Tag: japan

Latest Read: The Bomber Mafia

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date August 8, 2021

The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War by Malcolm Gladwell. His famous 2004 TED Talk about pasta sauce placed Malcolm onto the world’s new internet stage.

I also enjoy his podcast series Revisionist History. As a matter of fact The Bomber Mafia is an outcome of podcast Season 5, Episode 4. So Malcolm has delivered a rather unique book.

This is not a feel good story. Malcolm reveals the horror of war and the understanding that precision bombing dealt a harsh blow to Germany, while firebombing Japanese cities caused the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians.

The story begins with a short history of aerial bombing in World War I. Then Malcolm introduces Major General Haywood S. Hansell.

So Hansell and the mafia of Air Force leaders developed America’s high-altitude precision bombing strategy in World War II. His strategy was to limit civilian casualties as the pacific campaign was beginning to ramp up.

However, Hansell was replaced by Major General Curtis LeMay. Instead, LeMay altered the US Air Force tactic to a low altitude, fire bombing campaigns across Japan.

Did LeMay sell his soul?

Malcolm certainly structures this powerful storyline around Luke 4:2, the temptation of Christ by the devil:

And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.
Luke 4:2

LeMay led a devastating bombing campaign, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. In fact, after a single firebombing of Tokyo, between 100,00 to 130,000 civilians burned to death. Yet all the firebombing did not impact Japan’s industrial capacity to wage war.

Tags Curtis LeMay, Firebombing, japan, malcolm gladwell, Precision, The Bomber Mafia

Education Globalization Reading Technology

Latest read: The Next 100 Years

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date May 3, 2010

I was looking forward to George Friedman‘s The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century. I found this to be a very compelling read due to the simple nature that predictions in general are always horribly incorrect.

Friedman’s background provides a true global, military view of the world’s future and his role at Stratfor, a global intelligence service provides direction to his book.

Yet I could not help but think twice about some of the aspects of his work. I agree with his points that in the future countries including Poland can become a superpower, but at the same time to predict in 40 years America will be at war with Mexico after fighting Japan and Turkey are a bit…on the surface, a stretch.

For the strangest reason Friedman seems to be able to tie some of his predication today. Following the fall of the USSR and the Orange Revolution not many would predict that Ukraine and Russia would sign a joint agreement in April 2010 to keep Russian Naval forces in their former communist republic in Sevastopol.

At the same time his prediction of Poland’s coming success as a global power could not have taken into account the April 2010 tragedy in Katyn. I do not believe this will stop Poland from gaining power in the future, but it appears to be slowing down (potentially) the process by a decade.
I do feel the first half of the book hold chapters that are solid and well written:

Chapter 1: The Dawn of the American Age
Chapter 2: Earthquake: The US – Jihadist War
Chapter 3: Population, Computers and Culture Wars
Chapter 4: The New Fault Lines
Chapter 5: China 2020: The Paper Tiger

However Chapters 6 – 13 layout the world order from 2020 to 2080. Again the further out the more difficult to predict IMHO. Interesting reading for sure since most today would never foresee Mexico winning a war against America.

Tags: The Next 100 years, George Friedman, 21st Century, America, Japan, Turkey, Mexico, future, reading, trends

Tags america, china, china 2020, cia, culture, culture wars, future, george friedman, Globalization, intelligence service, japan, jihadist, military, population, Reading, social, superpower, ukraine and russia, war with mexico

Design Education Globalization Innovation OpenSource Reading Technology

Latest read: Hot Property

Its all in the timing. The global economic crisis has placed my latest read Hot Property: The Stealing of Ideas in an Age of Globalization into a pretty unique light. Regardless of the delay in the US economy the impact of globalization, technology and good old corporate espionage has impacted the world’s stage in manufacturing and distribution.

From aspirin to automobiles with computer technology stolen right in the middle. Author Pat Choate, an economist was the 1994 University of Oklahoma Arthur Barto Adams Alumni Fellow. He has also written Agents of Influence: How Japan Manipulates America’s Political and Economic System.

The core arguments focus on the use of historical legal patents and technological advances of foreign companies competing against American interests by stealing. Today its known as corporate espionage. The end result: the US government does not protect companies in today’s global marketplace.

This book will leave most Americans frustrated. Globalization has changed the way people and business must evolve to simply stay in business. The auto industry is a timely example of how America lost this business to global competition.

The old assumptions in American business do not work today. When you innovate and invent, patents will protect your dedication and hard work against competitors around the globe. How wrong Choate proves this idea is today.

Hot Property will quickly show you how far from the truth the real-world works … against you. Reminds me of T-shirts I see around the Univ. Wisconsin-Madison campus: “Don’t let school get in the way of your education”.Choate illustrates how major American companies like GM, Microsoft and Cisco are powerless to stop Chinese counterfeiters. To remain a “favorable company” in the Chinese market, American companies sacrifice their own development, technology and employees while trying to gain business in China. It is somewhat amazing to see the RIAA use it’s legal arm against elderly Americans for downloading an MP3 file but turn a blind eye to the stunning levels of piracy in China.