Today at MediaRight.ca we give the opinion space over to UK editorialists. After reading scores of UK editorials I am amazed that Blair has been able to commit any troops to Afghanistan at all… or Iraq for that matter. It’s as if most every journalist and writer were cast in the image of Jack Layton or a member of Rabble.ca. From expressions of utter horror that British troops are involved in combat to an almost blind focus on only those facts that support America hate and socialist utopianism, I see nothing in the UK of 2006 that defeated the Nazis in 1945. The British Bulldog is dead.
Add to this the possibility that Blair has duped his public by completely misrepresenting the Afghan conflict and cutting funding to the UK military while deploying it to two fronts, and the mess between British ears seems somewhat justified. In the end I conclude that the balance of UK public opinion has dissolved into hand-wringing; based on what I read of course. (and you can never trust all that you read)
The one thing that sneaks out often, no matter how hard the UK press tries, and no matter how many disgruntled soldiers it dredges up, is the fact that morale among UK troops is said to be incredibly high. ( a contradiction indeed )
In one editorial we feature, you’ll find evidence that a UK unit just about destroyed one of our Canadian LAV 3’s… now that would’ve been carnage.
CLICK
cross posted at Celestial Junk
ET: Your characterization of post Roman Europe, whether Byzantine or Feudal or whatever, would never be supported by many even in your own field. Europe and in fact, Persia and North Africa declined by every measure of the term… no, civilization did not die, but much of what the Romans and Persians and even Muslims had achieved fell away and was lost for centuries and did not reawaken until the renaissance. The level of sophistication in science, literature, art, politics, indeed all disciplines, virtually collapsed. Only the Byzantines managed to cling to some old Roman sophistication, but just barely, and only because the Moguls put an end to Islamic expansion.
As far as war. If the west saves itself from Islamic barbarism through the means you suggest, this will be one of the few times such has occured. War, and usually total and protracted war, has almost always determined the course of history. I support the current Afghan and Iraq conflicts not out of a belief in war, but because I want to see happen what you project. Victory without total war is my hope; victory over Islamic barbarism without the usual slaughter that humans almost always have fallen into.
One example of war not being the catalyst for change or survival is the evangelizing of the barbarian hordes by the Byzantine and Roman churches, where the invaders were converted as fast as they invaded. The Byzantines and Romans couldn’t win on the battle field, but they did win in the heart. Now, can you see that happening with Muslims?
Usually though, war has settle any clash between vastly opposing civilizations or cultures. We are already in the early phases, as Iraq and Afghanistan attest to. And, if Afghanistan and Iraq fail, the cost to my children will likely be conflict not on a low level as we have it today, but on a level where even the utopian left decides to fight for existence. I don’t know if I’ll be around to see it… but I believe Donald Rumsfeld’s analysis in this. To paraphrase: Consider this conflict like a new cold war, where we can grind down the enemy. Failing that, we’ll have total war.
PS: ET, would you rather have lived in ninth century Europe, or as a first century Roman?
me no dhimmi – no, when I say that the industrial economic mode could only decline IF the population also declined, that’s NOT a circular argument. It is saying that there are TWO variables in a situation, and that both are directly correlated with each other.
For example, when I heat water on the stove, it gets hot and starts to boil. Is that a circular argument? No, it is saying that two variables, temperature and the form of water, co-exist. If I reduce the temperature to freezing, the water changes its form to ice. Not a circular argument, but, two different variables are directly correlated to each other.
There is almost no chance of the global population reducing to a number where a non-industrial economy would suffice to support that population. It would have to reduce, globally, below two to three million. We are now at 6 billion. Billion.
So, I maintain my point. The global population is too large for any economic mode other than industrialism to sustain that population.
As for Iran, it has lots of problems, including the fact that 80% of its export is one product only. Oil. And above all, that its economic activities are all centrally controlled by the state; there is almost no private enterprise and what there is, is small shop local.
And, there’s a large number below the poverty line, about 40%, and a high infant mortality rate.
Again, I disagree with you about a ‘new dark age’. Our communication systems are too global, too ‘free’; our science is too networked (science operates in teams rather than by individuals); it can’t happen.
I certainly see a struggle, but, I simply can’t see a new ‘dark age’. That requires a very powerful central gov’t, extreme censorship of knowledge and information, control of all communication networks including blogs and the internet. That happened in Western Europe for a period from about the 4th to 12th c; can it happen all over the entire world now? I doubt it.
ET: Your last paragraph just described an Islamist’s fanatasy.
By the way, by New Dark Age, I don’t think any of us are suggesting one as existed post-Roman… by Dark Age we mean post Democratic. Say, as the former Soviet Union; or like exists in the ME, or African. This, by our standards, is Dark.
ET writes, “I disagree . . . about a ‘new dark age’. Our communication systems are too global, too ‘free’.” I beg to disagree.
“Free [unfettered], global” communications systems, run by opportunistic rogues and charlatans, are a major factor in what’s CAUSING the new dark age. Along with a virulent, implacable enemy (Islamofascism), the minds of a critical mass of the “citizens” of the West are being “dhimmied” by the utter spiritual and emotional junk of “our communications systems”.
So, IMO, besides being attacked from outside, the West is slowly, but very surely–significantly, via the fifth column of the communications industry–committing suicide.
debris trail – that’s not a fair comparison, between 9th c. Europe, which had ground to a halt and was on its last gasps, and 1st c. Rome! Of course, I’d prefer the Roman.
Yes, Europe moved into a ‘dark age’, a hiatus, and I’ll maintain that was because Christianity, as the centralizing doctrone, ‘chose’ the Athanasian rather than the Arian interpretation, which resulted in a centralist authoritarian ideology, unable to tolerate diversity and dissent. And also, rejecting questions, rejecting exploration of the body, of nature. Like Islam, it was a faith-based era.
But economically, at first, it moved into local self-sufficiency – and stabilized. It wasn’t as dark as you envisage; it was stable. Then, with the introduction of better agricultural techniques, such as the wheeled plough and the three field system – you had the ability to produce more food – and that increased the population beyond the organizational capacity of the regimes and also, a larger population required different health and nutrition. But, since the ideology was faith-based, it took about 400 years to move out of the rejection of science and into science..
Now, when you refer to a dark age, not as the death of science and dissent, but as the death of democracy – again, I disagree. That’s a different issue, but my point is that democracy is the only political system that can maintain a robust industrial economy, and our global population requires industrialism.
No, we can’t move into a centralist system. Most certainly, the socialists want that, but you can try it – and it will be disastrous. The Soviet Union and China have both had to give it up.
These are hypotheses, on both your part and my part. Therefore, they are unprovable; they are simply our own opinions. I think we’ll have to leave it at that!
lookout, 10:24 .. EXACTUALLY We would not be having a lot of the problems we have today if the Mainstream Media was at least neutral, Let alone pro Democracy. How else can you describe their blatant opologistic support of, if not outright support of;
UNelected UN Nutbars
Counties That Support Terrorism
Nanny State Policies
Extreem Political Correctness
Give up One’s Own Countries Cutural To Accomodate
Kyoto Hoax
University Talking Heads
The above would all fall flat on their face, of there own making, were it not for the Media.
THE MEDIA IS THE BIGGEST PROBLEM THE WORLD FACES TODAY. INCIDIOUSLY DANGEROUS !!
They have pulled out all the stops. Why ?? Do they, as Alan Fotheringham suggests, feel threatened by Missus Bloggs from Moose Jaw ??
ET: I agree that we are at the point in the discussion where we are making projections that only the future will prove or disprove. I truly hope you are correct. I, like you, believe that we will succeed, but the means to that concern me.
By the way, check out the post I put up this evening and read Victor Davis’ Islamic Fascism 101. Victor is getting more and more blunt in his writing
I’ll disagree one more time – and that’s enough for one day!
The Roman Empire, as a centralist political system, collapsed because its geographic area had grown beyond the capacities of a pre-industrial centralized system. But, the collapse, in a strange way, allowed the different areas to move into local settled economies. Prior to the Roman Era, they weren’t settled; the Roman period settled them; the post-Roman period moved the settled economies into stable, no-growth, no-change local economies.
Then, these settled economies, living in an area that is, frankly, the richest agricultural biome on the planet – rich soil, moderate temperatures, regular rainfall – increased its population. But, the ideology was promoting stability and no-growth. The increased population required innovative technologies, but the ideology prevented innovation. The few that emerged – deep plough, three fields – staved off the inevitable for a while. But eventually, the stability of ideology and political system had to change – to enable innovation.
We are now faced with another imbalance in the world, much as Rome settled Europe, but then, had to back off and allow the far-settlements to become local settled economies.
We are now faced with the emergence of a huge tribal population, kept in tribalism and non-industrialism – that is within ONE generation, moving out of tribalism and out of a peasant local economy. The problem with Islamism, is that it is tribal and a peasant ideology. The growth in ME populations over the past generation has been exponential and the ME nations haven’t changed their economic and political mode to include this population and develop a middle class. This imbalance is exploding into the rest of the world.
I maintain that it is, like a physical interaction, an imbalance, and it will ‘even out’ in time. That means, not that the West must abandon science, reason and technology, but that the ME must abandon dogma, irrationality and primitive mindsets. Islamic fascism is the ‘explosion’ of the imbalance, much like steam is an expression of an imbalance.
The MSM is attempting to reduce the imbalance between the West and the ME, by making the image of the West more like that of the ME. It won’t work. That’s too superficial. It has to be a real balance and not a fictional one.
So- I’ll maintain my point, insane as many of you may think me. Democracy and industrialism and capitalism – are the only way to go, within a population as large as we now have. And, we cannot ‘go back in time’.
That’s not how the MSM media works. They are not trying to bring the West down a notch so that the ME and the MSM are like equals; the MSM believes the West is to blame for all that’s wrong in the ME. In all other respects, your analysis is dead-on!
Et,
Not at all.
Accepted that the primitive dogmatic bloodletting of terror governance provides no advancement for mankind.
It is true that Industry, innovation, commerce and democracy will provide us with better health and prosperity.
A big wart has grown onto our winning democratic way however. That wart is a whopping degree of theft and fraud.
Is it a debilitating cancer yet?
[1] UN – Oil for Food rip-off.
[2] Enron and a long list of similar.
[3] Contractor fraud. Billion$ missing in Iraq..
[4] 50% of University test takers cheating
[5] Liberal Party billion$ rip-off of our wealth and just as important . . .
[6] Apathy of Canadians not protesting that Liberals should be brought to justice.
Conrad Black syndrom: I*m incorporated. I have lawyers, ergo, I am Tefflon.
Is this the breaking point of our otherwise winning way of life?
Integrity with PM Harper and the CPC arrived just in time to repair the damage and return our strength.
Without integrity there is lack of world confidence and with that comes certain failure.
I hope we manage to snip this wart in time. = TG
TG our system is working. It was never intended to eliminate wrong doing. We aren’t utopians, that’s the whole point, we admit that good and evil exist.
Just to take a couple of examples, capitalism works because Enron is gone. People are in jail. However in the case of the un-elected apparatchiks in the UN oil for food … nothing happens. The en-elected UN and the EU are proof that the concept that the Moe Strong Transnationals want to put in place, by partnering with Islamofascists, is not in our interests.
Also as you note, the Liberals did commit fraud, but thanks to democracy they are in opposition now and their front run new leader Ignatieff is in favour of taking the war on Islamofascism to Iraq and Afghanistan.
My only worry is the “enemy within” … the multicultis and the moral relativists that dominate our MSM and our campuses. If we gradually beat them into retreat (which we’re starting to do by blogging the MSM over the head) then we’ll win the WOT too.
ET: Although I agree with much of what you say, I feel I need to point out that your interpretation of the decay/collapse of Roman influence is a unique one, and seems to be from an almost purely anthropological point of view. It’s my opinion that your reasonings point to “a” cause; not “the” cause. Virtually all historians view Roman collapse from military and political and social perspectives and never mention the perspectives you offer as being primary. Could it be that each discipline views things differently, yet each in fact is looking too hard at one slice of a complex pie.
Cheers!
ET, 11:16 .. I agree when you say ” And, we cannot ‘go back in time'” But I think what you mean is, cannot go SUCCESSFULLY back in time. But Islam Extreemists are NOT worried about success, are they ? Neither are the real Socialists. And, now it seems, neither the MSM. The latter now wants to control the agenda, filling in the vacum since the fall of Communism,Socialism and the Berlin Wall. Media Darling organizations like Greenpeace became radically Left when the collapse of the Eastern Block left many wondering in the dessert, so to speak. Now they have to find another way to screw things up.
Just ask our very own Canadian, and Greenpeace co-founder, Patrick Moore. Greenspirit.com
Debris Trail, re: ET:
I had the same thought after the recent flurry of postings: that ET’s views, albeit extremely eurdite, seem all anthropological. And a bit too neat and final, I’ll add.
I’m still reeling from the revelation that an industrial economy can’t decline and that therefore Islamic tribalism will not prevail.
Budd Campbell: I was there. I read about it in the newspapers and heard it on the radio.
Posted by: Nemo2 at October 1, 2006 04:00 PM
That’s very difficult to believe, actually. The Minnesota paper said there about three such refusals a day, hardly a major item. But if one has a thing about Muslims, …
debris trail – no, I don’t view events from one discipline, and most certainly, not from an anthropological one.
My research is on energy-matter informational dynamics within physics, biology and – extrapolated to large social systems. This is not anthropology, although, I did teach ecological anthropology as well as information dynamics.
The fact that history has ignored the population demographics, ecological resources and technology – which are important factors in the energy-composition and energy dynamics of a society – and focused on what I call the ‘Individual Reality’ of military and political systems doesn’t make my analysis any less valid.
I maintain my point – the populations of the empire had increased beyond the organizational capacities of a centralist gov’t – hampered by lack of rapid communication.
The unifying attempt with the introduction of Christianity was too late, and, the Athanasian rather than Arian perspective led to a replacement of centralist authoritarianism in the Church rather than Rome.
And, the settling of previously unsettled peoples in the far reaches of the empire led to a further increase in population, beyond the centralist organizational capacities and requiring local organization to harvest local resources. Nothing to do with military acts.
B Hoax – of course I mean that one can’t go back successfully in time. To ‘go back’ would require a massive decrease in global population. Is that going to happen?
No, me no dhimmi, I didn’t say that an industrial economy couldn’t decline, understanding decline as a recession or depression. Such a decline is trivial.
I said that it couldn’t decline in the sense of disappearing. Our global population is too large for any technological system other than the industrial, and any economic system other than capitalism and any political system other than democracy.
If you want to end industrialism – what do you ‘decline’ to? Agriculturalism? Impossible. Are you serious? No more cars, computers, electricity, airplanes etc etc?
And again, our global population cannot be sustained by any other technology other than industrialism; it’s too large for a purely agricultural and a non-industrial agriculture!
So – I disagree with both debris trail and me no dhimmi.
It would be soooo interesting if Suzuki and Maurice Strong were to “fill us in” on this ‘agrairian (cuban farmers the most) thing’ and the ‘mankind has to collapse’ thing,…..
IN ORDER TO SAVE THE PLANET.
Is that not the reason ‘for being’ for the UN, One World Governance, blah blah,.. at least in Maurice Strong’s eyes ??
ET: I don’t think that any of us are suggesting for a minute that a return to any sort of a pre-industrial society is possible. I certianly am not.
But, your trust in modern mass communication, industrialization, etc. to keep us free is what I challenge. Mass communication, industrializaiton, and all that they include, can be used to enslave us as well. I agree that in the end society will move forward in a truly progressive way, but declines and “dark” periods can occur, and they can last, as they have in history, for decades or even centuries.
ET, many have written of how modern industrial society can be turned into a vehicle for totalitarianism. Germany, the Soviet Union, and Militaristic Japan were all industrial societies; and they used that to create mass death and temperary decline… and they very nearly won.
By the way, it is our industrial society that will, in my belief, assist us in defeating Islam; but not as many percieve. It’s in our ability to make industrialized warfare where we hold the advantage… the barbarians hold most of the advantage in lowlevel insurgency at this point.
The War on Terror, as it exists today, gives them most of the advantages. If they push to hard, or become too successful, then the advantage will move back to us, as we declare entire peoples, not just a few thugs, the enemy.
‘Talk about Lament for a Nation.
Where’s the present-day Winston Churchill, who by all accounts was not an ‘easy’ or ‘nice’ guy–but was a brilliant orator and had a prophetic vision?
I suspect that the meltdown, multicultural, have-to-be-nice-to-everybody, don’t rock the boat, British non-education system, much like Canada’s, has knocked out any nobility of character, any courage to stand up and be counted, any leadership qualities that would set a man or woman apart to ‘do battle’ with the present-day equivalent to the Nazis: the Islamofascists.
The very fact that most Muslims are a ‘visible minority’ means that they have been safe from criticism for an awfully long time. And now that it is crucial for them to be criticized and for many of them to be apprehended because of their lethal intentions towards British subjects, very few in Britain, INCLUDING HER ‘LEADERS,’ have the stomach or the balls to do or say what needs to be done and said.
Hands and tongues tied by politically correct cords. Wills dulled by years of patent and contradictory nonsense on the multicultural front. And very little time for God.
Frankly, it’s a total mess.
Debris Trail, you’re on my wavelength. With due respect to ET, I cannot–again–endorse the idea that the West cannot be severely “dhimmied”. Like you, DT, I see modern communications–despite all the advantages–as very much part of the problem. I agree that it’s unlikely (well, maybe not . . . ) that the “wonders” of the industrial society will go away: But those could well be our undoing too. (ET–sorry–I find your optimism somewhat unrealistic.)
BATB, right on! Me No Dhimmi, I hear you too. Thanks.
ET: Well, echoing debris trail, I had never ever felt that the industrial economy would “disappear”. I’m a glass-is-half-empty kinda guy but I never get quite that dark! (Tho for a few months after the stock market crash of 1987 I got a bit close and found myself reading Spengler!). Shudder.
Also with your remark about recessions and depressions being “trivial” it became very clear that we were looking at entirely different metrics, mine more on the order of four score and twenty, yours perhaps more toward a geological/anthropological time scale. I’m sure you know this, but I would avoid making that remark outside the academy!
been around the block: Way back in the early 80s I read Churchill’s massive 6-volume work called World War II. The man was a collosus! But the people were too! I could not agree more with you about the pathetic state of the modern UK. That said, a cataclysmic event could yet wake the sleeping populace, so maybe we should hold back from extrapolating current trends too far out — something I painfully learned in the investment business. In my mind’s eye I keep seeing civil wars on the horizon when all those ordinary Joes and Janes come to the full realization that their elites have sold off their patrimony. And I can see extreme right political parties rising up, especially in deepest darkest Eurabia (France).
I think this snippet, from a Front Page magazine interview with the very fine Theodore Dalrymple, sheds some light on the debate here:
“FP: How do you see the future in the context of the terror war in general and the Iraq war in particular? Are you optimistic or pessimistic? Give us some hope please.
“Dalrymple: I am not in fact very optimistic in the short term. At best we shall make an accommodation with the possibility of extremist action, in other words we will learn to live with it. I think the conditions that produce terrorism are not going to disappear, and I don’t believe in final victory, only attrition and the fact that all things pass in the end.
“In a sense, I am optimistic in that I do not beleive terrorism of the type we saw in London will ever achieve its goal. Unfortunately, it can cause a huge amount of damage in the meantime.”
Yup, it can.
Re the Wrought Iron Fence: One can read something into shapes etc if they want to. A few years ago Hanna Gartner, CBC, had a show and she was always talking with her hands. I called CBC and told them that she was constantly insulting the deaf with her hands and she should stop it. Next show she did was funny to watch, she tried to keep her hands in her pockets, behind her back etc. Wonder if M. Moore say the latest video, made early 2000, plotting 9/11. All those saying Bush did it mst be having strokes. Clintons fault all the way. Can’t take dogs in muslim taxis in Cal. Next time a muslim shows up to drive you somewhere tell them it is against your religion to support beheaders. We have to turn this against them in a lot of different ways, and make jokes about them.
And, way off topic. If the NSA law in the US was really about monitoring domestic phone calls and computers, why haven’t they stopped all the school shooters, drug dealers, and other criminal acts. Its reported the shooter today was settling a 20 year old grudge. Talk about muslims living in the past.
Getting back to those Somali taxi drivers for a moment:
What if they were landlords? If they tried to tell their tenants they (the tenants) couldn’t bring alcohol into their apartments, would the human rights commission side with the Somalis, or the tenants?
Most “common carrier” facilities have rules that forbid them from denying service to an individual who is not doing anything illegal. For example, Bell can’t prevent you from buying phone lines to run a gay chat line, even if the Bell rep hates homosexuals. On the other hand, Bell can deny a service if you name it “Kill All the Jews”. I thought similar laws existed for public transportation, but I’m not really sure. Anyone know?
The british bulldog has been dead and replace with a pink poodle
maybe it just turned into a cocker spanial