View 605 January 11 - 17, 2010 (original) (raw)

Sunday, January 17, 2010

The former Minister of Defense of Haiti is on TV complaining that Haiti does not need soldiers, and the US is sending soldiers rather than actual aid. Last night on TV we saw that a Belgian medical team abandoned a hospital because there was no security. We have seen that any attempt to distribute aid results in food riots, shots are fired at the helicopters or at others who were first in line. The former Minister of Defense wants the US to hand over the aid to Haiti -- he'll be willing to take charge if we will only restore his party to power -- and accuses the US of imperialism. The world press finds that newsworthy.

Apparently the US is not doing enough and not doing it right. We have taken over the airport and now we are turning away airplanes with medical equipment in order to land airplanes with soldiers. We are dumping food off the ramps, and not distributing things properly. The United States is all at fault according to the international press. A Mexican airplane with vital supplies was sent back. (Of course it arrived unannounced at one of the busiest times). It's all the fault of the imperialist Americans.

There has been a UN force in Haiti for years, but it does not seem to have established any order at the airport after the earthquake despite being the only organized military force in the country at the time; it took a US expedition to do that. Order will be established now that our Legions have arrived. Aid arrives and the airplanes are not rushed and looted. Slowly food and supplies and water are coming in. The water crisis remains -- at the moment water bottles are the only real currency -- but when the Navy gets the water makers going that will slowly be relieved. Eventually trucks will be able to move more than a few hundred yards from the airport. Slowly the crisis will simmer down.

God knows what happens after that. The United States will get little credit for this, of course, just as you hear little about what the Navy did in Indonesia and in other disaster areas.

God bless the Legions.

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I note that an Israeli IDF team worked all night rescuing a man from the fallen tax headquarters building. I hadn't heard that the IDF had managed to get a rescue team into Haiti. Given Hezbollah's rockets, it's hardly astonishing that the IDF has soldiers trained in pulling people from collapsed buildings.

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At some point we have a decision to make: how much of the Western Hemisphere are we responsible for, and just what responsibilities do we have? One answer is none: "We are the friends of liberty everywhere, but we are the guardians only of our own." Our responsibility it to preserve liberty here. Of course I have been saying this for a long time. See my 2002 essay on public policy: .

I have friends and correspondents who wonder if we should not use the Haiti disaster to demonstrate how well we can run a colony and show the world the glories of American exceptionalism, much as Rome did for Briton. As my friend Mike Flynn has pointed out, the Romans did such a good job of civilizing the Britons that after Rome left the Britons were able to civilize wave after wave of Saxon invaders. The effect continued long after. See Ivanhoe...

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Venezuela says the US is occupying Haiti under cover.

BBC and CNN are now saying that kicking food out of the helicopter is "sparking a riot". One might suppose that not throwing out the food would not be so good either. How does one feed starving people who do not have the tradition of women and children first? I don't doubt that our Legions would do it, but the Birkenhead Drill really is a damn tough bullet to chew. ***

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In a search for something else I found that I was once said to have said I had more information at my disposal than anyone else in the world. I couldn't recall saying that, but I found where it originated. The bookmark is for the day; the story is a couple of screens down. It's actually an interesting point from the days before the Internet existed, and "blogging" had not been invented, and is part of my claim to have been the first blogger...

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/
archives2/archives2view/view402.html#Saturday

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And a reminder:

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

by Rudyard Kipling

I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said:

**"Stick to the Devil you know."**On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wobbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will bum,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return.

Thanks to Rod McFadden for reminding me. I post this every few years... See alsoThe Old Issue

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*** To take your chance in the thick of a rush, with firing all about,
Is nothing so bad when you've cover to 'and, an' leave an' likin' to shout;
But to stand an' be still to the Birken'ead drill
is a damn tough bullet to chew,
An' they done it, the Jollies -- 'Er Majesty's Jollies --
soldier an' sailor too!
Their work was done when it 'adn't begun; they was younger nor me an' you;
Their choice it was plain between drownin' in 'eaps
an' bein' mopped by the screw,
So they stood an' was still to the Birken'ead drill, soldier an' sailor too!

http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/2700/

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