in spite of the fatigue which makes one feel cheated for having spent so much time and effort to travel such an insignificant distance on the map, and all is gloriously chaotic after the calm and order of the Finnic lands.

Claustrophobic shopping arcades, minus the familiar chains of banks or pharmacies, the smoking ban in cafes has yet to reach Russia, but oh how zealously it might be enforced if it ever does (unlikely think). This gives eateries a shiftless feel that evokes to me the boarding house landscape of London in the 1950s, fortunately for me I'm neither black nor Irish, nor a dog; this phenomenon is however offset by a rather more verdant and healthy menu – soups with sour cream to mix in (I never do). Chopped dill, melted cheese, potatoes potatoes...

The canals and cobbles – when will they film a Bond movie here?! A kid screams past on a jet ski, under bridges, to hammer the point home. The Saviour on Spilled blood church, an ill fitting piece of muscovy in this most European looking of cities, as if small boy, being one action man short for the skirmish he has in mind, substitutes one of his sister's barbies..

The long evenings; the white nights proper haven't begun yet but these off-white nights can be deceptive too. It's late already. Trying to get a meal at 9pm; everything is shut. One old Russian woman addresses us, unsolicited in the street. The Russians are much friendlier and more open than in Tallinn. 'Eto doroga?' - I ask if it is expensive – it isn't, it turns out, but it IS shut when we arrive. Settle on a place full of young people. Two boys dressed as sailors walk by. Actually they ARE sailors. Survivors of the Kursk? Of course not. I wonder what their lives are worth to their superiors. More than the borsch which I'm slurping down? Not much I fear. As Leningrad more people died here during the siege of world war two than currently populate Estonia. Eating rats and soup made from the glue scraped from cheap furniture. I shudder.

Deep, choppy, guiness-coloured water, the skeletons of the cities builders are getting restless, and surreally bronze sunlight. The spire of the church of the Peter and Paul fortress fulfills the role of the ubiquitous TV tower in the Baltic capitals. Stranded in the centre because the swing bridges are up. That never happens at Tower Bridge in London, as if cabbies need any excuses not to go south of the river. But we can't get back to the Vasilevsky island, in the absence of a boat. How long will we be stranded here, could be hours. Espresso from a kiosk to stay awake. Empty beer bottles everywhere, the detritus of what had been a huge crowd not half an hour ago, watching the party ships coming up the Neva, now dispersed like so many pigeons or starlings. A friendly drunk accosts us. Two Lamborghinis, no Ferraris. An unstable toilet truck behind the Winter palace. Haggling with a taxi driver to take us back to the hotel (for the bridges are coming down!) He is very pious, not only an icon on the dashboard of the virgin with child but another of Sai Baba. So I guess we'll be safe, despite his kamikaze hurtle towards the impending roadblock (the bridges are coming up again already). Back at the hotel. It's deserted. I think Petersburg was like this on the night of 25^th October 1917, despite what that film depicts. I have my my three revolutions walking tour, 1905, February and October 1917, planned, but I think that has to go out of the window. Petersburg is still Russia. I don't want to blaspheme by planning anything..

60 Years Of The PMC - A New Contributor

2010 marks the 60th anniversary of the launch of the PMC. Yes, it's impossible to believe, but that's because it is impossible. To mark this auspicious occasion the PMC will be taking a retrospective of some of the outstanding posts of the past six decades. From Cold War to Coldplay and from Ban the Bomb to Ban the Burka, every decade will be represented, and includes highlights from some of the most talked about of contributors...Bertrand Russell, Hunter S. Thompson, Roman Polanski, Roald Dahl and Limahl from Kajagoogoo, to name but a few - none of them contributed to the PMC's pages (oh, hold on a second, Limahl had a regular section in the early 80s). 1973 saw the addition of a new member to the PMC bureau. Andrew Whyte was a youth just out of hospital, who was initially set to the tasks that noone else had thought of doing, and, in the face of overwhelming criticism from the old school (Benedict Francis Kentigern in particular) stuck it out through thick and thin (mosly thick) and still tenuously holds his post today.. First posted on 11 December 1973.
 

Right. What am I going to write about, can't find anything in my book of quotations for the day to purloin. Hmm, did anyone insult me today. No. Is there a TV show I've just remembered which I can nostalgically place a youtube clip about? No, not that either. Hmm, and I'm not going to resort to sarcasm, that's just something I wouldn't ever do. Well, let's just resort to the default approach of ridiculing people in the public eye...ok, anyone notice how that Martin McGuiness from the IRA looks like a kind of bucolic Art Garfunkel? Ha ha, maybe they should cover one of their songs, not Bridge Over Troubled Water, that's for sure, Homeward Bound, for the day they get out of prison..or maybe 'semtex, mace armalite and lime' to the tune of Parsley, Sage etc. Ha ha..

Whyte went into hiding for 21 years following this post, following a threat of a 'panel beating', not from the IRA but from the rest of the PMC staff.

Ym etiruovaf Dab Srennam gnos

Yadot sah neeb etiuq a ysub yad dna os tsuj a yrev trohs tsop siht emit, tub ton na ynnufnu plic ot ynapmocca ti, ecnis s'ti yadirf gnineve...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVIXraaqXPU

..World News Continued...

..because the globe just won't stop turning..

USA
Vandals on the outskirts of Washington DC have caused damage to two bus shelters. Glass panes which made up part of the advertising hoardings were smashed, and graffiti, some of which included obscenities, was daubed on the walls. A Washington DC police spokesman said in a statement "it defies all comprehension how people could do such a thing. These bus shelters are used all the time, and there's a school less than two miles away". (Associated Press)

Afghanistan
A 98 year old man tragically died at the weekend after choking on scampi. Ibrahim Khan had been attending a birthday party on the outskirts of Kabul when the tragedy happened. He was rushed to nearby Kabul hospital where he was declared dead at the scene. President Hamed Karzai was said to be 'saddened' by the news. (BBC).

Ireland
The building of the new Dublin bypass has caused some consternation amongst local residents. The three lane highway, which will pass around the outskirts of the city, will, some protestors say, create an eyesore and will not alleviate traffic congestion in the centre. "It's a feckin' joke" said local housewife Mhaire McCann. "We're trying to get away from the image of 'Paddy the drunken road builder' in this country and now the authorities go and do this." she blasted.
Mayor of Dublin Gerry Breen disagreed however. " I disagree with that type of thing" he said. "The new bypass will generate jobs for local businesses and will breathe much-needed new life into the outskirts of Dublin, not to mention the city as a whole, when it is finished." he continued.

Norway
Oslo schoolboy Thor Bjaaland had an unexpected trip into family history at the weekend.
Thor, 12, had been looking for some paints in the attic of his home on the outskirts of the city, when he found some of his fathers school textbooks, buried underneath a load of junk.
"I couldn't believe my eyes" he said. "I was just looking through some old boxes which didn't contain anything interesting, just a load of old newspapers and some magazines with pictures of bare ladies. But underneath, I realised that there were some really valuable old books".
The books, which had weathered the years well and were in quite good condition, seemed to be written in modern Norwegian, a germanic language spoken in Norway at the time and closely related to Danish and Swedish. The books dealt with a variety of contemporary topics including trigonometry, titration experiments, and what I did on my holiday in France.
Local experts were called in and the books were safely removed and taken to the nearby Oslo museum. "Some of the books dated back as far as 1982" said a museum spokesman. "It really is a part of living history, and Thor must be proud to see that his father did very well in maths and science, though not so well in creative writing" she continued.
Thor's father, Oskar, was completely killed in 2003 in an incident involving a threshing machine and some loose-fitting clothing.

Ghana
A 'glamorous granny' event was held at the weekend in the outskirts of Acora, all in aid of charity.
In the closely fought contest, 67 year old Joyce Akkembaye emerged the winner, and claimed the prize of restaurant tokens worth 100 Ghanaian Cedis ( a little under 50 pounds) and apron with 'glamorous granny' printed on it.
"I didn't think I would win, because some of the other grannies were very glamorous" said a delighted Joyce. "My grandchildren are very proud".
Local church of Mount Zion had a different view, however. "These people will burn for all eternity in the lake of fire" explained a spokesman. (Reuters)




..and that's all the world news for now!