During nine years of operations in Afghanistan, 157 Canadian troops died (87 percent because of the Taliban.) For most of that time, Canada suffered, proportionately, twice as many dead in Afghanistan as the United States. During this period, the U.S. had ten times as many troops in Afghanistan. The U.S. also has ten times the population of Canada, so the 3,000 Canadians are making the same scale of effort, but suffering more losses in the process. But most of those losses were not from “fighting the Taliban,” but from mines in the road. Back in early 2007, 81 percent of Canadian deaths were from IEDs (roadside bombs). But that declined as Canadian troops received more bomb resistant armored vehicles.
Since the Taliban couldn’t cope with Canadian troops in head-to-head combat, they devoted much of their roadside bombing effort against the Canadians. But in the last year, the Taliban were only able to kill four Canadian troops. Still, the constant Taliban propaganda about how killing even a few Canadian troops would eventually force the Canadians to withdraw, is believed by most Afghans. Canada decided to withdraw all their troops from Afghanistan back in 2008, and more American troops have moved in to replace them.
It’s ironic that the reason the government of the day originally committed troops to the Afghanistan campaign was that they thought it would be “safer” than being involved in Iraq. Rather than being seen to support George Bush, the Canadian contingent was sent to a “less tainted” operation instead. The party that sent the troops in the first place lost few opportunities to call for them to leave, once the current government was in power.
It’s been “officially” a wonderful thing with absolutely no negative attributes for so long that it’s almost refreshing that the Chinese government is finally admitting it’s not all good news around the massive Three Gorges dam and reservoir:
In private, officials have worried about the project for some time and occasionally their doubts have surfaced in the official media. But the government itself has refused to acknowledge them. When the project was approved by the rubber-stamp parliament in 1992, debate was stifled by the oppressive political atmosphere of the time, following the Tiananmen Square massacre three years earlier. Last July, with the dam facing its biggest flood crest since completion in 2006, officials hinted that they might have overstated its ability to control flooding. On May 18th, with the dam again in the spotlight because of the drought, a cabinet meeting chaired by the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, went further in acknowledging drawbacks.
Having called the dam “hugely beneficial overall”, the cabinet’s statement said there were problems relating to the resettlement of 1.4m people, to the environment and to the “prevention of geological disasters” that urgently needed addressing. The dam, it said, had had “a certain impact” on navigation, irrigation and water-supply downstream. Some of these problems had been forecast at the design stage or spotted during construction. But they had been “difficult to resolve effectively because of limitations imposed by conditions at the time.” It did not elaborate.
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Daniel Ikenson takes ABC to task for their misleading propaganda against international trade:
Back in the “golden age” of 1960, when imports were oddities to marvel over in a disdainful way, the per-capita U.S. income was $2,914. In 2009, with imports ubiquitous, per-capita income was $46,411. (Economic Report of the President, 2010, Tables B-1 and B-34). In real, inflation-adjusted terms, even with a U.S. population increase from 181 million to 307 million, per-capita incomes in 2009 were almost triple what they were in 1960 ($42,277 vs. $15,669 in 2005 dollars — ERP, 2010, Tables B-2 and B-34). Oh, if only we could replicate the relative poverty, the limited consumer choices, the inefficient production processes, the massive trade barriers that compelled Americans to buy American, and the uneconomic work rules and wages commanded by once-powerful private sector labor unions. In 1960, before real economic liberalization spawned cultural and social liberalization, Diane Sawyer would never have dreamed of being a network news anchor, if she even dared to entertain the concept of working outside of the home. How can she pine for such an era?
It’s frustrating that so much research refuting the myth of manufacturing decline and supporting the conclusion that U.S. manufacturing is thriving — and is in fact leading the world in terms of value of output — is simply neglected by a media that is more committed to scaring than informing. Today Americans are less likely to find in their homes products manufactured in the United States because U.S. manufacturers have moved on to producing higher value products. American manufacturing isn’t focused on products that consumers find in retail stores, like furniture, hand tools, sporting goods, flatware, draperies, carpeting and clothes. American factories produce more value than any other country’s factories by focusing on producing the highest value products: pharmaceuticals, chemicals, airplanes, sophisticated componentry, technical textiles, and other items often sold directly to other businesses.
I and others have been making these points for several years, as U.S. manufacturing continues to thrive in every metric . . . except employment. Manufacturing employment peaked in 1979 and has been on a downward trajectory ever since. But that is the point that eludes ABC and everyone else who thinks U.S. manufacturing’s best days are in the past. Making more with less is the goal! That’s how an economy grows! The political imperative of “putting people back to work” regardless of the economic value of that work — remember the so-called stimulus? — spits in the face of economics. The fact that Americans are unemployed speaks to a mismatch of skills demanded and skills available, as well as to a business and regulatory environment that dissuades investment and hiring.
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Jon, my former virtual landlord, sent me a link to this article about the Avtomat Kalashnikov 47:
In his new book, The Gun: The AK-47 and the Evolution of War, out Oct. 12, New York Times reporter C.J. Chivers traces the origins of modern assault rifles — particularly Avtomat Kalashnikov 47, or the AK-47 — and analyzes how they’ve changed warfare. Popular Mechanics spoke to the author about how and why the AK-47 was developed and why it has had even more of an impact than nuclear weapons.
[. . .]
Q During the course of your research, did you get to meet or talk to Mikhail Kalashnikov?
A I met General Kalashnikov several times. He was a fascinating man and a very complicated figure — a master of navigating the Soviet system and its aftermath. He is often portrayed as a poor and simple peasant who, through sheer inventive genius, designed the world’s most successful automatic arm. But this is an almost absurd distillation, the carefully spun fable of Soviet propaganda mills. He’s actually something much richer: a small part of an enormous machine and a most useful and interesting lens with which to look at decades of often dreary and sometimes terrifying Soviet life. He’s also charming, beguiling, clever, funny and both intensely proud and publicly humble at the same time. The legends around him are insufficient at best and grossly inaccurate at worst. He’s quite a man and a challenging character to render.
Q Why is so much about the development of the AK-47 still shrouded in secrecy?
A After the weapon was fielded, the Soviet Union invested heavily in an official version of its creation. This was not long after the purges, when many prominent Soviet citizens and public figures had been liquidated. A new crop of heroes was being put forward by the Kremlin and the Communist Party. Mikhail Kalashnikov fit this movement perfectly — he was, by the official telling, the quintessential proletariat success story, a wounded vet with limited education and almost no training who conceived of this weapon and relentlessly conjured it into existence. The truth was more complicated. But this party-approved version was endlessly repeated in official channels, and one result of the propaganda was that many other participants in the weapon’s design were sidelined and kept silent. One important figure was even arrested, charged with anti-revolutionary activity and sentenced to hard labor. After the Soviet Union collapsed, some of these other men and their accounts began to circulate. But the archives have never fully been opened, and the myths have hardened into something that can feel like fact. We do know much more than we used to, but the full story, in crisp detail, remains elusive, and the Communist version still stands in many circles. Propaganda is a pernicious thing, and the Kalashnikov tale is an example of just how effective it can be.
The race for the post of mayor of Toronto was supposed to be a dignified procession to the installation of George Smitherman, former provincial cabinet minister. The vote was expected to be a mere formality, as the assent of the right-thinking people in the downtown core was assured. Somehow, though, they forgot about having given the vote to the hillbillies and hockey hackers of the uncouth far-distant suburbs. Those unwashed hicks apparently supported some gaffe-prone character with lots of media-friendly damage already on tape and ready to roll.
Unbelievably, the release of the damaging material seemed not only not to cause a drop in support, it seemed to increase his support. At that point, the gloves came off (one assumes), as these signs were put up along University Avenue overnight:
Not my photo, they’d already been taken down before I got to that stretch of University this morning. Photo courtesy of 680 News.
I believe it was the historian Robert Conquest who said that every organization eventually behaves as though it is run by a secret cabal of its enemies. I have seldom seen any more convincing evidence of this than the “No Pressure” video released by the anti-global-warming activist campaign 10:10.
[. . .]
The reaction from AGW skeptics was no surprise; many fulminated that the mask had slipped, and this video is the agenda of environmental fascism writ large. Thoughtcrime brings death! Conform! Obey! Or die . . . and the survivors get pieces of their friends spattered all over them as a warning. I think we open a more interesting inquiry by taking the 10:10 campaign at their word. They thought they were being funny.
[. . .]
There’s a mind-boggling disconnect from the feelings of ordinary human beings implied here, a kind of moral and emotional incompetence. It’s as though the 10:10 campaigners were so anesthetized by the secretions of their own zealotry that they became incapable of understanding how anyone not living deep inside their reality-tunnel would react.
[. . .]
To update Lewis, your garden-variety power-mad monster might commit the atrocities in this video, but only because they are not funny — because they spread fear or demonstrate power and ruthlessness. The kind of idealism that aims to be “tormenting us for our own good” may be what is required before you think blowing up schoolchildren with the push of a button is funny.
As many have commented, how could this video possibly have been professionally written, directed, acted, filmed, and edited with nobody actually noticing how awful it was? Were they all so morally sure of the righteousness of their cause that the didn’t recognize (or care) how most people would react to their casual — even cheerful — butchery?
I have to imagine that this little propaganda number was put together by the anti side rather than the pro side:
You don’t agree with this program? No pressure . . . we’ll blow up your kids. James Delingpole thinks it’s great (but not for the cause it supposedly represents):
But with this new monstrosity, truly the great Richard Curtis has excelled himself. It’s so bad, it makes his previous shimmering masterpieces of emetica – Love Actually, The Girl In The Cafe, The Boat That Rocked – look like Battleship Potemkin. It makes the Vicar of Dibley look like a collaboration between Oscar Wilde and Shakespeare. It’s so deliciously, unspeakably, magnificently bleeding awful it makes you wish that the man could be given a ticker tape parade in every major capital city, in gratitude for the devastating damage he has (unwittingly) wrought on the eco-fascist cause.
Update: Apparently, James isn’t the only one who thinks this is sending exactly the wrong message — the campaign is trying to recall the clip:
That, at any rate, is what they keep trying to do — cancelling it whenever it appears on You Tube, pulling it from their campaign website and so on.
Unfortunately their efforts are being frustrated by people on the sceptical side of the climate debate, who keep peskily insisting on reposting the video where everyone can view it. And rightly so. With No Pressure, the environmental movement has revealed the snarling, wicked, homicidal misanthropy beneath its cloak of gentle, bunny-hugging righteousness.
I don’t think any of us will ever be able to look at another Richard Curtis movie in quite the same way ever again. It may even be that we will now never, ever be able to enjoy another episode of the Vicar of Dibley, because all we’ll be able to think about is Dawn French with a Panzerfaust beneath her cassock ready to blast off the heads of any members of her congregation who don’t believe in Man Made Global Warming. What a sad day this is for us all.
Update, the second: Iowahawk thinks this may well be a great subject for a Harvard Business School case study. Using the principles of “new journalism”, he carefully recreates the situation, constructing dialogue to fit the theme:
London, sometime earlier this year: The 10:10 Project, a nonprofit NGO focused on reducing carbon, convenes a high level meeting in their posh modern conference room. After reviewing PowerPoint on the results of their latest government grant proposals and white-liberal-guilt fund raising campaigns, the 10:10 marketing team reports that previous communication efforts have not been proceeding as expected.
“Perhaps what we need is a fresh new campaign,” offers one of the conferees. “Something different, provocative… something edgy. Something that will really get our message across.” This is greeted with great excitement. The finance director pours through spreadsheets and identifies a budget source. An executive screening committee is appointed who develop timelines and begin scheduling meetings with London’s top agencies and independent film production firms.
Several weeks later, after sitting through a half dozen agency presentations that have yet to meet their standards, 10:10’s highly paid executive brain trust arrives at a meeting at the sleek offices of London’s hottest agency Splodey, Youngblood, Gutz & Bones. After introductions, small talk, and pastries, SYG&B’s creative director — winner of 5 British Clio awards — strolls confidently to the television monitor at the front of the room and walks the 10:10 clients through a scene-by-scene video storyboard pitching a new promotional mini-movie that will solve their communication dilemma. The smoothness of the presentation masks the hundreds of late night man-hours and debating the SYG&B creative department spent in crafting it — but it was worth it.
“Brilliant!” exclaims the 10:10 executive committee chair, to the enthusiastic nods of his colleagues. “Add one more exploding child, and I think we have a winner.”
John Pilger pays “tribute” to one of the more persuasive contributors to both militarism and commercialism of the 20th century:
Edward Bernays, the American nephew of Sigmund Freud, is said to have invented modern propaganda. During the first world war, he was one of a group of influential liberals who mounted a secret government campaign to persuade reluctant Americans to send an army to the bloodbath in Europe. In his book, Propaganda, published in 1928, Bernays wrote that the “intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses was an important element in democratic society” and that the manipulators “constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power in our country.” Instead of propaganda, he coined the euphemism “public relations.”
The American tobacco industry hired Bernays to convince women they should smoke in public. By associating smoking with women’s liberation, he made cigarettes “torches of freedom.” In 1954, he conjured a communist menace in Guatemala as an excuse for overthrowing the democratically-elected government, whose social reforms were threatening the United Fruit company’s monopoly of the banana trade. He called it a “liberation.”
Bernays was no rabid right-winger. He was an elitist liberal who believed that “engineering public consent” was for the greater good. This was achieved by the creation of “false realities” which then became “news events.”
Propaganda definitely existed before Bernays, but he may have been the one who codified and systematized the “science”.
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Strategy Page points out that even recycled propaganda can be effective:
Palestinian media, both Fatah and Hamas controlled, have undertaken a media campaign to arouse popular anger against Israeli plans to destroy the al Aqsa mosque. The problem here is that there are no Israeli plans to destroy al Aqsa. This complex is built on the site of two Jewish temples. The last one was destroyed by the Romans nearly two thousand years ago. Israel has always provided security for al Aqsa, but the Palestinians find it convenient to keep alive unfounded fears that Israel will, at any moment, destroy al Aqsa and rebuild their temple. This is what some religious extremists (Jewish and Christian) want, and one reason for the tight Israeli security around al Aqsa (which is otherwise controlled by Moslem religious authorities.) This fear mongering is a big deal among the Palestinians, but generally ignored, or simply unknown, outside Israel.
The numerous al Aqsa scare stories in the Palestinian media (replete with cartoons straight out of similar 1930s Nazi propaganda) are rarely recognized as a reason why Israel and the Palestinians cannot negotiate a peace deal. Arab and Western nations are again trying to organize peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis, with the goal of achieving a peace deal, and an independent Palestinian state. The “al Aqsa threatened by the Jews” propaganda campaign is one reason why these peace talks tend to go nowhere. The Palestinian strategy, which they make no secret of, is to keep harassing Israel until, as many Palestinians believe, the Jews will flee the Middle East and Israel will disappear. On Palestinian maps, it already has.
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I’ve seen lots of posts about yesterday’s boarding of the Mavi Marmara from both pro- and anti-Israeli viewpoints. Adrian McNair has one of the most even-handed summaries:
When I first got wind of the news that Israeli Defense Forces had attacked a Turkish flotilla headed for the Gaza Strip on the Mediterranean Sea, it was accompanied by the words “massacre”, describing the death of 10 pro-Palestinian demonstrators aboard one of the ships. But as Jonathan Kay wrote about the incident in the National Post, if Israel truly had wanted to “massacre” the Hamas sympathizers aboard the flotilla, they could have simply sunk them to the bottom of the Sea with torpedos.
The “massacres” and “genocide” on Gaza continues to go very poorly indeed, given the available firepower of the Israeli military. In fact, like all international incidents involving the IDF, once the fury dies down and the seas calm a little bit, we usually learn the true story of what really happened.
As a humanitarian effort, the flotilla was a waste of resources. As a propaganda tool, however, the flotilla was quite successful: most media reports will concentrate on the casualties and ignore the fact that Israeli forces clearly tried to avoid causing those casualties.
Several different videos seem to corroborate statements by the IDF that troops came under attack by the passengers, who were clearly enraged at having been boarded by the Israelis. To further avoid violence, the soldiers had been armed with paintball guns. If that sounds like something a military command would order with the intent to “massacre” civilians, it could not have been less effective.
After coming under attack, the commandos requested permission for the deployment of lethal force, which they were granted. Up to 10 activists are believed to have been killed in the ensuing melee, with some reports stating that the activists had got a hold of weapons from the soldiers and were firing at them.
Update: Kathy Shaidle advises the “this is terrible PR for Israel” conservatives to back off:
The raw anti-Semitism making the rounds yesterday certainly disturbed me.
However, more sinister (all the more so because it was well intentioned) was the tsking and moaning about how the flotilla incident was “bad PR” for Israel — five minutes after the news broke, no less.
“Who cares about the facts?! Think of how this looks!“
You sound like the leftists on the boat.
So-called pro-Israel “conservatives” who’ve read a couple of books and articles — and certainly have never been commandos, or even been on a boat that wasn’t shaped like a swan — really have no business debating the finer points of hand to hand combat at sea.
And they simply polluted the conversation yesterday with their tiresome, showoffy “tsk tsk” tweets and posts about “PR” and “optics.”
Publius explains that it’s no surprise that the Conservatives don’t want to support Toronto’s Pride Parade. I’m not at all against the parade, I just don’t think it’s a valid use of federal tax money.
Frank Furedi looks at how modern educators have adopted the methods of Soviet-era authorities to try to turn children into a home-based fifth column:
There is a long and sordid tradition of trying to socialise children by scaring them. The aim of such socialisation-through-fear is twofold: firstly, to get children to conform to the scaremongers’ values; secondly, to use children to influence, or at least to contain, their parents’ behaviour.
When I was a schoolchild in Stalinist Hungary, we were frequently warned about the numerous threats facing our glorious regime. I also recall that we were encouraged to lecture our errant parents about the new wonderful values being promoted by our brave, wise leaders. The Big Brothers of the 1940s saw children as tools of moral blackmail and social control. Today, in the twenty-first century, scaremongers see children in much the same way, exploiting their natural concern with the wonders of life to promote a message of shrill climate alarmism.
If you want to know how it works, watch the official opening video of the Copenhagen summit on climate change (see below). Titled ‘Please Help The World’, the four-minute film opens with happy children laughing and playing on swings. A sudden outburst of rain forces them all to rush for cover. The message is clear: the climate threatens our way of life. It then cuts to a young girl who is anxiously watching one TV news broadcaster after another reporting on impending environmental catastrophes. Then we see the young girl tucked into bed, sweetly asleep as she embraces her toy polar bear… but suddenly we’re drawn into her nightmare. She’s on a parched and eerie landscape; she looks frightened and desolate; suddenly the dry earth cracks and she runs in terror towards the shelter of a distant solitary tree. She drops her toy polar bear in a newly formed chasm and yells and screams as she holds on to the tree for dear life. The video ends with groups of children pleading with us: ‘Please help the world.’ You get the picture.
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Do you remember the reports from Iraq in the wake of the invasion about the mass looting of museums? If any of it happened, it was a small-scale effort, not the major haul that was so breathlessly reported:
Western archeologists are finding that many of the news stories coming out of Iraq about the theft or destruction of ancient artifacts were false. The national museum had preserved nearly all its treasures, and there was no widespread damage to archeological sites. Like much of the reports from Iraq over the last six years, the main intent was to get an exciting headline, not report what was actually going on. Some reporters, especially those embedded with U.S. troops, reported having their stories rewritten, or simply not published, because their editors felt what was actually happening over there contradicted the U.S. medias belief about what was actually going on. Some of this attitude persists.
A recent international corruption survey found Iraq at the bottom of the list (of over 160 nations) in the company of Somalia, Afghanistan, Burma and Sudan. Because of election laws, that force people to vote for “lists” rather than individuals, it’s difficult to hold anyone accountable for corruption. A new election law, that fixed many of these problems, was recently passed, but senior (and often corrupt) officials are still trying to block this reform. Many of the Shia politicians running the government would be happy to see a Shia dictatorship established, with them running things. Most Iraqis are not so sure about that idea.
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Patterico does some reconstructive surgery on Glenn Greenwald’s less-than-totally-honest practice of partial quoting:
Greenwald’s implication is clear: right-wing blogger Patterico shouldn’t have recommended Allahpundit’s coverage — and right-wing blogger Glenn Reynolds shouldn’t have linked Patterico’s recommendation of Allahpundit.
If only those right-wing bloggers had warned their readers to be skeptical and avoid jumping to conclusions . . .
But wait! What’s that little ellipsis in Greenwald’s quotation of my post? Why, I do believe that’s an indication that he left something out of my quote! Let’s just look at that whole quote to see what Greenwald chose to omit, shall we? I’ll put the part Greenwald omitted in bold type:
Whenever there is breaking news, it’s good to keep a few things in mind:
* Don’t jump to conclusions.
* Don’t be afraid to discuss relevant topics even if they seem politically incorrect.
* Always follow Allahpundit.
Hmmm. So Greenwald omits the part of my quote where I explicitly warn readers, as the very first thing I say, that they should not jump to conclusions in breaking news situations. And then Greenwald implies that my recommendation of Allahpundit was a poor one because Allahpundit jumped to invalid conclusions.
One of the most remarkable features of our age is the propensity toward changing the meaning of political terms. A semantic revolution converts the sense traditionally attached to words into its opposite. George Orwell has ingeniously described this tendency in his 1984. The second of the three slogans of Oceania’s party says, “Freedom Is Slavery.”In the opinion of the “progressive” intellectuals, Orwell’s dictum is the talk of a hysteric; nobody, they shout, has ever ventured to utter such a nonsensical proposition.
Unfortunately the facts belie their denial. There prevails in the writings of many contemporary authors the disposition to represent every extension of governmental power and every restriction of the individual’s discretion as a measure of liberation, as a step forward on the road to liberty. Carried to its ultimate logical conclusion, this mode of reasoning leads to the inference that socialism, the complete abolition of the individual’s faculty to plan his own life and conduct, brings perfect freedom. It was this reasoning that suggested to socialists and Communists the idea of arrogating to themselves the appellation liberal.
