Published at 07:50 on 10 February 2022
So far, your chief strategy in confronting the spreading, increasingly disruptive, and increasingly illegal protests has been to show weakness. It’s not working. Well, it’s not working to limit the scope and impact of the demonstrations.
Nobody wants this to go to the point of violence, but the window is rapidly closing to resolve this via nonviolent means. The time for various levels of government to get serious about cooperating is now. We need to see things like business licenses getting pulled for those who disrupt trade and traffic, and cumulative fines starting to really add up (with special measures for expedited and aggressive collection). If we don’t, things will get to the point where such actions basically cease to matter anymore. Then the only options will be violence or total capitulation.
Make no mistake, they have a right to demonstrate, no matter how wrong I believe them to be. That’s a basic freedom in any open society. What they don’t have the right to do is to unilaterally call the shots for everyone else.
Let’s do a little math here. The most recent Canadian federal election was under a year ago. The general politics of the protests are right up the alley of People’s Party, so let’s assume that all their voters are behind them. That’s about 5% of the electorate. The Conservatives polled 34%, but not all of them back the protests. Just listen to Ontario Premier Doug Ford, a pretty conservative Conservative, to prove that point. But let’s be generous and assume ⅔ of them do. That’s ⅔ of 34% or 23%. Add the earlier 5% to that and you have 28%.
Where is the “freedom” in letting 28% call the shots and telling the other 72% (who support COVID-19 policies distinctly more organized and interventionist than the 28%) to go lump it? That is what the policy of continuing to show nothing but weakness will get us.
Published at 17:52 on 24 January 2022
The story is still in the news, in fact the situation seems to be escalating, so let’s look into it some more.
First, that it is escalating should be no surprise. As I wrote before, multiple factors favor Putin ordering the troops under his command to invade.
What could be done to stop him? Ultimately, not much. Putin is not stupid. To reiterate, knows that NATO won’t consider it worth their soldiers’ lives to contest the issue militarily. Putin is a dictator and the leaders of most NATO nations are freely elected. Putin does not have to answer to citizens nearly so much; this also gives him significantly more freedom to escalate.
Probably the best thing NATO can do is drive home that they are really willing to make Putin pay (via measures that nonetheless fall short of military ones) if he invades, even if that means some sacrifices on the part of the NATO nations. The question is how much sacrificing the European NATO nations are willing to make. Many of them are addicted to Russian natural gas; confronting Putin could well cause an energy embargo with all the attendant economic harm that does. The threats must be plausible; Putin will call the bluff for ones obviously unlikely to be followed through on.
Even for plausible ones, he may call NATO’s bluff. In that case, it is imperative to follow through. So it’s critical to get things right in terms of the sacrifices the NATO nations are willing to make. See how tricky this all is? It is why I believe Putin will go in.
All that said, if sanctions are tolerable enough on the NATO side to be followed through with, yet harsh enough to the Putin regime, they may well prompt a recalculation on Putin’s part as to the wisdom of aggression.(And note that the invasion would still happen. There would just be a recalculation on Putin’s part (and maybe, just maybe, the consequences would drive Putin from power). But all that, as they say, is a pretty big if.
Published at 08:31 on 20 January 2022
Let’s interrupt all this smug mocking of how stupid righties can be for a moment. Because yes, they were stupid for doing that. Big deal, they were basically selected for their stupidity. They are the rubes who fell for Trump’s rhetoric to show up at the Capitol. Then they do something else stupid as well. Big surprise.
What I am interested in is the big picture. Which party has more overall average stupidity? Anyone can pick the game of cherry-picking a particularly stupid subset of the other side’s adherents to make fun of, so exercises like the one engaged in by the linked article really do not say much.
So, which party, in the aggregate, is stupider?
- Which party is smart enough to figure out how to prevail (and prevail repeatedly) despite being at a minority when it comes to the popular vote? Which party repeatedly has its lunch eaten, despite having that popular majority?
- Which party talked about “build back better” and “bipartisanship” as it took office in the wake of a coup attempt, as if nothing fundamentally had changed?
- Which party blew a once-in-a-lifetime political opportunity posed by widespread public shock at a coup attempt conveniently aligning with a new president’s honeymoon period, by using that opportunity to aggressively push for measures to defend the basic democratic political order?
- While the above two things were happening, which party quietly continued consolidating its advantages, via legislation and redistricting at the state and local levels?
- Which party sets the political narrative? Which party willingly lets the other party set the political narrative, by answering the other’s allegations, thus participating in the other party’s narrative, as opposed to countering with narrative-setting of its own?
So spare me the self-satisfied smugness about how some cherry-picked members of the other party (generally, those without much power in it) are stupid, Democrats. If you want to see real political stupidity, look in the mirror.
Published at 09:25 on 19 January 2022
I mean, sure, he runs a disgusting right-wing authoritarian regime. I don’t like Putin either. Check.
That formality dispensed with, why wouldn’t Putin threaten Ukraine? It’s a far weaker power, so Russia can get away with it.
Russia is unlikely to invade all of Ukraine, for the simple matter that doing so would be taking a bite of something way too big to chew. There would be resistance. Russia might well be able to eventually prevail over it, but it would take a major effort. It would not be a convenient little war.
So Russia is more likely to whittle off yet another chunk of Ukraine by force. Russia already forcibly annexed Crimea, and got away with it. And Russia would likely get away with whittling off another chunk.
NATO members are likely to be upset about it, but the level of upset will not rise to the level where anyone is willing to put the lives of their own troops on the line. This is particularly the case when one realizes how much of a has-been power NATO is.
This is because NATO relies primarily on the USA, and the USA is a seriously compromised nation with an extremely powerful domestic fascist movement with pro-Russia sympathies, a movement poised to almost certainly take power soon. And you better believe that latter fact is entering Putin’s calculus, too.
Published at 20:39 on 6 January 2022
Biden’s much-belated decision to speak forcefully about the coup attempt a year ago is exactly the sort of thing we need more of. Alas, odds strongly disfavor seeing much more of it. Everything I have observed about the Democratic Party points to its almost total uselessness as an institution when it comes to confronting fascism and preserving democracy.
And lo, in the article linked to above, we see the following: “Biden’s remarks do not mark a permanent shift in strategy about how to handle Trump, according to the president’s aides and allies.”
There really is no plausible scenario for the next forty of fifty years except for the USA to become a fascist state much like Portugal under Salazar or Spain under Franco. That will do the historically necessary task of burning the Democratic Party to the ground. Then, eventually, a better generation of Americans, painfully cleansed of the shortcomings that paved way for Trumpist fascism, can rise and burn the Republican Party to the ground, a task even more historically necessary.
Out of all those ashes there will be hope for something better, but only then.
Maybe I’m wrong. I hope I’m wrong. But all the evidence I see today points to a scenario similar to the above.
Published at 19:18 on 30 November 2021
So, at midnight local time this morning, Barbados became a republic.
If you are in the USA, you are probably unaware of this fact. If you are in Canada, you can’t escape it. The news media are covering this story over and over and over again. It started a few days before the transition, and continues today, on Barbados’ first day as a republic.
This is obviously quite telling, as though there is presently no serious effort to get rid of the monarchy in Canada, the remarkable degree of coverage of what is an aspect of the internal affairs of a tiny island nation shows that many Canadians are obviously thinking about it on some level.
Published at 07:36 on 28 November 2021
New variants are precisely what one would expect in a world were many are left unvaccinated.
The Third World is precisely where most unvaccinated people are, thanks the the rich nations being unable to agree that it would be a net win to weaken (not abolish, merely weaken) intellectual property laws to facilitate more widespread manufacturing of (and lower prices for) vaccines.
That the new variant was detected in Botswana and South Africa is no surprise. Those are two of Africa’s most developed countries. The variant could have easily evolved in a neighboring, less-developed nation, and only been detected when it showed up someplace with the public health infrastructure to readily detect it.
As with the initial spread of the virus, border controls proved inadequate in preventing its spread. The variant was, however, nurtured by nationalism-driven greed: European nations (and the EU are the real bad guys in this one, the Biden Administration has been much more open to sharing the vaccines) valued their business elite’s short-term gains more than any longer-term benefits to humanity of sharing their vaccine technology more freely.
The one border control that would have probably helped is stricter and more-comprehensive testing of travelers. I expect countries to realize this, and institute such restrictions. It is for this reason that I do not expect the planned relaxing of testing requirements at the US/Canada border to last. I will consider myself lucky if the border remains open to non-emergency travel at all.
But it will all be a very poor substitute for the sort of sharing and cooperation that is really needed.
Published at 07:15 on 28 November 2021
Just in the last day, let’s sum up:
- Now that people are looking for it, the Omicron variant is popping up all over the map.
- Most but not all of those infected with it recently traveled to southern Africa; this means that community transmission is already happening worldwide.
- Most of the infected are symptom-free, meaning that they had no reason to suspect they were spreading the infection and therefore were unwittingly doing so.
And remember, this one is more contagious than the old variants (more contagious than even Delta).
The one good bit of news is that the high rate of asymptomatic vaccinated individuals detected means that the vaccinations do seem to offer a significant measure of protection. If the consequences of an infection are so mild that one does not even realize one is infected, the infection is not really a big deal.
The big worry is that it might be serious enough for enough people that it will create another surge in the hospitals as the new variant spreads.
On the personal front, my big worry is that the US/Canada border might slam shut in the next few days, possibly when I’m in the USA loading another batch of my stuff to take north to Vancouver.
Published at 08:25 on 26 November 2021
The new COVID-19 variant is even more virulent than the Delta variant, which in turn was even more virulent than the original one, which was itself shockingly virulent. Remember, the draconian measures that merely slowed down COVID-19 absolutely crushed seasonal colds and flu.
Add that to how the new variant is popping up all over the place in South Africa, one of Africa’s most developed nations (and hence with one of the largest amounts of air travel to the rest of the world), how COVID-19 has a long incubation period in which people are contagious but symptom-free, and how cases of the new variant have been found not only in neighboring Botswana but in Hong Kong, and there really is only one logical conclusion to be reached.
Hence, my headline choice.
Published at 07:25 on 20 November 2021
Since I now have a day job, I don’t have so much time to elaborate on issues during weekdays anymore. So let’s elaborate on the Rittenhouse acquittal today.
Yes, I am aware that self-defense law in Wisconsin makes it easy to acquit people in Rittenhouse’s situation. That in no way refutes anything I wrote in my previous post. It merely helps explain how and why Rittenhouse could be acquitted. The how and why was not what I was discussing. I was discussing the message the acquittal sent, and it sent precisely the message I said it did. If you don’t believe me, listen to the fascists who are so happy about the ruling.
The law that enabled the acquittal helps send the message, in fact. It provides evidence that the acquittal was no fluke, and any fascist in a similar situation to Rittenhouse will probably also be acquitted. The law basically says, “open season on Blacks and the Left, go at it!”
Second, just because the law makes it very easy for a white, right-wing jury to acquit a white, right-wing defendant (in front of what appears to be by all evidence a white, right-wing judge), don’t for a minute think this deference would be extended to a Black or a Leftist who brought a gun to a demonstration and shot someone. If the tables had been turned, if Rittenhouse had been Black, odds are the whole thing wouldn’t have even gone to trial: Rittenhouse would have been pursued by, and shot to death by, the cops in what had been ruled a justified use of force. Literally just about everything in recent US history points to this outcome, and only a fool would deny it.
So yes, it is every bit as bad as I said it was earlier, and none of the standard objections based on Wisconsin self-defense law change that. Sorry.
