We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Samizdata quote of the day – patriotism and bravery in the military… undesirable apparently Personality traits such as patriotism and bravery are viewed as desirable within the military. This often encourages overt masculine behaviour amongst its members, therefore stepping outside the norm and challenging the group is often looked down upon and difficult to do. The task-focused approach can also lead to corners being cut if it is deemed that the ends justify the means, that certain actions or behaviours are tolerated if they achieve the desired result. The danger with this is that such undesirable behaviours, if tolerated for long enough, become the norm and the level of standards gradually erodes… Methods of bonding and creating team cohesiveness within the military often involve pranks and banter, but this isolates those who are different to the norm.
– Group Captain Louise Henton OBE (£) writing in 2003 prior to her tenure as base commander for RAF Brize Norton.
What could possibly go wrong?
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
For context, I take it this gallant officer of the Blairmacht currently commands the RAF base broken into by activists who daubed red paint on RAF aircraft wholly unchallenged.
There will be no Court-Martial, and a jury will acquit anyone charged with a crime of damaging planes on the basis that criminal damage was necessary to protect Hamas or whatever.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14835349/Defence-chiefs-RAF-Brize-Norton-targeted.html
Oh dear. Still she was probably concentrating on more important matters:-
https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/25253098.raf-brize-norton-holds-special-event-thank-supporters/?ref=msn
The guests were welcomed by Station Commander, Group Captain Louise Henton, and Commander Air Wing, Group Captain Andy McIntyre.
I just hope the canapés were up to scratch.
Yes, that’s the one :-/
Sounds rather different from when my Dad was in the RAF (1952-60), as a navigator and officer flying on aircraft like Meteors, Canberras and Venoms.
And let’s not forget this disgraceful, and to my mind, illegal episode of a few years ago.
I wonder if the Group Captain realizes that, although teasing and pranks can really hurt your feelings, getting shot down over enemy territory hurts a lot more? I wonder if she realizes that all those teasing and pranks are absolutely designed to prepare her teams for the rigours and privations of being in battle? That the military and military training is absolutely designed in that way for that purpose? And I wonder if she agrees with me that if you cannot handle a bit of pranking and roughhousing that perhaps the military might not be the best career choice for you? After all, if you can’t stand your colleagues calling you mean names or nicking your boots, how well are you going to handle the enemy stripping you naked hosing you down with cold water and shoving a broomstick up your ass to convince you to give up movements of your fellow troops?
The military is supposed to be composed of hard men, lethal killers who are adequately leashed by the civil authorities until they are needed.
I think the Group Captain might be thinking that she is working for the department of social work, or the treasury, where, admittedly her concerns might be more valid.
Well, yes, this is how monomaniacal military units are formed.
Perhaps the militaries should form homogenous divisions within the greater body. We could have men’s battalions, women’s battalions, trans-men’s battalions, non-binary battalions . . .
They could all compete to become the new Ghurkas.
There was a BBC article about a small all-female Norwegian special-force unit, meant for deployment where men would not be trusted; nunneries, perhaps, if any nunnery happens to be in a strategical location.
One definite advantage of such a unit is that men are not tied up defending the women in the unit.
If she wrote that in 2003, then it is fairly safe to say those who appointed her knew what they were getting. So she wasn’t there to improve military efficiency or security, she was there to socialise and (I read somewhere) get the pedestrian crossings painted in rainbow colours. Just doing her job.
On the other hand, I keep reading remarks to the effect that it’s just as well the people who broke in were just pranksters and not saboteurs. Really? They sprayed something into aircraft engines. Any volunteers for the next flight in those planes? Maybe Air Chief Marshal Sir Rich Knighton should go up first, to show everyone else they are all right.
Oh, and at the very least those “pranksters” ought to have to pay for the additional maintenance required, presumably including stripping down and carefully inspecting the engines. That should keep them busy for a while.
Group Captain Henton thinks that patriotism and bravery are bad – yet has been awarded medals, on what basis were these medals awarded to the lady?
The lady is also a senior officer (Group Captain is a far more senior rank in the Air Force than Captain is in the Army) in the Royal Air Force without any combat experience flying an aircraft. A rather odd state of affairs.
By the way – in case any American thinks the collapse of the British armed forces is funny, the United States military was going down the same “Woke”, i.e. Critical Theory Marxist, road – under Obama, Biden, indeed even under the Clinton Administration.
Part of the problem is lack of ideological training – yes LACK of it.
Civil Servants and military officers follow Critical Theory Marxist doctrines WITHOUT KNOWING they are Marxist – it all sounds nice, “Diversity”, “Inclusion” and the other buzz words – and people, even most of the people pushing it, have no idea that the thing is designed to destroy, utterly destroy, Western society.
As John O’Sullivan pointed out many years ago – people who do not understand the left (what they are doing) become puppets of the left, pushing their agenda without even knowing they are doing it.
Gramsci and other Marxists were pushing this stuff back when my father was a Marxist – back in the 1930s.
It has taken a very long time to work its way to a position of dominance in the institutions – but that has been achieved now.
It will either be burned out – or the nation will be destroyed.
Sadly the pragmatic, non ideological, British are incredible vulnerable to this sort of thing – because they do not think ideologically themselves means they are more (yes more – not less) vulnerable to people who do.
Even years ago, before Blair and co, if you asked British people in senior positions why such things as Freedom of Speech or truth in scientific research (rather than just making up data to serve a political agenda – as the Met Office, and so on, now do), they did not know how to reply – they would just mumble something about how that is how we did things around here (or some other David Hume style stuff) – an incredibly weak position.
If people do not think in terms of principles, understand them – then their “way of life” will collapse when it comes under intellectual attack.
Deliberately sabotaging military aircraft?
Traditionally that would have been severely punished.
For example, setting fires in Royal dockyards was punishable by being hanged by the neck till death.
Group Captain Henton (Order of the British Empire – I wonder if the lady thinks the British Empire was a good thing) also seems to misunderstand the concept of bravery.
A brave person is someone who is prepared to challenge group-think, not someone who submits to it.
For example, a brave person would reject her LGBTQ+ (etc) indoctrination.
But it is not a matter of a bad individual – the institutional culture has gone rotten, been made rotten, over many years – for reasons I touch on above.
To be fair to the unfortunate Group Captain, it may well be that she had no means of exercising any form of operational control over security at the air base. A significant part of the security at British military basis is provided by the Ministry of Defence’s Guard Service, whose website gives a helpful pointer to their role:
And of course:
It seems that those ‘visitors’ did not experience any ‘customer service’ from these guards, but perhaps ‘lessons have been learned‘.