Quotulatiousness

May 4, 2023

Despite all the evidence, Canada’s official motto doesn’t translate as “we broke it”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In The Line, Justin Ling adds more to the towering pile of evidence that “Canada is broken”:

If The Line has an editorial position, it is probably thus: Everything is broken.

This newsletter, of course, comes at the idea more earnestly than, say, the leader of the Conservative party. When my friend Matt Gurney advances that proposition, it is a lament. When Pierre Poilievre does: It’s wishful thinking.

While citizens of this country can’t always agree on what, exactly, is busted in our country, or why, or who is responsible — we can all agree, I hope, that things in this country could use a tune-up, at the very least. Canadians, after all, are imbued with a cloying optimism. An insufferable belief that things can be fixed. It’s a good thing.

Lucky for us, we have plenty of words written about how to fix much of what ails us. Because we, as a country, have a compulsive need to inquire about those problems. Our national pastime isn’t hockey, it’s the royal commission.

And we’ve got a government in office that loves to study the nature of the problem. There’s good work, these days, for the special rapporteurs and retired judges amongst us. And if you’re a Canadian that loves a good public consultation, you must be run ragged.

Yet we also have a government in office that has a pathological inability to take advice. And this problem may help explain why it feels like we’re sliding backwards.

[…]

When the government tapped an expert panel to study the use of solitary confinement in Canada’s prisons — literally torture — Correctional Services Canada blocked them from doing their job, and the public safety minister ignored their cries for help and then let their contracts lapse. Thanks to some scrutiny, the government renewed the study, then ignored it when the numbers showed they were still torturing people. Oops!

The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians — a body Trudeau created — warned in 2019 that Ottawa wasn’t taking foreign interference seriously, particularly when it came to China. “In short, government responses were piecemeal, responding to specific instances of foreign interference but leaving unaddressed the many other areas where Canadian institutions and fundamental rights and freedoms continue to be undermined by hostile states.” Prescient!

One of the most absurd examples is the sexual misconduct crisis in the Canadian Armed Forces. When Trudeau came into office in 2015, he had an external review on his desk from Marie Deschamps. One good external review deserves another, so the Liberals ordered one from Louise Arbour in 2022. What she found was harrowing: “We have been here before. Little seems to change.” Not only had the government failed to implement the Deschamps report, it was still failing to live up to the recommendations from the 1997 Somalia Inquiry. Fuck!

[…]

At the very centre of this tootsie-pop is, surprise, elitism. This Liberal government, armed with its paper-thin mandate, is convinced that they — and only they — are the verifiers of good ideas. And we should be grateful for whatever decision they deign to make.

If they farm out an idea to the public service, and the idea doesn’t come back in the form they envisioned, no matter: Send out the McKinsey signal. For just a few million dollars, their crack team of subject matter non-experts can prepare a PowerPoint presentation laying out the exact policy the political staff wanted in the first place.

The Liberals take a similar approach to consulting with the unwashed masses. When the government consulted the public on their plan to police “online harms,” they published a “what we heard” report that was broadly supportive of their plan.

Can we see the submissions? Journalists and academics asked. No. Came the reply.

Fierce fighting on Gallipoli … before WW1

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Bruce Gudmundsson outlines the operations of Ottoman Empire forces defending “Turkey in Europe” against Greek and Bulgarian invasion (in alliance with Serbia and Montenegro) in 1913:

In the English speaking world, the name Gallipoli invariably evokes memories of the great events of 1915 and 1916. A location of such strategic importance, however, rarely serves as the site of a single battles. Two years before the landings of the British, Indian, Australian, and New Zealand troops on the south-west portion of the the peninsula (and the concurrent French landings on the nearby mainland of Asia Minor near the ruins of the ancient city of Troy), Ottoman soldiers defended the Dardanelles against the forces of the Balkan League.

By the end of January of 1913, the combined efforts of Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria had driven Ottoman forces from most of “Turkey in Europe”. Indeed, the only intact Ottoman formations on European soil were those trapped in the fortress of Adrianople, those holding the fortified line just west of Constantinople, and those that had recently arrived at Gallipoli.

Soon after arriving, the Ottoman forces on Gallipoli began to build a belt of field fortifications across the narrowest part of the peninsula, a line some five kilometers (three miles) west of the the town of Bolayir. At the same time, they occupied outposts some twenty kilometers east of the line, at the place where the peninsula connected to the mainland.

The general situation in (and around) the Gallipoli Peninsula, 31 January 1913.

On 4 February 1913, the Bulgarians attacked. On the first day of this attack, they drove in the Ottoman outposts. On the second day, they broke through a hastily erected line of resistance, thereby convincing the Ottoman forces in front of them to evacuate Bolayir. However, rather than taking the town, or otherwise attempting to exploit their victory, they withdrew to positions some ten kilometers (six miles) east of the Ottoman earthworks.

While the Ottoman land forces returned to the earthworks along the neck of the Peninsula, ships of the Ottoman Navy operating in the Sea of Marmora located, and began to bombard, the Bulgarian forces near the coast. This caused the Bulgarians to move inland, where they took up, and improved, new positions on the rear slopes of nearby hills.

On 9 February, the Ottomans launched a double attack. While the main body of the Ottoman garrison of Gallipoli advanced overland, a smaller force, supported by the fire of Ottoman warships, landed on the far side of the Bulgarian position. Notwithstanding the advantages, both numerical and geometric, enjoyed by the Ottoman attackers, this pincer action failed to destroy the Bulgarian force. Indeed, in the course of two failed attacks, the Ottomans suffered some ten thousand casualties.

Though the Ottoman maneuver failed to dislodge the Bulgarians from their trenches, the two-sided attack convinced the Bulgarian commander to seek ground that was, at once, both easier to defend against terrestrial attack and less vulnerable to naval gunfire. He found this on the east bank of a river, thirteen kilometers (eight miles) northeast of Bolayir and ten kilometers (six miles) north of the place where the Ottoman landing had taken place.

British civil servants apparently need to have training on BDSM theory and practice

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Health — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In Spiked, Malcolm Clark outlines the proposal to be discussed at a civil service union conference next month:

“Cologne BDSM 07” by CSD2006 is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 .

For years, the LGBT lobby has wreaked havoc across the UK’s civil service. It has helped to turn the machinery of government into a crèche for the kind of people who can’t remember what pronouns they’re using that day. But this may have just been a taster of what’s to come. Kink, it seems, is the new frontier in identity politics. Get ready to meet the “BDSM” lobby.

Next month, at its annual conference, the biggest civil-service union, PCS, will discuss a motion calling on Whitehall to set up a network for staff who are into bondage, domination and sado-masochism (BDSM). I suppose there’s one thing to be said for this daft idea. The more time these jobsworths spend slapping each other around, the less time they’ll have to humiliate and torment members of the taxpaying public.

There are a few obvious problems with this proposed BDSM staff network. For one, its advocates have called for workplace training courses about BDSM. No, I’m not making this up. The suggested courses would explain that “mutual informed consent … is needed before erotic activity is carried out”. This is a statement of the obvious to most of us. Who says entry standards for the civil service are slipping?

You may have assumed that the priority of our civil service should be carrying out the business of government, rather than BDSM advocacy. Perhaps it should be getting on top of the fact that only three per cent of hospital trusts in England hit cancer waiting-time targets in 2022? Or the fact that 360,000 people had to wait more than 10 weeks for their passport last year?

One strange thing about this demand for training courses for kink-meisters is that it flies in the face of other recent staff demands. Across Whitehall, as in private industry, advocacy groups have long insisted that Britain’s workplaces have developed a toxic culture that does not respect sexual boundaries. Reams of new guidelines have been drawn up in response. Many of these guidelines consider asking questions about someone’s sex life to be, in itself, a form of sexual harassment. Yet now we could soon have staff networks based solely around people’s private sex lives. And what would a meeting of sexual fetishists discuss if not their sex lives? The weather?

Even twenty years ago, it was a common witticism to refer to workplace meetings as “beatings”, but this is a long way past a casual joke (that yes, is probably risky to make in most modern workplaces, as someone is bound to find offence).

While looking for an appropriate image to accompany this post, I was quickly reminded why most search engines now offer varying levels of “safe” viewing.

Why British train enthusiasts hate this man – Dr. Beeching’s Railway Axe

Filed under: Britain, Economics, History, Railways — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Train of Thought
Published 27 Jan 2023

In today’s video, we take a look at one Doctor Richard Beeching, the man who ripped up a third of Britain’s railways with nothing but a pen and paper.

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QotD: Gesamtkunstwerk

Filed under: Media, Quotations, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… it occurs to me that movies aren’t the best example of the Current Year’s creative bankruptcy — music is. Somewhere below, I joked that Pink Floyd’s album The Wall was a modern attempt at a Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk, a “total art work”. Wagner thought opera should be a complete aesthetic experience, that a great opera would have not just great music, but a great story in the libretto, great poetry in the lyrics, great painting in the set design, and so on, all of which would combine to something much greater than the sum of its already-excellent parts.

As I said, that’s awfully heavy for an album whose most famous song asks how can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat, but it’s nonetheless an accurate description of what Roger Waters was trying to do with the integrated concept album / movie / stage show. Whether or not he knew he was attempting a Gesamtkunstwerk in the full Wagnerian sense is immaterial, as is the question of whether or not he succeeded. Nor does it matter if The Wall is any good, musically or cinematically or lyrically.* The point is, he gave it one hell of a go … and nobody else has, even though these days it’d be far, far easier.

Consider what a band like Rush in their prime would’ve done with modern technology. I’m not a musician, but I’ve been told by people who are that you can make studio-quality stuff with free apps like Garage Band. Seriously, it’s fucking free. So is YouTube, and even high-quality digital cameras cost next to nothing these days, and even laptops have enough processor power to crank out big league video effects, with off-the-shelf software. I’m guessing (again, I’m no musician, let alone a filmmaker), but I’d wager some pretty good money you could make an actual, no-shit Gesamtkunstwerk — music, movie, the whole schmear — for under $100,000, easy. You think 2112-era Rush wouldn’t have killed it on YouTube?

I take a backseat to no man in my disdain for prog rock, but I have a hard time believing Neal Peart and the Dream Theater guys were the apex of rock’n’roll pretension. I realize I’ve just given the surviving members of Styx an idea, and we should all be thankful Kilroy Was Here was recorded in 1983, not 2013, because that yawning vortex of suck would’ve destroyed all life in the solar system, but I’m sure you see my point.** Why has nobody else tried this? Just to stick with a long-running Rotten Chestnuts theme, “Taylor Swift”, the grrl-power cultural phenomenon, is just begging for the Gesamtkunstwerk treatment. Apparently she’s trying real hard to be the June Carter Cash of the New Millennium™ these days, and hell, even I’d watch it.***

The fact that it hasn’t been attempted, I assert, is the proof that it can’t be done. The culture isn’t there, despite the tools being dirt cheap and pretty much idiot proof. Which says a LOT about the Current Year, none of it good.

    * The obvious comment is that Roger Waters is no Richard Wagner, but that’s fatuous — even if you don’t like Wagner (I don’t, particularly), you have to acknowledge he’s about the closest thing to a universal artistic genius the human race has produced. It’s meaningless to say that Roger Waters isn’t in Wagner’s league, because pretty much nobody is in Wagner’s league. And philistine though I undoubtedly am, I’d much rather listen to The Wall than pretty much any opera — I enjoy the symphonic bits, but opera singing has always sounded like a pack of cats yodeling to me. I’m with the Emperor from Amadeus: “Too many notes.”

    ** If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then please, I’m begging you, do NOT go listen to “Mr. Roboto.” Whatever you do, don’t click that link …

    … you clicked it, didn’t you? And now you’ll be randomly yelling “domo arigato, Mister Roboto!!” for days. You’ll probably get punched more than once for that. Buddy, I tried to warn you.

    *** Anthropological interest only. I know I’m in the distinct minority on this one, but she never turned my crank, even in her “fresh-scrubbed Christian country girl” stage. Too sharp featured, and too obviously mercenary, even back then.

Severian, “More Scattered Thoughts”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2020-10-13.

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