TimeGhost History
Published 16 Mar 2025As Europe emerges from WWII, Greece plunges into chaos. Political polarization, revenge killings, and failed diplomacy ignite a bitter civil war, turning former allies into deadly foes. From communist partisans regrouping in the mountains, to royalists asserting brutal dominance, the battle lines are drawn. Could Greece become the first major flashpoint in the Cold War, threatening peace across the Balkans and beyond?
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March 17, 2025
My Big Fat Greek Civil War – W2W 12 – 1947 Q2
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German politicians are willing to literally bankrupt the country to keep the AfD out of power
eugyppius is clearly no fan of Friedrich Merz, the CDU leader and presumptive next Chancellor of Germany, but even he seems boggled at how much Merz is willing to concede to his ideological enemies to get himself into that position:
Let us summarise, briefly, what has happened so far:
- The CDU are the party of fiscal responsibility. His Triviality the Pigeon Chancellor Friedrich Merz presented himself throughout the campaign as an unusual fan of Germany’s constitutionally-anchored debt brake. He told everybody that he could not imagine ever borrowing in excess of 0.35% of annual GDP, so interested was he in limiting the tax burden of future generations.
- All of the while, Merz and his advisers were scheming in secret about how they might overhaul the debt brake, firstly because they could not give the slightest shit about the tax burdens of future generations, and secondly because they spent the months since November 2023 observing what happens when a government that has no ideas is also deprived of money. “I have no ideas,” Merz said to himself during this time. “What happens if like Olaf Scholz I also end up with no money?”
- Exactly two weeks ago, U.S. President Donald J. Trump and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky had a verbal spat in the Oval Office. This spat put the fear of God into the Eurocrat establishment, for whom the Ukraine war has become a sacred and essentially religious cause. Merz capitalised on the panic to unveil his massive debt spending plan. He and his would-be coalition partners, the Social Democrats, announced that they wished to spend 500 billion Euros of debt on “infrastructure” and untold hundreds of billions of debt on defence. This would entail adjustments to the debt brake, in the same way setting your house on fire would entail adjustments to your living arrangements.
- This massive spending package will require a constitutional amendment, which can only be achieved with a two-thirds vote of the Bundestag. In the newly elected Bundestag, Die Linke and AfD will be in a position to block this amendment and Merz will be stuck with the debt brake. Thus Merz wants to break the debt brake in the final days of the old Bundestag – a strategy that has put him in the amazing position of groveling before the election’s biggest losers. Specifically, Merz has spent the past few days feverishly negotiating with the Green Party, who will not even have any role in his government, just to get them to sign off on his insane spending plans.
I wrote a lot here and on Twitter about the election nightmare scenario I called the “Kenyapocalypse” – a hypothetical in which the Greens and the Social Democrats would each be too weak to give the Union parties a majority on their own, such that Friedrich Merz would be forced to negotiate a coalition deal with both of them at once. In the end, Kenyapocalypse did not happen; the CDU avoided it by a razor’s breadth. Merz, however, turns out to be such a monumental retard that he has managed to recreate a simulacrum of Kenyapocalypse for himself. The man has been on his knees kissing not only Social Democrat but also Green ass for days. He has been begging the Greens to sign onto his debt plan, and the Greens have finally agreed, in return for the following concessions:
- The “defence” funding that will be exempt from the debt brake is to be defined as widely as possible. All kinds of things will count as debt brake-exempt “defence” spending now, probably including various climate nonsense.
- The 500 billion-Euro “infrastructure” debt is to include 100 billion Euros specifically earmarked for the “Climate and Transformation Fund” – the central financial instrument of the energy transition. This is basically infinity windmill money, you might as well set it on fire. Beyond this specific allocation, any projects that contribute to making Germany “climate neutral by 2045” will also be eligible for the 500 billion-Euro exception. This whole thing will be a massive wad of debt for Green nonsense and I would like to take this moment to laugh at everyone who told me how happy I should be that Merz was trying to fix Germany’s bridges with this debt bullshit. Nothing of the sort is going to happen.
- You will note that the explicit goal of achieving “climate neutrality” by 2045 is slated to be among the very few positive political points anchored in the German constitution. “Climate neutrality” is a more expansive concept than mere “carbon neutrality”, or net zero. It describes a utopian state of affairs in which human actions have no influence on the climate whatsoever.
These are prizes the Greens could not achieve even at the height of their influence, in the 2021 elections. Strictly speaking, the entire traffic light coalition fell apart over a matter of 3 billion Euros. Now the Greens are getting 100 billion Euros for free, all because Merz is determined to become Chancellor whatever the cost.
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How to Make Irish Shepherd’s Pie | Food Wishes
Food Wishes
Published 5 Mar 2012Learn how to make an Irish Shepherd’s Pie! This recipe is a lovely alternative to the much more common corned beef and cabbage recipe that you may have been planning for dinner. Take things to the next level with some nice Irish cheddar.
St. Patrick’s Day Special: Irish Shepherd’s Pie (the real one, not the stuff they eat in cottages)
I know I may have used a few atypical ingredients in this, but as far as I’m concerned, the only two things that are mandatory to make a “real” Shepherd’s Pie are potatoes and lamb. While the ground beef version is also very delicious, it’s not considered a “Shepherd’s Pie”, since shepherds raise sheep, not cows.
The real mystery is why the beef version is called “Cottage Pie”, and not “Cowboy Pie”, or “Rancher’s Pie”. When I think about cattle, many things come to mind, but cottages aren’t one of them. Okay, now that we have all those search keywords inserted, we can moooo’ve on.
By the way, I know it’s something of a Food Wishes tradition that I do a cheap, culturally insensitive joke about Irish-Americans drinking too much in our St. Patrick’s Day video, but this year I decided not to do any. In fairness, I know hundreds of Irish people, and several of them have no drinking problem whatsoever, so it just didn’t seem inappropriate.
Anyway, as I say in the video, this would make a lovely alternative to the much more common corned beef and cabbage that you may have been planning for dinner. Also, I really hope you find some nice Irish cheddar. I used one called “Dubliner” by Kerrygold, which can be found in most large grocery stores.
If you’re curious about beverage pairings, may I go out on a limb and suggest a nice Guinness, or other Irish beer … just hold the green food coloring, please. Erin go bragh, and as always, enjoy!
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QotD: Myths from Norman Rockwell’s America
I’ve seen complaints on X that a factory worker’s single income used to be enough to raise a family on but isn’t anymore. It’s true; I grew up in those days.
The complaint generally continues that we were robbed of this by bad policy choices. But that is at best only half true.
World War II smashed almost the entire industrial capacity of the world outside the U.S., which exited with its manufacturing plant not only intact, but greatly improved by wartime capitalization. The result was that for about 30 years, the US was a price-taker in international markets. Nobody could effectively compete with us at heavy or even light manufacturing.
The profits from that advantage built Norman Rockwell’s America — lots of prosperous small towns built around factories and mills. Labor unions could bid up salaries for semi-skilled workers to historically ridiculous levels on that tide.
But it couldn’t last. Germany and Japan and England recapitalized and rebuilt themselves. The Asian tigers began to be a thing. U.S. producers facing increasing competitive pressure discovered that they had become bloated and inefficient in the years when the penalty for that mistake was minimal.
Were there bad policy choices? Absolutely. Taxes and entitlement spending exploded because all that surplus was sloshing around ready to be captured; the latter has proven politically almost impossible to undo.
When our windfall finally ended in the early 1970s, Americans were left with habits and expectations formed by the long boom. We’ve since spent 50 years trying, with occasional but only transient successes, to recreate those conditions. The technology boom of 1980 to 2001 came closest.
But the harsh reality is that we are never likely to have that kind of advantage again. Technology and capital are now too mobile for that.
Political choices have to be made within this reality. It’s one that neither popular nor elite perception has really caught up with.
Eric S. Raymond, X (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, 2024-07-08.
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March 16, 2025
Female sexual predators
Every civilized person rejects the notion that male sexual predators should be tolerated, yet few are willing to accept the notion that female sexual predators might even exist. They absolutely do exist and they do commit terrible crimes against their — often very young — victims, as Janice Fiamengo shows:
Even when we are aware that women prey on children, many of us can’t really believe it. When Florida Congresswoman Anna Luna, a Republican elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, proposed three new bills last year that would impose harsh penalties, “including the death penalty”, for various forms of sexual abuse, child pornography, and child sexual exploitation, it is impossible to believe that Luna thought any number of women would be executed for child rape, and nor will they be given the leniency that is shown to women in the criminal justice system (see Sonja Starr’s research).
Yet similar crimes to Ma’s are easily discovered. In the same month that Ma pled guilty, a Martinsville, Indiana teacher was charged with three counts of sexual misconduct against a minor, a 15-year-old boy who has alleged that as many as ten other students were raped by the same woman. The month before that, a New Jersey primary school teacher was charged with aggravated sexual assault against a boy who was 13 years old when she bore his child; it is alleged that she began raping the boy when he was 11. The month before that, a Tipton County, Tennessee teacher [pictured below] pled guilty to a dozen sex crimes against children ranging in age from 12-17 years old. It is thought that she victimized a total of 21 children.
In the same month, a Montgomery, New York teacher pled guilty to criminal sexual assault of a 13 year old boy in her class, whom she assaulted over a period of months. In the previous month, a San Fernando Valley teacher was charged with sexual assault of a 13 year old male student; police believe she victimized others also. Earlier in the year, a substitute teacher in Decatur, Illinois was charged with raping an 11 year old boy. These are just a few recent cases, and only those involving female schoolteachers. Female predators are also to be found amongst social workers, juvenile detention officers, and sports coaches.
The feminist position on male sexual abuse of women and girls has for a long time been that it is about power. Men rape and abuse, according to Susan Brownmiller [quoted above] and others, because they believe it their right as men to keep women subordinate. Rape compensates for male inadequacy and allows for the expression of men’s hostility toward women: it is not about lust but about men’s need to humiliate and degrade. As Paul Elam once noted in a Regarding Men episode, the theory is fatally weakened if even a single woman does the same thing. Feminists have responded by saying that female sexual abuse is fundamentally different from male, less dangerous to society, less hurtful to its victims.
While I was doing research for this essay, I happened upon a recent podcast discussion between Louise Perry, British author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, and Meghan Murphy, Canadian Substack author and editor of Feminist Current. The podcast was called “What Happened to Feminism?” and I tuned in because I have enjoyed their perspectives on other issues.
Perry and Murphy are both critics of feminism who remain, as their conversation confirmed, staunchly feminist and anti-male. At one point in the podcast (at about 50:00), the conversation turned to #MeToo, and especially to allegations against teachers. Having already agreed that 95% of MeToo allegations were true, or at least based on something real, the pundits went on to agree, with disconcerting laughter, that there was no comparison between a “crazy” woman who “had sex” with a male student in her class, and a “dangerous” man, a “predatory rapist”, who went after under-age girls in his power.
Murphy even trotted out the old chestnut that abused boys were “stoked about the situation” in getting with “the hot teacher”. After all, she chuckled, “Men are gross predators. Men are perverts. They can’t keep it in their pants.” Perry, seeming taken aback by Murphy’s vulgarity, nonetheless agreed that the sexual abuse of boys is in an entirely different category from that of girls: “It is so annoying to me,” she said, “when people will go around claiming that these are exactly the same”.
Indifference to the victimization of boys, and lack of shame in admitting it, could hardly have been more stark. I mention the podcast not because it was singularly outrageous but because the attitudes expressed in it are still so much the norm, even amongst women who claim to have rethought other feminist beliefs.
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Fireside Chat – Winter War
World War Two
Published 15 Mar 2025Anna sits down to quiz Indy and Sparty about the Winter War! Did Simo Hayha really kill 500 men? Who’s to blame for the Soviet farce? And what was the Sausage War?
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Sir Wilfred Laurier is apparently the next designated target for the decolonialization mobs
Having run out of ways to desecrate the memory of our founding prime minister, the shrieking harpies seem to have designated the best Liberal prime minister in Canadian history to be unpersoned this time:
Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Prime Minister of Canada (1896-1911)
The so-called “Laurier Legacy Project” began in 2022 when the eponymous post-secondary institution in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, decided to conduct a “scholarly examination of the legacy and times” of Canada’s seventh prime minister (1896-1911). The academic investigation was launched in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in the U.S. and the suspected but unconfirmed discovery of unknown graves near the site of a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C. Institutions were facing pressure to publicly demonstrate they were taking immediate action against colonial legacies.
But was the school really committed to “conducting a scholarly examination” of Laurier? One that would weigh evidence, consider context, and arrive at a conclusion? Spoiler alert: of course not.
The university’s own website is a dead giveaway. A page titled “Who was Wilfrid Laurier?” begins with a single paragraph summarizing the former prime minister’s accomplishments, noting his ability to forge compromise, his participation in the construction of a second transcontinental railway, and the addition of two provinces, Saskatchewan and Alberta.
The rest of the answer to the question “Who is Wilfrid Laurier?” is four negative paragraphs detailing his record on Indigenous relations, restrictive immigration policies, and his role in “actively support[ing] the expansion of British imperialism on the African continent through his involvement in the South African War”. The page offers no hint of balance or objectivity. Perhaps this is what we have come to expect when institutions engage in historical investigations: the judgement has already been made. It’s just the path to get there that remains.
While the Laurier Legacy Project began in 2022, it is relevant today because the university quietly published its conclusion last fall. The report, written by post-doctoral fellow Katelyn Arac, called for 17 recommendations, most of which relate to the university and its extensive DEI policies. These included creating scholarships for communities “marginalized by Laurier” as well as building “artistic displays … in equity-deserving communities”. But few of the recommendations had to do with the actual legacy of the former prime minister.
Much like the school’s website, however, the language of the report made its bias known. Dr. Arac admitted her focus was on policy decisions related to “immigration and relations with Indigenous peoples”. She went on: “These policies were designed with two objectives in mind — assimilation and/or erasure; in other words, the eradication of Indigenous peoples in the land we now call Canada through policies of settler-colonialism”.
The report is part of an unfortunate trend in history today: measuring historical figures by a process of selective evidence. Rather than look objectively at the legacy of Canada’s first francophone prime minister, the project set out to investigate only where Laurier could be seen to have failed. And there were failures. That is part of history and governing.
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George Hyde’s First Submachine Gun: The Hyde Model 33
Forgotten Weapons
Published 11 Mar 2018George Hyde was a gun designer who is due substantial credit, but whose name is rarely heard, because he did not end up with his name on an iconic firearm. Hyde was a German immigrant to the United States in 1927 who formed the Hyde Arms Company and started designing submachine guns. His first was the Model 33, which we have here today. This quickly evolved into the Model 35, which was tested by Aberdeen Proving Grounds in the summer of 1939. It was found to have a number of significant advantages over the Thompson, but also some durability problems. The problems could probably have been addressed, but Hyde (who had gone from working as shop foreman at Griffin & Howe to later becoming chief designer for GM’s Inland division during WWII) had already moved on to a better iteration. His next design was actually adopted as the M2 to replace the Thompson, but production problems caused it to be cancelled. The M3 Grease Gun was chosen instead, and Hyde had designed that as well. He was also responsible for the design of the clandestine .45 caliber Liberator pistol.
The Hyde Model 33 is a blowback submachine gun which obviously took significant influence from the Thompson — just look at the front grip, barrel ribs, controls, magazine well, and stock design. However, it was simpler, lighter, and less expensive than the Thompson. It fared better than the Thompson in military mud and dust tests, probably in part because of its unusual charging handle, a long rod mounted in the rear cap of the receiver. This was pulled rearward to cycle the bolt, a bit like the AR15 charging handle. Like the AR15, this setup eliminated the need for an open slot in the receiver. Apparently, however, the handle had a disconcerting habit of bouncing back into the face of the shooter when firing.
Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…
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QotD: The “Social Contract”
Hobbes didn’t actually use the phrase “social contract” in Leviathan, but that’s where his famous “state of nature” argument ends. In the state of nature, Hobbes says, the only “law” is self defense. Every man hath the right to every thing, because nothing is off limits when it comes to self preservation; thus disputes can only be adjudicated by force. And this state of nature will prevail indefinitely, Hobbes says, because even though some men are stronger than others, and some are quicker, cleverer, etc. than others, chance is what it is, and everybody has to sleep sometime — in other words, no man is so secure in so many advantages that he can impose his will on all possible rivals, all the time. We won’t be dragged out of the state of nature by a strongman.
The only way out of the state of nature, Hobbes argues, is for all of us, collectively, to lay down at least some of our rights to a corporate person, the so-called “Leviathan”, who then enforces those rights for us. So far, so familiar, I’m sure, but even if you got all this in a civics class in high school (for the real old fogeys) or a Western Civ class in college (for the rest of us), they probably didn’t go over a few important caveats, to wit:
The phrase corporate person means something very different from what even intelligent modern people think it does, to say nothing of douchebag Leftists. In the highly Latinate English of Hobbes’s day, “to incorporate” meant “to make into a body”, and they used it literally. In Hobbes’s day, you could say that God “incorporated” (or simply “corporated”) Adam from the dust, and nobody would bat an eye. I honestly have no idea what Leftists think the term “corporate person” means — and to be fair, I guess, they seem to have no idea either — but for us, we hear “corporation” and we think in terms of business concerns. Which means we tend to attribute to Hobbes the view that the Leviathan, the corporate person, is an actual flesh and blood person — specifically, the reigning monarch.
That’s wrong. Hobbes was quite clear that the Leviathan could be a senate or something. He thought that was a bad idea, of course — the historical development of English isn’t the only reason we think Hobbes means “the person of the king” when he writes about the Leviathan — but it could be. So long as it’s the ultimate authority, it’s the Leviathan. For convenience, let’s call it “the Leviathan State”, although I hope it’s obvious why Hobbes would consider that redundant.
Second caveat, and the main reason (I suppose) it never occurred to Hobbes to call it a social contract: It can’t be broken. By anyone. Ever. It can be overtaken by events (third caveat, below), but no one can opt out on his own authority. The reason for this is simple: If you don’t permanently lay down your right to self defense (except in limited, Rittenhouse-esque situations that aren’t germane here), then what’s the point? A contract that can be broken at any time, just because you feel like it, is no contract at all. And consider the logical consequences of doing that, from the standpoint of Hobbes’s initial argument: If one of us reverts to the state of nature, then we all do, and the war of all against all begins again.
Third caveat: The Leviathan can be defeated. Hobbes considers international relations a version of the state of nature, one there’s no getting out of. If pressed, he’d probably try to attribute Charles I’s defeat in the English Civil War to outside causes. Indeed at one point he comes perilously close to arguing something very like that New Donatist / “Mandate of Heaven” thing we discussed below, but however it happened, it is unquestionably the case that Charles I’s government is no more. Hobbes bowed to reality — he saw that Parliament actually held the power in England, whatever the theoretical rights and wrongs of it, so even though the physical person of Charles II was there with him in Paris, Hobbes took the Engagement and sailed home.
Severian, “True Conclusions from False Premises”, Founding Questions, 2021-11-22.
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March 15, 2025
Trump’s actual goal in Ukraine
David Friedman posted this a couple of days ago, considering what President Trump’s real goals may be in the Russo-Ukraine conflict:
There are two possible interpretations of Trump’s policy. The pessimistic one is that he plans to give Putin what he wants, force Zelensky to accept peace terms that give Russia substantial amounts of Ukrainian territory and leave Ukraine disarmed and defenseless against future Russian demands. On that theory the clash with Zelensky was a pre-planned drama intended to provide an excuse for the US withdrawing support, make it less obvious that Trump now supports Putin. As of Monday that looked like a plausible reading of the situation.
The optimistic reading was that Trump wanted to force an end to the war on compromise terms, use the withdrawal of support to force Zelensky to agree. Tuesday’s news, Zelensky agreeing to a proposed cease fire and Trump responding by resuming US support for Ukraine, is evidence for that reading. The ball is now in Putin’s court. If he rejects the proposal Trump will be under pressure to continue, perhaps even increase, US support. That is a reason for him not to reject the proposal. My guess is that Putin will agree to a temporary cease fire, at least in principle, although he may haggle over details, try to push for a version more favorable to him.
What Trump wants, on the optimistic interpretation, which I now find likely, is to end the war. To do that he needs to find terms that both sides will accept. Zelensky will not accept terms that amount to surrender — even if the US abandons him, he has the option of continuing the war with increased support from the European powers, now moving to rearm. If they are sufficiently committed to Ukraine or sufficiently annoyed at the US they should be able to replace most, although not all, of what the US has been providing, if necessary with munitions purchased from the US; it is hard to imagine even Trump forbidding US arms manufacturers from selling to allies. Ukraine would be worse off than continuing the war with US support but, if Russia is willing to agree to terms Trump approves of and Ukraine is not, that will not be an option.
Putin was, despite American support for Ukraine under the previous administration, winning, although very slowly and at considerable cost. Unless Trump is willing to respond to Russian rejection of his peace plan by greatly increasing US support, which I think unlikely — no boots on the ground nor wings in the air — Putin has the option of returning to that, so will not accept anything much less. That suggests that the most likely terms amount to an extended cease fire. Ukraine does not disarm, Russia does not withdraw from territory it is occupying. Both sides stop blowing things up on territory controlled by the other, stop shooting at each other.
Judged by territorial control that is a win for Russia, since it ends up controlling most of what it wanted, the parts of Ukraine occupied by Russian speakers plus the areas that can block the water supply into Crimea, with Ukraine even further from recovering Crimea than before. That might be enough to let Putin present it to his population has a victory sufficient to justify the decision to invade Ukraine.
Seen from the outside, it would be an expensive victory, which might be enough to deter future adventurism or a renewal of the war. To get it, Russia has consumed a large part of the store of military equipment inherited from the Soviet Union, making it less formidable in any future conflict with Ukraine or anyone else. Worse still, the war has driven two neutral powers, both militarily substantial and one of them on the Russian border, into joining NATO. And between Putin and Trump they may have pushed the European powers into finally rearming. The population of the European NATO members is several times that of Russia, their economies as well:
“It’s striking but it’s true. Right now, 500 million Europeans are begging 300 million Americans for protection from 140 million Russians who have been unable to overcome 50 million Ukrainians for three years.” (Donald Tusk, prime minister of Poland)
What would be the effect of an extended pause in the war on the balance of power between Russia and Ukraine, the prospects for a renewed conflict? Both Russia and Ukraine will be able to rebuild what the war has destroyed; that will be a bigger benefit for Ukraine, since it has lost much more. One of Russia’s advantages in the war was that it not only had more munitions, it could build more, could fire far more shells at Ukrainian forces than Ukraine could fire back. An extended pause will give Ukraine and its allies time to build the factories they need. It will give states not involved in the war, such as South Korea and India, time to build up supplies of armaments and ammunition some of which can be sold to Ukraine when and if the pause ends. It will give US arms firms time to expand for a world where there is increased demand for what they produce.
If the European powers go through with their current talk of greatly increased military expenditure and continue to back Ukraine, there will be much more money bidding for arms on behalf of Ukraine than on behalf of Russia. That could shift the balance when and if the war resumes.
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Firefly – We Didn’t Know How Good We Had It
The Critical Drinker
Published 14 Mar 2025It was overlooked in its own time, never finding the audience it deserved, but Firefly has gone on to become a cult classic with the most dedicated on fanbases. And now that I’ve finally arrived to the party 20 years late, I wanted to share my thoughts on Joss Whedon’s Firefly.
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Eliminating “environmental justice” from the EPA
J.D. Tuccille suggests that you not take the New York Times coverage too literally as they wail about the Trump administration’s plans for the Environmental Protection Agency:
If you were to believe reporting from The New York Times — which is an increasingly unwise idea — the Trump administration is diverting the attention of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from poor and minority communities that face “disproportionately high levels of pollution”. But if you scratch the surface even a bit, you find that what’s really being eliminated are “environmental justice” offices that infuse identitarian ideology into EPA enforcement efforts. Americans should welcome efforts to strip racial obsessions from the armory of regulators who already wield too much power.
Competing Takes on “Environmental Justice”
“The Trump administration intends to eliminate Environmental Protection Agency offices responsible for addressing the disproportionately high levels of pollution facing poor communities, according to a memo from Lee Zeldin, the agency administrator,” Lisa Friedman wrote for the Times. She added that the memo directed the reorganization and elimination of “offices of environmental justice at all 10 E.P.A. regional offices as well as the one in Washington”.
Contrast that with a press release from the EPA, which states “that EPA will immediately revise National Enforcement and Compliance Initiatives to ensure that enforcement does not discriminate based on race and socioeconomic status (as it has under environmental justice initiatives) or shut down energy production and that it focuses on the most pressing health and safety issues”.
Whatever you think of the Trump administration in general, EPA Administrator Zeldin is on the right side of this debate. As I wrote in 2022 when the Biden administration formally introduced “environmental justice” concerns to the EPA, the term refers to “a decades-old school of thought that seeks to graft identitarian politics onto environmental concerns. That allows practitioners to wield civil rights law in addition to traditional environmental laws against perceived malefactors. It also makes it possible to slam offenders as ‘bigots’ if their actions affect one community more than another.”
There’s no need to read between the lines to figure out what is meant by “environmental justice” — its advocates are quite clear about their meaning. In 2021, the Northeastern University School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs published A User’s Guide to Environmental Justice: Theory, Policy, & Practice by Ken Kimmell, Alaina Boyle, Yutong Si, and Marisa Sotolongo.
The Ideology’s History of Racial Obsessions
“The demand for ‘environmental justice’ (EJ) has gained substantial traction in the last few years, as well it should,” the authors wrote in their introduction. “A key pillar in EJ will be widespread, community-designed and community-supported investment in neighborhoods that have been economically and environmentally burdened by a long history of racist government and industry decisions.”
“The environmental justice movement has evolved in parallel with and in response to traditional environmentalism to focus on the unequal distribution of environmental harms among different people and communities,” the authors add in summarizing the history of the movement. “Research revealing the whiteness of the environmental community elevated concerns that social justice and racial justice were not prioritized in mainstream environmentalism.”
“Applying the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin … frontline communities and others began to use the term ‘environmental racism’ to focus on the unequal (social and spatial) distribution of environmental burdens,” they continue.
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Canada’s Unique WW2 Rocket Artillery: The Land Mattress
OTD Military History
Published 12 Nov 2022The Land Mattress, officially known as Projector, Rocket 3-inch, No 8 Mk 1, was the Canadian rocket launcher used during World War 2. The last surviving example is on display at the @CanWarMus.
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QotD: Strategy
Strategy itself is a slippery term, used in slightly different ways in different contexts. In everyday usage, it is simply a plan to accomplish some task, whereas formal military definitions tend to specify the particular end. The US joint doctrinal definition, for instance, is: “A prudent idea or set of ideas for employing the instruments of national power in a synchronized and integrated fashion to achieve theater, national, and/or multinational objectives”. If strategy is not quite a theory for victory, the connection between them is apparent.
There is a subtle problem with this definition, however. Victories are rarely won in precisely the way the victors anticipate. Few commanders can call their own shots, as Napoleon did in Italy or William Slim in Burma. Wars are complex and messy things, and good strategy requires constant adaptation to circumstance — a system of expedients, as Moltke put it. Even with the benefit of hindsight, the cause of a war’s outcome is not always perfectly clear, as the ongoing debate over strategic bombing bears witness.
Indeed, the very idea that strategy represents a plan is very recent. From the first adoption of the word into modern languages,1 strategy was defined more as an art: of “commanding and of skilfully employing the means [the commander] has available”, of “campaigning”, of “effectively directing masses in the theater of war”. The emphasis was decidedly on execution, not planning. As recently as 2001, the US Army’s FM 3-0 Operations defined strategy as: “the art and science of developing and employing armed forces and other instruments of national power in a synchronized fashion to secure national or multinational objectives”. Something one does, not something one thinks.
This is best understood by analogy to tactics, a realm less given to formalism and abstraction. What makes a good tactician? Devising a good plan is certainly part of it, but most tactical concepts are not especially unique — there are only so many tools in the tactical toolkit. The real challenge lies in execution: providing for comms and logistics, ensuring subordinates understand the plan, going through rehearsals, making sure that everyone is doing their job correctly, then putting oneself at the point where things are likely to go wrong and dealing with the unexpected.
Ben Duval, “Is Strategy Just a Theory of Victory? Notes on an Annoying Buzzword”, The Bazaar of War, 2024-12-01.
1. This was before Clausewitz’s inadvertent redefinition of strategy, when the term still referred to what we now call “operational art”.
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March 14, 2025
Greenland in the news again … and it’s not about Trump this time
Tim Worstall sums up coverage from The Guardian about a case involving the government of Greenland and a mining operation going to court for damages from the government’s change of policy:
So, here’s a case:
Fearing toxic waste, Greenland ended uranium mining. Now, they could be forced to restart — or pay $11bn
Gosh.
In 2021, Greenland went to the polls, in a contest to which uranium was so central, international media dubbed it “the mining election”. The people voted in a green, leftwing government, led by the Inuit Ataqatigiit party, which campaigned against uranium mining due to the potential pollution.
When it took power, the new government kept its campaign promise, passing legislation to ban uranium mining. While not primarily a uranium mine, the Kvanefjeld project would require unearthing the radioactive substance to extract its rare earth oxides, putting it in violation of the law.
Many Greenlanders celebrated the vote as a victory for health and the environment. But three years later, the company is suing Greenland for stopping its plans, demanding the right to exploit the deposit or receive compensation of up to $11.5bn: nearly 10 times the country’s 8.5bn krone (£950m) annual budget.
That part of it isn’t wholly biased. It is, roughly and around and about, true.
Just as an aside I think I met one of the lads behind the mining company once. Mickey Five Names was it? Management and all has changed since then but they were not, say, of the probity of the board of Rio Tinto. Just as an opinion, you understand.
Still, they signed a contract which allowed them to prospect and so they then spent money. The law stated that they would, naturally, advance to an exploitation licence. That’s what they got denied.
[…]
Everyone’s agreeing on what happened. Roughly they are at least. You Mr. Corporation can explore and if you find something you can dig it up and so make money back on your costs. Then the government changed its mind leaving the company facing the total loss of all it had spent.
So, who has to cough up here?
No one — really, no one at all — is saying that a government cannot change its mind. Or even that elections should not have consequences and that policy might change after having had one.
What is being said is that if you nick someone’s property then you’ve got to pay for it.
Well, is not issuing an exploitation licence that you said you would nicking someone’s property? That’s clearly arguable (I would say “Yes!” but then that’s me) so, where do we go to argue this?
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