Tom Kratman has a great piece on his experiences with the people which seems to indicate so:
Most people shy away from or are at least ignorant of the reason so many of those adorable kids died. It’s simple; the Kurds starved them to death themselves. It’s a cultural imperative among them, when times get hard, to let the little girls die of starvation (first, of course), and then the little boys…
Interestingly, before we even arrived in our area, there had been an incident – a firefight resulting in several Iraqi dead – between the British Marines and some Iraqi troops guarding one of Hussein’s palaces in that part of Iraq. I asked a British officer about it and his answer was to the effect that, “As near as we can figure, as one of our patrols was passing, two Kurds, from different positions but surely with coordination, took a shot each, close to simultaneously. One shot was at our patrol, the other at the Iraqi on the gate to the palace. Both shots missed, but the Iraqis and our men, thinking they were under attack, reacted as one would expect. We were just a lot better shots, better led, than they were…
And then there was the day the Kurds demanded to be paid. Paid? Why, yes, we were providing free food, free medical care, free shelter, and free security, but they saw no reason not to be paid for unloading the free food and other goodies.
It is an amazing piece that gives you a real flavor for the Kurds which you don’t get from the media.
The case described is interesting, in that it speaks to a population which appears to have been heavily rabbitized at some point, and having been so, the rabbitization perpetuated itself by using rabbit strategy to avoid conflict, exploit others, and opportunistically and shamelessly seize whatever it could to avoid being exposed to K-selection. They even starve their kids to death during hard times, thus meaning kids who make it to maturity more often than not survived because they were bred during times of plenty, and thus they will perpetuate the rabbity ways of the clan.
The dangers of allowing the rabbits to breed in your society.
Mr Anonymous Conservative. This is slightly off topic but not in the big scheme of things. I once talked to you about a lot of very promising technologies and you seemed disgusted that that this would prolong the time to collapse. ,I as bad as I hate the r’s, do not want collapse. One of the very best survival guys I’ve ever read said it better then I.
Ferfal,”…Finally, I want to give a message of hope to you all, and remind you and me both that survival is about surviving, but not for the mere fact of living , but to live happy, rich lives.
Prepare because it’s the smart thing to do, and not because you are looking forward to SHTF and other disasters.
Do not make the mistake of thinking that TSHTF will be a brand new start for you, and that all your problems will just go away and you’ll have a new start in the brave new world.
It doesn’t work that way. Quite the contrary, everything will get worse, small problems will turn into bigger, more serious problems. If you have drinking problems, you’ll drink more, if you can’t keep a job, you’ll spend years unemployed, if you have a disease, you’ll see that it’s harder to get attention and medications. Again everything gets WORSE…”
I feel like him. I hope you will change you’re mind about hoping for collapse.
Ferfal wrote one the best survival post ever, ““Lessons from Argentina’s economic collapse”. I reread it often. It’s very pertinent to our situation. He also has a book that’s very good. I have no financial interest in him just like his work.
http://www.survival-spot.com/survival-blog/argentina-collapse/
I was mainly expressing the idea that things like post scarcity would be the end of our civilization. If today we developed a machine which would make free food, free housing, free entertainment, and could make more machines like itself, the current civilizational decline would be nothing compared to what you would see in a thousand years.
The collapse won’t be pleasant, but it is also not to be feared. Like r/K it is a part of the cycle, and necessary for the rebirth of a new civilized society.
One thing I will say – I have found harshness has a way of putting everything else in its place. If every moment lacks any harshness, I’ve found life can become blurred, with some unpleasantness filling every moment – and you will notice it more than you notice the beauty. If you introduce harshness, then there will be moments which are heavenly, in which you will see nothing worth worrying about, and you will enjoy those moments immensely, in between the less pleasant moments. It will all even out.
That’s disappointing.
Must be why women fighters are so predominant among the Kurds in Syria and Turkey.
isn’t it rather a super-K strategy ? kill the less adapted to ease the burden of the strongest ?
No, it is opportunism when you kill children, and even more amazingly r-selected when they are your own.
There is a clear line between K-strategists, who want to bang heads fairly by the rules and see the best succeed even if it is not themselves, and the r-strategists who want to find the weak and exploit their weakness to assure their own safety and security. Think Marines vs criminals. Marines will show up and go with whoever they are given – the bigger the opponent the harder the fall. Criminals stalk very carefully, looking for the weak and vulnerable, and then wait until they have maximal advantage.
It is why boxing has weight classes, and men aren’t supposed to hit women.