Peace, Order, and Not Wiping out the Middle and Working Class.

The Middle Class is an endangered species as is the Working Class, the people who once made things, and were thus the basis of our productive economy. For both groups, the discretionary income which formed the basis of our consumer society is on a curve that not only approaches zero, but with credit and inflation can cross well into negative territory.

It's not an original thought, but the production/manufacturing base of our economy is very likely not going to recover. Of course the Americans have been hit even harder than we have, which will compound our problems. Just saying we'll trade more with the Pacific Rim countries doesn't make it happen since geography does count.

This means a reduced tax base for governments, which means less services and/or more debt. That typically leads to more taxes as they try to wring more blood from the stones, which is a vicious circle of increased costs to businesses and individuals leading to less start-ups and innovation, as well as the flight of talent and capital to less oppressive regulatory locales.

Now, belt tightening and retrenchment can happen with reasonably clever government and there is some sign of that happening in Canada overall, although the power shift from Ontario to Alberta is noticeable. Ontario is a good example of the creeping collapse of the tax base, and here's the worm's eye view of how.

It's a one-two punch of taxes (HST) and energy costs. It can be hard to separate the other two, as anything the government does that costs you money is a tax in my books, but I'll try to maintain some separation.

Like any tax amalgamation (think GST) the price savings that are supposed to come to consumers are never passed on, thus the HST increased the cost of pretty much EVERYTHING in Ontario, gasoline in particular. Besides jacking the cost of personal transportation, this increases the cost of everything that needs to be transported which is, well, everything. So everything costs more, but most people aren't making more. This equals less spending of less disposable income which squeezes businesses, who are facing increased costs of their own.

Now for energy costs (as far as they can be separated from straight taxes), and Ontario will be the case in point. The Provincial government's "Green energy" agenda is hitting below the belt, and it also affects everyone. By subsidizing inefficient wind and solar projects this policy has raised electricity costs across the province.

Some of this is being realized (of course) belatedly by the provincial government, but my crystal ball for the future continues to function best as a paperweight or doorstop. One does not however need a clairvoyant to see unintended secondary and tertiary consequences; it just takes some thinking it through.

Idealists are by nature pretty much incapable of thinking past what they'd like to see happen, with dire consequences for us all. It's not even necessary to pull the precise outcome from something; if you can deduce a point where something bad happens due to "good intentions" you have a grasp of the process.

Going into 2011 I hope to be able to keep my family fed and the lights on, but like a lot of other people there won't be a whole lot else going on. Modest goals are the key to survival, as taking things in bite-sized chunks is sustainable, and should disaster befall a chunk or two, survivable. The idiots I've encountered who wished for $3/L gas may eventually get their wish, and if they do God help us all because the pie-eyed idealists in government will have hell to pay when the former middle class can't afford food.

First though, it'll flatten the working poor who are already being priced out of living space by rapacious condo development in many urban centres as well as ever-rising electricity and fuel costs. Can't have food riots here you say? Tax revolts and overstretched food banks and soup kitchens are more likely in the medium term, but there is still hope to avoid being pushed even that far.

You make your own luck with governments and I have some hope that things can still get better, at least at home. Another key to maintaining some control over your life is knowing that things can almost ALWAYS be worse than they are. We need leaders who can remember their mission statement: Peace, Order, and Good Government. Prosperous citizens are happy citizens, so I hope to see policies that encourage that in the New Year. The best of 2011 to anyone who still reads AotF.

Curtain coming down on Security Theatre?

That which has long been the elephant in the room of airline security is now stepping on enough toes it seems. I am seeing more calls for profiling, which of course turns into "racial profiling" in the media and nattering classes, but some people are far more likely to cause certain types of problems than others.

The incoming head of Germany's airport industry association has called for Israeli-style passenger profiling to be introduced. Christoph Blume said that grouping passengers into different categories of risk could put an end to the ever-growing number of security checks. Detection equipment would, he argued, "at some point... reach its technological and operating limits". But the country's justice minister said there was a risk of stigmatisation.

The usual response to that is "Racism!" and there are those lines showing up in this BBC article, but the shift in tone is noticeable. This is fairly even-handed, something I haven't seen enough of from the BBC the last several years. No security is perfect is it's not going to bring processes to a grinding halt, so a bit of brainpower will tilt the odds in your favour while speeding things up.

The harsh truth is that young Muslim males are most likely to try to take down an airliner; there has been no example that I am aware of of elderly women or toddlers making the attempt. The argument can be made that the parents could smuggle things onto the plane using the kid, but the same risk assessment applies to the parents. If they seem dangerous, their kids warrant some more attention too.

High-risk passengers - those deemed more likely to carry out terrorist or illegal activity, such as organised crime, drug trafficking or espionage - would undergo more stringent security checks. This could mean anything from a bag search to a full body search.

"This way [through profiling], control systems could be more effectively employed for the well-being of all participants," the new head of Germany's airport industry association ADV said.

Here's the key takeaway though (emphasis mine):

Joerg Handwerg, a pilot for Lufthansa and spokesperson for the German pilots' association Cockpit, told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle that current security procedures were not working and profiling was common sense. "The current controls are foolish, because we waste resources by doing things that feign security but don't actually bring security," he said. Mr Handwerg suggested a points system could be employed to determine which passengers might pose a higher security risk.

I am not so optimistic to think that things will change quickly, or indeed at all, but it's nice to see some cracks in the slap-dash edifice of airline security. Still, until this calms down a bit and I can go somewhere without being treated like a criminal all of my vacations will be within driving distance.

I'd love it if a plan came together...

This makes so much sense, but of course it will never happen:

The meetings between Saudi General Intelligence Director Prince Muqrin bin Abdaziz and Meir Dagan, most of which were held in the Jordanian capital Amman, dealt extensively with clandestine cooperation between the two agencies and plans for attacking Iran. Arab and Western sources reported that they reached agreement in the course of the year for Israeli fighter-bombers to transit Saudi air space on their way to bombing Iran's nuclear facilities. The Saudis were even willing to build a new landing strip in the desert with refueling facilities for the use of the warplanes en route to their mission.

What would really work and show that the Saudis will put (for once) more than their money where their mouth is, would be a joint IDF/Saudi AF strike on Iran. Pull the Americans and the Gulf states in, and you have most of the interested parties, and indeed a grand coalition.

Any serious attempt to cripple all of the Iranian factions which are causing or looking to cause trouble around the world will require the USAF, and a lot of it. The key is to hit all of the Revolutionary Guards assets, while leaving the regular Iranian Army (the Artesh) and air force alone. The Americans do that, the Israelis hit the nuclear stuff, and the Arabs hit the navy and the coastal missile/artillery units which could threaten them and oil moving through the Straits of Hormuz.

There has been lots of time to plan, so it's workable, and I bet it's mainly the economic fallout that's stopping the Americans. Oil at $150/bbl is about right immediately after the strikes, and all bets are off when it would come back down. The best time to do this may have passed, but if the Iranian clerics are sufficiently weakened the opposition could take over if they get the Artesh on side.

I can't see all of this coming together, especially with Obama in charge. That's not because he's a Dove, but because he dithers. I'm also not certain that Iran having nukes is worse than Pakistan having them, but taking out that particular government would be reason enough to hit them. There are millions of Iranians who think so too, because a lot of force is the only thing that can help them.

Wikileaks and Info Freedom

Having given this a few days to settle out, I've some more reflections on it. Today Julian Assange turned himself in to UK police, which will probably keep him from dying "accidentally" somewhere. I have read some twaddle about him now being a "martyr" or underdog, but I'm sure the shift in public opinion would barely register.

I admit I'm a bit conflicted about the concept of this leak, though the original acquisition was blatantly illegal. Wikileaks has been described (by someone whose opinion I respect) as "the Press" as in freedom thereof. I am very much in favour of transparency and accountability whenever possible, but I am troubled by Assange/Wikileaks agenda. If their intent is only to hurt the USA, that isn't in my interest, therefore I'm suspicious of them. Keeping the Americans from thinking they're infallible is another mission though, and one I can get behind.

This doesn't mean that there can be no secrets, but sometimes the priorities that people set for security are questionable. In other words, save your effort for the critical stuff where blood and treasure are on the line. This has exposed a critical weakness in US info security and brought a lot into the open, much of which I think belongs there. That said, Assange is still a pompous ass and I won't regret his downfall IF he's broken some serious laws. OK, even if things are trumped up a bit, but it sets a bad precedent; at this time all of this remains to be proven.

So much of what I've seen to date of these "cables" was about a millimetre from open source anyway. It was stuff that anyone who was paying attention would have at least suspected, the interesting part is getting it confirmed. That said, I suspect that the legions of Assange fans, especially the new ones, are not in the class of people who actually put much effort into understanding what happens in the world. Deconstructing it, bitching about narrowly defined parts of it yes, but digging into it? I doubt it, especially parts that didn't agree with their worldview.

That's why I read things like Slate. It's not the most moonbattish thing out there, but it is a useful snapshot of the liberal view of the world and one that I can stomach, mostly. You go too far in either direction and the nutbars emerge, but I'm definitely more in tune with conservatives. Doesn't mean I should read only that though.

In any event, the Americans came off pretty well overall, and their diplomacy is less clueless than I had suspected. Results still count though, and if they can't execute the intel they have their stock doesn't go up that much. My hope is that a lot of what the Arab governments are doing that has been brought to light makes their populations think a little harder about how they'd really like things to work in their part of the world. It's too much to hope that they'll open embassies in Israel, but some more pragmatism about relations with Israel and the West would be valuable fallout from this.

I'm sure there'll be more; this isn't over by a long shot even if you dismiss the conspiracy theories.

Taxpayer status

I've taken the title for this from some of Jerry Pournelle's old books. Essentially, it was an alt-history where relatively small groups of taxpayers supported a parasitic Welfare class. not too different from real life so far, but with a key wrinkle: Taxpayers had rights that Welfare types didn't, including voting.

Unconstitutional you say? Most likely (though I'll not look it up just now) but I would really like someone to convince me that people who don't contribute to the finances of the nation should have any say in how that money is administered. I don't really want that to happen of course since I don't believe it, but if you're not at least open to being convinced that you're wrong you're not worthy of expressing serious opinions.

This is a step down from the old democratic model that only (male) property owners could vote and seems logical to me; you don't contribute, you don't get a say. As a corollary I would make voting obligatory for Taxpayers (punishable by a fine of a day's pay) in order to ensure that rights come with Responsibilities.

Who would this affect? People on Social Assistance, in prison, or sheltering offshore from Canadian taxes. It would largely (but not exclusively!) affect the very poor, but I'd like to know how many people on Welfare make an effort to vote. I'll stick my neck out and say a low percentage with little risk of losing my head over it.

This system introduces a few democratic safeguards too. "Machine politics" would be limited in effect, simply because the poor and disaffected who are usually the backbone of these systems would not be a voting bloc. If everyone is forced to vote, more of them will feel compelled to take a real interest in who/what they're voting for, further weakening the ACORNs of the world. None of this is utopianism, just human nature; you can't force people to care but they can be encouraged, and it will take with at least a few of them.

The biggest defence against Tammany Hall/ballot box stuffing/dead people voting, etc. is the voter's list. It will be the same as the Tax agency's list and can't (easily or convincingly) be subverted by community organizers. One person, (on the Taxpayer list) one vote. The list will of course change, but since the government really likes it's money that list will be kept up-to-date. And they know everything about you already...

It's not immune to gerrymandering, but that's a separate problem and one that's much more obvious and thus easily dealt with. Anyway, all a bit off my usual beaten path, but that's a good thing since I'm feeling a bit tapped out on the geopolitics right now. When I have something new (for me at least) to say about that stuff it'll be back.

Wikileaks II, the early days.

At this time everyone not living under a rock (without a sat phone, anyway) has heard about the c> 250K documents released on Wikileaks. I don't intend to get down in the weeds about it, but there are a few fundamental things.

Firstly, the US serviceman who compiled and released all of this to Wikileaks is going to go away for a LONG time, and this is as it should be. An example needs to be made and it'll be this guy who richly deserves a long stint in Leavenworth for having betrayed the trust of the organization who paid him, if nothing else.

Secondly, this Julian Assange can run, but he can't hide. As of this writing he's still on the lam from the U.S. and InterPol, but with those two groups looking for you good luck finding a place to hide unless you're buddies with Bin Laden. He thinks he's really clever, and I'm sure there are a lot of fellow travelers who think he's great, but if anything good comes from this it won't be by Assange's design.

Thirdly (a big one) the revelations. The Saudis wanting the Yanks to attack Iran are not surprising to anyone who pays attention to what goes on in the world (some history helps too), but there are a few things that are at least unconsidered. I like that the Israelis told Abbas about Op CAST LEAD, but he didn't bother to tell Hamas. No love lost between those factions to be sure, but more co-operation between Israel and the West Bank than I had supposed.

Lots of stuff, none of it super secret (basic security clearance in the forces is Secret) and I'll wait for the dust to settle some more before I comment further. Feel free to speculate amongst yourselves...

For my 200th post, hair shirts all round!

A milestone of sorts for my little blog, this being the 200th of my sproadic rantings to be granted qualified electronic immortality on the web. Now done patting myself on the back for a number that could be twice that were I more motivated, on to the latest bit of stupidity to grab my attention, the context being the latest climate change fiasco in Cancun:

In one paper Professor Kevin Anderson, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said the only way to reduce global emissions enough, while allowing the poor nations to continue to grow, is to halt economic growth in the rich world over the next twenty years. [emphasis mine]
This would mean a drastic change in lifestyles for many people in countries like Britain as everyone will have to buy less ‘carbon intensive’ goods and services such as long haul flights and fuel hungry cars. [snip]
This could mean a limit on electricity so people are forced to turn the heating down, turn off the lights and replace old electrical goods like huge fridges with more efficient models. Food that has travelled from abroad may be limited and goods that require a lot of energy to manufacture.

If these people feel so strongly about all of this, they can feel free to cut off their electricity and walk everywhere. Bicycles you say? Those take a lot of energy to produce... Complete cluelessness, leaving out the fact that their Global Warming hysteria has been pretty thoroughly debunked leading into this wasteful, hypocritical, and self-deluding winter getaway in sunny Mexico.

Economic growth in the developed world is the only hope for this planet, as only the advanced technologies can support the booming populations of the "poor" countries and, more importantly, clean everything up so that we don't poison ourselves. That is the only real threat we pose to the environment, and a concentration on ways to develop our tech to get off of fossil fuels to BETTER energy sources (I'm looking at you, wind and biofuels!) might be a worthwhile expenditure of all of this hot air. Of course Talk - Action = Zero so we need money in research that actually produces something other than soundbites.

I encourage you to read the article I linked to; the comments are particularly interesting, being almost exclusively (as of this writing) dismissive of the tripe this conference is producing. The "experts" keep selling, but less and less people are buying it.

Fire Mission All Available.

Ok a slow month here so far, but I get the impression that no-one's reading it anymore so I don't feel pressured. Here is an example of why things will continue to get worse if the U.S.A. slides further into decline.

North Korea fired upon the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong on Tuesday, killing a marine and setting several buildings on fire, in one of the most serious clashes since the Korean War more than 50 years ago.

The incident spurred the evacuation of the civilians living in Yeonpyeong, where 13 other marines were also injured by artillery fire.

South Korean military officials scrambled fighter jets and fired howitzers in response to the artillery fired at Yeonpyeong. It is unclear if any North Korean targets were hit.

I do have to ask what those "fighter jets" were doing up there if the ROK has no target results. Then again maybe they do and they're just not telling the press, but the rule with these situations is you retaliate massively. About 10-1 should do the trick.

Of course nobody wants Korean War II, but that doesn't mean you walk on eggshells around these yahoos. The ROK and the Americans have the means to cripple DPRK's military, and this would be an appropriate response. The population has suffered enough, as tempting as carpet bombing Pyongyang might be, but smart-bombing government buildings there and presidential palaces (everywhere) would do nothing to make the population's life worse and would make the elites suffer.

As for the Chinese weighing in on this, they should be told to muzzle their dog or we'll do it for them. I think that language exactly would be just what the situation needs, but the Americans are far past having the cojones to do that. So we can expect more of this sort of thing, all over the world.

Go Big or stay home

I know that I'm not alone in thinking that as a civilization (Western part, anyway) we've lost the will to win. The linked article by Angelo Codevilla is well worth your time as a description of the gap between the "Ruling Class" and the bulk of the population in the USA. There are symptoms of that up here too, but we started from a statist position so this isn't as big a problem in Canada.

This part however is the most on-message with AotF, so I'll block quote it here:

Because our ruling class deems unsophisticated the American people's perennial preference for decisive military action or none, its default solution to international threats has been to commit blood and treasure to long-term, twilight efforts to reform the world's Vietnams, Somalias, Iraqs, and Afghanistans, believing that changing hearts and minds is the prerequisite of peace and that it knows how to change them. The apparently endless series of wars in which our ruling class has embroiled America, wars that have achieved nothing worthwhile at great cost in lives and treasure, has contributed to defining it, and to discrediting it -- but not in its own eyes.

No better summary of those actions/wars is necessary. Countries that fall into the clutches of their "progressive" elements lose all sense of themselves and thence have nothing to cling to as a National Interest.

National Interest can be well served by short/sharp wars, assuming that all more reasonable options have been exhausted first. Note that I do not say "in the last resort" because sometimes a smackdown is what is called for sooner rather than later. For example I'll use Afghanistan 2001; the Taliban were given a choice about turning over OBL, and they chose poorly. The SOF/Northern Alliance campaign that followed was exactly the right way to do it but the nation building/insurgency after the fact has been and will ultimately be a failure, an expensive and embarrassing one at that.

As long as the lily-livered run foreign policy we must hope that we don't face an existential (external) threat, because the "elites" won't let us win.

Speaking Truth from Power

I can' say that I was ever hoping for a world where more people learned to speak German, but I guess enough water is under the bridge for me to appreciate this:

BERLIN (AFP) – Germany's attempt to create a multi-cultural society has failed completely, Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the weekend, calling on the country's immigrants to learn German and adopt Christian values.

Merkel weighed in for the first time in a blistering debate sparked by a central bank board member saying the country was being made "more stupid" by poorly educated and unproductive Muslim migrants.

This is not the first time that Merkel has said this but this time the media isn't ignoring it, and I of course bring these things the attention of, well, whoever still reads this. Multiculturalism is a crock, and it's finally being recognized in some quarters as such.

Anecdotally I was aware of this policy three years ago in Afghanistan; one of our translators had scored a German visa to get out of there, and was complaining that he didn't want to learn German. As he already spoke English very well, I assume he was using it as a springboard to an Anglo country, but he wasn't the target of this German crackdown anyway.

You want to live under Sharia, stay in or move to Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan, etc. . If you want to be part of the culture that has given us all of our modern conveniences and the technology that is our only hope for a future, keep your religion for the church/mosque/synagogue/temple and work to fit in.

A recent study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation think tank showed around one-third of Germans feel the country is being "over-run by foreigners" and the same percentage feel foreigners should be sent home when jobs are scarce.

Nearly 60 percent of the 2,411 people polled thought the around four million Muslims in Germany should have their religious practices "significantly curbed."

Far-right attitudes are found not only at the extremes of German society, but "to a worrying degree at the centre of society," the think tank said in its report.

Is it "far-right" to not want to your way of life to be changed unrecognizably by immigrants who can't stand your culture? This is how certain people keep the engines of Western self effacement running, by tarring anyone who wants to stand up for it as some sort of Nazi. It looks like Germany is starting to shed its' fear of it's past, and between this and the Wilders acquittal the tide may be turning in Europe.

There's hope for us yet

The public prosecution department on Friday afternoon stated that Geert Wilders is not guilty of discriminating against Muslims. Earlier on Friday it announced he should also be found not guilty of inciting hatred.

If you don't know who Geert Wilders is, look him up. This was a hugely important case in the Netherlands and in Europe, as the chilling effect a conviction would have had on free speech (especially of the politically incorrect type) would have been devastating to protecting Western ideals.

Dealing earlier on Friday with incitement to hatred, Van Roessel and Velleman said some comments could incite hatred against Muslims if taken out of context, but if the complete text is considered, it can be seen that Wilders is against the growing influence of Islam and not against Muslims per sé.

I can splice pretty much anything into meaning whatever I want so this is merely common sense, which alas is none too common. Now we have to rein the Human Rights Tribunals in Canada under control. If it's against the law it should be dealt with in court. If not, kangaroo "tribunals" to muzzle people are no part of a free democratic society. Hopefully this moves the Dutch in that direction.

Bleep the U.N.

Busy week for me here, since I've started working on the shorter posts. Anyway, today's topic is Canada getting dissed (again) at the UN. This has happened a couple of times in the last while, between people breaking for lunch when the PM went to make our pitch for a temporary seat on the Security Council and us losing to Portugal (wtf?) in the vote this week.

Fuck the UN. Not because of this, but because it's a useless bloated bureaucracy steered by a bunch of countries that have nothing to teach us about running a civilization. I don't mean the Security Council, I mean the voting block of Developing and Muslim countries that vilifies democratic Israel and hobbles women's rights at every opportunity.

Portugal is one of the PIGS that have (possibly fatally?) crippled the Euro Zone, and THEY beat us for a seat? That tells you what sort of company we'd be keeping, and more importantly who we'd have to impress to get the votes to win. Thank you, but we have better things to do. Of course our Foreign Minister didn't cover the government with glory asserting that it was the Liberals who spiked the vote, but what can you do?

It's too much to hope that we could resign from the "organization" but we could at least treat it with the same regard it has for Canada. Except when it needs us for something of course...

Back on track, but to where?

Officials say a shift in U.S. war strategy has begun to take place in Afghanistan, away from classic counterinsurgency (protecting the population, providing basic services, promoting good government) and toward the traditional business of killing and capturing bad guys.

Well about time, and they can't say I didn't tell them. Well, they can since "they" don't read this, but I still said it was the only way to go in that shithole of a country. And I can call it that since I was there and people were trying to kill me.

According to the latest unclassified Air Force data, U.S. warplanes and drones dropped or fired 1,600 weapons on Afghan targets in the last three months, nearly half of them—700—in September alone. In the same three months last year, just 1,031 aerial weapons were released, 257 of them in that September. (Though the data are not entirely clear, it appears this more aggressive strategy has not resulted in an increase of civilian casualties.)

Years of operating over there have honed the FACs, especially the American ones who've spent so much time over there, so they're a lot better at picking targets for marvelous precision weapons, with predictable results. This is the "stick" that also provides a "carrot" to the suffering populace. If they know that if they give us targets we'll kill them, they have a weapon to use against our common enemies. And to be realistic, some people they don't like who can be conveniently removed by heavily-armed foreigners, but that's life in that part of the world.

What kind of deal will these Taliban negotiate? One condition Gen. Petraeus has set is that any Taliban seeking reconciliation must pledge to support Afghanistan's constitution and elected leaders. If they do so, will they cross their fingers and soon break the deal? Although U.S. troops might stick around to help enforce such accords, the ultimate guarantor must be Karzai. Will he hold up his end of the bargain without either demanding too much obeisance or cravenly caving in?

Finally, in order for any deal to take hold and result in political stability, there must be economic growth, credible institutions of justice, and a steady flow of basic services to the population. In that sense, COIN theory is still valid—and that leads back to the original concerns that have made a COIN campaign so slow and difficult: How can growth, good government, and basic services develop if the regime lacks political legitimacy?

There's another wild card, rarely addressed in these sorts of discussions: the fighters of the Northern Alliance, the former insurgency group that helped U.S. special-ops forces overthrow Afghanistan's Taliban regime in 2002. These fighters disarmed when Karzai came to power, but some intelligence analysts—and Afghans—worry that they might take up arms again if the Taliban were to come back into the government as part of a power-sharing deal. If that happens, civil war could once again break out.

Likely in fact, but my "line of death" option is still workable; back the Northerners with light but powerful forces, and you can keep the place from spinning out of control, and possibly keep the Chinese from walking in and profiting from all of NATO's blood and treasure. That however is another post entirely.

If you're against us, you're against us

In order to breathe some life back into AotF, I'm going to leaven it with shorter aggregator-type posts. To whit:

The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood has endorsed (Arabic) (English translation by MEMRI) anti-American Jihad and pretty much every element in the al-Qaida ideology book. Since the Brotherhood is the main opposition force in Egypt and Jordan as well as the most powerful group, both politically and religiously, in the Muslim communities of Europe and North America this is pretty serious stuff.

By the way, no one can argue that he merely represents old, tired policies of the distant past because the supreme guide who said these things was elected just a few months ago. His position reflects current thinking.

It's interesting that this comes when it does. America is staggering a bit, but that doesn't mean it can't come back. Of course the opposition's plan is to keep them on the ropes until they collapse (best case) or at least lose the strength to keep the MB under control in the Middle East and Europe. However this also comes at a time when Europeans are waking up and getting angry at their political classes for not representing their fears about Islam taking over European culture.

Multiculturalism is dead in Europe or at least dying, and Europe won't go quietly, at least not just yet. If we can stop this nihilistic self-loathing, we can take these MB mofos; there was a time when we knew what to do with a declaration of war.

Nobody expects the Climate Inquisition!

This will get zero mainstream media exposure, but I will do my small part to shine a light into the dark crevices of the "climate change" debate. I recommend that you read Prof Lewis' letter in its' entirety, but first his credentials and (more importantly) experience.

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President's Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)

The rote rebuttal of the Luddite "climate" lobby is that "he's not a climate scientist". Just like Freeman Dyson, he will be conveniently judged an imbecile in all matters not his credentialed specialty.

The climate lobby is mutating itself and its positions as fast as it can to keep ahead of public outrage or at least disbelief. There is a relentless current of propaganda about how we'll all cook, freeze, drown, or starve because of simultaneous droughts and flooding wiping out our food production. It's all over the place as they try to push all buttons for all people to keep the fear up and the money rolling in.

The latter is the root of the evil over which Prof Lewis has resigned his membership in the American Physical Society. There are a LOT of scientists who will not toe the alarmist line on climate, but they are blacklisted and mocked if they speak their minds instead of parroting the Groupthink. Thanks to the Web though, there may be an eventual "death" by millions of cuts to the prevailing policy of scientists being excommunicated in their hundreds for not selling out.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford's book organizes the facts very well.) I don't believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

There are a lot of things we could productively address, but there isn't a lot of money in that for scientists and the political classes, so I guess that won't happen. That's something to actually be worried about, and don't say that nobody warned where this was going.

“If I wished to punish a province, I would have it governed by philosophers”

I've gone through the comments I've had in the last month, and I was gratified to see some people that I've not seen before. I have no idea how people stumble across this since I've stopped telling people to read it, but it's nice to have you (if of course you've come back). So what today?

Well, Rob Semrau has gotten the boot from the Army, further disillusioning me with the way we do things these days. The Military doesn't need as much proof as a civil court, so the lack of real evidence didn't stop the Court Martial from finding him guilty of something, and an example was going to be made. Once the chain of command decides you're getting it, you'll get it no matter what you try.

I've talked about Rob before here so I'll not beat it to death, but I hope that he lands on his feet. He's a good man with a family to support, and as sad as it is to say it, he may be better off out of an Army that considers ass-covering and political correctness to be more important than combat effectiveness. No news there unfortunately; I have bills to pay or I'd tell the CF where they can go when they'll dedicate these sort of resources to "making an example".

There are also some incredible travesties of justice toward American troops, in fact all Western countries vilify their own soldiers more than they'd ever think of doing to the enemy. Actual criminals, rapists, etc should be hanged from the highest tree, but guys doing what they're trained and tasked to do (fight bad guys) can't be worrying more about what the JAG will say than about what the opposition might do.

This began with a quote about where we are from Frederick II of Prussia (a.k.a "The Great), so I'll end it with one about where our troops need to be, although "the enemy" here is really the brass and the lawyers:

“Always presume that the enemy has dangerous designs and always be forehanded with the remedy. But do not let these calculations make you timid.”

1010 equals 100% FAIL.

Again I came close to abandoning this thing, as I've been feeling tapped out of comments and I seem to be repeating myself. Then I think about how everyone else does that too, so I just need something to grab my attention.

Voila, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDdkzjfUnJQ&feature=player_embedded
I saw a post commenting on it on Hot Air, and I couldn't figure out why the commentator was so bent out of shape about it; it was a brilliant kick at the radical Green movement. There was only one problem, which I realized from reading the comments on the post, which is the radical Greens MADE this video.

I don't excuse my ignorance of radical movements, because there are so many already on my radar that these media twits are the least of my immediate concern. That said, if I were to make a video to make them look bad I wouldn't change a thing. You'd think that they'd have enough on the ball to not quote Osama bin Laden to back up their point, but I guess someone had to plumb the depths of cluelessness.

That's all for now. I may restructure a bit, as my new job is a lot busier but for now as long as you have this on a feed you'll get whatever I come up with. Ideas are always welcome, too.

Pastor Terry Jones is an Info Ops genius.

Opening statement: religious wackos of any stripe are intolerant idiots, and Terry Jones of Gainesville Florida certainly fits the bill. He has also however proved the point he was trying to make more perfectly than I could have planned.

His point is that Islam is evil and violent. One would hope that "The Religion of Peace" would step up and prove him wrong, but again it shows its' true colours. The plan (Jones') is to burn a crapload of Korans on Sept 11 2010 in memory of the people killed in the 9/11 attacks, and all sorts of people are running for cover because of what enraged Muslims will do in response.

General Petraeus has caved to these terrorists previously, throwing Israel to the wolves and blaming them for getting Americans killed, so it's no stretch that he's running scared again. Yes, I said the hero of Iraq is a coward and I'd say it to his face about this subject. If Muslims attack American troops because of this burning thing, there will be no blood on Terry Jones' hands. I can't say as much for Gen. Petraeus as he continues to embolden people to make intemperate demands about how us infidels should behave toward our Muslim betters.

The traditional word is "appeasement", and ask the Czechs in 1938 and the rest of Europe a few years later how well that played with the Nazis. Books are cheap and readily available, so burning them is no crime against humanity, merely stupid and inflammatory (literally and figuratively). Jones and his minuscule flock (c. 30 people) will not harm a hair on anyone's head unless they get too close to the bonfire.

Sure they'll piss people off, but they have a legal right (for the moment) to do that in their country. They have threatened no violence to anyone, let alone Muslims worldwide. I see video of the usual rent-a-crowd in Muslim countries protesting and burning American flags and effigies, and that's a proportional response, if you feel you must make one. On the gripping hand, saying over and over again that you'll kill Americans wherever you find them is a strong argument for Jones' postulate that "Islam is of the Devil", because we all know that they mean what they say.

This is international news, caused by a tiny Church and a Facebook page that at this writing had 12,484 "likes". If this was an Info Op to expose an entire religion as spawning dangerous lunatics it would be a brilliant success. I'm pretty sure this latest black eye for Islam is a by-product of a small group of yahoos in the Bible Belt, but yahoos or not, they're on to something here.

You broke it, you bought it.

This looks like "pick on Slate week", but it's just a coincidence that they're posting stuff that pushes my buttons. Unlike the last thing I wrote about, William Saletan is not being an idiot, it's the subject itself which catches a particular part of the zeitgeist.

The Ground Zero Mosque has been exceptionally polarizing, but most of the energy being expended is negative. To re-cap for posterity (e.g. the future when the links I might put in now won't work), a Muslim community centre/mosque is planned for a property a couple of blocks from the 9/11 attacks in NYC. For a lot of people, this is much too close.

I am one of them, but not from blind xenophobia; indeed, I know the significance to Islam of putting a mosque on conquered territory. A lot of other people feel the same way about it even if they know less history than I do, and this is the part which is increasingly being picked up by the media. To say that some of them (mainstream at least) are shocked by this is accurate, though "perplexed" is likely a better word. Politicians however make their livings by being in touch with public opinion, and more of them in the US particularly are coming down hard against this plan.

Saletan has this to say as his conclusion:

Ground Zero was just the beginning. The case against a mosque there has shifted from extremism to Islam. Now Republicans say their no-mosque rule extends only to Ground Zero, or three blocks from Ground Zero, or whatever exclusion zone the majority feels is appropriate. But the fire of enmity has already spread from terrorism to religion. I don't think New York can contain it.

This is true, and my amazement is that it's taken this long. Apologists keep prating that Islam is not to blame for things done in its' name, but it's no longer just cranks like me who aren't buying it. If Christianity still has to wear the Crusades and the Inquisition (and that's just a start), then Islam will have to work and mature to wash away the stain of violent jihad that is associated with it today. I would argue however that it is fundamentally damaged and this will not be possible.

There is NO separating a belief from the things done in the name of it, particularly if those things are written right into the book. Islamic terrorism isn't a few anti-abortion protesters; the Salafist inspired terrorism and oppression that troubles so much of the world, well, it troubles much of the world. This isn't a tiny radical fringe, this is a violent minority with influential religious opinion underpinning and the support of a sizable number of coreligionists.

The problem really is ideology of any stripe, but Islam is a big target because of what it inspires. Arabia is the birthplace of Islam, and the same place (modern version under the House of Saud) exports its' repressive Wahhabi doctrine throughout the world. (I will insert this for the sake of balance and an attempt at accuracy in terminology, but it changes the end results not one whit) As the keepers of the holiest sites in Islam, they are exceptionally influential morally, and due to all their oil money, in practical doctrinal terms.

Even the very name of the religion (see http://www.submission.org/islam/ ) tells you what it's all about. It has a DEATH SENTENCE for leaving it (apostasy), which should answer any remaining questions you have about why people are touchy about putting a mosque anywhere near where (muslim) religious idiots killed thousands of Americans and others.

War Crimes: The Drone Wars

It's a very human failing to demonize your opponents whether in mortal or merely rhetorical combat. I have scathing things to say about all sorts of people here (and elsewhere), but the marvels of editing and hindsight (involving hopefully more editing) allow us to see when we are hectoring. The Slate article I have picked on here could have benefited from some of that. Case in point:

Are the masters of "drone porn" committing war crimes by remote control? It's a bit shocking that more people aren't asking this question. I have a feeling that many of us, particularly liberal Obama supporters (like myself, for instance), haven't wanted to look too closely at what is being done in his name, in our name, when these remote-controlled and often tragically inaccurate weapons of small-group slaughter incinerate innocents from the sky, in what are essentially video-game massacres in which real people die.

Now I will get into how differently I see the world than do these "liberal Obama supporters".

Firstly, the repeated use of some catch(y) phrase throughout your essay lowers the tone of it significantly. "Drone porn" is not inherently inaccurate as a description; it's like crack for senior officers and I've seen it in action. Things that shock lose their effectiveness though overuse (sort of like conventional porn), and beating me with that phrase 16 times in one article is really overdoing it.

That however is mostly a style thing. My second main point is the bandying about of the term "war crime". This sounds clinical, but the few collateral casualties involved in drone strikes is not in scale or intent a war crime. Sure you can play with legal definitions to label it that, but reducing it to this level makes it a meaningless shibboleth instead of an affront to civilization. Firestorming Dresden in '45 is arguably a war crime, as it generated mass casualties for negligible tactical or strategic effect. Taking out the family of some guy who wants to destroy your precious liberal civilization is collateral damage from a legitimate (or at least necessary) military target.

Here's a part where the author loses any semblance of connection with reality:

Are the drone strikes defensible at 4 percent murdered innocents but indefensible at 33 percent? There's no algorithm that synchs up the degree of target importance, the certainty of intelligence that's based on, and potential civilian casualties from the attack. It's a question that's impossible to answer with precision. Which suggests that when murdering civilians is involved, you don't do it at all.

It's revealing that the comments on this article in Slate (Slate, of all places) were overwhelmingly dismissive. He goes on to refer to these drone targets as "criminals", demanding that we cease military operations against them. That legalistic attitude has already cost us any chance of success in Afghanistan, we don't need more if it.

The key thing is that regardless of certain peoples' sensitivities, there is a war going on. It's ugly (as are they all) and mistakes will be made. More importantly than this understanding of mistakes is the concept that this is an ideological war, and the only way to stamp out an ideology is to kill enough of its' adherents that they can't trouble you too much.

This comes to my third point about this hack job of an article. There is a whole lot of "we create more terrorists than we kill with _" floating around, and a fair bit of it settled here. First, I don't buy that, at least as far as it makes things any worse for us. The kids of a jihadist are brainwashed from birth to despise us "kufr", so killing them is merely proactive counter terrorism, and pissing them off doesn't change their attitude. At least after we blow dad into a red mist they know that we can and will kill them, and that sort of lesson will take with at least a few of them. Overall: net gain to our side.

Not nice and certainly not "liberal", but when we forget the basics "The Gods of the Copybook Headings, with terror and slaughter return!" The (historic, not rosy-hindsight-noble-savage) North American aboriginal peoples knew the score: kids are future warriors and women can breed more of them; you want to remove a threat, you remove ALL of it.

The NA Indians were by no means alone in this appreciation of ugly reality, but I use this as contrast to what is actually occurring on the North West Frontier these days. The locals (mostly Pakistanis) are happy to get rid of these guys and if it takes American Hellfires to do it, so be it, and there is no wholesale slaughter of non-combatants. On the other side of the Durand Line the Afghans (still Pashtuns) are complaining that the new COIN ("don't break anything") doctrine is strengthening the Taliban and other bad actors by removing the only stick we could use against them.

The only thing which will create more terrorists (besides all that Saudi money bankrolling them) is weakness and encouragement from us. And don't even get me going on Mr Rosenbaum's assertion that "There are those who argue that even the threat of a nuclear strike is a war crime". How about this: retreat to your liberal la-la land with your fellow travelers and leave dealing with the messy real world to those of us who live here.

Conjecture junction

Just when I was feeling a lack of things to write about that I haven't beaten to a repetitive pulp, salvation comes from of all places Facebook.

Accordingly, the topic du jour is "Conspiracy Theories", specifically those that people adopt without recognizing them as such. It's arguable that if people recognized something as a conspiracy theory (negative connotation of irrationality and unverifiable intended) they wouldn't adopt it. A good old conspiracy on the other hand...

In some ways this is uncharacteristically personal for me, as it was triggered by something posted by a friend, or at least someone who remains so at the time of writing. I've cut people loose before and I'll do it again any time that I need to if they become liabilities or it's clear we no longer have anything in common. We're very close to this point presently because B (let's call him that) seems to be getting sucked in by what I consider dark, irrational forces.

As is plain to anyone who reads this (and I don't think anyone who doesn't know me personally does anyway) you cannot say something that I consider foolish and not have me call you on it. Accordingly, if you post something that talks about how the Israel lobby, aided by "the Rothschilds" controls the media and whitewashes everything in Israel's favour, I'll be all over you.

Firstly, though B denies it, this is standard "Jewish big business controlling the world" conspiracy. Secondly it's patently absurd, especially the media angle; Israel is regularly vilified in the media, the media being largely a product of the leftist puppy mills masquerading as Universities these days.

So, it's apparent that he is sucking this stuff up without any rational or empirical analysis, and despite my intellectual limitations I am an absolute scourge of people like that. What depresses me is that facts and proof, verifiable falsifiable information, has no effect on people who buy into these things.

The foundation of any Conspiracy Theory is something, and it can be anything, that CANNOT BE PROVED. One of the more egregious examples is the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11/2001. I watched it happen, live on TV, so these idiots are not going to tell me that it was a "controlled demolition". I've seen them though, arguing that the lack of evidence for their allegation is due to a Mossad/CIA plot involving a fictional substance dubbed "nano thermite".

The idea of a CT is to provide an explanation that fits your narrative, in other words to fit events to your worldview (evidence be damned). Preconceptions are particularly resistant to any assault by reasoned debate; most people are intellectually lazy and and find it easier to accept pre-digested ideas. I frequently need to change my views on things as new information comes to me, but not on everything. If your ideas are well founded on facts, only a change in the FACTS, not merely other ideas will necessitate a change.

The ongoing debasement of the English language notwithstanding, I am not Humpty Dumpty; words have particular meanings, not just whatever I decide that they mean. In that vein, the objects of my ire today are properly called Conspiracy Conjectures. A theory is something that originated as a falsifiable hypothesis and was verified by reapeatable testing, and these conspiracies are none of that. Conjecture (paraphrasing from Oxford) is a half-assed idea based on incorrect or incomplete information.

I'm not going to waste time debunking specific things today, but I did my best to make B think about what he's posting. Some of our mutual aquaintances believe some questionable things, and I think this is rubbing off on B. I've asked him for specific examples and some quantifiable info (names and numbers); something tells me that I won't be getting it, but I'd like to be surprised here. And yes, we did land on the Moon.

Imperial Chicken Cordon Bleu

I pondered something about Iran and how to deal with that situation (nukes, particularly, government in general) but I lack enthusiasm for that at the moment. No, the thing that increasingly steams my beans is the growing oppression we in the formerly free West are being subjected to. For the moment this is mostly a problem in the increasingly totalitarian USA, but the virus spreads to our ruling class every time the Yanks touch down on our soil.

Most recently, and not at all close to home, is Obama's performance in L.A. when his peeps shut down entire neighbourhoods for hours so his O-ness could hold a fundraiser at a supporter's house. This has definite parallels with the recent G20/G8 foolishness in Toronto, and outrageous police-state security is de rigeur every time the Americans are involved.

Security and paranoia go hand-in-glove, and both are MAJOR industries in the US. The harsh truth is that when you're up against suicide bombers, no amount to security is foolproof. Certainly most domestic threats against Western aren't at that level, so the shutting down of entire sections of any visited municipality is overkill from either end of the threat spectrum.

Secrecy, swiftness and frequent changes of plan are the keys to minimizing exposure to hostile action. Dates are rarely secret but times can be fudged, routes can be varied, and all it will take is a standard police escort for the VIP convoy. This applies only of course if effectiveness and economy of effort/minimal public disruption are the objectives.

There is however that pesky evidence that keeping "the Principal" safe is not the primary purpose; rather it's keeping the hoi poloi (us) in their place. Tune your news antennae to "egregious security overreach" and I'm sure you'll see more of this, certainly with the current American Imperial house.

Insecurity Theatre

I admit to falling behind here, but it's summer and I'm on vacation so I make no excuses. There is a fair bit of stuff that gets my goat from time-to-time, but I need to have some sort of answer to the goat-getting happenings before I can get a decent rant going.

Although no promises are made for a neat solution to the security theatre making travel such an invasive chore these days, the creeping Orwellian tendencies of certain agencies are more and more on my radar these days. I have already decided that I will NOT undergo a full body scan of the sort today's link talks about; if they want to know what's under my clothes they'll have to do it the old-fashioned way.

Even better, I'll stay in Canada until the Americans realize that no-one anywhere else in the world is more likely to go on a shooting rampage than they are. Likewise there are enough drugs and explosives available in the U.S. and enough illegals pouring over their southern borders that any air traveller (or driver for that matter) coming from anywhere else is not likely to make a material difference if you let ordinary people and law enforcement do what comes naturally when something bad appears.

The full truth of United 93 can never be known, but we can be certain that left alone the scum who hijacked that plane wouldn't have crashed it in that field. It's not much of a choice, but if I knew I was going to die I'd do whatever I could to not take any (more) innocent people with me, and I'm sure that's what Todd Beamer was thinking in his last moments.

As the underwear bomber of last Xmas showed, the best and last line of defence is a self-preserving public who remember the real lesson of 9/11/2001; don't let the terrorists do what they want. Jasper Schuringa likely had that lesson in mind when he jumped Abdulmutallab, and he was the only thing that took any active role in preventing another air massacre. The system, for all of it's obnoxious security agents, scanners, no-fly lists etc. failed epically.

If the goal was in fact ensuring that transportation and the economy kept moving smoothly, bags would still be x-rayed and metal/explosives detectors would still be used. We would also do what has worked (more often than not) forever and "profile" people.

It is a fact that people who are up to something tend to behave strangely. Those damned "naked" scanners wouldn't pick up the very thing (explosive shorts) that they were rushed into action to prevent, but security or boarding agents doing their job and not afraid of being sued for racism or "islamophobia" would have picked Abdulmutallab up before he even boarded, simply for being just a bit too suspicious. All of these overlapping intelligence agencies that don't talk to each other suck resources for little return, and in general the entire system keeps expanding in an effort to cover every possible angle.

Life is risky, and to live it at all we have to allow for some danger. Determining a point of diminishing returns on something like transportation security is fraught, but it's that difficult because of the zero-fault culture we keep moving toward. I can't sort it all out, but here's how you keep planes safe:

• metal detectors, etc. screen out the guns knives and bombs;
• cockpit doors are locked for the duration of the flight, thus removing physical takeover of the plane as an option, and;
• Attached to the seat in front of each passenger is an 18" hardwood truncheon. Most effective use of the truncheon in close quarters will be demonstrated as part of the safety lecture.

A knife that you could sneak onto a plane vs. a riot stick? I'll tell you where my money is, especially when everyone has their own "kosh". If you insist on Air Marshals, give them a Taser as a stand-off weapon. Giving them a gun is the stupidest idea I've ever heard; that guarantees that there's a gun on the plane after all of the efforts to keep them off.

Yes, most people are sheep, but there are some sheepdogs out there and it only takes one or two to make all of the difference when things hit the fan. Less is in fact occasionally more, at least more effective when all of the "more" keeps tripping over itself and loses its purpose.

Rob Semrau vs.Christie Blatchford

Rob isn't out of the woods with yesterday's verdict, but his career is likely in a fatal stall. What this means is he will likely be consigned to staff work even if the "Disgraceful Conduct" doesn't get him booted out.

I've met Rob, and he's a real soldier who would have no problems in a real war. A "real war" is one where you have a job to do; that job is killing the enemy, AND that enemy doesn't wear your uniform. I have no certain knowledge of this, but I believe that he did finish that shredded Taliban guy off. It wouldn't have caused a blink in WW1, WW2 or Korea, and it was the right thing to do under the circumstances.

I do therefore take exception to this "verdict" from Christie Blatchford:

Yet every soldier I asked about it said pretty much the same thing: The Geneva Conventions, the International Law of Armed Conflict and the Canadian soldier’s bible on such matters, Duty with Honour: The Profession of Arms in Canada, all are firm that once a soldier is injured and hors de combat, French for “out of the fight,” he is considered a prisoner of war, and deserving of every protection.
...

I wonder if that distinction between Canadian soldiers and every other guy with a gun in Afghanistan now will be more difficult to establish.

Christie and perhaps "every soldier" she asked missed one thing; this was no "soldier" under any of those conventions. He was a franc-tireur, insurgent, what have you, and not protected by those treaties and agreements. Technically there is no obligation to take them prisoner, but in today's environment shooting any kind of "detainee" is a no-go, so why worry about the conventions?

As for Ms Blatchford's "distinction" exit line, give me a break. Even if this was a widespread practice (and it's not) we aren't the ones executing kids for having American money on them, slaughtering anyone who disagrees with us, subjugating all of the females and doing our best to deny an education or any kind of progress to the population. And, oh, yeah, we wear uniforms and don't use the people as human shields. If that isn't enough of a "distinction" between us and the Taliban/drug runners/general bandits over there then I don't know what she expects.

Get a grip Christie; you've been over there, you should know better than to come out with this sort of melodrama.

Just because you can, doesn't mean that you should.

The Toronto/Huntsville G20/G8 summits are well behind us now, hopefully never to be repeated. I've been waiting a bit to see how this all settles out, but I certainly have opinions of my own and they're not particularly surprising.

I have already addressed the strategic mistakes made in holding these things in a major city ("If You Build It, Will They Come?", AotF 21 June 2010), so I'll move to the tactical execution of the $1B in security for it. In short, the ball was fumbled, dropped, then kicked out of bounds in that order.

The PR battle was in danger from the get-go due to cost, and not helped at all by the "5 metre" rule. It is not unreasonable to expect people approaching or entering a secure area to submit to being searched as a condition to proceed, and that is a standard warning on any military establishment in Canada already. Somehow this turned into a tempest in a civil-rights teapot, another failure of leadership and communications.

The "drop" came on the Saturday when the vandals went to town and the only police presence was the burning police cars. Not only did this this start with no useful police presence, it continued that way. If there was ever a time to send in the riot squad and crack some heads, that was the time, place and the proper recipients. "Epic fail" by the police; I also like the French word for this sort of muddle: echec!

Phase Three, "kick it out of bounds" was on Sunday when the police overcompensated for their passivity the day before and penned people like cattle in various blocks near the event. The final roundup was the real problem, as even 4-5 hours after all of the summit attendees had left the police held milling groups of protesters, passers-by and local residents in a compressing ring in a couple of blocks (can't remember exactly where) and wouldn't let anyone through. So, if you lived there or were just walking through minding your own business you were swept up and held there for no good reason that even I could see, and I was watching it live.

I saw a lot of bad behaviour by the cops, and have read reports of a lot more. This again is a failure of leadership. Leadership is not "covering your ass", it's accomplishing the mission and looking after your people. In this case, if you're organizing security for this, "your people" include the public and business owners.

Acting like a bully has nothing to do with protecting the event or property; it's depressingly close to the fuckers who like to go out and smash stuff up. You're using the event to get your kicks and/or you're being carried away by the group/mob mentality. The job of the police is to separate the chaff from the wheat, not to throw it all in the silo. That bad metaphor aside, I just hope that the right lessons from this are learned in the law enforcement community

Put another COIN in the Afghan machine.

So, Gen. Stanley McCrystal is out over the comments he made about Obama's Advisory team to, of all things, Rolling Stone magazine. His replacement is Gen. David Petraeus, the man who led the successful (against my predictions I'll admit) surge in Iraq to keep the lid on the place long enough for the US to get out.

Fired or resigned, he should be gone, because to talk that way to the press about your boss is both insubordinate and phenomenally bad judgement. That said, I don't know that this will make much difference on the ground. If Petraeus has extracted changes in the RoE as his price for filling the gap we might see some results. Stop playing all nice with the Taliban and smash them in conjunction with the Pakistanis and you'll still be able to leave in a year or so. The place will still be screwed, but you might manage to hand all of the newly confirmed mineral wealth over to the Chinese with the insurgency under some sort of control.

Cynical? That can't possibly be a shocker around here, but just as the Americans have been shut out of oil development in Iraq since the effective end of hostilities there, they will be the last ones to capitalize on the lithium, copper, etc. that are apparently there in abundance.

Since a time limit has been placed on the NATO deployment, if we want to make a difference in the place it's now a race to kill as many bomb makers, financiers, drug kingpins and garden variety terrorists as we can before we go. This doesn't mean carpet bomb the villages (although if the civvies have all fled...) but it means a hell of a lot more stick and not a lot else, because we won't be around to give out the carrots.

Pakistan wants more money and gear to continue the drive against the Taliban on their side of the Durand Line, and in this case I agree with them. The interests of the West, India, (Northern Alliance) Afghanistan and Pakistan all align with beating the Taliban et al back, so it's the smartest place to put your resources. The "perfect storm" for the Taliban would be if the Americans take the gloves off inside Afghanistan at the same time the Pakistani Army gears back up.

This isn't a magical solution to the problem, it just would allow a chance that at least part of Afghanistan could be salvaged. Perhaps not for the people who poured all of the blood and treasure into it, but that apparently (generic leftish protesters notwithstanding) is how the West does business these days. I don't approve of exploiting people, (China is doing a fine job of that in Africa these days) but a bit of quid pro quo seems reasonable.

It's an Augean stable of a country for sure, but let's see what the new brooms can do.

As an end note, I will mention another American soldier who ran afoul of his chain of command in an unpopular war, the late Col. David Hackworth. "Hack" however complained about the conduct of the Vietnam war, instead of adolescent trashing of personalities in the administration so the situations can't be directly compared. If McCrystal had complained about the conduct of the war he might at least have accomplished something on his way out, but no such luck.

If you build it, will they come?

A lot of electrons are being re-arranged about the G8/G20 summits in Huntsville and Toronto ON this month, and I have to say we're spending an awfully large amount of money ($1.1B current estimate) on a huge waste of time. Yes I came out and said it: the Summits have no clothes.

Certainly I'm not alone in this, but most of what you read is about our incipient Police State or how much the "fake lake" cost. These are all worthy subtexts to the whole thing, but I have two much cheaper alternatives, and one that won't bother as many people.

The first is to tell our international "friends" that we're not wasting our tax money and disrupting people and transportation for these dog and pony shows, and that if they want to the "prestige" of hosting them they're welcome to it. I've heard that it's "our turn" but this is a bullshit photo op and nothing more; we can replace this with video conferencing at a tiny fraction of the cost of all this. The second money-saving idea is to pare security back to the bare minimum for VIPs and tell all those "Black Bloc" fuckers that they'll be shot on sight as soon as the first brick or Molotov is thrown. Really, all the fences, removal of mailboxes, etc. is to deal with a few thousand traveling thugs who show up to break things for fun. Shooting them would deter the fellow travelers and cut down on recidivism from the hard cases.

Obviously my second proposal won't fly in this country, but try that kind of shit in China and see how far you get. That brings me to my final proposal if you really insist on running these meetings. This has the added (partial intentional) effect of exposing the hypocrisy of the political classes that like their junkets: build a permanent G Summit facility somewhere that protesters will have a hell of a time getting to because of distance, isolation and/or forbidding terrain. I have two suggestions for location, but you can use your imagination.

Primary location, The Falkland Islands; access only by plane or ship, and I mean ship, not boat. No kayak-borne infiltrators will paddle over from Argentina to crash your party, and the British garrison is all the security you'll need. It'd be good for the local economy and give everyone there (garrison included) something to do. Yes, they're nasty cold, wet, windswept rocks in the middle of the south Atlantic but you're there on important business so what does that matter? You'd have one-time costs to build the necessary facilities and then relatively minor maintenance expenses. The whole thing might cost as much as one of these fiascoes anywhere else, and you'd have a permanent site with an "indigenous" security force.

Secondary proposal is Churchill, Manitoba. Not as isolated as the Falklands as it has permanent rail and air links, but isolating it is merely an issue of shutting those links down to passengers during the summit, and as it gets no cruise ships it's arguably easier to secure. Facilities would have to be built, and in order for it to not cripple the fall Polar Bear tourist season you'd schedule the meetings for the spring or summer. Again, the climate sucks (not to put too fine a point on it) but there's about as much to do in Churchill as in the Falklands.

Something "out of the way" was probably what was envisioned for Huntsville, but it's another example of governments coddling themselves at public expense. If they were serious about doing this sort of thing and not disrupting everyone for the sake a a few malcontents, they'd go somewhere like Churchill and not to the cottage/resort capital of eastern North America. $1B would go a long way in a place like that and have some lasting benefit to the community. Chain link fences and Jersey barriers don't leave that sort of legacy, but at least the swollen political entourages will be comfy while they're here.

Captain Kick-Ass vs. the 24 Hr News Cycle!

I don't think there were a lot of people who would have predicted that Obama would start making G.W. Bush look good, but that day has come. This not being a political blog per se this is not really my concern, except for what it represents to the big picture. Obama's regime is shamblingly alienating most of America's allies while trying (ineffectually, thank God) to make nice with the old "Axis of Evil".

Perhaps "ineffectually" isn't precise: in effect it has shown America as weak and something that can be ignored or worked around. This will only get worse for them the longer he or someone like him stays in power. Impeachment is unlikely (to date) so we have a couple more years of this to look forward to. If the current Marxist administration succeeds in cratering the American economy in that time, things will get a lot worse before they get better.

It is a common axiom of warfare that the worst course of action is to fail to choose one. Note that choosing to do nothing is a decision; waffling or being paralysed is quite different. Even less contentious than this is the universal axiom "Talk is Cheap". Saying you'll put your "boot on their neck" or convene a council of experts to determine "whose ass to kick" doesn't seem to have accomplished a whole lot. Hell, that's hedging: he has DONE nothing, and done it in the most muddled bureaucratic fashion imaginable. "Talk minus Action equals Zero" was on a shirt I once had, and a 0 looks a lot like an O.

The problem for anyone in the public eye these days is that you can't escape the media. You can make arrangements with the papers and traditional media outlets up to a certain point, but the internet never sleeps and it never forgets. Every thing you ever say or do (or fail to do) is there for the zealots who will run it to ground and post it on their blogs. From there it makes it to other places, and increasingly back into the major media outlets. The majors are owned by people, and people have positions or agendas they want advanced. That limits the sort of thing you will find on Fox, Al-Jazeera, CNN, etc. There is no limit to the variety of viewpoints that the internet ant hill will hold, and thanks to search engines it's all accessible and nearly impossible to suppress.

I stalled on this for several days as it went off track (now two separate posts), and in that time NOTHING HAS HAPPENED with Obama and the Gulf oil spill. There has been more talk, photo ops, and this afternoon there will be an address from the Oval Office, but nothing has actually been done. There is an increasing hum on the internet about Obama and what he's all about. It was always there, of course, but it's starting to take shape and become more coherent. This is an excellent example:

A great part of America now understands that this president's sense of identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs. He is hard put to sound convincingly like the leader of the nation, because he is, at heart and by instinct, the voice mainly of his ideological class. He is the alien in the White House, a matter having nothing to do with delusions about his birthplace cherished by the demented fringe.

Were I a religious type I'd say he was the Anti-Christ, as he fits the bill within that paradigm. I don't believe it's anything as profound as that, merely another sign (groan) of the forces within our societies that want to destroy what we've built. I highly recommend that you read Ms Rabinovich's entire article. They do everything bigger in the US, and I don't see much evidence of a significant political force in Canada that can do what the current manifestation of the Democratic Party is trying to do to the U.S.A. The NDP are most closely equivalent in Socialist mentality, but they are a spent force whose platform has largely been appropriated in pieces by successive centrist governments.

Back on topic, the picture that emerges is of the President of the United States of America who can't actually do anything. Of course there are mechanisms to keep the chief executive from running amok, but the image of a man who got where he is due largely to his demagoguery being exposed as an ineffective elitist by the very media that he manipulated to get there is pretty ironic.

Info Ops and Fallout Boys

As is obvious from my output here, I don't do "breaking" stories, but some I like to get to while they're still roiling. The IDF and the blockade runners fiasco which is playing out presently is still not 100% settled (what ever is?) but what we know could be used to write a manual on how to play the lefty media for sympathy.

First the legality of stopping and boarding vessels in international waters: this is the official Israeli position, but I have no doubt that what they are saying about the legality of their action is correct. You can either accept or flout the laws of any jurisdiction, but you defy them at your risk anywhere in the world. Israel is well-known to enforce its laws and borders, and to proceed as if you expect anything else is either malice or insanity. I like this for insanity:

INSANITY, med. jur. A continued impetuosity of thought, which, for the time being, totally unfits a man for judging and acting in relation to the matter in question, with the composure requisite for the maintenance of the social relations of life.

As there were too many people on those boats for them all to be insane, malice (or more charitably, "calculation") it is. Contrary to its reputation, Israel doesn't empty a magazine into every protest situation they run into, and they have a LOT of experience with this sort of thing, at least on land. The change of venue put them off their game, but it looks like they tried the non-lethal playbook first. The video that shows all of these "protesters" bleeding also shows them violently attacking the IDF commandos who boarded the ships. YouTube cuts both ways, but Israel can't win the PR battle with the truth no matter if it exonerates them; with Obama throwing the one true democracy in the Middle East to the encircling wolves, Israel doesn't have a lot of friends left.

Info ops, formerly known as propaganda, is all about making yourself look good at the other guy's expense. This was masterful in that regard, but it doesn't take much to make the IDF look bad to the sorts who make all the noise. The persistent use of the word "humanitarian" is a big feature, as is the word "protesters" There were some of those on board to be sure, the professional useful idiots from the West who tag onto repressive Islamic causes, but there were at least as many provocateurs.

The Israelis were certainly ambushed and attacked when they boarded; that fact is non-negotiable. People will argue provocation, piracy, whatever they want, but the bulk of international maritime and naval conventions are in line with the escalation the IDF took. Again regardless of the restraint the troops displayed (yes, I said restraint, and I meant it!) this is now in the international news cycle and a black eye for Israel is the least harmful likely outcome.

It will be interesting to watch what the Arab countries do now. Not what they say, what they actually do. Saudi money drives a lot of what goes on, and Iran's runs most of the rest. Saudi would much rather keep Israel around as a bulwark against Iran, so they never push the Israelis too far. Egypt has had enough of fighting the IDF, and in any event doesn't want to try to digest the Palestinians. Iran is allied with Syria however, and they may smell an opportunity.

So, a repeat of Hezbollah-Israel this summer? If that happens I will go on record here (on my anonymous blog, yeah, I know) as saying that Israel will put the hurt on Syria too for sure, and Iran if they can manage it. Assad knows this, so he'll make a lot of noise, but not likely heat things up. Hezbollah knows that another war is not in their interest until the Israelis are about to be pushed into the sea, but Iran might think the time is now.

Israel is cornered, and I can't come up with a worse group to corner than a nuclear-armed people with a 5000-year old history of being slaughtered every time they weren't stronger or at least more agile than their neighbours. You can bet that whoever pushes them to the wall will be short a few cities before it's all over. There are c.7.5M people in Israel, and (for you Old Testament scholars) that's a LOT of eyes.

Atoms for peace

The Gulf (of Mexico) oil spill continues, about a month on with no certainty of a solution on the horizon. At press time (ha!) they were about to try to jam it full of high-pressure mud to stop it, with a probability of success in the 60-70% range. I am certainly no expert, but when they can't get the job done, perhaps something a bit more extreme could do the job.

I say, it's a mile underwater, drop a small nuke on the leak. It's a 1950's style solution from back when they though you could do all sorts of engineering with A-bombs. It was in many ways a more forward-looking time than our own, at least for the tech stuff. I still don't have my flying car, but for that all of us should be thankful; on the scale of general calamity I will argue that millions of flying cars is more of a threat to life and limb than a bit of fission excavation would be.

Case against: "It's a NUKE, for chissakes, the fish will all glow and Godzilla will come and finish off The Big Easy!" I'm sure there might be some more nuance, but the general tone and level of "science" would be in this league I suspect.

Case for: It's in over 5000' of seawater, and a bomb of the size that might seal that leak (10kT? Smallish tac nuke anyway) will do a lot less environmental damage than all of that oil coming out will.

In any event, it's a sign of the times that this isn't even suggested. We are far more afraid of anything nuclear than we are of, well, pretty much anything else. The Yanks probably still have a few ASROC kicking around, although I suspect a bit more payload is in order. You could bundle this in with a nuclear test to validate your computer sims and solve two problems at once. Even without the testing of a new design, you'd still get a "twofer" by writing off an old bomb you had to dismantle for the new treaty anyway.

The bottom line here is: Stupidity gets us into things, why can't it get us out? Even more basic than that, I'd REALLY like someone to convince me that my proposal couldn't have settled this problem a lot faster and cleaner than whatever finally does. There's the gauntlet...

For Want of a Nail?

If I was really organized here, I'd file these posts by topic as well to see how my take on things changes (or not) with time. Who knows; if it's relatively simple I may yet do it. In the meantime I shall muddle through with more inexpert musings on our economic system.

Here is a place that being completely unversed in "the dismal science" is a boon, as I am not tempted to try to explain the intricacies of how we do things. The trigger for this post was an account on Counterterrorism Blog of the likely cause of the 6 May 2010 Wall Street Market crash. It has been know since the word "go" that it was a computer glitch, and I've read enough sci-fi to know what happens when too much of your day-to-day life is run by computers. Specifically, it runs fine until something big goes wrong, and then all bets are off.

It is surprising the mundane nature of the errors which take things down, hence the title of this post. In the case of the latest Wall St crash, apparently the automated "buy" side got hung up, so the "sell" side went crazy. Being a computer, that means it tried it's damndest to do what it had been programmed to do even though the conditions that those parameters had been set for were not present. The effect of this was the "sell" algorithm pushing the prices lower and lower looking for a buyer.

People generally won't do that. A lack of people in the loop made it inevitable, and it happens too fast to stop once it has started. Where this treads on AotF's turf is the threat that this poses to our collective well-being. For good or ill (more "ill" recently) the stock markets are both an indicator and driver of economic health. I recently suggested that the slavish business devotion to increasing stockholder value is hamstringing economic growth and employment, and this doesn't make me change my mind. You could see what happened to stockholder value in mere minutes on 6 May 2010, and in many other panic selling situations in the past. If it's wiped out and remade that easily, it's obvious that it doesn't really exist. Why then is this a weapon to be used against us?

I will argue (right here, btw) that protecting the systems that run the exchanges from cyber attacks is important, but CRITICAL is protecting the systems that run our infrastructure. This was graphically (though implausibly) shown in Live Free or Die Hard, and there is concern that the Chinese (primarily but not exclusively) have contingency plans to do just that. The terrorist threat to major info systems is limited and local at worst, unless they have some major State support.

This opens the can of worms about how much damage your garden-variety terrorist attack (suicide or car bomb) can do. The biggest thing that a terrorist cell can put together is a truck bomb, a la Oklahoma City, 1995 . While tactically devastating, strategically it is a pinprick. Enough of them, powerful and hitting dozens of critical targets simultaneously, could have a physically (as opposed to psychological) paralyzing effect on government and society and give that strategic effect, but nothing that big and sophisticated could slip completely past intelligence and law-enforcement agencies.

The short version? No conceivable (conventional) terrorist attack, cyber or violent, could disable us provided we have any sort of decent and competent leadership. Hurt us certainly, but when deciding where to prioritize resources we must separate the real from the fanciful. We won't get into leadership here, just assume they are up to it when push comes to shove.

Computer systems, as powerful as they are today, are nowhere near as seamless as they appear in movies and TV. 24 is the baseline of preposterousness in terms of integration of computer systems; having access to every CCTV camera in a city, etc. is nowhere near realistic, and certainly not instantly on-demand as shown here and elsewhere. Likewise terrorists could not shut down the markets and utilities at will to cripple our society.

The best defence against "systemic shock" is essentially what we already have: decentralization. One Big Computer is the worst possible idea, and fortunately both human nature (territorial) and technical limitations will do most of the work of keeping the lights on. Hardening those nodes will be haphazard, but I am confident that under our current level of computer dependency any cyber attack losses will be local and/or transitory. In this case time will tell if I'm right; history isn't much help as a guide for computerized systems...