FAREWELL 2014

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Hi folks,

Last day of this year and time for my recollections of 2014’s main events.

As always this is by no means meant to be a complete coverage of all the events that happened during 2014, just a personal blog post about some of the things I remember, and a few that I had forgotten until I started to compile this list.

I hope you enjoy.

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The Weather

We will start off with the weather since so many of us seem to be obsessed with it.

• In the United States there were weather extremes. In California, for example, January was the warmest and driest on record in San Francisco, San Jose and Los Angeles. Only four other Januaries since 1878 had been completely dry in Los Angeles until January 2014. Alaskans experienced their third warmest January in 96 years of record, according to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center.

• In many parts of the Midwest, on the other hand, 2014 was the coldest winter since the late 1970s or early 1980s. And some southern states of the US became the victims of, firstly, winter storm Kronos which brought a rare blanket of snow as far south as Louisiana, and sleet as far south as Harlingen, Texas and Pensacola, Fla. in late January, and then, just days later, a second winter storm, Leon, hit many of the same areas causing commuter chaos in both Birmingham, Ala. and Atlanta. Leon also spread ice and sleet to the Gulf Coast, including the Florida Panhandle, and the Low country of South Carolina.
• And worse was on the way. Winter Storm Pax deposited an inch or more of ice in a swath from east-central Georgia into South Carolina, including Augusta, Ga. and Aiken, S.C. Pax was the second heaviest ice storm dating to 1947 in Wilmington, N.C. The accumulation of ice from Pax claimed the famed “Eisenhower tree” at the Augusta National Golf Club. Pax marked the first time since January 1940 that Columbia, S.C. saw snowfall for three straight days.

• In complete contrast, the week after Pax, Columbia, S.C. tied its all-time February high of 84 degrees. Augusta, Ga. warmed into the 80s two straight days on Feb. 19-20.
• Elsewhere in the world, severe Atlantic winter storms took their toll on many parts of England which in 2014 experienced storms and rain not seen since the late 19th century.

• In Tokyo, Japan, which usually averages only about 4 inches of snow each year, there were also severe snow storms. In February, snow blanketed the city with 11 inches of snow in less than a week, the heaviest snowfall in 45 years for Tokyo and in 60 years for the city of Kumagaya, northwest of Tokyo. The following weekend, parts of eastern Japan, including parts of the Tokyo metro area, received another round of snow. Some smaller communities were isolated by more than 3 feet of snow.
• And in the southern hemisphere, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology reported that more than 10 percent of Queensland and almost 15 percent of New South Wales experienced their record hottest day on Jan. 3. A second heat wave hit parts of southern Australia in mid-January, with temperatures peaking above 41 degrees Celsius (just under 106 degrees Fahrenheit) for four straight days from Jan. 14-17, and reaching a sizzling 43.9 degrees C (111 degrees F) on both Jan. 16 and 17.

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Business and Technology

• In the world of business and technology 2014 was the year the Obama administration decided to stop inversion deals, where US companies bought foreign domiciled businesses and moved their profit centers to a much more tax friendly location.
• In technology buys, one of the largest was Facebook’s purchase of smartphone application WhatsApp for $19 Billion.

• In other sectors 2014 saw world oil price plunge to around $50 per barrel, good news for consumers, not so good for producers.
• Under pressure from the fall in oil and gas prices, along with the economic sanctions imposed by the west because of the ongoing situation in the Ukraine, the Russian Ruble went into free fall in December.

• Also in 2014, in March, the United Nations International Court of Justice ruled that Japan’s Antarctic whaling program was not scientific but commercial and refused to grant further permits.
• With Quantitative Easing having been ended in the US (for the moment anyway) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced plans for a new $29 billion fresh stimulus, including subsidies and job-creating programs, to help pull the world’s third-largest economy out of recession.

• After their embarrassing foul up last Christmas, this year both FedEx and UPS managed to deliver more than 99 percent of express packages as promised on Dec. 22 and Dec. 23, according to shipment tracker ShipMatrix.
• South Korean prosecutors arrested a government official who allegedly leaked information about an investigation into former Korean Air Lines executive Cho Hyun-ah, who forced a flight to return over a bag of macadamia nuts. Most of the rest of the world tends to think that the idiot executive should suffer the consequences of her stupidity, not the whistleblower.

• And finally, after their embarrassing hack attack and cringe-worthy capitulation to what amounted to a terrorist cyber attack which was rightly criticized publicly by President Obama, Sony finally decided to release its movie ‘The Interview’.

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Conflicts, Wars & Terrorism

Unfortunately 2014 saw many conflicts and acts of terrorism.

• In April an estimated 276 girls and women were abducted and held hostage from a school in Nigeria. The following month, Boko Haram militants killed approximately 300 people in a night attack on Gamboru Ngala and terrorists in Nigeria detonated bombs at Jos, killing 118 people.

• June saw the emergence of a Sunni militant group called the ‘Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant’ (also known as the ‘ISIS’ or ‘ISIL’). It began an offensive throughout northern Iraq, with the aim of eventually capturing the Iraqi capital city of Baghdad and overthrowing the Shiite government led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The group has been responsible for beheading of hundreds of people including several from the United States.

• In July and August tensions between Israel and Hamas grew following the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in June and the revenge killing of a Palestinian teenager in July. Israel launched ‘Operation Protective Edge’ on the Palestinian Gaza Strip starting with numerous missile strikes, followed by a ground invasion a week later. In 7 weeks of fighting, 2,100 Palestinians and 71 Israelis were killed.
• Also in July, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, a Boeing 777, crashed in eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 souls on board. There are conflicting claims as to who was responsible, some blaming pro Russian forces for a missile strike and others blaming Ukrainian forces.

• In August and September the United States military began an air campaign in northern Iraq to stem the influx of ISIS militants and the following month the United States and several Arab partners began an airstrike campaign in Syria.

Expect more on these stories during 2015.

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Departures

During 2014 we said farewell to many well know people from various walks of life. Here is just my selection of those I remember.

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From Literature

Sue Townsend

British novelist and playwright (b. 1946)

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P. D. James

British writer and life peer

(b. 1920)

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From Movies & TV

Roger Lloyd-Pack

British actor

(b. 1944)

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Maximilian Schell

Austrian-Swiss actor

(b. 1930)

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Philip Seymour Hoffman

American actor

(b. 1967)

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Shirley Temple

American actress and diplomat

(b. 1928)

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Sid Caesar

American actor

(b. 1922)

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Harold Ramis

American film director,

writer, and actor

(b. 1944)

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Mickey Rooney

American actor

(b. 1920)

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Bob Hoskins

British actor

(b. 1942)

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Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.

American actor

(b. 1918)

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Rik Mayall

British comedian,

writer and actor

(b. 1958)

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Casey Kasem

American radio host

and voice actor

(b. 1932)

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Eli Wallach

American actor

(b. 1915)

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Elaine Stritch

American actress and singer

(b. 1925)

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James Garner

American actor

(b. 1928)

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Menahem Golan

Israeli filmmaker

(b. 1929)

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Robin Williams

American actor and comedian

(b. 1951)

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Lauren Bacall

American actress

(b. 1924)

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Richard Attenborough

British actor and film director

(b. 1923)

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Joan Rivers

American comedian, actress,

and television host

(b. 1933)

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Richard Kiel

American actor (b. 1939)

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Polly Bergen

American actress

(b. 1930)

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Ken Takakura

Japanese actor

(b. 1931)

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Warren Clarke

English actor

(b. 1947)

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Glen A. Larson

American television producer

and writer

(b. 1937)

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Virna Lisi

Italian actress

(b. 1936)

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Billie Whitelaw

English actress

(b. 1932)

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Luise Rainer

Golden Age actress

“The Great Ziegfeld”

(b. 1910)

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From Music

Pete Seeger

American singer, songwriter,

musician, and activist

(b. 1919)

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Johnny Winter

American singer and guitarist

(b. 1944)

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Glenn Cornick

British bass guitarist

(b. 1947)

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Jack Bruce

British rock bassist

(b. 1943)

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Acker Bilk

British jazz clarinetist

(b. 1929)

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Joe Cocker

English singer

(b. 1944)

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From Politics

Zbigniew Messner

9th Prime Minister of the

People’s Republic of Poland

(b. 1929)

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Ariel Sharon

11th Prime Minister of Israel

(b. 1928)

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Tony Benn

British politician and diarist

(b. 1925)

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Adolfo Suárez

138th Prime Minister of Spain

(b. 1932)

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James R. Schlesinger

American economist and politician

(b. 1929)

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A. N. R. Robinson

3rd President of Trinidad and Tobago

(b. 1926)

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Howard Baker

American politician and diplomat

(b. 1925)

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Eduard Shevardnadze

2nd President of Georgia

(b. 1928)

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Albert Reynolds

Irish Taoiseach (prime minister)

(b. 1932)

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Ian Paisley

British politician and

First Minister of Northern Ireland

(b. 1926)

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Nicholas Romanov

Prince of Russia

(b. 1922)

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Jean-Claude Duvalier

41st President of Haiti

(b. 1951)

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John Spencer-Churchill

11th Duke of Marlborough,

British peer and educator

(b. 1926)

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Gough Whitlam

21st Prime Minister of Australia

(b. 1916)

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From Space Exploration

Valeri Kubasov

Soviet cosmonaut

(b. 1935)

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Wubbo Ockels

Dutch astronaut and physicist

(b. 1946)

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Henry Hartsfield

American colonel and astronaut

(b. 1933)

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Anatoly Berezovoy

Soviet cosmonaut

(b. 1942)

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From Sport

Eusébio

Portuguese footballer

(b. 1942)

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Mae Young

American professional wrestler

(b. 1923)

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Louise Brough

American tennis player

(b. 1923)

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Tom Finney

English footballer

(b. 1922)

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Nelson Frazier, Jr.

American professional wrestler

(b. 1971)

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Jimmy Ellis

American boxer

(b. 1940)

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Jack Brabham

Australian race car driver

(b. 1926)

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Malcolm Glazer

American businessman,

owner of Manchester United

(b. 1928)

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Valentin Mankin

Ukrainian sailor, Olympic triple champion

and silver medalist

(b. 1938)

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Fernandão

Brazilian footballer and manager

(b. 1978)

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Alfredo Di Stéfano

Argentine-Spanish footballer

(b. 1926)

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Andriy Bal

Ukrainian football player and coach

(b. 1958)

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Björn Waldegård

Swedish rally driver

(b. 1943)

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Andrea de Cesaris

Italian race car driver

(b. 1959)

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Health

• The big health scare of 2014 that dominated the headlines was the of the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa in February, that initially infected over 19,000 people and killing at least 7,000, the most severe both in terms of numbers of infections and casualties.

• In other news, also in February, Belgium became the first country in the world to legalize euthanasia for terminally ill patients of any age.

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Politics

• On January 1, Latvia officially adopted the Euro as its currency and became the 18th member of the Eurozone.
• In February, the Ukrainian parliament voted to remove President Viktor Yanukovych from office, replacing him with Oleksandr Turchynov, after days of civil unrest that left around 100 people dead in Kiev. The pro-Russian unrest lead to the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation and an insurgency in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

• In March, Nicolás Maduro, the President of Venezuela, severed diplomatic and political ties with Panama, accusing it of being involved in a conspiracy against the Venezuelan government.
• Also in March, an emergency meeting, involving the United Kingdom, the United States, Italy, Germany, France, Japan, and Canada temporarily suspended Russia from the G8.
• In April, also in response to the Crimean crisis, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) passed a resolution temporarily stripping Russia of its voting rights; its rights to be represented in the Bureau of the Assembly, the PACE Presidential Committee, and the PACE Standing Committee; and its right to participate in election-observation missions.
• The same month, United States President Barack Obama began new economic sanctions against Russia, targeting companies and individuals close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

• In May the Royal Thai Army overthrew the caretaker government of Niwatthamrong Boonsongpaisan after a failure to resolve the political unrest in Thailand.
• Back in Europe, in June, King Juan Carlos I of Spain abdicated in favor of his son, who ascended the Spanish throne as King Felipe VI.
• And the political year ended on a positive note, with U.S. President Barack Obama announcing the resumption of normal relations between the U.S. and Cuba after more than half a century.

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Space

• The major space event of 2014 happened in November when the European Space Agency’s Rosetta Philae probe successfully landed on Comet 67P, the first time in history that a spacecraft has landed on such an object.

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Sport

• The two major world sporting events of 2014 were the XXII Olympic Winter Games, held in Sochi, Russia in February, and the 2014 FIFA World Cup held in Brazil, and won by Germany, during June and July.

• In American sport the Super Bowl was won by the Seattle Seahawks, the MLB World Series  winners were the San Francisco Giants and in basketball the San Antonio Spurs came out on top.
• Ice Hockey had three champions in 2014, Canada becoming Olympic champions, Russia world champions and in the NHL the Los Angeles Kings were the victors.
• In tennis at the world famous Wimbledon Tournament in England Novak Djokovic became Men’s Singles Champion and Petra Kvitova Ladies Singles Champion, while the men’s and women’s winners of the US Open were Marin Čilić  and Serena Williams respectively.

• In Soccer, as noted above, Germany won the 2014 World Cup. The European Champions League winners were Real Madrid and the English Premiership was won by Manchester City.
• The Formula 1 motor racing champion for 2014 was British driver Lewis Hamilton, who also picked up the award of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year.
• In golf’s major championships, the Masters Tournament, held in April, was won by Bubba Watson by three strokes. It was his second Masters championship.
• May saw the BMW PGA Championship where young Northern Ireland man Rory McIlroy birdied the 18th hole to win by one stroke over Irishman Shane Lowry, who also birdied the 18th hole.

• In June, U.S. Open winner was Martin Kaymer who won by eight strokes to become the first German player to win the U.S. Open, and the first player to win the Players Championship and the U.S. Open in the same year.
• In July, the Open Championship Northern Ireland man Rory McIlroy, was on top again winning by two strokes over Rickie Fowler and Sergio García. It was his third career major championship, and his first Open Championship. With the win, he became the fourth player ever of 25 years old or under to have won at least three majors.
• In August, McIlroy was back, winning the PGA Championship by one stroke over Phil Mickelson. He was having quite a year, it was his fourth career major and his second PGA Championship.
• Then in September, in the Ryder Cup, Team Europe (also including McIlroy) defeated Team USA by a score of 16½ – 11½. It was the third consecutive Ryder Cup victory for Europe, and also Europe’s fifth consecutive home victory in the Ryder Cup.

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Tragedies

• In March Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a Boeing 777 airliner en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, disappears over the Gulf of Thailand with 239 people on board. The aircraft is presumed to have crashed into the Indian Ocean.
• In April Korean ferry MV Sewol capsized and sunk after an unmanageable cargo shift. More than 290 people were killed, mostly high school students.

• In May hundreds of workers were killed in mining accident in Turkey.
• In July, Air Algérie Flight 5017 crashed in Mali, killing all 116 people on board.
• And just a few days ago AirAsia flight QZ8501 crashed, wreckage has been found off the coast of Indonesia’s Kalimantan coast.

 

Is Obama Making A Bad Korea Move?

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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It was either a title with a pun in it or just call today’s post “The Sunday Sermon”, but as you can see the pun got the better of me as usual.

If you hadn’t guessed, this one is my take on the goings on in North Korea.

Here we go….

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Before the sermon starts I should preface it by saying we are in the current mess because politicians faffed about instead of stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons when they had the opportunity. It’s their mess, but unfortunately we are all in it with them.

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JFK had Cuba and now BHO has North Korea, both countries run by dictators and both in their time posing a nuclear threat.

Why do the Democrats always get the best crises? Poor old Dubya and his greedy and power hungry ally in Britain, Tony Blair (often deliberately spelled Bliar for good reason), had to make up an excuse to start a war with Saddam Hussein. Remember the Weapons Of Mass Destruction that never actually existed?

Of course, when JFK was doing his statesman like thing, during his brief breaks between his girlfriends, I was far too young to know or care about nuclear threats or more world wars. I had other more important things to be getting on with like battling invaders from Mars or trying to pluck up the courage to explore that eerie wood just a short distance from the bottom of our garden.

So what I know about the Cuban crisis of the early 1960s is all gleaned from books and reports from that period which are now a matter of history. (We’ll leave the debate about just how accurate and reliable that is for another time.)

The truth seems to be that the Cuban nuclear crisis had very little to do with Cuba or Castro. It was a posturing competition between the United States of America and the Soviet Union, and to a lesser degree a pissing contest between Kennedy and Khrushchev.

Khrushchev-Kennedy

In both Washington and the Kremlin, although there were the warmongers, there were more people who were sensible enough to realize that devastating each other’s countries would leave them both weaker and achieve very little. They were able to reach that conclusion simply because they were people who were not completely insane or delusional.

It probably seemed difficult at the time, but for JFK it was a relatively easy crisis to manage.

The ‘nuclear crisis’ facing Obama, if indeed it is that, is a different kettle of fish because Kim Jong-un shows all the signs of being both delusional and ever so slightly insane.

He can’t be held entirely to blame for this. He is the son of a long time dictator, who himself suffered from multiple delusions. And he was brought up in a militaristic and jingoistic regime, which is what dictators like to create for themselves simply because it makes their own people easier to control. North Korean propaganda has taught the public that military goals and economic goals are intertwined and therefore that Kim Jong-un’s actions are for the good of his people.

Kim Jong Un, flanked by Ri Yong Ho, Kim Yong Chun

In the latest moves to up the ante, the North Koreans have told Britain and Russia that they should consider the evacuation of their embassies in Pyongyang. They have also moved another missile to their east coast as a further threat to US Pacific bases.

This in itself is just the latest response to UN sanctions and South Korea-US military drills, both of which have done nothing to ease tensions and in fact have annoyed the North Koreans immensely.

Now the North Korean army is saying that it has received final approval for military action, possibly involving nuclear weapons, against the threat posed by US B-52 and B-2 stealth bombers taking part in the joint drills. And all this has been accompanied by a series of apocalyptic threats of nuclear war in recent weeks.

The trouble with all this posturing is that Washington, which always gets a ‘F’ for ‘FAIL’ in Foreign Policy, very seldom, if ever, gets it right at the right time.

Washington doesn’t seem to understand that the macho culture in many other countries makes it extremely difficult for them to be seen by their own people as the one who blinked first. Losing face has a terrible stigma for them.

Further military ‘exercises’ and posturing will probably have the result of leaving the Jong-un regime with little alternative (in their eyes) but to act aggressively.

How that aggression will manifest itself is anybody’s guess. Least likely would be an attack on America – it’s too far away for the type of missiles North Korea currently has.

An attack of some kind on the US base at Guam is possible, as is an attack on neighboring South Korea. The latter, depending on the scale and the number of casualties, could spark of retaliatory strikes by the US-backed South Koreans and from there it is a short step into a conventional and probably very bloody war.

And we should remember that the Korean war during the 1950s was a spectacular waste of human lives. Generals sacrificed their men for years and ended back at the 38th parallel, more or less the same place they started.

military-trucks-crossing-38th-parallel

Admittedly things might be a lot different this time if China decides that the North Korean regime is too out of control to support militarily. I doubt very much if it is in China’s long term interest to have a whacky dictatorship armed with nuclear weapons on their doorstep. After all it’s only 1,000Km to Beijing and more than 5,000Km to Hawaii, the closest state of the US to North Korea. At the same time would China want an economically united and strong US dominated state on its borders?

The jury is still out on that one.

Another thing that Washington gets badly wrong is that it thinks that because it is the most powerful military nation on earth – and it is by a long way – that therefore other countries will be afraid to take it on.

Rather than a comparison with the Cuban Crisis that everyone is concentrating on, I see parallels between North Korea today and Imperial Japan in the 1930s. Both are/were jingoistic regimes with an ’emperor’ having complete control, and both created a military style regime more as a way to suppress and control their own people, and therefore to cling to power, than to attack another nation.

But things being what they are, and people being so bloody stupid it’s unbelievable at times, there comes a time when those in power in such regimes lose their sense of reality and get carried away believing their own propaganda.

Hence Pearl Harbor when Imperial Japan forgot that when something big and powerful is asleep you should never poke it with a sharp stick, coz when it wakens up it will kick the crap right out of you!

And hence, the North Koreans are not afraid of taking on America. They should be, but they aren’t, which again makes some kind of attack more possible the more they are backed into a corner.

Thankfully there are some signs that Washington might be getting the message and preparing to step back from the rapidly approaching brink. American officials have reportedly decided to “pause” the recent show of US force in Korea because

– wait for it, it’s a good one –

they are surprised at the intensity of the North’s response.

I mean who could have seen that coming? Well the answer is just about everyone except for the cretins in Washington!

What is surprising, however, is that the most sense talked about the whole affair recently has been from the world’s number one cigar salesman, Fidel Castro. In fact, make that doubly surprising, in that he has said some things that I am in agreement with and that he is still around to say it!

Fidel Castro and cigar

He said “If a war breaks out there, there would be a terrible slaughter of people” in both North and South Korea “with no benefit for either of them.” And also that the “duty” to avoid the conflict is in the hands of Washington “and of the people of the United States.”

Castro hasn’t quite figured out that once elected US Presidents do whatever THEY want, not whatever the PEOPLE want.

But what he must have figured out is that politicians like to be liked because he also warns President Obama that his second term, “would be buried in a deluge of images that would portray him as the most sinister personality in the history of the United States.”

Ouch!

Equally, he cautions the North Koreans that now they have, demonstrated their “technical and scientific advances, we remind them of their duties with those countries that have been their great friends.” And he urged them to remember that “such a war would affect … more than 70 per cent of the planet’s population,” and decried “the gravity of such an incredible and absurd event” in such a densely populated region.

Do you think he is hankering after one of those Nobel Peace Prizes, like the one Obama got for not being George W Bush?

Who knows.

And who knows what is going to happen in the Koreas?

Certainly not the mob in Washington I think!

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