#2
It was a terrible mistake to leave any vestige of the old ways in the government of Afghanistan. "Cultural sensitivity" is bullshiat compared to efficiency in government. At the very start, we should have installed a military government, while the civilian government was being trained from scratch.
Future government ministers would be trained as office clerks, with promotion based solely on meritocracy and explicit following of directions. Then, when they run that office, they have their old boss as a watchdog over them until they work an entire year without screwing anything up or stealing anything.
This also means that in the cities, every child goes to a government run, western teacher taught school. Most of them live at the school as well. They wear uniforms, and their lives are totally controlled.
It ain't nice, but it is how you make civilization in a hell-hole backwater of a murderous disaster area.
Is David Miliband Britains worst-ever foreign secretary, or do you suppose his awfulness and incompetence were eclipsed by Lord Halifax? Its a close call. In the extraordinarily tense year of 1938 Halifax was dispatched to an important meeting in Germany where, on arriving at the Berchtesgaden, he mistook a beaming Adolf Hitler for the doorman.
Relations between the two countries were never quite the same after that. You would think that the moustache might have been a giveaway, that someone could have warned his lordship in advance, Listen, mate, anyone you see with a Charlie Chaplin moustache, an extravagant side-parting and looking a bit overwrought just dont tip him or give him your hat, okay?
Earlier Lord Halifax had been sent to India to keep everything nice and calm and, on arrival, decided that this annoying little brown man in a white dhoti who kept cropping up everywhere was quite inconsequential, not really to be bothered with. That would be Mahatma Gandhi, then. Perhaps he mistook Gandhi for a hatstand.
The journey of Halifax to high office landed gentry, Eton, Cambridge, causes second world war is different from that of Miliband. Although neither of them did much in the way of work before he became a politician, if were honest. Both were, in their different ways, born to the task of making Britain look completely ridiculous abroad.
Miliband had form even before he annoyed one of the few allies Britain has left in the world India. On a visit there last week he insisted that the government sort out the problem of Kashmir, the failure to do so being a direct cause of the murderous attacks in Mumbai, which left 195 people dead, by the Pakistan-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba. The Indians, who know a bit more about the problem than Banana Boy Dave, begged to differ.
It is a little as if some Indian politician had arrived in London a day or two after the 7/7 bombings and said, well, Britain, serves you right you shouldnt have invaded Iraq, should you? I wonder how we would have responded to that. It smacked of a certain how can I put this? insensitivity, ignorance, gaucheness and, more to the point, arrogance.
The Times of India reported that Milibands tactlessness has even surprised people in the British administration and his comments were immediately and rightly rebuffed by the Indian government, which sent a letter to our prime minister which began: Why in Vishnus name did you send this smug wonk with the weird hair to see us? He cant even hold a banana properly. Well, it probably didnt say quite that, but you get the gist.
By the way, the terrorists who carried out the atrocities in Mumbai were a jihadist group with typically psychopathic aims which stretch well beyond Kashmir. And as it was a British administration which created the problem of Kashmir in the first place, the comments of Miliband seem doubly insensitive.
Miliband has also now conceded that he regrets the war against terror. This seems to me an odd admission for someone who voted no fewer than five times in favour of its first manifestation, the illegal invasion of Iraq, unless it is accompanied by a personal apology and mea culpa, which it wasnt. I cannot remember him attacking the war against terror before 2007, either. You cannot be a member of an administration which has energetically prosecuted this relentless aggression and suddenly decide that it was wrong all along, unless you humbly apologise and resign from office (not necessarily in that order). You are left with the suspicion that Miliband simply finds it expedient to disown the war on terror, there now being a certain shift in emphasis emanating from Washington DC.
The foreign secretary was also fabulously weak in his comments about Robert Mugabe, hopelessly misjudged a challenge to the prime minister last summer, and has extreme difficulties dealing with soft fruit. Weak, tactless, arrogant, hypocritical and ill-informed. Hell, I think poor old Lord Halifax has lost his position.
Posted by: john frum ||
01/25/2009 11:08 ||
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#1
The author's got that classic British touch with sarcasm, but is quite clueless on the GWOT. It's OK - like the patrician bumbler he skewers here, he'll be carried and protected by those intelligent enough to understand such things. Or will he, now ......??
#4
The ignorant dishing it out to the really ignorant, neither of which seems in short supply in the sceptered isle these days.
But, it does go to explain Miliband's handiwork - didn't know if it was misguided Obamism or clownish Bidenosity. Guess Miliband is quite on the clown side of the spectrum.
#6
must have missed the news about the quantum revolution, Fox is reporting today that;
Scientist Teleport Matter More Than Three Feet
Friday, January 23, 2009
Teleportation on the big screen in 1979's 'Star Trek: The Motion Picture.'
Scientists have come a bit closer to achieving the "Star Trek" feat of teleportation.
No one is galaxy-hopping, or even beaming people around, but for the first time, information has been teleported between two separate atoms across a distance of a meter about a yard.
This is a significant milestone in a field known as quantum information processing, said Christopher Monroe of the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland, who led the effort.
Our federal government has been imposing tax increases on business in the guise of implementing regulations and unfunded mandates. Every time Congress passes a law adding a regulation or a new restriction, someone has to pay more for something outside a normal supply/demand event.
That is an unseen tax that has been building for 20+ years in this country.
Remove/cut these regulations and the economy will grow, free from inflation or deflation.
Wanna know why 45 million do not have health insurance in the USA? You need look any father then federal regulations which drive up costs unnecessarily and prevents businesses from entering markets to address cost increases.
#9
In this case, the difference is in the definition of what "expectations" means. If it means living within a budget, then the answer is yes. But if it is some Al Gore fantasy about the government having to ration everything, then the answer is no.
Our "real" economy of goods and services needs to be rebuilt, after having been outsourced. And this is where our recovery will happen. But it can't happen until the leverage economy dies. It can die on its own or be killed, but "leverago delanda est".
The future will be like the past in the truism, "If you need a loan, you cannot afford it." For years, 100% collateral on credit will be the rule.
On a personal level, this can mean something like a "credit-debit card", which is a debit card that behaves like a credit card--or an instant personal check.
You set your own limit by however much you put into your account, then once a month you receive your bill of how much money you need to send in to restore your limit.
In exchange, you get a percentage of the interest the credit-debit company can make with your limit, plus discounts from retailers because it is much more secure than credit cards. This would give you a much better yield than you could get through a bank.
#10
From Traffic: The percentage you're paying is too high-priced
While you're living beyond all your means
And the man in the suit has just bought a new car
From the profit he's made on your dreams
But today you just read that the man was shot dead
By a gun that didn't make any noise
But it wasn't the bullet that laid him to rest
Was the low spark of high-heeled boys
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
01/25/2009 10:54 Comments ||
Top||
#11
On the other hand, bad as things seem now, they could be a lot worse.
#13
A key difference between a centrally directed economy and a free market economy is the concept that in the former you can create evermore bureaucratic government job opportunities to micro manage the system, in the latter you just let the people keep their capital derived from their sweat, labor, and enterprising skills and spend it on what ever they want. While both will create jobs, the latter model usually creates jobs which in turn create more jobs [other than just more lawyers].
#16
Frankly (can I say that?) I'm willing to loan any RBeee particiant 100% of their cash balance right now, no questions asked. 2% per annum. I will need to hold on to the dough for the length of the loan. Still, NO LIMIT, NO CREDIT CHECK!
Timothy Geithner's tax oversights drew most of the media attention at his confirmation hearing, but the biggest news is the Treasury Secretary-designates testimony Thursday that he'll ratchet up one of the Bush Administration's worst habits: China currency bashing.
In a written submission to the Senate Finance Committee, Mr. Geithner said the Obama Administration "believes that China is manipulating its currency." He says he wants Treasury to make "the fact-based case that market exchange rates are a central ingredient to healthy and sustained growth." The dollar promptly fell and gold jumped $40 on the news.
We're not sure what Mr. Geithner means by "market exchange rates," given that the supply of any modern currency is set by a monopoly known as the central bank. When Mr. Geithner says China is "manipulating" its currency, what investors around the world hear is that he really wants Beijing to restrain the number of yuan in circulation and increase its value vis-a-vis the dollar. That's a call for a dollar devaluation to help U.S. exporters.
This would seem to be an especially crazy time to undermine the dollar, given that the Treasury will have to issue some $2 trillion to $3 trillion in new dollar debt in the next couple of years. A stronger yuan would also contribute to Chinese deflation and slower growth, which would only mean a deeper world recession. Even the Bush Treasury never formally declared China to be a currency "manipulator" in its periodic reports to Congress. If the Obama Treasury is now going to take that step, hold on to those gold bars. We're in for an even scarier ride than the Fun Slide of the last few months.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
