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Kissinger on the Ukrainian crisis

The old man has some interesting things to say about the current crisis.

Any attempt by one wing of Ukraine to dominate the other — as has been the pattern — would lead eventually to civil war or break up. To treat Ukraine as part of an East-West confrontation would scuttle for decades any prospect to bring Russia and the West — especially Russia and Europe — into a cooperative international system.

I do not think that demonizing Putin is a useful policy, it is a substitute for a policy.

Another voice of sanity

John Kerry says the Crimea, which has been Russian longer than the Louisiana Purchase has been American, is not Russian. Yeah, sure.

I have no love for Vlad the Impaler. On the other hand, I have no love for Obama. But one of them is going to triumph in this situation, because he has history and the will of the Russian people on his side. Russia will not lose the Crimea, under any circumstances. Note that the western edge of the map below shows the Crimean Peninsula taken from the slave-raiding Muslim Tartars before 1805. The Louisiana Purchase was in 1803. The Khanate of Crimea was destroyed by the Russians shortly before the end of the 18th century, in 1783. Don’t weep for these slave trading Muslims.

Russia_1533-1896

 

Thus I was pleased to see Lawrence Solomon propose in the National Post the split up the Ukraine into pro-European and pro-Russian parts. Some people do not belong together.

With Crimea’s departure from the Ukraine now a fait accompli, Ukraine will need to consider next steps. The next step should be divorce between Ukraine’s Russia-loving east and Europe-loving west. Although they are both populated primarily by ethnic Ukrainians, east and west meet on almost nothing – the east is mainly Russian speaking, the west mainly Ukrainian; the east is mainly industrial, the west mainly agricultural; the east’s economy is mainly oriented toward Russia’s, the west’s to Europe.

Compared to this lucidity, Kerry and Obama are not even wrong.

 

 

Putin dismisses western concerns

Husky

In a recent press conference, Vladimir Putin, shown above, dismissed Western concerns as so much chirping of squirrels. He said there was no immediate need to invade the eastern Ukraine.

PARIS – The European Union prepared a $15 billion aid package to Ukraine on Wednesday and froze the assets of 18 people blamed for looting the treasury of the nearly bankrupt country. The moves came as top diplomats from the West and Russia gathered in Paris to defuse tensions that have approached Cold War levels.

$15 billion eh? Are you sure that is enough to get Ukraine out of bankruptcy?

In case you have not seen it, David Goldman’s article on the Ukraine, “Hopeless but not Serious”, should provide a useful antidote to the huffing and puffing we are reading in the press.

Western follies continue in relation to the Ukraine

The greatest take-away from the Ukrainian crisis is that we live in a propaganda environment so thick that we can scarcely perceive it. Imagine if Quebec separated and the international community was trying to drive us out of the G8 because the federal government seized the western portions of (English) Montreal, plus the triangle of land between the Ottawa and St Lawrence rivers,  and Pontiac County.

Ludicrous huffing and puffing when we have neither the means, will or justification for stopping Russia from seizing Russian-language territories. Andrew Coyne, for example:

It is interesting to reflect on Russia’s long historic and emotional ties to Ukraine, as it is useful to bear in mind its strategic interests in the naval base at Sevastopol. But it is not actually germane. Whatever its motivations or explanations, the issue at the heart of the invasion remains: it is wrong, and it must be stopped. If it is not possible to eject Russia from Crimea, then certainly it must be deterred from expanding its reach further. That’s not only a matter of defending the right of Ukrainians to decide their own future. It isn’t even about Russia, in the long run. It’s about the whole structure of international relations.

Ah, no, Andrew, it isn’t. History is entirely germane. It is a matter of great power politics, in which right and wrong play rather less role than we idealists might like. It is about Russia’s interests and power as a state to control its near-abroad.

I hope the Ukrainians can pull themselves out of the mess they are in. I hope they can manage to lift their abysmal GDP per capita of $3,800 to the levels of prosperity found in, say, Slovakia [$17,600]. I hope they can maintain friendly relations with both the European Community and with Russia. I hope, I hope, but it is not going to happen without serious territorial adjustment to let Russians live inside Russia.

Everyone knows this, except people who write in newspapers.

Crimea: it was never Ukrainian until the Soviet dictatorship handed it to the Ukraine in 1954. See purple-coloured peninsula into Black Sea, below.

Ukraine-growth

Electorally, look at the difference between largely Russian-speaking areas and Ukrainian-speaking areas. Blue supported the ousted President Yanukovich, yellow the losing candidate Tymoshenko.

ukraine-2010-election

Linguistically it is divided this way. The solid red and pink is majority Ukrainian.

 

Ethnolingusitic_map_of_ukraine

 

If Obama had any brains he would be congratulating Putin on firm and decisive leadership on the issue (lying through his teeth of course) but remembering how much we owe to Putin’s non-interference  in important decisions in the United Nations and a few other favours he has done us in the nature of suppressing Islamic terrorism, which we have failed to be grateful for.

I hate dictatorships as much as the next sensible man, but when a foreign leader is claiming back territory vital to his national interest, which was handed over by a discredited former dictatorship to a neighbouring state which is now on its way to becoming foreign and possibly hostile, and when you have no capability of resisting that leader, nod sagely and agree.

Russia will dictate what is going to happen here, and we are just blowing smoke. Vlad the Impaler knows this. Apparently we do not.

 

Big Brother versus Evander Holyfield

I quote from the Guardian. I am not making this up. Evander Holyfield had some remarks about homosexuality on a British TV show, about which the usual suspects were seeking a witch-burning.

Big Brother producers verbally warned the former world heavyweight boxing champion about a conversation he had with fellow contestant Luisa Zissman about the lack of openly gay sports stars, which was broadcast in Sunday night’s highlights programme on Channel 5 from 9pm.

The Apprentice runner-up told Holyfield that she thought it was bad that few people speak out about being gay in the sports industry.

Zissman said: “I think it’s good to be open like that because it’s normal.”

Holyfield replied: “But that ain’t normal.”

Zissman then said: “That’s just the way some people are born.”

The retired boxer argued: “It don’t make no difference. If you’re born and your leg was turned this way, what do you do? You go to a doctor and get it fixed back right.”

Zissman tried to change the subject, saying she thought it was an inappropriate conversation for the house.

Later, the Big Brother production team called Holyfield to the diary room to discipline him and remind him of the show’s rules regarding unacceptable language and behaviour.

Big Brother said: “While Big Brother understands these are the views you hold, they aren’t the views that are held by a large section of society, and expressing these views will be extremely offensive to many people.

“Do you understand why?”

Holyfield said: “Yes I understand why. I thought I was just, I forgot about the thing. I was just telling her my opinion but it’s not like I was going to mention [it] to anybody else. It was just our conversation.”

He has not yet apologised for his remarks.

Big Brother continued: “Big Brother does not tolerate the use of offensive language and must therefore warn you to consider very carefully the effect expressing such views may have and the harm and offence you may cause by repeating these views inside the house.”

Big Brother! They are not even bothering to disguise it.

 

More signs of hope

It has been reported that David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, has told his ministers to get rid of the “green crap”, all the subsidies, levies, taxes and other encroachments on the taxpayer’s pockets, which are driving up household energy bills – as they are designed to do – by large amounts.

 

UK energy bills

I am waiting for Tim Hudak or the next premier of Ontario to speak as bluntly.

Gun ownership versus homicides

Breitbart says that maps made by the U.N. office on Drugs and Crime (circa 2007) clearly show that where gun ownership is highest in the world, crime is lowest on a per capita basis. Not! It is more complicated, and interesting than that.

gun ownership

It is surprizing to find how well-armed Canadians and Europeans are. The Americans lead the way with more than 75 guns per hundred people. But Canadians and the supposedly disarmed Europeans (France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Scandinavia have over 50  guns per hundred people, which translates into high household ownership of firearms.

 

homicides per hundred thousand

The homicides per hundred thousand figure  is even more surprizing. On this scale, Canada’s murder rate shows the same as the States’ (0 to 5 per 100,000), Europe’s level is equally low, regardless of the gun ownership figures, with the exception of Finland and Russia. The Balkans, of all places, show low murder rates, which means the prosperity may be ending their tribal feuding. Muslim North Africa, India and China look safe, if not exactly peaceful.

South America’s rates  outside of the largely white Argentina and Chile are bad to atrocious; East Africa, South Africa, and West Africa are good to avoid. In Papua-New Guinea they really are coming out of the stone age. Burma has several ethnic wars ongoing. Greenland has murder rates similar to those in other Inuit settlements in Canada’s north, which are drowned statistically in the rest of Canada’s population.

Another relationship is visible: the proportion of black Africans and African immigrants indicates high murder rates. Brazil is more than 40% African. In Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, and to a lesser extent Peru, the drug trade and high class tensions lead to high rates of crime.

While there is not a simple relationship between gun ownership and murder rates, it is evident that the US is much more safe than its image would suggest.

 

 

 

 

British Imam denounces political correctness in Islamic sex case

The Imam of an Oxford mosque, Dr. Taj Hargey, had some harsh words to say about members of an Islamic sexual exploitation ring and the culture that refuses to look at it.

But apart from its sheer depravity, what also  depresses me about this case is the widespread refusal to face up to its hard  realities.

The fact is that the vicious activities of  the Oxford ring are bound up with religion and race: religion, because all the  perpetrators, though they had different nationalities, were Muslim; and race,  because they deliberately targeted vulnerable white girls, whom they appeared to  regard as ‘easy meat’, to use one of their revealing, racist phrases.

Indeed, one of the victims who bravely gave  evidence in court told a newspaper afterwards that ‘the men exclusively wanted  white girls to abuse’.

But as so often in fearful, politically  correct modern Britain, there is a craven unwillingness to face up to this  reality.

Commentators and poli-ticians tip-toe around  it, hiding behind weasel words.

We are told that child sex abuse happens ‘in  all communities’, that white men are really far more likely to be abusers, as  has been shown by the fall-out from the Jimmy Savile case.

One particularly misguided commentary argued  that the predators’ religion was an irrelevance, for what really mattered was  that most of them worked in the night-time economy as taxi drivers, just as in  the Rochdale child sex scandal many of the abusers worked in kebab houses, so  they had far more opportunities to target vulnerable girls.

‘As so often in fearful, politically correct modern  Britain, there is a craven unwillingness to face up to the reality that their  actions are tied up with religion and race’

But all this is deluded nonsense. While it  is, of course, true that abuse happens in all communities, no amount of  obfuscation can hide the pattern that has been exposed in a series of recent  chilling scandals, from Rochdale to Oxford, and Telford to Derby.

 

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