The Strategist

Caught my eye this week - darknets and sub atomic wave guns

Here are some articles that caught my eye this week...

• New Zealand exports high-tech weapons to China, like the Pomsom 6000 Sub Atomic Wave Gun and the Grordbort 66 Sonic Destabiliser.

• The Guardian's Andy Beckett ventures into the deep web and darknets. Reminds me of a line from Milton's Paradise Lost: "On Heav'nly ground they stood, and from the shore, They viewed the vast immeasurable abyss".

• A translation of the Ango-Saxon poem 'The Wanderer' - "So spoke the wanderer, mindful of hardships, of fierce slaughters, and the downfall of kinsmen".

• A call for urban authorities to invest in "green infrastructure", the network of living green spaces, such as parks, gardens, cemeteries, woodlands and waterways, so that they work together as a functioning system.

Oh, and here's a rose from the garden...

Refining the "Cohorts of War" model

The Macedonian army of Alexander the Great: an army of the Professional Sub-Cohort? 

Over the last few days, I've been fleshing out and refining "Cohorts of War", my general framework for describing the fundamental forms of military organization that recur throughout history. This work included...

• Cutting the number of cohorts from five to four. The "Hybrid Cohort" didn't really work as a general category, i.e., one that applies across time, cultures and continents.  

• Expanding the model to include the hunter-gatherer pre-history form of warfare, refining the characterizations of the four cohorts, and breaking them into sub-cohorts where appropriate.

• Detailing the cohorts in terms of why they fight, who they fight for, how they fight, and how they organize.

Here's a summary of where I've got to...

Warrior Cohort

Fight for kin, chieftains and lords. Subdivided into three sub-cohorts: "Raiders", "Fighters", and "Men-at-arms". Examples:

• Australian Aborigines ("Raiders")
• Vikings ("Fighters")
• the Norman army of William the Conquerer ("Men-at-arms")

Volunteer Cohort

Fight for a living. Subdivided into three sub-cohorts: "Professional" (career soldiers); "Auxiliary" (frontier irregulars); and "Mercenary". Examples:

• Macedonian army of Alexander the Great ("Professional")
• Roger's Rangers of the 18th century French and Indian War ("Auxiliary")
• the Ten Thousand ("Mercenary")

Citizen Cohort

Fight for a country. Subdivided into two sub-cohorts: "Conscript" and "Militiamen". Examples:

• Napoleon's Grande Armée ("Conscripts")
• American colonial militias during the War of Independence ("Militiamen")

Champion Cohort

Fight for an idea or cause. Examples:

• Crusader military orders
• the Chinese People's Liberation Army (1930s/40s)
• al-Qaeda

Like I've said, this is a work in progress, and your comments are helping me shape this. I've modelled the Cohorts in more detail in a matrix format, and will have a pdf summary of this table up in a day or two. As always, suggestions, questions, qualifications and criticism are welcome.

Back in the real world where justice is done

Tim Stevens at Ubiwar finds some gems. This one is priceless. Human rights groups play first person shooter games, like Call of Duty 5, to see if they allow players to commit war crimes...

"The study condemned the games for violating laws by letting players kill civilians, torture captives and wantonly destroy homes and buildings.

It said game makers should work harder to remind players about the real world limits on their actions....

In particular, it said, few games it studied reflected the fact that those who 'violate international humanitarian law end up as war criminals, not as winners'."

Tell me, what 'real world' do these people live in?

Kagan on Thucydides: one for the Christmas shopping list

A C Grayling gives this book the thumbs up - Donald Kagan's Thucydides: The Reinvention of History...

"Kagan's book, fascinating and characteristically lucid, is one of those little masterpieces that permanently reconfigure intellectual landscapes. Thucydides will not be the same after this, though neither diminished as an historian nor less significant as a teacher for all time."

Sounds like a cool Christmas present.

Meanwhile, I'm reading Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago and Seneca's Letters from a Stoic, and dipping into Insurgents, Terrorists and Militias: The Warriors of Contemporary Conflict, by Richard Shultz and Andrea Dew.

These days you have to be choosy about buying and reading new books. Every time I walk into my favourite bookstore, and that's around two or three times a week, I notice all the new titles that have come onto the shelves. The publishing industry spews out so many books that most must be at best average, at worst dross, and certainly not memorable or profound.

This is one reason why I read the classics. If, like Doctor Zhivago or History of the Peloponnesian War, a book's been around for 100 or 2000-odd years, it's got to have something worthwhile to say.

A new way of visualizing Afghan war casualties

Ever tried visualizing casualties in Afghanistan? At the Guardian's Data Blog, David McCandless comes up with an interesting series of graphs and commentary, including this one on civilian casualties...

"Suicide bombs and IEDs account for the majority of deaths caused by anti-government forces. Night time air strikes account for many deaths caused by coalition forces.

Coalition-caused civilian deaths are much lower this year. This may be because the US has introduced new rules of engagement. Or perhaps they have reduced night time air strikes? It's not clear."

The Zulu army - which Cohort of War?

Zulus annihilating the British at the Battle of Isandlwana, 1879 (painting: C E Fripp).

Which Cohort of War does the Zulu army of the 19th century belong to? At first glance, it looks like a typical army of the Warrior Cohort, which is...

"Characteristic of tribal societies and feudal states....There is no standing army. Contingents of warriors, led by tribal chieftains or feudal lords, muster for a specific battle or campaign....The key binding relationship is fealty."

But consider this. The Zulu army was part and parcel of a large, cohesive and expansionary kingdom in southern Africa. It was well-organized, highly disciplined and flexible. Its fierce warriors were well-trained and had strong esprit de corps.

A manoeuvre force, the Zulu army used speed, surprise, knowledge of terrain and encirclement tactics to pin and crush enemies. The age-grade system of compulsory service, and an organized logistics system, enabled Zulu kings to mobilize large forces and sustain them in the field for long periods.

This sounds more like an army of the Citizen-Soldier Cohort...

"Well-organized states field large armies of citizen-soldiers, either on a permanent basis or mobilized for war. States do this by imposing military service obligations on citizens...The key binding relationship is duty. This is underpinned by a pervasive sense of threat from outsiders, and myths of national and ethnic identity and warrior ethos."

It's not a perfect fit. But like a Zulu impi the cohorts are not intended to be rigid. I'd suggest that the Zulu army of Shaka and Cetshwayo belongs to the Citizen-Soldier Cohort, in good company with the Spartans, Napoleon's Grande Armée and others.

"Cohorts of War" - a general framework

In war, the crucial element is people: how they are organized for combat, what holds them together as a fighting force, what society do they spring from. How they fight, and what they fight with, are secondary. The Roman army was arguably the world's greatest army because of the calibre of its men, the way they were organized, and the strength of the society from which they came. Not because it had better swords and shields.

Last week I started to model the development of western military organizations since the Renaissance, using the "Generations of Warfare" idea as a starting point (here and here). Since then, I've refined and expanded the model.

Firstly, I've decided to use "cohort" instead of generation, and to call my framework "Cohorts of War". I don't like the term generation because it suggests a historical progression - an evolution of military organization from primitive to sophisticated - which is often not the case. So, it's gone.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines cohort as...

1. an ancient Roman military unit
2. a band of warriors
3. persons banded or grouped together, esp. in a common cause.
   

This fits pretty well with what I'm trying to describe: the fundamental types of military organization throughout history. I've also...

• added a generation cohort - there are now five.

• extended the framework beyond Europe and the last 500 years.

• associated the generations cohorts with themes, and illustrated them with examples, rather than link them to specific time periods and places. If you look at Lind's original Generations concept, one of its methodological weaknesses is that by linking generations to time and place, contradictions and exceptions mount to the point where it loses integrity as an analytical framework.

So, here are my five cohorts of war (CW). This is a work in progress, and I welcome suggestions, questions, qualifications and criticism.

Ten easy things you can do to save the planet

At Global Dashboard, Alex Evans critiques the "climate change is an opportunity" notion as disingenuous and misleading...

The “opportunity” argument just doesn’t stack up against the tedious, time-consuming, expensive, unglamorous reality that will be the transition to a low carbon economy – and I think we’re doing ourselves no favours in sticking with it.

With climate change, people always look for cop outs - doing nothing while pretending to do something, and doing things that are easy, make us feel good, but entail no effort or sacrifice.

Take international climate change negotiations. These involve politicians talking about taking action to cut emissions, and promising to cut emissions, rather than actually cutting them.

Or carbon offset schemes. Buy a long-haul airline ticket and pay a small premium. This supposedly pays for a tree to be planted in Somalia - hence the offset. Cool - now I can go on my merry polluting way, knowing that my Somalian tree is sucking up my proportion of the carbon that the airliner has emitted.

Then there's the "10 easy things you can do to save the planet" meme...

Number 3

Buy environmentally friendly hair shampoo. Hint: when shopping, look for green or blue coloured bottles with pictures of dolphins, rainforests and waterfalls.

Number 7

When sending emails, include a message that says, "Please consider the environment before printing this email".

Make sure the message is displayed after your name, title, organization, phone and fax numbers, physical address, website url, personal affirmation and corporate vision statement - so that everyone will read it.

At the River Indus

The other day I bought All of Us, the collected poems of American writer Raymond Carver. It includes "The news carried to Macedonia", a poem about Alexander's soldiers on the banks of the River Indus...

The wind moves
    through the camp
stirs the tents of
the Hetaeri
    touches each
of the sleeping soldiers
Euoi! Euoi!
    men cry out
in their sleep & the horses
    prick their ears & stand
        shivering
In a few hours
They all shall wake
    with the sun
shall follow the wind
        even further

If you get a chance, read this poem in full. It's a poignant account of scarred, exhausted and homesick men.

"We few, we happy few, we band of [1GW] brothers"

A 1GW force: "King Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt, 1415" (John Gilbert)

I admit it. I have real trouble understanding "5GW" (fifth generation warfare). But maybe I'm slow. See what you make of this...

"5GW is the deepest of all, so entrenched within the target, the target does not know that the 5GW force exists.  When the target makes any decision, the target believes it is in full command of its decision-making ability.

The 5GW force merely creates information in relation to other information-sets it has not created; the target observes all information available and continues on his way toward making a decision and acting."

WTF? Sounds like Sun-tzu on acid.

But wait! Simon kindly pointed out that in my alternative "Generations of Warfare" model there are five, not four, generations...

"I would offer that your 4GW is actually 5GW ... with 1GW being the Braveheart style, every tribesman for himself, hope-it-all-works-out-on-the-day form of warfare that kept the trade alive for millenia before it all got organised."

So my 4GW "armies of champions" are 5GW. And my hybrid 1GW armies are now 2GW. Cool. But I'd qualify that by suggesting that 1GW is actually the medieval feudal host. Something like the English army that fought at Agincourt in 1415: the King, his household champions, nobles and their contingents of men-at-arms, archers, and peasant footmen. It was out of these feudal hosts that the hybrid 2GW armies evolved in the Renaissance.

Never thought that I'd say this, but I'm starting to dig the "Generations of Warfare".

Securing the cities, counterinsurgency style

Dean thinks that a counterinsurgency approach is the key to restoring security in America's lawless industrial cities...

Generally, the state’s response has been to respond to the problems caused by this situation by focusing on those elements which organize the most and, therefore, appear most threatening to the state system. 

As soon as a criminal organization is able to accrue enough power to exert its will geographically on a (semi) regular basis, law enforcement moves to crush it. 

While that results in a tangible good (bringing to justice those who have preyed upon local inhabitants and broken laws) it creates a host of cascading consequences that are almost never dealt with (a return of anarchy, increased violence as previously suppressed actors fight for control, etc.) until another network attracts the attention of the state.

I've got no problem with the state attacking criminal gangs. But as the state takes down the gangs, it's got to fill the power vacuum. The state must nurture alternative and legitimate governance structures - ideally grassroots citizens' councils. It must protect these councils against resurgent criminal elements. And it must give the councils money, resources and training. This is so councils can get essential services and economic activity going, facilitate community consultation and elections, and administer their own affairs.

Into the Fourth Generation: armies of champions

4GW? Armies of champions. Photo: Travis Zielinski

I love the idea of parallel universes. So I thought it would be fun to concoct an alternative version of William S Lind's "generations of warfare" idea.

Lind singles out certain battlefield tactics and technology. But what would happen, in a parallel universe, if Lind had focused on other developments, e.g., in military organization and wider society? What would the "generations of warfare" look like then? Maybe something like this...

1GW: the mercenaries

Early 16th century to late 18th century.

Powerful monarchies, supported by increasingly efficient state bureaucracies, field "hybrid" armies of elite professional troops, mercenary contingents and transnational military specialists (such as siege engineers and artillerymen). In the 18th century, hybrid armies evolve into more homogeneous forces of cavalry, artillery, and infantry regiments of the line, recruited from the aristocracy and the rural poor within a state's territory. These forces owe allegiance to the sovereign, not society.

2GW: the conscripts

1790s to 1970s.

Nation-states fight each other with large armies of conscripted citizen soldiers. The nation becomes synonymous with the army - "the people-in-arms", as Clausewitz described it. Universal conscription is a rite of passage for generations of young Europeans, who are animated to serve by patriotism, national and racial identity, and warrior myths.  The apogee of the nation-in-arms occurs in the two world wars of the 20th century, when nations mobilize all their resources - human and material - for total war.  

3GW: the volunteers

1980s to early 21st century.

Armies become all volunteer and professional forces of career soldiers who are relatively well-educated and highly trained. These forces recruit people from ethic minorities, immigrant groups, decaying industrial cities and hardscrabble rural regions. These people enlist because they see the army as a route to advancement and acceptance in society, not out of patriotism. Meanwhile, the scions of the wealthy elite and the prosperous middle class shun military service.

4GW: the champions

Emerging in the early 21st century.

Armies become caste-based - an increasingly distinct and detached element within society. They comprise highly skilled "champions", specialists in esoteric skills such as counterinsurgency, special operations, and cyber-war, who owe primary allegiance to their castes and combat leaders. The distinction between armies and civilian agencies blurs. The state outsources military responsibilities to private military companies. These also safeguard the interests of powerful corporations and wealthy elites. 

The dark side of medical marijuana growing

YT sent me this account of a thriving, and perfectly legal, drug trade: medical marijuana farming in Trinity county, northern California.

California law allows people with certain medical conditions to grow, possess and use cannabis to ease their pain. It also allows non-profit farming cooperatives where patients can pool individual plant limits. Sounds reasonable, but things have got out of hand...

"The upshot, critics say, is that a law crafted to help sick people has morphed into a lucrative trade, one in which rural farms are supplying urban dispensaries that cater to mostly recreational users armed with doctors' recommendations."

This has led to a big pay-off for previously poor Trinity County, which is blessed with excellent pot-growing conditions. But it's also brought trouble...

"Fall harvest season brings strangers with dreadlocks and cash boxes. Some farmers guard their crops with electric fences, razor wire and snarling dogs. Hikers have been threatened at gunpoint for wandering too close to where they aren't wanted."

You often hear arguments for legalizing marijuana. It's interesting to see the other side of the coin - in this case, that permissive drug laws are leading to social breakdown, deforestation, and an influx of wide boys and criminals to game the industry.

Roots - the origin of "generations of war"

If you want to grasp an idea, you have to dig down to its roots. The "generations of war" concept, which spawned the notion of 4GW (fourth generation warfare), was first set out in a short article in 1989 by its high priest William S Lind and others. This article is, if you like, 4GW's founding document.

Here's the article's argument in a nutshell. Lind stated that warfare has so far been characterized by three "distinct generations", or watersheds, of technological and tactical change:

• 1st generation (1GW): the massing of musket-equipped troops on the battlefield, in line and column formations - essentially the way people fought at Austerlitz and Waterloo during the Napoleonic wars.

• 2nd generation (2GW): the linear concentration of firepower (artillery, machine guns etc) against fixed defences and mass troop formations - essentially the way people fought at the Somme and Passchendaele during the First World War.

• 3rd generation (3GW): the use of manoeuvre to break through weak points and collapse enemy defences from behind - exemplified by the German invasion of France and Belgium in May/June 1940.  

Lind then proposed that a "fourth generation" of warfare (4GW) is emerging. This generation is based on four "central ideas" that are carried forward, and enhanced, from previous generations. These ideas are "mission orders" (this refers to a German concept of command known as auftragstaktik), decentralized logistics, manoeuvre, and collapsing the enemy internally.

He went on to suggest the characteristics of 4GW, such as the wide dispersion of fighting, blurring and disappearance of the "distinctions" between war and peace, and between civilians and military, and no definite battlefields or fronts. These factors, plus technology, Lind argued, would give small combat units great firepower and flexibility.

Lind applied the 4GW idea to armies, predicting the emergence of souped-up versions of 3GW military forces. But near the end of the article, he switched gear and speculated that a synthesis of terrorism, technology and three additional elements - a "non-national or transnational base", a "direct attack on the enemy's culture" and "highly sophisticated psychological warfare - could "constitute at least the beginnings of a fourth generation of warfare".

This is a problem for armies because "third (not to speak of second) generation militaries would seem to have little capability against such a synthesis". Translation: a 4GW force would thrash a 3GW or 2GW force. According to Lind, this asymmetry is "typical of generational shifts". 

So there you have it: the "generations of war" idea as originally formulated. In the next post I'll tell you what I think about it.

Sunday morning reflection: NZ and the World Cup

Last night the New Zealand football team beat Bahrain 1-0 to qualify for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. It's been 27 years since NZ last played in a World Cup finals.

The odds were stacked against NZ. After a nil-all draw in the first game in Bahrain, NZ had to win to go through, while Bahrain needed only to draw. Credit is rightly due to striker Rory Fallon for putting the ball in the back of the Bahrain net, but goalkeeper Mark Paston rescued us from disaster when he saved a direct penalty shot in the second half.

After the match, Fallon paid tribute to his father, Kevin, who coached the NZ team in the 1982 World Cup finals. "I just want to thank him for all those 6am starts when I was six and the time he has put into me."

In New Zealand, the beautiful game plays second fiddle to rugby, which dominates winter sport, media coverage, corporate sponsorship and advertising. Many kids, girls and boys, play football, but don't go on to play in adult competitions. This is a shame because, unlike rugby, football is an elegantly simple game, which emphasizes brain over brawn, and is a truly global sport.

As someone who coaches kids' football, I know that NZ playing in the World Cup will have an electrifying effect on youth competitions next winter. The guys that play for NZ will be idolized by junior footballers. Let's hope that NZ Football capitalizes on this surge of passion, and the heightened interest in football generally, by pumping resources into the junior game. In Europe and South America, the powerhouses of world football, the junior game is rightly seen as the breeding ground for future champions. Consequently, players, coaches and managers are well-supported.

If NZ is to make a lasting impact in world football, this has to be grounded in a grassroots and strategic approach to youth soccer. Ricky Herbert, the NZ coach who played in the 1982 side, put it this way...

"These guys will go the World Cup and it will be lifelong memories for them. But we can't forget the young kids that are left here."

Nor can we forget the coaches and parents who, as Fallon suggests, are crucial for getting the kids up for those "6am starts".

No half-measures for Afghanistan

Here's David Kilcullen talking about Afghanistan, and US President Obama's delay in deciding on a strategy...

"As an analogy, you have a building on fire, and it's got a bunch of firemen inside. There are not enough firemen to put it out. You have to send in more or you have to leave. It is not appropriate to stand outside pontificating about not taking lightly the responsibility of sending firemen into harm's way.

Either put in enough firemen to put the fire out or get out of the house. That is my analogy of where we are. Either of those approaches could potentially work."

Once again, Kilcullen has hit the nail on the head.

But as I've argued before, there is another approach which is not the sort of half-measure which Kilcullen, rightly, deplores. It's what I call a pest control strategy.

Forget grandiose COIN and national-building schemes - or the idea of protecting population centres, which sounds like another half-measure. Instead, establish one or two heavily fortified fire bases in strategic locations. From there contain the terrorist threat by carrying out precision strikes against al-Qaeda leaders and facilities using special forces, UAV attack drones, and local mercenaries.

Photo: Andrya Hill

How bad is swine flu?

5850 out of 50,182,850.

There are many ways to die, and swine flu is least among them.

Via Coming Anarchy.

Angles of war

Here's an excellent photo collection - Sean Power's photographs of British soldiers in Helmand, Afghanistan.

Power works unusual angles to good effect: looking up at subjects from a crouching or prone position, or looking down into scenes. He's unobtrusive, getting close to the soldiers without getting in their faces.

The first shot, of a small group of soldiers resting at the end of an operation, is striking. Not just because of the photo's composition, colours and texture. But also because the picture tells you something about these men and their esprit de corps. Even when they are resting, they stick together, in a circle, facing each other. They are a tight-knit team.

How do you get more people cycling?

I love cycling to and from work. It's free. It's clean. It's faster than the car or bus. And it's a great workout. No need for expensive gym fees.

But in New Zealand, most people don't see cycling as a viable way of getting to work. Cycling makes up about 1% of all trips. Twenty years ago it was 3.6%. Most New Zealanders get to and from work by car, usually one person to a car. By contrast, in some northern European countries 20 to 30% of trips are made by bike.

This is pretty appalling for a country that markets itself to the outside world as being clean and green - "100% pure". And pretty appalling for a people who pride themselves on being fit, rugged and outdoorsy types. This is bullshit, of course. Most of us are indoorsy - we spend our days inside homes, offices, cafes, cars and gyms.

The New Zealand government wants to increase cycling and walking to 30% of total trips in urban areas by 2040. There's fat chance of this happening unless central government and local authorities make a sustained investment in cycling facilities, like networks of bike lanes (proper lanes, that is, separated from the road), kerbside bike racks, and roads where cyclists and walkers get priority over cars.

Cyclists have to play their part too. There's nothing more off-putting than seeing cyclists with hairy white legs, riding along in tight lycra shorts, bright reflective jackets and cheap crappy helmets.

For cyclists, the following should be de rigueur: fit and tanned bodies, slick bikes, snappy gear, and cool shades. If we want more people to cycle, then we have to make it cool, stylish and fun.

On the bullshit of "generations of war"

In this essay in Armed Forces Journal (h/t Ubiwar), William F Owen attacks folk who invent fancy new words to describe existing aspects of conflict...

Thus the forces we used to call guerrillas are now “hybrid threats.” Insurgencies are now “complex” and require “complex and adaptive” solutions. Jungles and cities are now “complex terrain.”

My pet hate, when it comes to such "buzzwords and bumber stickers", is "4GW".

4GW is one of the four so-called generations of warfare, a concept invented by William S Lind and others in 1989:

• 1st generation involves line and column tactics of the musket era, e.g., the Battle of Waterloo during the Napoleonic Wars.

• 2nd generation involves tactics of linear fire and movement, e.g., the battles on the Western Front during World War One.

• 3rd generation involves using surprise, speed, manoeuvre and depth to attack or defend, e.g., the German blitzkrieg in 1940.

• 4th generation involves warfare between a state and a non-state entity, in which the non-state force avoids conventional combat and uses terrorism, guerrilla tactics etc to overthrow an opponent, e.g., the Viet Cong in South Vietnam.

When I first came across the term 4GW it annoyed the hell out of me. Partly because it suggests a progression which has no basis in history. Partly because any war can involve elements of all generations - Napoleon's campaigns, for instance, or the recent Sri Lankan civil war. Partly because it ignores wars that were fought before the 18th century. And partly because it is dreadfully Eurocentric.

I also found it confusing. 4GW seemed to be about familiar concepts: insurgency, terrorism, guerrilla warfare, rebellion, civil war. But it sounded so fancy, so Zen, that I felt there had to be more to it. After a while I realized that there isn't anything more to it. It's a classic example of obfuscation, a new, confusing and bullshit way of describing things that are already clearly and precisely named.

A simple question - WTF?

Memo to Afghanistan watchers: read this article about a British army bomb disposal expert who was blown up in Helmand. If you're anything like me, you'll have yet another of those "what the f--- are we doing here?" moments.

If this was Northern Ireland or the Mexican border - some place, in other words, where Britain and America have direct security interests - you could rationalize the extreme risks encountered by infantrymen, engineers and bomb disposal technicians.

But this is Afghanistan. And despite the myriad articles, editorials, op-eds, blog posts, policy papers, presentations, speeches and debates that spew forth on the subject, I've yet to see anyone put up a convincing case for exposing men and women like Olaf Schmid to such dangers. And for committing hundreds of thousands of troops to a counterinsurgency in one of the most hostile, isolated and strategically irrelevant parts of the world.

Stephenson on the singularity and other subjects

Check out this Q&A between sci-fi writer Neal Stephenson and Slashdot readers (h/t Ubiwar). It ranges over topics like 'Beowulf' and 'Dante' writers, new publishing models, hacking tools as weapons, and the singularity...

"I can never get past the structural similarities between the singularity prediction and the apocalypse of St. John the Divine....the key thing they have in common is the idea of a rapture, in which some chosen humans will be taken up and made one with the infinite while others will be left behind."

Stephenson's advice on travel is worth considering...

"The best 'self-defense means' when you are surrounded by a hundred million people of some other culture is to avoid dangerous places and figure out some way to get along with the folks around you."

This also sounds like a sensible approach to national security.

Putting the kybosh on Project Hayes

I like wind farms. But the Environment Court was right to put the kybosh on Project Hayes.

Meridian Energy wanted to put 176 wind turbines on the wild and remote Lammermoor Range in Central Otago, New Zealand. If the project had gone ahead, it would've generated 630 MW of clean electricity. It would also have damaged the local environment and spoiled the look of the tussock-clad range.

We need more wind farms, along with solar plants, to make use of a renewable resource, to generate clean electricity, and to reduce carbon emissions by replacing dirty energy with clean. Just not at any cost. Wind farms involve the industrialization of a landscape. That's ok when the landscape is already industrialized or otherwise heavily modified by man - what are called 'brownfield' sites. Meridian's Project West Wind, a wind farm in the hills behind Wellington, NZ, is located in an area that is intensively farmed and criss-crossed with grid transmission lines.

But it's not ok when we're talking about wild and unspoiled landscapes. In the industrialized world there aren't that many left, and those that remain should be left alone. Instead, we need to make better use of the many brownfield sites that surround our cities and towns.

Simon Mann, mercenary - the movie

Sounds like mercenary Simon Mann wasn't treated too harshly during his 15 months jail time in Equatorial Guinea's notorious Black Beach prison...

"Mann has said he 'felt like a guest … and not like a prisoner ... and there were reports he dined on wine, chicken, steak and vegetables brought in from a nearby restaurant."

"He had his own cell, exercise machine and books and was allowed regular calls home. He often had lunch with ... the Security Minister, who would bring food and wine from his hotel..."

I can't wait to see the movie. But they're gonna have to jazz it up a bit. Actually, a lot. Eating steak, sipping wine and reading Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo just won't cut it.

So, here's a couple of ideas for enhancing the plot...

Early on, prison thugs try to make Mann their bitch. He fights back with improvised weapons. That's where the steak knives and wine glasses come in handy. Along the way, Mann uses his accountancy skills to expose the money swindling scheme of the prison governor.

Later, Mann hatches a daring escape plan. It involves a wooden horse, tunnelling under the wire, and a motorbike jump to freedom. The prisoners break out but after a gunfight are recaptured. They're about to be shot when the presidential pardon comes through.

Still feels light, though. Any more ideas?

Regeneration 5 - the wild coast

Wellington's south coast is the city's rampart on a rough stretch of ocean - the Cook Strait. Blasted by ocean winds, pounded by stormy seas, the south coast is an epic landscape of high cliffs and hills, jagged crags and islands, and sweeping vistas of sea and mountains. Many ships have been wrecked in the south coast's wild weather and on its rocky shores and reefs.

Since European settlers arrived in 1840, the south coast has been extensively modified, urbanized and polluted. The native forest was largely chopped down for grazing land. Big earthworks, like Wellington airport, the Owhiro Bay quarry and the Palmer Head fortifications, gouged great chunks out of the land. For many years the city's sewerage ran untreated into the waters off Moa Point (which locals nicknamed 'Poo Point'). And suburbs have spread over the headlands and ridges, from Breaker Bay in the east to Owhiro Bay in the west.

For all that, the south coast retains its wildness. You don't just live on the south coast. Sometimes, in the teeth of a southerly storm, it can feel like you're just hanging on, like the creatures that struggle to survive in the rock pools and crevices between the high and low tide marks.

Recently there have been big efforts to regenerate the south coast and heighten its wild feel. At Moa Point, the discharge of raw sewerage ended when a modern treatment plant was built. Further along the coast, past Owhiro Bay, the quarry was closed and the hills and shore left to return to their natural state. And last year the Taputeranga marine reserve was created off the south coast - this will allow the once rich marine life to regenerate.

The photo below shows the cliffs of the old quarry site, on the way to the seal colony at Rimurapa (Sinclair Head). The sheer size of these cliffs always astonishes me. If you look closely, in the bottom right of the picture, you can see four people walking along the foreshore.

They are as ants.