Afghanistan again

I've been reading about Afghanistan again, another book by a young Brit. Rory Stewart this time - officer, Oxford graduate, diplomat, deputy governor in Iraq, Harvard fellow, founder of charity, walker, OBE, writer and now candidate for the Conservative party in Penrith and Border - and he is only 36. The book is about his walk across Afghanistan in 2002, which was part of a longer walk, from Iran through Pakistan, India, Afghanistan and Nepal. He just up and walked. Alone, most of the time, through difficult terrain, hostile tribal areas and often without any connection back to the "civilised" world." I am just so impressed with this guy. And he seems like a nice person too, neither arrogant nor superior, though you have to have a rich supply of self-confidence to accomplish what he has done.

One of his objections to the western military intervention in Afghanistan is that the west tries to fit a western idea of government, state and democracy on to a region that is just too diverse. In an article in the Daily Telegraph this summer, he explains: "It is impossible for Britain and its allies to build an Afghan state. They have no clear picture of this promised "state", and such a thing could come only from an Afghan national movement, not as a gift from foreigners. Is a centralised state, in any case, an appropriate model for a mountainous country, with strong traditions of local self-government and autonomy, significant ethnic differences, but strong shared moral values? And even were stronger central institutions to emerge, would they assist Western national security objectives?" I think he has a point, and the full article is well worth reading, as is his book.

Let the students do the work!

One of the classes I teach consists of a group of electricians-going-to-be-electronics-engineers - viz. very technically knowledgeable people (unlike me). Our English coursebook is not exactly the best I've come across (I'm being diplomatic here, it is really quite extremely dull, thankfully we've found a new one for next year), so I have struggled to come up with good texts as additions to the ones in the coursebook. Not being particularly interested in technical issues, I found it difficult to pick out which texts could be interesting and on a suitable level of complexity for the students. Then, lazy as I am, the idea struck me to let the students do the searching, so over the past couple of months, this is how we've worked: once a week, one student is responsible for 1) finding an article he (I'm not discriminating here, it's an all male class)thinks is interesting, on a naval or technical subject, 2)copy it and bring it to class where everyone reads it (so it can't be too long, a page or two), then 3) he goes through vocabulary, focusing on the naval/technical words of the text, and 4) tries to get a discussion going in class about the topic of the text.
I must say the students have done a good job on this, we have read about global warming and the opening of the Northwest Passage; electron beam freeform fabrication; the expanding Chinese Navy; the surveillance capacity of air force drones; and advice on how to save energy at home, among other topics. We usually spend a 40-minute lesson on this, and it gives the student in charge of the article practice in both chairing a discussion, and selecting and explaining complex vocabulary. The rest of the class get to read an interesting text, chosen by a peer, learn new words, and discuss. Nice work indeed.

The Junior Officers' Reading Club

I just finished reading young ex-officer Patrick Hennessey's bestseller The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars, with a view to using it as a set text for our first-year cadets. Unfortunately, I don't think it is well suited to our needs; the language is quite complex, and it presupposes quite extensive knowledge of the British military organisation and culture, so I guess we'll stick with the old memoirs from the Falklands War, One Hundred Days and Four Weeks in May.
(Aside: what we definitely could use is a new little naval war involving at least one of the English-speaking states of the world, and someone writing a whopping great book about it, complete with a lot of mesmerising navy and ship facts. That would both modernise and fancify (is that a word?) our curriculum.)
I don't think this book was quite as impressive as the reviews suggest, although it is interesting that a very young officer writes about his very recent experiences in a conflict that concerns us deeply. The title of the book is rather misleading, the Reading Club plays a very small part, and he writes mostly about training at Sandhurst, boredom in Iraq, and exhausting operations in Helmand.
What I found quite interesting is that his descriptions of his thoughts and feelings about being a soldier, like the yearning to see action, to prove himself, the intense feeling of being alive (the adrenalin-kick) during combat, and the feeling of being out of place when he is back home in London on leave for a few weeks, correspond very closely to observations made by historian Joanna Bourke in a 2001 Guardian article.
Comradeship, the craving for real action, the joy of destroying the enemy - these are ingredients in the life and experiences of soldiers that set them apart from "normal" civilian life, as Patrick Hennessey confirms in this interview:

Civilised places: Salisbury

This summer we spent a day and a half in Salisbury, Wiltshire, on our way from Devon to Gatwick. It was quite a coincidence that we ended up there; we were looking for somewhere to spend the last night not too far from the airport, and our first choice, Winchester, didn't have a single available room anywhere ("it's the wedding season", one B&B hostess explained). So Old Sarum it was, and we found rooms at a very respectable B&B, the Victoria Lodge, with a cheery, formidable and serviceminded landlady.
This was located a ten-minute walk from the city's market square, and we could walk along an idyllic riverside path, watching ducks, swans and other birdlife with their offspring on the way.
Salisbury turned out to be just the sort of English city I like; not very large so that you can walk rather than drive around; good restaurants (we had fantastic Italian food at Strada, and "the world's best hamburger", according to my son, at the Best Western Red Lion Hotel Lounge & Bar - it looked distinctly unpromising at first, but we were hungry and it was late, and it turned out to be a very good choice), very decent shopping facilities (this was where I finally found my "Keep calm"-mug) and a cathedral of really outstanding beauty. There was a Sunday service on when we went to see it, so we even got to hear the choir sing.
Civilised, extremely civilised.

Gone to meet its Maker!

Just testing to see if I still remember how to embed videos. The Parrot sketch is always worth reviewing.

Keep Calm and Grow a Mustache

Keep Calm and Grow a Mustache
Originally uploaded by 3LambsStudio

More keep calm variations

Keep Calm Parody - Blue
Originally uploaded by 3LambsStudio

Keep calm variations

CARRY ON!

This is the image on my new and stylish mug, one of my many purchases made in England this summer (Whittard in Salisbury). It was originally a poster published by the Ministry of Information (or Propaganda?) during the outbreak of WWII in 1939. The crown of King George and the reassuring message was intended to convey to the public that everything possible was being done to defend the country.
I have brought the mug to use at work, since I think the slogan is very appropriate here as well. In my department we have another motto which we quote to each other when the powers that be organise and make decisions we don't necessarily agree with: "Nicht ärgern, nur wunderen", but anglophile as I am, I like this one better.

More interesting phrases

World history is of course shaped by wars. After reading the rest of this year's exam papers, I have gained new insight into some lesser known aspects of various 20th century conflicts. In the Second World War, for instance, "the German Luftwaffe tried to crimple the UK by fighting the RAF", and "in 1941, their proud battleship Bismarck was intercepted in the Denmark Straight (sic!) by HMS Prince of Whales" (Charles, obviously).
In the Yom Kippur War "the Egyptians attacked across the Sinai with armoured colons", which was probably even more efficient than the "Viet Cong soldiers who were small and lightly armoured". They were of course assisted by "the North Vietnamese Army, a small potato compared to the US", according to one agriculturally minded candidate.