PeriodOne

Various ’special relationships’ could be connected with Lego, but this this entry focuses on the capitalised Special Relationship, i.e. that between the US and the UK. A wikipedia session has just led me to various Lego websites, one of which painstakingly and lovingly catalogues and cross-references every piece in every Lego set ever created. Even more exciting for the frantically procrastinating 29-year-old, the site also includes the instructions for all Lego sets which, when viewed, trigger waves of nostalgia.

But what I found most entertaining was a table which listed the respective names chosen for various space vehicles for the American and British markets by the Danish company. One, called the ‘Beacon Tracer’ in the US, became the rather pedestrian ‘Inspection Buggy’ for the UK. The excitingly rhymed ‘Vector Detector’ becomes the stubbornly utilitarian ‘Search Craft’. And the frankly over-the-top ‘Mega Core Magnetizer’ is crushingly downgraded to the ‘Mobile Recovery Centre’.

Spending a lot of time as I do with German students of English who seem to fondly regard my country as a kind of cup-of-tea period theme park where British-English-accented ladies and gentlemen play crochet with Prince Harry, and the States as the alluring, futuristic home of the kind of English they want to speak, I now see that we in the UK were programmed from childhood to understand that our mobile recovery centres, despite being the same as the American’s Mega Core Magnetizers (it’s even written with a z!), were never going to warrant the same attention.

Germany will have 4,400 troops serving in Afganistan this summer. This is why. Although they were markedly smaller this year, last Easter a reported 7,000 people took place in protests in Berlin against the Bundeswehr’s activities in the country, and the logistical support Germany gives the USA in Iraq. Spiegel, a German news magazine, reports that NGOs have claimed their work is more easily carried out in times of peace. It’s an intriguing argument, but falls slightly flat when one considers that last year aid agencies united to request that the UN provide them protection after three female workers were murdered by the Taleban.

I find it difficult to accept the view that there is NEVER a role for military intervention in the world, although this is a view the is often expressed where I live. Similarly, I think that those people who want troops out of Afghanistan ought to explain how they plan to prevent the Taleban regaining control over the country. And if they don’t have a plausible plan, then they should be prepared to take responsibility for the consequences such a development would entail.

Peace isn’t the default state of the world. In fact, humankind has only managed to achieve it for any length of time in the last 60 years or so. So the idea that if we do nothing, countries like Afganistan will revert automatically to a state of peace is nonsense. Somalia has been a living hell since the US and UN pulled out in the 90’s. The unnecessary loss of human life in DR Congo over the last two decades may well eclipse the worst atrocities of the Shoah. And it’s not getting any better.

Aggressive, unilateral military action is one thing. A unified, long-term strategic operation under the auspices of NATO is something quite different. To criticise what the German armed forces are doing in Afghanistan is to advocate a relativistic world view based on the idea that the Western world bears no responsibility for the well-being of the rest. It’s not right, and more people round these parts ought to speak out and say so.

Google’s currently showing 14,900 hits for the above phrase (explained below). A minor internet phenomenon. Most of these seem to be on blogs, picked up AFTER PeriodOne’s audacious scoop. No hat tips though. I seriously need to get some more readership going, especially as the British press has been dominated over the Easter weekend by a mega sleaze scandal in which bloggers of various political hues were involved, chiefly this Guy. 10,000 hits a day are not to be sniffed at. But PeriodOne seems to be very much a blog of the old-school (’old’ being in this case a relative term). Whimsical and gently meandering. Or, to paraphrase the author of Catchgraph: ‘longwinded’. I’m not sure whether there’s room for such low-impact writing on the relentlessly high-impact internet. Ah well. I suppose it won’t surprise readers to learn that my world has today been rocked by the fact that my windowbox lettuces have germinated. I was going to post a video, but the resultant media frenzy would have been simply too much …