Stephen Roney's Blog, page 146
February 26, 2022
The Honking Torture
Xerxes makes the point that only those who experience prejudice know when it happens. The prejudiced will have no idea. And he adds that he is being discriminated against by the truckers who went to Ottawa.
He is wrong to say that only the victim of prejudice can recognize it. Prejudice is a thought. We cannot read minds. Therefore, only the perpetrator knows.
The perpetrator may not believe he is prejudiced, true. Prejudice is a logical fallacy; people make logical errors all the time.
But so do the supposed victims. Hans Christian Andersen illustrates the problem in his parable of The Princess and the Pea. The privileged, if they face the slightest hardship, will think it a grave injustice, and raise a loud lament. Those who are often discriminated against are likely to have become conditioned to their lot, or rarely dare complain.
Accordingly, we cannot accept the judgement of the person claiming to have experienced prejudice. We need clear evidence.
We see a good example in the recent Freedom Convoy. The judge in the bail hearings for either Tamara Lich or Pat King referred to the honking of truck horns as “torture,” justifying a criminal charge, denial of bail, and perhaps even the declaration of a national emergency. I have heard complaints about diesel fumes.
The comfortable judge and the other complainers do not realize that the sound of truck horns and the smell of diesel is daily life to the truckers. A mine or a typical factory floor is also smelly and noisy. If their work experience is indeed torture, they surely do have something to complain about. QED.
Conversely, the truckers may have had no idea honking or diesel fumes would be torture to folks in downtown Ottawa.
Who, it must be said, are the most privileged among us.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
Helping Ukraine
One thing Canada should do to help the Ukrainians is to immediately open the doors to Ukrainian refugees.
February 25, 2022
The Run on Canadian Banks
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
The War in the Desert Far Away
Many are saying that the Ukraine is not our problem; that Canada should stay out.
Unfortunately, it is our problem. To stay out is the stance of the evil weak, allowing the woman to be raped in the stairwell, so long as she is a stranger.
Collective security protects us all; its failure is a threat to us all.
What is happening is unambiguous. Russia has invaded a neighbouring country. Even Russia is not pretending otherwise.
Canada can do little by itself, and perhaps little in combination with others, but we are obliged to do what we sensibly can.
The War in the Desert Here
To my eyes, the conflict between the Freedom Convoy and the Canadian government is as clear an example as possible, in this fallen world, of a fight of good against evil.
And the way it has apparently ended is a moral lesson: in the short term, evil always wins.
This is because, unlike good, evil will pursue self-interest without restraints. In particular, the greatest power of evil is the lie.
The lie can trick a large number of good people to support evil, because it is difficult for good people to believe others are lying. You can always cheat an honest man. These are the gullible good.
Others, many others, go along because it is easier to keep your head down—and the evil are invariably in power. “I’m all right, Jack!” These are the weak evil.
Because of this overall dynamic, the powers and principalities of this world are generally going to be evil. Any student of history must see this to be true. Except in exceptional times, the wicked rise to the top. The Bible, clearly enough, tells us so. The good are the salt under their feet.
On the other hand, the powers of this world suffer from the limits of the lie. This is why the arc of history indeed bends toward justice. Caught in a lie, like the Boy Who Cried Wolf, it all comes down about their ears. The previously deluded good people wake up, and with the heroic good, they form a majority. Once they are aroused and look unstoppable, the cowardly bad will swing behind them, and the house of cards comes down.
That, I suspect, is what the Freedom Convoy will have accomplished in the longer term. It was not strong enough yet. But by remaining resolutely peaceful, they have seized the moral high ground, and good people are going to wake up to who has been lying.
This is the strategy of Martin Luther King, of Gandhi, of Daniel O’Connell. Or of the early Christians.
The dawn is near.
Sadly, however, we are still in this fallen world. Trudeau may go soon, the Liberal Party may fall, and the heritage media may fade away. But soon enough, a new gang of bad people, piggybacking on the prestige hard-earned by the heroic truckers, will muscle to the front.
I think Pat King is already an example.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
February 24, 2022
Options for NATO
So now we have a big war.
American and NATO cannot afford to do too much. It is only too likely, if they get heavily committed in Ukraine, that China will seize the opportunity to take Taiwan. Indeed, I suspect this may be the plan, organized jointly by Russia and China.
But if NATO does too little, its reliability as an ally will be badly tarnished.
Sanctions have never worked to deter Russia before. Short of committing troops on the ground, can NATO do much else?
Perhaps something in the realm of cyberwar. I do not know how good Western capabilities are. The bad news is that Russia certainly has capabilities here too.
Other thoughts:
1. Rush small arms to the Ukraine in huge numbers. Get guns, grenades, and ammunition in the hands of as many Ukrainians as possible. Set Russia up for a long guerilla war. Ukrainians have a history of doing this.
2. Offer immediate NATO membership to Moldova and rush in NATO troops. This will at least punish Russia for the invasion, and have symbolic value.
3. In strictly military terms, it would not be costly to blockade and even seize the Kaliningrad area of Russia, which is surrounded by NATO countries. NATO troops are already in the area. This could probably done fast enough to be a fait accompli before Russia could react. It could be held as a trade-off for Russia vacating Ukraine.
Of course, invading part of Russia risks world war. But Putin is risking world war already. We have a game of chicken here. If it is always Russia escalating, and the West de-escalating, Russia always wins.
4. Close the Dardanelles to Russian shipping. Because the strait is so narrow, it would take very little to do so. Turkey is a NATO member.
5. Close the Baltic to Russian shipping. Again, it would take little to do so from Denmark, another NATO member.
6. Close the Sea of Japan to Russian shipping. This would be harder, but there are pinch points at Pusan-Fukuoka and Hokkaido. The combined Japanese, South Korean, and US Navies might manage it while being close enough to swiftly redeploy to Taiwan if necessary.
7. Invade Syria and take out Russia’s Assad client regime. Tit for tat—they invade a Western ally, the West invades their ally. They pull out of Ukraine, the West pulls out of Syria. The West is pretty sick of Middle Eastern wars, but it would not need that much redeployment to take out Syria, from Turkey, Israel, and Iraq.
One serious complicating factor is European dependence on Russian oil. I don’t know how big a problem that would be. Maybe prohibitive.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
Trudeau: Just Kidding!
The timing of Trudeau’s announced cancellation of the Emergency Act suggests the main reason was that it was about to get voted down in the Senate.
The harm caused to the banking system might have been handled by simply eschewing this power and freeing all seized accounts. Reputedly, this was already happening.
But Trudeau’s announcement happened in the middle of the Senate debate, before the vote. It seems about the time it should have been clear to an inside observer how the vote was about to go.
Had the Senate voted down the measure, Trudeau would have been in a tough situation. He had called it a confidence vote in the Commons—lose the vote, and he would be obliged to resign. There is no such thing as a confidence vote in the Senate, but saying it is a confidence vote is saying the government does not believe it can govern without it. Therefore, there would be calls for Trudeau to resign, and it would look irregular if he did not; perhaps it would even become a constitutional crisis.
It would also support the argument that Trudeau’s actions up to that point were improper, if not illegal.
So pulling the Act may have dodged him a bullet.
Does all this harm Trudeau politically? It looks as though it won’t. I have seen the argument that, by withdrawing the Act so soon, Trudeau counters claims that he was power-hungry or overreacting. Since it never got to the vote in the Senate, people may never know if this was the real reason.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
February 23, 2022
Senator Plett Speaks on the Emergency Act
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
My Letter to Senator Yussuff
Dear Senator Yussuff:
This is to urge you to help vote down the government’s invocation of the Emergency Act. It is not necessary to protect the sovereignty or constitutional government of Canada against so far peaceful protests, and the precedent set now will be crippling if not fatal to Canadian democracy. If any future government can declare a state of emergency on a relatively trivial matter, and seize bank accounts and assets without recourse, no organized opposition to government can any longer form.
This could also be true of labour actions. The Emergency Act is in particular a betrayal of the working class.
The Senate is our last best hope to prevent this. Please demonstrate the relevance of the Senate as a chamber of sober second thought. I am sure history will remember you well for it.
Sincerely
Stephen K. Roney
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.Whoop Jug!
Trudeau just backed down.
Film at eleven.
I wonder: is this because he had inside knowledge he was about to lose the vote in the Senate?
Or might it have been a reaction to the awful press, especially internationally?
Or--quite likely--was it the banks raising the alarm at how he was destroying their credibility and their business.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
