Quotulatiousness

July 28, 2022

“… this time it will be worldwide”

Elizabeth Nickson recounts her journey from dedicated environmentalist to persecuted climate dissident and explains why so many of us feel as if we’re living on the slopes of a virtual Vesuvius in 79AD:

A screenshot from a YouTube video showing the protest in front of Parliament in Ottawa on 30 January, 2022.
Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

I was experiencing a time-worn campaign to shut down a voice that conflicted with an over-arching agenda. And in the scheme of things, I was nothing. But in fact, I was almost the only one, everyone else had been chased out. I was an easy kill, required few resources. It was personal, it was vicious beyond belief, and it had nothing to do with truth. If I had continued my work in newspapers, they would have attacked my mother and my brothers, two of the three of whom were fragile.

As of now, this has happened to hundreds of thousands of people in every sector of the economy. The chronicles of the cancelled are many and varied, and they all start with the furies, unbalanced, easily triggered and marshalled to hunt down and kill an enemy. These programs, pogroms, are meticulously planned, they analyze you, find your weakness, and attack it. In my case, it was my solitude, my income, my need to look after my family that made me an easy sacrifice.

I was such an innocent. I thought with my hard-won skills, my ability to reason, to number crunch, to apply economic theory and legit charting, and report, the truth would be valuable, useful.

Every single member of the cancelled has had their faith in the culture badly shaken. They all thought, as I did, that we were in this together, we needed the truth in order to make good decisions, decisions that would promote the good of all.

Not now. Not anymore.

The truth I found behind the fields and forests of the natural world is animating people on the streets in Europe today, the Dutch, French and German farmers. It animated the revolution in Sri Lanka.

Because what I and hundreds of others had found was censored, the destructive agenda has advanced to the point where their backs are against the wall. They don’t have a choice. They have to win. And they are in the millions.

Same with Trump’s people. They aren’t mindless fans or acolytes or sub-human fools. Their backs are against the wall. They have no choice but to fight.

But because I and the many like me, who know what happened, were shut down, disallowed from writing about it, cancelled and vilified, no one understands why this is happening in any depth. City people mock and hate rural people. My photographer colleague/best friend in New York: “racists as far as the eye can see”. My old aristocratic bf London: “Pencil neck turkey farmers”. No city person can take on board that they have allowed legislation and regulation which is destroying the rural economy because they have been brainwashed by the hysteria in the environmental movement. This destruction is not the only reason but it is the fundamental reason for our massive debts and deficits. The base of the economy has been destroyed. We have lost two decades of real growth.

And we did it via censorship.

There is a truism about revolutions in China. All of a sudden, across this great and massive country with its five thousand year culture, people put down their tools and start marching towards the capital, hundreds of millions all at once.

We are almost there. But this time it will be worldwide.

September 21, 2021

QotD: Canadian international virtue signalling is not a new thing

Filed under: Asia, Cancon, Government, Media, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

[I]n January, after the tsunami hit, [Canadian prime minister Paul Martin] flew into Sri Lanka to pledge millions and millions and millions in aid. Not like that heartless George W. Bush back at the ranch in Texas. Why, Prime Minister Martin walked along the ravaged coast of Kalumnai and was, reported Canada’s CTV network, “visibly shaken.” President Bush might well have been shaken, but he wasn’t visible, and in the international compassion league, that’s what counts. So Martin boldly committed Canada to giving $425 million to tsunami relief. “Mr. Paul Martin Has Set A Great Example For The Rest Of The World Leaders!” raved the LankaWeb news service.

You know how much of that $425 million has been spent so far? Fifty thousand dollars — Canadian. That’s about 40 grand in U.S. dollars. The rest isn’t tied up in [Sri Lankan] bureaucracy, it’s back in Ottawa. But, unlike horrible “unilateralist” America, Canada enjoys a reputation as the perfect global citizen, renowned for its commitment to the U.N. and multilateralism. And on the beaches of Sri Lanka, that and a buck’ll get you a strawberry daiquiri. Canada’s contribution to tsunami relief is objectively useless and rhetorically fraudulent.

Mark Steyn, “Bolton’s sin is telling truth about system”, Chicago Sun-Times, 2005-05-15.

July 10, 2020

Upon a Sleepless Isle by Andrew Fidel Fernando

Filed under: Asia, Books — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In The Critic, A.S.H. Smyth reviews this Gratiaen Prize-winning travel memoir of Sri Lanka:

Having returned to Sri Lanka from school and uni in New Zealand, and spent a few years consolidating a career in cricket journalism, AFF (as he is also known) decides to tour the country on a solo self-educational adventure – not least because big chunks of it were basically off-limits during his upbringing, thanks to the 26-year civil conflict with the LTTE/”Tamil Tigers”.

The book begins:

    The smiles in Sri Lanka are as wide as the horizon, visitors say. The nation’s treasures are as boundless as the ocean, many report. But never let it be forgotten that the ineptitude of the government is as vast and as awesome as the heavens …

At this point, our intrepid would-be traveller just wants the ID card to which he, as a Sri Lankan citizen, is well entitled. But there follow six pages of brutal savaging of the bureaucracy (remember that bear scene in The Revenant …?), and then short treatises on social scandal, unsustainable development, the traffic, tourists, and the glossy travel magazines that bring them here. And we haven’t even left Colombo yet.

But he gets out and about soon enough, and in a punchy 240-page mildly-memoirish survey, utilising pretty much every form of transport barring the bullock cart, he sees the elephant herds at Minneriya, climbs the 1/8-Mile-High Club that was the rock fortress of Sigiriya, explores a highwayman’s hideout near Kandy, the surreal Lego-ish hill town of Nuwara Eliya, the tea estates, the ancient waterworks around Polonnaruwa, the temple-strewn Anuradhapura, the otherworldly Mannar island, the Southern beach towns, and on through the flattened LTTE heartlands up into Jaffna. (Cricket nerds, be advised: there is no cricket in this book.)

In all, his journey amounts to about seven or eight weeks on the road, and, Sri Lanka being a fairly small place, it’s worth noting that his is an entirely normal tourist itinerary – a visitor with even a mid-level budget and modest accommodation demands could cover all of it in a three-week holiday – just done more slowly and, crucially, with better local “access”, specifically linguistic.

Like all good “city-bred pansy” writer types, he gets into scrapes (a tuktuk crash), and makes a fool of himself (“helping” some fishermen), and the whole thing is narrated with much irreverent humour and ironic side-eye, topped off with a great line in exaggerated street-chat/aunty gossip and the occasional murderously-deft flick of the stiletto: “if you had the financial means to inspire a government worker out of apathy …” – all facets not exactly over-represented in Sri Lankan English letters (non-fiction, anyway. Novels are full of it).

Nor is his apparent economy dependent on foreknowledge on the reader’s part (aided certainly by the author’s more-or-less ingenuous exploratory conceit). Whatever learning AFF was already armed with here is lightly worn, he works in the historical and social context of each leg of the journey with a minimum of fuss (a certain journalistic pragmatism and efficiency paying off there, one assumes), and there’s really no time at which you feel he’s had to throw his bucket down the well of Wikipedia to get through to the end of a particular informative sub-section.

That said, considerable amounts of this material were new to me (which, in a whistlestop tour of the entire island, is not saying nothing). His trip to the abandoned rebel-descendant jungle village of Kumana is as intriguing as the details of the 1817 Uva rebellion are grim. And in particular, I’m grateful to him for introducing me to the life and works of the archaeologist John Still, and clueing me up as to the origin of the phrase “white elephant”: “after the Thai royal practice of presenting unpopular courtiers with tuskers that were ruinously expensive to maintain.”

Alas for AFF – the curse of writing first-draft history – Upon a Sleepless Isle also offers (or rather offered) two major hostages to fortune. Namely, his repeated and overt enthusiasm about the transition away from the family-oriented regime of Mahinda Rajapaksa (2005-15), and his vocal sympathy and support for Sri Lanka’s peaceful and tolerant Muslim minority. Only three months after the book was published, a series of domestic Muslim terrorist attacks took place around the country, killing hundreds, which in turn helped to usher in the present (Gotabaya) Rajapaksa government. These have aged almost so badly that it adds a certain piquancy to read his already-blasted hopes of just two years ago.

July 22, 2015

Tea

Filed under: Food, India, Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

I was not aware that there were quite so many grades of tea: David Warren explains the rankings (and why you won’t find any in the Tea and Coffee aisle of your local Sobey’s or Metro):

There are six grades of Darjeeling, and the highest, Special Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe (SFTGFOP), will never reach the Greater Parkdale Area. One will need not only money, but contacts to obtain it. Perhaps, fly there, and start networking among the estate managers. You can’t buy it at Harrod’s, because they don’t sell to Harrod’s: it would be beneath them. The Queen might obtain some, but then, she has a staff.

Each grade lower drops a letter off the front, so that my fine tea is of the fourth grade, just short of “tippy,” which refers to the abundance of flowering buds. “Golden” means that in the process of oxidation, these tips will turn a gold colour. “Flowery” is the term for high floral aroma. “Orange” has nothing to do with fruit, but refers to the Nassau family of Holland, whose most creditable accomplishment was pioneering the importation of tea into Europe, four centuries ago. The term insinuates, “good enough for Dutch royalty,” perhaps. “Pekoe,” or more correctly pak-ho, refers to the white down that gathers at the base of the bottom bud, an indication of the plant’s mood, its susceptibility to plucking. (Tea picking is an art; one does not strip the tree bare, but selects each leaf as it is ready.)

Now, survey your local supermarket shelf — let us suppose it is an “upmarket” emporium — and you will find in the tea section nothing but sludge. The teas will all be “blended” — which I esteem as blended whisky, or blended wine, delivered in tanker trucks. This will be especially true of the expensive boxes with whimsical names for the blends — that say nothing of date, terroir, or the specific variety. The tea inside the boxes will be packed in irritating little bags, probably with the absurd claim that they are “organic.” Once cut open, they reveal that the tea was ground by a Rotorvane, even before being stirred in a diesel-electric mixer. Various chain tea stores have sprung up, posing as effete, to separate fools from their money. Their pretensions are risible, and they annoy me very much.

I won’t comment on the “herbal teas” they also sell; except to recommend, to the women (including nominal males) who want herbal remedies for their malades imaginaires, that they take up smoking.

Rather, let us focus on the words, “Orange Pekoe.” They attach to most of the Subcontinent’s black tea supply, as to that of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka (the former paradise of Ceylon). I have explained what the words mean in a series — not much — but standing alone, they mean less. They guarantee that the purchaser will receive, at an inflated price, tea of a low, coarse, common quality, processed by the method called “CTC” (crush, tear, curl), introduced in the 1930s by a ravening industrialist named McKercher (“Sir William …”), and now spread around the planet.

The machinery was designed for volume at the expense of quality. It makes no sense to put good tea in, and what comes out might as well be bagged. This is tea for the masses, who have no prejudice or taste, and do not aspire to the humane. Like so much else in our fallen world, the best argument would be that tea of this sort is “better than nothing.”

April 14, 2015

Strategies of the Sri Lankan civil war

Filed under: Asia, History, Military — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

In The Diplomat, Peter Layton looks back at the strategies that eventually ended the twenty-five year civil war in Sri Lanka:

How to win a civil war in a globalized world where insurgents skillfully exploit offshore resources? With most conflicts now being such wars, this is a question many governments are trying to answer. Few succeed, with one major exception being Sri Lanka where, after 25 years of civil war the government decisively defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and created a peace that appears lasting. This victory stands in stark contrast to the conflicts fought by well-funded Western forces in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last decade. How did Sri Lanka succeed against what many considered the most innovative and dangerous insurgency force in the world? Three main areas stand out.

First, the strategic objective needs to be appropriate to the enemy being fought. For the first 22 years of the civil war the government’s strategy was to bring the LTTE to the negotiating table using military means. Indeed, this was the advice foreign experts gave as the best and only option. In 2006, just before the start of the conflict’s final phase, retired Indian Lieutenant General AS Kalkat in 2006 declared, “There is no armed resolution to the conflict. The Sri Lanka Army cannot win the war against the Lankan Tamil insurgents.”

Indeed, the LTTE entered negotiations five times, but talks always collapsed, leaving a seemingly stronger LTTE even better placed to defeat government forces. In mid-2006, sensing victory was in its grasp, the LTTE deliberately ended the Norwegian-brokered ceasefire and initiated the so-called Eelam War IV. In response, the Sri Lankan government finally decided to change its strategic objective, from negotiating with the LTTE to annihilating it.

To succeed, a strategy needs to take into account the adversary. In this case it needed to be relevant to the nature of the LTTE insurgency. Over the first 22 years of the civil war, the strategies of successive Sri Lankan governments did not fulfill this criterion. Eventually, in late 2005 a new government was elected that choose a different strategic objective that matched the LTTE’s principal weaknesses while negating their strengths.

The LTTE’s principal problem was its finite manpower base. Only 12 percent of Sri Lanka’s population were Lankan Tamils and of these it was believed that only some 300,000 actively supported the LTTE. Moreover, the LTTE’s legitimacy as an organization was declining. By 2006, the LTTE relied on conscription – not volunteers – to fill its ranks and many of these were children. At the operational level some seeming strengths could also be turned against the LTTE, including its rigid command structure, a preference for fighting conventional land battles, and a deep reliance on international support.

October 28, 2011

“The ultimate measure of this institution’s value [is] the elevation of human dignity and liberty for all their citizens”

Filed under: Asia, Cancon, Government, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:32

Stephen Harper made a speech yesterday that expressed a lovely sentiment. It’s not clear if the other heads of government attending the meeting will be quite as taken with it:

­ If the Commonwealth continues to ignore member countries that violate human rights and ignore the rule of law and democratic principles, the 60-year-old organization will fade into irrelevance, Commonwealth leaders meeting here are being told.

It¹s a message Canada and Prime Minister Stephen Harper strongly endorses but one which is expected to produce divisions at the biennial summit of Commonwealth Heads of Government. The summit got underway Friday morning in a ceremony presided over by Queen Elizabeth II.

“The ultimate measure of this institution’s value going forward will remain the commitment asked of member governments to the elevation of human dignity and liberty for all their citizens,” Harper said in a speech here Thursday after arriving from Ottawa. “In the next few days, it is my strong hope, that the Commonwealth shall reaffirm, and reinvigorate, this great purpose.”

Member countries are typically loathe to point fingers at the laggards in the 54-country Commonwealth when it comes to human rights and democracy but not Harper.

He has already singled out Sri Lanka’s government for sharp criticism over Sri Lanka¹s failure to investigate what a United Nations panel called “credible allegations” that the Sri Lankan army committed war crimes as that country’s 25-year-old civil war was drawing to a close in 2009.

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