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.   

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. 

District 9 by Osmosis

I've had a hard time writing about immigration policy. It's not because I don't have opinions on it (you should all be that lucky) but more because I see a reasonable policy as a forlorn hope.

That however will not stop me, any more than it stops me on all of my other Quixotic railing against stupidity and ignorance. Here is, imo, the crux of the problem for Western countries and the proximate cause of our eventual disappearance.

Bibi speaks no English and has been working at a small Saskatoon restaurant for the last six months. Her boss and friend, Sahana Yeasmin, told CTV that Bibi’s "situation back home is very bad."

Amnesty International is also urging the Canadian government to reconsider the deportation, saying the work of the UN body should be completed before the Canadian government makes any final decisions.

"There’s no way that Canada would want to be responsible for returning a woman back to a country where her rights could be violated," Gloria Nafziger, an Amnesty International refugee co-ordinator, told CTV.

 Emphasis mine. I do not dispute that Pakistan is a horrible place to live if you're a woman, and I can say the same thing for a lot of other places in the world. The problem is, if being a a woman means that your rights could be violated in Pakistan, by this logic we should accept all c. 90 million Pakistani women to protect them from this fate.

Don't be ridiculous, you say? That is the logical extension of this thinking, and it would take a lot less than that to destroy Canada as Canada. We can help some people, but we need to do that in such a way that they help us too. The harsh market truth is that a woman in her 60s with no money, no skills and who doesn't even speak one of our official languages is a liability to Canada, not an asset.

This is the sort of thinking which keeps the wheels turning and the lights on; mushy bleeding-heart talk about trampled "rights" in places we can't control does not help Canada (or the UK, France, Italy, Australia, the USA, etc. ) retain its' character as a place people would want to live in preference to their 3rd-World shithole.

You see what happens when I start in on this stuff? Obnoxious but unassailable truth is what happens. Sure you can tell me I'm a big meanie or a racist or whatever the fuck else you want to tar me with, but WE CAN'T TAKE EVERYBODY WHO WANTS TO COME HERE. I wish I could find the link to it again, but I saw an excellent lecture on immigration which involved jars full of marbles representing the various populations of the world. It very graphically represented what would happen if we were to open the borders, and that if we do so we'll all be living in Nairobi, and most of us not in the nice parts.

"We" are vastly outnumbered, and we should act like it, or there won't be a "we" left. Be very clear that this isn't some "White Power" shtick, I'm talking about culture, which can be adopted. Multiculturalism has failed. It works, for a while, as part of an empire, but a functioning democracy is a delicate flower which can be crowded out by weeds. Iffy analogy, but I think you get the point.

Going back to Nigeria again, contrast the governance of that country with that of Canada. It's a good comparison, as both have rich resource-based economies and educated, English-speaking ruling classes. Canada has internal divisions, but not the sort who raid each others' villages; the same cannot be said for the diverse parties in Nigeria. Nigeria is not poor, and Nigerians are no stupider on an individual basis than Canadians are (I'll steer clear of "Race IQ" stuff) so I would have to say the difference between their volatile and ineffective governance and ours is mostly a cultural one.

Now, if you like the way they do things, good for you. I don't, and I suspect the majority of people who grew up in (or gravitated to) the Western system would like to keep living in it. That means we can take some immigrants from wherever, but in digestible increments, and not just anyone. Sticking to this sort of policy is not for the meek, but if you like how things are where you are, it must be done so that the fortunate and productive few who we do take in have a nice place to live.

Symptoms of the Diseased Body Politic

With the Global Whack-a-Mole on Terror sputtering along again in Iraq, the issue of "foreign fighters” is at the fore once more. The UK has announced an intention to do something half-assed about non-citizen passport holders who go off on jihad. While some may take this as "finally someone's doing something", I personally see it as a sign of the rot and weakness which will be the end of Western Civilization.

Western Civilization has had a rough go for sure and is far from perfect, but it has produced most of what makes modern life comfortable and reasonably long. Scientific Method, germ theory of disease, immunization and advances in horticulture and chemistry have all come from "us", immeasurably improving lives the world over and the only things which make our current population remotely sustainable. This doesn't even include the advances in materials sciences and computers which keep everything moving.

It's not about colour or race, it's about culture. Anybody can be "western" if they want to, and there was a time when it was the thing to aspire to. Two World Wars accelerated the collapse of the British Empire as well as that of the French, but not before both had left their modernizing and linguistic impressions across the globe. The ideas were loose but so were some others, specifically Communism and Islamism. It could of course be argued that Communism is a Western development, but despite its' geographical origin it fails the "keep moving forward" test. There was a time when that was about unrestrained development, but it moved past that (for most people) to be about doing things better than before, not just bigger.

That still exists, but it is increasingly opposed by limiting philosophies. Foremost in my estimation is the "Climate Change" lobby. If you actually look at who is doing what you'll notice two distinct groups. First are the profiteers, the ones pushing carbon trading scams schemes, the Solyndras and wind farm subsidy-seekers, and of course the "scientists" who have sold out for the grants. They are bad and dangerous, but their motivations are venal and easily understood. The real menace are the Luddite (watermelon) Greens.

EVERY proposal to limit greenhouse gases (they could start, simply by ceasing to breathe) would destroy advanced technological societies by wrecking their economies. The partial success they've had in North America has driven up electricity rates and decreased reliability of supply, a mere shadow of what they would like to do. See the UK for the next step from where we are.

All of this is to say that the seeds of the downfall of Western Civilization are sown from within, and we are proving ourselves "unfit" in the evolutionary biological sense by the death-wish we have as a society. Cultural Marxism and Critical Theory are the key tools to take us down from within. When Moral Relativism is your guiding philosophy the outcome seems to be that everything else is judged superior to your own culture.

I like Rule of Law and having a decent chance of surviving walking the streets at night; it may surprise you but the two things are not actually related. They are in fact a historically exceptionally (vanishingly) rare combination even in the imperfect form we find them today in our First World countries. The harsh truth is that if you hate your heritage so much that you'd deluge your country with "Diversity" the basic institutions created in that First World will be replaced by the Third World which you have imported. Think of India, but where it's too cold to live in a shack, but that's the best case going down that road.

Which brings us back to the intro paragraph. Thousands of Saudis flocking to al Qaeda and now ISIS is no surprise. What is more of surprise on the face of it is recent Muslim converts of European extraction doing the same. Scratch the surface a bit and it starts to make sense. If you think of these Salafist groups as both "a Cause" and as gangs, you will see the appeal to overlapping personality types.

The simplest type is the adventurer. Young men have been from time immemorial headed out on raids and general mayhem, and these find expression in gangs, pirates, drug cartels, etc. I'm sure you would find that many in ISIS' current ranks aren't "true believers" but more opportunistic criminals and psychopaths with a gloss of religion to make it look good to the group. The next group need to belong to something, and jihad is the most dynamic something going today. A sub-set of them are the types who hate Western society as decadent and overly permissive and find the intolerance and rigidity of Wahhabi-style Islam the perfect antidote.

If the Arabs hate us, big deal, we've been fighting them since Roman times at least. When our own people turn against us to join them we really need to think about root causes. The simplest way to look at this is as osmosis or as Nature abhorring a vacuum.

Our confidence in the way we do things has declined, and with it our confidence and assertiveness as a culture. People in most parts of the world like to be on the winning side, and right now that doesn't look like us. We need something to believe in, but the common culture we once had (even between British and French in Canada it wasn't fundamentally different) has been systematically dismantled and blackballed as the worst thing ever.

There's your vacuum. Something needs to take the place of the Iliad and Odyssey, Horatius at the Bridge, Charles Martel, The Charge of the Light Brigade, Vimy Ridge, the flag raising on Iwo Jima, etc. If you don't have passing familiarity with at least 5 of the above, well, you're not alone these days.

The past is treacherous territory, but at some point you have to choose something to believe in. It could be where you come from (dangerous to outsiders) religion (ditto) or whatever else, but if you don't stake out something as the Line Which Shall Not Be Crossed you'll have no anchor and no standards for how things should be. We can do better than the old days, but we need something for people of diverse backgrounds to rally to. The current Canadian government is bucking the trend and trying to bring our history back, but they won't last forever. As long as we can't give our people something worth dying for, radical Islam will be ready to fill that void.

It's not paranoia if they ARE out to get you

t has not escaped my notice that I am a minority viewpoint in today's society. This doesn't make me doubt myself or my views, as they are based on observation of the world as it is, not as I think it should be.

This it could be said is the difference between a conservative and other people, and indeed, this article makes that point:

Traditional conservatism, or what’s better called Toryism, is not about hiding from the scary outside world. It’s a worldview that, as A. J. P. Taylor described it, “rests on doubt in human nature; it distrusts improvement, clings to traditional institutions, prefers the past to the future.” Conservatism isn’t defined by gun-nuttery or rabid fundamentalism. It’s about prudence in the face of progressive utopianism and revolutionary fervor. When the conservative looks into the mirror, he sees a broken, fallible man capable of good, but never perfect, things. Liberals and government apparatchiks in the media don’t see him that way. Progressivism seeks to crush human nature and the idea that man isn’t meant for greatness. A progressive’s reflection never shows humility, only a hubristic belief in fixing all the world’s wrongs. For the left, right-wingers, including social conservatives, are ignorant troglodytes in need of forced enlightenment.

It continues to draw disturbing parallels between past purges of "undesirable" elements of society by various "progressive" regimes of the past and the thought-crime policing which is going on today, but you can read it there.

I'd like to say that I think the author is off his rocker/meds but I really can't. We're not at Reign of Terror level yet, but having unfashionable (but harmless) ideas can cost you your job, no small thing in today's economy. Of course this is a small price to pay for a better world, right?

The word utopia means literally "no place" since perfection cannot exist in human affairs. Make things better? Certainly better, but perfect? No. That is my troglodyteist conservativeness speaking of course, because after a certain point the quest for "equality" becomes a zero-sum game. More women in the workplace equals less men in it; not a misogynist rant, simple math. Should we hobble the potential of 50% of the population to maintain someone's advantage? I'd say no, take all the best and brightest. Well, then that disadvantages the dim and useless.

It's easy to see how equality of outcome is completely separate from equality of opportunity, as with true equality of opportunity the cream will rise to the top of whatever you're looking at. If you game the opportunity, making it "more equal" for some, it descends into farce with manifold unintended consequences. Quotas and "affirmative action" undermine any confidence in the products of a system, as you can never be sure of the quality of any member of the preferred groups. Were I a black neurosurgeon I would really resent this. Meritocracy is problematic for those who don't make the cut, but I bloody well want my doctors and engineers selected by that process.

Freedom of speech is if not dead at least gravely wounded, mainly because if you don't toe the line you'll be shouted down. Nobody debates any more as they are either too certain that they know everything or afraid to state their real views in public. None of this is new under the sun, and Voltaire would likely recognize the constraints of the current regime, having had his run-ins with l'ancien. That's progress for you.

POTUSeless

Honestly I don't know where to turn right now, the world is spinning out in so many places. It is of course of no import to the grand scheme whether I'm tracking everything or not, but it is a big deal (it turns out) when the USA can't do it.

I am profoundly unimpressed with the current POTUS, but it is not a partisan or ideological attack I make when I say that he is worse-than useless in his current job. "Worse-than" for a number of reasons, but particularly since leadership of the (still) most powerful nation in the world is a zero-sum game, i.e. if he's occupying the top position nobody more capable can be.

The USA has a number of internal problems, being deeply indebted (mostly to their greatest strategic rival) being one of them, but their ability to project power is still unrivalled. Things would certainly be different on the foreign policy front were G.W. Bush still in charge, but since that can't happen (even if it were advisable and I don't suggest that) would things be any better around the world had Romney won the last Presidential election?

Let's start by enumerating the bigger strategic threats to the US and various other distractions, in descending order.

Threat #3: China's encroachment in the South China Sea and environs

In the big picture this is hugely destabilizing to world trade and the economic development of countries in the region. It is also something only the US Navy can be an effective counterweight to. There was a "pivot to Asia" bruited about recently, but again just saying something doesn't make it true. The Chinese aren't playing around here, and if you want to stop them you’d better be prepared to park a carrier task force over the Spratleys or Paracells, etc. in support of the most legitimate national claim under international law. And use it if push comes to shove.

I rank this one in last place for strategic threats, but it approaches zero if you decide to let the Chinese run the area. There are hundreds of millions of people on that region who would rather that didn't happen, for whatever that's worth.

Threat #2: The Islamic State, formerly Sunni Iraq and eastern Syria

ISIS/L has metastasized into a regional jihadist vortex, drawing in violent Muslim extremists from around the region and increasingly around the globe. They are firewalled in the north by the Kurds and nervously watched from all other points of the compass, the Shia government of rump Iraq and Iran doing the closest thing to heavy lifting right now.

The US didn't want to get involved in Syria, and I don't fault that since we are seeing with the looting of military stores in Mosul a Salafist organization with American military equipment, something widely predicted should the US arm the Syrian rebels. Turns out it happened anyway since the US backed the wrong horse (Maliki) in Iraq.

No however is the time to start whacking those jihadi moles. It's not a free-fire zone but the next best thing which is a great chance to kill a whole lot of assholes the world could really do without. This would be light on boots on the ground but could be used judiciously in support of limited goals, e.g. securing the Jordanian and Kurdish border areas. You support the outposts of civilization in the region but learn the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan and eschew the nation-building part of it. Killing them there prevents them from coming here.

Threat # 1: The Border

Central America is coming apart and people in desperation are sending their children north to the US in belief (well-founded if not technically accurate) that they won't be deported. Obama is trying hard to bury his head in the sand over this one, but with 350,000+ immigration cases backed up in US courts and upwards of 60K unaccompanied minors this year alone fetching up along the Rio Grande things are well out of hand.

Bleeding hearts who would abolish the border (another pesky "social construct" to be wiped out no doubt) have zero grasp of basic math, but let me put this in the starkest terms I can. There are TOO MANY PEOPLE IN THE WORLD. Specifically, there are too many people in the world with lower standards of living than we (working and middle class Westerners) have, about 5 Billion of them. They can't all come to the developed countries or those countries will cease to function as developed countries, and the whole world will look like Nigeria (failing state) or worse.  Think the L.A. from Elysium without the space habitat.

What to do? Start with enforcing the immigration laws already on the books. Then, dismantle the "War on Drugs" and send all those resources into Central America to clean out the root causes of the panic immigration. Bugger going after the drug distribution networks, just shoot-on-sight anyone on the streets with a gun. Go after the guns and kill with extreme prejudice any of the gang-bangers who want to fight it out. The US can put together intelligence cells to track insurgent groups better than anyone else, and I can make a case that stabilizing Central America (and ceasing to fuck with Mexico) would do more for the medium to long-term security of the US than the Middle East, possibly even China..

Distractions

1. Ukraine is setting into a counter-insurgency phase and at the moment (some rumours aside) the Russians have backed off. As I hypothesized a while back, Putin has taken the low-hanging fruit (Crimea) but realizes that the Donbas is more trouble than it's worth. This keeps things on NATO's radar, but it is now mostly a European problem.
2. Africa. There is a persistent Ebola (variant) outbreak in West Africa which deserves having an eye kept on it, and the continent is still awash in jihadi groups (AQIM, and Boko Haram the most visible) who need pruning.
3. Afghan elections/final drawdown/status of forces. Karzai's out, but the squabbling commences over alleged fraud and run-offs.

The big and the small all require leadership, the sort that believes in what they're doing. Since Obama only objective was to dismantle US power projection he's largely managed that, but it doesn't really get troops or the population rallying around the flag for some dirty work overseas, or even in your own back yard.  Romney is looking prescient for his attitude toward Russia, even if I disagree on the threat Russia really presents to us.  More of a mystery is domestic politics, but we know Romney knos how to run things so I really think he was the President the US needed, but instead they got the one they deserve.  Do better next time America, for you own sake as well as the world.

 

Greater Eurasian Co-Prosperity Sphere

The trigger for me to reactivate this blog was the Crimea crisis, and that is not yet over at time of writing.  A number of people have been impressed by how PM Harper is sticking it to the Russians over this, but I don't see the value of it.  I'm pretty sure Putin realises that this posturing (authentic as the feelings may be) is political in nature, but it doesn't look to have made any difference on the ground whatsoever.

Putin continues to play his cards close to his vest and my appreciation of the Donetsk basin as the next potential flashpoint is still in play.  As the US tries to figure out what Putin plans, I will put out there what I suspect is happening in his head on this.

As stated previously, Russia needs Russians, and there are a lot of them in the eastern Ukraine.  That is the grand plan, recreation of as much of the Russian Empire as they can without getting in a (big) shooting war to do so.  Second factor, Putin has proven himself a highly adept geopolitical opportunist, which plays into the empire building as well as general manoeuvring.  When faced with such inept (America) and beholden (Europe) opposition as Russia is right now, Putin is king of the hill.

Canada is making a principled stand against the annexation of Crimea, but principles are cheap when you have no skin in the game.  Crimea is not going back to Ukraine barring force majure and that's not happening.  It didn't work so well last time either.

My question is whether the Kremlin's threat assessment of international action in case of "assistance" to Russian-speaking eastern Ukrainians comes up plus or minus.  If Putin gains more than he loses, he'll probably go for it.  The sanctions we can/will bring to bear are limited in effect on a country as large and endowed with resources as Russia.  Equally important, the Chinese and the Indians, as well as most of Central Asia will continue to trade and otherwise work with Russia, China more so if it discomfits the US.

It has also been said that Ukraine had better show some willingness to fight for its' territory, and I think this an excellent point.  Russia would beat them handily, but just because you will probably lose isn't sufficient reason to not fight in this case.  What does get drowned out in all of this is the political/social mess that Ukraine is, so I have no real faith in their ability to put an effective military force in the field even if they are inclined to do so.

 At this point I think military force is the only credible deterrent to Putin, and even then only when it will actually be used.  An armed, contested invasion of Ukraine is an undeniable act of war and contravention of international law, and that was enough to get people to defend Kuwait 24 years ago.  Ukraine doesn't have the oil of Kuwait, but it does occupy a strategic buffer position in Eurasia, so you'd think the Europeans might take some issue with carving it up.

I suspect that most Europeans consider Ukraine not worth the bones of a single Swabian Panzer Grenadier, so it's up to the Poles and other border countries to stand up and conduct some "exercises" of their own in Ukraine.  An attack on the troops of a NATO member would force NATO to act, and forcing NATO to act is in the "minus" column for Putin.  As a side note, if NATO isn't prepared to act to counter Russian territorial aggrandizement, it might as well pack it in, as that's what it was set up to do!

Putin could over-reach himself, but under current conditions taking the Russian-majority areas of east Ukraine wouldn't be stretching too far, so consider that.   I think the decision on what to do will come in the next few days, and will depend heavily on what the US does.  On past performance, I'll bet on Putin having effectively a free hand, whatever that portends. 

Peninsular Peril

The votes have been cast (by those who didn't boycott the referendum) and Crimea has seceded from Ukraine and wants to go back to Russia. I regard this as a done deal as will any realistic observer, despite the protestations of illegitimacy from Western leaders.

That most people living there would prefer to go with Russia is obvious, even if the fact that Putin continues to gather Russians continues to elude people looking for motivation. It is known that Putin continues to use the immediate recognition of Kosovo after we'd bombed the Serbs out of there as licence to annex his own "self-determining" majority areas back to the Rodina, but not acknowledged by most of the media, let alone Western politicians.

So what? Sure, some people will be unhappy, and Ukraine is out some income from Sevastopol rental to the Russians, but what does that mean to anyone else? Ukraine has had a sequence of corrupt governments since independence from the USSR and I sure as shit don't want to get dragged into another war in Europe. Certainly not over an Anschluss like this, and I see the geopolitical cost to North America to be nil from the Crimea changing hands. The damage from puffing up and making vague threats of sanctions against Russia is potentially great.

A lot of people really didn't like G.W. Bush, but most of them were either lefties for whom realpolitik-clueless Obama can do no wrong, or people GW decided to take some action against, like, say, the late Saddam Hussein. One thing which definitively separates Bush II and Obama is that nobody who counts takes the latter seriously. Even in a no-win situation like the invasion of Georgia by Russia in 2008, Bush made a point of having American assets in the capital (Tbilisi) to present the Russians with an unspoken "red line". It must be noticed that as sub-optimal as things may have turned out for Georgia, the Russians took the hint and pulled most of the way back.

The lost Georgian territory is a lesson to them not to poke the bear, no matter if you're provoked. The lesson to us is (again) Talk - Action = Zero, Action - Talk = >Zero. I don't know what "we" would do if Russia had another crack at Georgia right now, but somebody had better be taking some proactive steps to dissuade Putin from cooking something up in Eastern Ukraine to take that also. After that? Belarus? The Baltic States?

The Balts have less to fear, and more potential European support than Ukraine due to ethnic/national/cultural connections to Europe vice Russia. I may have read The Clash of Civilizations too much, but birds of a feather do flock together and it makes sense to me to draw our lines along those natural fault lines.

I keep talking about action, so what should be done? In practice I don't see a lot of potential for the sort of thing that I think would send the right message, but if Europe still had any armies, it'd be a good time to start scheduling boots-on-the-ground joint exercises with what's left of Ukraine and put some bases in the Baltic States. Physical assets, preferably those which can shoot back, will do the job. Putin doesn't want a war as it's not in his interest to lose more than he'd gain. He will walk into as many places with a Russian majority population as he is permitted to, sanctions be damned.

Whatever. For my money, the next flashpoint is Donetsk, but it's not exactly crystal ball territory to come up with that. This is NOT a fait accompli but if Putin pushes for it he has enough support on the ground to pull it off in some fashion if there is no physical response from "our side". As long as Obama/Kerry are running the US show and the Europeans are beholden to Russia for their heating fuel, it's Putin's geographical and demographic prize to gain, and Ukraine's to lose.