by John Wilcock

BUMBLING ARMY GENERALS are a category not often in the news but their genre goes back a long way. Abe Lincoln had to remove several of them during the Civil War — McClellan, Halek, Buell — before entrusting the fighting to the redoubtable Ulysses S. Grant who finished the job to the benefit of all of us. Historians point out that more than a third of the 560 generals in that war were West Pointers who had been taught next to nothing about strategy. Things hardly changed over the ages as more and more of these supposedly superior mortals could be seen strutting around, chests pyramided with fruit salad decorations, many of which were awarded for just showing up. Many people might recall the inept General Westmoreland with his ridiculous (and fabricated) “body counts” of the Vietnam War which, more than anybody, he was responsible for losing.

  “Why don’t most Americans realize that most US Army and US Marine Generals are incompetent?” asked Breaker McCoy in a 2007 book with that title. US Generals, he wrote, were an elite “born into wealth and influence, fortified by attendance at prestige American universities, and awarded the best jobs in government. That ideology was taught at places like Harvard and Yale where they learned the ideas of a decadent mandarin caste. Premier among those ideas was the belief that America’s military was essentially a servile, mediocre collection of lower-class brutes, unimaginative enough to be left to their own devices yet useful as builders or toilers in construction.”

More recent were the comments of Col. Paul Yingling who retired this year after three tours in Iraq. He suggested (in the Armed Forces Journal) like many critics before him, that our military leaders, suffered from conformity, lack of vision and creativity, were always fighting the previous war, failing to appreciate that the art of war had moved on. “It is unreasonable to expect that an officer who spends 25 years conforming to institutional expectations, will emerge as an innovator in his late forties. As matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war.”

It’s ironic that the David Petraeus scandal, (which the French must think is gloriously trivial) should have concerned his private, rather than public life because, all things considered, he was at least more intelligent than his predecessors. So General Betray-us turned out be to correct after all — but that’s more something for his family to say.

MAKING CONGRESS PAY OFF? Business writer Sheila Bair’s idea, which she outlines in Fortune, is to remunerate these pampered pols the way that corporate directors are paid, ie. half of it not in cash but in stock (specifically 10-year Treasury bonds) which are redeemed when they hit their targets (ie. do their jobs properly). The rate of the country’s GDP growth and the percentage of the working-age population who have jobs could be suitable benchmarks, she suggests. “With every two-year election cycle, we should get to vote on whether we think Congress and the President collectively are earning their paychecks.”

INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR the Elimination of Violence Against Women is scheduled for November 25. “Violence is largely a guy thing,” says Harvard professor Steven Pinter whose latest book, The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined notes, somewhat surprisingly, that although the last century was the deadliest in history, the era before that found the world in a nearly constant state of war. The second half of the 20th century, he argues, marked the longest period of peace among the great powers in 500 years — “a result of one of those psychological retunings that take place now and again over the course of history.”

“Risk takers need backers. Good ideas need evangelists. Forgotten communities need advocates. And whether your chief resource is volunteer time or hard-earned dollars, for a relatively small investment, catalytic philanthropy can make a big impact. For me it’s proven the best job in the world, as thrilling and humbling as anything I’ve ever done.”
— Bill Gates, espousing the rewards for investing in the “vast, unexplored space of innovation” untouched by government or business.

SELLING HER VIRGINITY for $780,000 — the highest of 15 bids — Brazilian 20-year-old Catarina Migliorini plans to use the money to build houses for the poor in her southern state of Santa Catarina. Winning seducer, a Japanese man named Natsu, agreeing to use a condom, will do the deed aboard a plane flying between Australia and the US. The encounter, but not the intercourse itself, will be recorded by a film crew with no word yet on where the film will be shown. “I see this as as a business,” declared Catarina, in response to outraged protests. “I have the opportunity to travel, to be part of a movie, and get a bonus. If you only do it once in your life you’re not a prostitute.”

THE MOST PERSUASIVE movie of this decade, Park Avenue: Money, Power & the American Dream, should be mandatory viewing for all those clueless fly-over-country dupes who think the rich Republicans give a shit about their welfare. Centered on Manhattan’s 740 Park Avenue, the home of America’s greediest billionaires, it contrasts the gilded life there with poverty-stricken neighbors across the tracks and makes you wonder why a tycoon worth $20bn dollars doesn’t even tip the doorman. Writer/producer Alex Gibney, winner of an Oscar (for his Taxi to the Dark Side, 2007) will probably get another for this documentary. Asked what impact he expects the film to have, he responded: “I hope it will make people as angry as I am.”

CREATING GASOLINE FROM ALGAE is the object of Sapphire Energy’s Green Crude Farm in the New Mexico desert where 1.5million gallons of green crude oil a year are produced from acres of pond scum processed by sunlight and carbon dioxide. Forbes says the company’s target is the U.S. military, the nation’s biggest oil user, which has been buying biofuels in the hope of getting half of its renewable energy from renewable sources by 2020. “Whether the biofuels industry can scale up to the 8 million barrels the Navy needs annually — at a price Uncle Sam can afford — is the big unknown,” says the mag.

DINNER PLATES ARE OFTEN piled too high for many customers claims the Texas-based company Halfsies which, true to its name, is enlisting restaurants in a campaign to offer dishes with half-size portions for which customers will still pay full price. Most of the money will be devoted to a campaign to reduce world hunger which includes 50 million in the U.S. alone, reports the company, which began its operations in Austin and next plans to tackle New York.

THE FIRST OF FOUR organized trips to Cuba next year will include participants from the Occupy Wall Street movement and will deal with “emancipatory paradigms” (whatever they are). Cliff DuRand’s Global Justice Center has been organizing similar trips to this engrossing island for two decades now and three more are scheduled for 2013. Dates and information from [email protected].

THE WILCOCK WEB: You’d think that Republican leaders would realize that what voters rejected at the election were Paul Ryan’s ruinous ideas as much — if not more than — Romney himself. So to start the buildup for Ryan as their next presidential hopeful just dooms them to the same fate …. If people keep rebuilding houses that are washed away, why does the government keep paying to rebuild?…. Too often the world’s troubles are caused by people from one country infiltrating their neighbor and then seeking to change things in their favor: (Burma + Bangladesh, Sri Lanka + India, Yugoslavia + Albania, Cyprus + Turkey etc, etc)…. “The conventional view,” mused John Kenneth Galbraith, “serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking”… The New York Times’ new boss, Mark Thompson, is either a liar or a complete fool if he could spend 30 years at the BBC without hearing that their biggest star was a pedophile, seeing as it was widely rumored within and even outside the corporation… Protesters yell Mwizil (Swahili for ‘thief’) as Kenya’s $325-a-day politicians pass by, reports the Economist which adds that by contrast laborers’ daily pay is less than $2… There are postcards depicting pretty much everything —

even for selling French sardines (at right) and billionaire Leonard Lauder (the son of Estée) will talk next week (Nov 28) about his huge collection of cards at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts where they are on show through the winter……. At a cost of $450, gravestones can be fitted with QR codes by a funeral parlor in Dorset (UK) that enable mourners with smartphones to access a video of the deceased….. Environmentalist Elisabeth Rosenthal, writing in the NYT, says the fact that cyclists are required to wear helmets kills cycling and bike-sharing because it ‘promotes a sense of danger’ which drives would-be cyclists away. In many cities — where the accident rate is low — including Melbourne, Montreal, and Mexico City, helmet use is voluntary…. ….“Freedom,” defined by George Orwell, “is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”… A Michigan firm, Protean Electric, has developed a motorized device which can replace the rear wheels of a car enabling it to be driven by electric power….. MIT’s Media Lab reports that in congested urban areas, about 40% of gasoline use is in cars seeking parking…..“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” — Winston Churchill (1874-1965)