Daily Plagiarism

NOTE: This is mostly plagiarized from Mencius.

We have all heard the news recently about the sacking of General McChrystal for insubordination. Supposedly the shakeup will not result in any policy changes and General Petraeus will be able to keep his staff from running off at the mouth around reporters.

As an exercise in futility let's take Afghanistan today and ask what would Lord Curzon do if he were to replace McChrystal instead?

How about:

• Declare that Afghanistan is occupied and under American military administration for the indefinite future.


• Dissolve the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GiRoA) including all official local authorities.


• Martial Law - Establish that the top military commander is the plenary administrator with full power to govern by decree.


• All non-Afghans in the country, military or civilian, are now under his personal command.


• Any non-Afghans not essential to the war or occupation are sent home.


• All news media and in- or out-bound communication of any kind is subject to censoring.


• Assign a fully bio-metrically encoded ID to all Afghans.


• Setup military units with Afghan soldiers under foreign officers.


• Setup civil bureaus with Afghan clerks under foreign managers.


• Assign each Afghan to be the personal responsibility of an Afghan chief, employer, guild, or other small organizational unit that has an Afghan leader. He in turn is responsible to a foreign official who may replace him at will and for no stated reason at any time.


• Seal the borders with conscripted laborers and automated weapons systems.


• Repeat as necessary in Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, Mexico, Texas, Los Angeles, etc. etc. ;-)

This is proven colonial methodology: occupy, establish a hierarchy, defend it, and gradually shift emphasis from military units to civilian bureaus once order is established. It doesn't rely on 21st century military technology. But such hi-tech systems could help in establishing and maintaining order.

Or we can keep up with this Counter-insurgency non-sense. The approach above is strength through rational application of force. CoIN is about strength through weakness. And since it is failing we need a more liberal strategy: victory through defeat.

Mea Culpa

Some thoughts on the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill

The currency of television news (and most news outlets) is emotional sensationalism. It isn't that I don't "care" or "feel bad" or wish that those people didn't have to deal with their hardships. But the constant bombardment of the "drive-by media" to the senses of all these tragic cases, actually desensitizes people to their own emotional realities. In general I think "Don't Panic." is much better advice than "AHHHH!!! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!'

It is best to question whatever story starts to take shape after a big event. What everyone thinks right now is that BP was a big fat lazy greedy oil company. They took shortcuts. They took unnecessary risks. And as a direct result several workers were killed, and we are facing the WORST environmental disaster ever. Most people would also agree that Obama has botched the federal government's response. BP must be punished and made to pay up.

All of that maybe true. But there will always be more to the story. Why was the Deep Water Horizon registered to the Marshal Islands? Why were we drilling so deep? Why do we need so much oil in the first place? Why are there so many conflicting government regulations that tied the hands of people in the early days of all this? How does this spill compare to all of the industrial oil spills in human history, not just how big it is compared to the Exxon Valdez.

The short of it right now is that BP has the best chance of fixing this. If they get demonized to the point of bankruptcy, who is going to fund the $20 billion dollar slush fund? When did Obama and Congress become the Judicial Branch of Government? They haul the CEO before congress and strong arm him out of $20 billion? Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?

Here is what I really think: Our own over-cautious paranoia about environmental protection is more to blame than the CEO of BP.

The US has been so paranoid about the Environment that we have pushed oil exploration farther and farther offshore quicker than we had the expertise and technology to handle those depths. Oil companies are stigmatized. They have suffered brain drain at a time when their work is almost as sophisticated as the Apollo project. Over-regulation by the US makes it impossible to operate maritime vessels under a US flag, and companies are forced to use rent-a-registry countries like the Marshall Islands.

Because of our limited domestic oil production capacity these companies have to take greater risks in oil exploration. When global crises like the default of sovereign debt in Greece threatens to destabilize the entire European Union, Israel is at the center of another firestorm, Iran now very likely to have a nuclear weapon, and (in case anyone has forgotten) we are involved in the longest military conflict in US history; someone at BP decided to give the green light when the safe thing to do would have been to stop and listen to the concerns of the engineers and workers who knew there were problems.

Should that person face a criminal investigation and have to answer for what was done? Absolutely. If he is found guilty of a crime by a jury then let the judge throw the book at him. But to demonize the entirety of BP and haul the CEO in front of some show trial on Capitol Hill? I think that is a disgrace. For Obama to talk about finding out "Who's ass to kick?" even more so. For the president to directly set the amount of damages to this $20 billion punishment? Who is going to distribute this aide? How is it going to help? Will it lead to more corruption?

I think our short sighted sensationalist approach to environmental protection set the stage for this mess. Our short sighted sensationalist approach to world events provided the fuel, or lack thereof. And our short sighted sensationalist approach to the aftermath of the blowout is only making it worse. But by all means lets crucify the company that actually might be able to do something to fix it.

--
Jeff

Musings

Something is holding up the comment thread on Unqualified-Reservations. Probably a good thing.

In the meantime I have a lot more to read.

And enjoy this...




OR THIS IF THAT DOESN'T WORK....


I'll Fly Away



CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

Join The Froude Society

Mencius over at Unqualified Reservations has made a call for people to join the Froude Society.

I've taken the liberty of setting up a public google books bookshelf with all the required reading here. So far I have made it through the first chapter of The English In The West Indies. Here Froude is using broad strokes to lay out the political reality of the area. The English interest in the area was forged by all manner of men seeking their fortune. Those who succeeded were praised as acting in the government's interest ex post facto. "It was not the Crown, it was not the Government, which fought that battle: it was the people of England, who fought it with their own hands and their own resources." What an alien idea.

The greatness of its individuals made the empire great. The early conquests over and the wars settled, the Victorians now had an administrative challenge the scope of which the world had never known. Here Froude opens with his punctuated observations that belie the naive' interpretation of Colonialism simply as a means of exploiting resources and enslaving natives. It is this "broad distinction between colonies and conquered countries" which is problematic for the West Indies. In some senses they are both. For Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Cape Colony there was to be self-rule. For the conquered: "The crown, therefore, as in India, rules directly by the police and the army."

This long quote below seems to set the tone for what will follow:
"Again, there are colonies like the West Indies, either occupied originally by ourselves, as Barbadoes, or taken by force from France or Spain, where the mass of the population were slaves who have been since made free, but where the extent to which the coloured people can be admitted to share in the administration is still an unsettled question. To throw countries so variously circumstanced under an identical system would be a wild experiment. Whether we ought to try such an experiment at all, or even wish to try it and prepare the way for it, depends perhaps on whether we have determined that under all circumstances the retention of them under our own flag is indispensable to our safety."

To be sure there is a ways to go here. Critiques of Froude have a long and glorious history themselves. Froude has basically used chapter one as a preface to his travelogue and without many conclusions I will refrain from more commentary. The framing of his questions here having been Froude fodder enough for one post.

I did notice that the inscription in Google books has a Goethe epigramme. So lets end with that...

Fuersten praegen so oft auf Raum versilberetes Kupfer
Ihr bedeutendes Bild: lange betriegt sich das Volk,
Schwaermer praegen des Stempel des Geists auf
Lugen und Unsinn; Wem der Probierstein fehlt,
Halt sie fur redliches Gold.

[For so long princes stamped their images on poorly silver-plated copper that the people, deprived of any touchstone of truth, now take as pure gold the lies and drivel which the fanatic stamps as genuine.] Also note that "Schwaermer" was a derogatory term used against Anabaptists.

Cool animation repost

Repost of a cool animation from you tube -

Hey Wally check out these songs!!!

This is a pretty amazing cover. It is mostly the english version, but he does the third verse in German. Which is a little weird because the verse order in english version is a little different. But - still very good take on an old new wave hit...



And this should be our new national anthem for Obama:


Also some videos:




Enjoy!!

Just a quick test of concept. Hopefully Mike isn't going to kill me but I said I was going to try this.

Haha - "Come On Ride The Peace Train, And Ride It" - Cat Stevens vs. Quad City DJs

Not quite a mashup yet...