Escalatio and Salami Tactics...

First of all, hat tip to Belmont Club and also to Snapping Turtle, both via InstaPundit, for getting me to pay attention. Reality has been intruding lately...

Let's talk first of deterrence. Deterrence takes many forms: the various words for deterrence - Abschreckung (German), dissuasion (French) and устращение (Russian), as well as the Anglo-Saxon deterrence each have different meanings, even when the same thing is meant. The differences are subtle, but meaningful: while the English "deterrence" points to a weighing of alternatives and then a deliberate and conscious decision to not do something - a criminal is deterred if he decides not to rob someone because they may be armed, for instance - while the French "disuassion" points more to something along the line of dissuading someone, of the opposite of persuasion, which has fundamentally the same thing as the English.

The German "Abschreckung" isn't so simple: it's less a matter of intellectual analysis, but much more an emotional thing, of springing back from an action, and the word is based on the German for terror, with the "ab-" prefix adding to the effect.

The Russian устращение, ustrasenie, doesn't mean what the English and the French mean, let alone the German: the word means to cow or intimidate: back in the Soviet days (and according to the Soviet Military Encyclopedia) this word was always - with no exception - used in connection with NATO. It was first and foremost an ideological definition, and underscored what American nuclear weapons meant for the Soviets: they were there to intimidate them.

 

But back now to the topic at hand: the rebirth of deterrence.

 

Now, what is the whole point of deterrence?

 

Basically and most fundamentally, we have to go back to the immediate post-war period. The West had, largely, demobilized, while the Soviets, largely, had not. I'm simplifying, of course, but the countries of Western Europe, devastated by the war, had no will to remilitarize and create a large standing army. What to do, then?

Rely on nuclear weapons to dissuade, to deter, the Soviets.

But how did deterrence actually work?

Let's go back to the Soviets: they were, after all, those who were to be dissuaded, deterred. What would deter them?

Correlation of forces deterred them, dissuaded them: the calculus of Soviet military doctrine, of acquiring such superiority of force that their victory, whilst never guaranteed, would be inevitable. Great believers in inevitability, the Soviet military. If the correlation of forces were not favorable, the Soviet military informed the Politburo and decisions were made to address this. The Soviet military was tasked with ensuring that the Politburo could use the military to further its goals: to intimidate the bourgeois governments of the West in order to get them to stop resisting the inevitable development of history: the triumph, of course, of Soviet communism over capitalism.

So, what is the point of the links? What do they mean?

A group of retired military officers - actually, the elite of NATO - says quite bluntly that NATO must consider the first use of nuclear weapons, that NATO must retain a first-strike capability, nay a pre-emptive capability to destroy, utterly, the threat of attack by an enemy.

The reason behind this? Simply put, proliferation, or, more exactly, the threat of proliferation: the danger that with more and more countries - with less and less responsible leaders - will acquire the ability to use nuclear weapons in a conflict, leading to an increased likelihood that they will be used.

You see, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, the threat of the use of nuclear weapons was largely removed from the realm of politics.

It is now returning with heavy, heavy footsteps. It's not so much the simple likelihood that nuclear weapons are apparently being developed: it's much more that those developing them are not doing so because they want to shift correlation of forces to place pressure on the West (or, more exactly, that is not the primary reason), but those who are actively developing them - let's drop the sham, that's Iran - are developing them because they want to use them.

And that is what is so intensely dangerous.

The pundits in the West who seem to care little of whether Iran develops nuclear technology to the point where it can generate enough weapons-grade fissile materials to manufacture nuclear weapons, as long as they don't actually do it, are missing the point about nuclear weapons: they are a Rubicon that has not been crossed since 1945.

With the weakening of the UN and the apparent increasing rise of non-nation players - be these NGOs or movements like al-Qaeda - that do not play with the same rules as the classic nation-states of Westphalia, the problem becomes more acute.

So, what is the point of the threat of pre-emptive usage?

Simple: however organized the non-state actors may be, they still must operate within a framework of nations. Right now there is no way to prevent weak states - or sympathetic ones - from harboring non-national actors, and indeed these actors predicate their operations on being able to hide amongst the populations of such countries.

Political attempts to make this impossible have failed: both Afghanistan and Iraq underscore the fundamentally messy and protracted nature of asymmetric, but conventional, non-nuclear combat.

The generals here are pointing out that if the West is to succeed in fighting an ideologically motivated opponent, one committed to intimidating the secular governments of the West in order to get them to stop resisting the inevitable development of history, the triumph of Islam over the West, then it must revert to the balance of terror that sustained it through the Cold War.

But not, this time, by believing in rational, cool thinking that characterized Soviet military planning, but in recognizing that the opponent is, in our eyes, in the eyes of the enlightenment, fundamentally irrational. Hence the need to transform deterrence into what the Soviets always believed that it was: intimidation.

A pre-emptive philosophy, of fundamentally saying to the Muslim world, "Do not think of obtaining nuclear potentials to use against us, for we shall destroy you beforehand", can function only if it is used to intimidate, in the sense set out above, the nations involved into refusing to be a part of anyone's plans to actually use nuclear weapons.

And there are reasons that this needs to happen: if, for instance, a modest nuclear weapon of, say, Hiroshima yield, were to be detonated in Tel Aviv (after, say, being smuggled there by truck), it would gut Israel's society and kill between 1mn and 2mn people. The reprisals, say against Iran, would, given a 15-missile counter attack against the major Iranian cities, kill over 30mn.

What the real threat, though, is for the attack to be on Rome.

Normally, this would be deterred by guaranteed retaliation: but if al Qaeda executes the attack, who do you retaliate against? This is, of course, the deliberate policy of al Qaeda, of asymmetric warfare, of denying the West the ability to use the strengths of the West against al Qaeda,

But put nuclear pre-emption into the equation, believable - and that is the point the generals are making - pre-emption, and you get vastly different kinds of behavior.

But it's all a question of believability: call NATO's bluff on such, and you've exposed the paper tiger and won a massive propaganda victory. If NATO is going to go for such a philosophy, it has to be believable, which is what the generals are saying.

With the way things are going right now in NATO, with the abject German inability to grow a backbone and live up to its treaty commitments, believability is a major issue.

Put simply, deterrence will not work, has not worked, and believing that al Qaeda is a rational actor - as we understand that - and can actually be deterred is foolish at best and downright criminal at worst.

Hence: let NATO intimidate the countries we are talking about into deciding that they will no longer suffer al Qaeda to operate within their national borders. That is essential to destroying that group.

Escalatio, or the art and science of political intimidation by military threats, is a moot point; the enemy is engaged in operating at very low levels, of always making sure that they remain under the threshhold, operating as the Soviets did with "salami tactics" that constantly, slowly shift the barriers around. The West has lost its ability to play escalatio, not the least due to the nattering nabobs of the MSM, and if that is gone, there is only one game left to play, that of naked power politics.

And a small follow-up...

I ran across this today.

It just goes to underscore that the Greens are willing to sacrifice anything and everything to protect their version of the truth and remove any dissent from the program: it is, has been and will always be about control.

And here is a top-ten list that simply - and sensibly - lays out what environmentalists need to consider:

10. Go after pollution sources with the highest benefit/cost ratio, not those which are most noticeable.

9. It is always best and often vital to utilize existing infrastructure and capabilities when implementing new methods or technologies.

8. "Natural" "Organic" and "Bio" do not mean "good."

7. Plans for the future should not be made on the most optimistic predictions and should consider the most pessimistic reasonable predictions.

6. Simply attacking an environmentally damaging activity is not effective unless a better alternative of similar or better economics and usefulness is presented.

5. Taxation, price increases and caps on energy are inherently regressive and cause great damage.

4. It is unreasonable to expect the general public will accept major reductions in living standards or comfort and convenience. Simply put, it won't happen.

3. Depending on continuous heavy subsidies is not sustainable.

2. Every little bit does not help.

1. Sacrificing the needs of an economy for the environment will destroy both.

While each and every point is good, it is 5 and 4 that lead to 1. The damage caused is real, in terms of opportunities lost and futures denied: anyone wanting to deny progress, real progress instead of the reactionary nature of "progressives", is fundamentally interested in controlling his fellow men and should be seen as a fundamental threat to any and all democratic, representative governments. It's really as simple as that...

And now I'm just waiting for someone to tell me to take this down because it's harmful to the environmental movement...go to the link to see what I mean (see the comments...)

Global Warming Redux...and the Watermelon Movement...

This time it's a lacunae by Cockburn. You can read it here.

What Cockburn says is that he doesn't quite understand why the left has gone so heavily for the environment and the scare tactics of global warming.

He says:

This turn to climate catastrophism is tied into the decline of the left, and the decline of the left's optimistic vision of altering the economic nature of things through a political programme. The left has bought into environmental catastrophism because it thinks that if it can persuade the world that there is indeed a catastrophe, then somehow the emergency response will lead to positive developments in terms of social and environmental justice.

What really is going on is this: the left is really only interested in one thing only, and that is control. They still truly believe that they can reach the promised land if they can only control the means of production.

What Cockburn really should have written is this:

The left has usurped the environmental movement because it thinks that if it can persuade the world that there is indeed a catastrophe, then by giving the environmentalists control over the world's economy, the catastrophe can be averted.

Now does that make more sense?

His further points, however, are completely correct and underscores how truly, deliberately anti-progressive the left has become: the Luddite aspects of the environmental movement mesh beautifully with the left's desperate desire to control how people live their lives.

But this time it's enormous: they want to stop the Third World from moving away from poverty into affluence: just think of it, if the Third World lived like us how much damage that would create! Hence we have to keep those poor and misled fools from making a mess of their lives and ensure that they only may live as we see fit to choose.


Seriously, how can anyone, nowadays, be a leftist? Be a progressive? The world has turned these movements on their head, exposing their absurdity, and yet...

There is indeed a sucker born every minute. Those on the left who truly believe this are the useful fools of Lenin. They work, to borrow from Chomsky - hah! - with the bought priesthood of the left, the climate priesthood of the global warming apocalypse, kept happy and complacent with academic grants and positions of power within the climate science peer group and who ensure that peer review takes on new meaning.

The mainstream media, the synodiporia of the Watermelon Movement - green on the outside, red inside - is complacent as well. They are fellow travellers, at the best unwitting agents of influence, manipulated to take actions in the interest of the Watermelon Movement. These are those whose opinions fit into the goals of the Watermelon Movement, for whatever personal reasons: they are interested, for instance, in furthering their own careers, and are more than willing to cooperate, to accept support that would otherwise be severely embarrassing if found out.

Wonder why the image of the US has been so under attack? it is because so many have been able to do so well by attacking the image of the US for their own reasons and interests. The constant beating of the BDS drum, the constant harping and criticism by journalists whose only real interest is ensuring that they get more column-inches than anyone else working for their paper, has a cumulative effect, especially when alternative news sources are limited.

The seduction of the Watermelon Movement is fairly straightforward and literally takes its cues from Soviet-era KGB false flag recruitment techniques (i.e. telling someone that they are spying for Israel when in reality they are being run by the KGB), where careful and deliberate duplicity is the main mode of operations.

This method is goal-oriented disinformation, and the global alarmists are excellent at manipulating the main-stream media journalists: after all, their work is peer-reviewed (failing to mention that the peers in this case all share, basically, the same goals of getting money for their academic careers) and they're scientists, they can't be wrong. So let's not learn the science, find that non-statisticians are using advanced statistical methods that they don't know how to use (and try to hide how they manipulated the tools so that they always get the results they want), that the fundamental data underlying the models is biased due to urbanization and incorrect proxies and is increasingly simply bad science, but instead parrot the goal-oriented disinformation that the activists want spread.

But back to Cockburn: he's right. The global warming alarmists are truly medieval with their new-found ability to buy indulgences.

The Kyoto Accord is and remains fundamentally reactionary, with the goal of ensuring that underdeveloped countries be actively denied progress in meeting the needs of their citizens.


So who are the members of the Watermelon Movement? They are the the NGOs and government people who attend the conferences on global warming, they are the NGOs and government people who write the articles and are quoted in the mainstream press. They range from all over, but have one goal: to get their own goals advanced.

In other words, the Watermelon Movement is based on individual self-interest, but not in terms of the matter at hand, but rather how these groups can best attach themselves parasitically to the world's economy.

Who's behind them?

Good question.

It's a mixture of guilt-ridden financiers like Soros, dinosaurs of the left like MoveOn and the other ancient leftist groups. But who are they exactly, what are their interrelationships?

Good question.

Why The Subprime Crisis Came About...

This is one of the best explanations of the subprime crisis I've seen to date, and is from a banker. The first part, which has less to do with the sub primes, is here. Thumbs up to the blogger...

What was/is the problem?

The fundamentals of banking are, in reality, rather simple: if you want to get money from the bank, they need to know the likelihood of you paying that money back. The more likely that is, the less you will have to pay for that money. If you have savings and want to invest that money, the higher the interest rate, the greater the likelihood that you will not see any of your money back.

The banks live on asymmetric information (if the borrower could tap the lender directly, they wouldn't need the bank!) and fees for services provided. They pay interest rates on savings that are lower than the rate they charge to borrow that money, and the interest difference is where they make their money (service fees serve only to lower their overhead). They can turn their liabilities (unpaid loans) into assets by discounting the future value plus repayment risks and selling their portfolio at a discount. You normally don't do this, as the banks want the cash flows. It's their bread and butter.

So, what happened in the sub prime crisis?

The banks no longer needed to worry about whether the money got paid back. They jiggered their internal rating systems to make all loans look good, misrepresented those loans to external investors, and laughed all the way to the ... bank. They were more than happy to do so, since if one had properly discounted the loans, they'd have been true junk, with maybe ten cents on the dollar. So they broke even and cashed in on their fees.


The external investors invested like they believed that all sub primes were actually prime loans, and were overcome by one of the most fundamental human emotions: greed. They thought they were getting solid investment instruments with great rates of return, and I cannot fathom why their due diligence failed so abjectly.


The borrowers were complicit and stupid. On the one hand, the banks were actively looking for such folks, and normally would never, ever have lent them these monies, but since the bank was selling the loan immediately, it didn't care: someone else would pay the bill.

So, it's a tragedy: billions "lost", careers ruined, homeowners evicted, and this will cost probably around 50-75 points of GDP growth for the next several years each and every quarter until the mess is cleaned up and proper banking re-emerges.

Wind Power Redux...And A Return To The Planned Economy?

Christian Bartsch, who writes for the FAZ, has an article here, unfortunately behind the "pay me" firewall.

It's an important piece, albeit short, as it dismantles the idea that wind power is an alternative energy source.

Put simply: Germany, right now, has an installed base of 21.5 Gigawatt (21500 Megawatt) of wind power. Bartsch took the trouble of taking a look at what that installed base actually generated, and it is, put very bluntly, pathetic.

The industry itself calculates that you can only "count" on the installed base providing an average of 10%, i.e. from 21500 MW down to 2150 MW. But this is highly misleading: if you take a look at the real performance for October, you get two days - that's 2, the number between 1 and 3 - where, for a few hours, 1/3rd of the installed base actually delivered electricity, and another 2 days where ca 20% of the installed base was generated. The rest of the time? Under 20%, and there were several days where no electricity was generated, either because it was too windy or not windy enough.

This was even worse during the transition from 2007 to 2008: on 29 Dec., for a few brief minutes - !!! - 50% of the installed base generated electricity, after that a sharp decline to virtually nothing as weather inversions kept winds down. There was a jump on 2 Jan, but the windmills had to be closed down because a storm was brewing on the North Sea, resulting in zero energy being generated.

Now, this fairly pathetic performance is going to get worse: current installation plans call for another 3100 MW capacity to be installed by 2012 alone in the North Sea, with 10 wind farms with 660 wind mills. Since these are off-shore, they have to be cabled: 1900 km (!) of cable will have to be installed. Since installing such cable in the North Sea costs close to € 8 mn/km, this is ... ca € 15'000 mn, just for the cable alone.

In order to pay for this, wind energy is paid for with a 30% additional fee on the average cost of a generated kWh. Since more wind power is due to be installed, this means that energy prices, for Germany, will continue to climb regardless of the price of oil or coal.

Given that Germany is supposed to turn off its nuclear and coal-powered plants in 2020, this also means that Germany will have to import energy, with the enormous irony that this energy will come from French and Czech nuclear power plants.

Bartsch also looks at some of the alternatives: sun energy, for instance, costs the German consumers 50 cents per kWh, and even the German environmental minister acknowledges that sun energy in Germany is a dead-end street.

But what are the alternatives?

Biomasse costs 14 cents per kWh; wind power - when it deigns to deliver - 9 c/kWh; burning garbage is 6 c/kWh.

Coal? Lignite or brown coal is 2.5 c/kWh, as is nuclear; hard coal is 5 c/kWh. Sure, the purported "commons costs" are not included here, but the costs of current standards for air cleanliness and the like are.

Renewable energy is raising the costs of energy and reducing living standards in Germany, since sharply increasing energy costs means that you have to spend money on energy, rather than on consumption of other goods.


But there is something more important, and fundamentally more sinister, going on here, as Bartsch points out:

This points, to a large extent, to the end of energy markets in Germany, if not throughout Europe. The principles of supply and demand are being systematically dismantled.

If wind energy were even fractionally as promising as the wind energy fanatics would have you believe, then why are there no wind-powered ships on the oceans? They were abandoned the moment that steam-powered ships made it clear that shipping was no longer dependent on the vagaries of the wind.

The same is true for electrical energy generation: wind energy is simply to flighty and unstable to be truly considered an alternative.

The real problem is that this is now being regulated by law. The Renewable Energy Act in Germany (Erneuerbare Energiegesetz or EEG) is dismantling the free markets, replacing them with regulations and control mechanisms with punishment for failing to break the laws of physics.

Germany, one of the strongest economies in the world, an industrial country with 82mn population and a very high standard of living, is, via laws like the EEG, driven by politicians whose ignorance of the natural sciences is more than outweighed by their quasi-religious belief that they are going to be viewed by future generations as the saviors of mankind, is on the best way to becoming the first planned economy of the 21st century.

And that despite the obvious failure of any and all planned economies. People have a way of finding the loopholes to exploit the system.

And more fundamentally, I find it bizarre and a clear sign of a complete and total ahistoricity that this is even a topic for discussion. Climbing energy prices means that food will become more expensive and that the German industry will increase its move overseas to more conducive environments.

The environmentalists are increasingly watermelons: green on the outside, red inside. As I've said before, it's all about control: if they can't control the economies directly, they will do it indirectly, with, as far as I am concerned, a single goal.

Control.

But for what?

Nothing less than becoming a permanent parasite. These watermelons aim at becoming the tapeworm in the belly of capitalism, taking the best nutrients and passing on the remnants to the host, of thriving and spawning at the cost of the host becoming lethargic and apathetic. These watermelons aren't interested in raising the standards of living and improving the lot of the common man: they hold up the chimera of future generations and demand their wergeld.

PS: just saw that a total of 15 off-shore wind parks have been approved for the North Sea and 3 in the Baltic; installed capacity of 6'000 MW with a total of 1200 wind mills @ 5 MW... all of which makes the waste involved even worse.

A Disturbing Parallel...

Let's take a look back in history.

The Japanese, prior to WW2, were an expansionist, imperialist - in the literal sense - local power, one that had liberated itself, so to speak, from fearing the West by their victory over the Russians in 1904. They believed that they were ordained to unify the world under hakko ichiu, or "all 8 corners of the world under 1 roof", with the first step the liberation of Asia from western imperialists.

This was the driving force behind the Japanese war against China. The Japanese had entered China during the Boxer Rebellion (�和�之�). While the Boxer Movement (义和团运动; literally "The Righteous and Harmonious Society Movement") was an anti-imperialist movement based on the domination of China by western powers, it failed to stand in the face of western firepower and a western willingness to spend Chinese lives to achieve their goals of restoring the dynasty. The Japanese were happy to be involved, as it was proof of their acceptance as an advanced country: they contributed close to the half of the western troops involved in the fighting, and indeed Tianjin was liberated by one Col. Kuriya. The Japanese never left China after that: while they only got a small share of reparations - only the US got less - their troops remained in China, and after their victory over Russia in 1904 they took over Russian interests in China, leading to the virtual annexation of Manchuria and ultimately to the Sino-Japanese conflict.

The Japanese were not alone in their interest in the Chinese market, but demanded "paramount interest", akin to monopoly powers over international trade, which were largely opposed by most other nations trading with China, not the least of which was the US. The Japanese use of force to gain their goals in China - the Mukden Incident, for instance, was trumped-up by the Japanese - meant that unless the US was willing to go to war for Chinese markets, sanctions were the alternative.

The only problem was that such sanctions were highly asymmetric: the loss of Japanese markets for US industry was, bluntly, fairly trivial, while the loss of US goods was, for the Japanese, critical. The Japanese imported steel scrap and oil from the US, and both were critically needed for the Japanese war effort.

In other words, Japan declared war on the US because the US had hit it with sanctions that would have forced peace if the sanctions had been allowed to work.

Why did the Japanese, with only a portion of the population of the US, with virtually no raw materials of their own, and with large military, heavily capitalized (they don't call them capital ships for nothing!), declare war on the US?

Because of a monumental error in judgment. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in order to destroy the US Pacific Fleet - which almost happened - with the express goal of gaining time to consolidate their growing Asian empire, exploit the natural resources there, and then end up at the negotiating table to work out an end for the war.

Why did the Japanese think this would happen?

Because the Japanese believed, truly believed, that they would carry the upper hand. A wide-spread Japanese prejudice was that America, that polyglot nation that touted its diversity, could not and would not act with a united singular resolve, but rather was a mongrel that spend its time squabbling and bickering, such that it could not and would not be able to react to the singular goal of Japan, which was to dominate Asia and to be the primus inter pares in an "Asia for the Asians". Japan had seen how easy it was to divide the Chinese - which are, in fact, not nearly as homogeneous a folk as the Japanese - and "knew" that the US would be an easy target, with a devastating attack being all it would take to dishearten the American public and to divide the nation. There was plenty of information that supported this thesis: the "America First" movement and the various pacifist groups, along with a large German population that had more than a little sympathy with the National Socialists in Germany.

Given this belief, the Japanese convinced themselves that not only could they win, they would win: the Americans would be forced to accept the "new reality" of Japanese superiority and of course the paramount interests of Japan in Asia.

Now, what is the parallel that I refer to in the title?


Well, there is the obvious one: that anyone reading US internal politics with all its noise, flash and silliness as a way of judging US resolve in dealing with international problems is making the same kind of fatal error. Iran, for instance, can do a one-off attack, coupled with propaganda and terror acts, that could, perhaps under certain circumstances, damage or even sink a US carrier in the Persian Gulf (and don't think that Iran isn't contemplating this: it's probably the key to their war-fighting scenarios...), but it would take a concerted effort by the pacifist components of US society to prevent Iran from being severely pummeled and fundamentally destroyed.

But while it is tempting to run the parallel between Japan of then and Iran of now, the real danger is elsewhere.




China.

Huh? China doesn't even have much of a Navy, let alone one that had any sort of correlation of forces that approaches Japan's correlation with US forces at the beginning of WW2.

But bear with me: it's all about perception.

If you look here, you can see what I mean.

This is the key portion of that analysis - which is based on Chinese sources, not US speculation - with my emphasis and some slight reformatting:

China's experts concede its army would lose a head-on fight, with one senior colonel comparing such a scenario to "throwing an egg against a rock." Instead, the Chinese would attempt what Rand calls an "anti-access" strategy: slowing the deployment of U.S. forces to the Pacific theater, damaging operations within the region and forcing the U.S. to fight from a distance.

"Taking the enemy by surprise," one Chinese military expert wrote, "would catch it unprepared and cause confusion within and huge psychological pressure on the enemy and help [China] win relatively large victories at relatively small costs." Another military volume suggests feigning a large-scale military training exercise to conceal the attack's buildup.

...

Because the American public is "abnormally sensitive" about military casualties, according to an article in China's Liberation Army Daily, killing U.S. airmen or other personnel would spark a "domestic anti-war cry" on the home front and possibly force early withdrawal of U.S. forces. ("The U.S. experience in Somalia is usually cited in support of this assertion," according to the Rand report.) Once this hard-and-fast assault on U.S. bases commenced, the Chinese army would "swiftly divert" its forces and "guard vigilantly against enemy retaliation," according to a Chinese expert.

The PLA also would likely use less conventional attacks on the American military's vital communications network. The goal, as one Chinese expert put it: leaving U.S. combat capabilities "blind," "deaf" and "paralyzed." Losing early-warning systems designed to detect incoming missiles would be, for the Air Force, the most devastating setback ― one that could force the service to exit the region altogether, according to Rand.

Why, thank you President Clinton for Somalia...

Now do you see the parallel? The Chinese realize that they cannot win a WW2-style war with the US, and hence must attack so that the US is "blind, deaf and paralyzed", allowing the Chinese to real their military/political goals (in this case, the taking of Taiwan), relying on domestic public pressure to stop a US response in its tracks, disheartening the public and dividing the nation.

This is extremely dangerous: the parallels are clear, at least in my mind. The same kind of "Pearl Harbor" isn't possible anymore, but I think what the Chinese are thinking is that they would start an invasion of Taiwan under cover of a large-scale exercise and that if US carriers came any where near, they'd be attacked with massed ballistic missile attacks: after all, you only need one hit, and if the Chinese could take out one carrier with each 100 ballistic missiles - no nukes here - then they'd be happy to. A given the Chinese build-up of medium-range ballistic missiles around Taiwan - right now estimates place the number of such missiles anywhere from 300 to more than 800 - in Fujian province, and you can see the risks of a "sudden" non-nuclear first strike that would be damned hard to avoid: having 100 ballistic missiles inbound can cover a lot of sea space, and it may not be possible for a carrier to maneuver its way out of such a tactical situation.

Now, why would China do such a thing?

Simple: it is heavily, heavily dependent on foreign trade. It gets 60% of its energy from the Persian Gulf; as long as the US can control the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, Chinese economic growth is held hostage to US military might (if you are paranoid and see the world this way: in reality, the Chinese benefit enormously form the fact that the US help control piracy in the region...).

For the new mandarins in China, it must be galling to realize that the China trade exists under the sufferance of the US Navy. Given their attitude of cultural superiority, eerily similar to that of Japan in many aspects, then the parellels become even more disturbing...

How Terrorists Win...

There's an editorial in the Financial Times here.

What the FT argues is that it is not merely intolerable that those living in the Gaza strip be punished for the actions of their leadership, but downright prohibited by international law. According to the FT, the Arabs and international mediators should immediately seek an armistice with Hamas and that Israel cease the blockade of Gaza. The Islamists should be brought into the talks, with the goal of an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza, with its capital East Jerusalem, and then Hamas and all Arab countries should be required to recognize Israel.


Good lord, what is in the water at the editorial offices of the FT? Bottle it and sell it to the decadent, because it apparently takes the best and the brightest into a land of delusions and insanity.


Seriously: this is so wrong on so many levels.

First of all, the likelihood of Hamas recognizing Israel has the same likelihood that a snowball in hell has of maintaining its temperature. Who, pray tell, is going to take it upon themselves to "require" that Hamas and Arabs in general are going to recognize Israel? Anyone want to explain that mechanism?

Second of all, this is tantamount to suing for peace. The terrorist group known as Hamas - and somehow the FT failed to mention the financing of Hamas via Iran - wins under these conditions.

Hamas is using the captive population of the Gaza as a political tool to achieve its aims. Nothing more, nothing less. By giving in, by saying that it is intolerable that a population so held in thrall be punished for the actions of its political leadership, is to effectively say the Hamas and the Hamas-like thugs elsewhere that all they have to do is to take such a population hostage and the West will capitulate in order to protect the hostages.

Because what the FT calls for is surrender: it is letting the terrorists win.


What about the civilians living in Gaza? What about their frustrations, their rage, their abject poverty.


You have to make it clear who is to blame, and the West and Israel fails to do so: the situation in Gaza is nothing less than the result of the politics of Hamas, and alleviating the terrible situation there without removing Hamas is nothing less than rewarding Hamas for behaving as they have, giving them absolutely no incentive to change their politics. None whatsoever.

If anything, it gives them incentives to active make things worse. Every dead child in Gaza, every picture of the hopelessness of that population, is of use to Hamas as a political weapon to extort money from western countries who can be called naive and humanitarian at best, but who remain mind-bogglingly ignorant of what is going on.


To repeat: if the West and Israel were to follow what the FT calls for, only the terrorists win.

Put bluntly, this is an appalling editorial, filled with platitudes and outrage that the population of Gaza is suffering. This is woolly-headed thinking at its worst, and if it is indeed indicative of the thinking of London's finest, then ... good night, turn out the lights behind you.

The Market Moves...

Ah, the hysteria of the markets.

A colleague got fairly upset when he saw what had happened to his portfolio. I simply asked him if he had stop-loss orders in place and had liquidated his position.

Of course he hadn't, and indeed hadn't sold anything.

So I am asked him: what then did you lose?

 

Ahhhh.

Helping the poor...

I've been catching up on my reading, and just recently got to some Spiegel magazines.

There's an article in Spiegel 51/2007, from 17.Dec, that talks of the German "Gerechtigkeitslücke". This is best translated as "justice gap", and points to the fact that apparently the distribution of income in Germany has gotten steeper, rather than broader.

Of course, the article in question - couldn't find any link to it, but it's in that particular issue - found all the reasons why German income inequality has worsened: globalization, manager's greed, awful capitalism, the usual suspects.

What they didn't talk about was the fact that Germany, with its reliance on VAT for a good portion of its income, uses a regressive tax system that means the poor bear an larger burden of taxes, proportional to income, than the rich.

Hence here is my recommendation for helping the poor in Germany: get off their backs. Sink the proportion of government spending of GDP from over 40% to less than 30%, and that 10% difference should be used to reduce the VAT.

Anything else is a waste of time, and will only ensure that the poor will continue to be worse off, rather than better.


Likelihood of this happening: nil.

Likelihood of any German politician realizing what the problem is: even smaller.

Why A Fair Tax Isn't Fair... And The Laws of Unintended Consequences...

Ever since Huckabee won the Republican vote in the Iowa Caucus, there has been renewed interest in what he calls a Fair Tax.

In interest of fairness, let me provide a link to those supporting a Fair Tax that allows you to read what they say.

Basically, the Fair Tax idea is to tax consumption and not income. Income taxes are to be abolished, all other taxes as well (more or less), and everything is financed via the Fair Tax, which is differentiated from a Value Added Tax by being paid not at all stations of the value chain, but rather ONLY by the end consumer.

Hence, the basic example being the $100 widget, the current state of affairs is that you pay $100 for the widget plus your local sales tax (where applicable, not every state has sales taxes). Let's postulate that you have $100 income that is taxed at 23% (their example), that means you have to earn $130 in order to spend $100. So you had income of $100, spend $100 (assuming no current sales tax: it's clothing in New Jersey, for instance, the government gets $30.

Now, under the Fair Tax, you'd have your full $130. The widget would cost you $130, of which would be $100 plus 30% Fair Tax, the government gets $30.

So what's the difference and why all the fuss?


Simple: this is not reality.

First of all, final consumer goods are not priced according to what it costs the maker to make them, but rather what the market will bear. If incomes go up, prices will follow them as manufacturers seek to maximize their profits.

Hence in the above example, the Fair Tax advocates assume that the manufacturer would drop their prices to reflect their savings on taxes.

This is, at best, a rather naive assumption that has little or no likelihood of ever occurring.

Remember, goods are priced not COGS (cost of goods and services, i.e. all possible inputs into the production process) plus profits to cover the cost of capital and investments. Goods are rather priced at what the market will bear: the MP3 player that you readily buy for $100 online ( i.e. leaving the trade chain out of the story) costs, factoring in all possible costs, at best $25 to make (in quant 200'000) and get to the final consumer. The fact that you pay $100 for it is irrelevant: the difference is the company's profits.

This is fundamental: costs are on the one side, prices on the other. The ability to not merely balance the two, but rather to create the largest possible difference between the two, determines the success or failure of a company. Companies that balance the two fail, since they lack the funds to expand and improve their products; companies that maximize the difference, despite competition, thrive and succeed.

The real world is vastly more complex than our simple and simplistic example. You don't have income of $100 that goes for a single widget: that is a construct to make the basic idea simple. This is misleading: what you really have is gross income of, say, $63,497 per year, and you spend, say, 60% of that on consumption, with another 20% being taken up in income taxes/FICA and the rest used to pay down debt or to save. To give that real-world flavor, say $38,098 in consumption, $12,699 in taxes and $12,700 in debt servicing or savings.

Now, under the Fair Tax, you'd be spending 90% of your income on consumption (your 60% + 30%), nothing on income taxes, leading to a theoretical difference of -10% in savings (40%+20%+40% without FairTax; 70%+0%+30% under Fair Tax).

That means your disposable income went from $50,767 ($38,098+$12,669) to $63,497, an increase of 25% (63497/50767=1,2508).

Now that sounds good, doesn't it?

You consumption, though, goes from $38,098 to $49,527, a 30% increase that you, as the final consumer, pay under the FairTax concept. You're left with 63497-49527, or $13,970, which compared to your previous savings of $12,700 is an increase of 10% (13970/12700=1,1000).

Now that sounds great, doesn't it?

But what happens when a FairTax is implemented? Remember, everything you buy is now 30% more expensive in terms of perceived utility, and you have "only" a 25% increase in your disposable income. That means you will perceive your real purchasing power ability as having dropped by 5%.

Your consumption patterns *will* change.

In the real world, people have spending limits, either informal or formal. Personally, I have no qualms about spending $100 for that MP3 player: for me, that is disposable income. I don't do it every week, though: once a month is what I am comfortable with. If I were to have 25% more money in my pocket, that would jump to $120: I'm fiscally conservative. However, someone else may feel comfortable spending $150 on their MP3 player when their incomes increase, i.e. are fiscally liberal.

Now, companies making that MP3 player set price points: they know how their consumers behave (and spend huge amounts of money finding that out!). If they see incomes jump, say by the 25% in the above example, then they're going to try to increase their prices accordingly. Not immediately, but rather when the next product comes out, with "new" and "improved" added to the product description along with the price increase. Knowing how your customer reacts when his income stream increases is key to commercial success, and cannot be ignored: prices will grow, and you won't be moving up in terms of quality, but rather companies will price their products according to the disposable income of their customers. That's how the real world works, folks: anything else is an academic exercise at best.

After all, the goal of the company is to charge the maximum that the market will bear: if they can get away with charging $150 for a $35 item, they will, but will be happy enough to live with a $100 price.

Now one of the fundamental tenets of the FairTax folks is that companies will charge less for their products, as their products cost them less to manufacture. This is where the FairTax falls flat on its face: for it to work, companies must reduce their prices - pass on the benefits from lowered costs - in keeping with this reduction in their costs from lower taxation. Unless this is written specifically into law and companies are forced to do so, they won't: there is no incentive for them to do so, as all companies work within the same environment. As the FairTax FAQ correctly states, company taxes are passed on in one form or another to consumers, forcing prices up. Companies don't have a choice of doing this or not: they pass on cost increases as a matter of principle. If taxes were eliminated, there is only one incentive to reduce prices.

To gain market share.

Companies reduce prices for one reason only: to gain market share, either for ongoing products by expanding the customer base in excess of losses per unit, or by attacking the markets of their competitors to hurt their earnings greater than internal losses. Companies reduce prices to increase the perceived utility of their products, not because their costs are lower: this only works for companies who can gain a price advantage over their competition, and because this applies for all companies, this doesn't play here.

To reiterate, for the FairTax to work, companies would have to drop their prices: if they do not, then the calculations don't work.

What you've really done with the FairTax is to give inflation a huge push, as companies seek to maximize their portion of increased incomes. Again: prices in the real world are not priced at the marginal return price of the last unit made, but are priced according to what the market will bear. There are some efficient markets that will tend to lead to the marginal price of the last unit made, but there are plenty of inefficient markets out there as well.

In other words, that widget isn't going to fall from $100 to $77: it is going to stay as close to $100 pre-tax as possible, since that is the point where consumers buy. What improves is profit margins. The idea that there is a 100% trade off is naive at best.

Now, I've labeled this post as what a FairTax isn't fair.

Why?

Because at the very core of it, it's a regressive tax. There is no way to get around the fact - not opinion, but absolute, inconvertible fact - that lower income people spend more of their income on consumption than those with significantly higher incomes or wealth. It's not a life-style choice, either: the rich can, past a certain life-sustaining minimum, chose to consume; the poor must consume, meaning that someone rich can adjust their lifestyles to match what they are willing to pay in taxes, but someone at the bottom of the food chain cannot make any such decisions, as 100% of their income goes to consumption.

Now, this is rejected as an argument by the FairTax advocates, who argue that by giving something called a prebate (cash before the transaction, as opposed to a rebate, cash after the transaction) you can equal out the regressive nature of the beast.

Sorry: this assumes that this will make a real difference to the low-income consumer.

Someone who is, pre-FairTax, consuming 85% of their income, paying 15% in taxes with no savings, will, after a 15% prebate, spend 85%+30% = 115% of their pre-FairTax income, which will have risen to 115% to leave them in exactly the same situation as before.

Or let's be more exact: someone who is at the bottom income levels today, according to the FairTax FAQ, would get a 19% prebate to compensate for 30% in taxes.

How is that fair?

For me that's a 11% difference, a negative difference, that low-income folks can't avoid.

How is that fair?

Ultimately, changing the admittedly arcane and bizarre current tax code with this would have major unintended effects.

1) Inflation would increase as manufacturers exploit increases in income. This adds to the regressivity of the FairTax, as inflation will always lead corrections to any sort of prebate, resulting in real purchasing power loss, rather than gain.

2) Consumption patterns would change. We have no way of knowing what the effects will be: it may be moderate, it may be severe. If new houses are included, but existing houses are not, then fewer new houses will be built and existing houses will become significantly more expensive, creating a bubble in existing house prices, as demand chases a drastically reduced supply. This is merely one aspect: while those who are timid souls and who save a significant portion of their income regardless of taxation rates would benefit, this merely postpones the problem, as their later consumption will be taxed when their incomes are least able to finance the tax.

3) Is increasing savings and reducing consumption good for the country? Or more pertinently, is it good for me? This is more complex than I want to get into right here, but suffice to say that if consumption were to be reduced by, say, 15%, that means the flow of goods and services would be reduced by that amount as well, which drives down GDP. If that is the goal of the system, then fine: it certainly does not, however, sell itself as that. This is a serious point: I do not see how using the tax system to create greater preferences for savings against consumption can improve the lives of US taxpayers, since many, if not most, define their happiness - one of the god-given rights in the US - via material and services consumption.

4) The incentive to complete the final transaction outside of the realm of this tax would increase. Black markets would be created to complete final transactions outside of the system for high value items: if I pay 20% less for an illegal transaction, the seller has 10% more money and I've got 20% more money, with the government losing 30%; the enforcement of the FairTax would have to be wide-spread and draconian if it were to succeed, and this raises more problems than it solves.


Summing up - and this has gone on way too long already - the FairTax is neither Fair nor a good idea.

If you want to make the tax system fair, a Flat Tax is the way to go, with no deductions: everyone pays their share. A billionaire with $100,000,000 income from dividends and interest pays 20%, as does the local barber or the traveling salesman. You set it by dividing total income from all sources by needed government expenditures to get the base rate: it goes up and it goes down accordingly, each and every year, and the only way to increase income is for people to earn more or increase the tax rate.

The eternal return of the same...not.

One of the blogs I occasionally read is Global Warming Politics from Philip Stott. You can find it here.

In this post he points out, or rather points to a scholarly work that points it out, that there are problems with statistics used by environmentalists.

In this case, there have been revisions to the data such that a supposed deforestation trend appears and then after a revision disappears, repeating itself at every revision, and has been since the 1970s.

But this statistic continues to be quoted and then extrapolated to show that massive deforestation is our future.

Let me quote him:

Dr Grainger first examined data published every 10 years by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) since 1980. These cover all forest in the humid and dry tropics and appear to indicate decline. FAO's Global Forest Resources Assessment 2000, for example, showed that all tropical forest area fell from 1,926 million hectares to 1,799 million hectares between 1990 and 2000. Ten years earlier, however, FAO's previous report said that tropical forest area fell from 1,910 million ha to 1,756 million ha for the same 90 countries between 1980 and 1990. 'Owing to corrections to the earlier study, the 1990s' trend was just like a 're-run' of that in the 1980s,' said Dr Grainger. 'The errors involved in making estimates for forest area could easily be of the same order as the forest area reported cleared in the previous 10 years.'

Woah.

That last says it all: the errors are of the same magnitude as the deforestation process.

What does that tell us?

That such statistics are fundamentally useless.

If the error rate for a time series is so large that it makes any movement of the time series meaningless - say a rate change of 5% when the error rate is 10% - then any analysis based on that time series has just been discounted to nothing: you simply cannot make any judgment about cause and effect, of trends, of correlation, if that which you are observing is smaller than the average error rate.

The title of this post comes from Nietzsche: the eternal return in his philosophy is the ultimate affirmation of living, to accept the idea - terrifying that it is to him - that your life will constantly recycle, not merely with the joy and happiness, but also the worries, pains and despairs, the embarrassments and horrifying moments. While Nietzsche finds it frightening, to accept life this way is to place high marks on being alive, of accepting degradation and shame in order to continue to live (what one can draw out of that for pacificism is another story entirely...).

But the eternal return to faulty statistics, to incorrect conclusions and misled judgements: that is not something to be desired.

Now this is embarrassing...

This was in today's WSJ.

It's one of the more embarrassing articles I've ever seen: Pete du Pont is usually much better than this.

The gist of the article is that the developing world wants the industrialized world to grow slower so that the developing world gets a larger share of world growth, and is using Bali and the worthless pieces of paper signed there to force slower growth in the industrialized countries.

This is so obviously wrong that it is embarrassing.

First of all, growth is not a zero-sum game: world growth is NOT distributed automagically by the gnomes in Zürich, aided by the Bilderberg Secretariat and the Masons. It's simply the value added in production, in economic activities, and how it changes from year to year.

Second, what are the major markets for goods from the developing world?

That's right, the industrialized countries. They are, after all, the ones with the money.

So according to Pete, the developing countries want the industrialized countries to grow slower so that the developing countries can have a bigger slice of the pie, but that would mean that the developing countries would see demand from their key markets slow, making it harder for them to grow. Wait a second, how does that work...

This is embarrassing. Pete, what were you thinking???


The only reason that the conference in Bali led to the result it did is that it is the environmental movement and its hysteria that wants growth in the industrialized countries to slow. But this is first and foremost not a question of whether there is too much growth, but more fundamentally a question of control.

If the environmentalists gain control over investment decisions, over allocation decisions, over decisions that are best made in the market, they will gain control, indirectly, over the means of production, achieving via deception what communists and other leftists have been trying to do for the last 90 years.

The irony of this is that the environmentalists are truly, truly clueless when it comes to choosing the optimum for dealing with scarce resources. This is the field of economics, not environmentalists: placing an absolute value on "the fate of mother earth" means nothing less than subjugating all human activities to that goal, starting with economics, but scarcely ceasing there.

This is where the environmentalists simply do not understand what is meant by consumption, nor do they understand the role of innovation and technological development. Consumption doesn't destroy natural resources: it transforms them. Consumption is the purchase of goods and services by consumers: it is not the destruction of raw materials. Industrial metals are already heavily recycled, because it makes eminent economic sense to do so: when you buy copper pipes, the chance that these are made of virgin copper is small. Moreover, the copper isn't destroyed when it is transformed from scrap copper to copper pipes, but rather transformed: when they are replaced, they will also be recycled.

Faced with scarcity, humans have always found ways around a lack of raw materials, a lack of space, a lack of skills. Japan has virtually no raw materials, but is an industrialized society because its people were forced, as it were, to do more with less. Forbidding this, by making it impossible to innovate to meet consumer demands, is a path to stagnation. Stagnation, economically, is a catastrophe, as it is only by adding value that you can create capital. Stagnant economies are poor economies, with little chance for improvement.

The environmentalists want to keep you poor, under control and there are not a few who don't want to see you even live.

Let's Not Forget This...

One of the persons who drove me to blog no longer does. Steve den Beste was, nomen est omen, one of the best out there, and here's a link to his best.

Most of his writing has to do with international politics until 2004, when he stopped blogging for health reasons.

To put it simply, the watermelons of our time (green on the outside, red on the inside) are trying, once again, desperately, to bind and control. As in my last post, I said I would talk of the GWB, Global Warming Business, but let me use this post to lead to that one.

Let's remember what "international law" actually means: it is in and of itself a chimera, it means exactly what the sayer intends it to mean, since there is in and of itself no such thing.

To repeat: "international law" is a crock. If there is anything even remotely approaching international law, it is the set of treaties that state that the signatories agree to behave in the way and manner described, with a set of conditions for entering, following and leaving said treaties. This isn't my definition alone: see here for more.

That is, bluntly, the entire meaning of "international law". Nothing is written in stone, nothing beyond what is stated in those treaties means anything.

Why is this?

Because there is no international law. International law doesn't imply international courts - that's the other way around - but rather international law implies international law-givers, those that make the laws.

The UN is not that body. There is a World Court attached to the UN, but it deals with UN-specific questions and problems and derives its authority from the UN: only states agreeing to bind themselves to the decisions of the court are subject to the authority of that court. The US withdrew its agreement to be bound in 1986 in the wake of increasing politicization of the court's decisions. The World Court is weak: it can only make judgements based on political willingness to obey the court's decisions. This doesn't happen much: the US, for instance, tried to use the court to condemn Iran for illegally seizing US diplomats in 1980, but this failed; the court is and remains, fundamentally, political, as it needs the UN Security Council to back up its decisions.

The EU is also not that body. Really, there is no body, no political group out there that has the mandate to be the international law-givers, the ones who develop and codify the laws.

What is law anyway?

According to Merriam-Webster Online, law is a binding custom or practice of a community, a rule of conduct or action prescribed or formally recognized as binding or enforced by a controlling authority .

That is the key word: controlling authority.

Let's go back, then to Kyoto. Kyoto has meaning only for those who signed up for it.

The follow-on, Bali, led to a non-binding commitment to reduce greenhouse gases, non-binding in the sense that there were no set goals to be met. Almost anything qualifies, which means that the agreement is nothing but smoke and mirrors.

My point right now is that within the realm of international law there is no controlling authority, no law-givers, no court system in place that has any sort of utility, legitimation or weight of law that has any existence beyond the voluntary agreement of all parties involved, and that the latter, the voluntary agreement, is only good as long as those involved actually live up to their agreements.

Let's simply not forget this as we talk about the GWB. It's critical to understanding how truly absurd the rhetoric is, how toothless the agreements are, and how other countries simply ignore what doesn't work, ignoring the spirit and letter of "international law" for their own national benefit.

Connecting the dots...

Following up on my previous post - where it is made clear that part of the GWB is to scare the public - here is some more evidence of the outright fraud that is the GWB.

First of all we have this: a senior reviewer of the IPCC points out how the process of "peer" review at the IPCC has become fundamentally corrupt and is driven by politics, and that it should be abolished in disgrace.

Next we have this: the IPCC reverses the usual peer-review method (criticisms must be answered before publication) by rejecting criticisms, rejecting between 10% and over 58% of the criticisms of individual sections, averaging 25% for the IPCC as a whole. The peer-review process was reduced to a travesty, resulting not in true peer-review - challenging the basic assumptions, methodology and results - but rather in a white-wash, allowing criticisms of style and prose, but not any challenges to the fundamental opinions that drove the report. That is not peer-review, that is political misuse of the peer-review process. Again, to make it clear: the peer-review of the IPCC served no other purpose than to create an illusion of scientific review. It did not allow any - repeat, any - criticism of the data, methods or conclusions of the IPCC.

Adding to at least my dismay, we also have this : the deliberate vilification of anyone in the climate sciences area that dares to challenge the dogma of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). This goes beyond the usual name-calling of academia to the use of "climate change deniers" in the same sense as one refers to "holocaust deniers" as part of a concerted attempt to suppress critics, as well as calls for treating critics as traitors and even criminals for daring to hold a different opinion. Add to that the official censoring not of the proponents of AGW - Hansen has never been censored, despite his claims - but of their critics, and a disturbing picture emerges.

The IPCC is an outright scientific fraud, put together by the GWB in order for them to gain as much control over decision-making as possible on a global basis.

According to this, the warming stopped eight years ago in contradiction to all expectations. The data is fundamentally in question (see here for many articles on the problems that face the data, not the least of which is the deliberate falsifications of Mann et al to create the hockey stick). The methodology is also fundamentally in question (as can be seen here), and the results are driven by a political agenda, as can be seen by the IPCC process.

Now, what is that political agenda?


First of all, it's all about politics. Kyoto has been and continues to be a farce: as you can see here, even those governments claiming to be meeting their Kyoto goals are lying about it. As the writer of that post puts it: carbon emissions are a proxy measure for economic growth.

So what is the political agenda: it is one of control.

Control of growth, which necessarily means the control of the means of production. Sound familiar? I thought so.

What we're looking at is a concerted effort to create a world government, not by popular vote or by acceding to some sort of world federation, but rather by achieving control over the world's economies through the creation of a global boogeyman called global warming.

More on the GWB to follow...

The Key To Understanding Global Warming...

Martin Wolf, of the FT, has this to say.

He says a good number of right and proper things in that column, not the least of which is this:

In short, if they are to tolerate radical change in energy use, people must first be frightened and then they must be offered a good way out.

This is the key to understanding the whole Global Warming Business, of GWB. Now, isn't that an ironic acronym?

I'd just change that thought a tad:

In short, if they are to tolerate radical change in the way they live, people must first be frightened and then they must be offered our way out.

Not that it's necessarily Wolf's way: by "our" I mean those in the Global Warming Business or GWB.


It's one thing to understand that there is climate change and that human activity may contribute to it: duh.

It's a completely different thing to understand that this has been hijacked by vested interests that have no compunctions about lying about the basic science and lying about the basic data.

Don't think they do?

Lying about basic science: Mann's hockey stick, based on statistical methods that leads to the results regardless of what numbers are input.

Lying about basic data: that none of the long-term models are based on actual data, but rather on proxies, and that the proxies used for temperature changes are inappropriate because they reflect not temperature change, but rather changes in rain patterns (tree-rings).

My real, real problem with the entire GWB is that it is designed to take the maximum amount of money out of your pockets and put in the pockets of those selling snake oil.

And don't think for a moment that there is anything we can do to stop climate change: people are talking of spending billions, if not trillions, of dollars to achive changes that lie within the statistical variance.

That, my readers, coming from someone with 20 years of forecasting experience, is a waste in effort.

But first, let's frighten everyone so that they start obeying us.

That alone is the core of the entire driving force behind the GWB.



Oh, and as a postscript: Germany reaches its goal because of an accident of history: by choosing the base year of 1990, Germany get the benefit of including the output of inefficient, polluting East German industries in its base. By simply closing those down, it cannot but help be the once country with the greatest reductions. And they were closed down not for ecological reasons, but for strictly commercial reasons.

Around and Around and Around We Go...

Even the French have come to see what the Iranians are up to: they aren't going to be bothered listening to the West. Why should they? The sanctions are annoying, but do not threaten the power of the mullahs in that country. Iran is clearly, clearly without a doubt, planning on acquiring the entire spectrum of nuclear technology, with the veneer of civilian power generation, but in reality seeking the holy grail - if you'll pardon the term in use with an Islamic theocracy - of nuclear weapons.

Here's the key quote:

The French official described the meeting as "a disaster," adding "Jalili essentially said, 'Everything that Larijani has proposed is a dead letter and we have to start from zero.'"

The official also said that Mr. Jalili had declared, "There is no longer an Iranian nuclear problem," and had added that the only interlocutor recognized by Iran from now on would be the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The hard-line position from the Iranian side was clear confirmation that Iran would not compromise on this issue, the French official said, adding, "We have in front of us the real Iran."

We have in front of us the real Iran. Indeed. This is a classic way of buying time in political discussions: just when it appears that talks would actually start, stop them by starting over again by assigning someone new. We can only hope that the West recognizes this for what it is: a blatant attempt to buy time on the part of the Iranians in order to get the time they need. They now say that they will only talk with the IAEA, which is a shrewd move: calling the Iranian's bluff would mean that the UN will have to grow a pair, and that has been successfully bred out of the UN.

I've said this again and again: this is what they want, this is what they need, and it will cost lives to stop them. It boils down to the hard question: whose lives? If Iran does what it says it will do, it will destroy Israel, who will destroy Iran, killing dozens of millions. The core of the Israeli nation remembers מצדה. For those who don't know Hebrew, that is Masada.

So, here's the problem: I think it is reasonable to believe that Iran is building the infrastructure for nuclear weapons. It is also reasonable to believe that Iran will behave as its leaders say, that Iran intends to eliminate Israel from the world map. It is also reasonable to believe that Israel knows this. What do you do?

There are only three choices: you change Iran's drive to acquire nuclear weapons, you change Iran's intentions or you change Israel's existence.

There are diplomatic and military options. There is the option of genocide.

The diplomatic options are running out: we see as per ut supra that Iran has no intention of discussing their acquisition plans, nor have they shown any interest in changing their intentions.

That will leave military options. That will leave the option of genocide. To destroy Iran as a functioning country, all you need is between 14 and 20 20 kt warheads, which would reduce the nation of Iran from its current population of 71mn down to around 10mn. It would destroy all major cities in Iran, destroy the infrastructure of the country, and Iran after the strike would resemble Afghanistan after the Soviets withdrew.

Of course, if Iran were to use but one warhead against Israel, that destroy the Israeli state as well: a 15kt warhead exploded on the ground in Tel Aviv would rip the heart out of Gush Dan, the major population and administrative center of Israel, killing hundreds of thousands, and if accompanied by a major Iran-proxy attack from Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, could seriously place the existence of Israel as a functioning state in question.

This is not speculation: this is reality. The Israelis can destroy Iran; Iran, when it gets the bomb, can destroy Israel. Only irrational people commit genocide.

But remember that Masada wasn't a Jewish victory. It was a bitter defeat by an enemy who made defense virtually impossible by using Jewish slaves to build a rampart up to the gates of the city, making it impossible for the devoutly religious defenders to kill them. Realizing that they would fall, they chose death instead.

The Middle East is being remade before our eyes: we have, fundamentally, won in Iraq, bringing hope to the downtrodden Arab masses. Will this be destroyed by Iran? If the spasm comes - and can anyone really think at this point that it isn't? - what will happen?

Obviously, oil prices will explode, since Iran will disappear as an oil supplier. It will be the end of the age of oil. Those countries with strong nuclear infrastructures - France, Russia - will do well. Those with moderate alternatives will not. It won't mean megadeath in the West - of millions dying of starvation - but it will mean impoverishment and the virtual collapse of world trade. The world lives on oil, it is the lubrication that keeps the machinery of the world working.

The real problem is that the Iranians don't care about that. They are deeply and fundamentally irresponsible and irrational, and for hat reason alone should have their hands kept off the nuclear option.


Will the West get its shit together and really do the last possible diplomatic move, of extreme sanctions and blockade of Iran? That could destroy the government of the mullahs and make it possible to defuse the situation. But it means extreme sacrifice of the public, as refusing to buy Iranian oil means that oil prices will boom even further, and the public will bear the burden. That is the greatest weakness of the West, that public opinion drives policy.

Will the public accept high oil prices, inflation, economic dislocation to prevent Iran from nuking Israel? Which opportunistic group of politicians would quickly kowtow to Iran to break the blockade?

Around and around and around we go...

Muhabbet means what he says...

Hi -

Well, taking a moment here off from reality - which intrudes a lot lately - to cover something in a recent OpEd in the FAZ. It can be found here. Of course, that's in German, so it won't help a lot of y'all.

Who is Muhabbet? He's the son of Turkish immigrants into Germany who was born in Cologne but now lives in Berlin. He's a musician. He basically does what passes for Rap in Germany. I'm no expert on this genre...

Well, first a bit of background.

The leading parties in Germany are desperately in search of something called "multi-culti" or multicultural society, which in Germany means one where immigrants and Germans live alongside each other in tolerance and acceptance.

Nice work if you can get it: it doesn't work, despite the at times desperate attempts to pay off the immigrant communities and try and get them out of their ghettos. There is an official Germany and an unofficial Germany. The former has everyone living in peace and harmony, the latter has extremely high levels of crime and ghettoed communities where immigrants, unable to "become" Germans, are now living in their 3rd generation, either working menial jobs or living off the dole. Usually the latter, as many have the attitude that they deserve high-paying jobs because they're a minority, rather than doing it the "German" way by schooling, education and hard work. While Germany itself is a largely homogeneous, well-off society, the fact that they've imported an increasing minority which is anything but homogeneous or well-off is something that has been an active lie in German politics for the last 4 decades.

Esther Schapira, who wrote the article in the FAZ, found that Muhabbet, after Theo van Gogh was murdered, said that he'd have done the same and would've tortured van Gogh if he had had the chance: two other witnesses corroborate the story.

Muhabbet recorded a song with the foreign ministers of Germany and France against violence, etc. Steinmeier, the German foreign minister - well, not for long, as he's becoming vice chancellor - has not disavowed him after this became public, but has instead dismissed this, pointing to Muhabbet's "good works" since then, largely centered on Muhabbet playing the role of token minority, singing and dancing to quiet the natives.

That sounds harsh, but that is exactly what he does: his role is to placate immigrant minorities so that the German political parties won't have to deal with the massive problem that Germany has with immigrant minorities. Nothing more, nothing less. His reward is publicity, record contracts, "making it" in German society.

Well, that last is probably not much of a real reward, perhaps more of a curse. But you get there general idea.

So, what does Esther Shapira write now?

Natürlich darf ein Politiker singen. Auch mit einem Rapper im Tonstudio. Warum das aber ein Beitrag zur sozialen Integration junger Deutscher sein soll, verstehe ich nicht. Entweder sind die Zuhörer so integriert, dass sie wissen, wer Herr Steinmeier ist: Dann brauchen sie diese Gesangsübung aber nicht, um sich als vollwertiges Mitglied der deutschen Gesellschaft zu fühlen. Oder das Land, in das einst ihre Eltern einwanderten und in dem sie geboren wurden, ist ihnen nie zur Heimat geworden: Dann aber werden sie sich eher ausgegrenzt fühlen, wenn der Außen- und eben nicht der Innenminister ihnen versichert, dass sie dazugehören. Jene aber, die vom Märtyrertod träumen, sind mit solchen Späßen ohnehin nicht zu erreichen.

In English:

Of course a politician may sing. Even with a rapper in a recording studio. I just don't understand how this can be part of socially integrating young Germans. Either the listeners are integrated and know who Steinmeier is, but then they don't need these vocal exercises in order to feel that they are a full member of German society. Or, alternatively, the country that their parents emigrated to and where they were born has never been their home. If that's the case, then they will feel even more alienated, since it should be the interior minister, and not the foriegn minister, telling them that they belong here. Anyone, however, who dreams of a martyr's death, can't be reached by such silliness in any case.

This is, of course, absolutely correct: the show being put on has nothing to do with integrating the children of immigrants, it has everything to do with whitewashing the failure of German politics to come to terms with the monster that their forefathers created by allowing immigration with absolutely no concept of integration. You can't integrate people into society by saying "Hi, welcome aboard, here's your job": that creates workers, but not citizens.

Wie groß die heimliche Armee dieser „heiligen Krieger" ist und wie viele unheimliche Sympathisanten es gibt, die das Grundgesetz durch die Scharia ersetzen möchten, weiß keiner. Vielleicht gehört der junge Mann dazu, der mir vor kurzem in Frankfurt begegnete: kurze Haare, kurzgeschnittener Vollbart. An der Hand hielt er seine Frau. Er musste sie durch das Gedränge führen, denn ihr selbst war unter der Burka die Sicht nahezu versperrt. Gern hätte ich sie gefragt, wie freiwillig sie ihr Gewand trug, aber da waren die beiden auch schon in der Menge verschwunden. Frankfurt am Main ist die multikulturellste Stadt Deutschlands. Vierzig Prozent ihrer Einwohner und sogar siebzig Prozent der Neugeborenen im vergangenen Jahr haben einen Migrationshintergrund. Die liberale Tradition meiner Heimatstadt will ich mir von Anhängern totalitärer Ideologien nicht kaputtmachen lassen - und mag weder den Anblick rechter Skins in Springerstiefeln wortlos hinnehmen noch den von Frauen, die im Stoffkäfig durch die Stadt geführt werden.

How large is this secret Army of "holy warriors, and how many disturbing supporters are there, those that want to replace the German Basic Law with the Sharia? No one knows. Maybe the young man who I saw in Frankfurt recently belongs to them: short hair, trimmed full beard. He was holding his wife by the hand. He had to, since he had to navigate through the crowd, while she was covered by a burka and couldn't see where to go. I wanted to ask her, was she wearing that of her own free will, but both had disappeared in the crowd. Frankfurt am Main is the multi-cultural capital of Germany. whith 40% of the population and no less than 70% of new births in the last year coming from an immigrant background. I will not let the liberal tradition of my home town be destroyed by devotees of a totalitarian ideology, and dislike the sight of right-wing skinheads in jump boots as little as I like the sight of women led around town in fabric cages by their captors.

Now, I don't live directly in Frankfurt, but not far, and Frankfurt is indeed a melting pot. Or rather, it could have been one, it should have been one. Instead, Frankfurt is a stratified society, with money living in the "good neighborhoods" and the unwanted masses living in substandard, run-down housing - apartments that haven't been redone since the 1950s - and whose daily lives are spent dodging the bullets of criminality, hopelessness and resignation. The average immigrant isn't the rapper that Steinmeier et al are playing with, but rather someone who works the shit jobs that Germans don't want to do. The Germans don't want to integrate these folks into their society: they want them to do the dirty work and stay invisible.

I say that as someone who is an immigrant into Germany. I've been in Germany as a foreign resident for almost 25 years now, and in two years will have spent half of my life here - something I never saw coming - and while I have the enormous fortune of not doing the dirty work, I know that my role is to stay invisible. I can live with that: I'm a guest here.

Es mangelt mir zunehmend an jener Gelassenheit, die der Außenminister einfordert, wenn er verlangt, „unaufgeregt" damit umzugehen, dass sein Gesangspartner Muhabbet den brutalen Mord am niederländischen Filmemacher Theo van Gogh gebilligt hat. Ich rege mich auf. Ich werde die Bilder dieser hinterhältigen Schlachtung einfach nicht los. Theo van Gogh wurde am helllichten Tag auf offener Straße massakriert. Er radelte ahnungslos in sein Büro, als der Täter aus nächster Nähe auf ihn schoss, ihm dann mit einer Machete die Kehle durchschnitt und ihm am Ende mit einem Filetiermesser einen Brief in die Brust rammte: eine Kriegserklärung an den Westen, den Geist der Aufklärung, an uns alle.

What I can't abide any more is the calm that the foreign minister demands when he insists that we don't get upset that his singing partner Muhabbet approved of the brutal murder of the Dutch Filmmaker Theo van Gogh. I'm upset. I can't forget the pictures of the ambush and the slaughter. Theo van Gogh was massacred in public in the middle of the day, in the middle of a street. He was just riding his bike to his office, as the murderer shot him at close range, then cut his throat with a machete and then used a filet knife to pin a note into his breast, ramming it to the hilt: that was a declaration of war, a declaration against the spirit of enlightenment, against all of us.

Amen. The call for calm is the desperate call to deny that the problems exist, to deny that there are problems that need to be resolved: you can't put problems off forever, as much as that appeals to the German character.

Ich nehme diese Kriegserklärung ernst. Ich rege mich auf über notorische Verharmloser, für die nicht wahr ist, was nicht wahr sein soll. Auch mir fällt es schwer einzugestehen, wie viel Intoleranz und welches Gewaltpotential sich aus vermeintlicher Toleranz munter entwickeln konnte. Politiker aber müssen sich der Realität stellen, nicht sie verleugnen. Ich rege mich auf, wenn Frauen und Schwule von muslimischen Machos bedroht werden, wenn Kritiker des politisch-militanten Islams Polizeischutz brauchen und einem unterwürfigen Leisetreterdialog das Wort geredet wird.

I take this declaration of war seriously. I am angry about those who routinely, notoriously, claim that it's all hamless, for whom nothing can be that shouldn't be. I find it hard to admit, how much intolerance and potential for violence apparently develops from supposed tolerance. Politicians have to face reality and not deny it. I am angry, when women and gays are threatened by macho muslims, when critics of politically militant Islam need police protection and when everyone talks of stepping lightly as a form of dialog.

Amen to that: there are far too many people in Germany who deny reality. They deny that Socialism doesn't work, can't work, will never work; they deny that the German schools are designed for the needs of the teachers, rather than the students; they deny that Germany is a stratified class society. They deny that anything can be wrong with inviting millions of people to come live and work in Germany, yet fail to integrate them in any meaningful way, and they deny that Germany continually and repeatedly fails to live up to its obligations in the international community. Germany could be a source of great positive force in world politics, but fails to do so because that would be taking risks...

Der Außenminister mahnte, keine Ursache dafür zu geben, „dass diejenigen Schaden nehmen, die sich eine Zusammenarbeit mit uns vorstellen können". Seither frage ich mich: Müssen wir dankbar sein, dass mit uns geredet wird, und wer bitte sind „die", und wer ist „uns"? Theo van Goghs Mörder war ein Niederländer: Mohammed Bouyeri, geboren und aufgewachsen in Amsterdam, Sohn marokkanischer Einwanderer, sechsundzwanzig Jahre alt. Auf welche Seite also gehört Bouyeri? „Sie" oder „wir"? Gehören er und Muhabbet demselben Kollektiv an? Muhabbet ist kein Extremist. Er ist Mainstream.

The foreign minister warns against assigning causes, which might lead to damaging those, who can imagine cooperating with us. Since hearing that, I ask: must we be thankful that anyone talks to us, and please, who is "anyone" and who is "us"? Theo van Goghs murderer was a Dutchman: Mohammed Bouyeri, born and raised in Amsterdam, the son of Moroccan immigrants, 26 years old. Which side did he belong to? "Them" or "us"? Does he and Muhabbet belong to the same collective? Muhabbet is not an extremist. He is the mainstream.

This is one of the key points she makes here: that we, the West, have lots of problems with a religion that makes no difference between politics and religion, or indeed religion and anything else.

Die klare Trennung zwischen Integrierten und Islamisten gibt es nicht. Unverbunden stehen bei vielen widersprüchliche Gefühle lange Zeit nebeneinander. Acht Jahre dauerte etwa die Entwicklung Mohammed Bouyeris von einem sympathischen Jugendlichen zum islamistischen Killer. Acht Jahre, in denen er sich nicht versteckte. Die Jeans ersetzte er durch eine Djellaba, trug Kopfbedeckung und einen Vollbart. Und seine Überzeugung schleuderte er seiner Umwelt immer wütender entgegen. Doch keiner nahm davon Notiz.

A clear differentiation between integrated and islamist muslim does not exist. A lack of distinction means that many contradictory feelings can exist next to each other for a long time. It took eight years for the development of Mohammed Bouyeris from a friendly kid to an islamist killer. Eight years during which he did not hide. He replaced his jeans with the djellaba, covered his head, grew a full beard. And he threw his conviction, his beliefs with increasing anger against his environment. Nobody noticed.

Here again she is completely right: I've also seen the transition from a peaceful, quite philosophy student to an intolerant, arrogant macho who despised anyone who did not convert to Islam. It's not something that is hidden, but it's just as insidious as the transformation of someone into a racist.

Auch deshalb halte ich es für falsch, Muhabbets Äußerungen als privates Tischgespräch zu verharmlosen. Der junge Mann weiß, was er sagt. Er ist volljährig und hat ein Anrecht darauf, ernst genommen zu werden. Alles andere ist Rassismus. Es gibt keinen Kulturbonus für Intoleranz und auch keine mildernden Umstände für leicht kränkbare Machos. Auch ich bin ständig mit Äußerungen konfrontiert, die ich unerträglich finde als Frau, als Demokratin - darunter übrigens auch Songtexte von Muhabbet und ignorante Ministeräußerungen.

This is another reason I think it is wrong to discount what Muhabbet has said as some sort of private discussion. The young man knew exactly what he said. He is an adult and has a right to be taken seriously. Anything else is racist. There is no cultural bonus for intolerance and no special circumstances for easily angered machos. I am also confronted with speech that I find intolerable as a woman - among other things, the song texts from Muhabbet and the sayings of ignorant government ministers.

Bingo! This is a classic denial syndrome, that someone's statements, someone's political posturing simply can't be, that the political other can't be taken seriously. That is insulting and demeaning, and is counter-productive.

Appeasement ist gefährliche Überheblichkeit. Weil es die Wut derer, auf die pädagogisch herablassend geschaut wird, nur steigert. Ängstliches Wegducken wird als Toleranz ausgegeben. Das ist nicht nur feige und unmoralisch, weil es unsolidarisch gegenüber mutigen Kritikern wie Ayaan Hirsi Ali ist, die die Errungenschaften der Aufklärung unter Lebensgefahr verteidigen - sondern auch dumm. Der radikale Islam nämlich bezieht seine Stärke aus unserer Schwäche. So wie jeder Amokläufer sich genüsslich ausmalt, selbst Richter über Leben und Tod zu werden, so berauschen sich junge muslimische Männer an der Vorstellung, wie die „Feinde des Islams" ihnen ausgeliefert sind, wie etwa Theo van Gogh im eigenen Keller gefoltert worden wäre vor seiner Ermordung. Nicht der Tod, die Erniedrigung steht im Vordergrund.

Appeasement is dangerous pride, hubris. Because it aggravates the anger of those who are looked down upon by the appeaser. Frightened ducking is sold as being tolerant. That is not only cowardly and amoral, because it lacks solidarity with courageous critics like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who defend the achievements of the Enlightenment under life-threatening circumstances, it is plain and simply dzumb. Radical islam draws its strength from our weakness. Just as anyone running amok takes pleasure in being the judge of life and death, young muslim men take pleasure in the fantasy that the "enemies of Islam" are delivered to them for judgement, such as the fantasy of torturing Theo van Gogh in his own basement before his murder. It is not death, but debasement that is of prime importance.

Again, bingo. Appeasement is a uniquely liberal attitude, a mixture of denial and refusal to believe that one can be confonted with such absurdity. Appeasement, of tossing things to the ravenous wolves in a pathetic attemt to make them happy, only increases appetites and feeds anger and resentment. It achieves the exact opposite of what the appeaser tries to achieve, and I am firmly convinced that appeasers are directly responsible for the deaths of millions in WW2. Pacificism in the face of fascism and aggression leads to slavery and death.

Der Weg von derartigen, äußerst populären Größenphantasien zur Mitgliedschaft im Terrornetzwerk der Al Qaida ist lang, aber am Anfang steht modisch kokettierendes Posing mit den Parolen und Insignien des radikalen Islams. Dessen Diktion ist eine befremdliche Mischung aus pathetischem Herrschaftsanspruch und Gemeinschaftsgedanke, also die Betonung der Überlegenheit des Islams als einzig wahrer Religion und der Solidarität der „Umma", der Gemeinschaft aller gläubigen Muslime. Wanderprediger reisen durch Europa und halten Ausschau nach jungen Muslimen, die sich für den Dschihad rekrutieren lassen. Die Kriegserklärung der Islamfaschisten richtet sich gegen uns alle. Die Front in diesem Krieg verläuft zwischen den Gegnern der Aufklärung und ihren Verteidigern - nicht zwischen dem Islam und dem Westen. Das definiert die Grenze zwischen „ihnen" und „uns".

The path from such extremely popular fantasies about ascendence and greatness to membership in the terror network of al Qaida is a long one, but the first step is the fashionable, playful posing with the solgans and insignia of radical Islam. That is an alienating mixture of pathetic demands for power and communal thinking, with the emphasis on the superiority of Islam as the one true religion and the solidarity of the "Umma", the community of all believing muslims. Wandering preachers travel through Europe and are on the look for young muslims that can be recruited for Johad. The declaration of war by the Islamofascists is against us all. The front in this war runs between the opponents of the enlightenment and its defenders, not between Islam and the West. That defines the border between "them" and "us".

It is dangerous for fashion designers and purveyors of popular culture to make the trappings of fascism and totalitarianism "fashionable", acceptable and even popular. It makes those things that represent evil to be harmless, and the perception of evil as something harmless is exactly what evil wants and needs in order to survive and flourish...

Wir dürfen kein Terrain preisgeben. Die Frage, ob jemand gekränkt wird, ob also eine Veröffentlichung den Straftatbestand der Beleidigung erfüllt, können getrost Gerichte klären. Die Angst vor der Gewalt eines aufgepeitschten Mobs darf jedenfalls kein Argument sein. Nur wenn wir unsere Freiheit verteidigen, werden wir andere dafür begeistern können. Nicht durch ängstliches Zurückweichen. Für die Errungenschaften der Aufklärung sind Menschen auf den Scheiterhaufen der Inquisition verbrannt worden. Doch warum sollte, was dem Christentum möglich war - die Aussöhnung von Glauben und Vernunft -, nicht auch dem Islam gelingen? Aufklärung aber muss erkämpft werden: durch heftige Debatten, mit zäher Geduld, mit Mut. Und jene, die bereit sind, diesen Kampf zu führen, brauchen zumindest ein Umfeld, das sie unterstützt und ihnen größtmöglichen Schutz gewährt. Mit Appeasement, mit einer Politik der Beschwichtigung und der Verdrängung dagegen stärken wir die Gegner unserer Freiheit.

We cannot afford to give up any terrain. The question whether someone is insulted, whether someone in their speech meets the legal definition of insult, is something that courts can easily deal with. The fear of the violence of a infuriated mob cannot be an argument. Only when we defend our freedom can we convince others for the same, and this cannot be done by slinking away, afraid. People were burned at the stake achieving the enlightenment. If the key developmen can be achieved by Christianity - the reconciliation between belief and reason - what can this not be reached by Islam? Enlightenment must be fought for: by intensive debate, by extreme patience, with courage. And each and every one, who is prepared to fight this fight, needs at the very least an environment which supports them and provides the best possible protection. With appeasement, with a policy of discounting and denial, we only strengthen the enemies of our freedom.

GIven the European commitment to enlightenment and true tolerance, the demand that Islam also make that commitment is legitimate and necessary. Denying the protection of the law to those who are standing up to fascism and its supporters is tantamount to the state saying that it does not care. That is the most dangerous of developments.

Wir haben schon lange nicht mehr die Wahl, ob wir diesen Kampf führen wollen oder nicht, denn wir sind mittendrin. Deutschland ist ein Einwanderungsland, und ein erheblicher Teil der Einwanderer waren und sind Muslime. Ihre Kinder sind Deutsche, deutsche Muslime. Sie werden nicht gnädig geduldet, sie gehören dazu. Mit allen Rechten und Pflichten. Aber wer zu Recht ernst genommen werden will, der kann sich aus dieser Debatte nicht heraushalten. Die Muslime in Europa müssen Stellung beziehen. Sie müssen klären, wer den Koran richtig zitiert, die Dschihadisten oder jene, die beteuern, Islam heiße Frieden.

It's no longer the case of choosing whether we want to fight this fight, that's been long decided. We are in the middle of the fight. Germany is a land of immigrants, and a significant number of immigrants are muslims. Their children are Germans, German muslims. They are not someone who has to be tolerated, they are a part of our society. With all rights and duties. However, if anyone wants to be taken serously, they cannot avoid this debate. The muslims in Europe have to show their true colors. They must make it clear who is quoting the Q'uran correctly: the jihadists or those who claim that Islam means peace.

That is a key point: people have to make the decision which side they are on. But that is not the key point here.

What is key is that most Germans deny that Germany has become a land of immigrants. And that their children are German. My children were born in Germany, but they are not German: for that to be the case, I would have to be married to a German, which I am not. That is the legal situation: the law, in this case, serves to perpetuate the mythology that Germany isn't a land of immigrants.

Germany is. People born here are effectively Germans. German politicians deny this, the law denies this, but this is reality. Germany has been a country of immigrants from the very beginning, importing Polish workers during industrialization, Italians and Yugoslavs during rebuilding, Turks and Eastern Europeans during the Wirtschaftswunder years, and today desperately trying to attract highly qualified workers to meet the shortfall in Germans. This is the reality of the situation, but Germans and Germany as a whole doesn't see itself as a land of immigrants.

And while some go out of their way to make immigrants comfortable, the vast majority can't abide the thought that Gemany not only is country that needs immigrants, but more importantly can't abide the thought that Germany can't operate without them. So they deny it, hide it, pretend that it isn't a problem.

Which, of course, makes the problem even worse. Ignoring problems, denying them, doesn't solve them. Never will.

In den nächsten Jahren werden die Kontroversen heftiger werden. Sowohl mit den Vertretern des Islams als auch innerhalb der Gemeinden selbst. Wenn es den europäischen Muslimen gelingt, Islam und Demokratie zu versöhnen, also die Aufklärung des Islams durchzusetzen, dann wird das gravierende Folgen für die gesamte islamische Welt haben. Nur eine Unterstützung der Befreiungsbewegungen gegen die totalitäre Unterjochung wird die Welt zu einem friedlicheren Ort machen. Wir haben hier in Europa eine enorme historische Chance. Wir müssen sie wahrnehmen.

In the coming years the controversy will get worse, not merely with the representatives of Islam, but within that community. If and when european Muslims can reconcile Islam and democracy, when Islam has its enlightenment, that will also have major repercussions with Islam world-wide. Only by supporting the liberation movements against the totalitarians attempting to subjugate can the world become more peaceful. We in Europe have an enormous historical chance. We have to see it.

This is my major problem with Germany: the failure of the German governments of the last decade to be a strong, positive force for good. Instead, German governments have done everything in their power to avoid having to take any position: they want to keep their options open to see which way the wind blows.

Germany is very, very poorly served by its political parties and its politicians. Germany deserves better and while German industry might lose a sale or two, Germany could grow up and take its place in the world by ceasing to be a fence-sitter.

It's about time. But there is no one in sight that is willing to make this an issue. Denial is simply too attractive an alternative.