Quotulatiousness

January 9, 2026

Mark Carney’s play-acting on the international stage

Filed under: Cancon, China, Economics, Europe, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

There is no way that Canada can make itself economically independent of the United States, no matter how much wishcasting power is exerted to persuade anti-American boomers who habitually vote Liberal. Our entire economy is oriented to serve the vast market to our south, and we’ve been freeloading on our own military because the Americans have been willing to take up the slack and — until recently — not castigate our leaders for their fecklessness. It was bad under Justin Trudeau, but it’s actually gotten worse under Mark Carney’s leadership. Trudeau was performative and loved to play to the world media, but Carney seems to actually believe that he can reverse the entire direction of the Canadian economy by jetting around the world and bad-talking Donald Trump. The Canadian economy has been stalled for ten years now, and if Trump finally loses patience with our idiotic elites, it’ll go into free-fall.

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, James E. Thorne points out just how few cards Carney actually has in his hand:

Mark Carney’s and Canada’s Dangerous Refusal to Face Reality.

Mark Carney and most Canadians are behaving as if Canada is an independent pole in a multipolar order, when the world he actually inhabits is a hierarchy being brutally clarified by Washington. Trump’s revamped National Security Strategy and the “Trump Corollary” — asserted through the seizure of Nicolás Maduro and open threats toward Cuba and Colombia, make plain that the United States now treats the Western Hemisphere as an American security estate, not a debating society among equals.

In that framework, Canada is not a co-author of the rules. It is a dependency inside the U.S. sphere, structurally lashed to American markets, finance and supply chains. AND after decades without a serious sovereign industrial or energy strategy, Canada is at best a weak Middle Power, that has for decades squandered its competitive advantage through proformative politics and virtue signalling.

In this era, the Western Hemisphere is now a “secure production platform” for American industry and technology, defined not by territorial control but by ownership, access and compliance. The Trump doctrine logic is clear and blunt yet internally coherent: if the Western Hemispheres natural resources and supply chains are secured, the economic and geopolitical dividends will follow.

Carney’s answer to the Trump Doctrine, however, remains the same “City-of-London” orthodoxy that produced him: more proformative political grandstanding, more process, more declarations, more meetings, and more boondoggles.

The Greenland consulate, rhetorical red lines over annexation, the flying around the world, and ritual protests against U.S. action in Venezuela all presume that we still live in the post WWII rules based order. We do not! Will live in the era of the Trump Doctrine, and no we can’t wait it out. And in this era, Greenland will not be allowed to be under the influence of Russia or China.

Thucydides warned that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”. Carney’s tragedy is that he quotes the rules-based order while presiding over a country whose economic structure is colonial and whose security ultimately depends on the very power he is theatrically chastising. Posturing without power is not prudence. It is provocation without a plan. And yes it’s dangerous.

The irony is that Carney understands all of this perfectly well, which only sharpens the question: what, exactly, is he doing by posturing as a rules-based equal in a hierarchy where he knows Canada lacks the hard power to back his stance?

December 9, 2025

The “Great Feminization” of western culture

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics, Religion, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

In the National Post, Barbara Kay outlines the way society has been trending further away from traditional values and more and more toward the values of “empathy, safety, and cohesion” which have been predominantly feminine values in contrast to more male-oriented values of “rationality, risk, and competition”:

In September, public intellectual Helen Andrews caused a stir when she delivered a provocative 17-minute speech, titled “Overcoming the Feminization of Culture”, to the National Conservatism Conference, later published as an article for Compact, titled “The Great Feminization“.

Andrews summarized feminization as the prioritizing of feminine over masculine interests, but additionally prioritizing “empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition”. All these traits combine, she believes, in institutions where females are numerically dominant, to define “wokeness” and “cancel culture”.

Andrews points to Bari Weiss’ 2020 resignation letter from the New York Times where Weiss was labeled and ostracized for her social ties and cut off by perceived friends. In 2018, the newsroom there had tipped to a female majority which Andrews argues changed the work environment’s dynamics to one where cohesion is preferred, and covert undermining would replace open debate in favour of emotional harmony.

And I would argue that the more feminized society’s institutions become, the more readily extreme, empathic attitudes replace rational decision-making at policy-making levels, and the more society loses confidence in its ability to thrive.

Ironically, instead of directing empathy towards our own citizens, feminization also tends to direct empathy internationally. That is exactly what is happening at our national level, when our government earmarks funds for programs such as “Gender-Just, Low-Carbon, Rice Value Chains in Vietnam”.

This is also happening at a micro-level to the Jewish community in North America. Our spiritual leadership in non-orthodox synagogues is growing increasingly female, and, by no coincidence, is wokeness spreading, and, by no further coincidence, so is alignment with radical anti-Zionism.

[…]

Claims that Israel was guilty of genocide and apartheid, the authors write, were a constant feature of their education. Most shockingly, they write — and this at a rabbinical training institution headed by a female rabbi — that “the sexual violence Israelis experienced (on October 7) was never mentioned, even during Women’s History Month”.

What about the Christian clergy? A 2024 report on female Christian clergy found that in a 2018 sample, about 14 per cent of U.S. churches were headed by a senior female clergyperson. So, churches are not yet in danger of feminization. Good luck to them.

If there is a solution to the feminization-linked problem of anti-Zionism in the non-Orthodox rabbinate, I don’t know what it is. I only know this trend cannot end well for our community. What is essential in Jews’ spiritual homes now, more than ever in our history, is that they be spaces where “ahavat Yisrael” — love of Israel — is the prevailing norm. If we are not for ourselves, who will be?

On a more individual level, the Great Feminization has worked not to make women equal, but to increase their existing privileges and to demonize men who even notice the inequality now runs directly opposite to the narrative:

Image from Steve’s Substack

Over thirty years ago, I knew a woman who felt ecstatic joy taunting men with her nudity. She loved to flash her breasts at truckers on the highway. Thrilled at the thought that she left them frustrated, she would boast about her sexual power.

This is clear, unequivocal abuse. Imagine her taunting a village of starving Africans with BBQ’d steak. She then flees to her 5-star hotel, laughing and bragging that she had left them hungry and frustrated. This is how the West raises women. Self-obsessed, over-entitled and insufferable (insert obligatory, “not-all-women” clause here – yawn).

Feminists have gotten more sophisticated with their abuse since then. We now have transgressions that include absurd accusations like prolonged looking, mansplaining and manspreading. TikTokers go to the gym essentially nude in order to video and humiliate men who happen to notice.

We had the, “Yes means Yes” campaign that insists a man should repeatedly pester his partner with endless questions for permission during every intimate encounter. Never mind that a normal woman is likely to leave the bed after a few of these interruptions, rightly despising the insecure man who obeys that tripe. Anywhere outside of a deep feminist indoctrination camp, a woman will wonder whether your mother dropped you on your head as a child. I’ll bet that not even the most committed believer follows their own advice. This is not good communication — it denies healthy context, body language and facial expression.

And there’s nothing romantic about it; it is designed for feminist power. There is no number of reassurances that could possibly satisfy. The emphasis upon a non-stop verbal Q&A is courtroom strategy. And that’s the point: eliminate the human context, and set a trap for the man. “Did he ask permission to engage in number 17 of the 32 listed steps before sex? No, your honor, that’s where the sexual assault happened.”

Human intimacy is negotiated using mostly unspoken signals, and everybody likes it that way. Obviously there’s a need for clear communication, especially in a new relationship. I only need to include this disclaimer because the world is filled with pedantic manhating feminists eager to accuse me of denying women’s humanity. Grow up, child. Healthy women have absolutely no problem setting their own limits during intimacy. I’ve never met one who didn’t.

We cover for even the worst of women’s transgressions. When a woman murders her child, we call it infanticide and blame postpartum depression. When she murders her husband we call it battered wife syndrome, which is the title of a book by Canadian feminist law professor, Elizabeth Sheehy. Feminist lawyers even argue to eliminate female incarceration and close all women’s prisons, and for decriminalization of husband murder. This nonsense from the feminist cult for women with daddy issues protects mentally ill women who need psychological help, and/or belong in prison.

Every woman has a plethora of options, and near-infinite sympathy and support, in Western culture. Maybe that’s the problem: we don’t hold women responsible for their own behavior. Many women have not been socialized into adulthood.

At risk of making this a TLDR post, here’s Mark Steyn on the cultural side of our ever-more-feminized culture:

Welcome to another in our ongoing series of As I Said Twenty Sod-Bollocking Years Ago. Women have inherited the thrones of great powers — Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great, Victoria — and presided over massed ranks of courtiers drawn from the “pale, male and stale” (thank you, David Cameron). But America and its client states are the first in history in which every significant venue aside from ladies’ sport is now dominated by women. The west is closer than any society should be to the end of men — which is a big source of the terrible confusion in our schools that has led children to offer themselves up for bodily mutilation and irreversible infertility. Helen Andrews’ much noted “viral” essay on the phenomenon informs us inter alia that by 2024 American law schools were fifty-six per cent female and that sixty-three per cent of judges appointed by Joe Biden’s autopen are likewise on the distaff side. Elsewhere, fifty-five per cent of New York Times reporters are women (up from ten per cent half-a-century ago) and 57.3 per cent of US undergraduates are what we would once have called “coeds”.

At the same time, the principal source of immigration to the west is from a patriarchal culture even more severe (if you can believe it) than 1950s sitcom dads. If you live in London, Paris, Brussels, Stockholm, Dearborn, do you see more body-bagged crones on the streets than you did a generation back? Are you figuring on seeing more still in another twenty years? Or are you betting that the tide will have receded?

It is at the intersection of these two not entirely compatible trendlines — a feminised society with a patriarchal immigration policy — where lies the future (such as it is) of the western world. With that in mind, the annual commemoration of the 1989 Montreal massacre each December 6th has a symbolism that extends far beyond my own deranged dominion. Not just because it was an early example of the state hijacking the actual news to impose a narrative more helpful to its own needs. In the dismantling of manhood and manliness, no lie is too outrageous. As I wrote in The National Post of Canada on December 12th 2002 – twenty-three years ago:

    For women’s groups, the Montreal Massacre is an atrocity that taints all men, and for which all men must acknowledge their guilt. Marc Lépine symbolizes the murderous misogyny that lurks within us all.

    M Lépine was born Gamil Gharbi, the son of an Algerian Muslim wife-beater, whose brutalized spouse told the court at their divorce hearing that her husband “had a total disdain for women and believed they were intended only to serve men”. At eighteen, young Gamil took his mother’s maiden name. The Gazette in Montreal mentioned this in its immediate reports of the massacre. The name “Gamil Gharbi” has not sullied its pages in the thirteen years since.

The Gazette notwithstanding, that might open up many avenues of journalistic investigation, don’t you think? The potential implications of Canadian immigration policy. The misogyny in particular of Islam, and its compatibility with developed societies. But instead everyone who mattered in the Dominion’s elite decided it was all the fault of Canadian manhood in general — of Gordy and Derek’s, or Émile and Pierre’s, culture of toxic masculinity. That narrative has held for two generations. The only even slight modification has been from a sliver of academics who posit Gamil Gharbi as “the first incel“. I’m not sure “incels” — young men who are “involuntarily celibate” — existed as a mass phenomenon back in 1989: they are a consequence of the societal feminisation Ms Andrews writes about. The “incel” segment was by far the most interesting part of the Tucker/Fuentes convo, and the least remarked upon, but the notion that they’re itching to kill women bolsters the original 1989 framing, so the media are minded to entertain it.

Yet we all know, surely, that the young ladies in that Montreal classroom would have benefited from a little bit of available “masculinity” that day. Alas, the men to hand were in a certain sense far more profoundly disarmed than the wildest dreams of “gun control” advocates. From my book After America:

    To return to Gloria Steinem, when might a fish need a bicycle? The women of Montreal’s École Polytechnique could have used one when Marc Lépine walked in with a gun and told all the men to leave the room. They meekly did as ordered. He then shot all the women.

Which is the more disturbing glimpse of Canadian manhood? The guy who shoots the women? Or his fellow men who abandon them to be shot? For me, the latter has always been the darkest element of the story. From my column in Maclean’s, January 9th 2006:

    Every December 6th, our own unmanned Dominion lowers its flags to half-mast and tries to saddle Canadian manhood in general with the blame for the Montreal massacre — the fourteen women murdered by Marc Lépine, born Gamil Gharbi, the son of an Algerian Muslim wife-beater, though you wouldn’t know that from the press coverage. Yet the defining image of contemporary Canadian maleness is not M Lépine/Gharbi but the professors and the men in that classroom, who, ordered to leave by the lone gunman, obediently did so, and abandoned their female classmates to their fate — an act of abdication that would have been unthinkable in almost any other culture throughout human history. The “men” stood outside in the corridor and, even as they heard the first shots, they did nothing. And, when it was over and Gharbi walked out of the room and past them, they still did nothing. Whatever its other defects, Canadian manhood does not suffer from an excess of testosterone.

So the annual denunciation of manhood in general is the precise inversion of the reality of the event. That was unusual in 1989, but has become routine since: the UK Government’s “Prevent” programme, set up in the wake of the July 7th Tube bombings to “prevent” further “Islamist” attacks, now focuses its energies on the threat from a “far right” boorish enough to insist on noticing all these Islamic provocations; January 6th is an insurrection for which trespassing gran’mas have to be hunted down and banged up in solitary, but Thoroughly Modern Milley telling the ChiComs he’ll ignore his commander-in-chief or James Comey taking to Twitter to urge his chums to “eighty-six” the President is true patriotism of the highest order; in German cities saving democracy is so critical that it is necessary to ban the leading political party.

So the inversion of reality is pretty much standard operating procedure these days. There is, however, a sense in which that terrible one-off atrocity from the late Eighties has become a portent of tomorrow — of a western world thoroughly unmanned. Your average feminist lobby group doesn’t see it that way, naturally. “The feminism I think of is the one that embodies inclusivity, multiculturalism and the ability to change the world through the humanity that women do bring,” says Stephanie Davis, executive director of Atlanta’s Women’s Foundation. “If there were women in power in representative numbers — fifty-two per cent — I think that the World Trade Center would still be standing.”

October 15, 2025

Hamburg votes to secede from industrial civilization

Filed under: Environment, Germany, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Despite my always plummetting hopes for Canada I have to admit that I do enjoy a little soupçon of schadenfreude with every new bit of evidence from eugyppius that Germany is determined to ostentatiously self-destruct even before the demented Dominion can:

Hamburg is German’s leading industrial city. Its companies add 20 billion Euros in gross value every year. Much of this economic output is related to Hamburg’s happy location on the Elbe and the fact that the city is home to Europe’s third-largest port. All of this has made Hamburg extremely prosperous, which prosperity has filled it with rafts of clueless virtue-signalling morons who have no idea how anything works, why they find Hamburg attractive in the first place or how their hip urban lifestyles are maintained.

In this photo, published by BILD, you can see some of these unmitigated retards having a happy because they’ve just scored cheap virtue points by voting in their own personal energy apocalypse.

Photo from BILD via eugyppius

Specifically, these dumbasses are celebrating because their completely insane popular referendum passed with 53.2% of the vote on Sunday. This referendum, the so-called Zukunftsentscheid (“future decision”), binds the Free and Hanseatic City to achieving total carbon neutrality by 2040, five years earlier than the 2045 goal set by the almost equally insane Germany-wide Climate Protection Law as emended in 2021, which is in turn five years earlier than the 2050 goal established by the selfsame law as it originally passed the Bundestag in the year of the child-saint Greta Thunberg 2019.

Turnout was pretty low in Hamburg last Sunday, with less than 44% of eligible voters bothering to cast a ballot, most of them by mail. Thus just 23% of the most deranged Hamburgians could take their city hostage and commit its government to destroying all of its industry and most of its economic activity inside the next decade and a half. The biggest joke is that when Hamburg has finally achieved the sacred Net Zero, it will make absolutely zero net difference to anything. Hamburg is responsible for something 0.022% percent of CO2 emissions globally. The city is not even a rounding error.

The referendum was an initiative of Fridays for Future, but it gathered the support of various social and environmental organisations, among them Greenpeace, the union Verdi and even FC St. Pauli. It will successively cap annual CO2 emissions sector-by-sector, imposing a slow and relentless strangulation in turn on transit, households, commerce and industry.

May 31, 2025

Depending on how you read the tea leaves, are all the signed treaties now to be ignored?

Filed under: Cancon, Government, History — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

In The Free Press Rupa Subramanya discusses King Charles’s land acknowledgement at the start of the Throne Speech earlier this week:

Mark Carney joins our visiting King in the traditional Making of the Small Talk.
Photo by Paul Wells from his Substack

Canadians have a fondness for land acknowledgments, [NR: while some of us think they’re merely virtue signalling on steriods which will end up causing more mischief in the long run] which have now become common at police press conferences, on Air Canada flights, at hockey games, and even at a Taylor Swift concert.

But nothing has caused more commotion than the spectacle of King Charles III opening the 45th legislative session of Parliament on May 27 with a land acknowledgment, when he declared from his throne: “I would like to acknowledge that we are gathered on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people. This land acknowledgment is a recognition of shared history as a nation.”

People will point out that King Charles’s speech was written by Canadian prime minister Mark Carney’s government (true) and that as the monarch he was being respectful to Canadian traditions (fine). But there is something deeply funny about the literal King of England talking about the lands his predecessors brutally conquered centuries ago like they’re still up grabs.

Kicking off Parliament with a speech is a time-honored tradition, but it’s rare for the monarch to deliver it in person, and is normally delivered by the governor general, Canada’s official stand-in for the king. The reason the king was there was to push back against the idea that Canada is for sale.

“There is no better way to assert Canada’s sovereignty than by inviting the sovereign,” said Philippe Lagassé, a constitutional expert at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario. “Carney invited the king as part of his renewed emphasis on Canadian nationalism rooted in our institutions and history.” (Unlike the U.S., which broke from Britain in 1776, Canada remained a colony until 1867, when it became a constitutional monarchy with a British-style parliamentary system and the UK monarch as head of state.)

Lagassé added that Carney’s invite to Charles was also likely done to “leverage President Trump’s affection for the king in Canada’s favor.”

Trump may love the monarchy, but Canadians have traditionally been indifferent towards it. But that’s changing, thanks to Trump’s “51st state” rhetoric.

According to a recent poll, 66 percent of Canadians now believe the monarchy helps set the country apart from the United States, up from 54 percent in April 2023. In 2023, 67 percent thought the royal family should have no formal role in Canadian society; today, that number has dropped to 56 percent.

In his speech, King Charles didn’t mention Trump by name, but the subtext was hard to miss: “Canada faces another critical moment. Democracy, pluralism, the rule of law, self-determination, and freedom are values which Canadians hold dear, and ones which the government is determined to protect.”

March 27, 2025

Ban the swastika? Are you some kind of racist?

Filed under: Government, History, India, Politics, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In Ontario, the elected council for the Region of Durham has been reacting to a few painted swastika graffiti around the region over the last couple of months. To, as a politician might say, “send a message”, they proposed banning the use of the swastika altogether … failing to remember that it’s not just neo-Nazi wannabes who use it:

Durham council is adjusting the wording of its calls for a national ban on the Nazi swastika, or “Hakenkreuz“.

This follows efforts by religious advocates to distance their own symbols from the genocidal German fascist regime.

Swastikas often appear in Jain, Hindu and Buddhist iconography.

“The word ‘swastika’ means ‘well-being of all’,” explained Vijay Jain, president of Vishwa Jain Sangathan Canada, at Wednesday’s regional council meeting. “It’s a very sacred word. […] We use it extensively in our prayers.”

“Many Jain and Hindi parents give their children the name ‘Swastika’,” he added. “Many Hindi and Jain people, they keep their [business’s] name as ‘Swastika’. If you go to India, you’ll find the ‘Swastika’ name prominently used.”

“We stand in solidarity with the Jewish community and fully support all of the efforts by authorities to address growing antisemitism in Canada,” he said.

Regional council made its initial call for a ban on Nazi swastikas in February, after two separate incidents of the antisemitic symbol being scrawled inside a washroom at the downtown Whitby library.

On Wednesday, councillors voted to revise that motion to replace the word “swastika” with the term “Nazi symbols of hate”.

B’nai Brith Canada has been spearheading a petition campaign to have the Nazi symbol banned across the country.

The group has increasingly opted to refer to it by the alternative names “Nazi Hooked Cross” or “Hakenkreuz“.

On March 20, B’nai Brith put out a joint statement with Vishwa Jain Sangathan and other religious advocacy groups, calling for further differentiation between the symbols.

“These faiths’ sacred symbol (the Swastika) has been wrongfully associated with the Nazi Reich,” wrote Richard Robertson, B’nai Brith Canada’s Director of Research and Advocacy. “We must not allow the continued conflation of this symbol of peace with an icon of hate.”

March 1, 2025

“There were always scapegoats … and they were always driven out one way or another”

Filed under: Britain, Health, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

The second part of Nigel Biggar‘s look at the culture war in Britain includes a look at how the professional approach to young peoples’ gender issues became monomaniacal because nobody involved stopped to think for fear of being ostracized (or fired):

On the gender front, there’s plenty of reason to doubt the intellectual coherence of transgender-self-identification. When a biological male believes that his inner, authentic self is female, what exactly does he think being ‘female’ is? I’m still waiting for someone to persuade me that this doesn’t trade on gender stereotypes that feminists rightly taught us to throw overboard decades ago.

    Observe how that has nothing at all to do with the care of patients, and how it has everything to do with the self-regard and political standing of the managers.

There’s even more reason to doubt that the well-being of young people is well served by taking their asserted genders at face value and allowing them to align their bodies by making irrevocable physical changes. According to Hannan Barnes’ shocking chronicle of the scandal at the Gender Identity Development Service (or GIDS) at the Tavistock Institute here in London, there was widespread doubt among clinicians about young people’s claims of “an inborn ‘trans’ nature”, awareness that these were sometimes correlated with eating disorders and self-harm, and suspicion that they might be caused by abuse or trauma. Furthermore, the long-term effects of using puberty-blockers were “largely unknown”, there was considerable uncertainty about which patients would benefit from them, and the health of some young patients actually seemed to worsen while on them.

Notwithstanding all this, “the clinical team … never discussed as a group what it even understood by the word ‘transgender'”, clinicians “never dream[t] of telling a young person that they weren’t trans”, and they always prescribed puberty-blockers unless the patient actively refused them. What’s more, expressions of doubt by staff were discouraged. “Someone would raise concerns, and someone else would move in to shut it down”, writes Barnes. “Those who persisted in asking difficult questions were not received well … those who spoke out were labelled troublemakers. [According to one witness,] ‘There were always scapegoats … and they were always driven out one way or another'”. “Junior staff looked on and learnt”.

Note the chilling effect.

The Tavistock Institute in London

Barnes’ book bears the title, Time to Think, because she identifies the general problem at GIDS as that of “not stopping to think”. That, of course, raises the question, Why? Barnes gives several reasons. One was the fact that the GIDS was propping up the Tavistock financially and that senior managers had a material interest in not disturbing its assumptions. Another was the unwillingness to offend transgender lobby groups such as Mermaids for “fear of a backlash”. But, most important of all was concern for the ‘progressive’ reputation of the management. According to David Bell, consultant adult psychiatrist at the Trust and whistleblower, “The senior management regarded [GIDS] as a star in our crown, because they saw it as a way of showing that we weren’t crusty old conservatives; that we were up with the game and cutting-edge. That was very important to the management to show we were like that”. Observe how that has nothing at all to do with the care of patients, and how it has everything to do with the self-regard and political standing of the managers. Not for the first time, the basic narcissism of progressive virtue-signaling is exposed.

Update: Added missing URL.

February 28, 2025

Taking money from poor people in rich countries to give to rich people in poor countries

Filed under: Britain, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Tim Worstall explains how government foreign aid is quite literally anti-democratic (which is why it’s rare for governments to allow the voters any input about the subject):

Obviously we need to start with the observation of Peter, Lord Bauer — foreign aid is nicking money off poor people in rich countries to give to rich people in poor countries. As the sort of people who rule us went to school with those who rule the poor countries — I did, with the President of the Philippines, Bongbong, for example. V different year but still — it’s people nicking our money to spend on making themselves look good to their peer group.

You know, elite virtue signalling.

Yes, of course 0.7% of GDP should be spent upon Official Development Aid. ODA is very important, dont’cha kno’? Every chav in Britain should have near 1% of everything they do collected up and sent off to Ol’ Bongie. Obviously. Couldn’t face an Old Boys dinner without that now, could I?

Now of course that’s not actually quite how it’s put even if that is what it actually is. But just the sometimes the truth slips out from those corridors of power.

    The former head of the Foreign Office has warned Rachel Reeves not to cut Britain’s international aid spending, amid signs the chancellor is willing to raid the development budget to help pay for higher defence spending.

    Simon McDonald, the former lead civil servant at the Foreign Office, said it would damage Britain’s global reputation if Reeves chose to reduce aid as she looks for savings across Whitehall in this year’s spending review.

Reputation? Among whom? Among those who attended Pembroke?

    He told the Guardian: “At times of financial need, development assistance is an easy target for trimming because international assistance is not generally voters’ priority”.

Remember folks, democracy is that we the people decide. We’ve even those out there insisting that all economic decisions must be made via democratic means — that true economic democracy which is to be the new socialism.

But when democracy — in the form of “We don’t give a shit about that” — bumps up against the elite desire to look good at the state banqueting table guess what? Democracy has to git to buggery and the elite get to spend our money their way all the same.

No, really. Look what he’s saying. Voters don’t care. But they must be forced to pay all the same. So much for that vaunted democracy.

February 26, 2025

Colonialism was so bad … that we have to make shit up about how evil it supposedly was

Filed under: Africa, Australia, Books, Cancon, History, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the National Post, Nigel Biggar recounts some of the most egregious virtue signalling by western elites over the claimed evils of colonialism … even to the point of inventing sins to confess and obsess over:

Meanwhile, in Australia, there’s the extraordinary career of Bruce Pascoe’s 2014 book, Dark Emu. This argues that Aborigines, far from being primitive nomads, developed the first egalitarian society, invented democracy, and were sophisticated agriculturalists. Such was the morally superior civilization that white colonizers trashed in their racist greed. Named Book of the Year, Dark Emu has sold more than 360,000 copies and was made the subject of an Australian Broadcasting Company documentary.

Yet, it has been widely criticized for being factually untrue. Author Peter O’Brien has forensically dismantled it in Bitter Harvest: The Illusion of Aboriginal Agriculture in Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu (2020). And in Farmers or Hunter Gatherers: The Dark Emu Debate (2021) — described by reviewers as “rigorously researched”, “masterful”, and “measured” — eminent anthropologist Peter Sutton and archaeologist Keryn Walshe dismiss Pascoe’s claims.

Which bring us to Canada. The May 2021 claim by the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation to have discovered the “remains of 215 children” of an Indian Residential School was quickly sexed up by the media into a story about a “mass grave”, with all its connotation of murderous atrocity. The Globe and Mail published an article under the title, “The discovery of a mass gravesite at a former residential school in Kamloops is just the tip of the iceberg,” in which a professor of law at UBC wrote: “It is horrific … a too-common unearthing of the legacy, and enduring reality, of colonialism in Canada”. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ordered Canadian flags to be flown at half-mast on all federal buildings to honour the allegedly murdered children. Because the Kamloops school had been run by Roman Catholics, some zealous citizens took to burning and vandalizing churches, 112 of them to date. The dreadful tale was eagerly broadcast worldwide by Al Jazeera.

Yet, almost four years later, not a single set of remains of a murdered Indigenous child in an unmarked grave has been found anywhere in Canada. Judging by the evidence collected by Chris Champion and Tom Flanagan in their best-selling 2023 book, Grave Error: How the Media Misled us (and the Truth about the Residential Schools), it looks increasingly probable that the whole, incendiary story is a myth.

So, prime ministers, archbishops, academics, editors, and public broadcasters are all in the business of exaggerating the colonial sins of their own countries — from London to Sydney to Toronto. Why?

An obvious reason is the well-meaning desire to raise respect for indigenous cultures with a view to “healing” race relations. But that doesn’t explain the aggressive brushing aside of concerns about evidence and truth in the eager rush to irrational self-criticism.

January 6, 2025

If you’ve ever been in any military organization, you’ve encountered this

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Shady Maples on the frequent issue needing a particular piece of equipment, but … bureaucracy:

Have you heard the one about the soldier and supply technician?

    Soldier: I need a sleeping bag.

    Supply Tech: We’re not issuing sleeping bags right now.

    Soldier: I can see a sleeping bag on the shelf right there.

    Supply Tech: But that’s my last sleeping bag! If I issued that one then I wouldn’t have any left in stock. I need to keep at least one sleeping bag in stock in case someone needs it.

    Soldier: Yes! That someone is me! I need the sleeping bag!

    Supply Tech: Look, my job is to keep the shelves stocked. See the sign on the door? It says Stores, not Gives. If I give you that sleeping bag then we’ll be out of stock.

    Soldier: But I need the sleeping bag.

    Supply Tech: You’ll have to come back after we restock.

    Soldier: Fine, when are you restocking sleeping bags?

    Supply Tech: When we’ve depleted our current stock.

This is barely a joke, I’m convinced it’s a script that supply techs learn in Borden.1 A common variant involves a soldier trying to get a piece of kit ahead of a training exercise. The supply tech tells them they can’t have the kit because they don’t need it. If the soldier needed the kit then it would be issued to them and since it’s not issued to them they don’t need it. I have personally had that conversation multiple times with everyone from lowly supply techs to quartermasters up to Life Cycle Material Managers in ADM(Mat). A notable one involved asking the depot in Montreal to send my unit a specific piece of optical equipment2 which we desperately needed, only to be told that they could not release that kit to us because the Army divesting it. My unit had just taken on a new capability that required this kit, why were they throwing this equipment away? “Nobody uses it anymore.” But I’ll use it, I’m telling you that I’m going to use it! My appeal failed, the depot had to divest because no one used the kit and they wouldn’t let us use the kit because they had to divest. I subsisted by borrowing equipment from other units off-the-books.

Pic related, from Patrick McKenzie.

There is a deep and difficult-to-articulate emotion that I feel whenever I have interactions like this. It’s a middle shade of anger, frustration, sadness, and loathing triggered by a people who so are so lost in process that they stop caring about real-world outcomes. Via Scott Alexander’s Links For December, I just learned? that Scott Aaaronson coined the term “blankface” for people like this:

    What exactly is a blankface? He or she is often a mid-level bureaucrat, but not every bureaucrat is a blankface, and not every blankface is a bureaucrat. A blankface is anyone who enjoys wielding the power entrusted in them to make others miserable by acting like a cog in a broken machine, rather than like a human being with courage, judgment, and responsibility for their actions. A blankface meets every appeal to facts, logic, and plain compassion with the same repetition of rules and regulations and the same blank stare — a blank stare that, more often than not, conceals a contemptuous smile.

Once, my 2IC3 was trying to access a childcare benefit intended to reimburse members for babysitting when they are in the field or called in for overnight duties. My 2IC enquired about reimbursement but word came down from Ottawa that she wasn’t eligible since since had not used a licenced childcare provider. Nevermind that there are no licenced providers offering overnight childcare in our geographic area. When my 2IC submitted a grievance for her exclusion from the policy, the grievance analyst rejected it on the grounds that, since she never applied for the benefit (after being told she wasn’t eligible), she had not technically been denied anything. The analyst recommended applying for the benefit in order to be denied and then submitting another grievance based on that denial. At a time when the CAF is desperately trying to attract and retain female leaders, you know what really makes our case? Nickle-and-diming single moms over $70 of childcare. The analyst’s rejection letter made me feel like maybe Ted Kacynski had a point.

In his blog post, Scott Aaronson used Dolores Umbridge as the canonical example of a blankface. Umbridge is conspicuous do-gooder who uses her positional authority to make life miserable for everyone around her. As the story progresses and she accrues more power to her office, it becomes apparent that her virtuous posturing conceals a cruel authoritarian heart. Scott noted that:

    The most despicable villain in the Harry Potter universe is not Lord Voldemort, who’s mostly just a faraway cipher and abstract embodiment of pure evil, no more hateable than an earthquake. Rather, it’s Dolores Jane Umbridge, the toadlike Ministry of Magic bureaucrat who takes over Hogwarts school, forces out Dumbledore as headmaster, and terrorizes the students with increasingly draconian “Educational Decrees”. Umbridge’s decrees are mostly aimed at punishing Harry Potter and his friends, who’ve embarrassed the Ministry by telling everyone the truth that Voldemort has returned and by readying themselves to fight him, thereby defying the Ministry’s head-in-the-sand policy.

Voldemort is evil, yes, but he is a moral agent who chooses and sacrifices according to his principles. The series pits his perverse will-to-power against the protagonists heroic defence of good. Unlike Voldemort, Umbridge doesn’t have any vision or principles, her only goal appears to be rigorous application of Ministry rules and procedures. She is not an agent of evil so much as its midwife, allowing evil to spread by obstructing any effort to stop it.

    1. CFB Borden is the home of Canadian Forces Logistics Training Centre, a place that nobody says anything good about, especially the loggies.

    2. This piece of kit was specialized enough that I would effectively dox myself if I told you what it was.

    3. 2IC: Second-In-Command.

November 13, 2024

Ah, the lovely Welsh countryside, where everything is … racist?

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

Andrew Doyle digs into the claim that the Welsh government recently made that “racism relating to climate change, environment, and rural affairs” is oppressing visible minorities in the principality and preventing them from accessing the countryside:

The Welsh government believes that the countryside presents a problem for ethnic minorities. Its latest report on “racism relating to climate change, environment, and rural affairs” concludes that certain racial groups “face barriers created by exclusions and racism preventing them from fully participating in ‘environmental’ activities”. In response, the Welsh Conservative leader Andrew R. T. Davies has told a reporter from Guido Fawkes: “This kind of outdated virtue signalling nonsense is completely out of touch with the needs of the people of Wales. Labour is stuck on yesterday’s thinking, the kind that is being roundly rejected globally. Time to turf them out.”

The horticultural pun is forgivable given the sheer magnitude of the absurdity. While we might dismiss this as the usual brain-addled antics of the Welsh government, it’s just the latest example of a trend that has been ongoing for years. In September 2020, an article appeared in the Metro claiming that the countryside was “shaped by colonialism” and therefore is “unwelcoming to people of colour”.

Apparently, the illustration of three white people scowling at a black woman while standing in a meadow is proof of the article’s central thesis. I may as well sketch a shiny goblet and claim it as evidence that I’ve found the Holy Grail.

[…]

All of these examples are ostensibly frivolous and easy to dismiss as yet more “woke gone mad” news items, but there are other sinister aspects to consider. For instance, I was able to discover the reason why Kew Gardens went along with this ideological bilge by reading its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Delivery Plan. One of Kew’s EDI “strategy pillars” includes the seeking of accreditation by outside activist groups including Stonewall. Like many public bodies, ideas are implements in the workplace in return for points on schemes like Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index.

And this has serious ramifications. You might remember when the Times uncovered documents revealing that Stonewall has attempted to control what NHS trusts, government departments and local councils say on their social media accounts, demanding public support for its views on gender identity ideology, and then rewarding them with points towards its Top 100 Employers index. This means that if a government department uses the term “birthing parent” instead of “mother” they are able to advance in the scheme. It’s quite the racket.

Worse still, 10% of the Scottish government’s score on the index was relating to consultation with Stonewall on revising legislation. In other words, for a while there it was looking very much as though the SNP were using taxpayers’ money to fund a lobbying group that would in turn reward the government for changing the law according to their ideology.

The Welsh government is one of the worst offenders when it comes to pushing gender identity ideology onto children and working at the behest of identitarian activists. A Freedom of Information request in 2023 revealed that “Stonewall Cymru was directly funded by Welsh Government in the sum of £100,000 for the financial year requested”. (The full details can be accessed here.) I am not alleging that the latest drive to “problematise” the countryside is being directed by activist groups for financial gain, but it does suggest a certain susceptibility when it comes to this kind of ideological mania.

So when the Welsh government and other institutions insist that the countryside is racist, or that chrysanthemums are homophobic, or that badgers hate Sikhs, or whatever the current delusion might be, we shouldn’t just laugh it off. These are just the latest and silliest symptoms of a much deeper cultural malaise. This is an illiberal and regressive ideological movement masquerading as liberal and progressive, and it has ways of asserting its power.

Let’s face it, if they can convince you that the countryside is a domain of heteronormative white supremacy, they can convince you of anything.

September 26, 2024

QotD: The Asshole License, First Class

Filed under: Health, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Here’s the “official” definition of “passive-aggressive”:

    Passive-aggressive behavior is characterized by a pattern of passive hostility and an avoidance of direct communication. Inaction where some action is socially customary is a typical passive-aggressive strategy (showing up late for functions, staying silent when a response is expected). Such behavior is sometimes protested by associates, evoking exasperation or confusion. People who are recipients of passive-aggressive behavior may experience anxiety due to the discordance between what they perceive and what the perpetrator is saying.

There’s definitely a lot of that going around, but it doesn’t describe the behavior of the apple polishers, or the people who have issued themselves the Asshole License. You know the ones I mean: SJWs, of course, but also CrossFitters, vegans, cyclists … basically, anyone who takes up a certain cause or lifestyle seemingly for the sole purpose of being an enormous douchebag about it in every possible social situation. Neither I nor anyone else would have a problem with vegans, say, if they really were doing it for their health, as they so often claim, because if they really were doing it for their health, they’d bring it up once, and then forever shut the fuck up about it.

But they don’t. Similarly, nobody would have a problem with bike riders if they’d just follow the goddamn rules of the road. But they don’t, and the more “cyclist” shit they own — the racing bikes made out of space station parts, the lycra bodysuits, the helmets that look like cranial jockstraps — the less the rules of the road apply to them. Spot one of those fuckers in full kit, and you’re guaranteed to see him weaving in and out of four lanes, turning abruptly without signaling, and blowing through stop signs at full speed, with nary a glance at cross traffic. They’re possessors of the Asshole License First Class, you see, so obviously the rules don’t apply when they’re doing their Official Asshole Thing.

See what I mean? That’s not “passive-aggressive”. But it’s not “active-aggressive” either. They’re not trying to pick a fight. It’s like virtue-signaling, in that you, the audience, are absolutely necessary, but unlike the standard virtue-signal, which is strictly an intra-Leftist competition, this one entails hostility towards the rest of the world, not just toward fellow Leftists …

Severian, “The Passive-Aggressive Society”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-07-24.

September 25, 2024

Freddie deBoer on “deference politics”

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the first of a series of articles, Freddie deBoer discusses the phenomenon of “deference politics” practiced by many (most?) progressives in the United States (and equally in Canada):

When I talk about deference politics, I’m referring to the tendency of left-leaning people to substitute interpersonal obsequiousness towards “marginalized groups” for the actual material change those groups demand.

If you’ve lived in any left-aligned spaces in the past decade, you’ve encountered deference politics many times. A white person in a humanities seminar, an organizing meeting, an industry convention, a workplace gathering, etc., who makes the conscious decision to avoid engaging or to engage from a position of proactive apology towards various identity groups is engaged in deference politics. Someone who insists that members of “dominant groups” should censor themselves or speak softly or avoid speaking too much or defer to or otherwise “make space” for members of minority identities is advocating for deference politics; someone from a dominant group who tells others in that group that they should defer is practicing (self-aggrandizing) deference politics. “Maybe men should just shut up for awhile,” voiced by a man, is quintessential deference politics. “I sat my white ass down and listened” is deference politics. “Teach me how not to oppress you,” spoken at an academic conference by a straight person to LGBTQ people on a panel, is deference politics. Avoiding sharing a challenging opinion on an issue of controversy for fear of running afoul of the wrong kind of identity accusation is deference politics.

The infamous image above, of Democratic leaders wrapped in kente cloth and taking a knee in memory of George Floyd, actually preceded a meaningful attempt at material change, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. While that bill would not have been a sufficient overhaul of America’s criminal justice system — it’s hard to use the federal government to reform policing, which tends to be governed by state policies and influenced by local conditions — it would have been a good start. The Democrats, sadly, were not able to pass the bill in two tries, though perhaps it could still be revived. That the party simply didn’t have the votes to make the bill law isn’t something that we should be particularly hard on the Democrats about, but the contrast between its failure and the theatrics that attended its announcement is deference politics in its essential form: at a moment of mass discontent over the state of race and policing, Black Americans got the absurd performance from Congressional leaders but not the substance of better policy. And this is core to the critique of deference politics; the point is not that the good intentions of the people who practice them are worthless but that the people who practice deference politics never seem to recognize that all of the deferring never makes positive action more likely. Like many great political crimes, deference politics privileges the communicative and the emotional over the material and the actual.

It’s important to point out that many Black activists and writers recoiled at the deference politics practiced after George Floyd’s death and pointed out that they had never asked for such theatrics.

Is “deference politics” just a way to say “woke”?

No. Deference politics could conceivably be practice or demanded in any given political context and by members of any given political tendency. Conservatives do occasionally advocate for deference politics, such as when they insist that only veterans should comment on issues of war and peace. Nor do woke people assertively practice deference politics all the time; in fact, for various demographic reasons most people practicing social justice politics are themselves members of dominant groups, and they have a tendency to assert their own superior right to speak rather than to defer to others. The term “deference politics” should likewise not be used to refer to all cringey elements of “allyship”, which involves a diverse suite of questionable tactics and attitudes, but certainly deference politics are core to the behavior of the modern ally. The practice epitomizes the modern liberal obsession with defining politics as a matter of interpersonal niceties rather than as the systems through which human values are expressed in material terms in the real world.

September 22, 2024

Canada’s latest moral preening on the international stage includes a partial arms embargo against … the USA?

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Politics, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the National Post, Conrad Black points out that the Canadian government’s tedious and never-ending virtue signalling has reached a new and barely believable low:

It is the usual pious and cowardly humbug that causes Ottawa to announce it is suspending the sales of some non-lethal military equipment to Israel because it has the effrontery to opine that the Israeli Defense forces are insufficiently protective of the lives of civilian Palestinians in Gaza. But it is breathtaking that Canada should include in this practically irrelevant step an embargo on some equipment to the United States that it suspects the Americans might pass on to Israel. This initiative is a trifecta of fatuous error. First, it is clear from thoroughly available evidence that Israel has achieved an unprecedentedly low ratio of civilian to authentic military casualties for modern urban counter-guerrilla warfare. This is especially difficult as the enemy in this case, Hamas, proudly states that civilian casualties are useful to its propaganda campaign (which has brainwashed our foreign policy-makers), and which habitually embeds its terrorist cadres in and near schools, hospitals, and places of worship to incite as much collateral damage on its own population as possible.

Second, it departs completely from any real concept of the nature of war. The invasion of Israel on October 7 and the slaughter of more than a thousand Israeli, mostly civilians, was intended and received as an act of war. Wars are not fought by dropping pamphlets or posturing with trivial gestures. As General Douglas MacArthur famously said during the Korean War, “In war there is no substitute for victory”. This is particularly the case in the current war in Gaza as Hamas has made it clear that it will never accept the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state. As long as that condition prevails, there can be no peace and Israel’s pledge to exterminate Hamas as a terrorist force enables it accurately to be described in the Wilsonian phrase: “a war to end war”. Canada’s government is engaged in a contemptible assertion of moral relativism between the heroic and democratic state of the long wronged Jewish people and a ragtag of vicious terrorists happy to be the cannon fodder of the principal terrorism-promoting state in the world — the primitive racist totalitarian theocracy of Iran.

Finally in the trifecta, in the bankruptcy of their imagination, our foreign policy makers have taken up the trite evasion of the outgoing Biden administration, that “Israel has a right to defend itself”, but we reserve the right to coach it on how to do that and this effectively limits self-defence to the expulsion of invaders but muffled and insulated retaliation against the invaders after they have been evicted from Israel. This is a formula for perpetual conflict and is a moral and military under-reaction to the enormity of Hamas’ provocation. What our government imagines it is accomplishing with this pallid, torpid, and ludicrous gesture surely escapes the imagination of all interested parties.

It must slightly bemuse the United States government that it is boycotted by Canada, which has benefited from an American guarantee of our security since President Franklin D. Roosevelt, speaking at Queen’s University in Kingston in 1938, said that the United States would not “stand idly by” if Canada were invaded by any power from another continent.

August 31, 2024

QotD: Celebrity activism

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

It was never a practical project to silence the acting profession. These people are famous. Having acquired their fame, they then want to use their fame to do good, and in the process to become even more famous. This is only natural, especially when you consider that doing good and being heroic is what, according to the entertainments these people spend their lives making and acting in, life is all about. Trying to stop famous actors from expressing what they consider to be virtuous and heroic opinions in public is like trying to stop the wind from blowing or the sea from being wet.

Brian Micklethwait, “Minnie Driver and the changing meaning of goodness”, Samizdata, 2005-08-01.

July 13, 2024

Did you blink and miss Gender Empathy Gap Day?

Filed under: Germany, Health, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Don’t worry, unlike so, so many other formal days (or months, or seasons …) in the calendar devoted to this or that or the other real and imagined causes, celebrations, or acknowledgements, Gender Empathy Gap Day isn’t observed anywhere:

Remember these examples of virtue signalling? Can you imagine them doing the same for boys or young men?
Image from The Fiamengo File.

Few people have heard of Gender Empathy Gap Day, a day inaugurated in Germany in 2018 to raise awareness about our societies’ remarkable indifference to the suffering of men and boys. Not surprisingly, it has no official status in any country.

Most people, if asked, will insist that it is women and girls who suffer. We expect men and boys to apologize for their advantages and educate themselves about issues affecting women and girls. Animus against men is socially acceptable, even approved. “I bathe in male tears” is a popular feminist slogan, and university professors write mainstream opinion pieces with unironic titles like “Why Can’t We Hate Men?”

The Gender Empathy Gap Day doesn’t advocate a contest over which sex has it worse. It does advocate recognition of our collective inability or unwillingness to see the full humanity of men.

Academic researchers Alice Eagly and Antonio Mladinic have compiled data showing that both females and males tend to have more positive associations with women than with men. Researchers have also confirmed a much higher in-group bias amongst women, meaning that women feel more empathy towards other women than towards men, while men also feel more empathy for women.

Whether it’s homelessness (61% male), homicide (78% male victims), suicide (79% male), workplace fatalities (93% male), prison incarceration (93% male), or a host of other issues, men and boys do suffer. Yet according to the research of Dr. Tania Reynolds, we tend to associate agency with maleness and the capacity for victimhood with femaleness, seeing men and boys as active doers rather than as sufferers deserving concern.

As a result, we are tolerant of harsh punishments for male criminal offenders, but not for women. In 2012, Sonja Starr, a professor of Law, published the results of her study of discrepancies in criminal sentencing that showed a very large gender gap in the punishment of women for the same crimes committed by men. Starr’s extensive study found an average 63% sentencing gap that harshly disadvantaged men. She also discovered that “Female arrestees are […] significantly likelier to avoid charges and convictions entirely, and twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted”.

The gap in punishment results because we all — including prosecutors, judges, and juries — incline to the belief that women who commit crimes were led into their law-breaking by others, usually men, and had limited choices because of poverty, childhood abuse, mental illness, or addiction. We hesitate to deprive young children of the care of their mothers, while we are content to see fathers behind bars. As Starr points out, however, male offenders have also “suffered serious hardships, have mental health or addiction issues, have minor children, and/or have ‘followed’ others onto a criminal path”.

Author Glen Poole has noted that such indifference to male difficulties is built right into the stories our society tells about itself. He points out that when a large number of men are killed — whether in war, accident, or natural disaster — mainstream news sources report on people killed, making the sex of the victims invisible. It is not news when men and boys die.

When women or girls are killed or harmed, they are rarely if ever referred to as people. Their suffering is news.

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