As I’m sure you’ve figured out, Tilting at Windmills is an ex-blog. There’s no great story behind it, just time, energy, and other demands on the authors.

Mandos can be found at Politblogo (and see below).

Ian primarily writes for an American audience these days at the Agonist.

Kevin isn’t currently blogging about politics.

If (or more likely when) Ian and Kevin choose to blog about Canadian politics again, they will be found over at Peace, Order, and Good Government, eh?– the POGGe team kindly offered a home when the time is right for a return.

Thanks for reading.

In the previous post, written by one of the other two, it is correctly observed that this blog has kind of petered out. With the departure of the other two, it would be kind of silly for me to try to stick around much further as well. After all, I have my own blog at Politblogo, as they mentioned. I’ve kinda sorta restarted writing to it, which is what I suspect was the straw that broke the camel’s back and brought on the ave atque vale of the previous post. But that brings up another point for me.

In all honesty, my posting rate didn’t slow down entirely because I was otherwise too busy. This was true for a brief period of time. But as Ian and Kevin’s posting rate slowed down, I kind of became unenthused about starting up again. I mean, I was still posting all over the Internet. But I was posting in the comments of other well-frequented blogs and discussion boards. Because, for me, it’s all about dialogue. I was excited about Tilting at Windmills because until then, I didn’t really feel that I had a readership or colleagues who would engage with me in that sort of dialogue. It worked out here, very well during the election period.

Now, of course, it’s redundant to keep this blog going, as my partners have moved on to pogge, apparently, and that would leave me with two blogs. I suppose it will be left as an archive or something, since it would be a shame to lose all this text, most of it theirs.

And so I guess I will return to Politblogo. Or at least give it the old college try. Because, you see, it’s a solo blog that never gained a great deal of traction, or at least not enough to make it feel like I was holding a real dialogue. Maybe I’ll just have to wait until I can put together a group blog experience that will manage to tolerate and sustain my usual level of unyielding dogmatism combined with my oh-so-scintillating sarcasm and wit—if I can’t really sustain Politblogo the way I’d like. It’s all about the inspiration.

Until then, thanks guys. Enjoy your blog-hiatus and your new, pogge life.

Apropos of nothing but a mostly irrelevant digression on another blog, I would like to make an annoucement: everytime someone seriously utters the bizarre and oxymoronic (in the bad sense) phrase “just war”, I involuntarily imagine their brains dribbling out of their noses.  Sorry folks, nothing personal, that’s just the way it is.

Generally, whenever I realize that someone is going to attempt to explain and defend this concept, I need not actually read any further.  I need not continue exploring their arguments.  I need not obtain any further background on the matter at hand.  It is, at that point, over.  Because, frankly, there is no such thing.  It is very obvious propaganda and merely a sign of how far people are willing to go, intellectually, to avoid what is staring them in the face.

And what is staring them in the face is that fact that war emerges from a political situation, and the very existence of the political situation suggests that there is something unjust involved here.  A true “just war” would be one in which each of the participants has an equally legitimate case for an aggression that is definitely going to hurt a few bystanders, to say the least.  When you meet such a situation, call me.  Generally, it’s the case that neither has any real justification.  A pox on both your houses.

“But, Mandos!” you exclaim because you are wading in Egypt’s most famous river, “What are you?  Some sort of granola crunching pacifist.  Sheesh.  What happens when you need to defend yourself?”  Trust me, I tell you, I am no principled caricature of a pacifist.  If I am hit, and I have the power and presence of mind to do say, I will very likely hit back.  What I won’t say, however, is that there is any grand overarching “courage” or “principle” in hitting back—just as I wouldn’t say that there is any real principle in not hitting back.  I am, you see, willing to grudgingly look the other way when, in a hypothetical situation, someone says, “It is necessary that we fight a war.”

“But, Mandos!” you exclaim again because you are just being ornery and repetitive.  “What if we need to save other people—from an evil fascist aggressor.”  First of all, I would be very suspicious, if you were to say this, and I would ask you to take your hand out of your pocket and maybe even strip down to your underwear to make sure that you aren’t concealing an ulterior motive.  And then, if I am satisfied (has not happened in the meagre lifetime of this mortal raiment), I would say, “Fine.  Be that way.  But do not tell me that you are a hero when you return.”

Because, you see, “just war theory” is but a euphemism for “heroic state theory.”  Just from the name, dudes and dudettes.  Just from the name.

There’s a term that’s currently very popular among us Valar: “objectively funny.” It is not possible to explain the true depth and meaning of the term to mere mortals such as you, but I can give you a definition by example: if a Martian were to arrive with a Universal Translator, and someone were to explain to this being a given situation, and the alien laughed, and this could be repeated for all Martians, then it’s likely that that situation is objectively funny.

In Canadian public life, no person or thing probably fits the “objectively funny” bill than the train station raja, Conrad Black. Conrad Black is so objectively funny that the other Canadian epitome of objective funnitude, Jean Chrétien, decided to impede “Lord” Black’s acquisition of a foreign title just so that we could all laugh at him more.

What does this have to do with anything?

Well, a couple of weeks ago I was boarding a flight to Canada, and I got my hands on a copy of the Notional Pest. Now, I rarely read the Pest, since I make it a policy not to read anything that could have been generated by a computer program that I could whip up in a couple of hours. But this time I’m glad I did, because our favourite little raja wrote something absolutely amazing, casually appended to a column about something completely different. I reproduce it for your delectation:

A week ago, Jan Wong in The Globe and Mail observed the first anniversary of the removal of some boxes from the building where I then worked. There was nothing criminal about this, as will be demonstrated judicially in due course. Jan Wong’s story contained a number of outright falsehoods. The last time she focused on me, she claimed to have thrown a wallet over the fence in front of my house and complained that it had not been returned. (It wasn’t found). I’m grateful to readers for their informative e-mail correspondence. Could one of them tell me why Jan Wong, an ex-Maoist Red Guard whom I have never met, is flapping around me like a deranged Peking duck?

(Having been too lazy to write about it then, you probably already saw this at azerbic.)

After I read this totally unnecessary little ditty during takeoff, casually appended to a Yet Another Trudeau Diatribe (yawn), I blurted out loud “Oh my God!” and started to giggle uncontrollably, earning me some puzzled looks from fellow passengers. Because in the space of this short paragraph, Conrad Black has unwittingly encaspulated his entire being. In the space of a few short sentences, he stares down at our piddling justice system from on high (since it should only apply to us, not him), he informs us that the lurkers support him in email, and he delivers to us the obvious truth that Jan Wong is a talking item of food, conveniently Chinese-stereotyped! This, folks, is what the Notional Pest was always for.

Look at it. So beautiful. And obviously—objectively funny!

I was in Canada just recently during the period when the Toronto terrorism arrests occured. Steve Gilliard has an interesting perspective on it, and since he’s an American, he must be objective, of course. Multilayered irony aside, I agree with Gilliard’s take on it, the more I hear: it’s probably not nearly a conspiracy on the scale that everyone is trying to sell it. Nevertheless, as Muslim males, they should know better that they don’t have the freedom to be macho fools. I know this, because I am also one, and I definitely know better. If they were white border militia in the US, they’d get away with it, but not as Muslim males.

Of course, they could be what CSIS is billing them to be. I just think its unlikely. Why do I think this? Because macho fantasy blowhardism is incredibly common, and not just among young Muslim males. And the more I hear about it, the more it sounds like macho fantasy blowhardism and playacting. I too have a dream. A dream to become an internationally famous orchestral bassoonist. Their blowhardism is on the same scale as my bassoon fantasy.

But what is so striking is how ready and slick the PR aspect of this turned out to be. I’m living in Amreeka presently, and I try to stay a bit abreast of Canadian events in the You Ess Eh. So I’m on the ambassador’s mailing list. I don’t receive emails very often from Michael Wilson. But nary a day passed after the arrests than I received a breathless email exhorting me to tell all my American friends about Canada’s seriousness in Fighting Terror. As though this happened so that the Reformatories could say that we were Fighting Terror, not the other way around. I do not need to explain to you the PR blitz I saw when I was inside Canada, as well, and the delighted manner in which the Asperite media took to explaining how The War On Terror has now reached Canada and how lovely it is that we are now Just Like Israel. So, so convenient.

What’s the real lesson in all of this? The real lesson is, in fact, to get out of Afghanistan. In fact, any terrorism-related altercation in Canada, no matter how fishy, points us immediately to that lesson, even if it has nothing to do with Afghanistan. Actually, it’s the fishiness itself that indicates this lesson: this involvement in the empire is corrupting, and make no mistake, for all the well-intentioned propaganda, Afghanistan is our imperial involvement.

It’s been quiet around here.

Unfortunately, that’s not likely to change soon. I’ve been getting busier at work and I also have to move next month, and the wedding’s still creeping up on me.
Ian is the only one of us still writing regularly, but he mostly blogs here now.

On May 17th Parliament agreed to extend Canada’s deployment in Afghanistan for two years. Now I have decidedly mixed feelings about our deployment there - in principle I support it, but in practice it’s not clear to me that there is any victory in Afghanistan which is achievable. The so-called Afghani government doesn’t even control the entire capital, let alone the country, which is conctrolled mostly by opium growing warlords and a resurgent Taliban. The deployment size is too small, and there has been nowhere near the necessary commitment to rebuild the country and build up the central government. In short - a lot of Canadians are going to die, with no sight in end. Their goal is a purely negative one - to make sure the Taliban don’t get back into power, which is the most likely outcome if western forces leave, since there is no indigenous counter force capable of stopping them. Now, that goal may or may not be worth Canadian lives, but I’d be more happy about it if there was some plan to make sure Canadians wouldn’t be needed there forever.

But I would have voted against the extended deployment, and then I would have introduced a motion to bring them home immediately. The reason is this:

The Conservative government had underlined its commitment to the mission by threatening to extend it unilaterally by one year if it had been defeated in parliament.

What office Harper thinks he holds is unclear to me. What office Harper thinks he holds is unclear to me. But he clearly doesn’t think he’s Prime Minister of a democratic state. While he has the right to deploy troops without parliament’s approval, if he intends to do so without Parliament’s approval I see no reason for him to put it to a vote he intends to ignore. Not to put it too delicately, but who the fuck does he think he is?

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One of the great mysteries of economic life is how technology effects growth. The Greeks made at least one steam engine which we are aware of (a toy), but never used steam engines for work. The British took steam and used it to change the world.

On a more prosaic scale, the question of how to treat ideas in economic law has long perplexed us. On the one hand, we want those who create new ideas, new designs; those who write books and who discover new chemical formulas - to profit from them, because we believe that if they could not profit, many would simply not bother. Note carefully that I say “many”, the foolish idea that all people operate on a crude motive is beyond stupid - indeed many inventors would invent without any possibility of gain, and most scientists will perform their research for a modest university salary.

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The truth is I neeeever left you…

Do not worry, “Mandos” is not an anagram for “Madonna.”

You’ll notice that I haven’t been blogging much lately.  And by lately, one means the past n months, n an integer greater than 0.   Truth is, not only has real life taken me away, but I fell into my old habits of commenting on other blogs and discussion boards.  This time, however, it was caused by an actual change of focus, more or less.  My interests cycle over time.  This past few months I’ve been thinking about such esoteric subjects the politics of gender and the theory and philosophy of linguistic cognition, neither of which really fit into the blogs of whom I’m a member, but were much better suited to other blogs and boards.  Fear not, though—my interest in original content for THESE blogs (TAW and Politblogo) WILL eventually return, as I exhaust the possibilities for interesting discussion particularly on the matter of gender.  (Language is my first and most difficult love.)

But on the matter of the Deep Thoughts that I’ve been thinking, let me throw out a little bone.  Many (not all!) feminists believe that the gendered division of labour and sex roles is at the very least the historical root of contemporary forms of violence and oppression.  Sexism as the Prime Directive of oppression, as it were.  There is a very serious case for this.  However, some believe that equality can also only be reached by liberating women from these gender roles.

But there is another way to achieve equality, and I think it is much more likely.  Rather than liberate women from the forms of oppression that differentiate them from men’s oppression, instead it is far more likely that the forms of oppression that women have endured will merely be visited on men.  This is a perverse result, but we see some of the effects of this already.  The tyranny of looks and fashion and dieting is still more greatly visted on women, but various parties have started to cash in by imposing this phenomenon in increasing magnitude on men.

This suggests to me while sexism may indeed by the first, primordial oppression, one does not require it, in modern industrial society, to sustain oppression, and even if it were possible to undo the oppressive effects of sexism, it wouldn’t really result in general liberation.  By analogy, sexism may have been the mold in which the sculpture of domination was cast…but removing the mold doesn’t necessarily liberate us from the sculpture.
(Whether domination itself can really be uprooted as such is another matter…)

A wave of attacks by a criminal syndicate directly against police has occured in Sao Paulo:

PCC leaders were being questioned on the subject when the attacks started on Friday night, targeting officers in police stations, mobile units, at their homes or in bars.

The assailants used machine-guns and grenades. In one incident a home-made bomb was thrown into a police station.

As well as in the city of Sao Paulo, the attacks took place in the suburbs of Osasco, Guarulhos and Carapicuiba, and in the coastal cities of Cubatao and Guaruja.

In addition to the dead, at least 15 policemen and 15 attackers were wounded and 16 attackers arrested, police said.

The attacks sparked revolts in more than 20 state jails.

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Ah, David Brooks (I’d link, but ya know, subscription wall):

But even here, the latest news is good. Look around at all the green shoots of political renewal.

Not long ago, the temper-tantrum left seemed to be on the verge of capturing the Democratic Party, but now the Clintonite centrists are reasserting their intellectual, financial and political supremacy.

Last month, Hillary Clinton gave a proto-campaign speech in Chicago, laying out an economic agenda that Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute called remarkably centrist. Clinton called for a return to “pay as you go” budget rules. Congress couldn’t raise spending or cut taxes unless it filled the hole in the budget right away, the only effective way to restore fiscal balance.

Robert Rubin and others have begun the Hamilton Project, which is churning out policy ideas that defy easy categorization and serve as a blueprint for an innovative, moderate administration. The Democratic agenda will be fleshed out by the free-trade progressive Gene Sperling, and by Rahm Emanuel and Bruce Reed, whose coming book will push ideas on how to increase savings and such.

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It’s odd, in both the US and Canada, to watch the inability of people who grew up in the system to deal with those who don’t play by the rules. To this day, in the US, the majority of Democratic Congressman still don’t really understand that the rules have changed and that they are in a parliamentary system where there really can be no collegiality.

Today, in Canada, something similiar has happened. The Conventional wisdom is coalescing: Harper will rule cautiously, he will not run again for a couple of years, and the Liberals are due for six to ten years in the wilderness. Bearing all this in mind, and given certain internal problems, the Liberals have set their new leadership convention in November. November!
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Politics is the art of getting what you want by giving people what they think they want. I have often said that if I am ever in office, on my office wall will be a picture of the Queen giving Snow White the poisoned apple, sweet, red, round… beautiful and luscious.

Stephen Harper, Canada’s Prime Minister, probably doesn’t think of politics in quite that way, but he understands exactly what I mean. His 2006 budget is that apple – sweet and beautiful, shining in the media glare with a sheen of sweet tax cuts.

And Stephen has come up with many of those tax cuts by doing exactly what he has always wanted to do – he’s cut shared federal and provincial programs, to the tunes of billions of dollars, and redirected those dollars either to cuts, or to subsidies to his base (such as the child care allowance, whose greatest benefit goes to families with stay at mums (no, not stay at home husbands. That’s an unintended and unfortunate result from the point of view of the Conservatives. Let’s not gild this already burnished apple.))

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Harper began as Prime Minister with what I considered a promising start – by telling the US Ambassador that his suggestion that Canada doesn’t have sovereignty over arctic waters wasn’t welcome. One of the big advantages that you have as a right winger is that people assume you’re a hardass – that you’re willing to be tough, because you care more about principles than people. That a stereotype, and generally not true, but because people believe it, it has power.

But Harper has proved that he doesn’t have a spine when it really matters – talking tough about sovereignty is one thing, but actually acting tough to protect it and to protect other Canadian interests is another, and Harper has flunked with the new Softwood deal.

Canada won seven times in front of NAFTA tribunals, but Harper’s negotiated deal does everything the US timber lobby wanted. It caps sales at 34% of the US market. It provides for automatic tariffs if Canadian lumber prices fall below a certain point (a point the US timber companies can’t compete with). Perhaps most importantly, it gives the US government a veto over provincial lumber laws (which is something a principled Conservative who claims to believe that Provinces have a right to control their areas as asigned in the constitution shouldn’t be willing to do.)

In the negotiated settlement with Washington, the United States has a clause that allows it to veto provincial policy changes.

That clause worries some Interior forestry companies because of the pine-beetle outbreaks that have devastated trees where timber is now being rushed to market.

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I’ve been giving things a lot of thought over the past week, and I’m afraid that it’s time for me to stop blogging about politics.

Dad’s death isn’t the cause of this (and thanks to all of you for your kind thoughts). No, the main culprit is my career. A lot of things are reaching the point now where they’re going to demand my full attention for, I’d say, about another year at least. During that year, I also have to get married, plan a honeymoon, etc. etc. Something had to give and this is it. I just don’t have the attention span anymore to find things to say that aren’t already being well expressed by many of the fine folks over there on the blogroll.

Thanks again, and I’m sure I’ll see you around.