He gets most of the point…

Dan Garner’s editorial in the Ottawa Citizen today hits the broad mark, but I personally have a couple of issues with his portrayal of the “right wing” blogosphere.

I do find that the alarmism of a lot of those conservative worthies he mentions (see my links list for several of them) a bit shrill at times and certainly wearying in that it triggers my realist/paranoid streak, pushing it more into the latter end of the spectrum. That said, there IS a threat to our western way of life, and probably the reason the LGFs and others of the world are so shrill is that the rest of the media pooh-pooh the idea of there being any threat at all.

There are lots of places that jihadist money could go which would be a lot easier for the notional Propaganda Minister to pull off; various Muslim advocacy groups in Western countries would take money with no compunctions about where it came from as long as it was Muslim in origin. This could of course be part of the multi-pronged propaganda/misinformation approach of this “Goebbels” but I think that there is enough paranoia and honest concern amongst conservatives to be self-sustaining without money from “the enemy”.

Gardner’s big point that the paranoia and Homeland Security-type security theatre are a boon to Al-Qaeda’s plans to suck us into self-defeating and bankrupting foolishness is spot-on, though. That old saw from Benjamin Franklin about a people who give up liberty for security deserving neither is still the best way to keep things perspective.

I have in the past advocated aggressive yet more surgical and economical ways to deal with our half-assed enemies, and nothing I have learned from my first-hand experience has changed my mind. Basic security in airports and a spirit throughout the population to not let clowns with improvised weapons take over our conveyances will suffice to handle our tactical security problems. Aggressive counterintelligence and an ability (and willingness) to act on it would root out must threats pro actively and not require the entire populace to live in a police state. As well, leaving the various shitty governments of the world alone and minding our own business (e.g. Iraq) would go a long way toward safeguarding our strategic interests.

The evident decline of the USA is of a great deal of interest to any of us concerned about the future, and I’ll try to come up with a coherent piece on that in the near future. There is a good bit of evidence that the US is no longer anywhere close to the Republic that it was envisaged to be in the beginning, and a lot of the signs of that decay are the increasing tyranny people are subjected to in the pursuit of security against crack-heads like bin Laden’s crew. The good work being done which actually stops terror attacks is all done under the radar, where it belongs.

It's (not so) Good to be (not quite) the King.

Not exactly cutting edge news, but some reflections on the whole débâcle with Prince Henry and Afghanistan.

It’s not every day that I find myself in sympathy with the rich and famous, but I can totally see Harry’s point of view here. He’s a soldier, and as one he wants to do his job with his mates and his troops, and in my commoner opinion, it’s the best thing he could do. A guy in his position (third in line for the throne) very much needs something he can call his own, and Harry’s time in Afghanistan was that to him.

The psychological aspects of it aside, the whole concept that combat troops in Afghanistan would give a red rat’s ass about having a (trained and competent) celebrity in their midst obviously didn’t originate from the guys he served with. The Taliban aren’t the Red Army, the SS or even the NVA (North Vietnamese Army); even if they were to make an extra effort to take out a scion of the House of Saxe-Cobourg-Gotha, their capabilities are extremely limited.

In fact, every effort they make to take out any specific NATO person or thing just gives us a chance to kill them more easily and in greater numbers. I am quite certain that if you could ask any of Harry’s fellow troops, they would say of any Taliban desire to come after Prince Henry of Wales, “let ‘em try”. Combat troops are not inclined in a combat zone to be too concerned about what the other side might like to do, more about what they can do.

Of course I have no idea exactly what’s going on in his head, but in a way he shouldn’t be too surprised that the brass aren’t willing to put him in harm’s way. His relatives and ancestors served, but few of them were allowed right on the front line, and with the nature of the current Afghanistan situation, there is no front line. Thus arrives the flap resulting in the weak-kneed decision (not his) to pull him home.

William is stuck with being the main event, and he’s the one who should have to deal with this sort of thing, not his younger brother. My main (only, really) point here is that Prince Henry and his troops would not have cared one bit that the Taliban would have made a special effort to bag that particular “chicken”.

Any of us “outside the wire” in Afghanistan had a bit of an issue with political high-rollers coming in with their fleets of helicopters and media circuses, because THAT attracts extra rockets, mortar fire, etc. Harry was, on the ground, just another subaltern and would have been difficult for the bad guys to pin down. Besides, he’s a FAC, and you might get a lot more than you can handle attacking someone like that…

The Brit troops are still as good as ever, but their leadership is wanting at the highest levels, and that is the source of this problem. Even if the word was out in Helmand that Harry was there, journalists are very easily kept at bay in that environment, and any reporter compromising OPSEC would be quickly looking for a new job.

Combat Arms troops are by inclination and training quite willing to get into a fight, and I can imagine the Prince’s frustration at being denied the opportunity to finish his tour with the guys. Hopefully he gets another chance or at least finds something else that he feels the same way about that his government won’t screw him out of.

The Ice Age is comin', the sun's going out...

I've been saying this for a long time, but the MSM is finally catching on thanks in part to the unavoidable fact of the current winter. I make no claims to be a lone voice in the wilderness on this whole thing (and of course I picked this nugget off of someone else's blog) but the urge to say "I told you so" to the Inconvenient Truthers will not abate anytime soon.

Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."

I've travelled a bit in the last year, and a number of normally warm places have been chilled below "normal" in that period, not to mention the snow in the great white (again) norths. I'll be interested to see what Al Gore has to say to rebut this.


There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.

In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.

Even under the Weatherdome of the GTA they had 70cm of snow in two weeks. The merde blanche in Quebec City is as heavy as ever, etc, etc. Personally I was looking forward to a bit of warming, and the opposite of that causes us northerners a lot more trouble than Global Warming ever could. This just proves that we have no idea what nature will do, which should be a message to the more arrogant climate modelers, but I can't imagine they'll catch it.

I'm back...

Well, not 100%, but close enough for a short post to get things up and running again.

The topic du jour is the debacle in Kosovo in the last while. The Americans have once again failed to see where their interests, and by extension the interests of Western Civilization lie. Backing an independent Muslim Albanian state, taken by demographic stealth and NATO interference in the middle of Europe is short-sighted and ignorant of history for a start.

It also antagonizes (as badly as possible) the Serbs, who should be our natural allies, and further annoys the Russians, with whom we should have a better relationship than we do.

I'll leave it there for the moment, as I still don't have the best resources for doing this sort of thing, but I certainly (as always) want to make people think and of course some debate is always fun.

More to follow...

Off the grid.

Just the long-threatened hiatus; those of you who need to know are aware of what I'm doing, and therefore approximately when you should expect to see something here again. In fact, you'll get some sort of direct contact on that, so your minds can be at rest until I return...

More than cheap exports...

This connects with my previous post, "Crusade vs. Jihad", showing that there is more than one axis of re-vitalized Christianity to oppose militant expansionist Islam. In an ideal world I would of course prefer a secular opposition to any sort of theocracy, but things are not promising in that direction.

As always, "be careful what you wish for" goes with "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", but this article touches on the enervation of Europe, suggesting that the opposition to a Caliphate future rests elsewhere. Of particular interest:

"Islam might defeat the western Europeans, simply by replacing their diminishing numbers with immigrants, but it will crumble beneath the challenge from the East. "

and

"Years ago I speculated that if Mecca ever is razed, it will be by an African army marching north; now the greatest danger to Islam is the prospect of a Chinese army marching west."

I may point out that Mecca has been despoiled before, in fact by the early Wahhabis (see the book God's Terrorists by Charles Allen), but to date not actually razed. I don't see flattening Mecca as a realistically useful way to counter the people who would destroy us, but it would nicely polarize any other Muslims to a real drop-the-gloves us-vs.-them Götterdämmerung.

If things head in that direction, I suppose it won't be any time soon, but just because the Western "progressives" pooh-pooh all of our secular and religious heritage, the rest of the world does not share our collective self-loathing and desire to be erased. Something to keep in mind...

'Nuff said.

This article from Slate by Christopher Hitchens deals with how certain parties are demanding we all give up our rights to free speech (freedom varies by locality, of course) on pain of unlimited liability. [Hyperlink removed since it was dead; find it if you can because he's not dead yet and writes better than I do. 17 Jan 2011]

Unlimited liability means up to and including death, but I won't re-hash it; he does a pretty good job, so I suggest you read it yourself. It's not something most of us have had a direct experience with, but examples abound without looking too hard. This ties in loosely with my bit on that Aussie law from a few days ago, and it's something to keep an eye on.

I don't think it's at all classy to crap on peoples' holy books, but if that's all it takes to set off riots and generate a raft of death threats then I think there are some people with screwed up priorities and I for one don't want to be held hostage to that.