It should be fairly obvious that I have no problem with people making outrageous statements; that is, as long as "outrageous" is used in it's literal sense. Something that causes outrage usually does so due to a subjective reaction on the part of individuals or perhaps groups. Something outrageous does not become untrue simply because it's not popular in some quarters. "Ridiculous" is another type of statement, and that is something that provokes ridicule by being foolish, stupid, etc. and the connotation is that it is also false. 9/11 "truthers" (not even a word!) who foment conspiracy theories involving "nano-thermite" in the Trade Centre towers are a good example of something ridiculous.
So Ann Coulter was supposed to speak last night at Ottawa U. So what? Ann says stuff that even I think goes too far, but much of her delivery may be for rhetorical effect. She is a narrow-minded religious type, and as such I don't want her running things any more than I want the Green Party to run Canada. I'm closer to Coulter's end of the spectrum, but closer isn't collocated. Having said that, even if Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein were headlining something at my alma mater I'd just stay away; people who aren't threatening you (and I don't mean your ideas, I mean your precious skin) don't require violent protests, sit-ins and intimidation.
It makes these leftist Brown Shirts feel big to hector speakers they don't like out of the country, and for all of their ability to grab hold of the media they don't grasp the secondary effects of giving the Ann Coulters, David Irvings and Geert Wilders' of the world that kind of exposure. I must hasten to add that I only include Mr. Wilders in with the other two for his effect on cringing leftists; the West needs more people like him and I can't necessarily say that about Coulter and Irving as there are a fair number of them already.
OTTAWA - Hundreds of screaming students succeeded in what few thought possible Tuesday night - they silenced incendiary right-winger Ann Coulter.
Mm, not quite silenced; she got MASSIVELY more mainstream media coverage due to the screaming mob and the threatening (with legal prosecution) email generated in reaction to her mere presence than she would have had the local intelligencia ignored her. I also note that the CBC used the worst available photos of her; she's a good-looking woman and you don't get goofy shots of her without trying to. That (and the tone of the articles to a less-subtle extent) is subtle manipulation of the media, albeit BY the media. If 100 or so people who haven't been brainwashed by the relentless PC Marxism of our University system want to come and bask in her conservative glow, will that undermine all of our human rights?
The system is good at stamping out little PC clones that possess the illusion of independent thought, so not that many university students would show up for her anyway. Back in the day I probably would have (if I wasn't going out clubbing that night at least) but mostly because it baits these PC twits and I like to spar with them. I remember going to see Gwynne Dyer during Gulf War 1 with some leftish friends who obviously had never actually read what he had to say about war. They just assumed that a critic of the military must be against it. That is a product of the bullshit "Critical Theory" that likes to tear down everything that made the soft squishy society that these people inhabit possible. Western Civilization is the font from whence comes both the technology which makes 6B+ people on this planet possible AND the self-hating philosophy that stifles the free expression of ideas and has the potential to pull the whole thing down.
I confess to some ignorance (no excuse, I know) about the precise laws in Canada about expression, but I do know that we have no equivalent of the First Amendment. I cannot say "Let's kill all of the _" and expect to get away with it, so I won't. I would be interested to see the legal reaction in Canada to someone saying "Muhammad was a pedophile", evidence being him consummating his marriage to Aisha when she was nine (9) years old. I'll make an observation/prediction though: if it were libel it'd go to a real court, not some PC kangaroo version thereof.
Saying "Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims" is not strictly accurate, but not so far off the mark as to be "ridiculous" rather than merely "outrageous". The (Muslim) girl at Western who challenged Coulter on her proposition that Muslims should take "flying carpets" so that they wouldn't blow up our airliners handled it with some class, merely leaving after being offered the option of a camel when she mentioned she didn't have a flying carpet. Coulter scored some cheap points with her base, but did nothing to use her provocative premise as an entrée to a serious discussion of the source of all of these attacks. That marks Coulter to me as a lightweight, and suggests that the dumb-ass things that she says are likely what she actually thinks.
As for the "flying carpet" comment itself, it has potential. Make an opening by pissing people off with that, then riposte their frothing outrage with something along the lines of: Muslims wouldn't even have planes if it wasn't for Christians, or at very least Western Civilization. It therefore follows that camels certainly are an appropriate transport alternative for a group who SHOULD be preferentially profiled on the basis of their religion due to their demonstrated inclination to try to blow up things that they couldn't come up with themselves. There are enough bad apples in that particular barrel to taint the bunch; Islam DICTATES that non-believers should be subjugated (when not forcibly converted or killed), so ipso facto all Muslims are a potential threat to all non-Muslims (insert relevant verse etc. of Koran here for full effect).
That, Ann, is how it's done, and I'm not even all that clever so it can be and has been done even better. It's easy to outmanoeuvre the dogmatic of any stripe, especially the ideologues, and all that it requires is a) you get them riled up first, and b) that you can back up your wacky pronouncements with FACTS, not cheap jokes to the mouth breathers in your peanut gallery. You're good at a) and it's not too late to work on b) as long as you're flexible enough to separate the "mostly-true" from the factually unassailable and recombine them for maximum rhetorical impact. You've got a pretty good gig already though , so what could I know?
Wednesday 24 March 2010
Monday 22 March 2010
Acts of War on Terror
One of the shibboleths of the now re-branded "War on Terror" was the phrase "cowardly suicide attack". A roadside bomb can be termed "cowardly" since it's objective is to avoid direct engagement with the enemy, but by the same token so can an artillery fire mission. Anything where you intend to put your ass on the line involves at the very least determination or delusion if not actual courage. Your garden-variety AQ shaheed falls into the "deluded" category here, and given what AQ stands for I can only hope that they all get the death that they love so much, though not they way they're hoping to.
A contributing factor to this post was a show ("Silent Warriors") that I saw part of yesterday. It involved an AK-47 attack which killed two CIA agents in traffic in Langley in 1993. The perp was a Pakistani who shot the agents, but spared the wife of one of them who was in the car. The guy was eventually run to ground in Pakistan in '97, and executed in 2002. The agents got their stars on the wall at Langley, and the widow got payback on the man who spared her life. Hmm, doesn't sound very good like that, but still technically correct.
So what, you ask? Standard disgruntled-Muslim attack, albeit before it was really fashionable, but I found that I could identify with the attacker's method, if not his motive. First, he used a gun, not a bomb, and he did it in public in daylight. He shot the men he was after, and no one else. No car bomb in the market, suicide vest on the train, he had a military target and he hit that and only that. Say whatever you want about who's side they're on (and who really knows with the CIA anyway?), but a CIA agent is as legitimate a target for upset foreigners as you can get. Ditto the suicide attack a couple of months ago in Afghanistan that killed the CIA drone crew. The bomber hit a military target, and got it because of his determination and slack security on the post.
I am not of course advocating open season on the CIA. I am merely pointing out that enemy action against military/intelligence targets is exactly that, enemy action, NOT a terror attack. 9/11, 7/7 and Madrid were terror attacks; the attack on the USS Cole and the truck bomb that hit the US Marines' barracks in Beirut in 1982 were not. Do you hunt the planners down and kill them with extreme prejudice? Most certainly, as you can't make them think that their human cruise missiles are the only ones who will pay for hurting us. In this case at least I would make sure to execute them quickly and cleanly; that's MY "due process" for our mortal enemies.
Tarring everything that's done to attack us as a "terror" attack is stupid and plays into the opposition's hands by paralyzing us. Most terror attacks are headed off by Int and law enforcement agencies, and most of the rest are so incompetently executed (I'm looking at you, Abdulmutallab) that they are almost funny. In fact they are funny, to me, when the only ones they hurt are the shitheads who think it's a good idea to kill Westerners just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Burning to death or losing your 'nads (you again, Umar) sounds about right to me, as I lack confidence in a Hereafter that will give these clowns their proper reward.
It does us no credit to spew panicky "terror" crap every time someone gets the drop on us. There must be a tit for their tat, but (the disproportionate "tat" I'd prefer aside) some professionalism is called for from the talking heads. I'd like to see stuff along the lines of "Yes, we lost some good people, but rest assured that the planners won't get away with it." Of course Dubya said that about Bin Laden nine years ago and we don't have his head in a box on the steps of the US Embassy in Pakistan yet. Oh well; the reward is still up, $US 27M I think, so if he's alive (which I personally doubt on the balance of evidence) it could still happen. Hell, the head-in-a-box scenario still works if he's dead...
A contributing factor to this post was a show ("Silent Warriors") that I saw part of yesterday. It involved an AK-47 attack which killed two CIA agents in traffic in Langley in 1993. The perp was a Pakistani who shot the agents, but spared the wife of one of them who was in the car. The guy was eventually run to ground in Pakistan in '97, and executed in 2002. The agents got their stars on the wall at Langley, and the widow got payback on the man who spared her life. Hmm, doesn't sound very good like that, but still technically correct.
So what, you ask? Standard disgruntled-Muslim attack, albeit before it was really fashionable, but I found that I could identify with the attacker's method, if not his motive. First, he used a gun, not a bomb, and he did it in public in daylight. He shot the men he was after, and no one else. No car bomb in the market, suicide vest on the train, he had a military target and he hit that and only that. Say whatever you want about who's side they're on (and who really knows with the CIA anyway?), but a CIA agent is as legitimate a target for upset foreigners as you can get. Ditto the suicide attack a couple of months ago in Afghanistan that killed the CIA drone crew. The bomber hit a military target, and got it because of his determination and slack security on the post.
I am not of course advocating open season on the CIA. I am merely pointing out that enemy action against military/intelligence targets is exactly that, enemy action, NOT a terror attack. 9/11, 7/7 and Madrid were terror attacks; the attack on the USS Cole and the truck bomb that hit the US Marines' barracks in Beirut in 1982 were not. Do you hunt the planners down and kill them with extreme prejudice? Most certainly, as you can't make them think that their human cruise missiles are the only ones who will pay for hurting us. In this case at least I would make sure to execute them quickly and cleanly; that's MY "due process" for our mortal enemies.
Tarring everything that's done to attack us as a "terror" attack is stupid and plays into the opposition's hands by paralyzing us. Most terror attacks are headed off by Int and law enforcement agencies, and most of the rest are so incompetently executed (I'm looking at you, Abdulmutallab) that they are almost funny. In fact they are funny, to me, when the only ones they hurt are the shitheads who think it's a good idea to kill Westerners just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Burning to death or losing your 'nads (you again, Umar) sounds about right to me, as I lack confidence in a Hereafter that will give these clowns their proper reward.
It does us no credit to spew panicky "terror" crap every time someone gets the drop on us. There must be a tit for their tat, but (the disproportionate "tat" I'd prefer aside) some professionalism is called for from the talking heads. I'd like to see stuff along the lines of "Yes, we lost some good people, but rest assured that the planners won't get away with it." Of course Dubya said that about Bin Laden nine years ago and we don't have his head in a box on the steps of the US Embassy in Pakistan yet. Oh well; the reward is still up, $US 27M I think, so if he's alive (which I personally doubt on the balance of evidence) it could still happen. Hell, the head-in-a-box scenario still works if he's dead...
Saturday 20 March 2010
Whack-a-Muj in Afghanistan
Harking back to my initial post on the battle for Marjah, Helmand province, I will gratefully concede to being partially wrong. The Taliban, although brutal and ignorant are no Al Qaida, and have failed to accomplish their leaders' intent in Marjah.
The plan was to suck ISAF in and cause massive (by current standards) allied casualties in a nest of IEDs and ambush positions that the opposition had several months' warning to construct and refine. Reports I read had it that Taliban leadership was annoyed with their guys failing to die for Allah and Mullah Omar, and I can easily believe that.
That's the good news. I used the whack-a-mole analogy in the post title, but hitting an insurgent force this way (e.g. not cordoning off the area and killing anyone with or near a weapon) is more like hitting water with a hammer. If it's not destroyed (ok, it's hard to destroy water in any permanent way, but you know what I mean) it simply flows elsewhere. In any event, these two quotes tell you everything you need to know about Afghanistan:
Gen. McChrystal has not proven me wrong here in the big picture. The low quality of the human material he was up against is the only thing that has kept this from being another Fallujah, but the Taliban don't have to be brave and willing to martyr themselves to control the place in the long run. As they said, NATO has the watches, but the Taliban have the time.
The plan was to suck ISAF in and cause massive (by current standards) allied casualties in a nest of IEDs and ambush positions that the opposition had several months' warning to construct and refine. Reports I read had it that Taliban leadership was annoyed with their guys failing to die for Allah and Mullah Omar, and I can easily believe that.
That's the good news. I used the whack-a-mole analogy in the post title, but hitting an insurgent force this way (e.g. not cordoning off the area and killing anyone with or near a weapon) is more like hitting water with a hammer. If it's not destroyed (ok, it's hard to destroy water in any permanent way, but you know what I mean) it simply flows elsewhere. In any event, these two quotes tell you everything you need to know about Afghanistan:
Helmand Gov. Gulab Mangal acknowledges that the Taliban have outright control of three of the province's 13 districts. In most other districts, the only areas where the government has control are the district capitals, according to residents and some government officials.
Mangal's appointee as chief of Baghran district, Abdul Razik, hasn't been able to take up the job because the Taliban won't let him enter the area. Instead, he works out of an office in Lashkar Gah, telephoning elders in Baghran to try to persuade them to switch sides.
"How can I go there by myself if they are in control?" Razik asked. "We don't have enough soldiers or police to go with me. I can't go alone."
and:
"As long as we have 10,000 folks on the ground and open the spigot of greenbacks the success will continue," he said. "The U.S.-NATO-Karzai team will also get a boost from the large part of the media ... who will take a transitory local success and extrapolate it into a nationwide, permanent turning of the tide. How many times did we see that in Vietnam and in Iraq? How many times did the Soviets trumpet the same kind of victory in Afghanistan?"
Those who will not learn from history will keep attempting to splash around in the nation-building morass of Afghanistan. My equally dire prognosis for the democracy transplant in Iraq have not (yet) come to pass, but Iraq is a VERY different country than Afghanistan. That was merely a bad idea and unlikely to work, Afghanistan is quite possibly permanently broken.Gen. McChrystal has not proven me wrong here in the big picture. The low quality of the human material he was up against is the only thing that has kept this from being another Fallujah, but the Taliban don't have to be brave and willing to martyr themselves to control the place in the long run. As they said, NATO has the watches, but the Taliban have the time.
Tuesday 9 March 2010
Marching with Morons
The old expression goes: "The rich get richer, the poor get children". This is the basic premise of the story of similar name, and something which has been considered as a potential problem off and on for years. The premise is that the collective IQ of the population is lowered by only the least gifted having children. It is important to note that anything I have to say about that is anecdotal at best, as I have not made any actual study of demographic IQ trends.
What triggered me writing about this was an article in the Times Higher Education online about attempts to open up "elite" universities to the average Nigel:
'The issue at stake is a familiar one: the make-up of the student
population does not reflect that of the UK as a whole. People from some
groups - most notably poorer backgrounds - are significantly
under-represented in the university system.
According to a 2008 National Audit Office (NAO) report, Widening
Participation in Higher Education, half the population of England is
made up of people from lower socio-economic groups, yet among the young
full-time student population the proportion is less than a third (29 per
cent). Those from better-off backgrounds are more than twice as likely
to go to university as those from the less privileged sections of
society.
But getting to university is only the first part of the equation: the
second is the type of university these students attend. Poorer students
are more likely to study at "lower status", less selective institutions,
and this affects their life chances. The divide is widest in "elite"
universities, particularly Oxbridge - a high-profile issue regularly in
the public eye. It is here that widening participation collides with
"fair access".'
Granted, this doesn't have a lot to do with the book I mentioned above, but there is a bit of stupidity involved. This cannot be any sort of surprise; the definition of the word "elite" would do for starters. The article then goes on to burnish its' brilliance with something about how it actually matters which University you graduate from. To take a couple of domestic examples, the degree from Queens' carries a bit more weight in the marketplace than one from, say, Lakehead, all things being equal. This is not to slag Lakehead or to say that Queens' is the bees'-knees, but some are more prestigious than others. "Better" is a more complex idea requiring quantifiable direct comparisons, but prestige although nebulous is easier to get a feel for.
Where this comes back on track is with the effect of successfully integrating Joe and Jane six-pack (or the Brit equivalent; football hooligans, mayhap?) into Oxford and Cambridge. There could be some short-term boost to the "outcomes" for those plebes in the labour market ("Ooh! Oxford!"), but in the medium to long-term it turns those former "elite" universities into just another community access college. This is a typical political decision, looking only as far as the next election and how to get votes from certain segments of the hoi-polloi. Demographics are Destiny, but a pig with lipstick is still a pig.
If you're poor and want to go to a fancy school, there are mechanisms for that known as "scholarships". This keeps the elite character of the school, in fact enhances it, as it brings in the best and brightest, not just the kids whose parents are wealthy and well-connected enough to get them in. Of course this is (gasp!) an argument for a meritocracy. The politically correct will not accept that as the basis for society, as it is too "exclusionary".
I want people smarter than me running certain things, certainly anything that involves a lot of math. Most people don't resent people more intelligent than themselves, (as long as their noses aren't rubbed in it) and can appreciate that not everybody can do everything equally well, or on some cases, at all. It's rather like arguments to keep the Olympics more open to less-than-elite athletes; I don't care to watch anyone competing in something that they aren't not in the very top rank of; consider women's hockey from the recent games. Most people can play hockey (for example) worse than pros, so they watch pros to see it at the highest (available) level.
"Equality" and "access" when combined should not (and literally don't) mean that everyone can do whatever they feel like whether or not they have the means (personal or material) to do so. The government is an institution designed to keep the lights on and the worst excesses of human nature under control. It has everywhere grown far beyond that, and although I like our medical system, I'm not fool enough to think that it comes for "free". The laws of Thermodynamics dictate that you don't get something for nothing, and it applies in the practical "real world" as well. Of course governments exist to control the population; as an exception, the U.S. Constitution took a stab at keeping government small and out of most of peoples' lives 200+ years ago, but now they have "No Child Left Behind", which (thank you, Law of Unintended
Consequences) is more like "No Child Gets Ahead". Cue Harrison Bergeron.
This is the real risk to our societies, not poor people having more kids than rich people. Poor kids can still be smart, and with WELL CONSIDERED incentives they can and should get ahead. Anything that doesn't involve taking an opportunity from someone else who would otherwise have it is fair game in my books.
Entitlement is a cancer eating away at Western civilization, but we'll see more attempts to impose it on the taxpayers until our system collapses. That is, assuming it hasn't already in some places; Greece is pretty much paralyzed with strikes and protests, and the Euro zone is in real trouble. One thing I can tell you with certainty is that Brussels won't be able to do more than paper over this, if it can do even that. More regulation will be their answer to this, not "live within your means".
As soon as people think that others will bail them out, they are no longer interested in being prudent. At a personal level that's welfare, or being handed a university placement that you didn't earn by brains or bank account. Back on the education angle, 50% of the population is BY DEFINITION below Average. No government initiative will change that; in fact no power on Earth can, and any ideas to the contrary are at best delusional. The US Army's ads from a few years back had it right: Be All That You Can Be. I don't live in "happy-self-esteem world" and out here everyone has limited potential, like it or not. You can push that potential to see how far you can go, but you can't be pulled there.
What triggered me writing about this was an article in the Times Higher Education online about attempts to open up "elite" universities to the average Nigel:
'The issue at stake is a familiar one: the make-up of the student
population does not reflect that of the UK as a whole. People from some
groups - most notably poorer backgrounds - are significantly
under-represented in the university system.
According to a 2008 National Audit Office (NAO) report, Widening
Participation in Higher Education, half the population of England is
made up of people from lower socio-economic groups, yet among the young
full-time student population the proportion is less than a third (29 per
cent). Those from better-off backgrounds are more than twice as likely
to go to university as those from the less privileged sections of
society.
But getting to university is only the first part of the equation: the
second is the type of university these students attend. Poorer students
are more likely to study at "lower status", less selective institutions,
and this affects their life chances. The divide is widest in "elite"
universities, particularly Oxbridge - a high-profile issue regularly in
the public eye. It is here that widening participation collides with
"fair access".'
Granted, this doesn't have a lot to do with the book I mentioned above, but there is a bit of stupidity involved. This cannot be any sort of surprise; the definition of the word "elite" would do for starters. The article then goes on to burnish its' brilliance with something about how it actually matters which University you graduate from. To take a couple of domestic examples, the degree from Queens' carries a bit more weight in the marketplace than one from, say, Lakehead, all things being equal. This is not to slag Lakehead or to say that Queens' is the bees'-knees, but some are more prestigious than others. "Better" is a more complex idea requiring quantifiable direct comparisons, but prestige although nebulous is easier to get a feel for.
Where this comes back on track is with the effect of successfully integrating Joe and Jane six-pack (or the Brit equivalent; football hooligans, mayhap?) into Oxford and Cambridge. There could be some short-term boost to the "outcomes" for those plebes in the labour market ("Ooh! Oxford!"), but in the medium to long-term it turns those former "elite" universities into just another community access college. This is a typical political decision, looking only as far as the next election and how to get votes from certain segments of the hoi-polloi. Demographics are Destiny, but a pig with lipstick is still a pig.
If you're poor and want to go to a fancy school, there are mechanisms for that known as "scholarships". This keeps the elite character of the school, in fact enhances it, as it brings in the best and brightest, not just the kids whose parents are wealthy and well-connected enough to get them in. Of course this is (gasp!) an argument for a meritocracy. The politically correct will not accept that as the basis for society, as it is too "exclusionary".
I want people smarter than me running certain things, certainly anything that involves a lot of math. Most people don't resent people more intelligent than themselves, (as long as their noses aren't rubbed in it) and can appreciate that not everybody can do everything equally well, or on some cases, at all. It's rather like arguments to keep the Olympics more open to less-than-elite athletes; I don't care to watch anyone competing in something that they aren't not in the very top rank of; consider women's hockey from the recent games. Most people can play hockey (for example) worse than pros, so they watch pros to see it at the highest (available) level.
"Equality" and "access" when combined should not (and literally don't) mean that everyone can do whatever they feel like whether or not they have the means (personal or material) to do so. The government is an institution designed to keep the lights on and the worst excesses of human nature under control. It has everywhere grown far beyond that, and although I like our medical system, I'm not fool enough to think that it comes for "free". The laws of Thermodynamics dictate that you don't get something for nothing, and it applies in the practical "real world" as well. Of course governments exist to control the population; as an exception, the U.S. Constitution took a stab at keeping government small and out of most of peoples' lives 200+ years ago, but now they have "No Child Left Behind", which (thank you, Law of Unintended
Consequences) is more like "No Child Gets Ahead". Cue Harrison Bergeron.
This is the real risk to our societies, not poor people having more kids than rich people. Poor kids can still be smart, and with WELL CONSIDERED incentives they can and should get ahead. Anything that doesn't involve taking an opportunity from someone else who would otherwise have it is fair game in my books.
Entitlement is a cancer eating away at Western civilization, but we'll see more attempts to impose it on the taxpayers until our system collapses. That is, assuming it hasn't already in some places; Greece is pretty much paralyzed with strikes and protests, and the Euro zone is in real trouble. One thing I can tell you with certainty is that Brussels won't be able to do more than paper over this, if it can do even that. More regulation will be their answer to this, not "live within your means".
As soon as people think that others will bail them out, they are no longer interested in being prudent. At a personal level that's welfare, or being handed a university placement that you didn't earn by brains or bank account. Back on the education angle, 50% of the population is BY DEFINITION below Average. No government initiative will change that; in fact no power on Earth can, and any ideas to the contrary are at best delusional. The US Army's ads from a few years back had it right: Be All That You Can Be. I don't live in "happy-self-esteem world" and out here everyone has limited potential, like it or not. You can push that potential to see how far you can go, but you can't be pulled there.
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