Quick Shots - 02/Jul/2016

It's Freakin' Election Day

For a long campaign, it sure creeps up on you when you're doing your best to ignore it.
The pollsters are calling it 50-50 which usually means they don't know what they're talking about and there's about to be a massive swing. Or maybe they're right. Short theALP winning, it would actually be kind of fun to see if we get a hung parliament. Yes, that re-run would be fun too, and well deserved. See if Malcolm Turnbull can stick to his guns and say he won't form an extended coalition with the cross bench seats.

With 27% of those polled saying they haven't decided but they're likely to vote for  minor party, this is anybody's guess as to which way it will swing, let alone prognosticate by how much. Truly, there is no justice when it comes to elections so I'm just going to sit back and watch the carnage unfold. 2013 sucked so much I'm sort of possessed by schadenfreude. Secretly, I wish they all suffer - but they can't because somebody has to win.

Grunwald

I am researching the battle of Grunwald. It's the second last major engagement in the Crusades, and has the dubious distinction of pitting the Teutonic Knights against a coalition of Polish knights, Lithuanian light cavalry and some Tartars. The Poles were presumably Catholic at this point in time, and the Lithuanians were recent converts as well so, it was a kind of all-Catholic slugfest. As Crusade battles go, it is one of the less edifying moments. There is no Saladin or Richard the Lion Heart. Instead the leading characters are decidedly petty and perhaps a little personality disordered.  This is not a grand moment in the history of Crusades; it's more a lingering footnote, a cul de sac in history given that the Teutonic order, Lithuania and Poland all edged back from being big players after this battle.

The Teutonic Knights aren't exactly great protagonists. If anything they have the air of a psychotic cult, hellbent on conquering lands. A sort of an early version of the SS to come. Perhaps the SS even modelled themselves after the naked fanaticism and over-the-top brutality. If Crusade stories are told from the 'christian' side with the blessings of the Pope, then these would be your protagonists. It's kind of strange because the northern reaches of Central Europe don't exactly lend themselves to the Crusade project of taking and obtaining Jerusalem. But I guess heathens are everywhere if you look hard enough. The through the lens of religious fanaticism.

If of course you look at this battle from the point of view of the Poles and Lithuanians, this is the great defence of their motherland from the psycho cult Teutonic Knights. The reason I'm looking into this at all is because the battle of Grunwald represents the high watermark of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Lithuanians see this as their moment in history. They may be right.

The battle of Grunwald took place in 1410. The nuts and bolts of it aside, basically the Poles lured the Teutonic Knights into a battlefield of their choosing. The Lithuanians attacked first with their light cavalry and they were beaten back badly. They eventually regrouped to re-join the fray. By that point the Polish Knights had beaten the Teutonic Knights back to their lines. The Teutonic Knights eventually lost their leader and were routed.

The way the Lithuanians see it, they carried the day with their daring strategy of leaving the battlefield and then coming back. Something they allegedly learned in an earlier war. The way the Poles see it, the Lithuanians turned and fled, only to come back at the end so as not to be complete losers. As you can see , it's hard to draw a completely positive picture of the Lithuanian contribution to the battle. As for the Teutonic Knights, they never really recovered after this loss.

After the battle of Grunwald, there was the battle of Varna in 1444, followed by the fall of Constantinople in 1453. After the fall of Constantinople, the crusaders lost a vital way point on the way tot he Levant. Instead of sending more troops to the Levant, Europe then spent a good deal of time fending off the advancing Turks.
I won't go into the historic irony of the Turks now wanting to join the EU.

Speaking of which...

The Brexit Call We Don't See

I was chatting online with Somebody who voted for 'leave'. He's an educated guy; not necessarily a conservative; and not like some rabid xenophobe. His position was that the Euro project itself was in most part faulty, and therefore doomed to fail. Not only was Brussels faulty as a political organ, the entire Euro project had too many contradictions even before the GFC. Since the GFC, the Euro Zone has been - according to him - patching over the glaring problems, the most problematic of which is Greece and its debt problem. On a plain ledger, if Germany runs a surplus and Greece runs a deficit, Greece has to pay back Germany even though Greece really hasn't the means to do so. If Germany runs a surplus, it effectively constricts growth not just in Germany but also right across the Euro Zone. Yet there is no recourse for Greece or for that matter any other country.

According to him, Germany makes a lot of money exporting stuff it makes at a cheaper price that if they were doing it with Deutsche Marks. Gemran exports are competitive because the Euro currency depresses the price of Germany's exports - This depression of price happens because the entire Euro averages out all the productivity of its member states. Thus Germany clearly benefits from Greece being much less productive. Yet Germany is extra reluctant to share its spoils from this interaction. Why should Greece stick around to be punished by Germany at both ends of the ledger? And if that's the case, what other states are losing out?

He figures the UK is similarly losing out to France and Germany; which is a claim I don't quite get. He argues the Euro project is a house on fire and Brexit is merely the UK getting out of the burning building first. The Scots are crazy for wanting to run back into the burning building. It makes some kind of internal sense. It's not like the handling of Greece made the EU look good or accepting compromise.