war

Trump’s Boomer moment

Posted on by Nikolai Vladivostok

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/02/02/us/02iraq-airport-sub2/02iraq-airport-sub2-videoSixteenByNineJumbo1600-v2.jpg

Sick at home, wasting time on Twitter, I realize that a lot of people are pretty stupid.

Not low in intelligence (see Parts I and II of why clever people are stupid), but simply willing to swallow the neocon line and freely choose to believe comforting falsehoods that they know are false, this time about the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani.

“Don’t mess with the us!  We have Trump now, not Obama!  Finally, a President who supports the troops.  ‘Murika!  USA, USA, USA!  Anyone against the attack is a traitor.  Why don’t you just live in Iran?”

Such is the battle cry of the Boomer who still remembers Read More

Armistice Day

Posted on by Nikolai Vladivostok

On the day of writing it is 11th November, 2018.  World War I ended one hundred years ago today.

Enough has been said about the war already.  Millions died for no special cause.  It was the beginning of the end for Europe.  It brought about communist revolution, disease, WWII, and much more besides.

WWI is proof that, while whites might have a relatively high average IQ, we still manage to be far stupider than anyone else.

All I want to say is this:

Boys, nobody cares whether you live or die, or how much you suffer.  Maybe your immediate family.  Maybe a handful of close friends.  Maybe your dog will miss you.  But certainly no one else.

Society doesn’t care.  The gods don’t care.  Women care least of all.

Wilfred Owen writes of a disabled veteran:

Tonight he noticed how the women’s eyes

Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.

In a town two hours’ drive away there is a Commonwealth War Grave from the subsequent conflict.  We saw the neat rows of plaques dutifully engraved by the industrial processes of officialdom for Englishmen, Scots, Indians, Malays, South Africans, Sudanese and various other brave subjects the British Empire.  There was only one epigraph that could bring tears to my eyes, and does so again as I repeat it:

In loving memory of David

We miss you

Mum and Dad

Too old for war

Posted on by Nikolai Vladivostok

A few years ago me and my mate were talking about conscription and we realized that we’re now too old to go to war.  That glory and horror of mankind throughout history has somehow passed us by.

It could be that, as Pinker says, the world is more peaceful now.  Or that we lived through a rare, quiet bubble.  Or maybe mechanized warfare needs fewer men than before.

Whatever the case, we got off scott free.  No one invaded Australia the whole time we were young and living there.

My grandfather fought in Papua New Guinea.  My father was conscripted for Vietnam but Australia pulled out of the war before he had to go.  The closest I came was Read More