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.

The downhill slide?

If we lose in Afghanistan, this will be why:

“Commanders have also ordered troops to hold off attacking militants in some situations where civilians are at risk”.

If you can think of a statement of more use to irregular forces that have no concept of the Laws of Armed Conflict, I’d like to hear it. It gets better, too:

'Mr de Hoop Scheffer said Gen Dan McNeill, the commander of the Nato force in Afghanistan, Isaf, had also instructed troops to delay attacks on Taleban fighters if civilians are at risk.

"We realise that, if we cannot neutralise our enemy today without harming civilians, our enemy will give us the opportunity tomorrow," he added,

"If that means going after a Taleban not on Wednesday but on Thursday, we will get him then."'

I could go on and on about this, but I’ll content myself with just saying that if this is permitted to stand as NATO’s official position, we will inevitably lose in Afghanistan, and the opposition will manage to claim PR points on us every time we accidentally kill the civilians that they were hiding behind.

This leads me to the UN announcement that they want peacekeepers for Darfur. This is of course no surprise, but the uselessness of the plan is manifest (emphasis mine):

“UN resolution number 1769 will allow peacekeeping troops to use force for self-defence, to allow humanitarian workers to move freely and to protect civilians under attack.

However, they won't be able to seize and dispose of illegal arms.

A threat of future sanctions against Sudan was also removed from the resolution, which had been watered down during negotiations.

The resolution authorizes up to 19,555 military personnel and 6,432 civilian police in what is being called a "hybrid" force.”

As with pretty much everything the UN has been responsible for, this will be an expensive waste of time. Probably not an issue, as Canada has its’ hands full, but those of you who know me can smack me in the head if I ever let myself get sent on one of these missions. If I learned anything for Lt. Gen. (ret) Dallaire’s book, Shake Hands with the Devil, it’s don’t get sent on UN missions that tie your hands in such a fashion that they prevent you from doing what needs to be done.

Afghanistan is so far not at that level, but if the powers that be restrict the rules of engagement further, it’ll turn into another Bosnia. We’d then not only fail to meet our objectives, but there would be a lot more cases of PTSD (my pet hypothesis) and it would destroy the Canadian Army, again. As always, all opinions stated are my own; it's more fun that way.

Military-Industrial Complex Economics

This is a drop in the bucket in terms of their trade deficit, but selling a crapload of expensive weapons to the Saudis and other OPEC states is a good way for the US to recoup some of that oil money.

It doesn’t really look at a casual glance that others are seeing it this way, and the Israelis are understandably nervous. Or that is they are, but not so much that $3B per annum in aid from the same US military industrial complex can’t mollify them. And you can bet they’ll get all the good stuff too.

Some people have a problem with this, but as I’ve always said, I’d back Israel against any country over there. It is the only real, functioning democracy over there (wish that it were the case also for Lebanon) which needs outside assistance to maintain the status quo. Said status quo isn’t great, but I don’t see any viable options that everyone can agree on.

Israel is suffering from a real lack of leadership at the highest levels, but at least steps are being taken to get the IDF back to brass tacks so they aren’t embarrassed by Hezbollah in Round 2, whenever that is. It occurs to me that you could (in the context of the Mid-East) look at the sales to the Arabs as the "carrot", and the aid to Israel as the "stick" of American foreign policy. Just a thought.

The idea of JDAMs in the inventory of a probable eventual enemy (House of Saud is unlikely to stand forever) on the face of it sounds like really bad idea, but if the Americans sell them the hardware, they know what it can do, most likely where it is, and in any event they’ll have a lot more of it and better trained troopies to use the stuff when push comes to shove. Besides, it’s only a matter of time (if it hasn’t happened already) before Iran or China comes up with GPS guided bomb kits that they’ll sell to anyone. And never forget the Russians…

Speaking of Russia, there was an article in JDW for 27 July about the US offering the Joint Strike Fighter to India. This is obviously designed to frustrate said Russians, and helps convince the Indians that the US can be worked with. The Yanks get themselves so worked in a twist about inspecting peoples’ nuclear plants, particularly foolish in the case of India which has had nuclear weapons for 30 years. They seem to have worked something out, which should help bring our common interests with India into focus for all parties.

I’ve seen a bit of traffic on the state of the US economy, particularly their massive trade imbalance. Oil is a large chunk of that, and the exporting of manufacturing jobs to China, etc. has really undermined the position of the US as the dominant economy of the world.

How long they can maintain what they have, let alone if they can recover what they have lost, is a serious concern to the rest of us “western” democracies. For ideas on that, see my earlier posts (and the plethora of stuff on the web) about seriously developing REAL alternatives to oil. Ethanol is NOT one of them, although it’s making a lot of corn farmers more financially solvent (ha!) in the meantime.

The US needs to sell as much of this expensive stuff as they can to recoup the development money, but at the same time I’ve not heard them offer the F-22 Raptor to anyone, so they maintain an edge. That too is good for us, even if a lot of people forget which side their bread is buttered on…

About time, with the inevitable brainiac backlash.

This was placed under "Entertainment" for some reason, where it is pretty evidently a political story.

"The Australian government says it will enact a far-reaching law to ban films, literature and games advocating terrorist acts."

Of course the ivory-tower types see this as an assault on freedom of speech, but it's obvious that it is designed to counter the proliferation of jihadist material that infects the world.

Fisher points out that "terrorism itself is a subjective term."
"History is littered with this type of subjectivity masquerading as the voice of reason. So-called terrorists have been criminals one day and revered leaders the next. For example, Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi were both labelled as terrorists in their pursuit of the freedom of their peoples."

Uh huh. Missing the point of course, but the question is is it willfully or not? There are already laws on the books against making threats, and that is technically an infringement on peoples' "freedom of speech". It is therefore obvious that the precedent exists to curtail the rights of people to say whatever they want.

I would like to see this same group's position on "hate speech", Holocaust denial, that sort of thing. I am personally of the opinion that if people want to say stupid stuff about history or whatever, anything which doesn't directly advocate violence they should be allowed to do so. Then it is up to people like me to call them on their crack-headedness.

To anyone who has been paying the slightest attention to the world, this legislation is designed to give the police tools to use against (primarily) the spread of pernicious Salafist/jihadist propaganda; beheading videos, books exhorting acts of violence against "the infidel", this sort of thing.

Reading the article I linked to doesn't even hint at any of that, it just makes it look like Australia is about to start Nuremberg Rally style book burnings. Again, more balanced journalism. And to trot out comparisons to Gandhi and Mandela is at best moral relativism (albeit of the worst type) and at worst an insult to those men, their political successors, and the people of those free, democratic countries.

They don't know, they don't care, or both? I've no idea, and no inclination to find out, having better uses for my free time. The sort of people this law is targeting are not any stripe of "freedom fighter", quite the opposite.

It does conveniently cover any other breed of terrorism, which, let's face it, is ILLEGAL by its' very definition anyway. This just closes some loopholes and gives the government more of a handle on these clowns. We need more of this kind of thinking, not less.

“Truthers” and other abominations against Reason.

Since I seem to be on a minor run of posts before I’m temporarily exiled, I could hardly leave this one alone.

At a party I attended this past weekend, I made the error of saying out loud that I would be happy to punch in the head the next person who seriously tried to tell me that 9/11 was a Bush/Jewish conspiracy.

I do in fact possess the restraint to NOT follow my (in this case justified) impulses, but this restraint was soon sorely pressed. As much as I like a vigorous debate, I CANNOT STAND people who say stuff they can’t back up, and swear in the face of all evidence that “something else” caused it.

So, I have now been informed that it is “impossible” for the WTC towers to have fallen as they most obviously DID on live TV feeds to hundreds of millions of people. I guess I’m just a brainless dupe of the NeoCon/Zionist conspiracy to have believed my own eyes.

It seems as time goes on and memories fade it becomes easier for people to think that the simplest explanation cannot possibly be true, even if the options are illogical and nonsensical. I will admit that I have overestimated the scruples of those in the US government in the past (CIA-US Air Force running drugs into the US to finance the Contras for example), but I have yet to see any convincing evidence that anyone other than a bunch of disaffected Muslims who by cruisemissling (new verb) hijacked planes into them, took those buildings down.

This covers ground I and many others have been over before but I do feel an urge to violence when I’m fed a pile of uncorroborated hogwash. Taking as an example the bit about 7 or so of the suspected hijackers being “still alive”, if that is in fact the case, there are still 12 or so that were properly identified and correspondingly confirmed killed in the perpetration of a crime, as mass-murder is generally classed. Some misidentified Arabs (or guys with the same name that they dug up after the fact) suggest to me a lack of a clear trail on people who don’t even exist as DNA samples anymore, not a bloody FBI/CIA/Mossad/ad nauseum plot.

The big thing is sources and evidence. Sources are great; having any at all is better (in most cases) than not, but said sources must be considered. In this vein, I rudely dismissed Truther boy’s emphatic insistence that his source was “the UN”, as I think the UN isn’t worth the gelignite to blow it to hell. This of course is a broad generalization, but when I hear something palpably absurd, I can trot it out.

What particularly set me off was this guy’s assertion (swearing on the UN) that 50,000 Iraqi civilians were killed on the infamous “Highway of Death” in 1991. This is a preposterous number, when you figure that the accepted figure for deaths in the firestorm generated by the bombing raids on Hamburg in 1943 is 45,000.

Note that Hamburg was a saturation bombing raid on a densely populated city with the intent of causing a firestorm and destroying the city, versus a bunch of aircraft and various vehicles shooting up a MILITARY exodus from an occupied country along a deserted stretch of highway. I would have been at least partly satisfied if he could have even explained to me where 50,000 civilians could have come from to be there to be killed in the first place, but even this minimal proof was beyond him.

This is the general quality of our opposition folks, but there are a lot of them. Being the voice of reason is hard work if you’re to do it right, and even then often you’re wasting your time because they’ve already made up their minds. I don’t have to convince everyone that I’m right (after all, none of us are infallible), but I’ll be content if I can at least make them THINK. Sometimes it seems that’s asking a bit much.