A magic moment in the history of troll; it may never come again. OK, so you know the climate-change denier talking point about global warming supposedly “stopping” in the last ten years. It’s a classic example of how to lie with numbers; you just choose the bit of the data series that suits you and…
Read More Climate change denier redefines the number 10IPC sub-editors dictate our nation’s youth. Ha, been a while since I heard that one. There is talk at the Meadi Grauniad that someone wants to re-open The Face. I can almost feel the unusually stiff square binding and remarkably heavy paper already. It was like being a member of a secret league against wankers.…
Read More better left as an example to othersAndrew Brons apparently likes the voluntary repatriation grant clause in the 1971 Immigration Act, a sop thrown in for Enoch. Well. A feature of this legislation, if I remember correctly, was that accepting it was without prejudice to one’s immigration status. You could go back. So the only people who accepted it took holidays back…
Read More my country needs me…Just to finish off this gruelling series, I wanted to flag Kilcullen’s take on Afghanistan and opium. In short, his argument is that counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics in Afghanistan are identical; the poppy mostly grows where the Taliban are, it provides something up to 50% of the movement’s income, and it is anyway impossible to do…
Read More Accidental Guerrilla, Part 4: Kilcullen on DrugsA lot of The Accidental Guerrilla concerns ideas of terrain, space, and time. In fact, quite a bit of it could be considered an architectural approach to counter-insurgency. This is not surprising; a major theme is the idea that the conflict environment – the state of being at war or potentially at war, the disrupted…
Read More Accidental Guerrilla, Part 3: SpaceDavid Kilcullen describes the cycle of violence at the end of the last post in biological terms; we are apparently faced with “infection”, “contagion”, “intervention”, and “rejection”. Usually it’s wise to be really suspicious of anyone who talks biology in politics, unless they are talking about actual bacteria. However, this metaphor covers a very important…
Read More Accidental Guerrilla; Part 2, StrategyReading the literature on the insurgencies and counterinsurgencies of the 1950s and 1960s, one thing that stands out is that – as you’d expect from practitioners of what the Chinese used to call bandit extermination – there is very little agency attributed to the people. Yes, it is necessary to – here we go with…
Read More Accidental Guerrilla: Part 1, Theoretical FrameworkWell, Blears and Smith were good, but Geoff Hoon walking the plank? Klasse. Apparently there is talk of making him a European commissioner again; God knows why. Alan Sugar is some sort of minister and a peer of the realm. Peter Mandelson is turning into Michael Heseltine before our boggling eyes. Better get some cardio…
Read More Bob’s yer uncle, and Tess is your aunt..You thought the Hummer being put on the block was symbolism? This is symbolism: the bloated, militaristic, fuel-guzzling cultural trope itself is being sold to Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery. Yes; an unheralded outfit from the deep west, not even Shenzhen or Shanghai. Seeing as its core business is making construction gear, tankers, and off-road…
Read More giant symbol crashes and overturns, killing billions of dollarsI saw the Ettes play last night; the first band on my list based on SCIENCE! that I’ve actually seen. They absolutely nailed No Home and made Soizick dance. A lot. (RSW weren’t wrong, were they.) But before that, a story. Getting to the place, we found a closed speakeasy-like door and no sign of…
Read More thank you very much!