Mailvox: slutwalking

A number of people have emailed me about the Great Canadian Slut Walk - slogan: she's not slutty, she's Canadian - and wondered about my response to it. I have accordingly posted my thoughts on the subject at Alpha Game.

Comments ()

It seems the New Atheism is not on the rise

Contra the assertions of various factually- and logically-challenged individuals, the evangelical efforts of Richard Dawkins and his Scarlet-A campaign would appear to have fizzled:

A national UK survey out Monday found no traces of an "autism epidemic," despite earlier reports that the developmental disorder has been rising quickly in recent decades. Researchers found nearly one percent of Britons older than 16 years have autism, a rate that is similar to that seen in children. Younger people were no more likely to be affected than older ones, however, which would have been expected if the condition were truly on the increase.

"It was surprising to all of us," said Dr. Traolach Brugha, a psychiatrist at the University of Leicester, who worked on the study. "If this study is correct, it does put a big question mark over the autism epidemic."

On a related note, I was more than a little amused to encounter John Keegan's assertion of the way in which most people naturally "flee the company" of "the compulsively argumentative" while reading The Face of Battle today. But if it is not a mild form of autism that renders so many atheists completely incapable of recognizing it is their behavior that people despise and not their lack of belief, what else may serve to explain this compulsively argumentative truculence?

Comments ()

The ritual Republican self-castration

And so begins the familiar process of manipulating the Republican grass roots and saddling them with a status quo Republican approved by the red faction of the ruling party:

Who does best against Obama? Paul. The congressman from Texas, who also ran as a libertarian candidate for president in 1988 and who is well liked by many in the tea party movement, trails the president by only seven points (52 to 45 percent) in a hypothetical general election showdown. Huckabee trails by eight points, with Romney down 11 points to Obama. The poll indicates the president leading Gingrich by 17 points, Palin by 19, and Trump by 22 points.

As one commenter at National Review noted, "So Pawlenty is the "top-tier" candidate at 5%, and Ron Paul is the "non-major" candidate at 8%. Nope, can't see where charges of bias might come from."

It not remarkable how a powerful congressman who performs well in the polls, raises more money than the other candidates, is more intellectually formidable than any of them, and was proven to be correct about both the endless nature of the foreign interventionism of the last decade and the fragility of the banking system is automatically deemed "unelectable" and a "minor candidate". What is remarkable is the large number of mindless, thoughtless Republicans who, despite their feigned disdain for it, blithely accept the mainstream media's assertions and obey the stage management of the party elders.

And so we'll see all the faux conservatives pushing the ludicrous likes of Captain Underoos, Newt Gingrich, and the feckless Tim Pawlenty. For those non-Minnesotans not familiar with Pawlenty, all you need to know is that he is a spineless wet noodle of a politician with the moral principle of a Clinton.

Comments ()

What is worse than federal "help"?

"Help" from the United Nations:

Five thousand dead, 300,000 ill, and a medical emergency that has already lasted six months; now the people of Haiti have someone to blame for the cholera outbreak which has swept through their earthquake-ravaged country: the blue-helmeted peacekeepers of the United Nations.

An official report into the ongoing epidemic, which began last October, has concluded that it was almost certainly caused by a poorly constructed sanitation system installed at a rural camp used by several hundred UN troops from Nepal.

The virulent strain of cholera bacteria began infecting locals after faecal matter from their base seeped from badly designed septic pits into the Meye River, a tributary of the Artibonite River in the country's central region.

The United Nations is far worse than the joke many people believe it to be. If it ever obtains the genuine global power it seeks, the 5,000 Haitians it killed in the last six months will look like the smallest of rounding errors.

Comments ()

And yet curiouser

Still not smelling even the faintest odor of rat?

White House seeks to scotch bin Laden questions

The White House on Thursday sought to sidestep controversy over the exact circumstances of the raid to kill Osama bin Laden, highlighting instead a "flawlessly" executed and dangerous mission. Officials have declined to give any further details of the raid against the Al-Qaeda leader, after being forced to amend earlier accounts of what exactly happened when Navy SEALS stole deep into Pakistan in a covert action on Sunday.

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters on Air Force One that the operation was still being evaluated, but said that after transparently offering details of what happened, Washington was no longer offering public accounts.

Well, that's one way to convince everyone. Just refuse to answer questions and try to change the subject. Either Obama has the least competent PR staff in the history of the White House or there is something deeply wrong about the Official Story of the heroic bin Laden assassination. It's fascinating to see how the administration has so rapidly gone from bragging about it to not wanting to talk about it.

Comments ()

Another victim of feminism

One can respect the woman for her honesty, but it's hard to have a whole lot of pity for those who simply refuse to prioritize pursuing marriage and children:

I never envisaged life without a family. I had three significant relationships in my 20s and 30s, each of which I assumed would lead to marriage and children. My first relationship, with a fellow university student, ended after five years. We were 25, and he wasn’t ready to settle down, so we parted.

At 27, I started seeing the man who was to become my second major boyfriend. We had been together for 18 months when I found out he had been seeing someone else, so I was left with no choice but to end it.

I became involved with a man I was sure would be The One when I was 30. Right partner, right life-stage; what could go wrong? Three years down the line, he announced that he had fallen in love with someone else, and that it was over between us. And so, at the age of 33, I suddenly became single. The years that followed were some of the most difficult of my life, as close friends married and started families....

My regrets will always linger. My life is a poorer place for not having children, and I am less of a woman for not being a mother.

Needless to say, there are far many parents blithely encouraging their daughters to pursue worthless college degrees and dead-end "careers", and far too few encouraging them to place a priority on meeting and marrying the right kind of man. It's bizarre how young women are taught to apply to the right colleges, while at the same time waiting for the right man to drop unannounced out of the sky. Does anyone tell high school girls to simply wait and be patient for a university admission office to eventually ask them to show up on campus at the moment they least expect it?

Comments ()

The inevitable return of racism

It is becoming increasingly obvious that there was a legitimate reason underlying the imperialist European's concept of the White Man's Burden. Those who harbor a distaste for observable reality can shriek "racism" all they like, but no amount of moral self-preening or politically correct histrionics is going to change the fact that certain groups have repeatedly and reliably demonstrated a complete inability to maintain the societal infrastructure that is required to sustain Western-style civilization. There is no need to delve into potential biological or cultural explanations to simply observe what is not only historically and empirically obvious, but increasingly undeniable.

According to a new report, 47 percent of Detroiters are ”functionally illiterate.” The alarming new statistics were released by the Detroit Regional Workforce Fund on Wednesday. WWJ Newsradio 950 spoke with the Fund’s Director, Karen Tyler-Ruiz, who explained exactly what this means.

“Not able to fill out basic forms, for getting a job — those types of basic everyday (things). Reading a prescription; what’s on the bottle, how many you should take… just your basic everyday tasks,” she said. “I don’t really know how they get by, but they do. Are they getting by well? Well, that’s another question,” Tyler-Ruiz said.

Now, perhaps those who believe in racial, cultural, national, and ethnic equality will find this piece of evidence unconvincing too. Perhaps 47 percent isn't high enough to concern them, or perhaps they'll put it down to some mysterious cultural change that happens to coincide with the transformation of the racial demographics of Detroit. Or perhaps they will suspect semantic games behind ill-defined terms such as "functionally illiterate". Such excuses may smack of willful obtuseness, but are not entirely unreasonable.

So, here's the question. Precisely how bad will things have to get before you abandon your belief in racial, cultural, national, religious, and ethnic equality? 100 percent illiteracy? 80 percent illegitimacy? Cannibalism and necrophilia in the streets? Or will it take the complete abandonment of a once-thriving metropolis before you are willing to admit that there actually might be some real science behind the idea that all human beings are not, in fact, equal in any material manner and that civilization depends upon recognizing those material inequalities and taking them into account?

It's easy to avoid having a serious discussion on such matters by simply throwing rhetorical bombs. "Do you seriously believe blacks shouldn't be permitted to vote, you horrible racist?" "Do you seriously believe the citizen children of hard-working, law-abiding undocumented Mexicans should be forcibly deported to a country they have never even seen, you cruel and hateful person?" Gasps and feigned horror all round. But such rhetorical devices are nothing more than cheap appeals to emotion and won't delay the collapse of Western civilization by so much as a single day. So, here is my question in return. "Do you believe [population] should be permitted [action] if that permission demonstrably bears a high probability of leading to societal collapse?" That is the pertinent question that must precede any rational discussion of the subject.

We don't permit children to vote. Are they not people? We don't permit foreigners to vote. Are they, too, not people? We don't even permit ex-criminals to vote even though they are both adults and citizens. And they're also people, however much we might like to pretend otherwise. So, it's clearly not a question of democratic limits being intrinsically illegitimate, but rather what is deemed to be in the interest of the nation.

Now, I don't know about you, but I would much rather live in a safe, prosperous, and free society where I am not permitted to vote and am not even a fully equal member of society than in a third-world hellhole where I can vote every single day on whether clay or dirt will be distributed for dinner by the elected government. There is far more to human liberty than voting.

The end of the equalitarian era is rapidly approaching due to the same sort of intrinsic contradictions that sank Soviet economic communism. And like it or not, this almost surely means a return to the historical norm of open racism on all sides. As the Christian influence on the law subsides, there simply is no more basis for the idea that all men are created equal.

Comments ()

No photo, no video

Curiouser and curiouser:

Yet another backtrack and change of tune from the White House has emerged over the fact that Obama did NOT watch the raid live and did not see the moment Osama bin Laden was shot dead. In fact the video feed stopped before US special forces stormed bin Laden's hideaway.

The White House originally said that President Obama and Hillary Clinton watched the raid as it happened and in effect encouraged the world's media to report that they had watched "the drama unfold".

But now CIA chief Leon Panetta has admitted that, not only was there a 25 minute delay in the live feed and a blackout as has already been reported, in fact the video being played to the president stopped as troops got to the bin Laden compound. And the president did not see any subsequent action on the ground, including the fatal shooting of Osama bin Laden.

For those who wonder why I distrust everything the government says about anything on principle, note that about half of the information initially released by the government about the raid in Pakistan has already been publicly retracted. And the White House is refusing to release any evidence that would confirm the remaining claims.

Comments ()

A semblance of sanity

IP addresses are not people. And in related news, routers will not be permitted to vote in the 2012 election:

A possible landmark ruling in one of the mass-BitTorrent lawsuits in the US may spell the end of the 'pay-up-or-else-schemes' that have targeted over 100,000 Internet users in the last year. District Court Judge Harold Baker has denied a copyright holder the right to subpoena the ISPs of alleged copyright infringers, because an IP-address does not equal a person.

I've never understood the idea that an Internet connection can reasonably be pinned to a single individual. Even if there is only one computer connected to the local area network, who is to say that a different individual was not on the machine? But, given the 40-year war on common sense being waged by the U.S. judicial system, I suppose any semblance of sanity is to be celebrated.

Comments ()

Has Ron Paul flipped on immigration?

From my 2007 interview with him:

VD: Do you believe in open borders? That's the Libertarian position, after all.

RP: Some libertarians believe in totally open borders. I don't. Remember, I was the Libertarian Party's candidate for president in 1988 and I ran as a Right-to-Life Libertarian. I don't support totally open borders, because although I think the federal government should be small, protecting borders and providing national defense - which excludes occupying other countries – are two of its legitimate functions. I would beef up the borders and not worry about the Korean and Iraqi borders. It's ironic that we're taking border guards off our borders and paying them to go and train border guards over there. I do understand the libertarian argument. The more we deal with our neighbors, the better off we are. I like the idea of trade, I like the idea of free travel and friendship. When that happens, you're less likely to fight. But that doesn't mean anyone can come in and get easy citizenship.

My biggest argument is different than those who want to shoot anyone crossing the border. When you subsidize things, you get more of it, and we subsidize immigration. We need to stop that. I want to deny the benefits that draw people here. If we had a healthier economy, we could have a generous work program but we don't need it.

From the Numbers USA's review of Dr. Paul's new book:

In his book, Dr. Paul sounds very much like supporters of Comprehensive Amnesty measures by talking about the impossibility of sending back home 11 million illegal aliens. Like most amnesty supporters who say they oppose "amnesty," Dr. Paul seems to buy the false choice between "legalization" or mass deportation. Since he says mass deportation isn't possible, he feels he has to choose some kind of legalization.

He fails to support Attrition Through Enforcement, which is the middle way supported by most anti-amnesty Members of Congress.

He would limit the legalization by perhaps not allowing the illegal aliens to ever be citizens or to vote. But they still would get to stay in the U.S. and to keep their U.S. jobs, while millions of Americans who want the jobs would have to stay unemployed.

"It could be argued that (this system) may well allow some immigrants who come here illegally a beneficial status without automatic citizenship or tax-supported benefits -- a much better option than deportation," Rep. Paul writes on page 156.

I completely disagree with this statement. Deportation is absolutely the only option for illegal immigrants. While removing the temptations of automatic citizenship and the elimination of tax-supported benefits are definitely to be preferred to the present system, the political history of American immigration clearly shows that any such technical measures will be rapidly overturned, or as is more likely the case, declared to be unconstitutional and invalid by an immigration-friendly judge.

It seems politicians never learn that tweaks and fine-tuning are totally irrelevant when it comes to the art of governance. It's like attempting to drive a semi on a particularly convoluted rally course. However, I think it is a bit harsh to give Paul an F for a position that is better than a) the status quo, b) the other Republican candidates, and c) the Democratic candidate. I'd make it at least a D.

Comments ()

Who is in charge of the White House?

Is it Valerie Jarrett or Leon Panetta? Either way, Obama doesn't sound so much over his head as completely disengaged in this description of the evolution of the attack on the compound in Pakistan:

What happened from there is what was described by me as a “masterful manipulation” by Leon Panetta. Panetta indicated to Obama that leaks regarding knowledge of Osama Bin Laden’s location were certain to get out sooner rather than later, and action must be taken by the administration or the public backlash to the president’s inaction would be “…significant to the point of political debilitation.” It was at that time that Obama stated an on-ground campaign would be far more acceptable to him than a bombing raid. This was intended as a stalling tactic, and it had originated from Jarrett. Such a campaign would take both time, and present a far greater risk of failure. The president had been instructed by Jarrett to inform Mr., Panetta that he would have sole discretion to act against the Osama Bin Laden compound. Jarrett believed this would further delay Panetta from acting, as the responsibility for failure would then fall almost entirely on him. What Valerie Jarrett, and the president, did not know is that Leon Panetta had already initiated a program that reported to him –and only him, involving a covert on the ground attack against the compound....

I have been told by more than one source that Leon Panetta was directing the operation with both his own CIA operatives, as well as direct contacts with military – both entities were reporting to Panetta only at this point, and not the President of the United States. There was not going to be another delay as had happened 24 hour earlier. The operation was at this time effectively unknown to President Barack Obama or Valerie Jarrett and it remained that way until AFTER it had already been initiated. President Obama was literally pulled from a golf outing and escorted back to the White House to be informed of the mission. Upon his arrival there was a briefing held which included Bill Daley, John Brennan, and a high ranking member of the military. When Obama emerged from the briefing, he was described as looking “very confused and uncertain.” The president was then placed in the situation room where several of the players in this event had already been watching the operation unfold. Another interesting tidbit regarding this is that the Vice President was already “up to speed” on the operation. A source indicated they believe Hillary Clinton had personally made certain the Vice President was made aware of that day’s events before the president was. The now famous photo released shows the particulars of that of that room and its occupants. What that photo does not communicate directly is that the military personnel present in that room during the operation unfolding, deferred to either Hillary Clinton or Robert Gates. The president’s role was minimal, including their acknowledging of his presence in the room.

This might offer several alternative explanations to the inexplicable decision to immediately get rid of the body, the dithering over the evidence of the corpse's identity, as well as the bizarre nature of the compliments that the various White House officials were paying Obama after the operation concluded successfully. They struck me more like an uncertain little boy being patted on the head than as soldiers complimenting their commander; no one who has read the deferentially enthusiastic reactions of the English captains to meeting Admiral Nelson before Trafalgar is likely to mistake the various statements from Washington officials with the admiration of warriors for their victorious commander. Nor, in the picture of the temporary situation room, does Obama look like he's anything more than a passive observer. That means nothing in itself, but it is certainly in line with the perspective provided in the insider's account.

Obviously, other than checking on the weather patterns on the night of the aborted mission, we have no ability to ascertain the truth of this supposed insider's account. It could simply be a complete fiction inspired by the photo. But if it is true, it is further support for my contention that Obama is likely going to be replaced by the Democrats next year.

Comments ()

On the placement of elephants

I'm always more than a little amused when people comment that I am wasting my time by posting about Game, or atheism, or [fill in subject of little interest to you]. The fact is that I probably spend more time on pressing things like playing Guitar Hero and wondering why a superlative general like Hannibal would have elected to place his elephants in the center at Zama when he had to know that his cavalry on the wings was outnumbered by the Italian and Numidian cavalries opposing them.

The Romans drew up their forces in three lines, creating an effective reserve in the rear. The maniples however stood in separate formations, not creating a continuous line. The gaps were loosely filled by the velites (skirmishers). The Roman left wing was made up of Italian allied cavalry, while the right wing consisted of the Numidian calvary of Massinissa.

Hannibal meanwhile also aligned his troops in three lines. His mercenaries took the front, the second line was formed by the Carthaginian forces and those of the Carthaginian territories (Liby-Phoenicians). Finally at the rear stood Hannibal's most reliable troops, the veterans from the campaign in Italy. At the very front of the army Hannibal placed his elephant corps. On his left wing he had his Numidian cavalry and to the right stood the Carthaginian cavalry.

After some initial skirmishes between the cavalry units, the battle began with a charge of the Carthaginian war elephants. They were meant to cause confusion and terrify the enemy. But it was here that Scipio's preparation in lining up his troops in separate maniples bore fruit. The velites in the gaps now engaged the elephants, drawing them up through the alleys between the main Roman units. Also Scipio had ordered for every trumpeter of the army to blow, creating a startling noise which terrified the nervous beasts. This Roman tactic was largely successful. Most of the elephants simply charged up the alleys between the units, others even turned and collided with their own cavalry. However some did indeed drive into the Roman ranks and caused considerable damage before escaping up the alleys.

Since horses tend to be more skittish than infantry, it seems to me that it would have been significantly more effective to divide the elephant corps in two and attempt to drive off at least one cavalry wing, following the elephant charge up with an immediate cavalry attack while the Roman wings were still in disarray. Sure, hindsight is 20/20, but the fact that Africanus had his troops drawn up in columns rather than lines should have been an obvious clue that he planned to permit the elephants to pass through the Roman center.

Anyhow, Ender and I have been playing Hannibal lately and it's not just an excellent historical wargame, it's an educational game that tends to inspire this sort of thinking. Now I'm going to have to break out a Zama game and see if I can game out what might have happened if Hannibal had used his elephants as a means of actively defending his wings instead of simply trying to smash the Roman center with them.

Comments ()

Hiding the hatred

Fred Reed points out that thanks to technological advancement, the media is not going to be able to hide the persistent racial hatred of the black underclass much longer:

In a previous life as a police reporter I encountered or knew of many instances, always of a gang of blacks beating hell out of a white, and in a manner to do serious damage. The maidens in the video wanted to hurt the girl, wanted to hur her badly, and continued kicking her dangerously when they had her helpless. It is one thing to punch someone’s lights out, another to kick him repeatedly in the head.

Always the media respond by describing the attackers as “teenagers” and “youths,” and by burying the story as quickly as possible. When I was writing my Police Beat column for the Washington Times, any mention of racial hatred disappeared during editing.

Ignoring the hatred is not going to serve anyone well, black or white. In the Cook County Jail in Chicago, I once interviewed a Three Star Perfect Elite, if my memory of the title serves, a high-ranking man in the BGD, Black Gangster Disciples. These were and probably are a serious gang. Why, I asked him, do black gang-bangers spend so much time killing other blacks? “We’d rather kill whites, but we know we’d lose,” he said, stone cold. This disappeared in editing....

[I]f you point out that black schools in the cities are terrible, an assertion with which every black columnist in the US would agree, many journalists will furiously argue that it isn’t true—not quite calling you a racist, but very nearly. And so nothing changes. Stray thought: What would you think of an oncologist who insisted that your tumor didn’t exist?

One of the interesting ideas about American exceptionalism is the way in which its racial heterogeneous nature has tended to prevent socialism from sinking roots into the populace. The idea is that that Americans aren't particularly enamored with freedom or capitalism, but that they lack the strong ethnic identity that the various European nations have historically harbored. The massive Hispanic immigration that has rendered blacks a second-tier minority is also a complicating factor with regards to future race relations. The shrinking of the middle class due to the economy is likely to further poison race relations, and finally contra the expectations of the multiculturalists, more exposure to other races tends to be positively correlated to racism.

In short, neither the media nor liberal guilt nor political correctness among whites is likely to keep the lid on what they apparently believe is a potential powder keg for much longer. While it's true that America is an idea, it is often forgotten that it was an English colonial idea and one that has not been truly adopted in either its whole or its essence by various other groups who wish to enjoy its benefits without accepting its costs.

The great potential downside of the Browning of America is that it changes the calculation on the part of the likes of Fred's Three Star Perfect Elite. Once the underclass no longer feels so outnumbered, once is it no longer so certain it will lose, it is going to be considerably less reticent about attacking those who, thinking themselves non-racist, still presently believe themselves to be off-limits by virtue of their race.

Comments ()

And the anomalies begin

May 2, 2011: "Bin Laden -- given the code name "Geronimo" by US officials -- was found in the compound with one of his young wives, who identified him by name. According to White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, the woman died as she shielded bin Laden. Brennan said it was unclear whether she was attempting to protect the terrorist leader of her own free will, or whether he deliberately placed her in the line of fire. However, defense officials have confirmed that women were deliberately used as human shields to protect the compound's male inhabitants."

May 3, 2011: "A woman killed during the raid of Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan was not his wife and was not used as a human shield by the al Qaeda leader before his death, a U.S. official said on Monday, correcting an earlier description. John Brennan, President Barack Obama's top counter- terrorism adviser, told reporters earlier that the slain woman had been one of bin Laden's wives and had been used -- perhaps voluntarily -- as a shield during the firefight. However, a different White House official said that account had turned out not to be the case. Bin Laden's wife was injured but not killed in the assault."

There would appear to be one piece of the ID evidence gone, along with the body. If she wasn't his wife and she wasn't killed while shielding him, we have to assume that she also did not identify him. This leaves DNA and photos, although the DNA evidence may be less conclusive than would be desirable.

I think the best evidence that those of us on the outside have is that the USA was willing to violate Pakistani sovereignty in order to take out the target. I have no doubt that the White House genuinely believed it was Osama in the compound or that they killed someone there, the question is whether they were correct or not. And so far, the evidence they have offered is far from convincing, especially since we know they have the entire thing on video. If the post-mortem pictures are too gruesome to be released, then why not release several stills from the video before he was shot along with a statement from his surviving wife?

UPDATE: The Official Story continues to evolve: "The White House backed away Monday evening from key details in its narrative about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, including claims by senior U.S. officials that the Al Qaeda leader had a weapon and may have fired it during a gun battle with U.S. forces. Officials also retreated from claims that one of bin Laden’s wives was killed in the raid and that bin Laden was using her as a human shield before she was shot by U.S. forces."

So no body, no photos, no witnesses, and the story is changing despite the report that the White House officials watched the entire raid on video. Conclusion: the tale of bin Laden's demise is possibly - though not necessarily - a fiction. That someone was killed at the compound by the Navy Seals is not in doubt, only the question of whom. And if it was someone other than bin Laden, one can only hope that the graphic artists at the White House now busily engaged in photoshopping the corpse images are more competent than those who produced the forged birth certificate.

UPDATE II: Good news! The first White House photoshopper appears to be finished with his image of Obama's demise. Warning, it is very disturbing.

Comments ()

Decline is a choice

VDH skillfully elucidates the historically obvious:

Does “decline” mean inevitable collapse, like an aging person whose mind and body have become enfeebled? That was certainly the view of the ancients, who felt civilizations had finite life-spans (see Jacqueline de Romilly’s The Rise and Fall of States According to Greek Authors.) Do environmental catastrophes, resource depletion, or foreign armies end societies? They can, as the complex pyramidal societies from the Minoans and Mycenaeans to the Mayans and Aztecs learned.

All that said, decline is far more often a choice, not a preordained destiny. There was no reason that Athens at 338 B.C. needed to lose to Philip at Chaironeia or even that the loss there meant the end of Greek freedom. Macedonian forces were a fraction of the size of a far larger Persian force that had swept from the north into a far weaker Athens in 480 B.C. No law said that drama of the quality of the Orestia, Oedipus, Ajax, Bacchae, and Medea had to give way to the sitcoms of Middle and New comedy of the fourth century B.C. By September 1945, England had far more of its industrial base intact than had Germany or Japan, and had suffered far fewer losses, both material and human, since 1939 than either of the defeated Axis powers whose entire national ideologies had been rendered bankrupt and their people reduced to global pariahs. Why, then, did a country that produced the sort of four-engine bombers en masse that its wartime adversaries could not, or a Spitfire fighter better than any produced by Japan or Germany until the advent of the jet, end up decades later with unsold Jaguars while Mercedes and Lexus swept world markets? And why did a bombed out Frankfurt and Tokyo (200,000 incinerated in March 1945 alone) rather quickly out-produce a less damaged Liverpool (e.g., 4,000 killed in the blitz) or Manchester? Clearly the UKchose a path in 1945-9 that a once flattened Germany and Japan did not.

If Rome was supposedly “doomed” by the 5th century A.D., why did the Eastern Empire last another 1,000 years? Why was 1978 America a very different place than either 1955 or 1985 or 1996?

What the deeply knowledgeable VDH fails to acknowledge is that America does not face a choice because America has already collectively made it. Decline is no longer merely an option, it is a strong probability.

VDH notes two of the most significant factors, but fails to note that they are done deals. The explosion of wealth he cites was largely fraudulent, being based on a massive expansion of debt on the part of the Greatest Generation, the Baby Boomers, and to a lesser extent Generation X that robbed from the following generations. The inevitable debt-deleveraging, combined with the tens of millions of largely useless immigrants, now all but guarantees decline. It doesn't necessarily guarantee fall, however, only a retreat from a historically exceptional nation to an unexceptional one where the citizenry is helplessly subject to the whimsical rule of an aristocratic class. That this aristocracy is one of credentials and connections rather than blood and birth does not change its intrinsic lack of regard for the will of its subjects.

Comments ()

An inexplicable burial at sea

Apparently we are going to have to take the U.S. government's word for bin Laden's death:

After bin Laden was killed in a raid by U.S. forces in Pakistan, senior administration officials said the body would be handled according to Islamic practice and tradition. That practice calls for the body to be buried within 24 hours, the official said. Finding a country willing to accept the remains of the world's most wanted terrorist would have been difficult, the official said. So the U.S. decided to bury him at sea.

I'm not saying that Osama bin Laden isn't dead. For all I know, he's been dead since 2001, if not before. But it strikes me that if you wanted to make your own words more look suspiciously incredible, you would be hard-pressed to top the recent actions of the Obama administration.

"Hey, here's an ineptly produced computer file that clearly isn't a simple copy of the document that supposedly no longer existed in the first place!" "Hey, we killed the bad guy, but we had to ditch the body before anyone else could take a look at it and confirm it's actually him. Maybe if we just wave our hands and talk about DNA that nobody else has, someone will buy it."

The whole point of engaging in a helicopter raid rather than simply dropping a daisy cutter was to obtain the body. As one British journalist noted: "The decision to carry out a helicopter assault was incredibly risky but the US Navy SEALS and the CIA pulled it off. The huge advantage is that it means that bin Laden’s body was recovered – any speculation that he remains alive is likely to be shortlived."

Unless, of course, the body is immediately thrown into the sea.... But whether the most recent reports of bin Laden's death is real or not, they should at least serve as an excuse to get out of Afghanistan and Iraq before Libya heats up in response to Qaddafi's likely efforts at retaliation following the reported death of his youngest son. I find myself wondering if the unexpected cancellation of the royal honeymoon has anything to do with the probability that Qaddafi has his terrorist network aimed at Britain and France these days.

I'm not saying they needed to stick bin Laden's head on a pike at the White House, but providing independent confirmation from a third party such as the Saudi ambassador or one of his family members would have been significantly more convincing than a press release about a body dumped in the ocean.

UPDATE - Bin Laden may well be dead. Presumably photos will soon be released to prove it. But that will not change the fact that the U.S. government lied in claiming that his body was buried at sea in accordance with Islamic ritual. "Muslim clerics said Monday that Osama bin Laden's burial at sea was a violation of Islamic tradition that may further provoke militant calls for revenge attacks against American targets. Although there appears to be some room for debate over the burial — as with many issues within the faith — a wide range of Islamic scholars interpreted it as a humiliating disregard for the standard Muslim practice of placing the body in a grave with the head pointed toward the holy city of Mecca. Sea burials can be allowed, they said, but only in special cases where the death occurred aboard a ship."

That's two known lies in two days out of the Obama administration. They may be telling the truth about other things, such as Obama's birth certificate or Osama's death. But one is most certainly not justified in accepting anything they say at face value.

Comments ()

WND column

More Questions than Answers

It is truly remarkable to witness the speed with which the mainstream and conservative media have revised their collective opinion about Obama's birth certificate. The reader may recall that for most of the last three years, the media have been insisting that Obama released his genuine birth certificate when, in fact, all he had released was the short form "Certification of Live Birth."

Comments ()

A few more thoughts

I was wondering what series HBO might consider televising next... and I'm hoping it's not anything based on Robert Jordan material. It's over at the Black Gate.

Comments ()

The atheist's lament

Why, oh why, he wonders, do those stupid and evil Bible thumpers who know nothing about science, and shouldn't be allowed to vote or raise their own children, dislike someone so objectively wonderful as me?

Those who don’t believe in God are widely considered to be immoral, wicked and angry. They can’t join the Boy Scouts. Atheist soldiers are rated potentially deficient when they do not score as sufficiently “spiritual” in military psychological evaluations. Surveys find that most Americans refuse or are reluctant to marry or vote for nontheists; in other words, nonbelievers are one minority still commonly denied in practical terms the right to assume office despite the constitutional ban on religious tests.

Rarely denounced by the mainstream, this stunning anti-atheist discrimination is egged on by Christian conservatives who stridently — and uncivilly — declare that the lack of godly faith is detrimental to society, rendering nonbelievers intrinsically suspect and second-class citizens.

Is this knee-jerk dislike of atheists warranted? Not even close.

It never ceases to be amusing when socially inept assholes take the trouble of listing the reasons why they believe people should like them. Never mind the fact that the guy shows himself to be both disagreeble and dishonest in the very article where he is lecturing America for not liking him.

It's really not that hard to explain. No one likes people who offer them unsolicited advice, much less tell them what to do from an unwarranted position of assumed superiority. And as anyone who knows more than two or three atheists has experienced at one point or another, far too many atheists simply do not understand the concept of "live and let live". No one hates atheists because they don't believe in God; agnostics don't believe in God either. People tend to dislike atheists because so many of them are socially autistic jerks who are simply a massive pain in the posterior. The whining about Christian incivility is as hilarious as it is untrue; many atheists are so emotionally undeveloped that they cannot bear to be treated in the same manner that they habitually treat everyone else.

If everyone thinks you are an obnoxious prick, the solution is not to attempt to argue them out of their opinion, but rather to stop behaving like an obnoxious prick. And to think these are the very people who believe they are more rational than everyone else.

NB: I am obviously not describing all atheists here. There are plenty of perfectly likeable and intelligent atheists who are quite willing to leave others to live and believe as they like. But if the gentleman writing in the Washington Post is going to attempt to defend the likeability of atheists in very broad and general terms, he must accept the validity of contrarian evidence given in the same manner.

Comments ()