If you thought apocalyptic doom-mongering was the exclusive preserve of the Climate Change lobby, think again. We seem to live in an age when claiming that we’ve passed the point of no turning back and irreversible change is plunging us towards Armageddon is a significant industry, especially in the media. But then it probably always was.
As far as the Left is concerned, we’re facing the world being consumed by a conflagration of global warming and flooding, while the Right seems increasingly convinced that we’re only a few years, if not months or weeks, from social breakdown and fighting in the streets. But let’s not forget – the Left thinks that if we don’t all give up meat, live in yurts and forget the words ‘car’ and ‘aeroplane’ we’ll get all that anyway.
At the heart of this is ‘the Malthusian fallacy: forecast of doom predicated on one change that does not take other changes into account’ (Social Science Journal 2005). It all goes back to a newspaper revolution in the 19th Century that “sparked activists, influencers, disinformation and the Civil War” in an age that couldn’t even have imagined the internet.
Tim Stanley has written an astonishing piece for the Telegraph in which he claims that Britain is lurching towards civil war and that nobody has any idea how to prevent it. It’s a remarkable development that content like this has appeared in the mainstream press:
On one night in Westminster, I met someone who argued for voluntary repatriation, two generations back; a Labour activist told me we must “re-educate” Muslims; and Jacob Rees-Mogg, debating me on GB News, said Britain should take “zero” refugees. I spluttered a reply about the good Samaritan and staggered off to bed, confused and depressed.
For two decades I’ve argued for controlling immigration, and successive governments, including Jacob’s, increased it. Suddenly I’ve woken up in a land where everyone manically wants to reduce or even reverse it, and they’ve leapfrogged me into a pool of dark resentment.
Nigel Farage is mocked as a “dhimmi” for appointing a Muslim to chair his party; he looks nervous of his own supporters. Even Labour has turned on the Sentencing Council, which, for all its faults, was trying to fix a genuine racial disparity (it’s black people who tend to get longer sentences than whites, not the other way around).
On that last saga, so much hinges. It goes to the heart of how a society kills itself with kindness.
Stanley picks up on Louise Perry’s interview with the historian David Betz on Youtube, explaining that:
Betz argues that the conditions for a failed state we ordinarily apply overseas are now found here: frayed social contract, falling trust, polarisation. Into this mix Britain injected multiculturalism, encouraging millions to move here without expecting integration.
If you think “fear of the other” is a human instinct, the policy was mad to begin with. Combine it with economic decline and you invite ethnic competition over services and jobs.
Implicit in the Sentencing Council’s guidance is the belief that when you operate a multicultural society – packed with groups with different values and experiences, advantages and handicaps – the only way to achieve equal outcomes is to treat people differently. In this spirit, says Betz, the modern state acts like an imperial administrator, promoting the interests of preferred minorities while trying to avoid a riot.
Stanley is gravely concerned by how the celebration of diversity has been nothing short of dangerously divisive:
I grew up in a post-colonial world where we said “I don’t see race” and honestly, if naively, meant it. Over the past 30 years, liberal institutions have taught us to see race again – by stressing the wonders of diversity so persistently that some white people feel the State has actively taken a side against them. Ancient, binding concepts, such as “equality before the law” ring hollow. The latest Police Race Action Plan openly rejects the principle of “treating everyone the same” in favour of “equality of police outcomes”.
A situation in which millions believe cops are not impartial public servants but an occupying force is the headline metric of state failure. Mainland Britain has become Ulster.
It isn’t an endorsement of white resentment to acknowledge that it’s real and growing, that beyond the curated Question Time audience, millions have evolved from irony to nihilism to something more disturbing.
Such an article would have surely been unthinkable a few years ago, so why now?
In fact, the low level insurgency has already begun. Ireland has seen arson at asylum hotels. Last year, Britain had riots. Why did No10 insist that so many be thrown into jail? Betz notes that while Islamist terrorism is more lethal than far-Right extremism, there are only four million Muslims whereas there are around 50 million whites.
Were the latter group radicalised, things might go south very fast, hence some in the security forces clearly regard white Britons as the emergent threat.
Well, when “a formerly dominant social majority fears it is in danger of losing that dominance,” to quote Betz, it doesn’t surrender its position quietly – and yet this is what elites constantly tell the white working-class they must do, while refusing to abandon their own privileges.
With democracy abandoning this “formerly dominant social majority”, emigration impossible and aspirations unattainable, Stanley wonders how anyone could be surprised about the very real risks of violence and is perturbed about the State’s possible reaction. He reminds his readers:
Did you ever think the State could imprison us in our homes? And if it can isolate the diseased from the healthy, the vaxed from the unvaxed, do you think it can’t, or won’t, someday separate us based on race or religion?
Worth reading in full.
Meanwhile, Robert Jenrick, Shadow Secretary of State for Justice, argues that everywhere you look Britain has become a two-tier country, and that we have only narrowly just escaped the recommendations of the Sentencing Council which were suspended the other day. These, Jenrick said, “would have discriminated against men, white people and Christians”, had they gone ahead, but form part of a wider culture of a two-tier society:
I recently unearthed the [Sentencing] Council’s immigration guidelines, which water down sentences for immigration offences to below the 12 month threshold for automatic deportation. If enacted, it will mean that hundreds of illegal migrants and foreign offenders will avoid deportation, blowing another hole in our borders.
Last week, the Telegraph uncovered that the Ministry of Justice published new guidance in January which states probation officers must give regard to an offenders “culture” and whether they might have been subjected to “intergenerational trauma” from “historical events” centuries ago. Yes, you read that right. This is bonkers cultural relativism that is not just wrong, but puts the British public at risk.
And it’s spread all the way to frontline police officers, who are being told by the NPCC that they should treat ethnic minorities more leniently, saying that it would be wrong to be “colour blind” and “treat everyone the same”. They are striving for “equity” not “equality”. It comes as no surprise that Labour’s policing minister gave it her endorsement.
The depressing reality is that the two-tier sentencing guidelines were really just the tip of the iceberg. Everywhere you look under Keir Starmer we have a two-tier system, where ethnic and religious minority groups are given special treatment. And instead of getting infrastructure and new homes built, his deputy, Angela Rayner, is wasting her time on a definition of Islamophobia that may afford Islam protections against criticism and satire that no other religions benefit from.
Jenrick claims that a two-tier system is laying the foundations for ‘social unrest’:
The social fabric of our country has frayed because of unprecedented levels of mass migration, coupled with the denigration of British culture. We now see the balkanisation of parts of our major cities and the proliferation of groups lobbying for ethnic and religious interests.
Also worth reading in full.
And if all that seems bad enough, meanwhile William Sitwell warns about the prospect of a summer of chaos at the hands of JSO V.2 aka Youth Demand:
To encourage folk to join their merry dance, they are branding themselves as a veritable Just Stop Oil 2.0, as glittering and tempting as an iPhone upgrade; joining together those two couture lines of protest: pro-Palestine and anti-fossil fuel.
“Young people are resisting,” they declare on their new website, conveniently forgetting to add the words “going to work”.
And then there’s lots of frightfully cross stuff. In fact, they give Dave Spart, that parody of a Left-wing agitator in Private Eye, a run for his money. “The Government is engaging in absolute evil… they are enabling genocide… contributing to the murder of billions to keep the fossil fuel profits flowing.”
Apparently ‘Youth Demand’ is planning:
Daily co-ordinated actions, with plans to “shut down London with swarming road-blocks day after day”. And, doubtless, a lot more. Think the usual soft targets of art galleries and sports venues. Yes, the very same places that offer “real quiet and sanctuary”.
For some, that sanctuary lies in the snooker hall, a diverting contest between two artists of the cue and cloth. For others, it’s a quiet road in London on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
Yet this mob, with its fetish for protest and banging drums, frothing at the mouth and countenancing no reasoned argument; no nod, even, to actual reality (the sovereignty of a democratic country, the right to a warm home and hot water, for example), plan to disrupt and harass. And all the while not touching the, albeit phantom, “fossil-fuel elite”. But they will, for sure, annoy the living hell out of everyday folk going about their lives.
Worth reading in full if you’ve nothing better to do.
Come, let us take a muster speedily:
Doomsday is near; die all, die merrily.
Shakespeare, Henry IV Pt. 1
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You need to contextualise the figures you use, which are from the period of heavy fighting during the Battle of Sievierodonetsk. Also, I would seriously question Arakhamia’s outlying figure of 500 per day. If you take that out, it averages 101, which is Reznikov’s number for the fighting during that period – and being the Minister of Defence, he ought to have the best information.
As for Russian deaths, general consensus amongst military types seems to be that one can take 10-20% off Ukraine’s figure of 71k, i.e. about 60k (e.g., Justin Bronk suggests this, while nevertheless strongly disputing the claimed numbers of aircraft lost). Given the obvious fact that Putin needed to mobilise a lot of troops (82,000 or possibly many more) to fill the gaps, and they’re no longer able to conduct offensive operations, this seems eminently plausible.
You may be right that 151 per day is too high, although I also gave a reason why it might be too low. As I said, the number of Ukrainian deaths is much harder to estimate.
As to the number of Russian deaths, the CIA estimated 15,000 on 20th July – which is highly consistent with my estimate of 20,000 by 9th September.
The early CIA figure is just one estimate which some consider quite dubious – there have been disagreements over that. Ben Wallace said on 5th September that the figure was 25k (equating to ~32k today), which is still way lower than the Ukrainian government estimate, but I tend to take all third party estimates with considerable scepticism, since it must be extremely difficult to make such estimates without the kind of knowledge that only low-level unit commanders could realistically provide up the chain of command on a day-to-day basis. I don’t imagine either the MoD or the CIA are trying to count the dead using satellite imagery – it’s probably just a collection of educated guessess based on the apparent scale of combat in various parts of the country.
The database compiled by Mediazona and the BBC News Russian service uses a clear and rigorous methodology. Its creators have said it may underestimate the true count by 40–60%. Which would mean total losses for the regular Russian armed forces are around 10,800.
The Economist claims the DPR militia “have faithfully documented their casualties”. Their total losses stand at 3,526.
Losses for the LPR militia and the Wagner mercenaries are harder to estimate. But it seems unlikely they total more than 11,000.
Attempts like those of Mediazona to estimate casualties using publicly available data such as “social media posts by relatives, reports in local media, and statements of the local authorities” would only get a fraction of the true figure, not 2/3rds of it in my opinion.
The Frenchman Paul Valéry said that war was a massacre of people who do not know each other for the benefit of people who know each other but do not massacre each other.
Back in the real world they are likely losing 20.000 a month. At one point the Uke’s were so desperate for men they conscripted women and criminals. They have bled through over 100 K in dead with 2-3x that injured. They outnumber Vlad the Droner’s forces by about 5:1 yet still cannot make any appreciable gains. If Vlad the PecFlexer’s forces were fully deployed, the Uke’s would be shattered in 2 months. Not even the endless American billions/trillions to the corrupt regime will save them. If the 2nd coming of Chinghis Khan fought like the Americans, the entire Uketopia would be rubble from endless carpet bombing the width and breadth of the country. Criminal xi Biden the election thieving money laundering pedo would have already declared victory on an aircraft carrrier off of San Diego. The Uke’s should be happy the Russians don’t fight like the criminal Americans.
“Run off pharma troll for stab #12 and hopefully you can contract myocarditis or similar and then tell us it was the too-many-eggs-syndrome-nothing to do with the stabs. I hear from the speed of science people, that Stab 17 is the real game changer. Just hang on for that.”
Why don’t you run along and do the same, you nasty piece of sh*t!
What is the point of this speculation. The answer in all cases is too many.
What I have read in alt-media streams is the UKrs have lost 100k dead, 2-3 time wounded.
The 300k currently being injected from RUS are actually being assigned in the main to roles not in the UKr theatre. Non-Theatre active RUS combat troops are being transferred (once replaced ) into the UKr theatre. Reason for this is in 2019, RUS went volunteer-only (non-conscript) and there was a deficit between out-going and in-coming resources.
Another issue probably lost….is who is operating all this latest NATO tech we have sent the Ukr? Because it cant be the UKrs given they have no training or familiarity and active fighting at the same time? How many loved ones in NATO countries are receiving that door-knock stating their husbands and sons were killed in a training accident? We dont here that at all.
I aint picking sides. Im trying to balance competing competent reports from the West and the alt-media. If UKr was kicking RUS butts, why so much equipment (Billions), and why the request for more? Dont make sense? I strongly suspect what we are being told is 180 from the real truth?
Reports I have read indicate that 80,000 of the recent intake have already been embedded with existing front line units throughout Ukraine . It is speculation on my part that these troops are replacing ones who left at the end of their 6 month extended contract.
It makes sense to mix new and experienced troops so that the new troops can benefit from the front-line experience of their compatriots.
Who is operating all the NATO tech? I suspect NATO troops..that’s why it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that the UK really were operating the drones used in the Black Sea…
As you say, it’s hard to train people up quickly for these things….
As to how many troops, a few weeks ago I think it was the Washington Post said for every one Russian soldier killed or injured, five Ukrainian soldiers were killed or injured…..so a lot.
About two months ago Antony Blinken and LLoyd Austin went to Ukraine and vowed to “fight Russia to the last Ukrainian”…..I think we can safely say that to gain their own ends, they’ll also keep going to the last European as well…..
It concerns me when individuals use their status when they make personal comments. It is fair enough that the author of the piece identifies himself as the author, but when someone who happens to be an administrator identifies himself as such, when making comments that are nothing to do with administration, then I judge this as trying to gain some false authority for their view.
My guess is that it’s an automatic feature of the software they use to build and maintain the site.
Exactly. But it’s a fair point, and I’ll see if I can change it.
Thank you, Ian.
That was my suspicion too, however nothing stops someone setting up a private account. It is not even that payment is mandatory before comments are permitted
So both sides are underestimating their losses and overestimating the losses of their opponents. Gosh, who would have guessed that!!