Canadian Cincinnatus

A short history lesson for isolationist Putin-lovers

Recently, Vladimir Putin has earned respect among certain quarters in the conservative movement over his self-declared championship of ‘western values’. He has fearlessly stood up to the forces of Political Correctness by opposing gay pride parades in Moscow, as well as cracking down on blasphemous displays in churches, as per the Pussy Riot incident. He also unabashedly extolls ‘western values’ against the forces of Islamic fundamentalism. In contrast, the number of western politicians who are willing to stand up to PC totalitarianism is small, and when they do, they do so much more timidly. And these are not your typical western politicians, who are craven in their subservience to PC doctrine to the point of effeminate disgracefulness. Looking at things solely from this angle, Vladimir Putin looks good.

Well, let me throw some cold water on this nonsense. There is nothing ‘Western’ about Putin, nor commendable. He is a brutal savage, disgorged from the bowels of the KGB. He is a barbarian who needs to be defeated. If you have any doubts, watch this Bill Whittle video about the ‘workplace culture’ that spawned this evil man. One incident in particular reveals the character of Vladimir Putin, and it played a pivotal role in his coming to power: the apartment house bombings.

In August 9 1999, President Boris Yeltsin selected Vladimir Putin, then-head of the FSB (the successor organization to the KGB), to be his new Prime Minister.

Prior to Putin’s ascension, there had been a few terrorist bombings. First, there was a market-place bombing in North Ossetia on Mar 19, killing 62. This was widely attributed to Chechen terrorists as Russia was conducting a brutal campaign against them at that time.

The first bombing with Putin as PM occurred in a shopping center in Moscow on Aug 31. One person was killed and 40 were injured. A group calling itself “The Liberation Army of Dagestan” claimed responsibility. The next bombing – Russia’s first apartment bombing - occurred on Sept 4 in Dagestan, near the Chechen border. 64 Russian border guards and their family members were killed, and 133 were injured. So far, the bombings were either of small-scale or in the Caucuses near Chechnya.

The next bombing broke that pattern. It occurred on Sept 9 in Moscow. 400 kg of explosives was detonated beside an apartment building, destroying it, killing 94 people and wounding 249. On Sept 16, another apartment building was blown up, this time in Volgodonsk – killing 17 and injuring 69. In addition, on Sept 13 and 14, two more apartment bombs were discovered and diffused. Clearly, this put average Russians on edge, but now they were vigilant.

On Sept 22, locals in the town Ryazan (south of Moscow) noticed two men carrying sacks into an apartment building, from a car with Moscow plates. The local police found three 50 kg sacks filled with an explosive they identified, using state-of-the-art equipment, as RDX. This fact was initially confirmed by the FSB. The timer and detonator were armed. A local telephone operator intercepted a suspicious phone call suggesting a plot. Vladimir Putin praised the vigilance of the local residents. Composite pictures of the suspects were circulated, and they were soon arrested by local police.

At the police station, they produced FSB ID cards and were released. At this point the official story changed 180 degrees. It was not an attempted bombing, but a ‘readiness exercise’, and the sacks did not contain RDX, but sugar.

The car used by the FSB was listed by the local police as missing. And the FSB operators, whose pictures were widely circulated in the media, were never identified.

Why was the type of explosive important? Because RDX is a military explosive produced at one military factory. How did a large quantity of explosive disappear from this closely guarded facility?

On Sept 13, the speaker of the Russian Duma claimed to have received a report that an apartment building on the city of Volgodonsk had been blown up. The only problem? The Volgodonsk apartment bombing did not happen until Sept 16 – three days later.

Oh yeah. After the Aug 31 shopping center bombing, nobody had claimed responsibility for any bombings. And after Ryazan, no more apartment bombings occurred or were attempted.

A number of Muslims were convicted in some of the bombings but their convictions have been mired in controversy.

On New Year’s Day, Vladimir Putin surprised the world by announcing that he is now the acting President of Russia because Boris Yeltsin had abruptly resigned. On March 26, 2000, Vladimir Putin was elected President of Russia with 53% of the vote, campaigning in large part on finishing off the Chechen threat. Later that year, the Russian Duma sealed all information related to the Ryazan bombing for 75 years, on a pro-Kremlin party-line vote.

Considering all of this, Occam’s Razor leads one inescapably to the conclusion that the FSB, likely with the knowledge, and quite possibly under the direction of, Vladimir Putin, were responsible for at least some of the bombings – most likely the later, more destructive events that occurred away from the Caucuses – with the purpose of sowing an us-vs-them mentality among the Russian people that could be politically exploited.

Is it possible that this was some kind of a coincidence, and that Vladimir Putin is just unlucky in that all of these coincidences end up making him look guilty of something he didn’t do? Yes it is, but it’s not the way to bet. In Putin’s Russia, coincidences have a funny way of always breaking in the same direction. And for an unlucky guy, Vladimir Putin sure has led a charmed life.

Ultimately, the thing about Vladimir Putin is that he does believe in Political Correctness. It’s just a different Political Correctness than what rules in the West, and it is enforced by much more fearsome and ruthless means. 

“The Lost Art of Political Persuasion” and the Red Tory Death Spiral

One of the themes I write about is political strategy: how do you win political debates and elections, and affect change. On this subject, an important article has appeared in the Ricochet website, penned by Herbert E Meyer, detailing how politicians’ today fail to persuade voters. He begins thus:

“Persuasion used to matter in politics. A good politician was someone with the inclination — and the skill — to convince people who weren’t among his supporters to endorse his preferred policy or legislation.”

 “There are many ways to accomplish this. Lyndon Johnson operated at the retail level, so to speak. … In contrast, Ronald Reagan worked wholesale. He had a genius for convincing millions of voters he was right and — through them — convincing his political opponents that supporting the president’s policies was the best way to keep their jobs.”

One thing that made the Gipper the Great Communicator was that he was willing to communicate. He actually tried to persuade people about the ideas he believed in - systematically and consistently. The problem with most politicians is that they don’t even try.

Closer to home, I believe the fatal weakness of Tim Hudak, the former leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, was just this. While he put forward conservative policies, he thought that was enough, that they would sell themselves. He made no effort to explain to voters why jobs needed to be trimmed in the Ontario government. The same goes for his predecessor, John Tory, with regard to the faith-based funding issue.

 “George W. Bush, for example, genuinely wanted to convince people he was right about Iraq. But he had absolutely no talent for persuasion; nor, alas, did he have the sense to bring anyone who did have a talent for persuasion into his administration. After two terms in the White House, the total number of Americans who changed their minds in favor of the Iraq War was, roughly, zero.”

When public support for the Iraq War plummeted in 2004 and 2005, the White House was passive. After 2008, Rush Limbaugh asked Karl Rove why he didn’t fight back against the accusations made against Bush. His response was that he thought the American people would see through the anti-war propaganda. Duh! And people call you the Architect?

“President Obama is on-track to match that sorry record. He exudes contempt for anyone who disagrees with him about the war, Obamacare, or about any other issue ….”

The case of Barack Obama is different. His brilliant 2008 election campaign was not designed to persuade, but to deceive. He wanted to ‘fundamentally transform America’ but knew that such intentions wouldn’t fly with the American people, so he ran a ‘blank slate’ campaign, where Obama was presented as “a blank sheet of paper upon which the most beautiful poems can be written on” (to borrow a phrase from Chairman Mao). Because he couldn’t repeat this tactic in 2012, he was left with one alternative: playing to his base. Speaking of which:

“In politics, the alternative to persuasion is playing to the base. You identify your natural supporters … and then you throw as much raw meat at them as you can. You tell them whatever they want to hear, precisely as they want to hear it.”

While it may be the polar opposite of persuasion, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do it. It is very difficult to win an election when your base is not energized. Look at the obstacles Obama overcame in 2012 by motivating his core voters.

 “Persuasion, on the other hand, is hard. Convincing people to change their minds often requires that you appeal to their intellect rather than their emotions. You actually have to make your case, and you have to make it in a way that your audience will grasp and consider worth pondering. And because so many of the people you’re trying to convince don’t share your ideology, you must choose words and facts that will overcome their doubts and suspicions, and thus help close the gap between you.”

There are several tricks to the art of persuasion. First, is that you must put yourself in the mind of the person you are trying to persuade. What do they think? What do they value? What do they know?

The last is a particular sticking point for political junkies like us. Because we live and breathe politics, we are familiar with so many details the general public is scarcely aware exist. This is particularly true for conservatives, because the people we seek to relate to get their news from the MSM. A good illustration is a conversation I had with a conservative friend prior to the 2012 presidential elections. He was convinced Obama would lose, and in support his opinion, he listed a whole host of Presidential screw-ups and gaffs. While I was familiar with everything on his list, I asked him how many of them were known to the average American.

It is also important to remember that the people you seek to persuade are not everybody. In fact, if your base is motivated, you don’t really need to persuade all that many uncommitted voters. Remember that your supporters are already persuaded, and you do not need to persuade your opponent’s base. They are unreachable. All you need to influence are enough Low Information Voters to give you 50% plus one on Election Day. In Canada, with three or more parties in contention, it is more like 40% plus one. In reality, you are talking about 5 to 10% of the voters, tops.

The arguments you need to make are not so much broadcast to the general public, but aimed at a particular subset of the voters. It therefore follows that it would be a good idea to know who exactly they are.

“And you must do this in a way that broadens support for your policies without losing your original base.”

This is the most important sentence in Meyer’s important essay. The RINO/Red Tory believes that you need to jettison your more controversial policies in order to persuade unaligned voters. Unfortunately for them, by watering down your platform, all they end up doing is repelling core voters. And when the marginal voters see a revolt going on among their supporters, they defect too because nobody wants to back a loser. This is what I term the “Red Tory death spiral.”

The best recent examples of the Red Tory Death Spiral are the 2003 and 2007 Ontario Provincial Elections. The Red Tories spiraling to their political deaths were Ernie Eves and John Tory, respectively.

Why do Red Tories and RINO’s prefer the Red Tory Death Spiral to persuasion? I think it is because they realize that persuasion is, as Meyer points out, hard, and they have no idea how to do it.

The best assessment of Vladimir Putin I have yet read

Tom Nichols, of the US Naval War College, offers the best assessment of Vladimir Putin I have yet read:

“Putin is not a realist: very few national leaders are. Realism is much loved by political scientists, but actual nations almost never practice it. Nor is Putin a nationalist: indeed, he hardly seems to understand the concept, or he would not have embarked on his current path.”

“Like others of his generation, he is part of a cadre of men who came of age in a massive, multinational, nuclear-armed superstate in the early 1970s. The faceless cogs who made this system work were unremarkable people like Putin, trained in ideology and imbued with the false faith that the USSR’s greatest days were yet to come.”

“In 1975, Putin was just 23 years old. For most of us, our twenties are a great time of life: most of our schooling is behind us, our careers, our mature romances, our children and families, all lie ahead. For Putin, that meant joining the KGB, the most elite Soviet institution, and the one that would give him entry to halls of power that would make his fellow citizens both fear and fawn on him.

He would be somebody in the brave new Soviet future.”

“Men like Putin are not brilliant, but they are cunning. (The Soviet system excelled at weeding out genuinely creative people while rewarding excessively clever people. There’s a difference.) Seeing the writing on the wall in the late 1980s, Putin did what many older and less able Soviet men could not do: he jumped from the crumbling Soviet state to the new democratic movement.”

“Aside from these showy moments, however, we have no real evidence Putin is a nationalist. Rather, he has used his considerable power to build Soviet, not Russian monuments to power.”

“Finally, if Putin is a realist, it is a strange realism indeed. This is where counterfactual thinking might help: a realist seeking to increase the power and influence of his state simply would not do most of the things Putin is doing. The Kremlin’s foreign policy at this point violates almost every rule of competent strategy, to say nothing of common sense. From the injunction to avoid the needless multiplication of enemies to the danger of letting emotion overcome policy, Putin has trampled all over “realist” expectations.”

Multiplying enemies and amplifying emotions are realist goals, if your real goals are not foreign but domestic. As I have argues, Putin’s real goal is ensuring his domestic popularity.

“Putin also shows no understanding of the forces in Ukraine he is creating or manipulating. He has now re-awakened and invigorated Ukrainian nationalism, a notional threat to Russia he could have averted by leaving Ukraine saddled with a large number of Russian voters. (This also is part of what convinces me that Putin really has no understanding of nationalism, and that deep in his Soviet heart, he detests it in all its forms.) Elsewhere in Europe, of course, Putin has reminded a previously slumbering NATO why it exists. He has greatly empowered a traditional Russian opponent, Poland, both in the Atlantic Alliance and the European Union. If that’s part of a master plan, the logic seems murky.”

“War has returned to Europe because of Vladimir Putin, and solely because of Vladimir Putin. Negotiation has failed because it is impossible to negotiate over revenge. If a wider war lies further down the road, it will result, not from the realism of a Russian nationalist, but from the unrealized dreams of an angry old Soviet who wants to go back and live again in a time that was quickly swept away by the emergence of a better world.”

But these are just the highlights. Read the whole thing.

The long term weakness of Vladimir Putin

A good strategic synopsis of the situation in Eastern Europe can be found in the American Interest:

“It is time to discard any delusional or half-hearted approaches toward Moscow that bring only temporary pauses in this geostrategic struggle. The West confronts two stark choices: either help facilitate the collapse of Putinism, or face years of insecurity that will undermine both NATO and the EU and subvert the stability of Russia’s numerous neighbors. Trying to alter Moscow’s destructive international goals through negotiations is a forlorn hope: The Kremlin is engaged in an extensive “shadow war” to dominate its post-Soviet neighbors, and Putin has staked his presidency on rebuilding an extensive “Russian world.” The Western powers therefore have a direct security interest in minimizing future regional instabilities by constricting the Russian state and encouraging all sectors of Russian society to replace the destructive Putinist system.”

What are Russia’s weaknesses?

“There are three indicators of Russia’s creeping state failure, and they will be magnified in the coming years: economic decline, escalating repression, and reckless imperialism. Russia’s economy was deteriorating even before the limited Western sanctions were applied. GDP is contracting, industrial production is declining, capital outflow has reached alarming proportions, consumer demand is shrinking, and the country will soon enter a prolonged recession. In addition, the “phase three” sanctions imposed by the EU in the oil, defense, technology, and banking sectors in July will restrict Russia’s access to European capital markets and further damage its economic performance.

One of the themes running through my writings is that democracies are never as dysfunctional as they seem to be, while dictatorships are never as efficient and capable as they appear. In western societies, our dirty laundry is aired for all to see. In dictatorships, like Putin’s Russia, and Communist China, everything seems gleaming, modern, and efficient, at least from afar, but less so if you poke around a bit. Unfortunately, you are not allowed to poke around.

For Russia’s ruling clique, economic decline will necessitate political repression, while nationalist triumphalism over the seizure of Crimea, the alleged protection of ethnic Russians abroad, and staunch opposition to the West is intended to distract attention from decline and repression.”

As I have argued, the real cause for Putin’s military adventurism was his increasing unpopularity at home in the leadup to the 2012 Presidential election. Russia has real enemies, such as Iran (if it were to become nuclear), and China. But Putin is making deals with them. The most secure borders that Russia had are in Eastern Europe and they are what Putin is attacking.

“The coming crisis of the hyper-centralized Putinist system should be welcomed by U.S. and EU leaders, rather than viewed as a destabilizing prospect. If indeed Putin is replaced by an even more rabid nationalist, as some policymakers fear, then Russia will simply experience further decline and international ostracism that will rebound on its citizens. Moscow will not start a frontal war with the West because its military is simply no match for an American-led NATO, and it can only operate against weaker neighbors.”

A point Mark Steyn frequently makes is that foreign policy experts often make the mistake of valuing stability above all else. In a bad situation, stability only freezes the undesirable in amber.

“The demise of Putinism as a system of internal rule and international ambition can be hastened by a coordinated Western approach with three core components: international isolation, imperial indigestion, and regime replacement.”

“Economic sanctions will be more effective if they impact on Russia’s citizens as well as on leading oligarchs and Putin cronies. Falling government revenues, a downturn in living standards, shortages of consumer goods, difficulties in travelling abroad, and rising unemployment can help fuel revolt against a regime that will become increasingly isolated and seen to be stumbling economically.”

This is an absolutely critical point. To defeat Putin, the Russian people must be given a stark choice: themselves or Putin. Remember, Putin’s Achilles heel is his popularity, as evinced by the below 50% approval rating prior to the 2012 Presidential election. In trying to boost his popularity with military adventurism, he is playing a dangerous game. This is what Argentinina dictator Leopoldo Galtieri did, and look how long he lasted after he lost the Falkland Islands War.

 “To thwart Russia’s expansionism, external pressure must be combined with efforts to undermine Putinism from within. Kremlin controls can be weakened by supporting genuine federalism, decentralization, minority rights, regional self determination, and embryonic national independence movements throughout the overstretched Russian Federation. All such initiatives are consistent with broader campaigns for democracy and human rights in which both the U.S. and EU excel.”

The West can itself conduct a “shadow war” against Putinism, just as it did against Soviet Communism throughout Eastern Europe, by aiding democratic initiatives and supporting sovereignty movements among numerous nationalities.”

In the age of nuclear weapons, the indirect approach is a must. This is what Putin has been practicing against the West. So should we, but against him.

“More than a fifth of Russia’s population is non-Russian, and many of these nations, from the North Caucasus to eastern Siberia, have been deprived of their elementary right to promote their indigenous languages, cultures, and identities. Russian federalism is simply a cover for rigid authoritarianism in which the Kremlin appoints or approves local leaders in Russia’s 85 federal units. An international campaign for genuine federalism inside Russia will be supported by many of Russia’s regions, where a growing number of people increasingly resent Moscow’s political controls and economic neglect."

There are many non-Russian people trapped in that jailhouse of nations, and not all of them are in the Caucuses, or are Muslim. Take the Mari and the Komi people. They are not in the Caucuses and they are not Muslim but they are being continually persecuted and their culture is being systematically eradicated.

“Ultimately, if Putinism is not replaced with a non-imperial and democratic alternative, Russia will face a shrinking economy, which will fuel social unrest and compound ethnic, religious, and regional conflicts, culminating in potential territorial fracture. Although the West cannot guide Russia’s internal development, it can help promote opportunities for the emergence of a new Russia in which domestic dictatorship and imperial ambition are perceived as weaknesses and rejected by a disillusioned public.”

This will only happen after Putin has been served a defeat. 

Vladimir Putin, strategic dunce

Whenever I write about the Kremlin’s military adventurism, in the Ukraine or elsewhere, I invariably receive comments in response extolling the brilliance of Russian President Vladimir Putin vs. Western leaders (“Putin’s is brilliant,” or “our leaders are weak and corrupt”, “it’s useless, forget about it. Putin has us over a barrel,” etc., etc., etc.).

I believe these comments are half-right in that the leaders of the Western world have not exactly covered themselves with glory in their recent dealings with the Kremlin, whether it be President Barack Obama, Chancellor Angela Merkel, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy (who OK’d the deal to sell Mistral amphibious assault ships to Russia), or other feckless Euroweenie politicians. In addition, there are the corrupt German businessmen in bed with the Kremlin, and the useful idiots among the American isolationist movement (like Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul). It is also true that Vladimir Putin has been effective in putting into practice the tactics developed by Hitler in the 1930’s for playing Western democracies like a fiddle. In spite of all this, it nevertheless is true that whatever brilliance Putin possesses, it is only of a short-term tactical variety. Strategically, he is a dunce.

Why do I say that?

Consider this, until about 2008, the most secure borders the Russian Federation had were all in Eastern Europe. At that point in time, peace reigned in Eastern Europe. While there were some discordant notes, they were all created by the Kremlin, with every Eastern European country sincerely desiring peaceful relations and mutually beneficial trade with Russia. (They still do, they just know they aren’t going to get it.)

In contrast, Russia’s relations with Muslims, who live in the Russian Caucuses and control a number of countries that border Russia to the south, are very tense, if not hostile. This is partly because Russia has prosecuted a brutal war of occupation in Chechnya. Until the mid-90’s, Chechnya was led by Dzhokhar Dudayev, a western leaning, thoroughly secular, former Russian Air Force general. Unfortunately, in 1996, the Russians (using technology that may have been supplied by the Clinton administration) killed Dudayev, when he was talking on a cell phone. As a result of this decapitation strike and the wholesale brutalities inflicted on the Chechen people by the Russian military, the Chechen opposition has metastasized into the brutal Islamofascist terrorist movement that doesn’t think anything of massacring schoolchildren or taking over the Ost-Nord Opera House in Moscow. While a graveyard peace is currently in effect in Chechnya, one gets the sense that at the first opportunity, Putin’s corrupt stooge there will be overthrown and replaced by an ISIS-type hydra. The anti-American left always talks about ‘blow-back’ - well this is what real blowback looks like.

Another threatening border is the one with China. Eastern Siberia, a sparsely inhabited treasure-house of oil, gas and minerals, is under direct demographic threat from illegal Chinese immigrants pouring across the Russian border to out-compete the local Russians (where alcoholism is a chronic problem) for jobs. It is clear the Chicoms are biding their time until Eastern Siberia reaches a demographic tipping point. 

So, what does Vladimir Putin do about this situation? He has systematically created provocation and fermented war in Eastern Europe, while providing aid and comfort to Russia’s real enemies in the Muslim world and with China.

With regard to the Muslim front, Russia is busy supplying nuclear technology and advanced anti-aircraft missiles to Iran. So, what will the mullahs in Teheran do with their nuclear missiles and no-return-address A-bombs to a country famous for brutalizing Muslims? I don’t know, but I am sure we will find out if the Ayatollah’s finally get the bomb that the Kremlin is helping them build.

With regard to the Chinese threat, Putin supplies them with advanced weapons (like the SU-27 fighter - the best Russia has got), and signs sweetheart oil and gas deals with them.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Russia also has a northern border: the arctic. What has Putin done there? He is currently fermenting friction and discord with Canada over who owns the Arctic sea (and all the oil, minerals and gas that is to be found there).

With all this misplaced aggression on his part, the one thing I am sure of - no matter what happens to the peaceful, freedom-loving republics of Eastern Europe - the consequences of this large a quantity of strategic blunder won’t be good for Russia, or for the career (and longevity) of Vladimir Putin. 

Announcement: United for Ukraine Rally on Parliament Hill on Wednesday

I want to pass on an announcement I received from the Ukrainian community for an important upcoming event. Considering all the horrible aggressions visited on the Ukrainian people by Putin’s Russia, please try to attend this rally if you at all are able:

“Good evening friends and colleagues.  This is to invite The Estonian community to attend the United for Ukraine Rally on the 17th of September at 2pm on Parliament Hill.  The purpose of the rally is to welcome to Canada President Poroshenko of Ukraine.  This is an historic visit at a critical time in Ukraine's history.  

Where: Parliament Hill

Date and Time: Wednesday, September 17th, 2-4PM

Bring Canadian, Ukrainian, Baltic, Polish national flags etc...

There will be screens outside on Parliament Hill to watch and hear President Poroshenko's speech in Parliament.  He will also come outside with Prime Minister Steven Harper and briefly address the crowd.  Some buses are also being coordinated from Toronto and Montreal.  Please advise if you would like to arrange for transportation to Ottawa.

Kindly share this invitation with your friends, family and colleagues, and share it broadly through your e-mail distribution networks and social media forums.  We also encourage you to print copies of the poster and circulate it within the community such as on grocery store bulletin boards, coffee shops, community centers, churches, and other newsworthy places to help us spread the word about the rally.

Kind regards,

Jane Kolbe”

Malaysian MH7 truthers in our midst

Here is an article by Ron Unz questioning whether the Russians shot down Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17. I bring it to your attention only because Ron Unz is not a nut (or rather, he used to not be a nut), and he is not a leftist whacko. He is – or was – a respectable conservative. For instance, he was one of the driving forces behind Proposition 227, the successful ballot measure that banned bilingual education in California. So when he outs himself as an MH17 truther, one must wonder, how many less-well-credentialed conservatives are similarly deluded.

The primary evidence he highlights is via a left-wing Washington Post blogger, Erik Zuesse, who claims that a photograph of a piece of aircraft wreckage proves that MH17 was shot down by Ukrainian jets. His argument is that this photo shows penetrations coming from both sides, which is inconsistent with an exploding SAM. Earth to Erik Zuesse, I have a one-word rebuttal: secondary explosions.

Of course, my assertion that secondary explosions occurred is just as much speculation as Zeusse’s elaborately constructed theory based on a picture one piece of evidence. A catastrophic aircraft loss is a complex event that requires a full analysis to make sense of each piece of evidence. To this Zuesse states, “Only idiots would trust Britain to interpret these black boxes to determine what or who brought down that plane.” Well it must be nice to cavalierly dismiss evidence, even before you see it, simply because you do not like it.

But this remark perfectly illustrates the most debilitating intellectual error made by conspiracy kooks, their shifting standards of evidence. The weakness of their conclusions does not come, as is commonly supposed, because they are ‘ignorant’ or they ‘don’t know anything’. This is not true. Often quite the opposite is true: their heads are positively bursting with facts. It is just that they don’t judge facts dispassionately. The tiniest fact that supports their conclusion is hailed as a world-beating revelation, while, at the same time, entire lines of reasoning and fact are cavalierly dismissed as evidence planted by the Freemasons or the Jews or the neocons.

In this case, the fact that a Ukrainian Air Force IL-76 was shot down on June 14 was ignored, as was a report on June 19 from Russian News agencies that the rebels had acquired a Buk missile system from a captured Ukrainian military base; as was a tweet the same day from rebels confirming the same; as was the downing of a Ukrainian Air Force AN-26 on July 14; as was subsequent social media claims from rebels that it was shot down by a Buk missile; as was the shoot-down of a Ukrainian Air Force Su-25 on July 16; as were eye-witness reports of a Buk M-1 missile system in rebel-held territory operated by men with Russian accents16 km south of the crash site; as was a tweet appearing shortly after the shoot-down from an account of a prominent rebel leader claiming credit for the shootdown, a tweet that was quickly deleted; as is the fact that the range of a BUK M-1 missile (35 km) requires that it must have been fired in rebel-held territory; as was the fact that rebels shot down several aircraft after the MH17 shoot-down; as was  the fact that the rebels systematically obstructed crash-site investigation.

Hmm… Ron Unz and Erik Zeusse. Wouldn’t Occam’s Razor conclude that the most likely explanation is that Putin’s ne’er-do-wells in Eastern Ukraine deliberately shot down the Boeing 777 in the mistaken belief that it was a Ukrainian Air Force transport? Wouldn’t the evidence at hand make this explanation so likely that the burden of proof now falls on the proponents of opposing theories to provide the extraordinary evidence now required to make their case?

At this point, the conspiracy kooks reading this might sputter, “oh yeah, well what about global warming, aren’t the experts and authorities wrong there?” Let me tell you Mr. Kook, if the evidence opposing anthropogenic global warming (AGM) were as weak as the case put forward by kooks like Unz and Zeusse, then I would an evangelist for AGM. The reason AGM can today be legitimately doubted is that people like Steve Macintyre went into the weeds with the data and deconstructed the evidence in a rational manner. In other words, they provided the extraordinary evidence required to challenge the scientific establishment. Macintyre isn’t a conspiracy kook who babbles on about dark forces. He makes rational arguments based on a dispassionate analysis of all the evidence. And he has a treasure trove of East Anglia e-mail backing him up.

Until they can do that, the isolationist MH17 truthers should crawl back under the rock they came from and leave normal people be.

 

UKIP and the Tea Party: partying like it’s the 1990’s (1990’s Canada, that is)

According to the Daily Mail, the upstart conservative, anti-EU, anti-immigration party in Great Britain has just caused another political upset when a popular Conservative MP walked across the aisle to join UKIP. According to polls, the resulting by-election promises to be ‘a bloodbath’ for David Cameron’s ruling Tories.

As a Canadian observer of the domestic political scene in both the UK and the US, the rise of UKIP in Britain, and the rise of the tea party in the US reminds me of nothing more than Canada in the early 1990’s, with the Reform Party, led by Preston Manning, arriving on the scene. As in the US and UK today, the federal political scene was fossilized by three political parties (the then-ruling Progressive Conservatives, the Liberals, and the NDP). With the increasing leftward direction of Brian Mulroney’s PCs, differences between the three mainstream parties became increasingly harder to detect. The ruling class in Ottawa increasingly behaved like, well, like a homogenous ruling class. The us-vs-them dynamic created by the arrogance of Canada’s rulers set off a wave of populism, one that the Reform Party rode to victory (well, eventually).

In England, the pro-EU, pro-immigration, status quo is being challenged by UKIP. In the US, the no-constitutional-limits, spendaholic, amnesty-for-everybody status quo is being challenged by the spontaneous grass-roots movement known as the Tea Party.

It is important to note that UKIP founder Nigel Farage is a keen student of Canadian political history and has explicitly modeled UKIP after the Reform Party. At least this is what he said when he was the keynote speaker at the Manning Networking Conference in Ottawa two years ago.

I am sure my American readers are wondering, so what happened? The decisive event was the 1993 Federal Election, the most important election in recent Canadian political history. It had several immediate effects. Foremost, the ruling Progressive Conservatives (PC’s) were almost completely wiped out. After rats like Prime Minister Brian Mulroney deserted the sinking ship, the party ended up in the hands of incompetent hoplophobe, Kim Campbell. Her party went from 156 seats in Parliament (out of 295) to two. That’s right – just two PC Members of Parliament, neither one of which was her. Second, vote-splitting between the Reform and the PC’s led to ten years of Liberal rule. Third, the rise of the Reform Party from the backwoods of Alberta completely upended the prevailing political orthodoxy. As a result, the victorious Liberals were forced to govern like fiscal conservatives. And when Reform and the PCs amalgamated to form the new Conservative Party in 2004 (jettisoning the ‘Progressive’ label), Reformers (like Stephen Harper) were in the driver’s seat, and the Red Tories ended up in the back of the bus. Americans who are wondering why there has been so much common sense coming out of Canada recently, when it has historically been more socialist than the US, this is the backstory.

The Need to Act Immediately in the Russo-Ukrainian War

John Schindler, over at the XX Committee blog, has the most illuminating article about the current war in the Ukraine I have yet read.

While he has no illusions about the straits that the Ukrainians find themselves in, he also has no illusions about Vladimir Putin, whom he correctly notes is not as strong as he seems. He quotes one of the last remaining independent journalists in Russia, who says:

“Time, that trickiest of strategic concerns, is not on Putin’s side any longer, as Felgenhauer observes accurately, between weather and the Russian military’s conscript cycle:

“There is not much time left. Fall is approaching. The short hours of daylight and low clouds will complicate the matters for the air force. It will have difficulty supporting ground troops — pilots in Su-25 ground-attack planes need to see the targets on the ground. In addition, starting 1 October, it is necessary to conduct a new draft and begin the demobilization of those conscripts who are stationed on the border as part of the artillery battalion groups. It is specifically for these reasons that the question must be resolved now.”

We will know in a few days, then, if Putin has achieved his relatively limited military aims in eastern Ukraine. If he does not manage a quick win, there is every reason to think Ukraine and Russia will become embroiled in a protracted war for which neither Moscow nor Kyiv is ready.”

As I have been saying all along, Putin’s Achilles heel is time. The longer his military operations take, the more unpopular he will get at home. The anti-Putin resistance in the 2012 Presidential election really spooked him, and this is why he is cultivating an us-against-them mentality in Russia. Maybe next time, ballot-box stuffing and a 24/7 non-stop orgy of pro-Putin propaganda on every TV station in Russia won’t be enough.

Schindler’s remedy is spot on:

‘Sanctions will have no short-term impact on Russian behavior at this point. Vaunted Western “soft power” has been run over by Russian tanks. The decision for war has been made in Moscow, and it will be prosecuted until Putin achieves his objectives or the cost — rising numbers of Russian dead — becomes politically prohibitive. Putin knows that the Russian public, heady after the nearly bloodless conquest of Crimea, has no stomach for a costly war of choice with Ukraine, their “Slavic brothers.”’

As I have said, the worst case scenario for Putin is that he gets himself mired in lengthy counterinsurgency operations. In that situation, he will have to mobilize the less-than-elite conscript and reservist units. When conscript sons and reservists called back to active duty start coming home in body bags, Putin’s days in the Kremlin will be numbered. Already, as Schindler points out, “Dead Russian paratroopers are coming home for burial.”

“If the West wants to prevent more Russian aggression and save Ukraine from further Kremlin depredations, it must offer Kyiv armaments, logistics, training, and above all intelligence support without delay. Nothing else will cause Moscow to back down. Only by arming and enabling Ukraine’s military can the West make the cost of Putin’s war prohibitive for Russia. Ukraine’s defense ministry and armed forces require major Western aid to transform its underperforming military from bad Soviet habits to real fighting capability, but that is a long-term enterprise. Right now, Kyiv needs direct military aid. If NATO does not provide it, a wider war for Ukraine becomes more likely by the day, with grave consequences for the European peace that NATO has preserved, at great expense, for sixty-five years.”

This proscription is absolutely right. The sooner the West takes a stand, the better it will be. As in the 1930’s, appeasement only postpones the problem, allowing it to metastasize into something bigger and more terrible. Right now, time is of the essence. If the Ukrainians are backed to the hilt with weapons and training, they will do all the heavy lifting for us. Not because they owe us, but because they have no choice. If we let the Ukraine fall, NATO will have to fight Putin directly – with all the strategic risk that portends.

Anybody but a strategic nincompoop (like Pat Buchanan and the Pauls –father and son) should be able to see that.

 

Brad Duguid’s endorsement of John Tory means that Toronto’s left has given up on Olivia Chow

Yesterday, Ontario Liberal cabinet minister Brad Duguid endorsed former Ontario Progressive Conservative leader John Tory for mayor of Toronto. This can only be because the left-wing candidate in the Toronto mayoral race, Olivia Chow, has fallen to third place. Right now, it is a two-way race between John Tory and Mayor Rob Ford.

Clearly, Olivia Chow is the candidate the Toronto left would like to see running City Hall, but after the debacle of David Miller (Toronto’s Bill De Blasio), Torontonians are not clearly in a mood for another extremist in the mayor’s office. Nevertheless, as Toronto’s left sees it, Job One is not electing Olivia Chow, but making sure the Great Satan, Rob Ford, is not re-elected.

As the article linked to above points out, Ford and Tory are neck-and-neck, with Chow a distant third. Time for some strategic voting by Toronto’s respectable class.