The Great Bear

First, you say you will and then you won’t, then you say you do but you don’t…

What is up with you, Vlad? You haven’t been this indecisive since you thought about burning down East Berlin in the wake of the wall falling.

According to President Joe Biden, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is imminent. President Putin doesn’t exactly deny it but suggests maybe it’s just a training exercise. Meanwhile, various European leaders have trotted dutifully to Moscow for an audience in an effort to calm the waters. Putin hasn’t had this much attention since he invaded Crimea, which may be the point of this whole exercise.

Russia is not your dad’s Soviet Union. The collapse of communism was inevitable. Authoritarian states always contain the seeds of their own destruction, especially when the authority is vested in one man. Well-established democracies, on the other hand, take a concerted effort to bring down. Unfortunately, there are plenty, including those who live in and benefit from democracy, more than willing to lend a hand. Which brings us back to Putin.

French President Macron was the first to drop by for a chat. France, of course, is always interested in playing an independent role even in a more or less united Europe. They remain out of NATO and are active in their former colonies, as an advisor or military ally of last resort, and they have their own supply of nuclear weapons, so that must count for something.

There may be more at play: Macron is likely to run for re-election and, by all accounts, is likely to win. However, there are a lot of wild cards in the race and anything can happen between now and the election days (they have 2, the first to pick the top two contenders then another to decide the matter). Many of the other candidates, on both the far right and far left are openly admiring of Putin’s approach; at least one is being investigated for taking Russian money. If nothing else, Macron may be interested in seeing what Putin has that he doesn’t.

The political dance gets even more complicated when you add in the role of China to the world stage. Despite the recent “glum” Olympics and push back on the great belt and road initiative for trade, China certainly counts as the second most powerful country in the world economically and politically and is rapidly overtaking Russia as a military force as well. Putin made a quick visit to President Xi Jinping recently to affirm the close relationship between the two powers. This is an interesting reversal when you consider the last war these two countries openly fought was with each other. In those days, China was breaking away from Soviet influence and one has to wonder if Putin is now feeling resentful of the role China is playing, especially in former Soviet client states.

Meanwhile, Putin has more immediate problems. The Russian economy has a lot going for it, mostly in the form of natural gas that Europe has become dependent on. However, other sectors are more fragile and if Europe bites the bullet and begins to find alternative energy sources, the economy might not be able to withstand extensive sanctions from the west. The fact that so much of the Russian oligarchs’ wealth, including Putin’s vast fortunes (he might well be as rich as Elon Musk), are held offshore and could well be frozen in any conflict with Europe has to weigh heavily on his mind.

All out war in Europe is unlikely but not impossible especially if Putin tries to extend his control past the chunk of eastern Ukraine now in open revolt against the central government in Kyiv. Russian overreach could quickly spread to the Baltic states or even Poland and we all know what happens when someone invades Poland.

My own cynical theory is that Putin is getting old (he’s 69) and like all aging dictators he is determined his legacy will live on. As the world faces catastrophic climate change, Putin is saying to Mother Nature: Hold my beer!

Photo by Mark Basarab on Unsplash

Billionaires in Space

The world is all abuzz with the news of the recent successful near-earth orbit space flights by Branson and Bezos. Branson went first; Bezos went higher. It will be interesting to see what Musk will claim about his soon-to-be launch. That he kept it up longer would seem to be the appropriate brag, given the nature of the competition.

Of course, the first man achieved earth orbit just over 60 years ago when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made one lap of the earth. But, say the billionaires, we did it with experimental rockets that not only went up but came down.

True, but the X-15 rocket plane did that 13 times in the early 1960s, giving the eight pilots involved the official right to be called astronauts. Typically, the military pilots got their astronaut wings right away; the civilians (yes, that’s right) didn’t get theirs until 2005. The X-15B never made it past the design stage but it (or its successor, the X-20 Delta wing) was intended to reach orbit and do three circuits before flying back to base.

But we did it cheaper! That much is true. Billionaires are cheap.

Some people cheer on the entrepreneurs’ efforts, pointing, quite rightly, to all the skilled jobs that were created, not to mention the research benefits that cheaper and more frequent flights into orbit will bring. Many, I am sure, are hoping the price will fall enough (or the billionaires will give away a few trips for PR purposes), that they too can have their four minutes of weightlessness.

Me, I’d rather go back to Africa. For the lowest cost likely for a sub-orbital flight, I could take my extended family and do it in comfort.

Others, of course, decry the expenditure of millions for space tourism (which is all it is right now, no matter what future research benefits might occur) while there are so many problems here on earth. Better to end world poverty! Or fix climate change!

Of course, we need to do those things, but even if we took every dollar that Branson, Bezos and Musk are reputed to have (and remember it is mostly on paper) and distributed it to the world’s population, that would be about $65 USD for every man, woman and child on the planet. If we limited it to those who are actually hungry (roughly 800 million), it rises to a princely sum of $500. Helpful, true, but in the sense of if you give a man a fish… etc.

The real problem is that all of that cash would, sooner rather than later, wind up back in the hands of the very rich.

Because that’s how capitalism works. It is designed to shift wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich and the prosperous (the top 20% of the income pyramid). And all the talk of trickle down has been proven to be what usually trickles down.

Personally, I don’t object to billionaires going to space; I object to the existence of billionaires whether produced by western capitalism or eastern state capitalism. If we had a better system, we could solve world hunger and climate change and still go to space.

Interestingly enough, the link between entrepreneurs and risky behavior in machines is not a new one. In France before the Great War, fledgling auto-makers, the Renault brothers, made a name for themselves by driving the cars they built in extremely dangerous high speed road races. How dangerous? Marcel was killed in one of the races in 1903 leading Louis to quit racing to concentrate on building the business. You can find similar stories in the history of early aviation. Men and sometimes women took enormous risks to prove the value of their products and then set about getting rich afterward. I guess they had a different understanding of what entrepreneurship really looked like.

While billionaires (or their 1919 equivalent) don’t play a big role in my novel, In the Shadow of Versailles, they were there in real life, working behind the scenes or, often, in public view, to shape the world to their own interests. We all know how that turned out.

If you’d like to take an exciting trip, not to the edge of space, but to post war Paris, you can buy In the Shadow of Versailles here.

The Great Pandemic

Mandatory masks. Shuttered restaurants. Cancelled sporting events. Quarantines. Disease and death.

Sounds gruesomely familiar. But instead of 4 to 8 million dead worldwide, the figure was at least 17 million and maybe as much as 100 million. Unlike most flus, the victims were not confined to the very old and very young but hit adults in the prime of life particularly. Coming on the heels of the Great War, the Spanish Flu was the worst disease to strike the world since the Black Plague (which killed at least one out of three Europeans over a seven-year period).

Despite the name, the flu did not originate in Spain but possibly in Kansas in the United States where the first cases were reported in March 1918 (the exact origin is unknown but North America is the favorite candidate). By April it had spread to England, France and soon after Germany, almost certainly carried by American troops. The crowded trenches of Europe made a perfect breeding ground and the shifting lines meant everyone got a shot at infection. By the end of the war, the flu was probably killing as many soldiers as combat.

Like many pandemics, this one came in waves – four between March 1918 and the late spring of 1920. The first was fairly mild but the second, which started in August 1918 and ran until December, was by far the deadliest, killing millions around the globe. A third wave was nearly as bad, starting in Australia in January 1919 but soon sweeping across the planet.

Though not a central part of In the Shadow of Versailles, the Spanish flu does have a role to play in the novel, impacting characters directly or by the losses of friends and family and placing a damper on the desire to celebrate the end of war. The economy was flattened and even fashion was impacted.

Of course, the long-term effects of four years of war followed by two years of deadly disease were enormous, not the least of which was the explosion of cultural, economic and scientific innovation that marked the 1920s. But it also played a role in the flirtation with nihilistic philosophies and authoritarian politics that took hold in the 1930s. One wonders what the aftermath of our own little (a relative term – COVID-19 is one of the top ten diseases in history) pandemic will bring.

To discover more about the tumultuous times of post-war Paris and enjoy a ripping yarn while you do so, pick up a copy of In the Shadow of Versailles at your favorite on-line store right here.

Entering Paris

My first trip to Paris took place in the 1920s. Well, after reading “A Moveable Feast,” I certainly felt I had been there, much more so than I did from reading Victor Hugo or other French writers of the 19^th and 20^th century. That might seem odd but there is a rational explanation. Hemingway was a visitor to Paris, albeit one with a keen eye for details. Hugo et. al. saw Paris from the inside out while Hemingway and Stein and others saw it from the outside in, which is exactly the way I and, subsequently my hero, Max Anderson, would come to see Paris.

Of course, there is only so much one can understand about a place through books (with apologies to armchair tourists who are sure the world can be conveyed through words on a page). My first actual visit to the City of Light came in 2010, when I persuaded my wife and her daughter to accompany me on a brief 2-day jaunt across the Channel. We were already in London and a high-speed train could deliver us to Paris in a few hours, so off we went.

One thing I really remember was the heat. It was July and well over 30C the whole time we were there. Personally, the heat doesn’t trouble me but Liz finds it a bit difficult. So, I left them to do some leisurely sightseeing and shopping (Paris, right?) and took off on a death march that took me by foot and Metro (as the subway, much of which was built in the first two decades of the 20^th century, is called) around the city. I was travelling too fast for the local conmen to get me in their sights—I saved that for a later visit—as I traversed 7 of the 20 arrondissements (or districts) of Paris.

The 20 arrondissements form the core of Paris and are surrounded by the suburbs or banlieues where most immigrants and many working-class people lived and continue to live. Historically, the two parts of Paris were separated by numerous parks and the remains of the medieval city wall. Later, an ugly and still contentious ring road was constructed that serves as an unofficial border.

The arrondissements spiral out from the city centre with the 1^st one including the Louvre, the Palais Royal, the Jardins de Tuileries and half of the Ile de la Cite (the palace of Justice but not the Prefecture de Police). The arrondissements get bigger as you go, so covering the first seven is easier than visiting the last three. By the end of my whirlwind tour, I had realized one key fact. Everything in Paris was closer together and smaller than I had imagined from reading books, watching movies and looking at maps.

Since I’d already written most of the first draft of In the Shadow of Versailles (yes, this book has been ten years in the making, though I did a lot of other things in that time, too), that meant I had a lot more research to do. A year later, I was a back in Paris for a week, this time by myself and in the fall, when the weather was much more agreeable. I found a little place in 10^th arrondissement not far from Gare Nord, the train station where Max Anderson arrives when he first comes to Paris. When I say little, I’m not kidding. There was room for a single bed, a miniscule night table and a spot on the floor for my luggage. The bathroom was so small that I literally had to take off my pants to sit on the toilet and had to turn off the shower and open the door to turn around in the cubicle. But it was cheap!

Still, it was a great time, walking the streets, some of which turned into staircases part way up the hill, and visiting restaurants both famous and infamous. I even found a bar to serve as a model for Le Coq Bleu, Max’s hang-out, run by his friend, Yesim. Churches, museums (many of which had been houses), government buildings, bridges and cemeteries – I roamed the city taking pictures and writing new sections of In the Shadow of Versailles. I also began to take notes for By Dawn’s Early Light, the second Max Anderson mystery, which will appear in October. A subsequent trip with my wife in 2012 wound up focusing on the 8^th arrondissement, the old Russian quarter of Paris, which features heavily in the second novel. A final trip took place in 2014 when we spent 10 days in a nice apartment at the foot of Montmartre. It was mostly a pleasure trip—but some of the places we visited feature heavily in the third Max novel, currently being written. Sounds like time for another trip!

On of the nicest things about Paris is that so little of it has changed in the last hundred years. Many of the old buildings and streets are almost unchanged, at least on the surface and, while facilities have improved and some station names have changed, the Metro routes are largely what they were in the days after WWI. Once you understand the basic plan and character of Paris, all the rest of the gaps can be filled in with research. I have two shelves of a bookcase devoted strictly to Paris (plus another 30 on my KOBO). Among my favorites: One Thousand Buildings of Paris (photos and descriptions from across the arrondissements), Paris Underground, which shows the year-by-year development of the Metro, with plenty of illustrations and a 1922 catalogue from the Galleries Lafayette, which I found in the massive flea market beyond the ring road just past the 18^th arrondissement.

For a chance to see Paris from the eyes of soldier fresh from the trenches, you can pick up a copy of In the Shadow of Versailles, wherever e-books are sold. This link will take you to a central site where you can pick your favorite vendor.

Democracy in France

Every one of my acquaintance (and yes, I’m ignoring you right over there) is pretty pleased with the results of the French presidential election yesterday. The victory of youthful, energetic and centrist Macron over the darling of the far-right, Le Pen, has made us all sigh with relief. But, maybe we shouldn’t sigh too soon.

Quite apart from the fact that 11 million French voters – some perhaps taken in by Le Pen’s questionable pretence at temperance – wound up supporting the former and soon-to-be-again leader of the National Front is hardly cause for celebration. Macron still has a tough road ahead to try to forge some sort of government out of the congress that will be elected in a month’s time. His own fledgling En Marché party is unlikely to win a majority and, while the National Front is unlikely to turn its moderate (funny word that) success yesterday into a substantial block of seats, it will be tough to bring together deputies and senators of both the left and right into a cohesive government. And if Macron fails, Le Pen will be back again in 5 years and she just might win.

But what may be more troubling about the election is the underlying fault in western democracy that seems to grow more serious with each passing year. Large numbers of French voters simply stayed home, unwilling to vote for anyone who wasn’t their first choice. Some conservatives but many more on the left were clearly prepared for a Le Pen victory if they couldn’t have the candidate of their choice.

This was the exact same phenomenon that occurred in the last American election – which saw some Saunders supporters stay home (though in the end not that many) and some apparently vote for Trump.  While everyone has the right to vote or not vote as they see fit, it is an odd thing for people to vote for someone the polar opposite of who they originally supported as seems to be the case where some far left voters in France swung over to the far right.

This is a bit like people who say they like ice cream but only if it is butterscotch. No other ice cream will do. People! That is crazy. Even vanilla ice cream is better than on ice cream. I mean, ICE CREAM!

And democracy is a lot like that row of ice cream (and, heaven forbid, sherbet) containers. We all have our favorites – and some of us of course are lactose intolerant and hate ice cream – but we are usually willing to settle for our second or third choices. And democracy is much the same. If you only have two choices – surely there is one that is better than the other.

Of course, this is a bit facetious. Democracy doesn’t taste nearly as good as ice cream. After voting, I’ve often had a bitter taste in my mouth. And sometimes when I watch the necessary compromises that politicians have to make in a world where we all have different interests but we still have to get things done, I get an ice cream headache.

But a world without ice cream or democracy? Now that I wouldn’t want to imagine at all.

And that’s ten minutes