Category Archives: culture

Another Argument for the UK to Leave the EU

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Under EU law, governments have some leeway in limiting access to welfare, but in most circumstances can’t discriminate between their own nationals and those of another EU country.

But those rude Brits disagree. They want to make scarce resources preferentially available to British citizens. How terrible is that? The British government, for instance, requires those who apply for child welfare payments actually to live in the UK and to do so legally.

And this effrontery:

The British government justifies this condition “to prevent a burden on the welfare system.”

Never mind that the Brits have no requirement to justify to foreign jurisdictions how they spend their resources. But it doesn’t matter:

…Mr [Michael, the European Commission’s lawyer in this matter] Wilderspin retorted that “an increase in the financial burden cannot justify a failure to comply with EU law.”

Pay up, Sucker. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t the money, or have other uses for what you do have. Your [dare I say it?] Betters Know Better.

Time to leave guys. The EU has gotten arrogantly dysfunctional.

A Fundamental Misunderstanding

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Jeffrey Goldberg drew it out of President Barack Obama in Goldberg’s interview with Obama for a piece in The Atlantic. Unfortunately, Goldberg didn’t pursue it, perhaps because he has the same misconceived notion. The misunderstanding is about Iran; here is the core of the exchange that demonstrates Obama’s error.

Goldberg: Stay with Iran for one more moment. I just want you to help me square something. So you’ve argued, quite eloquently in fact, that the Iranian regime has at its highest levels been infected by a kind of anti-Semitic worldview. …you’ve argued that people who subscribe to an anti-Semitic worldview, who explain the world through the prism of anti-Semitic ideology, are not rational, are not built for success, are not grounded in a reality that you and I might understand. And yet, you’ve also argued that the regime in Tehran—a regime you’ve described as anti-Semitic, among other problems that they have—is practical, and is responsive to incentive, and shows signs of rationality. So I don’t understand how these things fit together in your mind.

Obama: Well the fact that you are anti-Semitic, or racist, doesn’t preclude you from being interested in survival. It doesn’t preclude you from being rational about the need to keep your economy afloat; it doesn’t preclude you from making strategic decisions about how you stay in power; and so the fact that the supreme leader is anti-Semitic doesn’t mean that this overrides all of his other considerations.

There is Obama’s error in all its glory. The “you” here aren’t the Iranian people, they’re the Iranian government leadership, men such as Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani. The concerns of the Iranian people related to survival or keeping an economy afloat don’t matter. Nor does any concern for power on the part of the Iranian people.

What matters is what matters to those men of the Iranian government—Khamenei, Rouhani, et al. And those men don’t care about the Iranian economy beyond getting the wherewithal to build nuclear weapons. Those men don’t care particularly about their survival or staying in power beyond using those nuclear weapons. Those men have only one goal, and it’s been their goal and that of their predecessors for over 35 years: destroy Israel. And, hopefully, destroy us. It is the men of the Iranian government who say Israel must be wiped from the map; it is Khamenei who demands the destruction of Israel and chants, during negotiations over their nuclear weapons program, “Of course yes, death to America….”

It’s also these men who likely will die in a nuclear attack on Israel and the response to that mass murder, along with too many of the Iranian people. But that’s an outcome devoutly to be wished from Khamenei’s and Rouhani’s perspective: that’s martyrdom and the path to Heavenly glory. Yes, those men are entirely rational, and every move they’ve made has been consistent with attaining their primary goal. A goal and a cost of which Obama has not the first minim of a clue.

It’s going to be a long and dangerous year and a half. And the Democrats’ proposed replacement for after those 18 months has already failed to answer her own three am phone call.

The Iraqi “Army”

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Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Iraqi’s pseudo-defense of Ramadi, that the Iraqi army hasn’t the will to fight.

The Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight. They were not outnumbered. In fact they vastly outnumbered the opposing force and yet they failed to fight and withdrew from the site… We can give them training, we can give them equipment. We obviously can’t give them the will to fight.

They cut and ran, abandoning that American-supplied equipment, small arms and vehicles among it, to the Daesh and abandoning the city and its remaining residents to those terrorists.

Hakim al Zamili, of the Iraqi Parliament’s Sadrist movement (you remember al Sadr) and chairman of the Security and Defense Committee, objected to that characterization.

The Iraqi army and police did have the will to fight [the] IS group in Ramadi, but these forces lack good equipment, weapons, and aerial support.

No, Hakim, Carter was being generous. Your Iraqi “army” is an insult to armies everywhere; in Ramadi they were stinking cowards who ran away. They wouldn’t fight to defend themselves, or their fellow soldiers, not even their families somewhere else. Here was the fight, and they shrank from it.

The reason they lacked “good equipment, weapons” is because they, once again, abandoned them and left them for the Daesh. Air support? As an American general said in an earlier war, they don’t need air support; they need to fight. The Daesh had no air support, they needed no air support for their inferior numbers to run your “army” out of the city.

No, it’s time for the US to stop using the Iraq Army Transfer Facility to arm and equip Daesh. We should, instead, arm and train—directly—the Kurds and the Sunni and Shiite militias. These are the ones who have the heart to fight, these are the ones who have the skill to fight, these are the ones who have an actual track record of success against the Daesh.

Redirecting our arms and training also would give us an opportunity to turn the Shiite militias away from Iran.

Memorial Day Celebrations

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I first posted this in 2012. It bears repeating.

Enjoy this holiday. Take the time to kick back, relax from the hard work you’ve been doing, and just goof off for a bit.

While you’re doing that, though, do something else, also. Invite that veteran in your neighborhood, who came back from his service wounded or maimed, and his or her family, to your celebration. Invite the family in your neighborhood whose veteran was killed in his or her service to your celebration. They need the break and the relaxation and the support, also. And they’ve earned your respect and remembrance.MtSoledadMemorialImage_big

MojaveCrossTo which I add this, excerpted from Alex Horton’s remarks on the significance of the day to him and his:

I hope civilians find more solace in Memorial Day than I do. Many seem to forget why it exists in the first place, and spend the time looking for good sales or drinking beers on the back porch. It’s a long weekend, not a period of personal reflection. At the same time, many incorrectly thank Vets or active duty folks for their service. While appreciated, it’s misdirected. That’s what Veterans Day is for. Instead, they should take some time and remember the spirit of the country and the dedication of those men and women who chose to pick up arms. They never came home to be thanked, and only their memory remains.

 

h/t Spirit of Enterprise

NSA, Bulk Collection, and Security

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For now, there is no bill extending in any form the NSA’s ability to bulk collect metadata about our telephone calls. The House-passed bill that would have kept those data in phone company possession and NSA-searchable under explicit court order failed in the Senate Friday, as did any effort to extend the existing capability, for any duration. At this point, the House and Senate are in Memorial Day recess and won’t return until the 31st. With the collection authority expiring on 1 June, that leaves the House and Senate only a few hours to figure something out or leave the thing expired.

Senator and Presidential Candidate Rand Paul (R, KY) said in the aftermath,

We should never give up our rights for a false sense of security. This is only the beginning—the first step of many. I will continue to do all I can until this illegal government spying program is put to an end, once and for all.

For all his braggadocio, Paul is right on the essence of this.

There is, and there always will be, creep; there is always expansion of government power, if not authority, no matter the good intentions for the original expansion. The best place to draw the line against further creep, the only effective place to draw the line, is at zero. The Constitution has transferred to government all the fraction of our liberty necessary; there need be no further transfer.

We can have security by giving up (some more) liberty? No. There is no security at all without liberty. The House-passed bill would have been a suitable intermediate step in winding down the bulk collection, and it should have been passed: a sudden disruption of the NSA’s necessary intelligence gathering can be dangerous. At best, though, it should have been taken as only that, and additional measures taken to complete the winding down.

Update: An earlier version of this post foolishly referred to Senator Paul as “Ron.”  That error has been corrected.