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.   

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.

Demographic Adjustment

I was going to go with something about Syria, how the UN and a number of countries have finally decided that slaughtering your civilians in a reign of terror to uphold your regime is a "bad thing", but what's the point?  Gaddaffi was thrown over for much less, the only reason I can see being European economic (oil) interests and a complete lack of understanding of the internal dynamics of Libya.  Since Syria has no oil worth mentioning and Assad is inexplicably given a pass in the international community as a "reformer", I guess his timing was good on this one to capitalize on the intervention fatigue which has come in wake of Libya.

Hmm, looks like I'm talking about this anyway. I'd like to say that this is what happens when I start writing without a plan, but sometimes it happens even with one.  To take this topic as far as I can now see a point in doing, perhaps people did in fact learn something about knocking over the strongman leaders of cobbled-together states.  This could explain the lack of definitive action vs. Assad, but that gives too much credit to institutions which have failed to learn from pretty-much anything else in recent and more remote history.  The disintegration of Libya for example has already spawned an Islamist/Tuareg takeover of half of neighbouring Mali, a direct result of that conflict.

Tito and Yugoslavia, anyone?  Not exactly ancient history and there are plenty more where that came from.  There are no neat endings/answers short of forcible partition (a la Kosovo, as bad an example as that is) so what else do we have?  As always there is lots going on under rocks of various sizes the world over but I am finding myself to be caring less and less about it.  Posing problems without solutions (or at least management) is not my style, and I honestly don't know what to expect in Syria. 

Given the resources I would chop it up I guess, but there's no winning in that part of the world short of some Old Testament ethnic cleansing.  One of my recent posts noted the willingness of a large part of Egyptian society to do this to Israel, but Arabs have been trying to re-do what the Romans did nearly 2000 years ago without success for 60+ years so it's almost boring (from this distance anyway) now.

One thing I have to say is that I'm becoming fond of the idea of a few hardcore Islamic states popping up in certain places.  My rationale is that this gives you something that you can attack as it concentrates terrorist idiots wonderfully.  Northern Mali? A good opportunity to kill a bunch of guys the world will not lament passing; it worked in Iraq and it's working to some extent in Somalia and Yemen right now so it's not without precedent.

And this takes us to Diversity as a policy.  It doesn't work.  People don't like "us" all that much, they REALLY don't like "them" in any quantity too near them.  This is as politically incorrect as all get-out, but it's a demonstrable fact.  The divide can be racial, though far more often it's religious/ideological/cultural, and the more of those differences you combine the worse the animosity is.  The answer to this would seem to be "split them up" would it not?  Yes, but...

People are even in our "enlightened" age essentially tribal and will almost always at least temporarily expand their "us" net to sweep in those with relatively minor differences when faced with a real "other".  Subdividing people too much would destroy these accommodations, so as much as I think maps need to be redrawn, more consideration and less zeal needs to be brought to bear on the process.  And yes, moving people around is the best way to accomplish this effectively (Greece and Turkey in the 1920s).

Back to Syria to close things out, here's a proposal: carve away a section for the Alawites, Christians and Druze along the Lebanese/Israeli border, leave the Sunnis the rest of it, maybe taking off the NE corner as a contribution to "Kurdistan".  Lots of hardship associated with this and a lot of other problems (Turkey's reaction to the Kurdistan idea not the least of them) but you know, omelets, eggs, etc.

The Maple Leaf for Now

First off, all the best to you in the year that Mayans decided to stop making calendars; considering where that civilization is these days I'd say they built more than enough redundancy into them. I can never guarantee we won't have a cataclysm, but I'll put my money (and everything else!) on the fact that I'll still be around this time a year from now.
 

AotF starts the year starts with more local musings on civilization. Canada is 40+ years down the history-abnegating path of Multiculturalism and Political Correctness, and we finally have a government which is trying to reclaim the common past of this country.
 

Political observers of all stripes believe the revival of interest in Canada's colonial history is part of a broader Conservative effort to rekindle patriotism and reshape Canada's culture more in the government's own image.

Tom Flanagan, a former adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper who now teaches at the University of Calgary, said that vision took root many years ago -- and originated at the top.

"Stephen once said to me that a conservative party in any country ought to be party of patriotism," Flanagan said in an email. "He is now creating a conservative version of Canadian patriotism."

Harper's brand of national pride relies heavily on elements common to many right-wing political movements, including unwavering support for the military and a push to lay claim to the country's far-flung northern regions, Flanagan said.

 

The thing that gets the most press of course is the attention to the formalities of our association with the Crown. There seem to be a lot of people who can't tell the difference between a Republic (what the USA started off as) and a Constitutional Monarchy, our form of government. The Queen is our Head of State, not the Prime Minister, and as long as that relationship is maintained protocol must be observed.
 

Where I weigh in on this is the connection it provides Canadians with a common heritage. Quebec, although intimately wound up in Canada’s common colonial past will always be bent out of shape about that fact that a German king took over from their French one. La Belle Provence has never accepted that they were but a Great Power pawn, so getting them on board with the monarchy is not going to happen.
 

Canada was referred to as "two solitudes" but I'd like to think we can reduce that to one: Nationalist Quebecois  who are already a vanishing political force. The rest of us, whatever our extraction, can adopt Canada with an identifiable history. Even if it wasn't your ancestors directly, you should be able to adopt the broad sweep of Canada's history, for example:
 

At Queenston Heights and Lundy's Lane,

Our brave fathers, side by side,

For freedom, homes and loved ones dear,

Firmly stood and nobly died;

And those dear rights which they maintained,

We swear to yield them never!

Our watchword evermore shall be

"The Maple Leaf forever!"
 

The whole of "The Maple Leaf Forever" is dated, sure, but there need to be things that a culture can identify as its' own or it doesn't exist. The latter works for "progressives" for whom everything that might set someone apart from anyone else is bad, but even a democracy requires an identity if people are going to be inspired to work for it.
 

Defending our territory is foremost in the duties of the Federal government, so solidifying our hold on the Arctic should not be at all controversial, merely overdue. Acknowledging the constitutional advantages of having a hereditary Head of State with (very) limited but absolute powers to dissolve government shows the robustness of our Democracy to withstand tyranny and demagoguery.
 

I am not a Monarchist for the sake of the Royal Family (Charles as King, really?) but the Canada that most people can agree that they want to live in would not be secure as a Republic. The separation of taxation power from the hereditary/appointed Crown which has the power to approve and dissolve government provides a simple "check and balance" on the prerogatives of both elements. Supporting that should not only be a "conservative" position.
 

Anyway, I pulled back in to start off the New Year, but I'm sure there will be wide-ranging wackiness for me to comment on before long. As I do occasionally, I'll appeal to any of you who read this to give me some sign with comments or even the quick "tick in the box" impressions I've provided for your convenience. No names, no pack drill, but I am curious to know a bit about who is looking at this.

Only one arm tied now...

David Cameron isn't the first European leader to say that Multiculturalism (as a policy) is dead, but the backlash from the usual suspects wasn't long in coming. First, Cameron:

"Let's properly judge these organisations: Do they believe in universal human rights - including for women and people of other faiths? Do they believe in equality of all before the law? Do they believe in democracy and the right of people to elect their own government? Do they encourage integration or separatism?

"These are the sorts of questions we need to ask. Fail these tests and the presumption should be not to engage with organisations," he added.

So far, so good. However, look at the list of traits we're validating here, and it's pretty obvious that there is a major religious group whose very basic tenets specifically deny those "universal human rights". Again, guess who. Well, here's part of the other side to spoil your fun figuring it out:

Meanwhile, the Muslim Council of Britain's assistant secretary general, Dr Faisal Hanjra, described Mr Cameron's speech as "disappointing".

He told Radio 4's Today programme: "We were hoping that with a new government, with a new coalition that there'd be a change in emphasis in terms of counter-terrorism and dealing with the problem at hand. In terms of the approach to tackling terrorism though it doesn't seem to be particularly new. Again it just seems the Muslim community is very much in the spotlight, being treated as part of the problem as opposed to part of the solution."

"Part of the problem"? Who keeps blowing things up and killing people for insulting their religion? Muslims, that's who. Any other groups are vanishingly small statistical anomalies in the group violence which threatens our transport and general security. Until that changes, the spotlight is where it should be.

Or is it? Later from Cameron's address:

"We need to be clear: Islamist extremism and Islam are not the same thing," he said.

And this is where he loses focus and the spotlight gets wobbly. Not everyone who goes to the Mosque on Friday is a terrorist, but the religion puts itself ahead of everything else. There is no “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” in the Koran or the Hadiths. Speaking of the latter:

42 Al-Miqdad heard Allah's Messenger (peace be upon him) as saying: There will not remain upon the surface of the earth a mud-brick house or a camel's-hair tent but Allah will instill into it the word of Islam, bringing both mighty honour and abject humiliation. Allah will either honour them by making them worthy of it and those whom He humiliates shall have to render submission to it. I said: The religion will then be entirely for Allah.

This is what we're up against. There is lots of foolishness in (especially) the Old Testament too, but Christianity (and Hinduism, Sikhism, and especially Buddhism) doesn't have a problem with secular governance. Alone amongst the major religions, Islam is NOT compatible with Rule of Law. It's a fundamental problem (not just "Islamic extremism" or other convocations of Islam) and it can't be danced around.

Let me be clear about what I'm saying here. You can believe WHATEVER you want, as long as it doesn't become MY problem. Forcing your religion on me violates that right out of the gate, so keep what you believe to yourself, and certainly out of public policy that I as a taxpayer am paying for.

I don't see Stephen Harper saying anything like this in the near future, but we don't yet have the sort of problems with multi-culty that Europe and the U.K. do . Hopefully they can manage their problems with this and we can avoid ours getting worse. This is a good start for the U.K. but Cameron needs to drop the gloves and tell everyone flat-out that Religion (that means yours too, Jack!) and the State will remain separate. Have no fear though; even if we whip this problem (not likely) there are plenty left to keep life interesting.

Curtain coming down on Security Theatre?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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