The road to Hell is trod by (reduced) Carbon Footprints

The linked article on “The Low-Carbon Economy” is distressing to me, as is anything with the potential to mess up my life.  Not being of the hair-shirted climate change self-flagellate persuasion, I have not bought into the “climate change” dogma prevalent today, and therefore look very closely at anything coming from “experts” (I’m sick of inverted commas already in the first paragraph) that has the potential to affect me.

The Economy is a nebulous phantasm at the best of times, as is anything which deals with abstracts. The abstracts here are trillions of units of fiat currencies, the default reserve currency still (at time of writing) the $US.  Whatever it is, billions and trillions of these notional credit instruments flash electronically around the globe daily, and somehow maintain everyone’s confidence that we know what we’re doing. 

2008 was the most recent time the wheels came off (or the bubble burst, choose your metaphor) but you can expect some sort of serious economic reverse roughly every decade.  I understand in general how this works, but one of the things I understand very definitely is that people supposedly much smarter than me use financial instruments of their own clever devising to manipulate these money flows for their own benefit.

This entire Sci-Am article is a study in rent-seeking, which sums up the entire Carbon Trading and Green Energy industries as far as I can tell.   As I’ve said many times before, a lot of these Greens are really Watermelons (Green on the outside, Red on the inside) and have ridden this bandwagon for all it’s worth as a means of wealth distribution from First to Third World countries.  An example:

Using green bonds and modified insurance portfolios
If the top financial layer includes big institutional investors and banks, then a second tier of untapped finance lies with insurance companies extending policies to the most vulnerable populations in the developing world.

Through the use of mobile phone-based services and micro-credit institutions, a great deal of insurance has already been extended to what Jim Roth of LeapFrog Investments calls the “emerging consumer.” Over the past eight years, the social investment fund has backed a portfolio of companies selling insurance products totaling $40 million, of which $33 million went to low-income consumers in Africa and Asia.

“It’s an optimistic story,” said Roth, noting that the vast majority of those consumers had never owned insurance before.

“A key difference is they have less money. So the kinds of insurance policies they can buy tend to have lower premiums and less benefits.”

Governments in the developing world are also now pooling their resources into sovereign insurance funds that make payouts for climate adaptation programs, said Fatima Kassam of the African Risk Capacity Insurance Co., a specialized agency of the African Union. Niger received a $25 million payout last year, having paid in with a $3 million premium. “Governments are coming together to change the model on disaster management,” said Kassam.

Let’s be clear about one thing to explain why I’m so bent about this sort of foolishness.  The “insurance” is for climate change adaptation/mitigation.  Since “climate change” can mean literally anything at all that weather/climate does, no traditional insurance company (i.e. one which intends to stay in business) would write policies like this. This is very thinly-disguised wealth transfer.

 

The problem is that despite quantitative easing and no physical standard for our notional currencies, “wealth” is a zero-sum game; the wealth has to come from someone.  I am NOT a redistributionist; “law and order Libertarian” is probably closer to the mark, so I object to beggaring ourselves to make African kleptocrats richer.   

Green energy policies in the UK dramatically raised electricity prices as subsidized (to the producers) wind projects were forced into the market. Although this is now easing, it took clawing back the policies that started it, and similar things have happened in other places too.  Coal is the big thing to hate these days (Obama leading the pack) but it has the advantage of being cheap and abundant.  It’s also dirty, but modern scrubbing tech cleans it up quite acceptably, at least as long as you don’t consider CO2 to be pollution. 

This is where activists end up eventually, when all of the low-hanging fruit has been picked.  Back in the 1960s and 70s pollution was a real problem, and people rightly took action to clean it up. With the sulfur dioxide (acid rain) dealt with in the 1980s, North America and Europe ran out of serious, widespread environmental pollution sources.  Coincidentally or not, this is right when Global Warming popped on the radar as the next apocalypse.  Note that we (and both ice caps) are still here, despite all of the doom-laden pronouncements from 1988 onward.  Beware the “green intentions” of any climate lobby, and follow the money to see why people are really doing what they're doing.

Remember the past, look to the future, but keep your powder dry.

Today, May 8^th 2015 marks the 70^th anniversary of the end of WWII in Europe.  The Americans and to a lesser extent the Brits and Australians had a hard slog in the Pacific for a couple more months, but Europe was the main event.  The Canadian news has been full of the commemorations in Holland, our main theatre of operations at war’s end, and arguably our most enduring achievement, clearing first the Scheldt estuary (essential to bring Antwerp on-line as a port) and later The Netherlands of Nazi troops.

The Dutch to this day remember that we did this for them, but this is the last time there will be any significant number of veterans at one of these events.  The youngest of them are in their late 80s, so we’ll see how this is marked in the future. 

I don’t know about “doomed to repeat it”, but a self-willed ignorance of where you come from is in no way useful to ones’ understanding of the world.  There’s a line between chauvinism and identity and it’s a tricky one to walk, but as anyone who reads this knows, I refuse to hate myself for my ancestors or ethnicity.  There are plenty of others who will do that for me, so no need to borrow trouble.

Nevertheless, the past is the past and not to be lived in.  I have seen the definition of a Dark Age given as ‘when we no longer realize that certain things done in the past are possible’.  We often forget that our predecessors were in no way stupider than us; inconformity to current politically correct ethics does not make one unintelligent, regardless of modern cult-Marx university instruction. Could Canada put 1,000,000 people in uniform again (3,500,000 would be the figure proportionate to our current population)?  I know that we did, but I’m sure that would be a shock to most of our Millennials since they aren’t taught anything anymore.   

Canadian society has changed almost beyond recognition to our Great Depression/WWII generation, for good and ill.  People were tribal and racist back then, and we’d like to think that’s changed, but the changes are superficial since this is the natural state of most people.  Race relations in the USA have actually deteriorated in Obama’s Presidency, unavoidable when people take their cues from a race-baiting Administration and media.  This isn’t the way it was “supposed to be” but things are polarizing and stratifying. 

This is a matter of “us” and “them”, the default state of humanity.  Whether or not stripped of automatic racism, i.e. writing someone off due to their skin colour, affinity seems to operate in concentric circles.  The two biggest circles are religion and civilization.  Co-religionists have an automatic affinity, just as infidels, heretics, etc. are natural antagonists.  In the modern world, this isn’t a big deal for most groups, but it is lethally important to the Salafist interpretations of Islam.  Do I care if someone is a Sunni/Shia/Sufi/Ismaili/Alawi/Druze? No, with the exception that the latter four sects don’t cause me/us trouble; I consider Assad and the Baath to be secular, in case you care to quibble about the Alawi. 

I know enough about the differences in these sects to be able to spot civilizational affinities across broader religious enmities, but many Westerners don’t.  This takes some work, mostly reading, which most people can’t be assed to do.  It also takes a willingness to learn and admit you were wrong about things you didn’t understand, something even more people are bad at/incapable of.

This brings me by my typically torturous path to my second point.  As of today, Omar Khadr has been released on bail from an Alberta prison, despite the best efforts of the Canadian Government (ah, rule of law) and at least one of the American veterans he injured when he threw that grenade in Afghanistan.  I will not recant my opinion that a fourth bullet (Khadr survived being shot three times) would have saved a lot of trouble, but that was then and this is now.  Omar says that he is “a good person” and wants people to get to know him for that.  It may come as a surprise to some, but I’m willing to give him a chance to do just that.   He was brainwashed into jihad by his family (why the hell are they still allowed to live here?) and I am sceptical that he has left that all behind, but he’s been in prison (including Guantanamo) since he was 15 so it’s possible that he would like to do his time and fade into a quiet life. 

Only time will tell, but unless we were going to lock him up forever (which was not the case) he was getting out eventually, and now is as good a time as any.  I offer no predictions of his future behaviour; if I had that sort of prescience I’d use it on the lottery or the horses and not waste it on this sort of thing.  All I will say is that it’s possible (depending entirely on Khadr’s character) that cutting him a bit of slack is a good thing and will put him on the right track.  If so, great and I hope he makes something positive of his life.  If he regresses to his family’s mean, well, there’s still that fourth bullet.

Who defends everything, defends nothing

The big international news of the day is the investigation into the crash of Germanwings flight 4U 9525 into the French Alps this Tuesday past. Current evidence from the voice recorder and the profile of the flight supports the idea that the co-pilot locked the pilot out and then deliberately plowed the plane into the mountainside.  It is a reflection of our times that there is a fair bit said about the co-pilot’s religion or lack of it, and we all know what religion it is they’re tiptoeing around.

We may never know why this guy murdered everyone on board, but that’s life sometimes.  We have a whole bunch of murderous buggers whose intent is clearly announced to us, and there should not be a lot of debate about what we need to do about that.  Certainly debate about “how”, but nobody who can be bothered to know what is going on can honestly suggest that there is any other (useful) solution to these Da’esh etc. Salafists than a bullet in the head apiece.

And yet what have we in Canada’s House of Commons? (Legislative branch of Canada’s govt’t in case you didn’t know) There we see members of the opposition parties splitting hairs about whether Canada has “UN authorization” to bomb Da’esh targets over the now-notional Iraq/Syria border.

The Prime Minister has mocked them pretty effectively (says I; and they say Harper doesn’t have a sense of humour) but the mendacious and clueless tripe being spewed by Mulcair (who’s smart enough to know better) and Trudeau (who, well, doesn’t appear to be) won’t cut much ice with the general public.  Most people see enough of what’s happening over there to know that something has to be done about it.

The idea that this seems to be moving toward is a (cursory) examination of why we would intervene here as opposed to any number of other places.  One comment I saw was about how it must be oil since people are constantly being slaughtered in Africa and we don’t get involved there.  Yes, we get some oil from the general region, but we will not roll in there and pump the place dry due to our military action.  If everything was “about oil” we wouldn’t have an embargo against Iran, and in any event we could get by without ME oil.  If we did, however, the same people bleating here would be braying that we’re extracting our “dirty” oil sands (and building pipelines for it) to replace the light, cleaner stuff our east coast refineries get from Saudi and Algeria. 

As for Africa, there is plenty of stuff we’d like from Africa, far rarer than oil.  Economic motivations are insufficient for Canada to commit armed force; that much we just won’t do.  Millions of people are slaughtered in Africa (by other Africans), but they aren’t proclaiming a world-wide empire and declaring war on us (Boko Haram’s declaration for IS aside) so no, we don’t have pressing interest in their insoluble problems.

One reason, sufficient in itself I’d say, is that we simply can’t help out everywhere, but that doesn’t mean we should sit idly by and do nothing.  Rwanda should be enough evidence to the chattering classes that having the UN’s approval for being somewhere is not equivalent with doing what needs to be done; the opposite is more likely as far as I’m concerned.

We could do much more for the Kurds et al than we are, and our troops would think it worth doing.  This won’t happen, but a Battlegroup such as we had in Kandahar would make a massive difference in stabilizing that area.  We’d lose some people, but soldiers are paid for those sorts of risks, and in this case it’s not a lost cause (as opposed to Afghanistan), at least as long as you circumscribe the mission appropriately.  More of our boots (and tracks) on the ground would make short work of any IS forces who tried to come at us (or got in our way) while the nastiest city fighting could be left to the indigenous troops; it’s their fight at the end of the day.  This provides worthwhile and much appreciated support while not putting our troops and equipment through a meat grinder like Mosul or Tikrit.

We could probably do other things too.  We could help the French (more than we already have) in the Sahel, we could sort out South Sudan (maybe) or, my own pet project; a change of regime in Zimbabwe.  Bad things are happening to one degree or another in all of these places and many more, but intervention in any of them is neither easily practical nor sufficiently critical to our National Interest (remember that, anyone?) to justify us being there. 

So, where’s the line for intervention?  What are the criteria?  This is an art, not a science, so it’s not easy to quantify these things; what’s worth fighting for, more importantly what worth dying for, is extremely subjective.  In the case of Kurdistan, there are people there who a) want our help, b) need our help, and even more importantly c) will appreciate it.  I’ve said all of this before, but it’s worth saying again.  It occurs to me to put it into a rough equation for determining where we should help out (where L=locals):

 
[(LWant + LNeed + LAttitude + Probabillity of Mission Success) x National Interest] > [Risk + Expense] = Intervention  

 An algorithm/flow chart would do this better, but you get the idea.  Weighting of factors is fraught, but if I were to apply this to our post-2002 involvement in Afghanistan, it would not have passed, mainly due to the PoMS and NI factors being essentially nil.  If anyone with more math than me wants to refine this, go for it.  It won't change anything, but I think it visualizes the thought/risk analysis process pretty well.  I'd be interested to see a representation of the thought process of people who know what I know yet still think we shouldn't be helping in Iraq/Syria, especially in light of the assembled coalition.  Doubt I could make sense of it though. 

All against all, or at least some.

I’ve let the blog languish again, as happens when I can’t be bothered to write what I’m thinking about things.  Often that happens because it’s the same shit, often even the same pile, over and over again.  Today I am inspired enough by my prescience to comment upon a particular shit show.

 

 

The Da’esh debacle in Syria/Iraq continues, and although they have been (mostly) contained and in some places pushed back, a decisive victory over them, even if one could define what that was, remains out of the question.

 

 

I proposed a viable strategy for the situation some months ago, specifically to bolster the Kurds and with them the terrorized religious minorities (Christians, Yazidis specifically) in the area.  While “our side” may not have anything I can recognize as an active strategy, the other players in the neighbourhood certainly know their interests and act, as much as they can, in those interests.

To situate things, here are the major power/interest blocs according to me:
 

·         Iran/Damascus/Hezbollah/Baghdad: Iran is the underpinning and sole hope of victory for the Shia factions in the region.  Assad gets some support from Russia, but without Tehran he would have been out of business a long time ago.  Iranian Quds Force have trained and supported Assad’s troops, as they have done the same for Iraq’s Shia militias.  Without Iran. Da’esh would have run roughshod over the rest of Iraq and taken Bagdad and who knows what else.

·         House of Saud/Jordan/non-Da’esh Iraqi Sunnis/Lebanon (minus Hezbollah)/Israel: if nothing else points out how tangled this gets, this grouping does.  I say the Saudi royal family instead of Saudi Arabia proper, as I’m certain that Da’esh has some significant support in the hoi-polloi; not a majority to be sure, but support is there.  I don’t know what proportion of Sunni tribes in the “Sunni Triangle” have held out against Da’esh, but any that have likely had support from Saudi.   Jordan was on the fence until Da’esh burned their pilot alive, but now they’re bombing the shit out of them (“the shit” is assumed; I have no BDA).  The Lebanese Army has skirmished with Da’esh (and likely al-Nusra as well) but they are not known as a formidable fighting force.  However, due to the severity of the threat to the country as a whole, Saudi is paying for $3Bn worth of armaments (from France) to boost up the Army’s capacity.  As for Israel, they’re low on Da’esh’s priority list (Hezbollah is higher) but they left to their own devices would be a problem for Israel eventually.

·         “Kurdistan”/anyone who isn’t a Da’esh compatible Sunni (includes religious minorities): This is the group without any major patronage, but also the only group(s) I think we should be directly helping.  The Kurds are pretty secular, socialist in some cases, and despite their internal divisions they are the best bet for a functional country out of that entire mess.

·         Sidelines/Wildcards: Turkey is the biggest question mark here.  They have tense relations with the Kurds (improving, but still fraught) and have been accused to helping or at least turning a blind eye to Da’esh recruiting and logistics.  I think they are letting Da’esh bleed the Kurds to weaken them, but with Erdrogan’s Islamic proclivities (e.g. support for Hamas) I’m not certain that’s all that’s going on.  Russia is keeping an oar in too, basically to put that oar in “our” spokes by keeping the region unstable.   

 

If one is being as objective as possible, few countries outside of the region have any real interest in what happens, but the nature of this is that the affected area will spread, and in fact hat is happening.  I could add to the above groups Egypt, as our brilliant intervention in Libya a few years back has allowed Da’esh to take root there.  Libya makes Da’esh a direct threat to Europe as well as much of Africa, and if Al Queda in Yemen decides to switch over and gains traction, that’s the Arabian peninsula and East Africa. 

Most of these regions have indigenous Salafist groups (Boko Haram, AQIM, Al-Shabab) so in some ways this just puts a different name on an existing problem, but it’s a whole lot of moles to whack. I’d say it’s time to sort out some spheres of influence with players like Iran, but TELL them what they will be and enforce it. 

Specifically, Iraq as a country is history, much the same can be said for Syria.  The Saudis are concerned about a “Shia Crescent” from Iran to Lebanon, but exactly what they can do about it is questionable.  I could suggest that Saudi and Jordan act together to redraw their borders to take in the Sunni areas of western Iraq, but I’m sure there are many practical reasons not to do that, and a lot of them likely tribal.

All we can (and should) do is to help establish a viable Kurdistan, one that can stand against all comers.  This will piss off the Turks, but they aren’t our allies anymore in anything more than name so I’m not inclined to care.  I would go so far as to say that it’s in Turkey’s interest to shed some Kurdish territory to this end, but of course that will never happen.  Iran will likely have some issues with this too, but I’m even less inclined to worry about that. 

How much blood and treasure Western countries should put into keeping Da’esh down is difficult to answer.  Obviously the people directly affected should be doing the heavy lifting, but how much and what kind of help should we provide?  I would say more than we are now, and more importantly WE MUST HAVE A COHERENT PLAN for whatever we commit.  A sound strategy, the right force mix, and the Saudis paying the bills are the keys to our optimal (realistic) end state.   

 

On the current trajectory the big winners are Assad, Iran and Hezbollah.  That group alone should cause sensible people on the West to want to engineer a better (for us) outcome. Not going to happen of course, so I guess we'll just watch and see what does.  

Bash some heads together or be chopped separately

This past weekend has seen an unprecedented series of public demonstrations in France as an outpouring of solidarity and “don’t-tread-on-me” in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre.  World leaders (though notably no-one from the USA) lead the crowd, and the one in Paris was estimated at 2 million people, bigger than Liberation Day in WW2.  At the same time, the anti-Islamization marches in Germany continue, and may be gaining traction.  The latter is hard to be certain of, as the media is determined to tar all of these people as Nazis and supresses and distorts reports.  In these two events you see that Europe is approaching critical mass in terms of the threat of Islam to Western Civilization. 

The West has spent much time, blood and treasure of fighting amongst itself, but in the post WW2 period one could be excused (on casual reflection) of thinking that this internecine fighting is behind us.  I think that in the post-nationalism period the struggle has changed from being international to being a “civil war” in every Western country at the ideological level.  In other words, the West is wilfully destroying itself. 

Not all of it of course, but the self-loathing strain of “white guilt” progressivism is firmly entrenched in our university and media making it the default position of the latter.  The idea that anything done by white men is the worst thing ever seems to be the basis of it, and as such it encompasses everything from Marxists (the cultural variety) to radical feminists and many other sub-groups besides.  I run into this on a regular basis online, and have greatly curtailed my activities there (mostly to here) as these people are so thoroughly indoctrinated that they don’t even try to debate, just insult and belittle. 

How many of them are having second thoughts in the wake of the Paris attacks, and the ones before them in Ottawa and Sydney is anyone’s guess, but the hard core (who I estimate at c. 10% of the population) will cling to their “Écrasez l’infâme” attitude toward their own society no matter what.  They are, no matter what their actual proportion of the population, a minority and at some point, hopefully now or very soon, the majority who don’t feel like bowing down to these jihadis will accept that some heads need to be cracked to maintain what we have. 

Canada is overhauling its’ laws to deal more proactively with terrorist wannabes (we’re already arresting them) but France I’m sure already has what it needs to deal with them, including now the public and political will.  The EU overall needs to tighten up to track these guys (and girls) when they travel to Syria, etc. and either nab them before they go, or (better to my mind) let them go and revoke their passports as soon as they clear the EU.  Couple that with contributing military force to battle them wherever they went and we have most of a plan to manage this threat. 

People need to be (and are) arrested for supporting Salafist causes, and the net has to expand to Facebook etc. posts.  Post a message supporting Islamic State,  10 years in jail.  Conspire to support them, life.  Make it painful and you will weed out the lightweights, or at least muzzle them.  The intelligence services can track them (hopefully) when they go underground, and I’m sure (as much as I can be with no inside knowledge) that many a plot has been foiled already.   

Whatever laws are passed and whatever action is taken, it has to be balanced with not making life difficult for law-abiding citizens.  For routine investigation and enforcement this is very do-able, and the (let’s face it, pinprick) attacks those guys can make do not justify martial law.  That’s here; in France they have a much larger problem with extensive “no-go” areas in the banlieues of Paris and elsewhere, and  military reinforcements have been sent.  This is the tactical response required to the situation, and as long as the usual whiners shut up when the necessary “profiling” takes place and supporters are rolled up the problem is, as mentioned previously, manageable. 

Soluble?  No measures which would leave our societies recognizable as “free” could reduce the threat to zero, and even the alternatives (police/military state) aren’t 100% solutions.  “We” must decide that our way of life is worth defending and do so at all levels.  That will necessitate hating a bit less the society that allows you to publicly call for its’ downfall and (sometimes) replacement, if for no other reason than you’d rather not be lumped in with the jihadis who do the same.   You can and will be judged by the company you keep, even the virtual kind.   

Beyond-the-Pale Horsemen

Events like yesterday’s massacre at Charlie Hebdo in Paris are a tactical surprise, but not a strategic one.  CH has (they say they’ll be back) a history of nettling Islam and doing so in an inflammatory fashion.  While this is offensive to some people, under no circumstances in a civilized society should that lead to bloodshed. An appropriate (civilized) response is to ignore, rebut inaccuracies, or failing that, to skewer their stuff as well as they did yours.  

I saw this compared (due to the death toll) to the Brevik massacre in Norway in 2011 which leads me off on a related tangent.  Brevik was the odd exception these days, someone without a religious motivation who killed a lot of people for a cause, but he did it to attack what he saw as the out-of-touch “elite” who were enabling Islamization in his country.  Not the civilized way to do things, but if those “elites” don’t figure out that most people are unhappy with being flooded by immigrants who don’t share their values, we may see more things like this. 

There is some concern that the fallout of the Charlie Hebdo attack will be a strengthening of the “radical right”.  If that’s the threat you take away from this you’re totally missing the point, but there’s plenty of that going around.  Hitler used the analogy of the culture as a biological system, with (in his view) the Jews representing an infection in the “body”.  Breaking that concept into its’ component parts and generalizing, it is obvious to anyone with a functioning brain that not all cultures are the same, and some are too alien for others.  The indoctrination provided by Cultural Marxist universities these days does much to suppress actual critical thought so this realization is rare within the intelligencia, but it’s obvious to the man on the street.  

A “reaction” is inevitable when you mix incompatible cultures, and Europe is hip-deep in that right now.  “Right wing” parties can’t rise if people aren’t drawn to them, and people won’t be drawn to the fringes if the centre looks after their concerns.  Pragmatic/realistic politicians will note the way the wind is blowing and tack that way to keep the “extremists” from gaining traction.  Currently in Germany there is a growing anti-Islamization movement which has been denounced by Angela Merkel, but she is no dummy so I suspect we’ll see some re-positioning by the ruling party.  People all over Europe are concerned that they are being overwhelmed and edged out by immigrants and mainstream politicians had better take note. 

I have no idea what will happen, but despite recent attacks on mosques in Sweden I don’t predict an anti-Muslim pogrom in Europe.  This does not preclude more violence, but as much as I want to keep the baleful influence of political Islam away from my culture, people walking around in headscarves and skullcaps is not by itself a threat to Western civilization.  By this I mean that the last thing I want to see in response to the very real Salafist threat to our institutions and free speech is your everyday Mohammed or Fatima hassled (or worse) just for their general affiliation.  What I would in fact like to see is those Dick and Jane Muslims putting the boot (literally or figuratively) to the Salafi assholes in their midst.  

For that to happen governments must be prepared to call Islamist terror what it is, while giving the larger Muslim community the (moral and enforcement) support it needs to purge itself of Salafis/jihadis. They can flush them out then we’ll sort them out, at home or in whatever wanna-be Caliphate they jihad off to. 

 

I believe I’ve talked about my conception of  a “tribe” on here before, but the essence of it is that a tribe should encompass anyone who is willing to live by its’ rules.  The Western Civilization tribe can absorb anyone who wants to be absorbed (apolitical Muslims included), but must fight anyone who tries to subvert it. We can’t all get along, but most of us can and we have to expand that circle as wide as possible.  With that done, open season, no bag limit on anyone outside of it.  

RIP to the fallen staff and police at Charlie Hebdo.  I have confidence that the French will get those two assassins; I won’t put any money on them ever standing trial, but I don’t hear the Barons of Runnymede rolling in their graves about that.   

I love it when a strategy comes together...

Bashar al-Assad, President of rump Syria, thinks that the Americans don't know what they're doing in the region. That's not explicitly what he said, but that's what this amounts to:

Asked whether coalition airstrikes are helping him, Assad said that the bombardments -- the Obama administration's preferred military tactic in the fight against the Islamic State -- aren't enough. "Troops on the ground that know the land and can react are essential," Assad told journalist Régis Le Sommier. "That is why there haven't been any tangible results in the two months of strikes led by the coalition. It isn't true that the strikes are helpful. They would of course have helped had they been serious and efficient."

Despite the wishful thinking of some in the West when he came on the scene to replace his father, Hafez al-Assad of "Hama rules" fame, Bashar (Opthamologist by training) is a chip off the old despotic block. I suspect that's more nurture than nature, but he has in any event survived in an environment which would have exposed and destroyed him for any weakness. In fact, the entire region is like that.

The Baath regime in Syria as in Iraq is bad news, but it was (pretty much) equal-opportunity bad news. Christians, Alawis and other non-Sunni minority groups survived as well as anyone could in Syria until things came apart in 2011. Being an enemy of the State was what would get you tortured and killed, and as brutal as that is it's something you could avoid, i.e. you weren't born into it.

Enter Da'esh/IS/ISIL/Al Queda/etc. The decendants of the Moslem Brotherhood old Hafez decimated in Hama, they are rabidly intolerant Sunni militias, so intolerant that most Sunnis don't want to live under them either. The non-Sunnis who remain have been forced to side with Assad in sheer self-preservation. In that case the "enemy of their enemy" is their only hope.

Does that mean that we should work with him? Well, that depends. In an ideal world where we all love each other and some rare zombie virus makes people turn nasty, no. In the real world where things are a lot greyer than that you don't work with a murderous sadistc regime unless of course they are less distasteful than the alternatives.The question: is Assad sufficiently less off-putting than Da'esh/Al-Queda/Nusra to be worth propping up?

I won't pretend that this is a simple decision, but I'll zoom out enough to try to put it in perspective. Until 2003, Iraq and Syria were "stable". Not Parliamentary-Rule-of-Law stable, but most people could go about their daily lives with little chance of violence which counts as stability in most parts of the world. Once the Americans broke Iraq (that is neither ideological nor debatable at this point) the whole region began to creak. The eventual result was the so-called "Arab Spring" which succeeded only in the place it began, in Tunisia. Egypt got the government it thought it wanted in the Muslim Brotherhood, but quickly realized that having the military run things was not so bad after all. Syria tried to reform but that only exposed how brittle the power structure was and of course it shattered.

Shit gets tribal pretty quickly in situations like that (civil war) and the surviving enclaves are the Alawis (Assad's "tribe") and the Kurds. The Syrian Kurds' only chance of survival is to amalgamate with the Iraqi Kurds and I have said before this is where I think we should put our efforts. Erdrogan and the Turkish government; in his/their effots to re-create the Ottoman empire has/have placed themselves in opposition to NATO's interests and should be booted out of the alliance. I mention this because the Turks are the single biggest impediment to carving out a stable safe-haven for people fleeing Da'esh.

The Iranians also have Kurdish issues, but they are a bit more pragmatic and are actively supporting their militias fighting Da'esh. Should we co-operate with them? How I work it out is that worst-case scenario, Iran spreads its' (Shia) "Islamic Republic" to parts of Iraq; that is still less miserable than Daesh/Al Queda. This would defacto split off Iraqi Kurdistan to join up with Rojava. In case you wonder why I think we should support that, go read this.

Are the Kurds perfect? Not by a long shot, but as far as I can tell they are better than all regional alternatives. My information is not based on personal experience, but by all accounts their internal tribal issues don't turn into oppressing other people which is all that I can ask of a group. The real litmus test is "would I take a trip there [Iraqi Kudistan]?". The answer in this case is "yes" because even as in infidel Westerner I would be as safe there anywhere other than home. Their proposed constitution looks pretty Socialist (not surprising, Kurdish Workers' Party and all) but Disestablishmentarianism is the law of the land making it unique in the region since Turkey has purged Ataturk.

Coming back to Assad, the Social Contract of the Rojava Cantons (linked above) recognises the "territorial integrity of Syria" which brings it in line with the rump Baath state. This is potential common ground, but there is no way the Cantons would let Assad back in control. What I don't know is what the Iranians would think about cutting loose their link to Hezbollah, inevitable if the current power structure is dissolved.

That could be grounds for some old-school "sphere of influence" talks between the US, Saudis and Iranians. The tradeoff could be recognition of defacto Iranian expansion into Iraq, sans "Sunni Triangle" in exchange for cutting the Levant loose. The Saudis would have cause to dislike this, but it wouldn't change much on the groud so it might not be a deal breaker. Hezbollah has bled a great deal for the Assad regime (really for Iran) so it's unlikely Iran would cut ties, but they would gain more Shia in Iraq than they'd lose in Lebanon so who knows?

The region (and many others) has a preference for backing "the Strong Horse". Assad's Syria was that in the immediate area for many years; it is so no longer, but it can still do a lot of damage. The Alawis are a fairly despised minority in the ME, but so are the Kurds, Christians, Yazidis, etc. I see common cause there, but there are a lot of Great and Regional Power interests to overcome before the underdogs can band together. Get rid of Assad and the Baath Party and we could work with non IS Syria against Da'esh and in spite of Erdrogan. I deduce Iran as the lynchpin of this, with Russia having some say, maybe just as an extraction plan for the Baath ruling elite.

There's your angle Obama; you still have a chance to actually earn that Nobel Peace Prize. Fat chance the USA does anything this coherently thought-out with an understanding of the region and history, but the regional players understand these things. Somebody will do something but it probably won't be us.

A lot of drops will fill a bucket

At time of writing the Canadian government has voted to undertake the combat missions against Da'esh which we were at least partially doing already. Where this goes I don't know, but past practice from Afghanistan coupled with our current fiscal restraint suggests that this will remain at the level of low-rate airstrikes against painfully "safe" targets and some undisclosed Special Ops activity. Better than nothing, but unlikely to make a difference in the grand scheme.

Still, it's important to do something and we are at least doing that. What I draw more encouragement from is stories like this:

Dillon Hillier was working construction in Alberta when ISIS gunmen began their brutal push into Kurdish territory. A veteran of the Canadian mission in Afghanistan, he decided he couldn’t just watch it happen.

Last weekend, the 26-year-old infantryman left Calgary and flew to northeastern Iraq to help Kurdish fighters fend off the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham. “I just felt it was the right thing to do since they’re facing some pretty tough times,” he said in an interview.

Unlike the radicalized youths who have flocked to Syria and Iraq, Mr. Hillier is a military veteran and he is siding with ISIS’s most formidable enemy, the Peshmerga. Mr. Hillier said he expected to be joined over the coming weeks by volunteers from Canada, the United States and Sweden.

To help Canadians eager to fight ISIS, an Ottawa military veteran recently formed the 1st North American Expeditionary Force. Ian Bradbury said former Canadian Forces members had launched the non-profit group to provide financial and logistical support to friends who felt compelled to volunteer.

The Kurds are the only group over there who both have ability to resist Da'esh (and equivalents) and a tolerant and reasonably progressive mindset as a culture. In short, they are worth supporting against the alternatives, and not merely as the lesser of available evils. They also appreciate the help, a rare trait in that part of the world.

Experience has shown that supporting most Arab groups is a waste of time as they're never happy whatever you do or don't do. Largely anecdotal, but we don't need peer-reviewed studies to tell us that if Iraq was a tar baby Syria would be the same.

It's not just the Arabs of course, there are a lot of other groups just as opportunistic (Afghans leap to mind) but we have proven Nation-Building to be a failed model, expensive in blood and treasure. The Kurds have built their own; it's still under construction but they'll do it themselves with some support from us, as it should be. They have a chance to be the beacon of "democracy" tolerance and freedom in the Middle East that Bush II and the NeoCons thought they could fashion post-Saddam Iraq into.

Young men have been trickling in from Western countries to bolster the Kurds, and by extension the displaced Christians, Yazidis and civilized Sunni Muslims of northern (nominal) Iraq. I wonder if anyone has thought of approaching the Saudis to grubstake these guys.  Infidels of course, but along with that they are a pretty safe bet to not boomerang on the House of Saud like the Sunni proxies they usually use. The cost effectiveness of supporting Western volunteers in Kurdistan could be very high. Here's the pitch:

End State: Kurdish autonomous area secured and displaced persons returned to their homes in contiguous areas.

How: Support to Kurdish forces and creation of a support system for volunteer replacements from other countries.

Salient features:

• Hub created in theatre with money from Gulf and Western governments
• Ground organization consisting of recruitment, supply and medical facilities
• Employs mostly locals
• Tickets home are part of the supply arrangements

I envision a small staff to liaise with applicants, pick them up from the airport, issue them with weapons, body armour, ammo, first aid kit and a local cell phone. From there link them up with the Peshmerga for employment and hope that the field hospital you've set up doesn't see them for anything worse than top-up inoculations.

An actual International Brigade is a bad idea, but a dedicated support organization for the individuals, especially the supply and medical resources, will encourage more guys to go. As mentioned in the linked National Post article, ad hoc support groups have been forming in home countries, but things remain sketchy on the receiving end.  With "allies" like this, the Kurds and the people they're sheltering need all the help we can give them.

Draw the correct lessons from Ottawa

Last week in Canada generated world-wide headlines for the dramatic attack on an honour guard soldier at our national war memorial and subsequent armed attack on our House of Parliament (seat of the Federal government in Canada).  Twenty-four-year-old Corporal Nathan Cirillo of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (Hamilton ON) was shot from behind and killed as he stood with an unloaded rifle at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and a security guard (again unarmed) at the doors of the Centre Block was wounded trying to deflect the gunman as he charged into the building.

This was pretty crazy for Ottawa, but it was in fact the second attack on a member of Canada’s Armed Forces by a Canadian Muslim convert in that one week; see my previous post. This was another act of terrorism, and we have Sgt-at-Arms Kevin Vickers (head of Parliamentary security) to thank for putting the Ottawa shooter out of our misery.  We also still have PM Stephen Harper to thank for calling it the Islamist terrorism that it is.  There seems to be some opportunistic bill jamming-through, but I’ll leave that out of this.

Can we expect more of this sort of thing?  I would say “yes”, and it’s good that a lone-wolf (who could easily have done much more damage) was the first attack, to shake up security arrangements.  The vehicular attack on Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent earlier that week is the sort of thing you can’t really prepare for, except by paying more attention to your surroundings. I stayed away from this until the dust settled a bit, and now I have some observations.

Firstly, more preventative detention of people who express an interest in “jihad” is in order.  It’s all very nice to make lists of potential bad apples, but when they start killing people that practice is obviously deficient.  You “like” Islamic State on Facebook?  Go to jail for 10+ years for terrorism/sedition.  Yes, sure it might “drive them underground” (too many quotes in this paragraph already) but if you’re not going to stop them when they are operating out in the open that hardly makes a difference. 

Secondly, our security needs some tweaking but mostly on the enforcement side.  Canada is not completely clueless (at the pointy end at least) about the threats we face, but there must be political will to do something about it, and I must say from a domestic political standpoint, the current party/leader combination is the only one which looks like it might have the stones for that.   The Guards at Buckingham Palace carry loaded weapons and there has been talk of arming our sentries, but that won’t happen here due to jurisdictional issues. I have thought about this a bit over that last several days, and on balance it’s better it stays that way provided that the local police will guard them, as is happening now. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Now we know.  If I were running things I would give the sentries a loaded mag so that they are not helpless, but still leave the cops as the first line of response.

Thirdly, media and public reactions.  This implies no conspiracy, but I am going to very cynically say that these attacks are timed very well for the Canadian Armed Forces.  The years in Afghanistan are behind us and the military was largely losing relevance to the public, dissipating the high regard in which they were held.  Defence funding was slashed back to levels not seen since the “peace dividend” Decade of Darkness of the 1990s and it was obvious that even the supposedly CAF-friendly Conservative government had lost sight of the necessity to maintain what you have.  The Canadian public has rallied around Cpl Cirillo in particular, (WO Vincents’s murder was far less telegenic) and two attacks in short order have brought the home-grown jihadi problem into focus a bit more.  I have no illusions that forceful direct action will result from this, but it’s better than nothing.

Media response was well handled overall, but I feel that the hand-wringing about 22 October being “the day that changed everything in Ottawa” was overdone.  That day was in fact September 11^th 2001, and it changed everywhere else in the Western world that day too; a sense of perspective is in order here.  It’s now the week after and things are going back to modified normal just as they should be.  It’s time to stop reacting and start acting against the threats within our borders.  If these fucks want to go to Syria to get killed, let them go and cancel their passports as soon as they clear a European airport.  Pressure on them will push some in that direction, and if they don’t leave they go to jail.  I don’t give a shit if you were born here or not; if Canada isn’t good enough for you get out and don’t come back.

If it squawks like a duck, and kills like a duck…

First of all, my condolences go out to the family of the Canadian Armed Forces member killed yesterday, as do my hopes for the speedy recovery of the one who was injured.  

On Monday 20 October 2014 (yesterday as I write this) two CAF members were intentionally stuck by a car in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu QC, home to a military training facility.  One, as mentioned above, has now died of wounds suffered in this attack.  The driver then sped off, but fortunately there was a police cruiser on the scene (how stupid was this guy?) which gave chase.  After the offender (suspect my ass) rolled his car into a ditch he (apparently) came out with a knife and (fact) was shot dead by police. 

Good riddance to bad rubbish I say, but the most significant part of this whole affair was how the Canadian government handled it.  Immediately after the events, the Prime Minister (himself) called this a probable terrorist attack.  Turns out he wasn’t pulling it out of his ass, as he had been briefed by our National Security organizations about the perp’s background. This guy was a local convert, and had been gobbing off on Facebook or whatever about “going on jihad”.  Since Daesh put out their fatwa on everyone in the Western world, this guy must have felt he was doing his bit.   

It will be interesting to see how the CAF handles this, as I would argue that the member was killed in action.  The Americans by contrast bent themselves into pretzels to call Nidal Hassan’s jihadi killing spree at Fort Hood in 2009 “workplace violence” despite him yelling “Allah Akbar” when he started it.  This refusal to face and admit reality is a leadership failure. 

There will be more of this sort of thing, and in many cases (like this one) they will be essentially unpreventable since we don’t live in a police state.  I will accept that risk, and it’s made easier knowing that PM Harper, whatever his other faults, “gets it” and won’t pretend the problem away.  So, thumbs up to the police officer who settled this guy’s hash, and to our PM for not soft-pedalling the event or the general threat.  

Singularity-minded

What is obvious to anyone with a functioning brain is that there are far more people in this world than any plausibly functional model of our “economy” has a use for.  There are only so many “McJobs” and robots, as the linked article re-hashes, will take most of those. 

The question from there is what to do about that.  I do try in these posts to propose solutions, not merely rail against the myriad of “wrong” in the world, but this one poses a problem to even come up with something which would work, regardless of how unlikely it is to be implemented due to standard human failing and venality.  Here we go anyway.

The population problem is the biggest one.  Back when everything we ate came from family farms and c.80% of the population was occupied doing this, there were c. 1 billion people on Earth.  Now (in developed countries) significantly less than 10%  of the population is engaged in producing our food.

This doesn’t cover all “productive” forms of work, but it does bring the productivity gains of modern technology and organization into focus.  During the early stages of the Industrial Revolution everything was done by hand in a very inefficient but manpower-intensive fashion, resulting in rural depopulation as people rushed to the factories for work.  As time went on and clever people designed labour-saving machines to do unskilled work, those least talented were thrown out of work.  This process began in the 18^th Century and continues today.  Remember that women weren’t part of the workforce at that time (although children were); now we have twice as many people we need to find jobs for.

This frames the problem, but the only two solutions I see popping out of this are:

·         Remove the surplus population, or;

·         Smash our technological base and get us all back making buggy whips or subsistence farming.

It is to be noted that the second option will bring about the first, but without the productivity to make things work; in other words, complete civilizational breakdown.

Nature may soon do something about there being so many of us; Ebola is making its’ way out of Africa for the first time.  The ability of mass international rapid transit to vector diseases worldwide first really got attention during the SARS breakout in 2003, and that had nothing like Ebola’s death rate, albeit it spread even more easily.  Ebola comes in different variants with differing lethality, symptoms and incubation periods so we’ll be dealing with this for a while.  Just imagine if SARS came back too…

Getting back on track, we are in what I’ll call a “luxury-scarcity period”.  It is conceivable to feed everyone, and with very local and temporary exceptions this happens.  If you live in a warm climate (Africa, for example) that is most of what you need to survive; good thing too, given the limited to non-existent social and community housing expenditure there. While there are many people in Western societies who struggle to make ends meet, the number of actually homeless are statistically barely significant and are mostly people with serious mental problems who are essentially un-employable. 

The real question if things don’t completely collapse is: what do we do with the jobless?  I do not believe that there is any “self-evident right’ to anything produced by someone else, although many disagree.  My test of these ideals is how much effort it takes to achieve these “natural” rights.  In this case, it takes the coercive power of a government to make people pay taxes, and it has been always thus.  Breathing is about the only thing that I’d call free, everything else requires somebody to do some work.

“Tax the rich” comes out a lot, usually from people who can’t count past 100 but occasionally from hypocrites like Warren Buffet.  That will not work for the fairly obvious reasons that taxing something makes less of it, and that there isn’t that much money held by “the 1%” compared to what a country spends in a year.   Next year that money won’t be there as the (formerly) rich are confiscated from and those smart enough to see it coming (most of them or they wouldn’t be rich in the first place) will relocate.

There goes the Marxist-Anarchist solution, what next?  Expansion of the current welfare state would seem to be out as that “Scandinavian” model has proven itself unsustainable in the last 20 years.  Shorter work week?  The thing that this glosses over is that there is only so much money in a business to pay people.  If there are 40 person-hours per position and you cut that into 2 chunks, each of them will only be getting paid for 20 hours. 

What all of these ideas have in common is a lowering of living standards. Less money means less stuff, full-stop.  I’ve worked part-time, and it’s great for students or stay-at-home parents who want to generate some more household income while the kids are in school. It was a a time in my life when I had no responsibilities beyond myself and I most certainly could not have supported a familiy on that income. Time is traded for money in pretty-much any type of transaction you can name; the value of that time is highly variable, but however you slice it, ΔTime = Δ$.

Any kind of post-scarcity geek (or other) utopia is based on cheap and abundant energy.  With enough cheap (clean) energy you can do almost anything you want, and paying the heat and light bills of non-productive members of society becomes plausible then..  I am partial to the Culture books of Ian M. Banks as far as post-scarcity sci-fi is concerned, but that construct only works because nearly omniscient AIs are running everything.  The suspension of my disbelief for that is far less of a strain than to assume that people with no profit motive (Star Trek Next Gen) could create and sustain such a thing.

In case you somehow missed it, I am a small-r realist, and I do NOT believe in the perfectibility of Man.  “Pretend to pay them, they pretend to work” didn’t work for Communism so any version of confiscatory taxes intended to level the playing field will have a similar effect.  It takes money (or equivalent) to get stuff done, so I remain at a loss as to how to deal with computers taking our jobs.  It happened to me once already, but the consolations were another job and the fact that the program did a far worse job than I had.  These consolations will be in increasingly short supply.

The irony is that developed countries are just that, developed, and their decreasing birthrates are in step with increases in productivity with Japan leading the way in both.  These countries will not remain prosperous if they have to take in millions of unemployable (because there are no jobs) immigrants (Japan again, but an exception to this).  That is another issue, and panicky diseased epidemic migrants could scupper us all even before the robots do. 

Katie, bar the door.

There has been so much happening and all of it at a fair rate of change that I have had a hard time coming up with a coherent idea for a post here, but I’ll take a stab at it today.
Right now Da’esh is on the cusp of taking Kobani (spelling varies), a Kurdish village on the border with Turkey. Turkey has voted to take military action against Da’esh, bur are sitting on the border watching Da’esh overrun the town while preventing Kurds on their side of the border from getting through with reinforcements and resupply.

Turkey of course has a long violent history with the Kurds, but by their present actions they are ensuring that this continues. There are no simple solutions in that (and many other) part of the world, but if you want to move forward you have to change. Keeping the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” even under these circumstances is a sign of almost pathological hatred, and no good will come of it.
What I would do in Erdrogan’s place is push Da’esh out of a sizable chunk of the area contiguous with Iraqi Kurdistan and encourage as many Kurds as possible to move into it. This would give the Kurds what they want, rid Turkey of its’ more restive Kurdish population (non-violently) and put a stick in Assad’s spokes which Turkey is anxious to do. Looks win-win to me, certainly in relation to what they’re doing now.

The last seismic shift in boundaries in the region was WW1, this is the next one. There is no more “Syria” nor for that matter really any “Iraq”. The resulting vacuum (from failed revolution in the former and failed nation-building in the latter) will be filled by something, as Da’esh is doing right now. The one place where nation-building has a chance (few sure-things in this life) is with a self-identifying group, and the Kurds are one such. This sort of chaos doesn't have to benefit only the bad apples, but force will be required and eggs will be cracked for any such omelette. Mixed food metaphors, but you get the idea. I don’t see a good outcome to this as the will to take the action required is lacking in those who have the power and resources to make it happen.

Speaking of political will, we also have Ebola to deal with. Liberia is on the verge of total collapse, although with its’ recent history that was never too far off at the best of times. These local tragedies would be of scant concern for any other than humanitarian reasons were it not for a confluence of two features of modern life: air travel and Political Correctness.

It is abundantly clear that this is a deadly disease with a c. 40% mortality rate even if you get proper care, worse if you don’t. It’s no SARS in terms of transmission, but in the later stages of incubation all body fluids are vectors, and with fever, nausea and diarrhoea the main symptoms, there are many opportunities if you aren’t quarantined.

This is precisely what needs to be done: quarantine the region. That will be impossible to 100% enforce of course, but without an attempt it will spread everywhere. It has shown up so far in the USA, Spain and now Macedonia, and that’s just what I can remember with certainty right now. Screening measures are going into place but are easily spoofed by people taking standard anti-inflammatory meds or by people lying about their point of origin.

Some airlines have stopped going to these countries, but unless all of them do it won’t stop it. This is frightening enough, but it gets worse. Think panicked mass migration. "Katie, bar the door" indeed, but you won’t like what it would entail to do so. Positive enforcement of borders while ensuring zero entry of desperate and possibly sick people cannot end well and WOULD necessitate lethal force. The only thing which might dissuade someone facing something like Ebola from going where they think they’ll get better medical care is them knowing that they’ll be killed if they try it. What (Western) politician is willing to make THAT call?

Yeah, we’re screwed, but no change there. I may be laying in more emergency food supplies, but if I’m going to do so I’d best do it soon. Likely it won’t come to that here, but even if not I’d best lay in some ammo in case these Da’esh fanboys try to take a crack at us in our “bedrooms”.