The West’s Green delusions empowered Putin. While we banned plastic straws, Russia drilled and doubled nuclear energy production.
|
|||||
|
Christians in MP Steve Baker’s seat pray for him to quit role on climate thinktank
When it says “protesters gathered”, we are not talking about the First Crusade. The gathering process probably took less than three seconds.
I see something missing there.
Smite the idolaters?
All very civilised, and these doubtless well-meaning folk, all fifteen of them, have every right to make their protest, and I am glad that Mr Baker smote them not. But if we’re gonna be doing political prayers, here’s mine. Oh Lord, open their eyes: we need fracking and nuclear power for the sake of the poor and the peace of the world. As Andrew Neil writes in the Mail,
Added later: From Tipp Insights, “Anti-Fossil Madness Funds Putin’s Ukraine Aggression” February 26th, 2022 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
 I am seeing a phenomenon being floridly expressed today, but it is something I have observed for many years: nothing happens in the world, at least nothing good, unless the malign USA is driving it. Yes, the United States is the richest, most powerful nation on earth and it has been since World War II. And yes, it has interfered under presidents of all stripes in pursuit of its perceived geopolitical interests. It has done this for good or ill in a great many places, sometimes benignly, other times with a breathtaking lack of judgement. But just as the leaders of that great nation often overestimated the USA’s ability to impose its will in far away lands, many people in many places also overestimate America’s influence in world affairs. They largely deny that locals have agency, oblivious to the fact people everywhere are capable of organising politically in ways not directed and driven from an agency in Langley, Virginia. As a friend of mine who was deeply involved in the 2014 Maidan revolt in Kyiv said to me once:
He was of course joking, but Maidan was a golden example of how something overwhelmingly driven and executed by Ukrainians, in Ukraine, in response to Ukrainian political and social pressures becoming intolerable, was nevertheless written off as CIA mischief-making. That idea was pushed hard by Russia when their pet oligarch was deposed, and it is entirely possible Putin even believes it himself. It is actually more supportive of his worldview than the notion it really happened because millions of Ukrainians loathed Putin, hated his Ukrainian puppet in Kyiv, and reject the malign influence of Russia generally. But so many people seek a simpler world, a bipolar one in which everything is down to the Big Actors (with America still the biggest at the moment). Understanding that and feeding into it grants profound insight into Russian (and to some extent Chinese) propaganda. Add to that the rightly shattered confidence in Western institutions the last two years has wrought, and it is not surprising otherwise discerning folk fall for it. Many seek to explain the world through the distorting prism of the Americocentric delusion, rather than face the complex frequently fracturing mosaic that explains the world more accurately. People do things locally for local reason; not everything is about some current iteration of the Great Game. If the USA (and UK) have a share of blame for what is happening in Ukraine right now, it is not because they ‘provoked’ Russia: Putin has made it clear the very existence of a politically and culturally independent Ukraine is intolerable to him. No, their mistake, their toxic involvement, was when they pressed Ukraine into surrendering the nuclear weapons Kyiv inherited from the defunct USSR in return for meaningless guarantees. Russia is not attacking Ukraine in response to actions of the USA since then, that’s an Americocentric delusion. This is not happening because Ukraine wanted to join NATO, it’s happening because they are outside NATO, which is not the same thing at all. Russia is not driven by fear of NATO strength, it is driven by perceptions of western weakness. Russia believes the cultural, military and geopolitical balance has tipped in their favour, expecting the west will respond to their invasion of Ukraine today with nothing more than official grimaces. I hope they are not correct about that but we will soon see. Putin is motivated by oft stated imperial ambitions to Make Russia Great Again, to ‘restore’ Russia to its imperial boundaries with Moscow as the New Rome (yes, they really say that); Ukrainian rejection of that notion and assertion of their own identity is therefore intolerable. But reject ‘the Russian world’ they did, because Ukrainians do not wish to be ruled from the Kremlin even indirectly. That is why they overthrew Russia’s favoured oligarch and sought to chart their own course in the world. That is what this war is about. February 24th, 2022 | 90 comments - (Comments are closed)
George Orwell, Animal Farm:
(Credit to, um, www.marxists.org actually, for providing the link.) The Times yesterday, “Donald Trump praises Vladimir Putin’s ‘genius’ move on Ukraine”. The headline worked; there are more than a thousand outraged comments about how Trump is “supporting Putin”. I knew before I read the first line that the point he was actually making would be something along the lines of this:
The BBC, this morning: February 24th, 2022 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
When I was young I read many earnest articles saying that international aid should be directed towards eradicating the long term causes of famine and poverty rather than short term fixes for specific disasters. Back then I was convinced by such arguments, but later I reversed my opinion. Give generously in emergencies, yes, but most government-to-government foreign aid was well described by development economist Peter Bauer: “Aid is a phenomenon whereby poor people in rich countries are taxed to support the lifestyles of rich people in poor countries”. The money from the sky is not merely wasted but counterproductive:
Yet it remains true that when catastrophe strikes it is often only governments who have the power – the credit, the personnel, the ships and aircraft – to render aid quickly. In most such cases I unhesitatingly say, do it. Yeah, it might be nicer if we were not forced to pay taxes for any cause at all but when people are dying by the thousands don’t wait for Libertopia to evolve before helping them. However it is at least arguable that one situation where even emergency aid can end up doing net harm is when the regime in charge of the country stricken by famine or disaster is so bad that perpetuating it (as the aid will undoubtedly do) is an even worse catastrophe. Is Afghanistan such a case? This Guardian article does a fair job of presenting both sides of the dilemma, albeit from a starting point far more in favour of international aid than mine. February 2nd, 2022 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
How many goodly creatures are there here! – William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act V, Scene I Hillel Neuer welcomes the New Year in with a look at the newly elected members of the U.N.’s highest human rights body. January 2nd, 2022 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
Ian Birrell in the Mail on Sunday asks,
October 3rd, 2021 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
Mark Steyn wrote the other day,
Good question. But why only ask it about the army? While many here are distrustful of governments in general, most agree that if a government must exist at all it exists for the purposes listed in the preamble to the Constitution of the United States:
I wish I could say “President Biden is failing at all these objectives”. Mere ineffectiveness would be so nice. He is worse than useless on every one of them. He is worse than the British government on every one of them, which is quite an achievement. ‘America is back’, all right, back to 1975. That affects us, too. Sharks attack when they smell blood in the water. In a spirit of open-mindedness I invite American readers more familiar with their local situation than I am to suggest any mitigating factors which might raise Mr Biden’s score to zero on any of: forming a more perfect union, establishing justice, insuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defence (Yanks could spell in those days), promoting the general welfare (promoting welfare dependency doesn’t count), and securing the blessings of liberty to himself and his posterity… on second thoughts, I must grant that he is doing OK at keeping Hunter Biden out of jail. August 18th, 2021 | 67 comments - (Comments are closed)
BBC News 17:16 BST: Taliban take over Presidential Palace – reports Conveniently, Afghanistan has had its own Samizdata tag for nearly twenty years. It is interesting, if depressing, to look at the old entries. August 15th, 2021 | 36 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Facebook axes team over far-right data”, says the Times.
A commenter called LucasTheCat gave me the title for this post when they responded, “This is strange for two reasons – none of the commentators listed are what I would consider to be ‘far right’ and isn’t removing the report – the same as taking the weather report out of your paper – because you don’t like the weather – or am I missing something?” By the way, the idea that Nick Clegg was released on the world deliberately is a fringe conspiracy theory that Facebook has rightly banned. The current theory is that he was accidentally leaked from an insufficiently secured British political system. July 16th, 2021 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
Thirty years? Women of childbearing age should not drink – WHO How about forever? Face masks should continue ‘forever’ to fight other diseases, says Sage scientist June 18th, 2021 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
Sky News on Twitter: “Boris Johnson has suggested the world’s leading nations should support a more ‘gender-neutral and feminine’ way of post-COVID economic recovery.” “Gender neutral and feminine”? Click on the words below* that in your opinion best match what was going through Boris’s tousled head as he said these words. (a) Pay up, Matt, I did it. (b) Hey, if Joe can get away with “Those RFA pilots”, I can get away with this. (c) You’re looking awfully pretty today, Carrie. (d) You’re looking awfully pretty today, Ursula. *Nothing will happen when you click. But you will feel better for having expressed yourself. June 11th, 2021 | 42 comments - (Comments are closed)
|
   |
||||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
