After all, we’re told that geographic translocation makes people 100 percent real members of the nation into which they immigrate.
Islamic State executioner who beheaded US journalist IS British, government believes as Cameron returns from holiday early and Foreign Secretary says UK troops could be sent to Baghdad.
Now why would UK troops be sent to Baghdad? Shouldn’t the US be launching airstrikes on London to warn the British people not to behead Americans? Actually, that’s not the worst idea. Perhaps the Brits would be a little bit more cautious about handing out passports to people. Call it the Pearl-Foley Doctrine: if one of your citizens murders an American, your government and people will be held responsible.
Seven different people have independently come up with the notion that this should be my Borg name, so I suppose in the event that I am ever assimilated by the science fiction hive mind, I shall most certainly adopt it. Nerd minds really do think alike. What I think is funniest about the Hugo results is the speed with which the Wikipolice were quick to add them to the Wikipedia page about me; apparently I am so important that I am the only not-winner to have his not-winning deemed notable. Not even the massive International Lord of Hate is a figure of such significance. I thought the quad-sourcing was particularly amusing. (Blame Jamsco for the image. Why do I have the feeling it is going to end up on the Encyclopedia Dramatica?)
In 2014 Beale’s novelette, “Opera Vita Aeterna”, was nominated for the Hugo Award.[17] It came in sixth out of five nominees, behind “No Award.”[18][19][20][21]
Four sources makes it that much more true! The pinkshirts just never learn, do they? The more they go out of their way to exhibit the extent of their irrational hatred for me, the more they seek to DISQUALIFY me, the more interesting I become to everyone else who isn’t part of their twisted little world. I suspect some of them, like John Scalzi, are aware of this but lack the necessary emotional control to restrain themselves. The call of the hate is simply too strong to resist.
Speaking of McRapey, it was suggested that it was not entirely fair for me to call out him out for his traffic fraud when I haven’t publicly provided any evidence of the Google pageviews at VP. (There was no similar complaint about AG, as the running “monthly” total is displayed on the left sidebar there. If anyone knows how to get that widget running on the old Blogger template, please let me know.) After all, the Sitemeter pageviews are considerably lower than the Google pageviews claimed, so it was theoretically possible that my traffic might be lower than I was asserting. Fair enough, if perhaps a little insulting to even an intelligence much more modest than mine. So, I grabbed this screenshot yesterday towards the end of the day; yesterday’s total was actually 36,241.
This covers the last month, so it is no one-day spike. As you can see, the daily pageviews have averaged about 34k; at no point in the last month have the daily pageviews descended below 26,328. And one has only to visit Alpha Game to see that the running 30-day total is 1,475,512 at the moment, or rather, a bit more, since the number rises throughout the day. August should end up somewhere around 1,535,000, plus or minus 25k. Anyhow, there it is, so I hope everyone is satisfied that everything is scrupulously fair.
I shall now await all the fawning puff pieces about me in various media sources and the inevitable book contracts offered by eager mainstream genre publishers now that it is proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that I have nearly four times more traffic (3.75x more, to be precise) than the “extraordinary amount of traffic” that impressed so many people in the recent past.
American journalists discover they are not off-limits to the caliphate:
American freelance photo-journalist James Wright Foley has been beheaded by ISIS in a video message posted today online and titled as ‘A Message to America’. Foley, pictured centre and top left, has been missing since November 2012 after being taken hostage while reporting from Syria. ISIS posted the extremely graphic video to social media as proof of their barbaric action. Foley addresses the camera before he is killed and labels the US government his real killers as a man in black robes armed with a gun stands over him. The journalist then leaves a haunting message for his brother, John, who is in the US Air Force. ‘I died that day, John, when your colleagues dropped that bomb on these people. They signed my death certificate’. ISIS, which has claimed control of most of northern Iraq and parts of Syria is threatening to kill Time journalist Joel Sotloff unless President Obama ceases attacks on the terror group. Foley’s family including parents John and Diane, of Rochester, New Hampshire, bottom left, had publicly appealed for their son’s release.
The Bush Concept had it exactly backwards. Fighting them over there so we would not have to fight them here was only going to inflame the situation, which is exactly what has happened. The West must fight them here so it can leave them alone there. Islam has no place in the West. It must be driven out again, just as it was driven out of Spain and Austria centuries ago.
I warned about the rise of the caliphate years ago, to the mocking disbelief of some who genuinely believed the so-called Arab Spring meant the rise of liberal democracy in Araby. Now we’re seeing it take shape. The nations of the West will eventually decide it is necessary to ban Islam again, and repatriate Muslims to the House of Submission again, so the sooner it does so, the less bloody the conflict in the House of War will be.
One friend of the Foley family said something important. “These savages have got to be stopped. It’s coming West.” Only it is not coming West. It began coming West decades ago, and now there are millions of them in the West. What is coming is the Second Reconquista. The West is not going to die. Europe belongs to us.
We need to realize, but will not, that blacks are a separate people, self-aware and cohesive. They have their own dialect, music, and modes of dress, which they value. They name their kids LaToya and Keeshawn instead of Robert and Carol because they want to maintain a distance from whites.
The races spring from utterly different cultures. Compulsory integration is thus a form of social imperialism in which whites try to force blacks to conform to European norms. Blacks have no historical connection at all to Greece, Rome, the Old Testament Hebrews, Christianity, the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, to Newton, LaGrange, or Galois, to the philosophic tradition of Thales, Aquinas, Schopenhauer, or Hegel. Nor do Eurowhites have roots in Africa. No commonality exists.
We talk multiculturism, but try to impose a monoculture—ours—on blacks. Why? Why in school should we insist that blacks study things of no interest to them? It is reminiscent of policies aimed at stripping American Indians of their languages and traditions.
On the other hand, I as a white man have little enthusiasm for studying Shaka Zulu, the Great Zimbabwe, or African religions. Would not all be happier with their own schools in which they could maintain their own culture?
“Separate but equal” is in bad odor as a governing philosophy. It seems to be the only thing that works. If voluntary, wherein lies the evil? Less contact means less conflict.
Is there any evidence that blacks want to associate with whites? Or vice versa? In the universities, do blacks not clamor for black-only dormitories, black-only fraternities, and Black Studies? And what is wrong with this? Why should blacks not associate with whom they choose? And why should not whites?
Almost always, when the races do not have to mingle, they don’t. In Washington, blacks fleeing the crime of the city go to the heavily-black Prince George’s County, whites to Arlington, Fairfax, and Bethesda. Within Arlington, blacks cluster together in mini-barrios. So what? It’s their business.
Note that the togetherheid pushed endlessly on us is almost entirely rhetorical, preached by people who mean that others should practice it. I lived for years in the city with many liberal, racially correct friends. They spent all their time with other whites, and the restaurants and bars they patronized seldom had more than a token black, if that.
Ethnic mixing doesn’t work, gang. Not Moslems and Parisians, Irish Catholics and Protestants, Shias and Sunnis, Indonesians and Chinese, nor even New Yorkers and Alabamans. We think it should work, insist that it will, punish those who observe that it doesn’t. Yet still it doesn’t work. The greater the difference between groups, the less well it works. If we realized this, and let people do as they choose, the country would be much better off.
Another point that people fail to realize is that racial and cultural mixing is intrinsically destructive, even when it isn’t forced. I am, in part, an American Indian. I know virtually nothing of my tribal culture or history. I speak three languages, smatterings of two more, and I know precisely two words of my tribal language. What most people forget when they speak cheerfully of Arthur C. Clarke’s grand brown melange of humanity is that it means the death of almost every human culture, almost every human language, almost everything that is not the lowest and most vulgar common denominator.
Think about how Europeans look down on American lack of culture, or, conversely, think about how Americans look up to European culture. In the envisioned Grand Multicultural Amalgamation, the resulting culture will make American culture look refined.
As for the intrinsic desirability of racial intermingling, go tell that to a tribe of Indians that is dying out, or to African pygmies being hunted to extinction, or to orthodox Jews desperately trying to prevent their race from being intermarried out of existence how it’s all really for the best that they go quietly into the void.
Bob @bobby_5150 Between @voxday and @scalzi , who would have thought scalzi would be the bigger douche bag. (;:;)
Agree&Amplify @angreeandamp @bobby_5150 Makes You wonder just what else Vox may be right about.
For some time now, John Scalzi has been offering dubious explanations of his past traffic claims. Last year he stopped reporting his annual traffic and even resorted to posting misleading evidence of a one-day traffic spike driven by an external source in order to shore up his more fraudulent claims. However, it turns out that he was even more grossly fraudulent than we knew when talking himself up to the media. Consider his 2010 interview with this Hugo-winning SF/F magazine, in which he undeniably misrepresented the amount of traffic his site receives by a factor of between 17.5 and five, respectively.
Interview: John Scalzi by Erin Stocks Published September 2010
Anything you ever wanted to know about science fiction writer John Scalzi you can find online at the public and rather opinionated blog that he’s kept since 1998, whatever.scalzi.com/. His bio page holds all the usual info—education, past jobs, present jobs, books published, awards won—and is wrapped up with the tongue-in-cheek coda: “For more detailed information, including a complete bibliography, visit the Wikipedia entry on me. It’s generally accurate.”
But spend a little more time browsing, and you’ll learn that beyond the dry stats and quippy bon mots, there’s more to John Scalzi and his writing than meets the eye. For one thing, his blog gets an extraordinary amount of traffic for a writer’s website–Scalzi himself quotes it at over 45,000 unique visitors daily and more than two million page views monthly.
As it happens, there is considerably more of interest beyond “the dry stats”. For various reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with my relationship with certain hacker groups, I am in possession of a considerable amount of Mr. Scalzi’s historical traffic statistics and to say that he exaggerated his blog traffic does not really do the man justice. Consider: for the 12-month period from September 2009 to August 2010 immediately preceding the September interview with Ms Stocks, Whatever had 4,916,947 pageviews. And while 409,745 pageviews per month isn’t bad, it is considerably less than the “extraordinary amount” of “more than two million page views monthly” that he claimed at the time.
You don’t need to take my word for it either, as in his post entitled 8 Million Views for 2012, Scalzi happened to include a graphic summary of his annual pageviews from previous years, shown here on the right. The 4.49 million number is for 2009 and equates to 374,023 per month. The 5.13 million is for 2010 and amounts to 427,599 per month. Obviously, the 409,745-pageview number for the twelve-month period in between is both credible and substantiated by Scalzi’s own report.
Nor will his usual retreat to the “up to” excuse hold any water. The fact is that at no point, either before or after the Lightspeed interview, did Whatever ever have “more than two million page views monthly”. John Scalzi has only once ever had more than one million page views, barely, in May 2012. And his unique visitor claim is even less accurate. Prior to September 2010, Whatever’s peak MONTHLY unique visitors was just under 135,000, in February 2010. That means that far from being “over 45,000 unique visitors daily”, he was actually seeing “under 4,500 unique visitors daily”. Considerably under, as it happens; the actual number of daily unique visitors from September 2009 through August 2010 was 2,567. Which even the most math-illiterate pinkshirt should be able to grasp is not “over 45,000”.
Now, you may not like me at all. You may not agree with me about much. You may even believe that I am Voxemort, the Supreme Dark Lord, whose name must not be mentioned in the science fiction and fantasy world, in a non-ironic sense. But none of that changes the observable facts. And the facts are that John Scalzi is a proven liar, a fraudulent self-marketer who has regularly inflated his reported traffic in a self-serving manner, and an inherently untrustworthy individual. You simply cannot take anything the man says at face value, much less place any confidence in the narrative he attempts to pass off, because his primary concern is how any given fact or individual can best serve what he perceives to be his interests.
It may help to understand that my perspective has always been iconoclastic and my opinions have been widely read since I was first nationally syndicated back in 1995. As a result, I am under a certain amount of pressure to never modify, spin, or manipulate information in any deceptive or misleading way, because there are literally dozens of critics who dislike me and are waiting to exploit even the smallest slip-up. (Look what resulted from that single tweeted blog link, for example.) It has been that way for nearly twenty years now. So, if I am saying something about my traffic, or especially about someone else’s traffic, you can bet your life on the fact that I am telling you the absolute truth to the extent that it is available to me.
I have had a Sitemeter widget on the sidebar for the entire existence of this blog. I have a Google pageviews widget on the sidebar of the AG blog, and I would have one here if it worked with the old template that I prefer and still use. When I say that this blog had 41,075 pageviews yesterday, or that there were 62,971 pageviews between the two one week ago, or the two blogs will get over 1.5 million pageviews this month, I am not exaggerating in the slightest and I can easily prove the truth of my assertions. John Scalzi has all the same information about his traffic that I do and more. All he has to do to prove me to be a liar is to simply make public his WordPress statistics from September 2009 to August 2010.
Ask yourself why he does not do so. Ask yourself why he will not do so. Ask yourself why he has not only continued to hide his daily traffic numbers since I first called them into question last year, but is now releasing even less information than he did before. And then, like Agree&Amplify, you might consider asking yourself, what else is Vox right about? What else is John Scalzi lying about?
Now, perhaps he is entirely correct and I am “a real bigoted shithole of a human being” and “an undeserving bigot shithole”, my Hugo-nominated novelette is “to put it charitably, not good”, and Larry Correia is “whining about how [he] totally MEANT to fail spectacularly at the Hugos” and trying to “RATIONALIZE [HIS] HUMILIATING DEFEAT”.
Or perhaps he is not, and he is simply lying about these things as he has been observed to lie about other things. The incontrovertible evidence is right there in front of you. To take it into account or to blithely ignore it is up to you. And it’s mysterious, is it not, that this very well-sourced and impartial information concerning his “more than two million page views monthly” is missing from his Wikipedia page.
My man in the pub was at the very low end of what believers will do and pay for: the Richard Dawkins website offers followers the chance to join the ‘Reason Circle’, which, like Dante’s Hell, is arranged in concentric circles. For $85 a month, you get discounts on his merchandise, and the chance to meet ‘Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science personalities’. Obviously that’s not enough to meet the man himself. For that you pay $210 a month — or $5,000 a year — for the chance to attend an event where he will speak.
When you compare this to the going rate for other charismatic preachers, it does seem on the high side. The Pentecostal evangelist Morris Cerullo, for example, charges only $30 a month to become a member of ‘God’s Victorious Army’, which is bringing ‘healing and deliverance to the world’. And from Cerullo you get free DVDs, not just discounts.
But the $85 a month just touches the hem of rationality. After the neophyte passes through the successively more expensive ‘Darwin Circle’ and then the ‘Evolution Circle’, he attains the innermost circle, where for $100,000 a year or more he gets to have a private breakfast or lunch with Richard Dawkins, and a reserved table at an invitation-only circle event with ‘Richard’ as well as ‘all the benefits listed above’, so he still gets a discount on his Richard Dawkins T-shirt saying ‘Religion — together we can find a cure.’
The website suggests that donations of up to $500,000 a year will be accepted for the privilege of eating with him once a year: at this level of contribution you become a member of something called ‘The Magic of Reality Circle’. I don’t think any irony is intended.
At this point it is obvious to everyone except the participants that what we have here is a religion without the good bits.
What a pity for him that “Scientology” is already taken. You know, I’d have a private breakfast or lunch with people for a mere $25,000. Actually, that’s not quite true. I’d have private lunches or dinners. Since I prefer a silent breakfast, accompanied by reading rather than talking, you’re just not going to get your money’s worth.
As it happens, membership in the Dread Ilk is free and BYOG. Which, of course, stands for Bring Your Own Gun. Not that there isn’t a rigorous test, which consists of old-timers such as Nate and the Ghost of Bane staring you and your weapon of choice down with narrowed eyes. If they grunt and turn away, you’re in. If they spit and shake their heads, you’re out. Of course, if you show up with anything in 9mm and you’re not a lady, there is a good chance that if you are accepted, you’ll be sent to the Queer Party Friends brigade. Show up with a Glock and you may as well wear heels.
The most amusing part of the piece is definitely the comments, as the Dicky Dawk cultists show up in force. I’m sure you’ll be very surprised to know that the author, an atheist, is repeatedly assumed to be, and accused of being, a Christian. Because, after all, there can be no criticism of the Great Master that is not rooted an irrational and unscientific attachment to the evilist of all evil religions. They repeat by rote the usual Dawkinsian nonsense such as this:
Why would xenophobia, racism, rape or sexual infidelity be any more wrong if God did exist? You cant get an ought from an is, even if the “is” is devine. If an act is “moral” only because God commands it, then performing that act isn’t morality, merely blind craven obedience to a divine dictator – who, if the Old Testament is to be believed, frequently ordered his worshippers to commit genocide, rape and child abuse.
Morality: “conformity to the rules of right conduct”. So performing the act that God commands, which is conforming to the rules of conduct declared to be right by the Creator, is, without question morality. Whether the conformity is “blind craven obedience” or brave, self-determined voluntary compliance, the act is moral.
Which also means that xenophobia, racism, rape or sexual infidelity can only be wrong IF the intrinsically legitimate superhuman authority a) exists, and b) has set rules of right conduct that those things specifically violate.
As expected I came in last place for best novel. The surprising part was that I was originally 4th, but then Australian voting rules kicked in, the last place is removed and the votes are recalculated. It is a weird system, and basically what it does is settles on the least disliked candidate as winner. I thought for sure the outraged SJW contingent would make sure I was dead last from the start, but as I’ve seen over the last few weeks from reviewers, many honest reviewers were surprised that it was actually a really good book.
As for the rest of the Sad Puppies slate, they did about what we expected. The shocking one was Toni Weisskopf was actually 1st for best editor, but after the Australian thing lost. Too bad, because Toni is truly an amazing editor, but I’ve heard that Buchannan is really talented, so good for her. Brad had a pretty solid showing. Most of the others came in last or close. Vox came in 6th out of 5. (we actually had a side bet about which one of us would do worse because he figured he was far more hated than I was, and he won that bet)
Yeah… I think Scalzi still might be a touch bitter for that time I publically beat him like a rented mule.
I do enjoy the constantly moving goal posts of the perpetually outraged, like how Sad Puppies somehow turned into a crusade for racism/sexism/homophobia in their heads. I never expected to win the Hugo. My stated goals this entire time was to get some political untouchables onto their sainted slate, so that they would demonstrate that there was serious political bias in the awards.
To which Mr. Scalzi, spurned in yet another attempt to make nice with the big dog of the Baen Gang, reacted in his inimitable manner:
John Scalzi @scalzi Also, I was right: Today IS filled with choice whining about how certain people totally MEANT to fail spectacularly at the Hugos, SO THERE.
John Scalzi @scalzi RATIONALIZE YOUR HUMILIATING DEFEAT SOME MORE PLEASE IT GIVES ME THE TINGLES IN A DEEP AND PRECIOUS PLACE YES YES THAT’S IT
And every Game-conversant man thought. “Tingles? Yeah, I suppose that does sound about right.”
The strange thing about these weird little fen is that they proudly proclaim how different and unusual they are, then turn around and assume that everyone else must share their priorities and values. Their psychological issues are often apparent in the way they contradict themselves, not just over time, but often in the course of the same statement. Our Friend Damien is now theorizing, on the basis of his own extensive experience with psychological issues, that I’m on the verge of a mental breakdown… because I didn’t win a trophy? Which is particularly funny in light of McRapey’s recent multi-platform meltdown.
Damien Walter @damiengwalter Well, if I’m any judge of mental breakdowns, Theodore Beale’s borderline personality disorder will be revving towards implosion around now.
Geoffrey D. Wessel Fuck him anyhow.
Fred Kiesche @FredKiesche @damiengwalter You sure about that? Because he seems to think this is all a good thing from the most recent tweet.
Damien Walter @damiengwalter If I’m any judge, yes 😉
The Erudite Ogre @eruditeogre That is fascinating.
Fred Kiesche @FredKiesche Especially given the results in the vote breakdown document. Western Union couldn’t have been clearer.
Damien Walter @damiengwalter Also highlights how deluded he is. He genuinely believes he has thousands of “Ilk”, when it’s just a few dozen +
Damien Walter @damiengwalter + bozos and berks who log on to his blog day after day to argue to rant about stuff they hate.
The Erudite Ogre @eruditeogre I peeked at his website. He’s going with a badge of honor strategy to interpret the results.
Damien Walter @damiengwalter Of course. The real burn comes in a few weeks when we’ve all stopped talking about him.
Fred Kiesche @FredKiesche Wait, who?
Damien Walter @damiengwalter What? Did you say something?
The Erudite Ogre @eruditeogre He’s deep in his echo chamber right now. Once the adoration wears off he’ll write something utterly assholish.
Apparently the real burn has been postponed, as they’re still not done talking about the worthy winners of the Hugo Award. Oh, wait, no, they’re still talking about me.
Damien Walter @damiengwalter Theo’s been absolutely and publicly humiliated by the community his pathology has fixated on. I genuinely hope he finds a good therapist.
Arthur Chu @arthur_affect I find this very doubtful. The whole narrative revolves around persecution & oppression, he publicly predicted he’d lose
SFReviews.net/SFF180 @SFReviewsnet 10h Meh, people like him have a remarkable skill at constructing narratives in which they come out on top no matter what happens.
Damien Walter @damiengwalter Most likely he’ll ball up in bitter rage that will cripple the rest of his pitiful life. No change there then!
Geoffrey D. Wessel @gdwessel I wonder if, perhaps, unilaterally, people paid him neither mind nor money? Then what?
Arthur Chu @arthur_affect Plenty of ppl already don’t. That’s why the escalation
Damien Walter @damiengwalter Give it a few weeks, the attention he needs will dissipate, and we’ll find out.
Damien Walter @damiengwalter Eventually people get bored of the story.
Arthur Chu @arthur_affect Vox didn’t get “purged” bc he suddenly decided to start being a racist. He’d been a racist for years
Arthur Chu @arthur_affect He got “purged” bc for the 1st time he directed a racist screed at a specific person, & marked it to go on Twitter
Geoffrey D. Wessel @gdwessel Yes, I know all that. 🙂 But ironically, it’s all this that got him the mass attention to begin with.
Damien Walter @damiengwalter That’s why borderlines are very difficult. They fixate on a group and will do anything to get attention from it.
Damien Walter @damiengwalter And his gang of halfwits will start losing interest now because he’s been shown to be weak.
Geoffrey D. Wessel @gdwessel Well, either that, or the conspiracy moanings will ramp up. Either way, fuck him.
john_zeleznik @john_zeleznik Regretfully this plays into he and his goons narrative.
john_zeleznik @john_zeleznik A nitwit like Beale that has a ridiculous monicker like Vox Day is too ignorant to be humiliated.
Damien Walter @damiengwalter That’s what malformed personalities do, they create new identities in an attempt to belong somewhere.
Geoffrey D. Wessel @gdwessel Self-fulfillig prophecies often do.
Isn’t it clever and witty when they pretend not to know who they are going on and on about? The remarkable thing about their bizarre attempts to psychoanalyze me is that all of this is the result of a single tweeted link. That’s how desperate for attention I was: I wrote a single blog post in response to a Vibrant American who was publicly lying about me, then tweeted the link. If that’s not attention-whoring, well, what is?
Spacebunny’s response to all this cracked me up: Have to leave @voxday alone for a couple of hours – better lock up the guns before I leave.
But I couldn’t be too down, as John Scalzi was, despite our many differences, gracious enough to review “Opera Vita Aeterna”. He was really too kind, writing: “It was like Gene Wolfe… easy to enjoy… deserving of award consideration.” I mean, wow! I can honestly say I never expected my writing to be compared to Gene Wolfe’s in any way, shape, or form. And by a Hugo Award winner, no less! It’s very heartening.
Anyhow, now that I have been shown to be less than massively popular among a small community of physically decrepit freaks weak, I will completely understand if you begin losing interest now.
The recently released autopsy report appears to indicate that the witness who claimed Michael Brown was shot in the back, with his arms raised up in surrender, was completely lying and the subsequent protests are based on an intrinsically false premise:
Michael Brown, the unarmed black teenager who was killed by a police officer, sparking protests around the nation, was shot at least six times, including twice in the head, a preliminary private autopsy performed on Sunday found.
One of the bullets entered the top of Mr. Brown’s skull, suggesting his head was bent forward when it struck him and caused a fatal injury, according to Dr. Michael M. Baden, the former chief medical examiner for the City of New York, who flew to Missouri on Sunday at the family’s request to conduct the separate autopsy. It was likely the last of bullets to hit him, he said.
Mr. Brown, 18, was also shot four times in the right arm, he said, adding that all the bullets were fired into his front.
My first thought is that was remarkably good shooting for a cop. The fact that Brown’s head was bent forward when he was struck indicates that both the video witness and the friend of the police officer involved were telling the truth when they reported that the 6’4″, 292-pound Brown was charging the officer when he was shot dead.
None of this excuses the militarization of the police across America, or the initially over-the-top response to the protests that involved heavy machine guns and armored personnel carriers. But it is looking increasingly as if, in this particular case, the entire affair is concerns nothing more than a cop justifiably shooting a vibrant criminal who tried to attack him.
Which, of course, says nothing about the justification for every other police shooting in the country.
In the short term, it’s good that ISIS didn’t blow the Mosul Dam. In the long run, that may be indicative of a more serious problem:
Kurdish fighters have recaptured Iraq’s largest dam from Jihadists amid ‘fierce resistance’ from Islamic fighters after support from US airstrikes, according to security officials. The strategically important Mosul Dam – which supplies electricity and water to a large part of the country – was captured a week ago.
An attempt to retake it began yesterday morning with US air strikes before Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers moved into the area.
I thought the seizure of the dam all but guaranteed ISIS dominating the region, because I assumed they would threaten to blow it if there were any attempts to retake it. It’s a little surprising, because their strategy has been, until now, both ruthless and effective.
But it makes sense for ISIS to refrain from flooding the region if it is seriously intending to govern there. Speaking of ISIS aka ISIL, here is additional information from new Castalia author James Dunnigan, who is also one of the contributors to RIDING THE RED HORSE, and his excellent Strategy Page.
When ISIL overran northern Iraq in early June the Islamic terrorists captured a lot of heavy weapons used by the Iraqi Army. Over the last few years the U.S. has sold lots of used heavy weapons to Iraq at attractive prices. This has included 1,026 M-113 armored personnel carriers, 140 M-1A1 tanks, 21 M88A1 armored recovery vehicles and 60 M1070 tank transporters (which can also carry supplies or other vehicles.) Iraq also bought 24 M-109A5 self-propelled 155mm artillery, and 120 M198 155mm towed howitzers along with thousands of hummers and military trucks, plus infantry weapons, engineer gear and other military equipment.
In June ISIL captured about fifty of those M198 155mm towed howitzers and began looking for someone to operate this stuff. That was not difficult. This was because Sunni Arabs got most of the leadership (officer, senior NCO) and technical (like operating artillery) jobs during the decades of Saddam’s rule. ISIL has a large pool of experienced users of artillery. While most Iraqi artillery was Russian, they also had over a hundred Western 155mm models, like the South African GHN-45. This weapon was not only similar to the M198 but superior in some ways (like longer range). The main reason the U.S. disbanded the Iraqi armed forces after 2003 was the fact that nearly all the key personnel were Sunni Arabs, who had just lost power and access to most of the oil income. That loss of power and privilege made most Sunni Arabs very angry and that’s why to this day most Islamic terrorists in Iraq are Iraqi Sunni Arabs. Thus ISIL knew it had a waiting supply of qualified soldiers who knew how to operate an M198 and many were willing to do it without too much prompting.
In other words, the artillery at which the US air strikes have been primarily aimed are US-supplied howitzers with a 25-kilometer range. I’d say that is a powerful argument in favor of isolationism.
