Published on 21 Mar 2017
Without trains, the modern armies of World War 1 were not able to move their troops en masse. Without trains, the soldiers at the front didn’t have food or ammunition and without trains, the soldiers wouldn’t make it to the nearest hospital. Trains were the backbone of the new, industrialised war of the 20th century.
March 22, 2017
The Backbone of Total War – Trains in WW1 I THE GREAT WAR Special
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Alberta in the 1970s “had more revenue than it knew what to do with. THAT IS NOT A FIGURE OF SPEECH”
Colby Cosh on the past and future of the Alberta Progressive Conservative party:
On Saturday, as was generally foreseen, Jason Kenney became leader of the Alberta Progressive Conservatives. This sounds portentous and impressive. But one of the things that strikes you, since Kenney is proposing to (at a bare minimum) re-brand the Alberta PCs, is that their leaders are not exactly an honour roll of mighty statesmen. The party was successful and did good, and Albertans are grateful for its legacy. But they are, perhaps, grateful in the reluctant, compromised way one might be grateful to an ex-wife who was not much fun but helped the kids turn out well.
Peter Lougheed helped to change Canada’s destiny and define the compact between Ottawa and the provinces. Ralph Klein put the province on a competitive, economically diverse footing and established the fiscal health that a New Democratic government is now exploiting. But Lougheed’s electorally unsuccessful forerunners are forgotten by all but families and friends, and Klein’s successors all came to unhappy political ends.
Why, then, do Albertans speak so fondly of the Progressive Conservative heritage? I am afraid the answer is that older Albertans have chosen to forget it and younger ones don’t understand it. Peter Lougheed led a government that, owing to 1970s oil prices, had more revenue than it knew what to do with. THAT IS NOT A FIGURE OF SPEECH. Much of the art of Alberta government in the Seventies was trying to think up new, non-wasteful uses for oil money.
Most of Lougheed’s choices turned out to be very wasteful indeed after he left office. Those budgeting conditions have occurred only a few times anywhere in the annals of Western civilization, and they are never coming back. If they did, it would now be thought insane to follow a Lougheed program — make bad infrastructure and “value-added industry” bets, throw doomed loans at resource and tech companies, flood the cities with cheapo housing.
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A check-in from the “libertarian writers’ mafia”
In the most recent issue of the Libertarian Enterprise, J. Neil Schulman talks about “rational security”:
Two of my favorite authors — Robert A Heinlein and Ayn Rand — favored a limited government that would provide an effective national defense against foreign invaders and foreign spies. Rand died March 6, 1982; Heinlein on May 8, 1988 — both of them well before domestic terrorism by foreign nationals or immigrants was a major political issue.
Both Heinlein and Rand, however, were aware of domestic political violence, industrial sabotage, and foreign espionage by both foreigners and immigrants, going back before their own births — Rand February 2, 1905, Heinlein July 7, 1907.
Both Heinlein and Rand wrote futuristic novels portraying totalitarianism (including expansive government spying on its own citizens) within the United States. Both authors also portrayed in their fiction writing and discussed in their nonfiction writing the chaos caused by capricious government control over individual lives and private property.
In their tradition, I’ve done quite a bit of that, also, in my own fiction and nonfiction.
So has my libertarian friend author Brad Linaweaver, whose writings I try never to miss an opportunity to plug.
Brad, like myself, writes in the tradition of Heinlein and Rand — more so even than I do, since Brad also favors limited government while I am an anarchist. Nonetheless I am capable of making political observations and analysis from a non-anarchist viewpoint.
We come to this day in which Brad and I find ourselves without the comfort and living wisdom of Robert A. Heinlein and Ayn Rand. We are now both in our sixties, old enough to be libertarian literary elders.
Oh, we’re not the only ones. L. Neil Smith still writes libertarian novels and opines on his own The Libertarian Enterprise. There are others of our “libertarian writers’ mafia” still living and writing, but none as politically focused as we are — and often, in our opinion, not as good at keeping their eyes on the ball.
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Sue Rhodes – My Workbench
Published on 25 Feb 2017
Follow Sue on Instagram: @rhodes_woodwork
Workbench made by Sue Rhodes as her masterclass student project at the John McMahon School of Fine Woodworking, Nottinghamshire, UK (http://www.schoolofwoodworking.co.uk).
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QotD: Sharia and women’s rights
As a moral and legal code, Sharia law is demeaning and degrading to women. It requires women to be placed under the care of male guardians; it views a woman’s testimony in court as worth half that of a man’s; and it permits a husband to beat his wife. It’s not only women’s legal and sexual freedoms that are curtailed under Sharia but their economic freedoms as well. Women generally inherit half of the amount that men inherit, and their male guardian must consent to their choosing education, work, or travel.
In Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, and parts of Nigeria, where Sharia law underpins the judicial system, women’s rights suffer greatly.
There is a growing trend among some feminists to make excuses for Sharia law and claim it is nothing more than a personal moral guide, and therefore consistent with American constitutional liberties. Yet the rules that such “Sharia-lite feminists” voluntarily choose to follow are also invoked to oppress women — to marry them off, to constrain their economic and human rights, and to limit their freedom of expression — who have not consented to them. The moral conflict between Sharia and universal human rights should not be dismissed as a misunderstanding, but openly discussed.
Many Western feminists struggle to embrace universal women’s rights. Decades ago, Germaine Greer argued that attempts to outlaw female genital mutilation amounted to “an attack on cultural identity.” That type of deference to traditional practices, in the name of cultural sensitivity, hurts vulnerable women. These days, relativism remains strong. Too many feminists in the West are reluctant to condemn cultural practices that clearly harm women — female genital mutilation, polygamy, child marriage, marital rape, and honor violence, particularly in non-Western societies. Women’s rights are universal, and such practices cannot be accepted.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, “On This ‘Day Without a Woman,’ Don’t Leave Women Oppressed by Sharia Law Behind”, The Daily Beast, 2017-03-08.
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